The Dreams of a Boy

by Card's anonymous

Peter still dreams of possibilities, of how things could have been, of how they should have been. When everything ends in death, Gabriel Gray is their last chance: if Peter and Mohinder can save him, they can save their future.

Title: The Dreams of a Boy 1/9
Author: Card
Pairing(s), Character(s): Peter, Mohinder, Sylar, Gabriel (and others)
Rating: R
Warnings: Violence, some slight gore, cursing, disturbing imagery, character death (insofar as much as Heroes ever does character death)
Summary: Peter still dreams of possibilities, of how things could have been, of how they should have been. When everything ends in death, Gabriel Gray is their last chance: if they can save him, they can save their future. Together, Mohinder and Peter go back to save the watchmaker before he becomes Sylar. Can human nature be changed so easily, or are we powerless against destiny?
Disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters or profit from this fiction.
Spoilers: Up to 304 with vague references to the rest of volume three
Word Count: 6,429

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. -- Eleanor Roosevelt

[Peter, 2012]
First, he dreamed. Long dreams of long ago days when he'd been a boy and Nathan had been a half-grown man. Of sailing, of cabins and parties and the time he'd hidden under the buffet table, flat on his back and watched the feet of men and women come and go. He had listened to their babble as if it were a foreign language, snickered when his mother stopped close enough he could have reached out a finger to touch the pointed toe of her shoe. She asked Nathan where Peter had gone off to and Nathan must have shrugged, might have been drinking something because it sounded like he was barely finished swallowing when he said he didn't know.

Peter remembered smiling, remembered his Mother stalking off with comments of how Peter was never going to grow up but Nathan had walked around the end of the table, stopped and looked around before he bent down to pull up the long table cloth to look right at him. What're you doing, Pete? Nothing, Nathan. How about you come out of there now? You can't hide forever.

Dark dreams of present days, of standing at the back of the crowd, of holding the gun in his hand, of raising it and seeing himself younger, foolish, standing there at his brother's side. Content to trust Nathan loved him, Nathan would never betray him or anyone, or maybe simpler, that Nathan would always be his hero. Nathan would be the man that saved the world and saved him.

He dreamed of pulling the trigger, again and again. He dreamed of the screams of the men and women. He dreamed of Nathan's face as he fell.

(He dreamed of heat that burned the clouds from the sky.)

And when the dreams passed, light burned red beyond his eyelids, he remembered that he should have been dead. (Claire.) "Peter," he shouted as the world rushed in all at once. It was too much to bear, the sound of nothing, the feeling of hard metal and the brightness of halogen bulbs buzzing over his head.

"At last." He knew that voice, beyond the fuzzy edges of his memory (he had died) and turned toward it. Sylar was standing beyond the IV, his eyes were blank and cold and empty, his shirt and neck were sprayed with blood and his left hand dripped with it even as he cocked his head to one side. "You've been making a mess of things again, Peter."

No, no this wasn't supposed to happen. "Where's Peter?" he said. "I sent him to you; you were supposed to help him!"

Sylar's smile was feral. "I imagine Peter found his way back to his own time, unless they killed him. I didn't ask."

"What did you do, Sylar?" Peter asked. This wasn't meant to happen; it was a perfect plan to bring Peter here, to give him that ability, to change the future, to keep the family together and save the world. It was all hinged on Sylar, on his ability to see how things worked, cause and effect meeting up in perfect unison.

"I did nothing," Sylar assured him. "They killed my son." He smiled again, as if he were watching Noah play in the sandbox, a smile that a father held for his son, the smile a man held for his sole reason for fighting— "Suresh!"

"Mohinder?" he whispered.

Sylar was walking out of the room as Mohinder ducked past him. He should have been covered in scales, hiding in shadows, moaning in pain at his mistakes and how his body was tearing itself apart from the inside out but there he stood as he had been.

"What?" Peter said. "How?"

"Claire's blood healed you," Mohinder explained. "We discovered its aptitude years ago. It's amazing really, its regenerative properties—" But he stopped short then, as Peter stared at him. "Sylar," was his shameful confession. "He offered me the cure in return for my cooperation."

"Cooperation?" Peter demanded as Mohinder pulled the IV out of his arm and offered him a shirt. "Cooperation with what?" But that may have been a stupid question to ask, if Noah were really dead—

"I'd suggest you reacquire the healing power, Peter." Mohinder turned his face toward the door; there were bruises on his arms, a scratch across his neck that looked as if someone had been fighting for their life. "Before it's too late."

"Before its too—?" That wasn't the right question, how and why Suresh got here, those were the things he needed to know. "What's going on?" The floor was cold and wet under his feet; he looked down and saw the puddle of blood. Beyond the end of the slab there were bodies, piled five together. Men with broken necks and slit throats, men with glassy dead eyes that were staring upward into the blinking halogen light as a scream pierced the air.

Mohinder wouldn't look him in the eye, wouldn't answer. Peter ran—toward the noise, toward Claire and Sylar's voice that purred into her ear as his fingers dug into her neck and glowed bright orange and red. She was pinned to the wall by the broken metal rods, one in her shoulder, and one through her hip, her blood leaking a puddle onto the floor as she thrashed in pain.

"Sylar," Peter shouted. He grabbed the man by the shoulder was thrown back against the wall, landed on the floor against a dead man's back. Mohinder was pulling him to his feet, tugging at him as if he could keep him away.

"You are a monster," Claire gasped at Sylar. "You always were. They said you'd changed, they said you weren't a threat anymore. They were wrong." Her head tipped back, teeth digging through her lips as the metal turned in her side, Sylar's finger drawing a circle in the air as he smiled at her screams.

Peter grabbed Sylar's elbow, pulled him around to face him. "Stop this," he said.

"I don't want to," Sylar said.

"Peter," Claire croaked. "He killed Matt Parkman, he killed the Haitian—he's got their abilities now." She was pleading with him now, as the metal kept twisting in her side, to save her. To see Sylar as the evil that he was.

"She killed you," Sylar returned. "She tried to kill you twice, she tortured you. She killed my son." He turned to look at Claire, the fake smile slipping from his face as his voice deepened. "And she's not sorry."

"I am," Claire begged. "I'm sorry."

"No," Sylar repeated. "You're not. But you will be."

"Sylar, you don't want to do this," Peter said. He caught Sylar's wrist in his arm, and stared up into his face. A man that he'd never considered a brother, a man he had never trusted, who he had never felt comfortable around (not really) but an ally in the later days. Sylar hadn't been a monster since the day Noah was born. "Gabriel," he said. "Think of Noah."

"You've never called me Gabriel before," Sylar said. His hand was sticky and hot against Peter's neck, pulling him closer to hug him, to apologize for what he'd done, to admit that Peter was right, close enough to whisper. "I don't like it."

"Peter's right," Mohinder was saying from behind him. "Keeping Claire alive is in the best interest of all of us. Her blood is the only cure we have for—"

Sylar rolled his eyes, one hand still on Peter's neck as his other finger cut a slash across the air. Claire's head hit the ground hair first and then face down in the puddle of her own blood. "Don't worry," was a secret whispered in Peter's ear, but all he saw was her hair soaking down into the blood, the last kicks of her dying body before it was still and the only sound she made was the drip of her blood. "She's only the first one." A quirk of Sylar's lips. "Don't look so shocked, Peter. It's what you wanted."

"I never wanted this!" Peter screamed at him.

"How unfortunate," Sylar said before he flicked two fingers and the invisible thrust of energy sent Peter flying into the wall again. Colors dimmed and sound blurred, he could hear the thud of footsteps and the sound of Mohinder's voice as it left the room.

Then blackness.

[Mohinder, 2012]
"So," was a purr that sidled across the floor past the thick layer of dust, that crawled up the wall where the sticky crust of the cocoons were still peeling, to the dark corner where Mohinder crouched with his back against the ceiling. A little breeze blew, made the sheets of plastic wave and crackle. "This is where you ended up. Ah, Mohinder, I expected so much more from you." Sylar was pale, stark contrast to the darkness he swathed himself in, the filth that he stood in to tip his head back and peer up at him. "Come down," Sylar said. "I promise I won't scream."

"What do you want?" trembled in his throat. Peter had come—Peter from long ago, brash and fearless but full of a fool's hope. Mohinder had told him not to go, told him that Sylar's power was dangerous, that it had turned the man into a killer that had rampaged without repentance until the day, quite suddenly, he became a father. Noah had been the only thing that tamed Sylar.

"Haven't you seen the news?" Sylar asked. He looked from one side of the room to the other and clucked his tongue before he smiled back up at him. "I guess not." The smile was gone, the patience was gone and Sylar was tearing at Mohinder with telekinesis, ripping him away from his perch and slamming him against the ground. "I asked you to come down."

Mohinder pressed his palms against the floor and lifted his face. Sylar was crouching in front of him, hand held out. A silver tube in his hand bore the Pinehearst logo and the grim line of his mouth promised that this formula had been obtained with as much violence as could be wrought. There was blood drying around Sylar's wrist as he leaned in closer. "What are you willing to do for this?"

Anything.

Sylar's grin returned. "You're going to tell me where Matt Parkman is."

"Why do you need Matt Parkman?" Mohinder asked as he shoved himself straight to his feet. "What happened to Noah?" The pain was sudden and searing, burning like fire as bright as lightening against his chest, throwing him back against the wall hard enough to see stars and a sickening swirl of blackness. The scales cracked against the floor and he gasped for breath, for consciousness and—

Water, half frozen, splashed against his face. "Wake up, Mohinder." Sylar was crouching next to him again, setting the glass down on the floor and staring at him, one hand out to touch him but Mohinder pulled away. Bore the heavy sigh as Sylar rolled his eyes. "Let me see your eyes, you might have a concussion."

"I'm fine," Mohinder said and pushed himself up and sagged back against the wall.

Sylar sat on the floor, legs crossed and elbows resting on his knees. He toyed with the silver vial of serum that was meant to cure Mohinder. "Peter brought himself here from the past. He came to my house, he took my power—They followed him." (No, that wasn't meant to happen, Peter wasn't meant to go.) "Noah's dead."

"Sylar," Mohinder said.

But his eyes were already empty, there was nothing left. "Some of them survived," Sylar whispered. He turned the vial over in his hand again. "I want Matt Parkman." There again, Sylar's eyes looked up at him. Asking him if he were willing to trade a life for what was in that vial. "I'll find him, whether you decide to help me or not." And Sylar held out the vial again like asking him to make his decision.

"Then why…"

"This is far from altruistic," Sylar assured him. "But all I need for you is an address, Mohinder. That's not too much to give, is it?"

Mohinder stared at the vial, he thought of his life before, he thought of his impetuous, he thought of the monster he was now, of the screams of women and the revulsion of men, he thought of men and women who purported to be his friends that had run from him when he needed them. And he thought of Maya's face before she died. "I'll tell you," Mohinder agreed.

"Good man," Sylar whispered. "You can have this," with a nod at the vial. "After we get back."

--

Sometimes Mohinder still dreamed of his childhood, long before he knew about this world. Sometimes he still dreamed of hot days in the sun. Sometimes he dreamed of his Mother's voice in song. And when the nightmares came, in the dark of night, he thought of Sylar. And the thought crept through his body like maggots wriggling in the dead flesh of a corpse, eating away at what was left of his soul beneath the ravaged exterior of his body. The scales ached, and cracked and bled.

He remembered the eyes of a monster, a parasite, as they stared at him past the barrel of a gun and challenged him to say he was more important to his own father than a murderer. They challenged him to define right and wrong and make sense of vengeance itself. Dark eyes and a pale face that called him a coward, and he was. He had the chance to kill Sylar and he'd let him live once, twice, three times. When the nightmares came and crept and burned in his mind he thought of how he might have changed the whole world with one squeeze of the trigger.

But the nightmare broke into daylight, Sylar strode down the hall as Mohinder scuttled as a bug. He broke open the door as Mohinder hid out of sight. He slaughtered Matt as Mohinder hid his face against his knees and promised himself that it would all be over soon.

And then the baby cried.

Mohinder moved then, scrambling to his feet, inside the apartment, slipping on blood and tripping over the bodies—stomach curling in revulsion at the sight, at himself, at Sylar picking up Daniella out of the crib, his hands coated in the blood of her father and whispering to her in a sweet little voice that she didn't need to cry. "Sylar," he said.

"I'm not going to kill the baby," Sylar said back. For a second, only for a second, there was something of the man he'd been in his eyes. "She can't stay here." He carried her out of the room, down the hall and knocked on the door, waited for the terrified woman to come to the door and offered her the baby. "I didn't want to leave her in that mess," Sylar said.

"Okay," the woman babbled and took the baby girl and closed the door behind her.

Sylar turned to look at him, pulled the vial out of his pocket and threw it at him. "I always liked your face," seemed like an odd thing to say to him. The moment dragged while Mohinder held the vial in his hand, let his thumb smooth across the smear of blood on it.

He drew in a swallow as he reached over to pull the door to the apartment closed behind him, to forget Matt how he'd led Sylar right to him. The world was going to end, was going to be torn apart by men and women with abilities that they were never meant to have because Mohinder had perfected the formula that Arthur Petrelli had dangled in front of his face like a prize. He'd never intended to cure Mohinder, not ever.

"Does that make you angry?" Sylar asked him.

"It did," Mohinder said. Once, before he became this monster, when he still had dreams. He looked down at his arm now, the scales were too thick there, turned the vial over in his hand, pulled the cap off and stabbed himself in the thigh. The pain came as heat, surging through his body, over his skin, breaking and snapping until his knees hit the ground and all at once his hands were—

"Come with me." Sylar stood at the end of the hallway, as if he'd intended to go and stopped, turned back and waited. There was a smirk playing at the corner of his mouth, a satisfied sort of look as Mohinder thought (yes, yes that would be a good idea). "Now that is useful," Sylar whispered when Mohinder walked over to him. "Very useful."

--

"Kill everyone but Claire," Sylar remarked to him once they were inside the doors.

Yes, kill those men that came to kill them. To stretch the strength in his arms, to twist their flesh beneath his fingers, and fling their bodies like nothing more than ragdolls at the walls. Until the walls bore the stains of blood, the floors grew slippery with them. Sylar threw men out of the windows, broke the doors from the hinges, he slaughtered every man that stood in his path, up the stairs and breaking through the doors to find Claire and the Haitian waiting for them.

Sylar stopped. "Claire," was almost brotherly. Kind, perhaps. "Did you think this would work?"

"I think you don't have any powers so long as I have the Haitian," Claire whispered. Her arm was straight and steady with the gun pointed right at Sylar's heart. But she was afraid; Mohinder could see it in her eyes.

"He can't hold them all," Sylar said and threw his hands forward, fingers spread, pushing out with every power he had under his control. Sparks and steam rolled off the end of his fingers, the glow started in his palms and pulsed until the room was hot and Sylar moved—the gun went off, it barely stopped him as he slammed his fist into the Haitian's face.

"Claire!" was the man's last word. The gun fired and fired again, Claire putting bullets through Sylar as he tore off the top of the Haitian's head, exposed his brain, manic and single minded, barely took the time to throw Claire against the wall.

"Interesting," Sylar whispered as he stood up again, spit a bullet to the side. "Suresh," he said.

Had he stood there all this time? "Yes?" he asked. Claire looked at him then, begged him and hated him all in that one glance before her head was jerked back around by Sylar's hand on her chin. His face so close to hers.

"Peter is through those doors," Sylar said.

"He's dead," Claire ground out through her clenched teeth.

"We can fix that," Sylar said. "Can't we doctor?"

[Peter, 2012]
He dreamed of possibilities.

Standing on the roof of a building, wearing a khaki jacket, watching his cell phone drop forty stories to land at Nathan's feet. He was nothing more than a kid again, the belief that he could fly and maybe—if he couldn't—that Nathan would find a way to catch him. Arms wide to what could be, his feet stepping off the ledge and believing in nothing more than faith itself. Everything was air under his arms, against his neck and face; it was simply meant to be and so it was. Nathan never grabbed his hand, he had faith too, smiling from where he stood on the ground and Peter smiled back as the air stopped rushing.

This was flying; he was flying.

Claire meeting him in the hallway of her high school, whispering that she was nothing more than a teenager and Peter would know when she said that, would know just by looking at her, that she was the one, the girl that he had to save to save the world. She called him crazy when he told her she was in danger but he saved her life from the man all in black. (From Sylar.)

Nathan met Claire with tears in his eyes, without reserve as he pulled her into his arms and held her, as he apologized for the things he hadn't been and hadn't done in his life. And their Mother had to understand then that she could not stop them from healing this family from all the damage she had done. Claire cried when she met the boys, the boys didn't understand at first but soon they called her their sister and Heidi found a way to welcome Claire. A politician's wife knew how to be gracious. Nathan lost the election by three points, they mourned the lost opportunities, celebrated their family in its new entirety.

One Sunday—when they never had brunch, but they found their way together once in a while to eat bagels and argue—the doorbell rang and Claire said she'd get it, that she couldn't take any more boring old man talk of the law and politics, Nathan leaned his head back against the couch where he was slouched with a glass of orange juice balanced on his belly and Monty against his left side to shout after her about how he wasn't old. Then he'd smile as he looked back at Peter sprawled out in the chair to tell him: She was talking about you.

Simon giggled behind his hand and asked his Dad for more juice, Nathan groaned and objected but he would have gotten up to get it, wondered out loud where Claire was before the scream that tore apart the peace of the dream.

Claire! But it was too late, Sylar stood next to her body, her brain dripping in his hand as he grinned and started to laugh.

You're too late Peter, you're always too late.

(He dreamed of falling.)

The air smelled like putrid death, his mouth tasted like blood and his face burned like fire as he opened his eyes. There was no light now, as he crawled back to his feet and stumbled forward those first steps to fall again, landed on his knees next to Claire's head. Years ago, when she'd been nothing more than a kid, a cheerleader he'd been told to save, she had told him that he was the only one that made her feel safe.

"I'm sorry," was what he said to her when it didn't matter anymore. Sorry that he hadn't saved her, sorry that he hadn't ever known how to, sorry that it had come down to this and that she had died at the hands of the one man she still feared. "I'll stop this."

Then he had to go, to get back to his feet and stumble until he found his footing. He walked because it was important to see them, the men that were broken and twisted, the ones that were slashed in half, the ones that eyes were still staring and mouths were held open in bloody and grotesque silent screams. He walked four stories and found only dead men, down to the lobby where the first security guard was slumped over the desk with the TV still set to the news. The headlines ran again and again about Costa Verde, the tragedy that left a crater where the city had been and two hundred thousand people were dead. Authorities were linking the catastrophic explosion with an unsuccessful attack made on the President, they weren't releasing any names yet but there was speculation that this attack might have had something to do with the terrorist organization.

With him.

He only half knew where he was going when he closed his eyes and curled his hands into fists, half an intention let instinct take over and he found himself opening his eyes in the Oval Office with a shocked looking aide gaping at him while Nathan finished the sentence he'd started and smiled at her reassuringly.

"It's quite alright," he said to the aide. "Could you excuse us?" She ducked her head and muttered her yes, sir Mr. President and was gone. Nathan dusted himself off before he looked over at him. "You were dead, Pete."

"Didn't take," Peter said back.

Nathan smiled blankly. "That's unfortunate." The words were cold as ice in the room, Nathan leaned back against his desk, hands folding around the edge as he stared right at his face without apologizing. "Time travelling, Peter? And what exactly were you hoping to accomplish by sending my brother to find Sylar?"

"He got the ability?" Peter asked. It had to have worked then, somewhere Peter was back in the past and he could set things right, steer the course along the right path and—

"He killed me, Pete. If it weren't for Claire's blood I wouldn't be sitting here now." Nathan stood up again. "You," was caught between sorrow and laughing. "You never think things through, Peter, you never did. You think one thought and you hang onto it until you've made the worst possible situation, you never look around at the big picture. We knew Sylar's ability was dangerous—you knew it was dangerous."

"Peter can handle it," he said back. "He'll find a way."

Nathan turned his back to him, just like that. "It really is unfortunate, Peter. I didn't want to do this."

Peter wanted to ask him what was unfortunate, some part of him that died four years ago wanted to touch Nathan, to be hugged and consoled and to be told (even if it were a lie, even if it were always lies) that everything would be alright. He heard the gun discharge, he heard the bullet rushing forward and looked at his brother's back. "I'm going to fix this Nathan."

Then he was on a street, in the dark as the sky broke open to rain and the ground was drenched. He broke into a store to steal clothes and money and found himself somewhere dry to sit that had a TV tuned in to the news.

Sylar would leave a trail of bodies wherever he went, the reporters would inevitably find it.

[Mohinder, 2012]
Sometimes Mohinder dreamed of the desert. The stretch of sand bleached blond by the sun itself, shaped by the grace of the wind that blew it from one dune to the other. Always moving, always changing. It was blank and hot everywhere, seemingly barren and uninhabitable. He dreamed of rain in the desert, the softest and shortest of showers that teased his tongue with the thought of water.

The sand rocked him, under his back, as if water while he stared at the burning knot of the sun overhead, just wishing he were dead or blind. Wishing that when the clouds came at last in that desert, they weren't bruised and when they broke open that they didn't rain blood and shriek lightning and thunder that sounded like snapping bones.

The slap across his face jerked his head to the side. Sylar's hands were over his wrists, his breath was close and acrid. Faintly sweet. "Concentrate Mohinder," Sylar said again. He'd said it before. Concentrate on the past. His voice sounded so heavy, the words sank down into Mohinder's flesh until he wanted to do what he was told, what was asked of him and couldn't question why. He'd wanted to kill those men at Pinehearst. They deserved to die for standing in defense of the men that had used Mohinder and let him become this thing.

Sylar's fingers tightened, his patience ran thin as he raped Mohinder's mind for the knowledge he wanted.

"It hurts," Mohinder whimpered, head back, body shuddering with the pain and soaked in sweat as thick as blood. The assault didn't relent, Sylar must have smiled at such a stupid plea, must have laughed because there were puffs of breath against Mohinder's neck. He might have considered, Sylar's ability and the hunger that came with it, the way that none of them—nobody at Pinehearst, nobody at The Company had ever been able to isolate it, matched with Matt's would lead to this. The world was laid at Sylar's feet now, he was free to tear open their skulls anyway he pleased, free to rape the darkest thoughts of man to the surface and twist them around.

Nightmares shattered behind his eyes, nightmares of Molly being ripped limb from limb, nightmares of his father's murder, nightmares of the men he had kept in his lab, the experiments that had gone wrong, of the long days when he had known he would become a monster. (Nightmares of Maya and how she had died.)

And then it stopped, and his body felt as limp as jelly. Sylar shoved himself up, stood back and just stared at him. "I loved my son," Sylar said.

Mohinder let his head fall forward, made some effort to push his heels against the floor, to straighten up in the chair but his muscles would not consent, would not cooperate and he could barely manage to the coordination to whisper: "I know" past the drip of sweat from the ends of his hair.

"Stop fighting so hard, Mohinder. It'll hurt less." And Sylar was back again, freezing fingers catching his wrist, breath tickling his hair and the tearing pain of his power.

Mohinder screamed.

--

"I always liked you," Sylar confided in him as he laid flat on floor, back across the painting half scratched off the floor of the loft. He was holding a cookie in his left hand, nibbling at the edges of it between his thoughts. What an unappreciated luxury, the privacy of one's thoughts. "I'm not just saying that."

Of course he wasn't. Mohinder concentrated on his fingers hanging loosely over the end of the chair arm, on the pull of duct tape holding his arms down, the torn skin and whether that slime was blood or sweat. He might have torn his skin to shreds with all the thrashing. His feet were flat on the floor and he could feel that but couldn't use it. He had no energy at all, not even enough to lift his head or straighten his shoulders.

"You were decent, Mohinder." He lifted the cookie to his mouth then, bit off a mouthful and chewed it methodically, stared at it. "Noah liked these," he whispered. "He had nightmares sometimes, he wet the bed and we'd sit in the kitchen and share a cookie and he'd tell me about the boogey man."

Mohinder tipped his head back, too far, felt it hit the back of the chair and wished he hadn't bothered. Now he could see Sylar moving, watch him rise back to his feet, see him when he came to loom over the chair again. "What..." are you going to do? but he was too tired to speak.

"I'm going to kill them all." A smile, Sylar touched his face, dragged his thumb through the track of tears dried to salt tracks on Mohinder's face. "But first, there's really someone I should go see."

--

He stood because Sylar told him to stand. Matt's power had untold applications, a veritable wealth of possibility. Theoretically, Sylar could make Mohinder do whatever he wanted, feel whatever he wanted, think whatever he wanted. He had told Mohinder to kill the guards and he had, he had told Mohinder to break the door and he had, and now he stood guard and watched Sylar leaning over Angela Petrelli's tiny form.

She bit her lips until they bled, clawed the chair she sat in until her fingernails broke, she whimpered in fear and gasped in pain until Sylar pulled screams out of her.

"That's really too bad," Sylar purred to her. He straightened, stared down at her as she tipped her head up to meet his eyes, hers were blood shot and wide open, her mouth opened as if she meant to deny whatever truth Sylar had found. "No," Sylar whispered to her as he pointed his finger. "I'm through listening to your lies."

And then she started screaming.

--

Sometimes Mohinder could dream of green, of tree tops and grass and walls of the apartment where his father had chosen to live those last few months of his life. Sometimes, he could dream of orange, of his mother and her kind words and kind hands that held him and consoled him and offered excuses for why it had come to be this way.

He thought she might have held him still, if he had only known where she were or if she were still alive. Her arms would be skinny and fragile around his shoulders, her voice would speak soft into his ear and tell him of all the things they could not control. When Mohinder raged at his father, when he blamed the man's rash and illogical decision to abandon his family in the name of science, she would comfort him.

There was no way his father could have known what sort of monster he would find in America. There was nobody that could have known, nobody that could have stopped it. His mother would tell him that and wipe the tears from his eyes when, at last, he cried for the things he had lost.

It was a car horn that woke him, jerked him awake from where his forehead had rested against the glass. Sylar didn't spare a glance to look at him, kept his blood-crusted hands on the wheel and his eyes faced forward.

"Where are we going now?" Mohinder whispered.

"Nowhere," Sylar said. "This is a dream." He looked then, a smile and light flooded in, everything was too bright and Mohinder closed his eyes but when they opened he was holding the wheel of the car, looking out at snow and ice of Bozeman, Montana. Sylar was slouched in the passenger seat talking about philosophy and greater purpose. He stopped, reached a bloody hand up to hold the bar above the window.

"Why are we here?" Mohinder asked.

"Because," Sylar whispered. "Just for this minute, it wasn't a lie." He turned his head to look out the window, smiling at the snow that was thrown by the tires, at the bumps in the fields they passed that might have been anything—tractors, sheds, stacks of hay—and there was blood dripping out of his ear.

"What did you find out from Angela Petrelli?" Mohinder asked. It was all a dream but the cold crept into his bones, through the jacket and he started to forget that it wasn't real. That he hadn't been the man sitting next to Zane Taylor in years; he might not even have the capacity to be that man again.

"That everything I believed was a lie," Sylar said. He turned his head again and the world broke. Everywhere there were clocks ticking, bells chiming, the noise grew louder until it was deafening and Mohinder grabbed his ears just to make it stop—shouted—

He opened his eyes to the flat plane of a wood floor. Sylar was sitting on the couch beyond Angela's body, just staring at him. "What are you going to do now?"

"Wait for Peter," Sylar said.

[Peter, 2012]
The answer came in a dream, his mother's dreams. The Company, the office where they had all stood for the last time before the family broke apart, before there was no healing the world because there was no healing their family.

It was a matter of teleportation, an empty hallway with dead men ripped in half. The flickering halogen light that buzzed and threatened to die. And down, past the closed doors, the one that stood open where Sylar was waiting for him. He could hear his voice, enigmatic and exhausted explaining to Mohinder:

"Wait for Peter."

"Why would he come?" Mohinder asked.

"He's already here." And then the voice grew louder, Suresh's feet pulled in as if he were trying to sit up. "Aren't you, Pete?" Energy burned until the lights popped and the wall cracked apart, exploded out into the hallway. Mohinder was scrambling somewhere backward, and Sylar was stepping out through the sprinkling of sawdust and broken paneling. "We're not brothers, Peter. Your mother lied to me."

He had no powers; Sylar's smile was cruel as he stepped forward. Peter stepped back, he thought he wanted to run but the energy caught him like a punch in the gut, flung him against the wall and Sylar followed, hand on his throat and stepping up closer.

"This is going to hurt," Sylar whispered to him. And then he tore into his mind like a rapist.

[Mohinder, 2012]
It shouldn't have worked, perhaps it shouldn't have been so easy to step up behind Sylar with the broken pipe, to stab it through the back of his skull and end the screaming at last. At last, he had corrected the mistake he'd made when he had fled from the apartment with Peter's dead body instead of staying, of killing Sylar once and for all while he was unconscious on the floor.

Then, when the nightmare was fresh, it had been fear that set his course. But he had nothing left to fear when they had all become reality. Sylar fell to the floor, Peter landed on his hands and knees, gasping and choking on his own breath. Coughing until he puked.

Mohinder crouched next to Sylar, rolled him onto his back. He would only come back again, somehow the monster would live again. He always did. Peter fell on his side, panting now and watching as Mohinder wrapped his hands around Sylar's face. As he twisted, one knee against Sylar's chest to hold his body still and tore—bone popping, skin ripping, blood rushing until at last the monster was dead. His head rolled down the hall, his body pulsed blood onto the floor.

Peter fought to his feet, as unstoppable as the monster had been, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, turning the corner to find his mother's body and— Nothing. Not so much as a gasp, not so much as a teary eye. "We've got to stop this, Mohinder."

"How?" he asked.

Peter looked back, down. "Gabriel was a good man," wasn't the answer Mohinder wanted to hear. "I never went back far enough. That was all; I never went back far enough to save them."