Author's Note: This story was written for a fic contest going on in an LJ community I'm apart of. What you had to do was write a story either mentioning or alluding to a quote the mod of the community chose. She gave out a list of quotes and the one that stuck out to me was the one that, obviously, inspired this short oneshot. I hope you enjoy it!
Disclaimer: I do not own Heroes.
"The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven."
- John Milton
Haunted
It wasn't the same anymore. It hadn't been the same in a while. He was always looking over his shoulder. Forever searching for that shadow that was never there. That shadow that wasn't anywhere anymore.
Sylar was dead.
The threat was gone, had been gone, for a while now. Yet…it didn't feel that way.
He took measures, steps, to ensure that he was being careful. He made sure to check if he was being followed; left a strand of hair in a seemingly innocuous place to make sure that no one had been into his apartment, to make sure that no one had disturbed the small world that he had created for himself.
They had burned his body. He couldn't have survived that. Fire was so permanent, so final, nothing could come back from that…right?
Peter said that what had once been concern for his own well being was turning into paranoia but Mohinder disagreed. Sylar had been such a strong presence in their lives that it was hard to believe that something so wicked, so threatening, could be gone just like that.
Evil did not die that easily.
So against his mother's wishes he stood in America even though he ached for home. He could never forgive himself if he bought this affliction to India with him. He had to be rid of the memory of Sylar forever and he knew that it would never truly leave him.
He could always have asked Bennet to have the Haitian wipe his memories of the serial killer from his mind, but then that would be cheating.
Forgetting was not overcoming.
Bitter laughter filled the air as the geneticist sat in his chair, leaning back against the tattered, worn fabric. He was caught between a rock and a hard place.
He wanted to defeat the memories of Sylar but they were so ingrained, he couldn't.
He would never go home.
'What if' seemed to be the beginning of countless thoughts floating through his mind these days. He lived by those two words now. They were the answer to a perfect unattainable life.
He had tried countless times to stop looking over his shoulder, to stop being 'paranoid', but he knew better than that. The nagging voice in the back of his mind was what drove him to continue on his mad quest for security. That's why he had moved three times in the past six months. He made sure that he paid everything in cash and did his best to make sure he stayed and remained under the radar.
He toyed with the notion of changing his appearance and his name, but his situation hadn't become so dire yet. That was an absolute last resort.
He would only do that if his suspicions were made reality. If Sylar was still alive he would do anything and everything in his power to remain safe.
An old coffee tin tipped over and crashed to the floor causing the scientist to jump and look frantically around his bare apartment.
TV was a thing of the past and so was radio. If Sylar was still alive he didn't need anything distracting him from his presence.
What if he decided to drop in on the professor and Mohinder didn't hear? If the racket blaring from the TV masked the sound of murderous footsteps Mohinder would feel like a fool. The serial killer would have won again and the professor couldn't have that. Sylar had won too many times already, he didn't need one more victory.
Mohinder limited himself to small bursts of reading.
He would read a paragraph every ten minutes and then listen out every fifteen.
The baby next door drove him mad with its constant crying. It was a perfect distraction for Sylar to make his entrance. He prayed daily that his neighbors would move.
He shifted in his ratty chair which was pushed up against a wall, so he couldn't be snuck up on from behind, and looked out the window across from him.
Sylar was out there.
Sylar was waiting.
And Mohinder would never be free.