I don't know why, but I randomly thought of this last night. ::shrugs:: It's Mylar, with a hint of past Mohinder/Eden. I don't own Heroes. I do love feedback.
"You know, I like this city."
Eden sits on the desk, swinging her legs absently. Mohinder starts a little at the sound of her voice, but he doesn't look up.
"I mean it, I really do," Eden insists, a little wistfully. "I like the tall buildings, and the noisy streets, and even the filthy air. But do you know what I like most of all?"
She waits, but Mohinder doesn't answer, so she continues. "I like the people. I love all the silly people who are busy busy busy all the time, always rushing somewhere, doing something, pretending they don't have time to care about anything or anyone, but secretly," she lowers her voice to a confidential whisper, "secretly everybody is searching for somebody: somebody who understands them, somebody to connect with."
There is a thoughtful pause. "Sadly, most people will never find that person. Imagine, spending your whole life looking for something and never, ever finding it." There is another pause, and then a little sigh. Then a bright giggle dispels the silence. "So Mohinder, who are you looking for?"
Mohinder doesn't answer or even glance up from his notes. This time there is silence until, as though he has begun to miss the cheerful chatter, Mohinder looks up. He is alone.
"Doesn't it scare you, being visited by a ghost?" Eden wonders. She doesn't expect him to answer, but surprisingly, Mohinder looks up. He gives her an appraising lookâthis is the first time he's really seen her since she died.
"You're not a ghost," he answers matter-of-factly.
"No? What then? Figment of your imagination?"
Mohinder shakes his head. "You're an echo. It's an uncommon side effect of your power. When you are unsuccessful at planting a suggestion, you might leave an echo of yourself in that person's mind."
"You fought," Eden remembers fondly.
"I did."
"But I won in the end. It wasn't unsuccessful."
Mohinder shakes his head. "You didn't win. That was free will."
Eden smiles then, with a sincere happiness that Mohinder has never seen in any other human. It makes Mohinder's heart swell and break at the same time, and for a moment he looks away. When he looks back, Eden is gone.
"He's coming."
"What?" Mohinder stops typing and looks up to see Eden standing in front of him with he arms crossed and a grim expression.
"Sylar. He's coming. Here."
Time seems to stop as the words take more than forever to reach Mohinder's mind. Sylar? Here? But he was supposed to be dead. "How do you know?"
Eden perches on the edge of the desk to explain, nervously tracing her finger along the side of the laptop. "What you said, about the echo? Well, you're not the only one. There was one other person who ever fought back." She looks up, meeting Mohinder's attentive eyes with her own steely gaze. "That's how I died."
Mohinder swallowed once. "What do I do?" he asked helplessly.
"Kill him."
Kill him. It should be easy, right? After all, he already pulled the trigger once.
But since then he's found himself missing Zane, or at least, the Zane he knew. He misses that half-apologetic, awkward smile, and the way he pulled the sleeves of his shirt over his hands and fidgeted when he stood still. He misses the way he said his name, as though it were something beautiful and exotic.
In his dreams he's pulled the trigger a thousand times, and sometimes it's Sylar but sometimes it's Zane and he looks at Mohinder with wide, innocent, questioning eyes even as he falls to the floor.
And surely Sylar was innocent once; he can't always have been a killer. Maybe he was Zane before he became Sylar, and maybe somehow he can change back. Perhaps Sylar was right, and he does deserve a chance at redemption.
"No."
"Kill him." A strange harshness underlines her words, a harshness Mohinder has only heard once before. His eyes widen in surprise, but this time, he doesn't argue.
Satisfied with her work, Eden fades away, leaving Mohinder alone to contemplate his mission.
Footsteps in the hallway, and Mohinder picks up the gun with a shaking hand. A knock on the door, and he cocks it.
"Mohinder?" It's Sylar's voice, and a tear rolls down Mohinder's face. He can't bring himself to open the door, because he knows what he'll have to do if he does. He raises the gun to his own head for a moment, but the suggestion, more powerful than any Eden herself could have produced while she was alive, forces his arm to lower the gun. Mohinder lets out a choked sob followed by a half-stifled scream of frustration as he realizes that he no longer even has that escape.
"Mohinder!" Sylar calls again at the sound of Mohinder's rage. Then there is a crack as all the locks on the door break at once, and the door swings inward. It seems to take all of eternity to open, but it's not long enough and Mohinder can feel the muscles in his hand contracting, his finger twitching at the trigger. Sylar steps forward, but then stops at the sight of the gun.
"Mohinder," he says a third time, helplessly. Mohinder sobs in return, fighting his own body as the voice in the back of his mind grows louder and louder: Pull the trigger. Kill him.
"Are you going to kill me?" Sylar asks, in a soft, sad voice that is more Zane than Sylar. Mohinder tries to swallow but his throat is already closed and it just hurts. It's his dream, oh god it's his dream and its happening just the way it always happens, and soon Zane will be lying on the floor with a bullet hole in his head and a look of broken innocence on his face. "Because, if you are, I won't stop you. God knows I deserve to die." He stands with his hands out in a gesture of defenseless acceptance, and Mohinder sobs as he realizes that this was what he's been waiting for. Sylar does have a shot at redemption, and now Mohinder has to take it from him. He closes his eyes.
"Are you going to shoot me?" Sylar's voice is barely above a whisper this time, and Mohinder feels suddenly weaker than he's ever felt in his life. His limbs are heavy and everything aches. Trembling, he lowers the gun, slowly, jerkily.
"No."
Sylar reaches out to catch him as he falls, and the echo of an echo is born in his mind.
Sometimes it's not so bad. Sometimes he can move and speak and go through the day almost as though nothing's wrong, save perhaps a persistent absent look or the tendency to forget what he's doing and wander off.
But most days Sylar has to help him with everything. He can't feed himself or dress himself or even get out of bed sometimes. He just lies there, mumbling to himself, while a million suggestions float around his head like a million thought balloons, but with all the power of nothing at all. A million ideas and none of them his, and he can't make sense of any of them. He is confused and lost and alone, trapped by the spiteful echo of an echo, without even the sanctuary of his own mind to comfort him.
But even in times like those, Sylar is there to guide him through his day. It is his duty; it is his gratitude and it is his love.
It is his atonement.