Title: Let's Write a Letter To the Day After Tomorrow
For: doctor_caduceus
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Sylar/Mohinder
Word Count: 590
Prompt: Tempest, glide, augury, psychopomp.
Notes: Beta'd by the lovely daughtersofisis ♥
Excerpt: Mohinder dreams of the future. Nuclear sands shifting over tumbled skyscrapers, flowing past jagged spires of glass – the world, empty and silent. Only the sun burns bright, a white disc in the sky.


Mohinder is dreaming. Synapse to synapse, neurons stringy and pleading, tiny little messages. Can you hear me now? Can you hear me?

Sylar hears.

Mohinder dreams of the future. Nuclear sands shifting over tumbled skyscrapers, flowing past jagged spires of glass – the world, empty and silent. Only the sun burns bright, a white disc in the sky.

Everyone can tell the future; Sylar knows this, his intuition gleaming sharp. Anyone can predict the next ice age, the next asteroid, the next atomic bomb with unerring accuracy, but this information, it locks itself in the depths of the brain, useless and repressed.

We use only 10% of our brain cells at any given time. What could we do if we used them all?

Mohinder's eyelids flicker, pulled taut from his roving gaze. Dreamscapes, truthscapes, reality and disconnect, he glides through his world like a ghost of the past. Here is a doll's head, eyes scratched, face sanded to a featureless plane; here, the iron remains of a skyscraper; there, the naked skeleton of the Statue of Liberty. Remnants of empires ancient, the rise and fall of the United States of America.

Sylar sees all this and more. He met a boy once, a boy with dark skin and curly hair and big, frightened eyes. His limbs were thin and his shirt was loose and in his head, he had the power of a shaman. His blood ran dripping from Sylar's fingers and painted destiny on the floor.

Mohinder stirs. The future troubles him; it's not what he expects. The sky throbs, green and clouded, and the sand surges at his legs. Stay stay stay, it hisses.

Sylar presses his hand to Mohinder's chest. Humans are weak, frail, made with nothing but molecules and atoms. Here is Mohinder's sternum, and here is his heart. Hiding behind its cage of bone, it beats weakly, a telegram in Morse. Can you hear me?

Sylar hears.

Mohinder is moaning, struggling to wake; he is drowning in sand, arms helpless against the sky which pushes him under. Deaf, dumb, blind – his eyes and ears and mouth are filled with dreams. Electricity racing, thousands and thousands of synapses asking, a hyperventilation of the mind. His heart, it screams.

New York will crumble, an avalanche of cement and steel turning to ash, to dust, shadow, nothing. Satellites will ricochet, moons will fall, and the sun, it will burn, ultraviolet and angry. The world will topple off its precarious axis and sigh in pain. Can you hear me now?

The whites of his eyes flash terror in the dark. Ripped from his dreamworld, his futureworld, he shudders awake and the connection, it. Stops.

All these futures, they just want to be heard.

Mohinder shivers, blood icy. His tongue rasps against his lips and his throat clicks dry in the silence. Sylar feigns sleepiness.

"Mohinder?" he slurs. "Is everything okay?"

The future still lingers, waits to be heard. Mohinder shakes his head. "Just a dream." His voice is hoarse, cracked. He turns into Sylar's arms and pulls the sheets up. By morning, he will have forgotten.

But Sylar knows, he hears, he listens to the cells and the ions between them. Teeth sharp, eyes dark, he will remember what the future said. What will he do with this knowledge? Only the sun knows, eternal and burning, white in the sky. Destiny drips from his fingers in the color of blood.

Everyone's a fortune teller. Everyone's an augur. What will you do with your future?

(Can you hear me now?)