if someone betrays me, i won't be a victim (rp for witnessof_fate

[heroslayer]

He couldn't quite say what had caused the shift this time, his awareness of what Nathan did becoming less and less absolute as the lines between them blurred, but he could say that it had been both fast and sudden. One minute, Nathan had been on hold with Yagamoto Industries, trying to get in touch with Hiro as Mohinder had suggested, and the next, he was on the floor, the shift of skin and bone already slowing by the time his face connected with the carpet. He'd noted dimly that the change had to be some kind of record -- faster even than when he was in control of whose face he was wearing at any given moment -- and then the thought was gone as he tried to catch his breath.

He'd barely managed to get a handle on himself and the twitchiness that came in the wake of awareness when a voice, distant but still familiar, started yammering from -- somewhere.

Pushing himself up out of the carpet, careful to stifle a groan, his eyes fell to the ground as he searched for the source of the disturbance. It didn't take too long before he noted Nathan's cell phone, slightly worse for the wear from where he'd crumpled on top of it. It took even less time to connect things enough that he could place who, exactly, was shouting at him from the other end of the line and why.

Rage as sharp as the change back had been rose in his chest, choking the breath he'd just gotten back out of him again, and he reached out, fingers curling around the phone viciously. For a brief instant, he considered telling Nakamura that he was back -- hell, maybe he'd go for the whole truth just to put some kind of black mark on Bennet and Parkman's records -- and then he thought better of it. Instead, he simply tightened his grip on the phone, allowing himself a brief moment of satisfaction as it came apart in pieces in his hand.

Uncurling his fingers, he let the remains of the device clatter to the floor unceremoniously, and got to his feet, moving towards the door immediately. He needed to find Mohinder. Someone needed to suffer both for letting Nathan somehow manifest his abilities and for talking the politician into trying to make himself into an weapon of justice. Someone needed to pay for using him again, just as the Petrellis had, and leaving him with no voice to argue the choice. And considering Mohinder had been responsible for at least two of those slights -- a fact which he was keenly aware of now, when he hadn't quite been when he'd first come to -- it was only fair.

That in mind, he let himself into the garden where he could vaguely recall Mohinder telling Nathan he'd be when he got off the phone, and sunk into the shadows along its edges, not wanting to be seen before he could make the other man out in the dying daylight.

Comments

[heroslayer]

"You don't get it," Sylar snarled, sudden hot fury lighting in his eyes. "Nathan's dead, Suresh. That thing you're nursemaiding? It's not him. It's a ghost, it's a -- a cancer, and it's killing me. Just because you think you can wake me up every time you get tired of screwing him doesn't mean I'm winning. It's all slipping away and what are you doing about it?" He all but barked out a laugh. "You tell me you're helping while you screw me over, trying to make him -- me -- into something that isn't who I am. You're making it worse, and I've been helping you by letting him come back. I trusted you."

He paused, sucking in a short breath through his teeth as he tried to order his thoughts, realizing in hindsight that not only had that come out in a rush but it had been anything but coherent. If anything though, his efforts to calm himself down only seemed to further his fury. "Maybe I owe you something for not turning me in to Bennet and mom, but it's not enough. It doesn't make up for the fact that you're trying to force the redemption -- or whatever the hell this is -- that you'll never get on him. On me. I don't want it; I just want my life back. And I'm so tired of being your charity project. Or your whore. Or whatever the hell you want from me. You're not doing you're best -- you're doing whatever the fuck serves you.

"Just like your father."

[capableof-both.livejournal.com]

Mohinder flinched away from the words--more emotionally than physically, given his situation, but they hit their mark. They hurt, and not the least because of the grain of truth in them. Nathan was dead, and nothing Mohinder did was going to change that. Claire maybe could have, but no one had thought of that quick enough, and now he was left with a ghost and a madman, an echo and a resonance, all trapped and wrapped up in one body, and Sylar was right that it wasn't fair to him. What they'd done wasn't right, and to snap back that it was just punishment for what he'd done wasn't going to help, and wasn't right either. It wasn't just--there was no justice in this. Death would have been better, cleaner.

And maybe he was looking for his own redemption in the other two--in him, in...trying to force Nathan's basic decency into Sylar's consciousness somehow, to show him what he could be. He swallowed. Playing god, just like his father, just like Matt.

It really was too easy to slide down into guilt these days.

"What do you want from me, then?"

[heroslayer]

"Nothing," he answered, temper sliding back into cold calm. He shifted a bit, reaching out to brush his fingers over his hair, but there was no intimacy in the gesture. This was not the touch of the man who had inexplicably cuddled up next to him just weeks before. "You're out of chances, Suresh. And even though I'm going to kill you, I don't want your ability. You get to die like Chandra did."

His fingers twisted sharply in his hair. "Same crime, same punishment."

[capableof-both.livejournal.com]

Mohinder felt a cold chill run through him at that, cold enough to snap back even the sharp pain of the fingers in his hair and leave him feeling numb. He looked at Sylar and all he could see was death. He'd seen it before, and always fought his way free, somehow, but he didn't know if he had the will for it anymore. There was too much blood on his hands and maybe he deserved it.

But they didn't, was all he could think, and he struggled a bit in Sylar's grip.

"Not here. Whatever you're going to do to me...don't do it here. Don't put my mother and Molly through that again...please..."

[heroslayer]

"Fine." He could at least honor the last request of a dead man walking. Call it payment for what little Mohinder had done to help him, not turning him over to Bennet and Angela. "But if you try to get away from me, I'll make sure you suffer. I'll make sure she suffers. We clear?"

[capableof-both.livejournal.com]

"I won't try to run," Mohinder promised, eyes a little dull. Where was there to run to, anyway? If Nathan was dead, really, and he'd pushed Sylar from whatever they'd formed to this, and he had so much blood on his hands that he wasn't good for Molly anymore...she'd been doing so well under his mother's hands...

"We're clear."

[heroslayer]

"Good." That said, he readjusted his grip on Mohinder's hair, fingers even more vicious than before, and stood up, pulling the geneticist up to his feet along with him as painfully as possible. "Anywhere in specific you feel like dying, Suresh? Or do I get to pick?"

Really, he could care less, either way. Mohinder needed to pay for his betrayal before he slipped away again. It didn't matter where.

[capableof-both.livejournal.com]

"Just somewhere away from here," Mohinder said, wincing as he tried to gain his feet and get them under him, even though everything hurt to move. "I don't care where, otherwise..."

[heroslayer]

Sylar hummed, accepting, and dropped his hand away from his hair. He turned, one hand curling into a fist at his side, Mohinder's shirt crumpling a bit as if his fingers were fisted in it. He tugged once, just to make sure the Indian understood the idea that he was leashed, then moved towards the door back into the house, dragging Mohinder through it and out onto the street, hurriedly.

He took a moment to look around once they were outside, taking it all in -- he hadn't actually been outside of the house the few times he'd been himself, always confining himself, not wanting to be seen. He didn't take too long, however, not wanting to risk Mohinder regaining his will to fight, and with a sigh he started down the street, still tugging the other man along. He stopped just short of the first unoccupied alley they stumbled upon; a brick wall would work as well as anything to beat his head in.

"You first."

[capableof-both.livejournal.com]

Mohinder let himself be dragged. His mind was racing, trying to see a way out of this. He didn't want to die. Maybe he deserved it, maybe it was only fair, but he didn't want to die. But he'd promised not to run. He didn't know if she'd be safe after, anyway, but he hoped, prayed, that she would be.

But he didn't want to die.

The sight of the alley made his stomach twist in fear and he didn't think he could take that step, freezing at the mouth of it. He'd promised not to run, but he couldn't move inside either like a cattle to the slaughter.

"I can't..."

[heroslayer]

Casting a glance over his shoulder, he couldn't help but roll his eyes. He'd half-expected this, of course, self-preservation a powerful thing -- enough to win out in spite of Mohinder's apparent death wish -- but that didn't make him any happier. Nor did it stop him from digging his nails into his palm, invisible grip tightening in the other man's shirt or from making a gesture that seemed to suggest that he was throwing a baseball, pitching Suresh over his shoulder and into the alley without mercy.

[capableof-both.livejournal.com]

Mohinder felt himself fly forward against all the resistance he'd put up, none of his strength helping him now as he fell to his knees, palms scraping across the gravel as he tried to catch himself and failed. He looked up, judging the distance, fight or flight kicking in, but flight wasn't an option, and even fight wasn't much of an option.

He didn't know what would push Sylar into going after Molly, and so the only thing he could think to do would be to talk his way out of this somehow. Rolling a bit until he was sitting, he watched the shadow in the alleyway that somehow managed to encompass love and hate and fear and faith all in one, and didn't know how anyone could carry so much conflict about another inside them.

"So this is it, then? I made a mistake, trying to find a way to keep this all together and you hidden from them, and it's the last one I'll make? Then what? You haven't got control back, Sylar. Nathan's too strong...what are you going to do when he goes home, freaked out about what's happened to me, with no one to explain to him, and goes straight to Angela and Bennet?"

[heroslayer]

"You don't listen," Sylar snapped, fanning his fingers out to shove Mohinder back into the wall behind him with enough force to hopefully break something. "I lose either way, Suresh. Bennet or my own brain deciding I'm the wrong half of this -- this hell. It doesn't matter. At least if I kill you, it's because I decided to. Rather than having you betray who and what I am again and again, behind my back."

Perhaps he'd let too much slip in admitting to Mohinder that he was starting to feel like his body and mind were trying to get rid of him rather than the other way around, but at this point, he didn't care. It didn't matter how blurred the lines were or what fleeting hope he may have given him. Suresh would be dead in a few minutes, Sylar not staying this hand this time. He wouldn't get the chance to try anything stupid, whatever that entailed.

"This is my choice. Not yours. Not Nathan's. Not Angela's. This is how I want to go down. Swinging rather than just fading away."

[capableof-both.livejournal.com]

Mohinder cried out a bit at the force with which he hit the wall, feeling a sharp pain in his back and side as he hit, and it was suddenly hard to breathe again. He wondered if he'd broken his back, but then reasoned if he had it wouldn't hurt this fucking much. Rib then, maybe, or scapula. Something. He'd heard a snap, he was sure, and breathing around the pain became necessary, even as he tried to figure out how to reason his way around it.

"So you'd rather kill me for trying to find a way to save you than work with me to find a way you can live with?" he asked, wheezing a bit, curling over in pain. "You've given up? Just going to go out in a flash of tantrum, causing as much pain as you can, and call it your choice rather than doing whatever it takes to survive? I never figured you for a quitter."

[heroslayer]

He made another gesture, this time intentionally snapping another rib in hopes that it would get Mohinder to shut up.

"You haven't tried. You stopped playing the game." That much was fact, far from the rage-fueled accusations of earlier. He'd given Mohinder weeks -- month. He'd threatened the things he cared about, demanding answers, as was part and parcel of how they worked. And what had Mohinder done? Nothing. He'd kept Nathan in the dark. He called him out whenever he felt like changing up who he was fucking. No actual progress had been made. "So excuse me if I don't trust you not to keep sitting on your ass until even you can't call me out again."

[capableof-both.livejournal.com]

Mohinder cried out again, shuddering in pain. It was blinding, turning the world white and then dark in a way he couldn't fathom, couldn't deal with for a moment. Sylar's words were just noise, something in the background of the waves of pain washing through him and he couldn't breathe. At that moment, he just wished he'd kill him to stop the pain.

"I don't know how to reverse it," Mohinder finally said, gasping around the nausea from the pain. "It's not science, what they did...what Matt did...science can't undo it...you have to find somehow...something to hold on to...I was trying...trying to give you that..." Give them both that, but whatever. He could have let Sylar go the time he tried to, not called him out again.

[heroslayer]

He shifted a bit, frowning but not looking away, his posture suggesting that he planned on letting up. Or at least planned on not breaking another rib for that he deemed a wrong answer.

"I wish it could be you," he muttered, frown turning to a scowl. "It should be you. But it's not. Nothing's working. Hell, he wandered back into your father's office again, a few days ago, and I couldn't get out."

That had been before the lines had thinned, of course, but still. That alone terrified him, since Chandra was as much a part of him as Mohinder was if not more so. Chandra had shaped him into the living weapon he was and to be denied that trigger? He shook his head a bit, even if he never put words to that fear.

[capableof-both.livejournal.com]

"But you're here now," Mohinder pointed out, still shaking a bit and not breathing right from the broken ribs. He was fighting through the pain to try and be clear--at least he had some practice at it.

"You're here now...you haven't lost, but you have to want to hold on. A few weeks ago...you were ready to give up all together, and you're doing it again--one last hurrah before you give up and let yourself disappear..." He didn't even know what he was trying to do, really, just words through the haze of red the pain had turned into. He coughed, and it hurt even more, a little blood coming up that made him wonder about the damage to his lungs.

"What happens when I'm gone?"

[heroslayer]

He made a sound that could have passed for a laugh, were there any real humor in it. "I'm not letting myself do anything, Suresh. It's just happening. My body seems to think I'm the wrong half of things here, and it's shaking me off like a bad case of fleas. And the only reason I'm here now is because I scratched at the Goddamn door for long enough, like -- like some kind of animal left outside in the cold. Do you have any idea what that's like? I'm tired. And between that and you trying to screw me over? It's too much. I can't keep going like this."

He didn't bother to grace that last question with a response. He didn't know and he didn't think it mattered much when he lost either way.

[capableof-both.livejournal.com]

"I wasn't trying to screw you over," Mohinder protested, heedless of Sylar's interpretation. He'd already said this. "I was trying to protect you..." Another cough hit as he tried to breathe and he curled over in pain, adding bitterly, when he could, "God knows why."

He struggled to catch his breath, shaking with the effort. "But if you're tired and done, then fine. Finish it for both of us. You did manage to retake control. You can do it if you try hard enough, but just...end it, let yourself go, and let me go, too. I probably deserve it for something, if not this." He wasn't sure if he was goading or bluffing or simply not caring anymore, but the world was narrowing in little spots of pain and he was hoping, at least, that he'd pass out and miss whatever came next. At least it wouldn't hurt anymore.

[heroslayer]

"Same reason I trusted you, I guess."

Seems they both had made mistakes, but he didn't put that out there, instead asking, "Would you even let me come back after this, Mohinder? If I let you live?" Not that he wasn't still exhausted, wasn't still tired of being Mohinder's whore, but morbid curiosity compelled him to ask. "Give me a reason, and maybe both of us can walk away from this."

[capableof-both.livejournal.com]

It would be stupid to let him come back after this, but, really--he'd let him come back after he'd tossed him around before (though he'd never injured him so badly), and after he'd threatened Molly, after Mohinder had killed him, at least temporarily and had to fear that, and after learning he'd killed Nathan, and everything was a lie.

What was one more fight, if he got out of it alive?

"Yes," he said, though it was soft enough Sylar might have missed it save for his hearing. "I don't want to lose you..." Why else hadn't he called Angela?

[heroslayer]

"You're not lying." For some reason that hurt. Why couldn't Mohinder just just take the easy way out and release them both from this hell?

Sighing, he shifted, putting his back opposite the wall he'd ground Mohinder into so that he could slide down it. "You might, anyway. Maybe -- I don't know. I'm tired. I just want this to be over, and if I let go -- let you go ... "

He was dimly aware he was back to not making all that much sense, but it was out of exhaustion now rather than anger. He wanted so badly to give up, even if he couldn't destroy him in the process like he wanted to. He was tired of fighting, tired of living in fear of his own demise. Why not just give into it and never have to worry about anything else again? Why not just accept his punishment, no matter how unfair?

[capableof-both.livejournal.com]

Coming up with coherent arguments was getting more and more difficult, but the shift from anger to exhaustion in Sylar's voice seemed to indicate that maybe he wouldn't have to. Maybe, somehow, he'd managed to survive this, even when he'd been prepared to die. Not that the other man mightn't get set off again, easily, Mohinder thought hazily, closing his eyes and trying to draw in a breath, only managing a shallow one, but at least he was getting oxygen in. That seemed to indicate that maybe his lung wasn't completely punctured, at least.

"It's your body...you've a right to it," he murmured, and that seemed right, at least, even if he didn't want to lose what was left of Nathan, either.

[heroslayer]

He closed his eyes, huffing out a heavy sigh, and muttered, "Wish someone had told them that." A pause, and then, "Goodbye, Mohinder."