A Night in Bozeman

[code_breaker]

The bed was uncomfortably cold.

Mohinder wriggled down under the blankets a bit more, tugging them tighter against his body. He wasn’t used to the biting cold of America in winter, the blanketing snow and the sharp winds that cut through flesh to chill the bone. He had been, once, when he lived in England, but those years were far behind him and warmed by a decade of living in Chennai’s sunny streets.

He tugged the thin pillow over his head, tucking his knees up against his body and hugging them. He wanted to blame the cold entirely for sleep eluding him, but he knew it wasn’t true. The cold was pervasive, but not as pervasive as what plagued his thoughts.

Sylar.

Even thinking the name made him shiver and hug his legs tighter, eyes closed.

He was out there, somewhere, with his father’s list and a drive to kill that he seemed to revel in and despise at once. No one could kill so many people, so brutally, if they didn’t enjoy it. But the memory of that hidden altar of penance in the small apartment clung like tattered cobwebs.

Forgive me.

Sylar had accused his father of making him what he was. Was that reflected in that room, in his scribbled pleas for forgiveness from whatever deity he believed in?

A noise outside made him freeze. He was sure he had heard footsteps, boots treading softly up the stairs.

Mohinder could feel his breathing sharpen as he lay there. It was just a resident, a guest like them, probably walking down to the toilets, trying not to wake anyone. Or to the vending machine for a drink to try and take the chill out of them and get back to sleep.

It wasn’t Sylar coming for him. Sylar didn’t know where he was. Sylar wouldn’t walk up the stairs like any normal person and pause at his door, trying to hear him.

It was probably just Zane.

The thought made him relax a little. Zane was odd, but he supposed waking up one day and accidentally liquefying you alarm clock and the table underneath would do that to a man.

He’d probably not been able to sleep and gone for a brief walk. He was used to these colds. To sleeping in strange beds, touring with his band.

Mohinder almost thought to go and tell him he was awake still, but his shivering had finally subsided as the horrors of Sylar drifted from his mind, replaced by the warming thoughts of a new friend.