Title: The Only Living Boy in New York
Characters: Mohinder/Gabriel, Dark Hiro
Word Count: 1497
Rating: M for angst and dark imagery.
Summary: AU to the nth degree. A good deal of implied character death. Showering.
A/N: I've tried to refrain from posting fic, as most of it turns out terribly, but this ... well, this came out, and I'm rather fond of it. It's dark, though. You have been warned.

---

Gabriel rarely slept without dreaming.

The dreams always started differently. Sometimes there was a young Asian boy smiling at his subconscious, sometimes a beautiful young woman with thick red hair and a waitress' notepad, sometimes a blonde teenager with tears standing in her eyes. They simply stood there, doing nothing.

And always, the swordsman came.

He had dark eyes and a darker smile. If the young boy was there, he swallowed him up. If the redhead was there, he wrapped his arms around her as though he were her guardian angel. If the blonde was there, he stood in front of her and stared until Gabriel looked away, feeling like he had done something dirty, something wrong.

The dreams always started differently, but they always ended the same.

---

Gabriel supposed it was the fear always hanging over his head; when he was out in broad daylight in the middle of the city; when he was, for once, alone in wherever they were living at the time; when he was drifting off to sleep with Mohinder's head burrowing into his neck, dark curls tickling his jaw. He did not know who the swordsman was, what he had done to him in that past life, that life that he had lost, that would cause him to be so angry. But always, he was there, the eyes of a demon staring from a marble face, his sword drawn, making patterns in Gabriel's skin, never too deep, never too shallow, always enough to cause pain but never enough to cause anything more, always something that he and Mohinder could mend, hiding in another city, another cheap motel, hot shower water pounding on their skin.

Every time they moved, he thought that the swordsman might have lost them, that they might have been swift enough, clever enough, fast enough in acting on knowledge gained too late, but, always, it was futile. Perhaps he was too much of an optimist, as Mohinder said; perhaps he had too much hope.

Gabriel thought he had a reason to be hopeful. He had found Mohinder, after all.

---

He thought of it as home because it was where Mohinder was, and that, lately, was the only qualification Gabriel needed.

Mohinder had not been surprised; he had stopped being surprised months ago when Gabriel came staggering home drenched in rain and his own blood -- the swordsman brought both, it seemed. No, Mohinder had only stared at his face with dark, tired eyes for long moments, before pulling him into the hotel room and closing the door.

He had healed, by that time; he always healed. But healing didn't take away the blood caked across his arms and chest, and Mohinder had peeled off his shirt, thrown it aside for the motel workers to find the next morning, half-carried him to the bathroom, and set to work, gentle hands scrubbing, lips brushing over clean skin, leaving safety and comfort behind.

Mohinder's curls clung to his face and Gabriel's shoulder, and Gabriel pulled his arms tighter around the other man's body, forcing himself to believe, like always, that if he held Mohinder close enough he could block out all the evils of the world and it would just be the two of them there until there was no more time, warm water running down their backs, flowers of half-dried blood floating toward the drain. But it was a lie, and they would leave in the morning, following carefully laid plans, happy in an illusion of safety.

But the swordsman would follow.

---

Gabriel had met Mohinder outside of a hospital. They had been released at the same time, almost the same hour. Mohinder had been waiting for a taxi, Gabriel had been checking the time and wondering what on Earth he was going to do now.

"Are you crazy?" Mohinder had asked, no sarcasm meant or conveyed, accent faintly tinged with spice, so that Gabriel got chills when he looked up and met fiery, determined brown eyes boring into his.

Gabriel shook his head. A small laugh. He tried not to be.

"You didn't look like you were." He had smiled, then, and Gabriel, if he hadn't been fully invested in the conversation before, was now thinking of nothing else. He had wondered if Mohinder could tell, if he knew what a magnetic pull that simple gesture created.

"Mohinder Suresh," and he had held out his hand for Gabriel to shake. It had taken Gabriel a couple seconds to register what he had done, a couple more to remember what to do in return, and then he had taken the hand with a little half-smile, refusing to let himself be instinctually shy. He had a new life, now; he got to choose how he was going to live it.

"Gabriel Gray."

"It's a pleasure to meet you," and the smile had vanished almost as suddenly as it had appeared, the effect something not unlike extinguishing the sun. "I heard them talking about you. I knew I had to find you. I mean, I … I heard them, and I thought they were talking about …"

"About?"

"About me."

The taxi had come, then, and Mohinder had pulled Gabriel in after him, insisting that they needed to talk, that he would buy tea, if Gabriel was in the mood. Gabriel had followed him without complaint; he supposed he hadn't stopped, since.

---

Mohinder had wanted to know where they had come from. Gabriel hadn't been so sure. What if they didn't want to know? What if they had done something awful? What if that was why they couldn't remember in the first place...?

His fears, every doubt he'd ever had, had been quieted with a single kiss, and he had spent the months after it in a haze of wonder, every moment no longer simply a moment but some profoundly meaningful thing to be treasured and kept desperately close, lest it all slip away and become a dream from which he would wake to white walls and confusion.

They had gotten jobs, gotten a little apartment in Manhattan where they could start to move on, rebuild whatever they had lost. And waking up every morning with something so precious curled up against him only reinforced Gabriel's belief that, as long as this new life would always, always be exactly like this, whatever he had been before didn't really matter, so much.

---

He had met the swordsman in the rain, of course, walking home from the coffee shop where he worked.

Gabriel hadn't understood what was going on until the sword was half-buried in his skin, twisting, shaping him into something new, something strange. Blood had run into the gutters, floating in rivulets down the flooded alley, and he had barely the strength to climb the stairs to his apartment when the swordsman was done. He had screamed until Mohinder woke and found him crumpled in the kitchen, no longer bleeding but trembling with adrenaline and fear.

Mohinder had pulled his shirt off that first time, had run his hands over wet blood, but could find no wounds, no injuries to have caused it.

So he hadn't believed Gabriel until he had seen the swordsman himself.

---

He didn't know what state they were in. He hadn't asked.

"Mohinder," he whispered. He couldn't feel his leg with a heavy body pressing it against the wall, and water pounding against his chest was making it ache.

Mohinder moved slightly, and Gabriel eased him to his side, wanting to watch as his eyes flickered open and he looked up, searching for something familiar in a world of unknowns. For the briefest moments as he woke, Mohinder looked as he did when Gabriel had first seen him, features full of intense, vibrant life, just as they had been before had found Gabriel wearing midnight red, before the insomnia had set in and he had begun to sit up nights, staring out the window and asking silent questions of the stars.

"Will it ever stop?"

Gabriel let the words fall out of his mouth even though they didn't serve a purpose anymore. Perhaps the first few times it had been an honest question, but now it seemed numb, robotic.

Mohinder let his head fall onto Gabriel's arm. "Of course," he murmured, running his fingers up and down Gabriel's thigh, fingernails caked with blood that he'd spend the morning washing out until it was replaced with his own. "We're going to be just fine."

Gabriel leaned his head forward, pressed his lips against dark curls. "I love you, Mohinder."

Mohinder responded by moving against him, wrapping his arms around Gabriel's waist and holding him close until the world went dark.

---

The dreams always started differently, but they always ended the same.

"Claire -- Claire Bennet."

The sword ran through Mohinder first, a cruel mockery of the way Gabriel shook off every injury the swordsman dealt him. A man who expected death every second of his life could not have it, and a man who had been smiling up at Gabriel one moment was falling forward the next, steel glinting through his shirt, so easily broken and never the wiser.

"Sarah Ellis. Dale -- Dale Smither. Peter Petrelli--"

The swordsman spoke, now, names falling from his lips, names Gabriel didn't know. And yet he felt them, screaming in his sleep against Mohinder's chest, begging please, please, I didn't, I didn't --

"Petrelli. Claire Bennet. Kimiko Nakamura. Chandra--"

The swordsman carved an S in his chest, three lines, marking him, and the cold, impersonal metal brought pain only rivaled by the fire in the dark eyes --

"Chandra Suresh. Peter Petrelli. Charlie -- Charlie Andrews--"

He didn't heal. No, to heal required the thought, the promise, of soft, warm hands brushing over his neck, gentle lips pressing against his own, and that would never, would never --

"Hiro Nakamura."

The sword ran through his neck, and all, finally, was still.