Mohinder Suresh (
seekevolution) wrote2014-01-15 06:13 pm
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Quarantine
News had a way of spreading a little too quickly. The moment Nathan had fallen at the press conference, media began having it's field day. Mohinder paid little attention.
He arrived at Odessa fourteen hours after the incident, severely jet-lagged and with a computer pre-loaded with all of the information that the Company thought he'd need. Mohinder had been down this road before, though never with such dire circumstances. The Shanti Virus was a subject near and dear to his heart, though it was far less stressful when all he needed to cure it was a bit of blood. Even though it was his own blood, at least he felt as if he was doing something.
Knowing from experience that not everything was black and white anymore, Mohinder kept his laptop and medical kit close at hand and made his way to the quarantine line with a grim look in his redrimmed black eyes. "Mohinder Suresh," he said, forgetting his title again for just a moment. "Doctor. You need to let me through."
The National Guard service man looked wary before radioing it in through the barricade. It was tense. Mohinder's shoulder bag slipped twice and he nearly dropped his sample kit. "All right, cleared to go in. Good luck, doctor."
Mohinder nodded, rubbing the back of his neck. He'd gone from New York to India and back again in two days, bringing Molly to stay with his mother. After what Sylar did to her, again, he could not risk leaving her in anyone else's care. Not with Matt gone.
Seeing the man, however, after he'd just gone off on this quest to find his father at the expense of helping him with a child they both sort of promised to look out for, did not make Mohinder smile. If anything, it only made the lines on his face etch in more deeply. He stood in front of him, looking as tired as Mohinder felt, ill fitting clothing a bit more rumpled than usual. Never mind, of course, that Mohinder had done his fair share of leaving too on his attempts to bait the Company through lectures across the globe. "Do I have a lab yet?" Mohinder asked. No greetings. No necessities. That's what happens when you abandon people, Matt.
He arrived at Odessa fourteen hours after the incident, severely jet-lagged and with a computer pre-loaded with all of the information that the Company thought he'd need. Mohinder had been down this road before, though never with such dire circumstances. The Shanti Virus was a subject near and dear to his heart, though it was far less stressful when all he needed to cure it was a bit of blood. Even though it was his own blood, at least he felt as if he was doing something.
Knowing from experience that not everything was black and white anymore, Mohinder kept his laptop and medical kit close at hand and made his way to the quarantine line with a grim look in his redrimmed black eyes. "Mohinder Suresh," he said, forgetting his title again for just a moment. "Doctor. You need to let me through."
The National Guard service man looked wary before radioing it in through the barricade. It was tense. Mohinder's shoulder bag slipped twice and he nearly dropped his sample kit. "All right, cleared to go in. Good luck, doctor."
Mohinder nodded, rubbing the back of his neck. He'd gone from New York to India and back again in two days, bringing Molly to stay with his mother. After what Sylar did to her, again, he could not risk leaving her in anyone else's care. Not with Matt gone.
Seeing the man, however, after he'd just gone off on this quest to find his father at the expense of helping him with a child they both sort of promised to look out for, did not make Mohinder smile. If anything, it only made the lines on his face etch in more deeply. He stood in front of him, looking as tired as Mohinder felt, ill fitting clothing a bit more rumpled than usual. Never mind, of course, that Mohinder had done his fair share of leaving too on his attempts to bait the Company through lectures across the globe. "Do I have a lab yet?" Mohinder asked. No greetings. No necessities. That's what happens when you abandon people, Matt.
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It was crazy. It was fractured. He wasn't ready for the onslaught of that sickness in his head - hadn't felt anything like that before, the split open, barely-together ideas that yet ... yet, they were so focused, striving so hard onwards. It was like an animal, a predator, all teeth and no sense, except for the instinct that was terrifyingly clear.
He only fought it for a moment before he had to back away like he was burnt. It was like recoil, shooting up his arm, clawing at his head, and god, it hurt. It hurt a lot.
That flinch let both Sylar and Mohinder loose. Matt felt faint. Was quickly growing to hate that feeling.
"You sick fuck --"
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That flinch was all that Sylar needed to pull himself together and to pin Matt once more against the wall. Sylar's predatory style was seductive, the way he leaned in, the way his lips pulled back to flash white, even teeth. Even the glimmer in his eyes read sex as he lifted his finger as he'd done so many times before to slice into a person's head.
"Because you care so much, the moment I get finished sorting through your brains, I'm going to try your little tricks out on our good friend the doctor there," Sylar whispered, Mohinder hardly able to get up.
The first slice started easily enough. Getting through bone was difficult and Sylar liked to take things very, very slowly.
"I am going to taste him from the inside out until there's nothing left of his mind but scrambled eggs."
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when the pain hit there was nothing he could do but scream. His skin split open by nothing, just the twisted will of this psychopath, and the blood dripping down the side of his face was warm and way, way too real.
Past that initial outburst though, Matt kept silent, or struggled to. He grit his teeth, closed his eyes, and thought desperately at Mohinder because he couldn't focus nearly long enough to catch Sylar's eyes and make him stop.
do something- you're okay, you're fine, you can take him- hurts- please- anything- Mohinder
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He gritted his teeth and gasped in pain as he put weight on an ankle only to choke on the smell of ozone as Peter flashed between him and the two struggling at the wall.
Peter knew how to stop Sylar and pain, fresh from his family, left him harder than he'd thought he'd be. A come-here gesture at the knife block in the kitchen sent one into his hand and he drove it, deeply, into the back of Sylar's head.
The psychopath dropped, dead, at Peter's feet, blood pooling into the carpet. He did not go to Matt immediately, crouching instead to be sure he'd gotten the killer. Mohinder was left to tending the detective.
Fearing the worst when he pressed a towel to Matt's forehead, Mohinder parted the skin slightly to see how deep had been cut. He couldn't see bone. That was the biggest relief of all. Headwounds bled profusely however. It would take some time to stop.
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Peter, meanwhile, seemed satisfied with the way the knife was lodged and was towering over Sylar's body with a grim expression. It had been quick, too quick, and he was still brimming with energy he didn't know what to do with.
He could electrocute him. Could take him anywhere in the world. Fly him into the atmosphere. What did they want to do with the body? If the knife was moved, he'd live.
Matt coughed again and looked up from Mohinder's shoulder, at Peter.
"There's really no way to make sure he doesn't come back? Hey, I- let me", he added in a murmur, making to take the towel from the geneticist to press it against the head wound himself.
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Mohinder had had prophetic dreams (in a way, though seeing his father's death after the fact was more personally telling than any futurescaped presented to him) before, but the one on the couch in Odessa terrified him like no other. He leaned his chin to Matt's uninjured temple before the American was moving again in his arms. Matt sat up and Mohinder sat back on his heels.
Don't fuss. Let me, came the quick thought. Mohinder didn't feel like speaking right now, though his hand was shaking as he did his best to stop the bleeding. I'm use to having your blood on my hands at any rate.
"I honestly don't know," Peter said, nudging Sylar with his toe. "As long as no one removes the knife from his skull, we're gold. I say encase the bastard in concrete and drop him in the bay."
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He was surprisingly distant at the moment though, from what had just happened. There was pain. There were even tears as a result of it, but the real scare would come later, the shock and the terror. They still had work to do. Matt focused on that.
He nodded briefly when Mohinder thought to him, not really having the energy to fight him on that one, could tell it was something he wanted to do. He did lift a hand to palm at his eyes though, blink the sting and wetness away, but he kept his eyes on Peter. Even if he kept a hand to Mohinder's arm.
"Should probably call Bennet", he suggested. "At least tell him we got him."
Gaze dropping to Sylar's body, he looked at Mohinder, shaking his head slightly. It throbbed. It hurt from where the coarse towel met the open wound but it only led to one or two flinches. He stayed in place.
"He's ... Jesus, I've never- his head is a mess. I couldn't handle it."
It was almost apologetic, but either way he felt the need to voice it.
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It would just take Mohinder a little while to get there. He wasn't entirely unscathed either. And this apartment-- There wasn't much of it left to be salvaged at this rate.
While the Indian fiddled around in the medicine cabinet, Peter glanced at Matt. "I'll call Noah but I'm not giving him up. I'm going to take care of this one myself. No rehabilitation, no Company stepping in. I don't want to see him again for the rest of my life."
And that would be a very long life if Adam could be believed.
"I.. I think that might need stitches, Matt. I can do them if you want."
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And all that probably registered in Peter's head, judging by the grim understanding shared between them.
At the prospect of stitches, Matt seemed a bit taken aback. Mostly because well ... a serial killer was bleeding out on their carpet. Then again, their lives had stopped being normal a while ago.
"Uh, yeah. Sure." He glanced over at Mohinder and added, "Do me a favor and look him over, too."
Peter nodded, and Matt tossed him the phone they'd brought from Odessa, the one that'd have Noah's number in the history. For whenever the opportunity arose, he thought darkly as he slowly stood and carefully stepped over Sylar's legs to go sit on the couch, taking away the towel for a moment to observe all the red stains on it.
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"I can hear you," Mohinder groused from the bathroom but by the time he returned to the sofa, all that was left of Sylar was a blood stain. He was beyond happy about that.
Righting the nearly destroyed coffee table, Mohinder carefully sat on the edge to begin to temporarily close the cuts on his friend's forehead.
Now that they were alone--
"What you did-- What you tried to do-- Thank you. You made yourself a target. You didn't have to do that. He's proven before that he's not interested in killing me. I would have been all right." It might be better that Mohinder didn't realise all of the twisted things that had been in Sylar's head about him.
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"No, you wouldn't have", he said in a low tone, angling his head away for a moment to glance up at Mohinder briefly before his gaze fell again. He grimaced faintly as Mohinder's fingers returned to the tender skin around the cut. "He was ... he kept thinking ..."
He didn't quite manage to figure out what he wanted to say because he didn't really have words. There hadn't been too many sentences. Just a lot of impressions. And that was new, too. He distantly remembered telling it to Janice, saying that he could only hear thoughs, not see them. That seemed muddled now. He was sure there'd been pieces of memories in all the chaos.
He trailed off and then just finished, bluntly, "He liked seeing you hurt."
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...said he liked it, thought he might keep me for entertainment while he tracked them all down--
There was a very big reason, beyond the one that Sylar was a killer and had murdered his and Molly's parents for Mohinder to loathe the man.
During the time it took for Sylar to stop the bullet to his head and for Peter to waltz into the flat uninvited, Mohinder had been in the mad man's grasp for almost two hours.
And Sylar's tastes-- Well. He knew all about Sylar's tastes.
Mohinder swallowed dryly and wiped his hands off on a fresh cloth over his knee, going in for another bandage. The bleeding was slowing, thankfully, but it still made a mess.
"As I'm sure you've discovered by now, I don't attract normal people. They start off well enough--" He laughed, wetting his lips. "This escalate quickly towards the poorer end of the scale, it seems. I know your relationship with your ex-wife must be trying now, but I still envy you. That's a long time to have another person's love." And not someone wanting to use you...for whatever reason.
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He blinked when Mohinder brought up Janice, not sure he wanted to think about her. Frowning, he tilted his head back and breathed out a sigh. God, he felt so ... weird. His body was rushing but everything was still. It was like shooting a gun for the first time except he wasn't sure how on earth he'd come down from this.
"Look", he started, almost feebly. "I know we don't ... don't see eye to eye that often. But I'm not going to- use you, okay? I know that's not what you meant, but I ... hear me out."
He was pinching the bridge of his nose. He'd probably hung out with Mohinder a bit too much.
"He was going to hurt you. I couldn't let him do that. ... that's it."
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For any reason.
He shifted his body to the sofa itself and gently tugged Matt's head to his lap. Don't argue with him on this one, Parkman. Mohinder had to get the bleeding under control until Peter came back to stitch him all up and having the blood run down Matt's face wasn't helping him stitch the last bandage on.
"What you've done for me in the last week, Matt-- No one's ever done that for me." He was back to stroking some of Matt's hair again, just to clear it away from his forehead. He had more bruises on his own face, drying blood at the corner of his lip. He hadn't gotten out of this encounter unscathed but he fared better than Matt did. "I don't believe you can understand what that means to me. And yes, we might not see eye to eye, but you mean more to me than you might realise either."
It sounded more romantic than Mohinder meant it to be, but coupled with the thoughts he'd been having off and on for several days now, perhaps not.
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"If that's true, you can't have known any decent people, ever", he summarised the statement somewhat awkwardly. "I just ... did what I had to do. The right thing to do. Or that's what I hope."
He wasn't sure how to tackle the other pieces Mohinder had told him, and no, his mind still wasn't fully adding it all up, but it was pleasant nonetheless. Being liked and wanted. He'd tried to model himself a lot for Janice, try to be what she wanted or needed him to be, but Mohinder - it had never been that way between them. It was freeing, in a sense. He felt good with that.
Stretching out a hand in front of himself to find that he was still trembling slightly, he closed it into a fist ... and seemed to be struck by something amusing, despite that. He smiled a little and looked up at the younger man.
"I feel a bit like Molly, right now", he admitted in a surprisingly light tone. "I keep expecting you to sing."
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Mohinder took to stroking Matt's hair full time as he glanced at the way the detective's hand shook. There really wasn't anything he could do for that, to be honest. It was all nerves and Matt was a ball of them. He could feel it in the way he shifted his weight and the way he sort of lost focus talking.
Sylar's mind-- It must have been awful. Worse than Matt had tried to convey.
"I must tell you, Molly's hair is nicer," Mohinder joked, though he did start to hum, if only to try and calm his friend down, free hand lighting gently on Matt's chest and eyes focused on the curve of his lips...or the oozing head wound he kept wishing would disappear.
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Just talking - that was nice. It helped him find some ground to will away the fractures from his own head. He was hardly an expert (or maybe he was, now, who else could do what he could, in all honesty?) but he didn't think anything had changed in him from the contact. Just ... the memories of the ferocity would stick around for a while. It was like having witnessed the Walker crime scene. The images haunted him still. Now the reasoning behind them would too.
After a moment of silence on his own end, his eyes idly fixed to the ceiling as he listened to the wordless melody, he reached one of his hands up to catch hold of Mohinder's lower arm. He didn't really reflect much on it - it was just a gentle hold, something to beg for a pause. His fingers had dried blood on them.
"Thanks", he said simply.
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Eventually, Mohinder's fingers fell still in Matt's hair and perhaps he was on the verge of dozing when Peter returned. Mohinder didn't want to know where Sylar was, he didn't want to know what Peter had done with the body. There were a few nods passed around before the Indian was instructed to hold Matt's head still, on his lap.
Peter didn't bother to tease this time. He didn't really care what they did with their lives, though if anyone asked him, he thought that they were being unreasonable stupid with their fighting when it was obvious that they cared for each other. There were too many social conventions these days.
But no one asked him. So all he did was suture Matt's forehead closed and slap a better bandage on there for him. Mohinder, of course, got a once over too. A sprained wrist and two cracked ribs left Peter with not even a scrap of ace bandage left over in his bag.
"Listen guys. I think it's time I go back to my family but...uh... Listen. Thanks. For being there. And helping me. Both of you."
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He left after a hug between him and Mohinder and shoulder touching between him and Matt, with a mutual promise that if either side needed the other, they could count on each other.
It was silent despite the fact that it was still daytime outside after Peter disappeared. It was like the noise didn't really dare enter the apartment when they were both so tired and shaken and even shakier with the relief - and disbelief - of the whole thing being over.
"Okay", Matt was saying as he poured himself a glass of milk. "We want out of here by tomorrow. Let's just ... pack what we need, set everything up. Then ... sleep. Yeah."
It was an agreement to something Mohinder had been thinking and Matt was feeling happy about the company. They were a team, they were a family. They looked out for each other.
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He packed a dufflebag with the remaining pieces of Matt's wardrobe and a few nicknacks from his father's initial stay at the place. He set the packed things by the door and followed Matt, as promised, to his room to pack up his suitcase.
Maybe he spent too much time trying to choose his clothing, maybe he was just delaying the inevitable. Leaving tomorrow, as ready as he was for it, was a big move. They hadn't even looked anywhere...but a short term lease ought to be just fine until they could get something more permanent.
Once he'd finished folding up jeans and underwear, Mohinder sighed and carefully climbed into bed beside Matt. "How's your head?" he asked softly, hands to himself this time. "Still dizzy?"
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When Mohinder appeared beside him, he blinked and looked up, having listened to the other man pack up everything with his eyes drifting close. "Only when I move", he said with an expression caught somewhere between a halfway smile and completely serious. "Think we're all set?"
Aside from the fact that they had no plans for where to go, it seemed they were. Matt could sense the bit of conflict Mohinder had when he thought about it but chose not to comment on it. He hoped it'd be a good thing for all of them. Just to get away from the continuous reminders of what had happened there - to all of them, now. Before all this it had just been Mohinder who had seen bad things in the apartment. Now, Molly had too. And Matt himself.
"What time is it in India?" he asked with that reflection, watching-but-not-quite-seeing as Mohinder started shedding the first layer of clothing. That seemed like a good call, he'd just kind of faceplanted on top of the bed and settled with that for the time being for his own part. He sat up slowly, refraining from touching the head injury. "You should call Molly."
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He could feel Matt shifting around over there and he reached blindly for the other man to wrap his fingers around his shirt and tug him down. The act itself might not be entirely successful, but it should have gotten his point across.
Lay down.
"Call Molly, find a ready to move in flat, sign a lease, drop our things there, go get Molly--" There might be a few more steps in there too but Mohinder's half eating the pillow.
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He was quiet as Mohinder settled down and his breathing evened out but Matt found himself awake for quite a long time. Looking up at the ceiling and counting cracks in it ... he was exhausted, mentally especially so, but it was the kind that wouldn't let you rest.
He didn't leave, though, and when Mohinder inevitably crept closer in his sleep Matt let him and eventually drifted into a light sleep.
He didn't feel all that rested when he woke, but he felt okay, for the first time since Kaito Nakamura's murder.
... it struck him that he'd pulled a total disappearing act on his job and the realization settled with a small groan. But at least that one should be an easy fix.
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Too exhausted to dream, the undercurrent of Mohinder's sleeping thoughts were more mundane than usual. He dreamed of socks and folding laundry -- something normal. After the last few weeks, all he wanted was to return to the life that they'd had.
Mohinder woke a few hours later, the commotion of Brooklyn momentarily terrifying before he settled into the rhythm of traffic again, honking horns, people shouting.
The clock told him it was two in the morning but his stomach reminded him that Matt's suggestion about eating really ought to be heeded.
Did anyone deliver pizza this late, he wondered, waiting on his bladder to force him out of bed before moving. Despite his injuries, for which he really ought to take some medication, he feels good. Relieved. Safe.
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And woke, almost immediately, when Mohinder left. He rolled over to his back and covered his eyes with his hands when he called out to him, not actually sure whether that had been a thought or speech and not paricularly caring either way.
"It's New York, of course they do! Don't get anything with shrimp on it", he added as he glanced at the clock as well.
Well, their sleeping schedules would be messed with for a while. Maybe just as well since Molly would probably be jetlagged to hell anyway.
He took a few more moments til he got up, dizzy from standing but knowing that he wouldn't really want to sleep if Mohinder was awake anyway. He leaned on the door frame and looked blankly at the blood stain in the living room.
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<3 Missed you!!!
missed you more! welcome back <3
It's so good to be back.
I imagine, it sounded like such a hassle. /pets
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