She never drank before tonight.
Not even at her brother's wedding, where the champagne flowed freely and mixed with black tears.
Maya never wanted to end up this way. That's how their madre died after all. She drank herself to death when their father left them. Maya wonders sometimes if this is the way that all females in her family will wind up, drunk and alone.
And still searching for a man's approval.
She chucks the bottle across the room and it shatters into a million pieces. She's supposed to be watching Molly tonight; she'll have to call in sick. Mohinder will understand. If anyone understood this situation, it was Mohinder. He'd been there before.
The only difference was Mohinder found his way out of this black hole.
He wasn't searching for a way back into that man's arms. He didn't want to feel the touch of that psychopath anymore, feel the hot breath of that man whisper in his ear again, remember the way his eyes lit up as if he was looking at something special. Something extraordinary.
She could feel him taunting her, watching her move about her New York City apartment like a frightened child. She was afraid to be alone. Even worse was to be alone with memories of him.
"I'm still here, Maya. And I'm not going anywhere."
One day she gets so disgusted by her behavior that she vows not to let him get to her anymore. He wasn't worth the time she spent unable to get out of bed. He wasn't worth dark circles under her eyes from the nights spent hiding from dreams of his touch. He wasn't worth the money she spent on alcohol to avoid the pain of thinking of the past.
Alcohol does not make the asshole go away, she realized. The only thing that makes the asshole go away is going away from the asshole.
She did that. Accomplished the first step.
So why didn't she feel any better?
It's two months later by the time Maya is able to put on a good show of getting over things and moving on. It's all an act, one she believes even a child would see through. She's putting on weight again, eating three meals a day, sleeping through the night and hasn't cried in front of anyone in some time. She leaves those breakdowns for the few moments when they let her out of their sight.
"You look good." Mohinder smiled at her over dinner one night after finally convincing her to leave her apartment. He placed an extra emphasis on his words, as if by the sheer fact of saying them, they would be true. "You were starting to worry me."
"Did I look so bad?" She makes a failed attempt to smile as he places his hand over her own. It's the first time another man has touched her since.. but it's just a friendly touch, it's not like he means it. Not like they ever mean it. When he doesn't answer her question, she shrugs and turns away to stare into the night. "I'm okay. Really."
Sometimes she still dreams of him and wakes up to find her bed empty.
She's never quite sure if the tears that follow are because she hates what he's done to her. Or because she misses what he used to do.
Everything reminds her of him these days. She wouldn't have made it all the way to America without him, she says, even though that's not quite true. She wouldn't be walking these city streets or friends with Doctors Suresh. He led her to this new life and then dropped her.
Put a bullet in her chest and ran away.
Everything holds an essence of that man. She can't forge ahead like this so one night she develops a plan. She'll just leave. She'll get a car and drive as far as she could in one direction and never have to look at New York City without him again.
Maya gets as far as Ohio before the pathetic car she's rented breaks down. She finds a job waitressing within the first month and sets up shop in a dingy little apartment just outside of Columbus. And she doesn't think of him. Not ever. Not even when her eyes burn black and she can't control the tears that fall. Or when she touches her hand to the spot where his bullet stuck her heart and remembers his betrayal.
She does think of Mohinder though. Of Matt and Molly too. The ones she's left behind like Sylar did to her. They were becoming friends over the past few months. She wonders sometimes if they miss her or if she hurt them.
But they kept speaking his name. The company was trying to find Sylar. The cheerleader Sylar almost killed was coming for dinner. Another victim Sylar killed was in the newspaper. Sylar, Sylar, Sylar.. leaving was all she could do to keep from going insane.
She couldn't listen to that name anymore.
When Mohinder knocks on her door, Maya's surprised. She didn't think she meant that much to him. He came eleven hours all this way, just to see her. The least she can do is let him in. She only hopes he doesn't speak that name because it still grates on her ears, turning her heart inside out.
"Why did you leave the city, Maya? Is something wrong?"
She feels trapped standing here with the doctor, although Maya can't quite understand the reasoning behind that fear. Perhaps it was because he was going to drag her back there and make her remember a hundred touches she was dying to forget. Perhaps it was only because she felt she betrayed him by leaving and starting anew.
"Mohinder, I--"
"Come back with me, Maya." His eyes are pleading with her and she barely stops herself from breaking. He tries a different tactic, one she can't so easily refuse. "Molly misses you."
Six months have passed since Maya had been in the same room at him. Sometimes she imagines meeting up with him again. She imagines what she would do, what she would say. She would smack him across the face, maybe turn her eyes black and make him cry too. Make him feel every single thing he did to her so he would understand her pain.
A million questions would spill from her lips. Why did he use her? Why did he kill her brother? Was he planning this from the beginning? What was he thinking when they slept together? Why did he leave her? Why hadn't he come back?
The daydreams always ended the same way. He would apologize, get down on his knees and beg for her forgiveness. Somehow she always took him back. No matter what he did to her or how much he destroyed her life, she always took him back.
Everything that once was hers is gone and replaced with what-might-have-been's. It's deep and dark and lonely in this hole she's sunk.
Maya doesn't always think she'll get out. Maya doesn't always want to bother trying.
Matt has started interfering in her life but she takes his advice willingly. She needs to move on, they tell her. It's time to find another man to take the place of the one who hurt her so badly. In time, she won't even remember his name and Sylar will be another vanquished nightmare. That's the idea.
Then Matt hooks her up with a guy he knows on the force and Maya is forced to go through the motions. She wears her hair up and buys a new slinky dress. The man is very nice, not the type to steal anyone's brain and make off like they'd made another conquest. He's not the kind of man she can compare to an angel either. He's plain, ordinary and utterly normal.
He doesn't excite her.
He doesn't fill her with hope for the future.
When she arrives home, Maya wonders what is wrong with her. And why she can't just accept what is placed in front of her. Why does she always have to be so unhappy? Why can't she just forget what Sylar's kisses tasted like?
Maya feels like she's betrayed so many people by now she can't count them on one hand.
Those she killed before she gained control of her power.
Her brother. She let him die and then made love-- no, had sex-- with his killer.
Mohinder. Matt. Molly. They all want her to forget but she can't because the forgetting hurts almost as much as holding onto the memories.
Mohinder still works for the company, though he's less morally gray these days. Her knight-in-shining-armor to replace her angel. He brings work home, files and papers that Maya is warned are top secret. She's not to let Molly see them because it's all strictly confidential.
Mohinder never specifically tells Maya that she herself can't see what's written inside. That's just an unstated rule, one Maya obeys until one night when she hears Mohinder speak that name again.
"Sylar was captured by the company a few days ago," Maya hears him tell Matt just before they leave and her eyes dart to the new folder that rests on Mohinder's desk. "They're testing some new drugs on him."
When they're gone and Molly is asleep, Maya picks up the file that is labeled 'Gray, G'. Her breath catches in her throat, freezing inside of her as she opens to find a mugshot of the company's new test subject. He hasn't changed that much over the past ten months. He's still the same man she fell in love with and the same man she now hates.
Over the following weeks, Maya volunteers to babysit Molly more and more.
Each night after Molly falls asleep, Maya reads over the latest report Mohinder brings home. She reads about them hurting him, what surgeries and drugs they're trying out on him and how depressed he's become. She smiles. She was a strict catholic but the eastern religions did have a good idea about karma.
The bastard deserved everything he got. And she relishes learning about each step of the process of breaking him down. She only wishes she could be there in person when he screamed out, when he couldn't take the pain anymore so she could smile and tell the doctors to do it again but stronger and harder and faster this time.
Karma is a girl's best friend and he has it coming to him in spades.
Later, Maya reads up about Buddhism on the Internet. She's thinking about changing her religion and incorporating more of these karma ideas into her own life.
It's then that she realizes what she wants isn't karma.
It's vengeance.
Guilt pushes the hurt aside. Another feeling Maya needs to make room for in her heart.
She wants to save Sylar from the pain. No one should experience what he's living through.
Not even her worst enemy, who he has now become.
Maya doesn't know what to expect after she convinces Mohinder to let him see the man that killed her brother. She says she wants to look into the killer's eyes and see if he has a soul. A soul is not the only thing she's looking for in those deep, dark eyes of his.
"What brings you here today, Maya?" Sylar stares back, eying her up and down. He tries to appear tough, as if the bruises that cover his face are merely decorations.
There's nothing in his eyes. No love she thought was there before, no warmth Maya swore she felt during their trip together. There is nothing but a lonely, empty man with no hope of love in his heart. He is so lost. She almost feels sorry for him. Almost.
"I wanted to convince myself of something."
"And what might that be?"
"That you never loved me."
That night Maya finishes a whole carton of Haagan-Dazs because that was what you were supposed to do in America after going through a long, painful break up.
The next morning, she rises with the sun and greets the day.
She finally feels alive again.
A month later, it no longer bothers her that Sylar is stuck in the company. Very few things bother her when it comes to Sylar anymore. He was, as Matt promised, another nightmare she finally vanquished. He wormed his way up through her thoughts sometimes but not for very long and not in a way that would produce any lasting depression.
Matt gave Molly a piggyback ride through the apartment, joking with her about how they're not going to have vegetables in the new apartment because all little girls needed a healthy dose of sugar in their lives. Molly shakes her head incredulously, as if to say 'that's my dad for you'. Maya laughs and places a piece of tape across the last cardboard box, firmly closing it and writing the word 'Dishes – Fragile' on it, because fragile things needed to be protected.
After Mohinder received a raise at the company, the boys found a newer, bigger apartment closer to the center of the city. They were moving out today and leaving the past behind. They seemed to all be moving on. It was a good feeling.
Maya smiled as Mohinder and Matt packed the rest of the boxes in the moving truck, watching them from the sidewalk. They were good fathers and good people. She wondered how she had been lucky enough to find them.
Perhaps that was the silver lining to the disaster which was Sylar.
Molly shook her arm, waking Maya from her reverie. She pointed to the hopscotch board, the one Maya painted on the sidewalk a few months ago. "Can we play one more game before we leave?"
"One more. And then I'll paint you one at the new place."
"A new one?"
"Yep. And it'll be better than the last."
She was never in love before she met Sylar.
When jealousy sprung up in her after Alejandro told her he was going to marry Sarita, she wondered if she would always be alone. It was part of the reason she chose to hide in the convent and give her life over to God. At least he would love her, if no one else did.
During that week on the road with her angel Gabriel, thoughts of spending a life alone were pushed aside. Maya was in love for a moment, one shining, glorified moment. Or at least she thought so.
She was never in love before she met Sylar.
She still has never been. But she thinks she knows what it might feel like.
Only next time, she hopes it's real.
And he doesn't leave her.
And he doesn't hurt her.
And maybe, just maybe, he loves her back.
-THE END-