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[fanfic] Legacies: Part 8 (R)
Title: Legacies
Chapter: 8 (of 8)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tiptoe39
Characters/Pairings: Matt/Mohinder; Maya; Elle
Rating: R for violent and sexual content
Warnings: Spoilers for all of Season 2 so far; slash. (The slash is integral to the plot, but it is not the plot itself.)
Summary: We are given legacies by those who leave us, but also by those who stay by our side.
Author's note: Thanks toilsaluvsrick for her amazing beta work on this!
Previous chapters: Prologue | One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven
Downtown's traffic snarl made Mohinder feel as though he were climbing a jungle gym. The address, black-on-gray on his cell phone, was pale in his hand. He was sure he'd memorized it the moment it came through, but he kept glancing back, afraid it had changed, or he'd remembered it wrong, or something else horrible and catastrophic. And everywhere, wire fences and car exhaust and silver vending carts in his path. He dodged and darted. He had to get there. He had to get to Matt.
Three floors up and again wire and metal impeded his progress. An elevator that wouldn't come. He took the stairs. Outside, the sirens sang the blues into the cavern of his ears. As he approached the door, the name plate-- Walk-in Clinic. Dr. Wong, Dr. Howe, Dr. Russell-- swung toward him and Matt's face appeared, an anxious glance into the hallway that jumped in surprise when it actually saw Mohinder there. "Oh, thank God, finally," he said, stepping outside and running down the hall to him, grabbing both his hands. "I thought you'd never get here."
"I'm here now. What happened?"
"I'm not sure. We got called out here and-- God, it's like a massacre in there, you don't want to see it-- but that's when it happened, a few minutes after I got in I tried-- and I couldn't hear anything. I don't know what's going on, and... I'm scared," he admitted, a hollowness in his voice. "I don't know how to explain it. I'm just scared."
Mohinder was scared too, he discovered. He'd had the idea knocking around in the back of his head since Matt's call, but now it came rocketing forward. What if Matt had contracted the Shanti virus?
Loss of power was the first symptom, of course-- the virus targeted and latched onto those abnormalities as its entry point. But then the other physical symptoms started. Immune system failure, shortness of breath, fever, delirium, weakness--
--and then I could lose him.
Suddenly he was shaking. He grabbed Matt's arms, leaned his head in toward his shoulder, breathed in the scent of his closeness. He tried to think about what it would be like to not have him there, snide and sometimes rude and solid and real. Matt trading joking barbs with Molly. Matt watching football like it was a religious ceremony. Matt tearing into him about the Company and all he was sure they'd done. Matt leaning on his shoulder late at night, too drained to deny how badly he needed the contact and comfort. Matt kissing him, lips soft on his, making him feel like melting butter. Matt laughing. Matt shouting. Just Matt.
He couldn't imagine a time he wouldn't be there, couldn't remember a time he hadn't been. It was like life began and ended in that small apartment, the ratty hand-me-down of his father's that had somehow become his. And then Molly and Matt came to live there and it had somehow become home. Because they were home.
And without meaning to, he was stepping in closer, moving into Matt's arms, tears filling his eyes, thinking the same thought wildly over and over and over even though it frightened him to think that he was thinking it, frightened him to know that it was coming from a place so deep inside him that it couldn't be anything but true.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
Matt stepped back. "God, you have weird timing, you know that?"
Mohinder looked up, trying to blink the tears away. Embarrassingly, they instead spilled onto his cheeks. "What?" It was a pale, chalky whisper.
"Look, um, I'm not good at this." Matt was blushing. "But, you know, this hasn't been the greatest day, and I'm just about desperate enough that I'll take it and run with it." He ran a quick finger over Mohinder's jaw, kissed him softly on the lips, just once. "I love you, too."
"Matt..." For a moment he thought he might melt into the floor. He hadn't meant for this to happen, hadn't meant to realize it at this worst of all possible times. And he certainly hadn't meant to let him into his head far enough to read what he himself had only just realized.
Then it hit. "I thought you said you couldn't read minds."
"Huh? You mean you didn't say that out loud?" Matt blinked and blushed. "Oh, jeez. God, that's..."
"Not something we need to worry about right now." Mohinder wanted to be amused by Matt's awkward embarrassment, but all of a sudden the name plate on that door was boring into his eyes. A clinic. What if a patient here had the virus? What if it had gone airborne? "I need to go in--"
"No. Mohinder. You don't want to--" But Mohinder already had his hand on the door and was pulling on the knob.
The room was full of dead bodies.
Dead receptionists slumped over the counter. Dead patients young and old fallen on the floor and crouched in front of their chairs. A dead nurse at the inner door, her clipboard splayed over her outstretched, limp arm. And two policemen, not dead but suffering, breathing heavily, clutching at their throats as though the room were full of smoke. And both of them looked up at him with eyes like those on the dead bodies, eyes streaming with black tears.
"Maya," he breathed. "She was here." He felt like throwing up, felt like screaming. He groped for Matt, who caught him in mid-faint. Mohinder struggled for coherence. "My God," he whispered, pale and white. "She really is..."
It was almost too much to take. The grotesque array of corpses, the demonic black scrawls of dying tears. Just as bad was the thought that he had hurt her so much that she had lost control like this. And she had been so happy just a day ago, standing outside that restaurant and talking animatedly about everything from her escape from the Dominican Republic to her new dress...
And then it hit him.
"He kept breathing and moving... If the boat had not been there, we might...”
He stared at the scene, dumbfounded at his own idiocy. The sound of pieces snapping into place was ringing in his ears. The Dominican Republic. Through Haiti, westward to Mexico.
Mohinder knew the identity of the one man who'd survived Maya's power.
He'd treated him.
It was two hours to Hartsdale, and he didn't have time to waste a second. He moved so fast toward the staircase that he never heard Matt call his name in surprise, never saw Matt's fellow officers stand straight up, breathing easier, their eyes clearing.
The sound of the door slamming behind Mohinder was like a thunderclap-- deep and resonant. The books rattled on the shelves. Bob neither jumped nor spoke. He simply raised an eyebrow and put down the book he was engrossed in.
"Maya Herrera," Mohinder said. His voice echoed against the wood paneling. "She's the same as Shanti, isn't she? What she does. It's the virus. She infects people."
Bob smiled. "Brilliant. I knew you would have the chance to figure it out sooner or later. Yes, Miss Herrera emits the Shanti virus. Dreadful thing, really."
Mohinder strode to the mahogany desk and slammed his palms against it. "But my sister died of the virus when she was only five years old. How on earth has Maya surv--" Then his eyes met Bob's. And he saw some genuine grief there. A flash of humanity in a face that was usually so clinical, so businesslike and cold.
"Allow me to clarify," Bob said in a voice that didn't sound like his own. "Miss Herrera is indeed just like your unfortunate sister would have been. If she'd been allowed to mature."
And all of a sudden Mohinder realized why his father had nearly gone insane with grief. It wasn’t just losing a child, as horrific as that is. It was giving a child up.
"My sister didn't die of the virus, did she?" he said slowly.
"Her death was because of the virus, yes."
"But she didn't die of it, did she?"
Bob ran his hand along the cover of the book. "No."
Mohinder straightened up. Running his fingers through his hair, he paced, his voice shocked, broken. "You killed her. Because she could have transmitted it to others."
The man behind the desk heaved a heavy sigh. "If her power had matured, yes. We were lucky to get to Shanti when she was as young as she was."
Bob got up. "Chandra Suresh was frantic. He called every university he could, looking for reasons as to why his baby girl had started crying black tears. We were able to intervene fairly easily. When Victoria analyzed her blood, she realized that with maturity and time, the hormone she was secreting would be able to kill normal people in seconds. Those with genetic anomalies would also die, albeit slower, and after losing their particular abilities." He heaved a heavy sigh. "It was a difficult decision to make, Doctor Suresh. We took no joy in it, believe me."
"But Maya's blood has mutated again," Mohinder said. His body was still shaking, but he needed all the revelations now, so he could deal with them and move on. "Is it possible that she..."
"I'm afraid so, Doctor." Bob nodded gravely, coming to stand toe to toe with Mohinder in the big room. "My daughter is under the mistaken impression that I don't know what she's been up to. It was a valiant effort on her part, but the power Miss Herrera wields cannot be controlled. What's more, the Shanti virus she emits now has a chance of going airborne. The threat of a worldwide outbreak was not ended when your friend Mr. Petrelli destroyed our sample. It's now a very real possibility."
Even though he had suspected it, Mohinder still staggered a few steps at hearing the truth spoken. He felt waves of guilt overwhelm him. If he hadn't led her on, hadn't allowed her to believe he might feel something for her, even unknowingly, could he have prevented this disastrous turn of events?
"This was our miss, not yours," Bob said as though sensing his guilt. "We should have stopped her when we had the chance. Instead, we took a hard look at ourselves in the wake of the Bennet fiasco and thought, let’s try to be humanitarian."
"Wait. Stop." Mohinder's head was still spinning. "This doesn't make any sense. Why would you allow Elle to continue experimenting with Maya if you knew she was..."
Bob smiled ruefully at him.
He felt his heart plummet to his socks. "My God," he said. "You wanted more samples of the virus, so you could continue your sadistic research. You're an animal!"
"Not at all," Bob grinned. "We've been quite humanitarian about the whole thing. We've even taken out an insurance policy."
"An insurance..."
And Bob stretched out his hand and pointed straight at Mohinder. "You."
"Me? What do you mean?"
The lizardlike grin returned. "Did Miss Herrera ever tell you about her brother?"
"What? What does her..."
And Bob bridged the gap between them, leered into Mohinder's face. Eye, eyeglasses, eye. "Do you think you're just a normal human being, Dr. Suresh? You, whose blood can cure a virus? More importantly, did you think we kept you around purely for the value of your research?"
It was too much. Mohinder shrank back from the emotional implications of it all, returned to the frantic cogitation that was his first line of defense. Think logically and the rest will fall into place. His blood contained a natural immunity to the disease, which he was able to tap to synthesize a cure. But that was no surprise to either of them. What it had to do with Maya's twin brother, who seemed to be the indispensable key to controlling his sister's outbursts...
He froze. And he mouthed three words without a voice.
Brother and sister.
His eyes cleared. The world came rolling back into focus. Bob was smiling triumphantly. "Yes, Doctor Suresh. Precisely."
He tried to find his voice, succeeding only in a hoarse whisper. "So I am... I have an ability?"
"Not as such," Bob said sadly. "You, like Miss Herrera's brother, carry the antidote to the disease in your blood. You yourself have seen it. It was our hope that we would be able to provide the impetus to speed your mutation along if the time came, but we have been unable to discern the key to doing that. So you remain unable to emit an airborne antidote, as he did."
"You're wrong."
"No, I'm quite clear on this. Your daughter is living proof of it. She required an infusion of your blood to be cured."
"No, I can emit it. I have."
The voice was full of sunshine. Bob had to do a double take, "Beg pardon?"
Mohinder's smile was wide. His eyes lost focus and he began to ramble, pacing back and forth in the lavish study. "Matt called me," he narrated. "I went down to meet him. He said he lost his power. I suddenly realized that if he had the virus, I might lose him, and I panicked... and it returned. His power returned. I must have emitted it. That must have been what happened."
Bob observed the rant, his eyes squinting closer and closer as the young man went on. Finally, he cleared his throat. "Doctor Suresh," he said with some embarrassment, "believe it or not, I try to make it a habit not to inquire about the personal lives of my employees."
"You're right, I don't believe it." Mohinder tried to sound cross, but the light in his voice could not be so easily vanished.
And hearing that light, Bob knew the answer to his question even before he asked it. "Have you, by any chance, fallen in love with Officer Parkman?"
Mohinder smiled widely. "Yes," he said. "Yes, I have."
Of course. Of course it should work out this way. The legacies of his parents' pain, of his sister's sacrifice, woven inextricably into his own life story. And the living legacy of a blossoming love. Of course they should be borne into the moment when they were needed the most.
Bob actually clapped his hands with delight. "How extraordinary. It seems we may have a true case of amor vincit omnia. Just as Miss Herrera's feelings for you prompted her change..."
"...my feelings for Matt caused me to begin to emit the antidote," he breathed.
The man nodded. "And, it appears, at an even more sophisticated rate than the late Mister Herrera ever managed." He smiled as genuinely and as widely as Mohinder had ever seen him. "Congratulations, Doctor. You appear to have saved the world today."
Molly found Maya in an alleyway. She was running from everyone who approached, panicky, starving. When she saw Mohinder approaching her, she tried to run. Matt froze her in place. He hated doing it, but he had to... at least until Mohinder was close enough to tell her it was OK, that he could do what Alejandro could do, that she couldn't hurt him and wouldn't hurt anyone while he was there. She burst into tears and ran into his arms, crying "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to, I never have."
He looked at her with shining eyes and said, "And you never will again."
They injected her with periodic infusions of his blood. Her system tried desperately to reject it, and for a while she was very sick, delirious and vomiting when she wasn't sedated. But the therapy, torturous as it was, seemed to work. By the end of the week, she didn't show any sign of the pheromones, even when being shown her favorite telenovelas (in a sealed room, of course). By the second week, her genetic markers had returned to normal.
Mohinder practically lived at the lab that month, and Matt and Molly came often to visit, seeing him more often at his job than at home. It was an OK sacrifice to make. Sometimes you just have to put your happiness on hold to save the world, Matt explained, and Molly puffed up her chest with pride and said, "I can take it."
When it was all over with, Maya moved out west. It was too painful for her, she said, to be this close, to see them this often. Mohinder would send boosters of his blood if things got iffy. She smiled and said, "Be good to each other." And that was that. She was gone.
"Another nightmare behind us," Matt said as he closed the door to Molly's bedroom.
Mohinder was standing at the counter, rubbing his hand anxiously against his sleeve. "Do we have to keep facing them?" he wondered plaintively, his eyes seeking out Matt's. "One nightmare after another, until we die?"
Matt shrugged stoically. "I don’t know. If we do--"
Mohinder interrupted him with words and with flying arms and shoulders rocketing against his. "I don’t want to," he pleaded, burying his head in Matt's shoulder like a selfish child. "I want to declare a moratorium on nightmares. Can I do that? At least for tonight?" His face turned upward, the searching look still on his face.
"Sure, sure. Anything you want." Matt kissed his forehead, cradling him in strong arms. "No nightmares tonight."
A pair of tears escaped Mohinder's eyes at the touch of Matt's lips. He grazed his own mouth against the stubble of his chin, then cheeks, as Matt kissed the bridge of his nose. And then there was a seismic shift and they were holding tight to each other, kissing like dying men, like the world might crumble any minute and this was their very, very last chance.
I'm not going to wait one more night.
No, me neither.
Who had the thought and who replied? The voices were jumbled, shadowed. Perhaps they both did. It didn't matter. It was true.
There were gasps and awkward motions, and the grasping of a wrist, a hip. Somehow they were back where they'd started this dance, in a room, on a bed, Matt on top of Mohinder, pressing into him, groaning deliriously. Mohinder's hips stretched taut against him. Shoulders straining. But this time, when Matt held his eyes and reached for the things he'd bought, there was no interruption. No screaming outside the door. Just silence.
Mohinder's teeth began to chatter, then. "This is truly unmarked territory," he whispered.
"Where's your sense of exploration?" Matt teased, though his face was white.
"How are we going to--" Mohinder stammered, the old rusty clanking of logic groaning at shouldering the unfamiliar load. "That is, who will--"
"I don't know. I have no idea," Matt said. "You can, if you want."
"This is awkward," Mohinder said regretfully. "I hope I don't-- that is, I hope you're still OK--"
At this, Matt grabbed his hand and put it firmly on him. "Feel that?" he growled. "That has been waiting over a month for you. We're still OK. You could tell me I had to wait a year. You could tell me I had to-- I don't even know what-- but whatever it is, it wouldn't stop me from wanting you."
He didn't have to say all that. The moment he'd felt that heat with his own hand, Mohinder had lost all semblance of doubt. He was on fire, his tongue was in knots, he was about to die. And he knew exactly what he wanted. "Take me," he breathed. "I want to be the first to feel what it's like."
"Are you sure?" Matt asked, cupping his hands gently around Mohinder's face.
Mohinder echoed the motion with his own hands. "I want to be able to tell you it's OK," he said. "I want to know. I want to be the one to reassure you."
"Mohinder..."
"You're always the brave one," he insisted. "If you hadn't been brave enough to kiss me, we wouldn't even be here. I might have never..."
"Don't. Don't say that." Matt's eyes were glistening with tears. "You saved my life, remember?"
"But I might have never developed the ability to cure you!" Mohinder burst out. "I could have lost you by now. It was you. It was falling in love with you that made all that possible."
"I love you," Matt whispered, kissing him.
But still Mohinder hadn't finished. "So let me be the brave one. For once."
Matt nodded silently.
Mohinder sat back and pulled his shirt over his shoulders, then moved forward to slide Matt's shirt off. It was like a ritual. Although life in a small apartment meant it was hardly their first close encounter, it still felt new and halting, especially when dark fingers trailed down the white stomach, each motion followed by wide eyes. The second stage was more difficult, but he felt sheltered by that amazed gaze, and when he was finally there, totally revealed and trembling, Matt let out a long, slow breath.
"I think," he said, his voice barely even audible, "I think--"
I can't read thoughts, Mohinder thought wildly. What do you think? Please, tell me.
"I think I've got to touch you," Matt blurted out, and then he laughed. "Did that sound like something out of a porno?"
But this time it was Mohinder who'd lost his breath. "Touch me, then," he rasped. And echoing Matt's motion earlier, he grabbed one of his hands and drew it toward him. They didn't speak again for several minutes, and by the time Mohinder's mouth broke into a cry of "please, please," they were body to body, naked and intoxicated by their closeness, adoring each other.
There was some more awkwardness then, of course, with weird liquids and foil wrappers and Matt sort of sniffing his fingers suspiciously, but like the brave one Mohinder urged him to stop thinking, stop worrying, stop doing anything but touching him, and when Matt finally listened Mohinder could turn his focus on himself and try to relax, try to feel something except for nervous. He wasn't used to this, didn't know how it was supposed to feel, and part of him just wanted to get it over with.
But then Matt was touching him where he did know what to expect, and Mohinder melted. The feeling of having a hand not his own, not tentative on a foreign landscape but sure and confident on a familiar one, made it so much easier to trust, to relax, to believe. He cried out.
It scared Matt a little. "Are you OK?"
"Yes, God yes..."
"Can I..."
He was asking permission?
Mohinder surged forward and kissed him hard. "Please," he said.
And then all at once it was happening, and Matt was dumbfounded because it was supposed to be disgusting and dirty and wrong, that's what popular culture and peer pressure had told him since he was old enough to experience it. But it wasn't disgusting, maybe it was a little dirty but it was right. More than right. Perfect. Mohinder was perfect. His skin with the sweat glistening on his shoulder was perfect. His small, agonized cries were perfect. Even those odd moments of hesitation and awkwardness and rearrangement were perfect because they were real and Mohinder was really here with him in this moment.
And Mohinder's mind was somewhere primitive and pre-speech. He was thinking in kaleidoscope fragments of color and sensation and it was like falling into a prism, pieces of color returning home to their source, to perfect white.
Their eyes met an instant before the world turned off, and there was a moment of perfect understanding and clarity.
This is forever.
"We're going to have to figure out what to tell Molly," Matt observed lazily, kissing along the line of Mohinder's collarbone. He was breathless, blissed out, but still he couldn't stop touching him. The contact was like a drug. Without it he was dizzy, he suffered cravings.
"I think she knows," Mohinder laughed, running his fingers through the short-cropped hair and bending to plant a kiss among it. "She is a remarkably perceptive girl, you know."
"She takes after you."
"Nonsense. You're the annoyingly perceptive one." Somehow everything was uproariously funny right now. Perhaps it was just that they were naked and unburdened by guilt or fear for the first time in ages. After tragedy has darkened a landscape for too long, the world becomes a great comedy in contrast. "I certainly wasn't about to open my eyes until you opened them for me. Then again, I suppose that is what detectives do."
"I thought that's what scientists do," said Matt carelessly, but Mohinder seized up. Matt leaned back to gaze at him curiously.
It's both. Do you suppose that is a sign?
"Shanti..." he whispered brightly. For a moment, he could see her face, rich as sunlight. He could see her eyes, full of generosity. And he could feel the embrace of a sister he'd never known, a sensation at once warm and painful. He wanted to cry.
"Hey, are you OK?" Matt brought him back to reality. "You look a little sad."
Mohinder shook his head, gazed at him. "Do you believe," he asked, feeling a little foolish, "that people who leave us behind give us something as they go? A gift, of sorts?"
"I think we get gifts all the time," Matt said. "And not just from people who are gone." He shrugged nonchalantly. "Look at what you've given me, and you're right here."
He had a true talent in his ability to say the profound as though it were of no consequence, Mohinder thought with some amusement. A phrase sprang to mind. Was it a quote from somewhere? He couldn't remember. It felt like wisdom from the ages, but he couldn't recall its source.
"'We are given legacies by those who leave us, but also by those who stay by our side.'"
The End
Chapter: 8 (of 8)
Author:
tiptoe39Characters/Pairings: Matt/Mohinder; Maya; Elle
Rating: R for violent and sexual content
Warnings: Spoilers for all of Season 2 so far; slash. (The slash is integral to the plot, but it is not the plot itself.)
Summary: We are given legacies by those who leave us, but also by those who stay by our side.
Author's note: Thanks to
ilsaluvsrick for her amazing beta work on this!Previous chapters: Prologue | One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven
Downtown's traffic snarl made Mohinder feel as though he were climbing a jungle gym. The address, black-on-gray on his cell phone, was pale in his hand. He was sure he'd memorized it the moment it came through, but he kept glancing back, afraid it had changed, or he'd remembered it wrong, or something else horrible and catastrophic. And everywhere, wire fences and car exhaust and silver vending carts in his path. He dodged and darted. He had to get there. He had to get to Matt.
Three floors up and again wire and metal impeded his progress. An elevator that wouldn't come. He took the stairs. Outside, the sirens sang the blues into the cavern of his ears. As he approached the door, the name plate-- Walk-in Clinic. Dr. Wong, Dr. Howe, Dr. Russell-- swung toward him and Matt's face appeared, an anxious glance into the hallway that jumped in surprise when it actually saw Mohinder there. "Oh, thank God, finally," he said, stepping outside and running down the hall to him, grabbing both his hands. "I thought you'd never get here."
"I'm here now. What happened?"
"I'm not sure. We got called out here and-- God, it's like a massacre in there, you don't want to see it-- but that's when it happened, a few minutes after I got in I tried-- and I couldn't hear anything. I don't know what's going on, and... I'm scared," he admitted, a hollowness in his voice. "I don't know how to explain it. I'm just scared."
Mohinder was scared too, he discovered. He'd had the idea knocking around in the back of his head since Matt's call, but now it came rocketing forward. What if Matt had contracted the Shanti virus?
Loss of power was the first symptom, of course-- the virus targeted and latched onto those abnormalities as its entry point. But then the other physical symptoms started. Immune system failure, shortness of breath, fever, delirium, weakness--
--and then I could lose him.
Suddenly he was shaking. He grabbed Matt's arms, leaned his head in toward his shoulder, breathed in the scent of his closeness. He tried to think about what it would be like to not have him there, snide and sometimes rude and solid and real. Matt trading joking barbs with Molly. Matt watching football like it was a religious ceremony. Matt tearing into him about the Company and all he was sure they'd done. Matt leaning on his shoulder late at night, too drained to deny how badly he needed the contact and comfort. Matt kissing him, lips soft on his, making him feel like melting butter. Matt laughing. Matt shouting. Just Matt.
He couldn't imagine a time he wouldn't be there, couldn't remember a time he hadn't been. It was like life began and ended in that small apartment, the ratty hand-me-down of his father's that had somehow become his. And then Molly and Matt came to live there and it had somehow become home. Because they were home.
And without meaning to, he was stepping in closer, moving into Matt's arms, tears filling his eyes, thinking the same thought wildly over and over and over even though it frightened him to think that he was thinking it, frightened him to know that it was coming from a place so deep inside him that it couldn't be anything but true.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
Matt stepped back. "God, you have weird timing, you know that?"
Mohinder looked up, trying to blink the tears away. Embarrassingly, they instead spilled onto his cheeks. "What?" It was a pale, chalky whisper.
"Look, um, I'm not good at this." Matt was blushing. "But, you know, this hasn't been the greatest day, and I'm just about desperate enough that I'll take it and run with it." He ran a quick finger over Mohinder's jaw, kissed him softly on the lips, just once. "I love you, too."
"Matt..." For a moment he thought he might melt into the floor. He hadn't meant for this to happen, hadn't meant to realize it at this worst of all possible times. And he certainly hadn't meant to let him into his head far enough to read what he himself had only just realized.
Then it hit. "I thought you said you couldn't read minds."
"Huh? You mean you didn't say that out loud?" Matt blinked and blushed. "Oh, jeez. God, that's..."
"Not something we need to worry about right now." Mohinder wanted to be amused by Matt's awkward embarrassment, but all of a sudden the name plate on that door was boring into his eyes. A clinic. What if a patient here had the virus? What if it had gone airborne? "I need to go in--"
"No. Mohinder. You don't want to--" But Mohinder already had his hand on the door and was pulling on the knob.
The room was full of dead bodies.
Dead receptionists slumped over the counter. Dead patients young and old fallen on the floor and crouched in front of their chairs. A dead nurse at the inner door, her clipboard splayed over her outstretched, limp arm. And two policemen, not dead but suffering, breathing heavily, clutching at their throats as though the room were full of smoke. And both of them looked up at him with eyes like those on the dead bodies, eyes streaming with black tears.
"Maya," he breathed. "She was here." He felt like throwing up, felt like screaming. He groped for Matt, who caught him in mid-faint. Mohinder struggled for coherence. "My God," he whispered, pale and white. "She really is..."
It was almost too much to take. The grotesque array of corpses, the demonic black scrawls of dying tears. Just as bad was the thought that he had hurt her so much that she had lost control like this. And she had been so happy just a day ago, standing outside that restaurant and talking animatedly about everything from her escape from the Dominican Republic to her new dress...
And then it hit him.
"He kept breathing and moving... If the boat had not been there, we might...”
He stared at the scene, dumbfounded at his own idiocy. The sound of pieces snapping into place was ringing in his ears. The Dominican Republic. Through Haiti, westward to Mexico.
Mohinder knew the identity of the one man who'd survived Maya's power.
He'd treated him.
It was two hours to Hartsdale, and he didn't have time to waste a second. He moved so fast toward the staircase that he never heard Matt call his name in surprise, never saw Matt's fellow officers stand straight up, breathing easier, their eyes clearing.
The sound of the door slamming behind Mohinder was like a thunderclap-- deep and resonant. The books rattled on the shelves. Bob neither jumped nor spoke. He simply raised an eyebrow and put down the book he was engrossed in.
"Maya Herrera," Mohinder said. His voice echoed against the wood paneling. "She's the same as Shanti, isn't she? What she does. It's the virus. She infects people."
Bob smiled. "Brilliant. I knew you would have the chance to figure it out sooner or later. Yes, Miss Herrera emits the Shanti virus. Dreadful thing, really."
Mohinder strode to the mahogany desk and slammed his palms against it. "But my sister died of the virus when she was only five years old. How on earth has Maya surv--" Then his eyes met Bob's. And he saw some genuine grief there. A flash of humanity in a face that was usually so clinical, so businesslike and cold.
"Allow me to clarify," Bob said in a voice that didn't sound like his own. "Miss Herrera is indeed just like your unfortunate sister would have been. If she'd been allowed to mature."
And all of a sudden Mohinder realized why his father had nearly gone insane with grief. It wasn’t just losing a child, as horrific as that is. It was giving a child up.
"My sister didn't die of the virus, did she?" he said slowly.
"Her death was because of the virus, yes."
"But she didn't die of it, did she?"
Bob ran his hand along the cover of the book. "No."
Mohinder straightened up. Running his fingers through his hair, he paced, his voice shocked, broken. "You killed her. Because she could have transmitted it to others."
The man behind the desk heaved a heavy sigh. "If her power had matured, yes. We were lucky to get to Shanti when she was as young as she was."
Bob got up. "Chandra Suresh was frantic. He called every university he could, looking for reasons as to why his baby girl had started crying black tears. We were able to intervene fairly easily. When Victoria analyzed her blood, she realized that with maturity and time, the hormone she was secreting would be able to kill normal people in seconds. Those with genetic anomalies would also die, albeit slower, and after losing their particular abilities." He heaved a heavy sigh. "It was a difficult decision to make, Doctor Suresh. We took no joy in it, believe me."
"But Maya's blood has mutated again," Mohinder said. His body was still shaking, but he needed all the revelations now, so he could deal with them and move on. "Is it possible that she..."
"I'm afraid so, Doctor." Bob nodded gravely, coming to stand toe to toe with Mohinder in the big room. "My daughter is under the mistaken impression that I don't know what she's been up to. It was a valiant effort on her part, but the power Miss Herrera wields cannot be controlled. What's more, the Shanti virus she emits now has a chance of going airborne. The threat of a worldwide outbreak was not ended when your friend Mr. Petrelli destroyed our sample. It's now a very real possibility."
Even though he had suspected it, Mohinder still staggered a few steps at hearing the truth spoken. He felt waves of guilt overwhelm him. If he hadn't led her on, hadn't allowed her to believe he might feel something for her, even unknowingly, could he have prevented this disastrous turn of events?
"This was our miss, not yours," Bob said as though sensing his guilt. "We should have stopped her when we had the chance. Instead, we took a hard look at ourselves in the wake of the Bennet fiasco and thought, let’s try to be humanitarian."
"Wait. Stop." Mohinder's head was still spinning. "This doesn't make any sense. Why would you allow Elle to continue experimenting with Maya if you knew she was..."
Bob smiled ruefully at him.
He felt his heart plummet to his socks. "My God," he said. "You wanted more samples of the virus, so you could continue your sadistic research. You're an animal!"
"Not at all," Bob grinned. "We've been quite humanitarian about the whole thing. We've even taken out an insurance policy."
"An insurance..."
And Bob stretched out his hand and pointed straight at Mohinder. "You."
"Me? What do you mean?"
The lizardlike grin returned. "Did Miss Herrera ever tell you about her brother?"
"What? What does her..."
And Bob bridged the gap between them, leered into Mohinder's face. Eye, eyeglasses, eye. "Do you think you're just a normal human being, Dr. Suresh? You, whose blood can cure a virus? More importantly, did you think we kept you around purely for the value of your research?"
It was too much. Mohinder shrank back from the emotional implications of it all, returned to the frantic cogitation that was his first line of defense. Think logically and the rest will fall into place. His blood contained a natural immunity to the disease, which he was able to tap to synthesize a cure. But that was no surprise to either of them. What it had to do with Maya's twin brother, who seemed to be the indispensable key to controlling his sister's outbursts...
He froze. And he mouthed three words without a voice.
Brother and sister.
His eyes cleared. The world came rolling back into focus. Bob was smiling triumphantly. "Yes, Doctor Suresh. Precisely."
He tried to find his voice, succeeding only in a hoarse whisper. "So I am... I have an ability?"
"Not as such," Bob said sadly. "You, like Miss Herrera's brother, carry the antidote to the disease in your blood. You yourself have seen it. It was our hope that we would be able to provide the impetus to speed your mutation along if the time came, but we have been unable to discern the key to doing that. So you remain unable to emit an airborne antidote, as he did."
"You're wrong."
"No, I'm quite clear on this. Your daughter is living proof of it. She required an infusion of your blood to be cured."
"No, I can emit it. I have."
The voice was full of sunshine. Bob had to do a double take, "Beg pardon?"
Mohinder's smile was wide. His eyes lost focus and he began to ramble, pacing back and forth in the lavish study. "Matt called me," he narrated. "I went down to meet him. He said he lost his power. I suddenly realized that if he had the virus, I might lose him, and I panicked... and it returned. His power returned. I must have emitted it. That must have been what happened."
Bob observed the rant, his eyes squinting closer and closer as the young man went on. Finally, he cleared his throat. "Doctor Suresh," he said with some embarrassment, "believe it or not, I try to make it a habit not to inquire about the personal lives of my employees."
"You're right, I don't believe it." Mohinder tried to sound cross, but the light in his voice could not be so easily vanished.
And hearing that light, Bob knew the answer to his question even before he asked it. "Have you, by any chance, fallen in love with Officer Parkman?"
Mohinder smiled widely. "Yes," he said. "Yes, I have."
Of course. Of course it should work out this way. The legacies of his parents' pain, of his sister's sacrifice, woven inextricably into his own life story. And the living legacy of a blossoming love. Of course they should be borne into the moment when they were needed the most.
Bob actually clapped his hands with delight. "How extraordinary. It seems we may have a true case of amor vincit omnia. Just as Miss Herrera's feelings for you prompted her change..."
"...my feelings for Matt caused me to begin to emit the antidote," he breathed.
The man nodded. "And, it appears, at an even more sophisticated rate than the late Mister Herrera ever managed." He smiled as genuinely and as widely as Mohinder had ever seen him. "Congratulations, Doctor. You appear to have saved the world today."
Molly found Maya in an alleyway. She was running from everyone who approached, panicky, starving. When she saw Mohinder approaching her, she tried to run. Matt froze her in place. He hated doing it, but he had to... at least until Mohinder was close enough to tell her it was OK, that he could do what Alejandro could do, that she couldn't hurt him and wouldn't hurt anyone while he was there. She burst into tears and ran into his arms, crying "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to, I never have."
He looked at her with shining eyes and said, "And you never will again."
They injected her with periodic infusions of his blood. Her system tried desperately to reject it, and for a while she was very sick, delirious and vomiting when she wasn't sedated. But the therapy, torturous as it was, seemed to work. By the end of the week, she didn't show any sign of the pheromones, even when being shown her favorite telenovelas (in a sealed room, of course). By the second week, her genetic markers had returned to normal.
Mohinder practically lived at the lab that month, and Matt and Molly came often to visit, seeing him more often at his job than at home. It was an OK sacrifice to make. Sometimes you just have to put your happiness on hold to save the world, Matt explained, and Molly puffed up her chest with pride and said, "I can take it."
When it was all over with, Maya moved out west. It was too painful for her, she said, to be this close, to see them this often. Mohinder would send boosters of his blood if things got iffy. She smiled and said, "Be good to each other." And that was that. She was gone.
"Another nightmare behind us," Matt said as he closed the door to Molly's bedroom.
Mohinder was standing at the counter, rubbing his hand anxiously against his sleeve. "Do we have to keep facing them?" he wondered plaintively, his eyes seeking out Matt's. "One nightmare after another, until we die?"
Matt shrugged stoically. "I don’t know. If we do--"
Mohinder interrupted him with words and with flying arms and shoulders rocketing against his. "I don’t want to," he pleaded, burying his head in Matt's shoulder like a selfish child. "I want to declare a moratorium on nightmares. Can I do that? At least for tonight?" His face turned upward, the searching look still on his face.
"Sure, sure. Anything you want." Matt kissed his forehead, cradling him in strong arms. "No nightmares tonight."
A pair of tears escaped Mohinder's eyes at the touch of Matt's lips. He grazed his own mouth against the stubble of his chin, then cheeks, as Matt kissed the bridge of his nose. And then there was a seismic shift and they were holding tight to each other, kissing like dying men, like the world might crumble any minute and this was their very, very last chance.
I'm not going to wait one more night.
No, me neither.
Who had the thought and who replied? The voices were jumbled, shadowed. Perhaps they both did. It didn't matter. It was true.
There were gasps and awkward motions, and the grasping of a wrist, a hip. Somehow they were back where they'd started this dance, in a room, on a bed, Matt on top of Mohinder, pressing into him, groaning deliriously. Mohinder's hips stretched taut against him. Shoulders straining. But this time, when Matt held his eyes and reached for the things he'd bought, there was no interruption. No screaming outside the door. Just silence.
Mohinder's teeth began to chatter, then. "This is truly unmarked territory," he whispered.
"Where's your sense of exploration?" Matt teased, though his face was white.
"How are we going to--" Mohinder stammered, the old rusty clanking of logic groaning at shouldering the unfamiliar load. "That is, who will--"
"I don't know. I have no idea," Matt said. "You can, if you want."
"This is awkward," Mohinder said regretfully. "I hope I don't-- that is, I hope you're still OK--"
At this, Matt grabbed his hand and put it firmly on him. "Feel that?" he growled. "That has been waiting over a month for you. We're still OK. You could tell me I had to wait a year. You could tell me I had to-- I don't even know what-- but whatever it is, it wouldn't stop me from wanting you."
He didn't have to say all that. The moment he'd felt that heat with his own hand, Mohinder had lost all semblance of doubt. He was on fire, his tongue was in knots, he was about to die. And he knew exactly what he wanted. "Take me," he breathed. "I want to be the first to feel what it's like."
"Are you sure?" Matt asked, cupping his hands gently around Mohinder's face.
Mohinder echoed the motion with his own hands. "I want to be able to tell you it's OK," he said. "I want to know. I want to be the one to reassure you."
"Mohinder..."
"You're always the brave one," he insisted. "If you hadn't been brave enough to kiss me, we wouldn't even be here. I might have never..."
"Don't. Don't say that." Matt's eyes were glistening with tears. "You saved my life, remember?"
"But I might have never developed the ability to cure you!" Mohinder burst out. "I could have lost you by now. It was you. It was falling in love with you that made all that possible."
"I love you," Matt whispered, kissing him.
But still Mohinder hadn't finished. "So let me be the brave one. For once."
Matt nodded silently.
Mohinder sat back and pulled his shirt over his shoulders, then moved forward to slide Matt's shirt off. It was like a ritual. Although life in a small apartment meant it was hardly their first close encounter, it still felt new and halting, especially when dark fingers trailed down the white stomach, each motion followed by wide eyes. The second stage was more difficult, but he felt sheltered by that amazed gaze, and when he was finally there, totally revealed and trembling, Matt let out a long, slow breath.
"I think," he said, his voice barely even audible, "I think--"
I can't read thoughts, Mohinder thought wildly. What do you think? Please, tell me.
"I think I've got to touch you," Matt blurted out, and then he laughed. "Did that sound like something out of a porno?"
But this time it was Mohinder who'd lost his breath. "Touch me, then," he rasped. And echoing Matt's motion earlier, he grabbed one of his hands and drew it toward him. They didn't speak again for several minutes, and by the time Mohinder's mouth broke into a cry of "please, please," they were body to body, naked and intoxicated by their closeness, adoring each other.
There was some more awkwardness then, of course, with weird liquids and foil wrappers and Matt sort of sniffing his fingers suspiciously, but like the brave one Mohinder urged him to stop thinking, stop worrying, stop doing anything but touching him, and when Matt finally listened Mohinder could turn his focus on himself and try to relax, try to feel something except for nervous. He wasn't used to this, didn't know how it was supposed to feel, and part of him just wanted to get it over with.
But then Matt was touching him where he did know what to expect, and Mohinder melted. The feeling of having a hand not his own, not tentative on a foreign landscape but sure and confident on a familiar one, made it so much easier to trust, to relax, to believe. He cried out.
It scared Matt a little. "Are you OK?"
"Yes, God yes..."
"Can I..."
He was asking permission?
Mohinder surged forward and kissed him hard. "Please," he said.
And then all at once it was happening, and Matt was dumbfounded because it was supposed to be disgusting and dirty and wrong, that's what popular culture and peer pressure had told him since he was old enough to experience it. But it wasn't disgusting, maybe it was a little dirty but it was right. More than right. Perfect. Mohinder was perfect. His skin with the sweat glistening on his shoulder was perfect. His small, agonized cries were perfect. Even those odd moments of hesitation and awkwardness and rearrangement were perfect because they were real and Mohinder was really here with him in this moment.
And Mohinder's mind was somewhere primitive and pre-speech. He was thinking in kaleidoscope fragments of color and sensation and it was like falling into a prism, pieces of color returning home to their source, to perfect white.
Their eyes met an instant before the world turned off, and there was a moment of perfect understanding and clarity.
This is forever.
"We're going to have to figure out what to tell Molly," Matt observed lazily, kissing along the line of Mohinder's collarbone. He was breathless, blissed out, but still he couldn't stop touching him. The contact was like a drug. Without it he was dizzy, he suffered cravings.
"I think she knows," Mohinder laughed, running his fingers through the short-cropped hair and bending to plant a kiss among it. "She is a remarkably perceptive girl, you know."
"She takes after you."
"Nonsense. You're the annoyingly perceptive one." Somehow everything was uproariously funny right now. Perhaps it was just that they were naked and unburdened by guilt or fear for the first time in ages. After tragedy has darkened a landscape for too long, the world becomes a great comedy in contrast. "I certainly wasn't about to open my eyes until you opened them for me. Then again, I suppose that is what detectives do."
"I thought that's what scientists do," said Matt carelessly, but Mohinder seized up. Matt leaned back to gaze at him curiously.
It's both. Do you suppose that is a sign?
"Shanti..." he whispered brightly. For a moment, he could see her face, rich as sunlight. He could see her eyes, full of generosity. And he could feel the embrace of a sister he'd never known, a sensation at once warm and painful. He wanted to cry.
"Hey, are you OK?" Matt brought him back to reality. "You look a little sad."
Mohinder shook his head, gazed at him. "Do you believe," he asked, feeling a little foolish, "that people who leave us behind give us something as they go? A gift, of sorts?"
"I think we get gifts all the time," Matt said. "And not just from people who are gone." He shrugged nonchalantly. "Look at what you've given me, and you're right here."
He had a true talent in his ability to say the profound as though it were of no consequence, Mohinder thought with some amusement. A phrase sprang to mind. Was it a quote from somewhere? He couldn't remember. It felt like wisdom from the ages, but he couldn't recall its source.
"'We are given legacies by those who leave us, but also by those who stay by our side.'"
The End