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I wrote this as a distraction from the Big Damn Petrellicest Story, and also because it was too amusing to not write.
Title: The Fine Art of Leaving Things Unsaid
Pairing: Mohinder/Sylar
Rating: Technically PG, but don't be fooled.
Wordcount: 4613
Notes: Vague crossover with Sandman, but you don't need to be familiar with it. If you are, though--remember that one story in the second volume, the one with the, ah, convention...?
Summary: "It's fifty dollars. Why is it fifty dollars? It's a book."
Title: The Fine Art of Leaving Things Unsaid
Pairing: Mohinder/Sylar
Rating: Technically PG, but don't be fooled.
Wordcount: 4613
Notes: Vague crossover with Sandman, but you don't need to be familiar with it. If you are, though--remember that one story in the second volume, the one with the, ah, convention...?
Summary: "It's fifty dollars. Why is it fifty dollars? It's a book."
It was a cold, dark Thursday evening in a not especially important month of an inconsequential season. If there were leaves lying around, they blew over the blacktop of the parking lot. It was a parking lot; the parking lot belonged to a hotel. It was not called the Hotel Corinthian, because this was not Las Vegas, and also because that would have been highly ironic. The hotel was strictly middle-of-the-line; the floor of the lobby was covered in a leaf-patterned carpet and the walls were an unremarkable shade of cream. The man at the front desk was largely idle, as he was not expecting any customers so late at night—perhaps other, larger hotels in more populous locales would have been used to night traffic, but not this one.
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He was surprised, therefore, when two men walked in through the glass front doors of the lobby. One of them—somewhat taller, with dark hair and a mild expression—laid down a credit card and asked for a room under the name of Suresh.
“Single or double?” the man behind the desk asked; it was not his job to judge.
“Single,” the taller man said, grinning slightly. His companion—Indian, by the looks of it, with a considerable crop of stubble and some rather impressive hair—said nothing.
The man behind the desk rang up the charges and gave them two keys to room 154. “Here on business, sirs?” he asked, politely, because while it may not have been his job to judge, he certainly enjoyed doing it.
“So to speak,” murmured the Indian man. The taller man grinned again and leaned forward on the desk.
“Haven’t you heard? There’s a convention in town.”
---
More men poured in through the night—and a few women—and the man behind the desk learned to ask as few questions as possible, as not all of them were as friendly as the first two. He wondered, for a while, why he had been unaware of the existence of the convention; surely the hotel manager would have mentioned it? But then he checked the reservation sheet, and sure enough, it said right there that the conference rooms were all checked out for a—he squinted—a Cereal Convention.
Odd thing to have a convention for, he thought, but wouldn’t it be a boring world if we were all the same.
By the morning, nearly all of the rooms were full. The hotel restaurant was quietly flooded with a mass of con-goers, mostly unobtrusive middle-aged men—or the few women—or some fellows who simply looked odd. The pair who had arrived first was sitting together at a table in a corner, examining the menus. One of the waitresses listened in, curious about what sort of people might be attending a convention for breakfast food (and if that meant they would just want cereal for breakfast, and in that case why were they bothering with the menu).
The taller man: They’ve got pancakes.
The Indian man, quietly: They do.
The taller man, looking over the menu at his companion: There’s no need to be sullen.
The Indian man: I’m not sullen.
The taller man: You hardly said anything the entire way here.
The Indian man: There wasn’t much to say, was there?
The taller man: I thought you liked being on the road. Nostalgic, and all that.
The Indian man said nothing.
The taller man: You enjoyed it back then. I don’t see why you can’t enjoy it now.
The Indian man: You know it’s not the same as it was back then.
The taller man, leaning over and placing his hand over his companion’s: You’re right. It’s better.
The Indian man: If you say so.
The taller man, returning to his menu: Or there’s a buffet.
Another table was ready to order, and the waitress hurried off to do her job.
---
The chairman of the convention was a tall, skinny fellow with glasses and a blank expression. He looked around the room—every chair was filled. That was a good thing, he decided. More people meant they would feel comfortable. Comfort was very important.
He stepped up to the podium and began his speech, welcoming all of the attendants to the con. He mentioned how good it was of them to be there—to have boldly made what for some was a journey of considerable distance, just to be at this little get-together. He spoke of how it should be appreciated that the convention had been restarted after its unfortunate decline so long ago. He made a joke. It was well-received. In the audience, the taller man chuckled; the Indian man did not.
With the conclusion of the opening ceremony came the official opening of the con. Programs had been passed out, and everyone had a badge with a name and a number on it. The Indian man’s badge said: Mohinder Suresh. The taller man’s badge said: Sylar. There were not very many full names on the other badges.
Sylar paged through the program, searching for any interesting panels. Mohinder Suresh watched the people around them—tall, short, mostly white, almost entirely men, mostly older than they were, mostly average or unattractive. They were garnering some attention for being out of the norm, but nobody said anything to them.
“Look,” said Sylar, pointing to a page in the program: “at 12 there’s a panel on surgery and dissection.”
“I suppose you want to go to that,” said Mohinder Suresh.
“It would be interesting. I bet you’d like it too—get more acquainted with what I do. Maybe you’d be less uneasy about it if you got involved.”
“I don’t want to get involved,” said Mohinder Suresh, tight-lipped. “I would prefer it if I didn’t have to be involved.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” said Sylar, tilting his head slightly. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be here. Just admit it, Mohinder—you’re not as opposed to it as you say you are.”
Mohinder didn’t say anything. He seemed to do that a lot.
They went to the panel at 12. The panelists included an old, balding man, an overweight and nervous-looking man in his forties, a man in a doctor’s coat, and a harsh-faced woman in a nurse’s uniform. The names on their badges said: the Harvester, the Florist, the Whitecoat Vanisher, Nurse Ratched.
The Whitecoat Vanisher lectured on the benefits of using only the cleanest scalpels; otherwise, he said, one would be in danger of leaving ragged and unsanitary edges. Unless, of course, that was what one was going for. The Harvester and the Florist had a fierce argument over the best method of organ removal. (“A clean cut through the stomach,” declared the Florist, “and use your hands—it’s so much more personal.”) Nurse Ratched did not say much, but when she did, she said it in a cruel, condescending voice that discouraged anyone from disagreeing with her. Sylar nodded and laughed and took notes. Mohinder watched impassively.
As the panel concluded, Sylar went to the front of the room to ask the Whitecoat Vanisher a question. “What do you think,” he said, “about the consumption of things collected? Is it a strictly tribal throwback, or can it be done with a more modern twist?”
“If one does it to gain a connection with the person,” the Whitecoat Vanisher replied, “then I would say it is a very fine and proper way of doing things, regardless of anthropological origin.”
“But what if you do it to take something from the person? As a—transference. South American tribes would eat the heart or liver of their sacrifices because it made them stronger.”
“Ah, but they also did it to honor the one sacrificed, did they not? Anything consumed in that manner creates a connection between the people involved, whether or not that was the intention. And that is indeed a very old practice, but that does not make it out-dated. There is no need to fret over the modernity of consumption—many consider it a timeless classic.”
Sylar nodded earnestly and continued to talk at some length about transference, and gaining strength, and whether or not there would be others at the convention who were interested in such things. Mohinder stood in silence. After a while, the Whitecoat Vanisher said that he had another panel to get to, but it was very nice talking to you, Sylar, and perhaps they would have the fortune of running into each other on the job some day. Sylar said that would be a highly illuminating experience.
Sylar and Mohinder walked out of the room and into the main hall of the convention. A number of paper flyers had appeared on the walls and columns of the place; some advertised online groups, or businesses, or room parties.
“That’s clever,” said Sylar, examining one that promised only the best service would be found at an industrial supplies shop in Topeka, Kansas. “I wonder if I should have some of these made up for the store.”
“The store is so often closed that hardly any customers come any more,” said Mohinder.
“Which is why we need to advertise. You’d think the people here would understand the need for it to be closed when we’re on the job.”
“Would these people really be interested in watches?” said Mohinder, eyeing the crowd.
“You’d be surprised, Mohinder,” Sylar replied.
They had lunch at a café near the hotel. Sylar kept glancing around, watching all the normal people enjoying themselves. Mohinder was, if anything, even more uncomfortable. They did not spend very much time in the café.
After lunch, they went back to the hotel and into the dealers’ room. It was not a particularly large one; the hotel did not have the money for it, and besides, there were not an overwhelming number of dealers. Most of the stalls offered equipment—knives, saws, hammers. (“I don’t need those,” said Sylar, distastefully. “Not everyone is so fortunate,” said Mohinder.) One stall sold self-published books and home movies. On the table stood a small TV, playing grainy images of a naked woman chained and crying in a basement. After a while, the crying stopped.
Sylar pulled Mohinder to a stall that sold medical supplies. “Look,” he said, pointing to a box of small glass bottles, “they’ve got curare.”
“They do,” said Mohinder, quietly.
“You really have no sense of nostalgia, do you? It was your first real effort. I should think you’d want to remember your first time,” said Sylar.
“Not particularly,” said Mohinder. “I prefer to live in the present.”
“The present in which you are accompanying someone you once would have sworn you wanted dead. Assisting, too.”
“I am not assisting,” said Mohinder. “I try to discourage it.”
“You don’t do a very good job. And you are assisting. You gave me the list.”
“I gave you a list. It is by no means complete.”
“Nine names scratched off, Mohinder. If you wanted to stop me, you wouldn’t even have given me one.”
Mohinder turned away. “Look,” he said, examining the previous stall, “there’s a book on applied social Darwinism. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
Sylar picked it up eagerly. “Oh, this is great! Good eye, Mohinder. But…” He looked at the price tag. “It’s fifty dollars. Why is it fifty dollars? It’s a book.”
“It’s a hardcover,” said Mohinder, mildly.
Sylar pulled some rumpled and messy bills out of his wallet and gave them to the person behind the table, who thanked him and gave him a receipt and a plastic bag. He put the book in the bag, which crinkled. “Everything’s so expensive at these,” he grumbled.
They went to the art show, next. It was not very large either, but it was at least less crowded. They looked at a painting of a run-down barn with meat hooks dangling from the ceiling and a large pile of dirt in the background. It was actually very good. The placard next to it indicated that it was entitled “A Better Place.” Sylar praised the composition. Mohinder wondered why you would keep meat hooks in a barn. Wouldn’t a warehouse be less conspicuous?
The rest of the art show was an eclectic mix of gritty, semi-monochromatic paintings, reddish-brown watercolors that possibly were not precisely watercolors, portraits of twisted, distorted faces, and a number of fairly crappy photo-manipulations. “Did they do that in Poser?” said Sylar, wrinkling his nose. “You’d think people would have learned by now.”
While wandering the halls, they saw someone dressed as Freddy. A thirtysomething man with dark, unkempt hair asked them to take his picture with him. They complied. They also saw someone dressed as Leatherface.
At 5, there was a panel called Keeping It on the Down-Low: A Guide to Avoiding Media Attention. Sylar dragged Mohinder to the very front row, insisting that they had to get as good a view as possible.
“These guys are just really incredible,” he said, fairly buzzing with anticipation. “I’ve always wanted to meet them.”
“I thought the point was that nobody’s heard of them?” asked Mohinder.
“Well, yes. So that must mean they’re really good.”
The panelists discussed methods for destroying leftovers—wild animals, one said, or hydrochloric acid, or, if you were on a budget, a garbage disposal would work nicely. They said that traveling around was important—if you confined it to where you lived, the number of missing people would arouse suspicion. No more than one or two collections per fifty-square-mile-radius. And, and this was important, no unusual behavior. Keep up the appearance of a friendly and polite neighbor. Complain about how your job makes you go on business trips so much. Do not return until at least a week after the collection. It may be tempting, but it is the most suspicious thing you can do.
Sylar paid rapt attention. Mohinder, not particularly wanting to listen, instead occupied himself with wondering why Sylar was so interested in this. People already knew about him, his name was already plastered in police stations across the country (but not his face—he’d seen to that, and Mohinder didn’t like to think about it.) Sylar reveled in attention. It didn’t make sense.
One of the panelists was a younger man with light hair and a calm, zen-like demeanor. He spoke clearly and knowledgeably about using every tool and skill available—if you were a factory worker, utilize your workplace, make it look like an accident. If you played chess, claim to be going to chess tournaments. If you were particularly good at—oh, let’s say, sewing, you could make a policeman’s uniform and pick people right off the street. People would remember that it was a policeman, and not what you looked like, and you could do it anywhere. Make use of everything you have available.
The name on his badge said: Silencer.
Sylar paid especial attention to him.
Afterwards, they went to dinner at the hotel restaurant, which was once again almost full with other con-goers. The atmosphere was surprisingly pleasant and informal. Everyone seemed happy to be there and talk to each other—although they did tend to change the subject when waiters walked by.
“Why were you so interested in that panel?” Mohinder asked, playing with his cobb salad.
Sylar swallowed the bite of steak he’d been chewing. “I was just thinking about a change, that’s all.”
“A change in what?”
“In the way we do things. It’d be nice to stop worrying about being caught, wouldn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t say I worry about it, as such,” said Mohinder.
“See, that’s what I’m talking about. You’re always so standoffish about it. Well, living in hotels is fun and all, but we can’t really do it forever, and the money’s going to run out, so—why not just go somewhere and stay there? We could finally sell the store and start a new one. You’d get a chance to acclimate. And we could do what they said, just go out every few months and spend a few days somewhere else, and then we’d come right back home.”
“A few weeks was what they said,” said Mohinder. “There aren’t very many good reasons for a watchmaker to be gone for a few weeks every other month.”
“We’d think of something. We always do.” Sylar reached out and put a hand on Mohinder’s shoulder. “Come on. Just one more, and then…you can finally relax. It’ll be nice.”
Once again, Mohinder didn’t say anything.
---
The night air was cool and not entirely unpleasant as it came through the window of their room. Sylar was in bed, reading the book they’d bought earlier. Mohinder sat in a chair, staring out at the night sky, thinking about…whatever he was thinking about. He didn’t seem inclined to say.
“This is really fascinating,” said Sylar, looking up from the book. “It talks about the necessity of removing the weaker members of the species from the genetic pool—but it also talks about being stronger than the competition. Most social Darwinists don’t think about that. Maybe because they don’t think they have competition.” He chuckled.
“You’re not removing the competition,” said Mohinder, staring out the window. “You’re removing the rest of your species. That’s not Darwinism. That’s the opposite of Darwinism. A species cannot survive if it destroys its members indiscriminately.”
“It’s not indiscriminately,” said Sylar. “Most of the ones we find don’t want or even know about their abilities. I’d say that constitutes being a weaker member of the species.”
“But some of them do know, and do want. They are as legitimate as you are, perhaps more so. Yet you treat them all the same.”
“We treat them all the same,” said Sylar, putting the book down. “Don’t complain about something if you go along with it. Hypocrisy is not a good trait to have.”
“I suppose it’s not one of my worse ones,” said Mohinder. “There are so many, these days.”
“Don’t talk like that,” said Sylar. “You know that’s not true. Come to bed.”
Mohinder silently got out of the chair, pulled his shirt off, and slipped under the covers. Sylar lay on his side, watching him.
“You really are beautiful,” said Sylar, tracing the outline of Mohinder’s jaw. “You know I mean that.”
“You probably do,” said Mohinder, quietly.
“There’s no ‘probably’ about it,” Sylar whispered, shifting closer, turning Mohinder’s head to look at him. “You’re beautiful. You’re incredible. I just want you to stop pretending.”
“You pretend all the time. You pretend to be different whenever we’re not alone.” Except here, he thought. But the convention wasn’t like the rest of the world.
“I only pretend to keep us safe. You admitted it—I never pretend around you. We can be honest when we’re alone.” Sylar wrapped an arm around Mohinder’s waist. “We’re alone now.”
Mohinder closed his eyes.
Later, with Sylar’s head resting on his chest, sleeping comfortably, Mohinder stared at the ceiling and tried to remember what it was like to know who you were.
---
In the morning, Sylar said they weren’t going to any panels that day. Mohinder didn’t complain. Instead, they wandered around the convention until they found the man from the last panel—in the dealers’ room, examining an apron.
“Hey,” said Sylar, feigning curiosity, “you were at that panel yesterday, weren’t you? The one on hiding your work?”
“Yeah, I was,” said the man, looking back at him. “Is that something you’re interested in? I could give you a few more pointers—”
“Actually,” Sylar interrupted, “I was more interested in what you said about using everything you had. Skills, and so on.”
The man turned his gaze back to the apron. “Yeah?” he said, nonchalantly. “It’s a major aspect of collecting, but I don’t think people utilize it as often as they should. It’s such a waste.”
“It really is,” said Sylar. “If you have an…ability, you should use it.” He watched the man intently.
The man glanced back up at him.
“What’s your real name?” Sylar whispered.
The man turned to move away, but he froze where he stood. Sylar walked around to face him, hands behind his back.
“You’re going to tell me what your real name is,” he whispered, “and maybe we’ll never see each other again.”
“Gregory Lawrence,” the man whispered.
Mohinder pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and looked at it carefully.
“Yes,” he told Sylar.
Sylar smiled.
He raised a finger and pressed it to the man’s lips. “Shhhh,” he said, and then the man couldn’t say anything.
Slowly, stiffly, the man walked out of the dealers’ room and through the lobby doors. They walked on either side of him. After a while, they were sufficiently away from the hotel—no collecting here, the chairman had said, people will make the connection, but surely they wouldn’t care as much if it was someone who the town didn’t even know was here.
It looked like a field. It probably was a field. Possibly it was a very large yard, but that would still fall under the definition of “field”. In any case, it was empty. There was a tree.
The man collapsed at the base of the tree, his limbs left loose and unmoving. Sylar tilted his head, staring at him.
“What can you do?” he asked the man.
The man looked up at him, eyes empty.
And then the wind stopped blowing softly and the grass stopped rustling and for a moment, Mohinder thought he couldn’t breathe.
But he could, of course. And he could still feel the wind against his face and see the grass waving below him. But none of that made any noise. It was silent. Utterly and entirely silent. It was almost peaceful.
Sylar mouthed a word that might have been interesting, and leaned down, and reached out.
There was no noise. It would have been possible for Mohinder to pretend he was somewhere else, if he just closed his eyes—at home, maybe. So quiet. But he didn’t, and he watched the blood drip down the tree and into the grass.
After a while, Sylar stood up and the silence stopped.
Mohinder pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to him.
Sylar wiped away the blood on the corners of his mouth and managed to get most of his right hand clean before the cloth was saturated; after a second, it crystallized into ice, which shattered. He let the pieces drop into the grass. They would melt by morning.
Mohinder looked at what remained of Gregory Lawrence, who had called himself Silencer. He couldn’t decide if that reflected creativity or a lack of it.
He kneeled, and took a glass vial out of his pocket, and carefully repositioned some of the blood into it, and he capped it neatly and put it back in his pocket.
“You said there would be one last one,” he said.
“I think that was him,” said Sylar. “It’s sort of symbolic, isn’t it? I think that was the first one who was like me.”
“He wasn’t like you,” said Mohinder, and he didn’t really know why.
Sylar looked up at him. “No. I suppose not.” He glanced back at the body. “I should…do something. Mark the occasion.”
“You could bury him,” said Mohinder, looking at the vast expanse of dirt and grass and knowing nobody would bother looking here for a person nobody had known.
“I like that. Learning how to keep it quiet.” Sylar smiled. “Of course, I’m much better at that now anyway.”
Dirt piled itself in a neat heap, leaving a hole next to the tree. What was left of Gregory Lawrence slipped into it without a sound. Sylar closed his eyes. Slowly, carefully, the blood from the grass and the tree rose into the air, forming perfect droplets. They drifted over the hole and fell like a soft red rain.
“That was new,” said Mohinder.
“Every day and in every way I’m getting better and better,” said Sylar, opening his eyes and smiling.
The hole filled itself in. There was nothing left to show they were there, save for the bent grass where they had walked, but nobody would notice that.
They spent the rest of the day in their room.
---
That night, the convention was hosting a dance. It wasn’t really clear why—there were so few women, and not many of the people attending were comfortable with the idea of being energetic in the presence of others. But of course similar problems plagued any other convention, and that had never stopped them. So the chairman had decided they would go ahead with it. In fairness, a number of people did show up, including nearly all the women. (Nurse Ratched was not in attendance.) The music was alternately loud and angry and loud and happy, the dichotomy of which did not seem to bother any of the dancers. There were no slow songs. The ones who would prefer slow songs were not the ones who came to the dance.
Sylar and Mohinder wandered in around 10 PM, and spent the first few minutes staring. There were probably more unusual things one could witness, but they couldn’t think of any at the moment.
“They’re happy,” said Sylar, softly.
“Some people are simply innately unselfconscious,” said Mohinder.
“Yeah,” said Sylar, still staring.
After those few minutes, one of the dancers—a forties-ish woman with wild brown hair and an extremely incongruous corset—grabbed Mohinder’s arm and pulled him in. He protested, of course, but she was so enthusiastic. Sylar continued to watch, amused. Sometimes he grinned at the spectacle—or laughed—or, on a few notable occasions, raised an eyebrow. Eventually he stepped into the (admittedly modest) throng and rescued him, pulling him away from the wild-haired woman and back into the safety of the main hall. Mohinder collapsed against a wall, exhausted and not a little distressed.
Sylar looked at him and tried not to smile. “Had enough?”
“I think,” Mohinder said, weakly, “that we should just go back to our room.” And so they did.
---
Sunday was the last day of the convention, and the attendees were sparser, mostly packing or already on their way. Sylar and Mohinder had one final breakfast in the hotel restaurant—cereal, just because—and watched the convention drift away. Outside, the person dressed as Freddy and the person dressed as Leatherface were playing hacky sack. Nobody seemed especially bothered by this.
“I had fun,” said Sylar, dropping a ten on the table (including tip). “We should come again next year.”
“When we’re settled and pretending to be good neighbors?” said Mohinder.
“You know,” said Sylar, looking around, “this isn’t a bad town. I bet they could use a watchmaker.”
“Buying property is expensive.”
“That’s why we’re going to sell the old store. Free up some money. I don’t think real estate would be too bad here, do you?”
At first, Mohinder didn’t say anything, but then he said, “No. It’s a small town. It wouldn’t be.”
When they left, the leaves were blowing around the parking lot again. It was still cold and still a bit windy, but the lightness of morning was seeping in.
They were going back to New York, and then they would come here again, and then things would be different, or maybe they wouldn’t.
It didn’t matter, really, thought Mohinder, as they drove. Even if things didn’t change, it might be okay.
For the first time in a long time, he thought, kill, and he didn’t have much reaction to the word one way or another.
Everything was going to be okay.
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