Fic: SuperHiro
Eee, so today I wrote a Hiro fic! Oh, and it was sooo much fun. It's been far too long since I really loved writing something. That feeling where the plot just unfolds in front of you, and the characters are sitting in your head, feeding you all their lines, and all the description just flows from your fingertips, and you end up with whole sections where you just can't change a word, because it just materialised, fully formed, exactly as it should be? I haven't written like that in a very long time, but I did for this fic, and the idea is making me giddy.
Course, that doesn't mean it's good, but I feel good about it, and that's what counts. Especially after attempting this yesterday and coming to the conclusion that Hiro hated me, as he refused to cooperate. :P
Title: SuperHiro
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Hiro. Ensemble.
Spoilers: Up to 1x11, Fallout
Warnings: Contains Peter/Claire, so there's a strict don't like, don't read policy here. :P
Summary: As Hiro travels from the beginning to the end of the world, he begins to think that his talent isn't much of a gift after all.
Author's Note: This was written for spiffychocolate, who wanted a Hiro fic with Hiro/Charlie. I kinda moved away from the prompt a little bit, but I hope she likes it anyway. :) Also massive thanks to the amazing James for the beta, and especially for putting his foot down and deleting all the rubbish that came out in my 'wheee, Hiro!' glee. :P
The first time Hiro travelled in time, he watched the world end.
It was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him.
When his eyes fell on that comic book, he knew this was his destiny. He was this time’s Superman, or Spiderman (after all, Peter Parker did live in New York), and the idea filled him with giddy joy.
He hurried to the home of the artist, to find out how he knew his story, but instead found the man lying in a pool of blood, his head cut off and his brain missing.
The men that tried to arrest him clearly didn’t know of his superhero status, and they didn’t believe his explanation of his powers. Some people just weren’t ready to meet their savoir yet. Still, he tried to explain things as clearly as he could, throwing in as many Star Trek references as possible so that these Americans would understand. But then he made a phone call to Ando, and everything became just that little bit stranger. He had travelled forward in time, five weeks ahead, to read this comic and see this murder. He was collecting a message for the rest of the world.
Then the explosion happened. The earth shook and buildings crumbled, and Hiro jumped away as the world crumbled around him.
He looked down at the comic book clutched in his hands, his instruction manual, his Yoda in paper form, and he knew. Destiny had called him, and he was going to follow its lead.
***
The second time Hiro travelled in time, it was all about a girl.
He spent months talking to her, trying to convince her that he was from the future and that she should leave and never come back, but she just nodded and smiled. He wasn’t the man from the future, coming to save her. He was just her quirky friend who she had to appease.
But he couldn’t give up. He spent every moment with her, constantly doing ‘tricks’, as she called them, fulfilling her orders, making things appear and predicting the future.
One day, after correctly predicting another sports win, she turned to him and smiled. "Oh, Hiro, you’re so smart," she said. "Sometimes I think you gotta be psychic."
"Not psychic," he said patiently, trying to make her understand. "From the future."
"Oh, yeah, I know." Her smile grew wider, but so did her eyes, and he knew that she was just trying to appease him. "It’s just, even if you are from the future, you remember so much."
"You remember so much too," he said, mentally begging her to finally see it. "You have power, like me, and bad man will come."
But she just laughed it off, saying that the bad man had already come and taken all her taxes away. And so it continued.
Still, he managed to convince her to come with Japan with him, and, in the end, that would be enough. If he could get her away, even if she didn’t believe him, he would be able to keep her safe.
Then, one day, as he discussed their plans again, he saw a sadness grow in her eyes. She was dying.
He couldn’t save her.
Then she told him that she loved him, and he finally saw the way. As he leaned in to kiss her, he knew that he could save her, even if it was only for a little while.
He opened his eyes, and he was back in Japan.
***
The third time Hiro travelled in time, he went back too far.
He had been aiming for six or seven months. Instead, he had gone back sixty or seventy.
Sixty or seventy million years.
Hiro gasped as he took in his surroundings, tall trees and thick undergrowth and the constant noise of activity around him. Huge insects buzzed in his ears, and the grass under his feet quivered as though hundreds of tiny creatures were scurrying along.
"This isn’t New York," Ando said quietly, his eyes wide. Hiro had attempted to take his sidekick with him, and he took this as a sign that, for once, he had been successful.
Then again, perhaps this whole scenario proved just how unsuccessful he had been. Taking someone with him had caused him to overshoot a little. Not that it mattered. Hiro recalled Isaac’s painting, and he knew that this was the way it was meant to be.
"No," he said, pulling the sword out of its sheath with a dramatic flourish. "It is our destiny."
The momentum of the sword dragged him forwards, and he toppled onto the ground with a crash.
"Will you stop waving that sword around like you know how to use it?" Ando said, pulling him back to his feet. "You’re going to hurt yourself."
Hiro shook his head. Sometimes Ando just didn’t understand how things worked.
"Mister Isaac painted me here with a sword," he explained patiently.
"Mister Isaac also painted you fighting a T. Rex!" Ando said. "We need to get out of here before it eats us both."
Hiro suddenly remembered his fears at the sight of that painting and grabbed his friend by the arm before he could move. "What if we step on a bug!" he said frantically. "We could change history!"
"You already fell over while holding a sword," Ando reminded him. "You’ve probably squashed many bugs." At Hiro’s horrified expression, he sighed and added, "If anything horrible happens, you can always go back and warn yourself not to come here, saving the world from devastation and saving you from being a dinosaur’s lunch."
This seemed almost nonsensical to Ando, but it seemed to reassure Hiro, and he put away his sword with a satisfied nod.
They wandered the jungle, trying to fathom out what exactly to do. Ando was beyond worried, eyeing the trees suspiciously as they moved, but Hiro felt almost giddy with excitement. The sword was a comforting weight against his back. When the time came, he would know how to use it.
The pair eventually reached a great clearing, and even Ando had to stop in wonder at what they saw. They had come to a watering hole, a lake surrounded by giants, oblivious to the strangers in their midst.
A triceratops suddenly stomped past. They both jumped away in shock, but it merely looked at them with a mixture of confusion and disdain and continued on its way. Hiro had never seen anything so great and impressive in his life.
Well, except perhaps for the sight of that pteranodon flying overhead moments later, but it was a very close contest.
They remained at the edge of the clearing, frozen with awe and fear. Hiro felt that if he moved, even a little, he would somehow upset everything. Even so, the urge to get a closer look almost overwhelmed him, and, despite his better judgement, he put one foot forward.
All of the creatures looked up, and time seemed to freeze. Hiro held his breath, desperately hoping that he hadn’t upset them, and then he heard the roar.
Without warning, all of the creatures suddenly started to race away into the trees. Ando dragged Hiro out of the way just in time, as the triceratops spun around and hurried back the way it had come. The ground shook so hard from the passing creatures that they both stumbled to the ground, and when they finally got back to their feet, the clearing was almost empty.
The roar sounded again. Hiro looked up to see the trees shaking and crashing as the ground throbbed beneath his feet. Across the clearing, the trees parted like grass, and a monster emerged.
Oh, shit.
Ando clutched at his arm and started frantically whispering in his ear. "Get the sword. Get the sword, Hiro!"
But Hiro couldn’t move. The heroic idea of fighting a dinosaur suddenly faded into flashes of claws and teeth, and Hiro remembered all the times that he had failed. He hadn’t even managed to save Charlie. How could he save himself and Ando against a killing machine with a sword he couldn’t even lift?
Grasping his friend, he squeezed his eyes shut in concentration. The roars of the dinosaur mixed with its crushing footsteps in his ear, and he hoped, prayed, that they were too small to be noticeable, that it would pass them on its way to bigger prey.
Focusing his mind clearly on the future, he felt his stomach twist. The roars faded into the chatter of a television, and he opened his eyes to the sight of his hotel room.
"I did it!" he said, his face spreading into a grin.
"I thought you were meant to fight it!" Ando said, gesturing at the useless sword.
"I will," Hiro said. "Next time."
"Next time?!" Ando said, as Hiro moved to turn off the TV. He pulled the sword out again, and looked at it in his hands. He had some serious training to do.
"Yes," he said firmly. "Next time."
***
The fourth time Hiro travelled in time, everything had changed.
He opened his eyes to a silent wasteland. The buildings around him were crumbled and charred, the ground was twisted and cracked, and, when Hiro looked up, he saw that the sky was a poisonous churning purple. The air was filled with stench of fear.
This was not what he had expected. They had saved the world. He had seen it happen, watched as Peter defeated Sylar and collapsed in the streets of Manhattan. Nathan had sighed, and Claire had cried, and life had continued.
This could not be the future.
As if his recollections had somehow summoned it, he heard a voice echo from behind him, cutting through the heavy silence like a knife.
"Hiro! Oh my god, Hiro!"
He spun around to see Claire running towards him, stumbling and slipping on the broken ground in her haste. She looked as undamaged as always, but her skin seemed thin on her bones, and her long blonde hair was mashed with brown and red.
She threw her arms around him, her tiny frame almost knocking him to the ground in her desperation. "Oh god, you don’t know how glad I am that you’ve come," she said.
She stepped back, her eyes roaming over him in disbelief.
"Why?" Hiro asked. "What happened here?"
Claire opened her mouth to respond, but another voice cut her off. It echoed frantically from somewhere to the left, making Hiro jump.
"Claire? Claire! Where are you?"
"I’m here, Peter!"
There was the sound of pounding feet, and then Peter Petrelli emerged from among the buildings, fear and relief mixing in his eyes. He looked thin, too, and he had a wild desperation in him that Hiro had only seen once before.
He barely acknowledged Hiro’s presence as he raced up to Claire and threw his arms around her. "Don’t you ever do that, Claire," he said, his words smothered by her hair. "Don’t ever."
"I only went a little way, Peter," she said, but her voice was laced with regret. "And look who I found."
Peter stepped back then, and his eyes finally focused on Hiro. His features changed from fear to shock to devastated joy in an instant.
"Hiro," he said, dragging him into a hug too. "I can’t believe you’re here, man."
"What is here?" Hiro asked. "What happened?"
Claire opened her mouth to respond again, but Peter shook his head.
"We shouldn’t talk here. It’s not safe."
Hiro managed to stop himself asking what that meant as the pair hurried him down the street, in amongst devastated buildings and the occasional festering corpse, until they reached what once must have been a subway station.
"Down here," Claire said quietly, and they squeezed into a gap in the rubble, slipping and sliding down the old staircase until they reached a small cave at the bottom. Peter pulled a flashlight out of his pocket and turned it on, revealing a rough shelter, complete with candles, a tattered blanket and what must have once been a large food store. Now only a few battered cans remained.
The alarm bells in Hiro’s head were beyond deafening now. "What happened here?" he said again, willing them to finally give him an answer.
"The end of the world," Peter said, and he laughed bitterly. "Guess my brother was right. All that work was for nothing."
"But where are the others?" he asked, desperately hoping that he didn’t already know the answer.
"Dead," Peter said bluntly. "They’re all dead." He gestured to Claire. "We’re the only ones left."
Claire, who had been leaning against the wall and regarding a crumpled subway map with a sort of resigned curiosity, suddenly turned towards him. "You have to stop it, Hiro!" she said, and Hiro saw the frantic hope in her eyes. "You have to go back and warn us!"
He frowned, still not understanding. He had watched the end of the world once before, and it had been exciting. It had been destiny.
This was hell.
"But we stopped it," he said slowly. "We stopped the bad man. No more world ending."
Peter laughed again, a short, single bark of laughter. "Seems that saving the world is a full time job. And we’re not exactly professionals."
Hiro’s eyes flickered between the gaunt faces of his friends, and he felt a new resolution take hold of him.
"I will stop it," he told them, nodding emphatically to highlight his point. "Tell me what to do."
Claire shook her head. "We don’t know. We don’t know how to stop it. But if you warn us, if we have more time - "
Hiro felt a familiar twist start in his stomach, and fear flooded through him. "What happened?" he asked, desperate now. "Quick, tell me!"
One word came from Claire’s lips before his stomach twisted over, and he found himself standing alone. Grabbing his phone, he hurried out of the door, that single word ringing in his mind.
Sylar.
***
The fifth time Hiro travelled in time, he wanted to stay there forever.
He materialised in Isaac’s studio, a couple of months back from when he’d closed his eyes. The place was full of people, laughing and joking and living their lives like nothing could ever disrupt them, and Hiro couldn’t help but stop for a moment to watch them.
Peter and Claire were sprawled on the couch, chatting like old friends. Peter said something, and Claire laughed, a purely joyful sound that seemed to fill her whole being. She arched her back and tilted her head in laughter, and then raised her foot and pushed his cheek lightly. He laughed too at that, and then moved across to kiss her.
Mister Isaac was in the corner, painting away as always, surrounded by canvases of robberies and murders, but also of kisses and games. It had been good to be a hero then.
Nathan was sat at a table in the corner, paper piled up beside him, and only shooting his brother the occasional exasperated glance. The disgust had come earlier. And later. At that moment, he seemed far more distracted by the Sanders family, who were having a very animated conversation as Micah worked to fix some tiny microphones. Those things had been more than useful, Hiro remembered. However, even that noise didn’t seem to rattle Nathan, and when Micah looked up and smiled, he smiled back and returned to his work.
Everything about the scene was happy, and Hiro wanted to turn back before he disrupted it all. But then Ando looked up from his comic book - one Hiro had leant him, and he had enjoyed far more than expected - and shot him a confused smile.
"You’re back early, Hiro," he said.
The others stopped and looked at him too, and Hiro knew that there was no turning back. He stepped forwards, knowing that he was about to shatter this peace forever. He had no choice. He had to tell them.
"I have a message for you."
Course, that doesn't mean it's good, but I feel good about it, and that's what counts. Especially after attempting this yesterday and coming to the conclusion that Hiro hated me, as he refused to cooperate. :P
Title: SuperHiro
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Hiro. Ensemble.
Spoilers: Up to 1x11, Fallout
Warnings: Contains Peter/Claire, so there's a strict don't like, don't read policy here. :P
Summary: As Hiro travels from the beginning to the end of the world, he begins to think that his talent isn't much of a gift after all.
Author's Note: This was written for spiffychocolate, who wanted a Hiro fic with Hiro/Charlie. I kinda moved away from the prompt a little bit, but I hope she likes it anyway. :) Also massive thanks to the amazing James for the beta, and especially for putting his foot down and deleting all the rubbish that came out in my 'wheee, Hiro!' glee. :P
The first time Hiro travelled in time, he watched the world end.
It was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him.
When his eyes fell on that comic book, he knew this was his destiny. He was this time’s Superman, or Spiderman (after all, Peter Parker did live in New York), and the idea filled him with giddy joy.
He hurried to the home of the artist, to find out how he knew his story, but instead found the man lying in a pool of blood, his head cut off and his brain missing.
The men that tried to arrest him clearly didn’t know of his superhero status, and they didn’t believe his explanation of his powers. Some people just weren’t ready to meet their savoir yet. Still, he tried to explain things as clearly as he could, throwing in as many Star Trek references as possible so that these Americans would understand. But then he made a phone call to Ando, and everything became just that little bit stranger. He had travelled forward in time, five weeks ahead, to read this comic and see this murder. He was collecting a message for the rest of the world.
Then the explosion happened. The earth shook and buildings crumbled, and Hiro jumped away as the world crumbled around him.
He looked down at the comic book clutched in his hands, his instruction manual, his Yoda in paper form, and he knew. Destiny had called him, and he was going to follow its lead.
***
The second time Hiro travelled in time, it was all about a girl.
He spent months talking to her, trying to convince her that he was from the future and that she should leave and never come back, but she just nodded and smiled. He wasn’t the man from the future, coming to save her. He was just her quirky friend who she had to appease.
But he couldn’t give up. He spent every moment with her, constantly doing ‘tricks’, as she called them, fulfilling her orders, making things appear and predicting the future.
One day, after correctly predicting another sports win, she turned to him and smiled. "Oh, Hiro, you’re so smart," she said. "Sometimes I think you gotta be psychic."
"Not psychic," he said patiently, trying to make her understand. "From the future."
"Oh, yeah, I know." Her smile grew wider, but so did her eyes, and he knew that she was just trying to appease him. "It’s just, even if you are from the future, you remember so much."
"You remember so much too," he said, mentally begging her to finally see it. "You have power, like me, and bad man will come."
But she just laughed it off, saying that the bad man had already come and taken all her taxes away. And so it continued.
Still, he managed to convince her to come with Japan with him, and, in the end, that would be enough. If he could get her away, even if she didn’t believe him, he would be able to keep her safe.
Then, one day, as he discussed their plans again, he saw a sadness grow in her eyes. She was dying.
He couldn’t save her.
Then she told him that she loved him, and he finally saw the way. As he leaned in to kiss her, he knew that he could save her, even if it was only for a little while.
He opened his eyes, and he was back in Japan.
***
The third time Hiro travelled in time, he went back too far.
He had been aiming for six or seven months. Instead, he had gone back sixty or seventy.
Sixty or seventy million years.
Hiro gasped as he took in his surroundings, tall trees and thick undergrowth and the constant noise of activity around him. Huge insects buzzed in his ears, and the grass under his feet quivered as though hundreds of tiny creatures were scurrying along.
"This isn’t New York," Ando said quietly, his eyes wide. Hiro had attempted to take his sidekick with him, and he took this as a sign that, for once, he had been successful.
Then again, perhaps this whole scenario proved just how unsuccessful he had been. Taking someone with him had caused him to overshoot a little. Not that it mattered. Hiro recalled Isaac’s painting, and he knew that this was the way it was meant to be.
"No," he said, pulling the sword out of its sheath with a dramatic flourish. "It is our destiny."
The momentum of the sword dragged him forwards, and he toppled onto the ground with a crash.
"Will you stop waving that sword around like you know how to use it?" Ando said, pulling him back to his feet. "You’re going to hurt yourself."
Hiro shook his head. Sometimes Ando just didn’t understand how things worked.
"Mister Isaac painted me here with a sword," he explained patiently.
"Mister Isaac also painted you fighting a T. Rex!" Ando said. "We need to get out of here before it eats us both."
Hiro suddenly remembered his fears at the sight of that painting and grabbed his friend by the arm before he could move. "What if we step on a bug!" he said frantically. "We could change history!"
"You already fell over while holding a sword," Ando reminded him. "You’ve probably squashed many bugs." At Hiro’s horrified expression, he sighed and added, "If anything horrible happens, you can always go back and warn yourself not to come here, saving the world from devastation and saving you from being a dinosaur’s lunch."
This seemed almost nonsensical to Ando, but it seemed to reassure Hiro, and he put away his sword with a satisfied nod.
They wandered the jungle, trying to fathom out what exactly to do. Ando was beyond worried, eyeing the trees suspiciously as they moved, but Hiro felt almost giddy with excitement. The sword was a comforting weight against his back. When the time came, he would know how to use it.
The pair eventually reached a great clearing, and even Ando had to stop in wonder at what they saw. They had come to a watering hole, a lake surrounded by giants, oblivious to the strangers in their midst.
A triceratops suddenly stomped past. They both jumped away in shock, but it merely looked at them with a mixture of confusion and disdain and continued on its way. Hiro had never seen anything so great and impressive in his life.
Well, except perhaps for the sight of that pteranodon flying overhead moments later, but it was a very close contest.
They remained at the edge of the clearing, frozen with awe and fear. Hiro felt that if he moved, even a little, he would somehow upset everything. Even so, the urge to get a closer look almost overwhelmed him, and, despite his better judgement, he put one foot forward.
All of the creatures looked up, and time seemed to freeze. Hiro held his breath, desperately hoping that he hadn’t upset them, and then he heard the roar.
Without warning, all of the creatures suddenly started to race away into the trees. Ando dragged Hiro out of the way just in time, as the triceratops spun around and hurried back the way it had come. The ground shook so hard from the passing creatures that they both stumbled to the ground, and when they finally got back to their feet, the clearing was almost empty.
The roar sounded again. Hiro looked up to see the trees shaking and crashing as the ground throbbed beneath his feet. Across the clearing, the trees parted like grass, and a monster emerged.
Oh, shit.
Ando clutched at his arm and started frantically whispering in his ear. "Get the sword. Get the sword, Hiro!"
But Hiro couldn’t move. The heroic idea of fighting a dinosaur suddenly faded into flashes of claws and teeth, and Hiro remembered all the times that he had failed. He hadn’t even managed to save Charlie. How could he save himself and Ando against a killing machine with a sword he couldn’t even lift?
Grasping his friend, he squeezed his eyes shut in concentration. The roars of the dinosaur mixed with its crushing footsteps in his ear, and he hoped, prayed, that they were too small to be noticeable, that it would pass them on its way to bigger prey.
Focusing his mind clearly on the future, he felt his stomach twist. The roars faded into the chatter of a television, and he opened his eyes to the sight of his hotel room.
"I did it!" he said, his face spreading into a grin.
"I thought you were meant to fight it!" Ando said, gesturing at the useless sword.
"I will," Hiro said. "Next time."
"Next time?!" Ando said, as Hiro moved to turn off the TV. He pulled the sword out again, and looked at it in his hands. He had some serious training to do.
"Yes," he said firmly. "Next time."
***
The fourth time Hiro travelled in time, everything had changed.
He opened his eyes to a silent wasteland. The buildings around him were crumbled and charred, the ground was twisted and cracked, and, when Hiro looked up, he saw that the sky was a poisonous churning purple. The air was filled with stench of fear.
This was not what he had expected. They had saved the world. He had seen it happen, watched as Peter defeated Sylar and collapsed in the streets of Manhattan. Nathan had sighed, and Claire had cried, and life had continued.
This could not be the future.
As if his recollections had somehow summoned it, he heard a voice echo from behind him, cutting through the heavy silence like a knife.
"Hiro! Oh my god, Hiro!"
He spun around to see Claire running towards him, stumbling and slipping on the broken ground in her haste. She looked as undamaged as always, but her skin seemed thin on her bones, and her long blonde hair was mashed with brown and red.
She threw her arms around him, her tiny frame almost knocking him to the ground in her desperation. "Oh god, you don’t know how glad I am that you’ve come," she said.
She stepped back, her eyes roaming over him in disbelief.
"Why?" Hiro asked. "What happened here?"
Claire opened her mouth to respond, but another voice cut her off. It echoed frantically from somewhere to the left, making Hiro jump.
"Claire? Claire! Where are you?"
"I’m here, Peter!"
There was the sound of pounding feet, and then Peter Petrelli emerged from among the buildings, fear and relief mixing in his eyes. He looked thin, too, and he had a wild desperation in him that Hiro had only seen once before.
He barely acknowledged Hiro’s presence as he raced up to Claire and threw his arms around her. "Don’t you ever do that, Claire," he said, his words smothered by her hair. "Don’t ever."
"I only went a little way, Peter," she said, but her voice was laced with regret. "And look who I found."
Peter stepped back then, and his eyes finally focused on Hiro. His features changed from fear to shock to devastated joy in an instant.
"Hiro," he said, dragging him into a hug too. "I can’t believe you’re here, man."
"What is here?" Hiro asked. "What happened?"
Claire opened her mouth to respond again, but Peter shook his head.
"We shouldn’t talk here. It’s not safe."
Hiro managed to stop himself asking what that meant as the pair hurried him down the street, in amongst devastated buildings and the occasional festering corpse, until they reached what once must have been a subway station.
"Down here," Claire said quietly, and they squeezed into a gap in the rubble, slipping and sliding down the old staircase until they reached a small cave at the bottom. Peter pulled a flashlight out of his pocket and turned it on, revealing a rough shelter, complete with candles, a tattered blanket and what must have once been a large food store. Now only a few battered cans remained.
The alarm bells in Hiro’s head were beyond deafening now. "What happened here?" he said again, willing them to finally give him an answer.
"The end of the world," Peter said, and he laughed bitterly. "Guess my brother was right. All that work was for nothing."
"But where are the others?" he asked, desperately hoping that he didn’t already know the answer.
"Dead," Peter said bluntly. "They’re all dead." He gestured to Claire. "We’re the only ones left."
Claire, who had been leaning against the wall and regarding a crumpled subway map with a sort of resigned curiosity, suddenly turned towards him. "You have to stop it, Hiro!" she said, and Hiro saw the frantic hope in her eyes. "You have to go back and warn us!"
He frowned, still not understanding. He had watched the end of the world once before, and it had been exciting. It had been destiny.
This was hell.
"But we stopped it," he said slowly. "We stopped the bad man. No more world ending."
Peter laughed again, a short, single bark of laughter. "Seems that saving the world is a full time job. And we’re not exactly professionals."
Hiro’s eyes flickered between the gaunt faces of his friends, and he felt a new resolution take hold of him.
"I will stop it," he told them, nodding emphatically to highlight his point. "Tell me what to do."
Claire shook her head. "We don’t know. We don’t know how to stop it. But if you warn us, if we have more time - "
Hiro felt a familiar twist start in his stomach, and fear flooded through him. "What happened?" he asked, desperate now. "Quick, tell me!"
One word came from Claire’s lips before his stomach twisted over, and he found himself standing alone. Grabbing his phone, he hurried out of the door, that single word ringing in his mind.
Sylar.
***
The fifth time Hiro travelled in time, he wanted to stay there forever.
He materialised in Isaac’s studio, a couple of months back from when he’d closed his eyes. The place was full of people, laughing and joking and living their lives like nothing could ever disrupt them, and Hiro couldn’t help but stop for a moment to watch them.
Peter and Claire were sprawled on the couch, chatting like old friends. Peter said something, and Claire laughed, a purely joyful sound that seemed to fill her whole being. She arched her back and tilted her head in laughter, and then raised her foot and pushed his cheek lightly. He laughed too at that, and then moved across to kiss her.
Mister Isaac was in the corner, painting away as always, surrounded by canvases of robberies and murders, but also of kisses and games. It had been good to be a hero then.
Nathan was sat at a table in the corner, paper piled up beside him, and only shooting his brother the occasional exasperated glance. The disgust had come earlier. And later. At that moment, he seemed far more distracted by the Sanders family, who were having a very animated conversation as Micah worked to fix some tiny microphones. Those things had been more than useful, Hiro remembered. However, even that noise didn’t seem to rattle Nathan, and when Micah looked up and smiled, he smiled back and returned to his work.
Everything about the scene was happy, and Hiro wanted to turn back before he disrupted it all. But then Ando looked up from his comic book - one Hiro had leant him, and he had enjoyed far more than expected - and shot him a confused smile.
"You’re back early, Hiro," he said.
The others stopped and looked at him too, and Hiro knew that there was no turning back. He stepped forwards, knowing that he was about to shatter this peace forever. He had no choice. He had to tell them.
"I have a message for you."