Fic: Three Hundred Days (Heroes)
When Hiro managed to teleport back in, it was already too late.
The destruction was total, Peter remembered. The city, all around him, that bustled with commerce, energy, life just an instant earlier was gone. Bare ruins shuddered where buildings once stood, and the plaza - he couldn’t tell where the plaza ended and the buildings began. Not anymore. It all looked the same.
Hiro found Peter at the epicenter of the explosion. At what Peter supposed was the new Ground Zero.
He was a wreck, his clothes burnt to bare ash, a gash across his face - from Sylar, Hiro remembered - burnt into a scar, all in that one instant. He was weak, curled, body wracked with out-of-control emotion.
“It was Sylar,” Peter gasped, when Hiro knelt next to him. “Sylar - he exploded-”
Hiro never learned how weak Peter truly was, in that moment.
The clinics outside the radiation ‘hot zone’ hardly even deserved the name. They were more tents than buildings, less hospital than morgue.
Peter volunteered the second day after the explosion. The doctor in charge, his hands bloody from the patient dead on the table in between them, barely looked at Peter.
“You’re a nurse?”
“Yeah.”
“Then get to fucking work.”
Every minute, they had new patients. Burns, both from the radiation in the initial blast and the fires that came afterwards. Bones broken, joints sprained, skin torn open. Bruises so huge and so dark that they disguised a shattered skeleton, destroyed in the shock wave.
Peter didn’t have to think. His training took over.
He worked non-stop from sunset on the second day to sunrise on the fourth.
When he got there, they already didn’t have any beds to spare. They fit patients on the floor, on the windowsills, in every nook and cranny they could spare. There was no such thing as privacy. Six hours after he got there, they ran out of gloves, syringes, IV fluid, antibiotics. It took them another three to run out of painkillers, disinfectant, filtered water. By the third day, there weren’t any bandages.
Eventually, he realized who was bringing in most of the survivors - it was Hiro. Hiro, teleporting straight into the radiation, rescuing out these people, these half-dead people who weren’t even sure that they wanted to survive.
Hiro would probably be dead of cancer in the next decade. Hell, they all probably would. Except for Peter. No, Peter would live. Peter would live as long as he wanted -
He kicked out the most able-bodied survivors to find stores in the area - most of them were abandoned, the owners fleeing across the country as fast as they could drive, as fast as they could run. They brought back clothes, and he set them to work ripping cloth into usable pieces.
Vaguely, he remembered bandaging a girl’s arm with the remnants of a pair of designer jeans. Designer jeans. In another life, those jeans would have cost a hundred fifty, two hundred dollars, and right then Peter was using them like twenty-five cent bandages.
It made him laugh. He laughed and laughed and laughed, so hard he had to run outside, next to the garbage dump and the flies and the half-dried blood. He laughed so hard it hurt, then past hurt, then past tears. When he finished, he found that he couldn’t get up, that his arms and legs physically wouldn’t obey him.
Peter slept out there, braced awkwardly against brick and concrete.
He woke when a hand touched his face, a voice spoke in his ear.
“Peter.”
Peter stirred, and blinked up into Hiro Nakamura’s face. He was exhausted, turned inside out and upside down, dizzy and hungry and cold.
“The government sent supplies.”
The fifth day. Five fucking days before the fucking bureaucracy could send this clinic what it needs.
God bless America.
And just like that, Peter had to keep going. He swallowed some anti-radiation meds, and the first chance he got, pressed some into Hiro’s palm.
Hiro didn’t thank him, and didn’t even bother to head around the corner, or hide, at all. He just vanished, right in front of Peter’s eyes. In front of a dozen other people. And no one cared.
On the sixth day, Peter finally slowed down enough to have a meal, a real meal, instead of a snack grabbed on the fly. He wasn’t hungry, he thought, until he actually sat down in front of the cheap fried chicken and mashed potatoes and grey green beans and devoured them, all of them.
He wondered if Hiro had anything real to eat since the explosion.
“Look, it’s Nathan Petrelli.”
“Guys, Nathan Petrelli is on again!”
“Turn it up! Turn it up!”
Peter turned bleary eyes to the tiny, beaten-up satellite television, and watched the hypocritical, stained words from his brother’s mouth.
Eventually, he realized that Hiro was beside him, his frame slumped, like there just wasn’t enough inside him even to sit up anymore. Like everything that Hiro was had just been drained out of him.
“He knew,” Peter blurted. “Nathan knew everything, and he did nothing to stop it.”
If it had been any other time, Peter knew that Hiro’s jaw would have gone slack, that he would have protested. Hiro believed in Nathan, Peter thought, the same way Peter himself did. And they both were wrong.
“He knew?” was all Hiro said, in a tiny echo.
“Yeah,” Peter rasped, and that was the beginning.
Two weeks, and they finally had trailers for the doctors, nurses, volunteers. The clinic was fully-staffed now, with experts from around the country, and Peter found himself unwittingly in charge of half the place, along with the doctor he met the second day.
The doctor never stopped talking, never shut his mouth. Peter could always hear him, even from across the entire compound - when he was with a patient, it would be a constant stream of facts, reassurances, normal conversation, like the world hadn’t been snapped in two. Peter liked listening to it, and it gave him a reassured, confident feel that things could get better.
Day sixteen the doctor ran himself too ragged, and his body simply collapsed, unable to hold up anymore. As they shipped him away, Peter realized that he’d never actually learned the doctor’s name. Sixteen days, and they’d become a perfect working team, and Peter-
“-never even knew his name,” Peter confessed, voice slurred with lack of sleep.
Hiro had his sword across his knees, and if Peter looked closely, he could still see the beaded remnants of something faded. Something with an echo of crimson.
The single bed was too crowded for the both of them, but they fit, somehow. Barely wasted skeletons of what they were.
“Hiro,” Peter asked - and it should have been breaking the silence, but it wasn’t, he could hear the groans, the pain, the agony even from in here - “do you want to sleep here?”
I don’t want to be alone, threaded Peter’s heartbeat. Don’t leave, don’t leave, don’t leave me.
In response, all Hiro did was lift Peter’s chin, kiss him once, shallow. It was a plea, in its own way, Peter supposed, but at that time he wasn’t thinking about that. He was thinking about how much he needed skin, living skin, against his, and how cold he felt all the time, and how his hands hurt from the blood that soaked him every. Single. Day. And when Hiro kissed him, maybe out of pure loneliness, grief for a lost friend that Peter hardly even met, Peter broke, he snapped, he shattered, and he clung to Hiro for six long, restful hours.
In the morning, he went out, and he healed those who needed healing.
Day twenty-eight, and Peter couldn’t sleep any longer without Hiro, without Hiro’s arms around him, without Hiro’s heartbeat holding off the rest of the world.
Sex must have been the furthest thing from Peter’s mind - he was terrified of losing control again, of slipping up and putting more blood on his hands, and no, no, no, no, no, he couldn’t think about that, he couldn’t, because it might kill him and if it killed him it would kill thousands more people and he had to have control, control. Sex meant losing control, and he wasn’t ready. What he needed was comfort, a human bond, something to remind him that everything wasn’t lost when New York City was wrecked.
Day thirty-seven, and Congressman Nathan Petrelli made an announcement to the entire world about those responsible for the explosion.
Gabriel “Sylar” Grey, he said. A man, with the ability to literally blow himself up, killed in the explosion. Concurrent, he announced the findings of a genetic research project that found that humans were evolving at increasing rates. Genetic mutations.
Peter’s mind blurred, and he noticed, like the pebbles one by one at the beginning of an avalanche, how the volunteers, the medics looked at Hiro. And they murmured ‘disappear’ and ‘invisible’ and ‘mutation’.
Right then, Peter knew it was the end of his life. That his brother Nathan just destroyed the world.
“Hiro,” Peter said, that night, “we have to go.”
And they left.
Peter had no idea where they went, but it was to a cabin, in the midst of a plain - flat, huge, empty. The world stretched to the horizon and back again, and the stars were crystal clear in the sky. The emptiness was dizzying, for someone born and raised in New York City. Peter couldn’t stand to go outside, for the first few days, and the dead silence made him shiver at night.
But, Peter slept. And when he slept, he kept sleeping. His body finally crashed from the stress, emotional and physical and mental, and he slept for days.
It was fitful, sometimes, and dreams of scalding hot blood and glowing hands would tear Peter out of sleep, whimpering with terror. Hiro was there, though, every single time, and he would stroke Peter’s back, wipe his forehead, until Peter shuddered back to sleep.
Finally, Peter opened his eyes, into near-complete darkness. Hiro was beside him - Peter knew that in every cell of his body. He would know it if he were deaf and blind and wrapped in cotton. He’ll always know.
“What do we do next?” asked Peter.
“We help,” said Hiro. “As best we can.”
His English was improved, Peter noticed. And his voice seemed deeper. Colder, maybe.
“I’m so sorry, Hiro,” blurted Peter.
Hiro cupped Peter’s cheek in his hand. “It wasn’t your fault,” Hiro told him.
For an instant, Peter believed that Hiro would forgive him. That Hiro knew everything, and could absolve Peter of what he’d done, and that Peter could go on living, knowing that somehow he could make up for it, somehow he could turn the world around and bring everything back to the way it was. He leaned into Hiro’s touch, aching for the affection in it, and then Hiro spoke again.
“It was Sylar,” said Hiro, “and none of us could have stopped him.”
It wasn’t Sylar! Peter wanted to scream. It wasn’t Sylar, it was me, I killed all those people, but the time for confession was long past.
Peter shook in a sob, a convulsive sob, and then the dam broke and he cried. Hiro held him close, but Peter couldn’t stop, until his nose was running and his eyes were swimming and he felt rubbery and wet and like he’d been stretched too far, too thin, and then snapped back into shape too quickly.
Eventually, Peter calmed. He had no idea how long they stayed there, but he remembered that the sky was starting to turn grey, then red, before he moved.
He slid over Hiro, practically in the man’s lap, and kissed him, long and deep and slick. Snaked a hand into Hiro’s pants and discovered, without surprise, that Hiro was hardening, right into Peter’s palm.
“Peter,” said Hiro, in a half-protest, but Peter silenced him.
It was pretty clear, then, that Hiro didn’t have any experience with this, that all he knew was wanting, wanting and the incredible feel of life against life. He needed Peter, just as much as Peter needed him.
It burned, without much preparation, but Peter had rougher sex before, and he didn’t mind, not so very much. But when he started to move, Hiro stopped him.
“It’s hurting you,” Hiro protested, for real, this time.
“It doesn’t hurt so much,” Peter breathed, against Hiro’s neck, and he urged Hiro into motion.
Hiro was still gentle, though, with such a very delicate touch that it made it hurt all the more. A sweet kind of torture, and Peter hoped that in this, he could help himself, help Hiro, help the world, all at the same time.
He spasmed against Hiro, empty of grief, full of a heart-stopping need, even if just for a few minutes.
Day forty-seven, they found Bennet. Bennet, driven half to distraction by the potential for sanctions against those with talents. Terrified of the test that was being developed.
“What can we do to help?” Peter asked.
Bennet hesitated, for a long moment, and glanced between them. “Help me protect these people,” said Bennet. “They don’t deserve this.”
“We’ll do everything we can,” Hiro confirmed.
Then, later, “I’m so sorry about Claire,” said Peter.
Bennet didn’t really seem to understand him for a moment, then his expression cleared. “Me too,” was all he said.
Day fifty-nine, the first sanctions went into effect.
Day seventy-six, Peter Petrelli attacked a government convoy for the first time in his life.
He stared at it for a long time, after everyone had fled. Seven vehicles - four cars, three trucks - strewn across the road. Smoldering, burning. Wrecked. An in them, Peter could smell the death, the death of thousands, of millions, the death of an entire city -
“I know you’re here.”
Peter was invisible, of course, just as a precaution. But Hiro knew him, and knew him too well.
Peter unmasked, next to his lover.
“Did we do the right thing?” he asked, in the light of the sunset.
“Protecting the innocent is always the right thing.”
In time, Peter forgot that there ever was a life before the explosion. He forgot that he loved New York City, that he thrived on the life, the spirit, the personality of his home. He forgot that he used to be a nurse, that he made it his life’s goal to care for the injured and dying. He forgot that there ever was a time that he didn’t need Hiro, that he wasn’t a part of Hiro.
And if he could have, he would have forgotten his older brother. Eventually he found that, more than ever, all he wanted to do was forget.
Day eighty-one, a news story aired all across the country that radiation cleanup was complete, that New York City was safe for human habitation and construction again. The President unveiled a new project, for rebuilding the city.
“It shouldn’t have cleaned up that fast,” said Peter, watching the broadcast a little too carefully. “Nuclear radiation doesn’t clean up that fast. They should have had to destroy the whole place.”
Next to him, Bennet shrugged. “We still don’t know everything about Ted Sprague’s power,” he said. “It might not have been, strictly speaking, a nuclear explosion. It could have been another kind of radiation.” He tilted his head to the side. “Though, you would think that Sylar would have done the most damage possible. On purpose.”
“Who the hell knows what was going on in his head,” Peter deflected.
That night, Hiro came back from one of Bennet’s little missions with a bullet wound.
“The whole point is to be subtle!” roared Bennet. “If we continually advertise to the government that we’re here, sooner or later, they will come around and shut us down!”
“What was I supposed to do?” Hiro shot back. “Those people needed our help!”
“If it’s too dangerous,” Bennet explained, his voice tight and steely, “you pull back. You get out of there-”
“I won’t abandon them!”
“It’s a matter of the greater good. If we’re not here, we can’t help anyone.”
Hiro stood up straighter. “A hero doesn’t make compromises.”
“Then a hero doesn’t live in the real world.” Bennet looked Hiro in the eye. “Don’t ever pull a stunt like that again. If necessary, we have to let some go.”
Hiro left Bennet’s compound that night. Peter followed him.
Day eighty-two, Peter and Hiro moved into Isaac’s loft. Peter bandaged up Hiro’s arm, where the bullet hit, and they curled up next to each other, on top of a brand new mattress, sprawled on glass-littered concrete.
Hiro’s fingers stroked in Peter’s hair. “I love you, Peter,” murmured against Peter’s brow.
Peter closed his eyes. “I love you, Hiro,” he whispered, against the cloying darkness of the silent city.
Day ninety-two, against his better instincts, Peter went to see his brother.
Nathan was shocked, surprised. Glad, even. But his eyes lingered on Peter’s scar, and his expression tightened, almost imperceptibly.
“Why’d you do it, Nathan?” Peter crossed his arms.
“I don’t know what you mean, Peter.”
Peter shook his head. “I don’t believe you, Nathan. How could you have let this happen?”
“The greater good, Peter,” said Nathan. “You’ll understand someday.”
“I hope not.”
Peter never came back.
Day one hundred eleven, Peter Petrelli and Hiro Nakamura made the FBI’s Most Wanted.
“We’re terrorists,” Peter said, softly.
Hiro shook his head. “We’re not.”
Peter moved to his feet. “The entire country thinks we are. What difference does it make, anymore?”
“The difference is in us. They can tell America whatever they want, but we know. We know we’re helping people.”
Peter was tired, so very tired. And he couldn’t live his life, couldn’t take one step out the door without seeing a ruined city. Couldn’t take a breath without smelling ash on the air.
“Where does it stop, Hiro?” Peter asked finally, defeated.
“That’s not for us to see.”
By this time, they knew each other. Peter had never felt this intimate, this open, with anyone in his life - and yet, he’d never kept as many secrets as he did from Hiro.
Then again, maybe he just hadn’t had enough secrets to keep.
That night, he pressed his nose into the crook of Hiro’s neck and breathed, deep and long.
“What are you doing?” laughed Hiro, and Peter marveled at how much light there could be in a pitch-black room. Just from hearing Hiro laugh…
“Smelling you,” said Peter, bracing himself up, one hand idly tracing the smoothness of Hiro’s chest.
Hiro pulled Peter up and kissed him. Lips a little chapped, a little clumsy, but Peter loved it. He loved everything about Hiro. Most of all, he wanted that faith - he wanted to believe that the world would be better tomorrow, and even better the day after that. He wanted to be a hero.
Hiro rolled them over, and Peter curled his legs to his chest, without being told, without any but the barest of urges from Hiro’s fingertips.
The slick preparation drove him crazy - it always did. Hiro could tease, with just a little bit of a squirm here, a little press inside, then withdrawing, until Peter wanted him so bad he would beg for it…
Peter cried out, soft and low, when Hiro slid inside him.
This won’t last, he thought, horribly, fatally, and he shuddered apart in climax.
Slowly but surely, the days blurred together. Peter stopped noticing the passage of time, only that the days got warmer, longer.
The rebuilding projects started to stagnate. People weren’t moving back to the city, no matter what the government did about it. They were terrified, of radiation, of cancer, of a kind of death that they couldn’t see until they were already gone.
Peter didn’t even notice how he and Hiro were changing, until -
Day one hundred eighty-one. Prison break, special containment cells, Dallas, Texas. It was almost too easy - and as they left, Peter spotted a movement out of the corner of his eye.
He reacted with telekinesis, and it wasn’t until almost a minute later that he realized what had happened.
The guard had been trying to run. Trying to get away. And the movement -
Peter swallowed, and he tried to justify it to himself. Tried to say that the guard might have been attacking, that Peter had to be cautious, but the truth was that Peter attacked them, didn’t he? Maybe he and Hiro weren’t on the right side after all, not if they could kill people like this.
“What are we doing, Hiro?” Peter shouted over the call of thunder, the roar of rain, in the alley behind Isaac’s loft. “What the hell are we doing?”
“Whatever it takes.”
Hiro’s voice was almost too low, murmured under the rain. But Peter heard it.
Day two hundred and six was the first time one of them brought it up.
“Maybe we shouldn’t see each other anymore.”
This time, the first time, it was Hiro.
“What do you mean?” Peter asked, in disbelief.
“You’re hiding, Peter,” said Hiro. “I know you, and you’re not here. You’re gone.”
“That’s ridiculous,” scoffed Peter.
“No,” said Hiro. “It’s not.”
Peter cocked his head to the side. “I’m not the one who’s hiding,” he snapped. “Ando’s dead, Hiro. Driving yourself crazy saving everyone in sight isn’t going to change that.”
Hiro’s expression didn’t change. “I’m coming to terms,” he said. “I’m learning to live with it. Are you, Peter?”
Later, they made up, and pretended that nothing was wrong.
By day two hundred forty, they’d learned how to plan. The strikes were careful, surgical. Unwittingly, Hiro had learned Bennet’s lessons, and now, that was what they followed. They did whatever it took - they held back, they pressed forward. They fought for the survival of their race, and around them, the United States of America started to devolve and panic.
Day two hundred seventy-one, Peter was the one who brought it up.
“Do you sometimes wonder,” he said, “if we should keep seeing each other, like this? Isn’t it too dangerous?”
Hiro kissed Peter on the forehead. “Nothing is too dangerous,” he told Peter.
Peter leaned into the caress, and he let Hiro wrap him in an embrace.
Day two hundred ninety-four, they killed fourteen active-duty men and women from the National Guard. People who were just doing their job.
Peter found it, deep inside himself, to hate them. He hated them for everything, for the suppression of those with the genetic mutation, for the state of the country. He hated them for the bomb and for the destruction of his world, and for being bystanders as Fate wreaked havoc on the country.
Somewhere, in the midst of that, he forgot to regret.
Day three hundred and sixteen, it ended.
“Peter, it’s over,” said Hiro. “We can’t do this anymore.”
Peter shook his head. “What do you mean, Hiro?”
“Us.” Hiro turned away from Peter, slid the sword off his shoulder. “It can’t go on.”
“Why not?” Peter was bewildered, shocked.
“We’re tearing each other apart,” said Hiro. “Living in the present. Destroying as we want to. We’re taking revenge.”
“We’re helping people-”
“I don’t believe that anymore,” Hiro cut him off. “And neither do you.”
It was all so fast, happening too quickly - “Hiro,” Peter began, then, “I need you.”
“You’ll learn to live without,” Hiro told him. “I did.”
“But,” and Peter couldn’t find another protest, inside him. “But it’s our anniversary,” he said, softly.
Hiro glanced up.
“Three hundred days.” Peter’s throat choked. “We’ve been together three hundred days.”
“I’m sorry, Peter.”
Peter came back, on day three hundred eighteen, but Hiro wasn’t there. The loft was deserted. Instead of Hiro, all Peter found were two lengths of string stretched the length of the loft. One, labeled “Peter Petrelli” - the other, “Hiro Nakamura”.
On day three hundred nineteen, Peter Petrelli arrived in Las Vegas. He never looked back.
The destruction was total, Peter remembered. The city, all around him, that bustled with commerce, energy, life just an instant earlier was gone. Bare ruins shuddered where buildings once stood, and the plaza - he couldn’t tell where the plaza ended and the buildings began. Not anymore. It all looked the same.
Hiro found Peter at the epicenter of the explosion. At what Peter supposed was the new Ground Zero.
He was a wreck, his clothes burnt to bare ash, a gash across his face - from Sylar, Hiro remembered - burnt into a scar, all in that one instant. He was weak, curled, body wracked with out-of-control emotion.
“It was Sylar,” Peter gasped, when Hiro knelt next to him. “Sylar - he exploded-”
Hiro never learned how weak Peter truly was, in that moment.
The clinics outside the radiation ‘hot zone’ hardly even deserved the name. They were more tents than buildings, less hospital than morgue.
Peter volunteered the second day after the explosion. The doctor in charge, his hands bloody from the patient dead on the table in between them, barely looked at Peter.
“You’re a nurse?”
“Yeah.”
“Then get to fucking work.”
Every minute, they had new patients. Burns, both from the radiation in the initial blast and the fires that came afterwards. Bones broken, joints sprained, skin torn open. Bruises so huge and so dark that they disguised a shattered skeleton, destroyed in the shock wave.
Peter didn’t have to think. His training took over.
He worked non-stop from sunset on the second day to sunrise on the fourth.
When he got there, they already didn’t have any beds to spare. They fit patients on the floor, on the windowsills, in every nook and cranny they could spare. There was no such thing as privacy. Six hours after he got there, they ran out of gloves, syringes, IV fluid, antibiotics. It took them another three to run out of painkillers, disinfectant, filtered water. By the third day, there weren’t any bandages.
Eventually, he realized who was bringing in most of the survivors - it was Hiro. Hiro, teleporting straight into the radiation, rescuing out these people, these half-dead people who weren’t even sure that they wanted to survive.
Hiro would probably be dead of cancer in the next decade. Hell, they all probably would. Except for Peter. No, Peter would live. Peter would live as long as he wanted -
He kicked out the most able-bodied survivors to find stores in the area - most of them were abandoned, the owners fleeing across the country as fast as they could drive, as fast as they could run. They brought back clothes, and he set them to work ripping cloth into usable pieces.
Vaguely, he remembered bandaging a girl’s arm with the remnants of a pair of designer jeans. Designer jeans. In another life, those jeans would have cost a hundred fifty, two hundred dollars, and right then Peter was using them like twenty-five cent bandages.
It made him laugh. He laughed and laughed and laughed, so hard he had to run outside, next to the garbage dump and the flies and the half-dried blood. He laughed so hard it hurt, then past hurt, then past tears. When he finished, he found that he couldn’t get up, that his arms and legs physically wouldn’t obey him.
Peter slept out there, braced awkwardly against brick and concrete.
He woke when a hand touched his face, a voice spoke in his ear.
“Peter.”
Peter stirred, and blinked up into Hiro Nakamura’s face. He was exhausted, turned inside out and upside down, dizzy and hungry and cold.
“The government sent supplies.”
The fifth day. Five fucking days before the fucking bureaucracy could send this clinic what it needs.
God bless America.
And just like that, Peter had to keep going. He swallowed some anti-radiation meds, and the first chance he got, pressed some into Hiro’s palm.
Hiro didn’t thank him, and didn’t even bother to head around the corner, or hide, at all. He just vanished, right in front of Peter’s eyes. In front of a dozen other people. And no one cared.
On the sixth day, Peter finally slowed down enough to have a meal, a real meal, instead of a snack grabbed on the fly. He wasn’t hungry, he thought, until he actually sat down in front of the cheap fried chicken and mashed potatoes and grey green beans and devoured them, all of them.
He wondered if Hiro had anything real to eat since the explosion.
“Look, it’s Nathan Petrelli.”
“Guys, Nathan Petrelli is on again!”
“Turn it up! Turn it up!”
Peter turned bleary eyes to the tiny, beaten-up satellite television, and watched the hypocritical, stained words from his brother’s mouth.
Eventually, he realized that Hiro was beside him, his frame slumped, like there just wasn’t enough inside him even to sit up anymore. Like everything that Hiro was had just been drained out of him.
“He knew,” Peter blurted. “Nathan knew everything, and he did nothing to stop it.”
If it had been any other time, Peter knew that Hiro’s jaw would have gone slack, that he would have protested. Hiro believed in Nathan, Peter thought, the same way Peter himself did. And they both were wrong.
“He knew?” was all Hiro said, in a tiny echo.
“Yeah,” Peter rasped, and that was the beginning.
Two weeks, and they finally had trailers for the doctors, nurses, volunteers. The clinic was fully-staffed now, with experts from around the country, and Peter found himself unwittingly in charge of half the place, along with the doctor he met the second day.
The doctor never stopped talking, never shut his mouth. Peter could always hear him, even from across the entire compound - when he was with a patient, it would be a constant stream of facts, reassurances, normal conversation, like the world hadn’t been snapped in two. Peter liked listening to it, and it gave him a reassured, confident feel that things could get better.
Day sixteen the doctor ran himself too ragged, and his body simply collapsed, unable to hold up anymore. As they shipped him away, Peter realized that he’d never actually learned the doctor’s name. Sixteen days, and they’d become a perfect working team, and Peter-
“-never even knew his name,” Peter confessed, voice slurred with lack of sleep.
Hiro had his sword across his knees, and if Peter looked closely, he could still see the beaded remnants of something faded. Something with an echo of crimson.
The single bed was too crowded for the both of them, but they fit, somehow. Barely wasted skeletons of what they were.
“Hiro,” Peter asked - and it should have been breaking the silence, but it wasn’t, he could hear the groans, the pain, the agony even from in here - “do you want to sleep here?”
I don’t want to be alone, threaded Peter’s heartbeat. Don’t leave, don’t leave, don’t leave me.
In response, all Hiro did was lift Peter’s chin, kiss him once, shallow. It was a plea, in its own way, Peter supposed, but at that time he wasn’t thinking about that. He was thinking about how much he needed skin, living skin, against his, and how cold he felt all the time, and how his hands hurt from the blood that soaked him every. Single. Day. And when Hiro kissed him, maybe out of pure loneliness, grief for a lost friend that Peter hardly even met, Peter broke, he snapped, he shattered, and he clung to Hiro for six long, restful hours.
In the morning, he went out, and he healed those who needed healing.
Day twenty-eight, and Peter couldn’t sleep any longer without Hiro, without Hiro’s arms around him, without Hiro’s heartbeat holding off the rest of the world.
Sex must have been the furthest thing from Peter’s mind - he was terrified of losing control again, of slipping up and putting more blood on his hands, and no, no, no, no, no, he couldn’t think about that, he couldn’t, because it might kill him and if it killed him it would kill thousands more people and he had to have control, control. Sex meant losing control, and he wasn’t ready. What he needed was comfort, a human bond, something to remind him that everything wasn’t lost when New York City was wrecked.
Day thirty-seven, and Congressman Nathan Petrelli made an announcement to the entire world about those responsible for the explosion.
Gabriel “Sylar” Grey, he said. A man, with the ability to literally blow himself up, killed in the explosion. Concurrent, he announced the findings of a genetic research project that found that humans were evolving at increasing rates. Genetic mutations.
Peter’s mind blurred, and he noticed, like the pebbles one by one at the beginning of an avalanche, how the volunteers, the medics looked at Hiro. And they murmured ‘disappear’ and ‘invisible’ and ‘mutation’.
Right then, Peter knew it was the end of his life. That his brother Nathan just destroyed the world.
“Hiro,” Peter said, that night, “we have to go.”
And they left.
Peter had no idea where they went, but it was to a cabin, in the midst of a plain - flat, huge, empty. The world stretched to the horizon and back again, and the stars were crystal clear in the sky. The emptiness was dizzying, for someone born and raised in New York City. Peter couldn’t stand to go outside, for the first few days, and the dead silence made him shiver at night.
But, Peter slept. And when he slept, he kept sleeping. His body finally crashed from the stress, emotional and physical and mental, and he slept for days.
It was fitful, sometimes, and dreams of scalding hot blood and glowing hands would tear Peter out of sleep, whimpering with terror. Hiro was there, though, every single time, and he would stroke Peter’s back, wipe his forehead, until Peter shuddered back to sleep.
Finally, Peter opened his eyes, into near-complete darkness. Hiro was beside him - Peter knew that in every cell of his body. He would know it if he were deaf and blind and wrapped in cotton. He’ll always know.
“What do we do next?” asked Peter.
“We help,” said Hiro. “As best we can.”
His English was improved, Peter noticed. And his voice seemed deeper. Colder, maybe.
“I’m so sorry, Hiro,” blurted Peter.
Hiro cupped Peter’s cheek in his hand. “It wasn’t your fault,” Hiro told him.
For an instant, Peter believed that Hiro would forgive him. That Hiro knew everything, and could absolve Peter of what he’d done, and that Peter could go on living, knowing that somehow he could make up for it, somehow he could turn the world around and bring everything back to the way it was. He leaned into Hiro’s touch, aching for the affection in it, and then Hiro spoke again.
“It was Sylar,” said Hiro, “and none of us could have stopped him.”
It wasn’t Sylar! Peter wanted to scream. It wasn’t Sylar, it was me, I killed all those people, but the time for confession was long past.
Peter shook in a sob, a convulsive sob, and then the dam broke and he cried. Hiro held him close, but Peter couldn’t stop, until his nose was running and his eyes were swimming and he felt rubbery and wet and like he’d been stretched too far, too thin, and then snapped back into shape too quickly.
Eventually, Peter calmed. He had no idea how long they stayed there, but he remembered that the sky was starting to turn grey, then red, before he moved.
He slid over Hiro, practically in the man’s lap, and kissed him, long and deep and slick. Snaked a hand into Hiro’s pants and discovered, without surprise, that Hiro was hardening, right into Peter’s palm.
“Peter,” said Hiro, in a half-protest, but Peter silenced him.
It was pretty clear, then, that Hiro didn’t have any experience with this, that all he knew was wanting, wanting and the incredible feel of life against life. He needed Peter, just as much as Peter needed him.
It burned, without much preparation, but Peter had rougher sex before, and he didn’t mind, not so very much. But when he started to move, Hiro stopped him.
“It’s hurting you,” Hiro protested, for real, this time.
“It doesn’t hurt so much,” Peter breathed, against Hiro’s neck, and he urged Hiro into motion.
Hiro was still gentle, though, with such a very delicate touch that it made it hurt all the more. A sweet kind of torture, and Peter hoped that in this, he could help himself, help Hiro, help the world, all at the same time.
He spasmed against Hiro, empty of grief, full of a heart-stopping need, even if just for a few minutes.
Day forty-seven, they found Bennet. Bennet, driven half to distraction by the potential for sanctions against those with talents. Terrified of the test that was being developed.
“What can we do to help?” Peter asked.
Bennet hesitated, for a long moment, and glanced between them. “Help me protect these people,” said Bennet. “They don’t deserve this.”
“We’ll do everything we can,” Hiro confirmed.
Then, later, “I’m so sorry about Claire,” said Peter.
Bennet didn’t really seem to understand him for a moment, then his expression cleared. “Me too,” was all he said.
Day fifty-nine, the first sanctions went into effect.
Day seventy-six, Peter Petrelli attacked a government convoy for the first time in his life.
He stared at it for a long time, after everyone had fled. Seven vehicles - four cars, three trucks - strewn across the road. Smoldering, burning. Wrecked. An in them, Peter could smell the death, the death of thousands, of millions, the death of an entire city -
“I know you’re here.”
Peter was invisible, of course, just as a precaution. But Hiro knew him, and knew him too well.
Peter unmasked, next to his lover.
“Did we do the right thing?” he asked, in the light of the sunset.
“Protecting the innocent is always the right thing.”
In time, Peter forgot that there ever was a life before the explosion. He forgot that he loved New York City, that he thrived on the life, the spirit, the personality of his home. He forgot that he used to be a nurse, that he made it his life’s goal to care for the injured and dying. He forgot that there ever was a time that he didn’t need Hiro, that he wasn’t a part of Hiro.
And if he could have, he would have forgotten his older brother. Eventually he found that, more than ever, all he wanted to do was forget.
Day eighty-one, a news story aired all across the country that radiation cleanup was complete, that New York City was safe for human habitation and construction again. The President unveiled a new project, for rebuilding the city.
“It shouldn’t have cleaned up that fast,” said Peter, watching the broadcast a little too carefully. “Nuclear radiation doesn’t clean up that fast. They should have had to destroy the whole place.”
Next to him, Bennet shrugged. “We still don’t know everything about Ted Sprague’s power,” he said. “It might not have been, strictly speaking, a nuclear explosion. It could have been another kind of radiation.” He tilted his head to the side. “Though, you would think that Sylar would have done the most damage possible. On purpose.”
“Who the hell knows what was going on in his head,” Peter deflected.
That night, Hiro came back from one of Bennet’s little missions with a bullet wound.
“The whole point is to be subtle!” roared Bennet. “If we continually advertise to the government that we’re here, sooner or later, they will come around and shut us down!”
“What was I supposed to do?” Hiro shot back. “Those people needed our help!”
“If it’s too dangerous,” Bennet explained, his voice tight and steely, “you pull back. You get out of there-”
“I won’t abandon them!”
“It’s a matter of the greater good. If we’re not here, we can’t help anyone.”
Hiro stood up straighter. “A hero doesn’t make compromises.”
“Then a hero doesn’t live in the real world.” Bennet looked Hiro in the eye. “Don’t ever pull a stunt like that again. If necessary, we have to let some go.”
Hiro left Bennet’s compound that night. Peter followed him.
Day eighty-two, Peter and Hiro moved into Isaac’s loft. Peter bandaged up Hiro’s arm, where the bullet hit, and they curled up next to each other, on top of a brand new mattress, sprawled on glass-littered concrete.
Hiro’s fingers stroked in Peter’s hair. “I love you, Peter,” murmured against Peter’s brow.
Peter closed his eyes. “I love you, Hiro,” he whispered, against the cloying darkness of the silent city.
Day ninety-two, against his better instincts, Peter went to see his brother.
Nathan was shocked, surprised. Glad, even. But his eyes lingered on Peter’s scar, and his expression tightened, almost imperceptibly.
“Why’d you do it, Nathan?” Peter crossed his arms.
“I don’t know what you mean, Peter.”
Peter shook his head. “I don’t believe you, Nathan. How could you have let this happen?”
“The greater good, Peter,” said Nathan. “You’ll understand someday.”
“I hope not.”
Peter never came back.
Day one hundred eleven, Peter Petrelli and Hiro Nakamura made the FBI’s Most Wanted.
“We’re terrorists,” Peter said, softly.
Hiro shook his head. “We’re not.”
Peter moved to his feet. “The entire country thinks we are. What difference does it make, anymore?”
“The difference is in us. They can tell America whatever they want, but we know. We know we’re helping people.”
Peter was tired, so very tired. And he couldn’t live his life, couldn’t take one step out the door without seeing a ruined city. Couldn’t take a breath without smelling ash on the air.
“Where does it stop, Hiro?” Peter asked finally, defeated.
“That’s not for us to see.”
By this time, they knew each other. Peter had never felt this intimate, this open, with anyone in his life - and yet, he’d never kept as many secrets as he did from Hiro.
Then again, maybe he just hadn’t had enough secrets to keep.
That night, he pressed his nose into the crook of Hiro’s neck and breathed, deep and long.
“What are you doing?” laughed Hiro, and Peter marveled at how much light there could be in a pitch-black room. Just from hearing Hiro laugh…
“Smelling you,” said Peter, bracing himself up, one hand idly tracing the smoothness of Hiro’s chest.
Hiro pulled Peter up and kissed him. Lips a little chapped, a little clumsy, but Peter loved it. He loved everything about Hiro. Most of all, he wanted that faith - he wanted to believe that the world would be better tomorrow, and even better the day after that. He wanted to be a hero.
Hiro rolled them over, and Peter curled his legs to his chest, without being told, without any but the barest of urges from Hiro’s fingertips.
The slick preparation drove him crazy - it always did. Hiro could tease, with just a little bit of a squirm here, a little press inside, then withdrawing, until Peter wanted him so bad he would beg for it…
Peter cried out, soft and low, when Hiro slid inside him.
This won’t last, he thought, horribly, fatally, and he shuddered apart in climax.
Slowly but surely, the days blurred together. Peter stopped noticing the passage of time, only that the days got warmer, longer.
The rebuilding projects started to stagnate. People weren’t moving back to the city, no matter what the government did about it. They were terrified, of radiation, of cancer, of a kind of death that they couldn’t see until they were already gone.
Peter didn’t even notice how he and Hiro were changing, until -
Day one hundred eighty-one. Prison break, special containment cells, Dallas, Texas. It was almost too easy - and as they left, Peter spotted a movement out of the corner of his eye.
He reacted with telekinesis, and it wasn’t until almost a minute later that he realized what had happened.
The guard had been trying to run. Trying to get away. And the movement -
Peter swallowed, and he tried to justify it to himself. Tried to say that the guard might have been attacking, that Peter had to be cautious, but the truth was that Peter attacked them, didn’t he? Maybe he and Hiro weren’t on the right side after all, not if they could kill people like this.
“What are we doing, Hiro?” Peter shouted over the call of thunder, the roar of rain, in the alley behind Isaac’s loft. “What the hell are we doing?”
“Whatever it takes.”
Hiro’s voice was almost too low, murmured under the rain. But Peter heard it.
Day two hundred and six was the first time one of them brought it up.
“Maybe we shouldn’t see each other anymore.”
This time, the first time, it was Hiro.
“What do you mean?” Peter asked, in disbelief.
“You’re hiding, Peter,” said Hiro. “I know you, and you’re not here. You’re gone.”
“That’s ridiculous,” scoffed Peter.
“No,” said Hiro. “It’s not.”
Peter cocked his head to the side. “I’m not the one who’s hiding,” he snapped. “Ando’s dead, Hiro. Driving yourself crazy saving everyone in sight isn’t going to change that.”
Hiro’s expression didn’t change. “I’m coming to terms,” he said. “I’m learning to live with it. Are you, Peter?”
Later, they made up, and pretended that nothing was wrong.
By day two hundred forty, they’d learned how to plan. The strikes were careful, surgical. Unwittingly, Hiro had learned Bennet’s lessons, and now, that was what they followed. They did whatever it took - they held back, they pressed forward. They fought for the survival of their race, and around them, the United States of America started to devolve and panic.
Day two hundred seventy-one, Peter was the one who brought it up.
“Do you sometimes wonder,” he said, “if we should keep seeing each other, like this? Isn’t it too dangerous?”
Hiro kissed Peter on the forehead. “Nothing is too dangerous,” he told Peter.
Peter leaned into the caress, and he let Hiro wrap him in an embrace.
Day two hundred ninety-four, they killed fourteen active-duty men and women from the National Guard. People who were just doing their job.
Peter found it, deep inside himself, to hate them. He hated them for everything, for the suppression of those with the genetic mutation, for the state of the country. He hated them for the bomb and for the destruction of his world, and for being bystanders as Fate wreaked havoc on the country.
Somewhere, in the midst of that, he forgot to regret.
Day three hundred and sixteen, it ended.
“Peter, it’s over,” said Hiro. “We can’t do this anymore.”
Peter shook his head. “What do you mean, Hiro?”
“Us.” Hiro turned away from Peter, slid the sword off his shoulder. “It can’t go on.”
“Why not?” Peter was bewildered, shocked.
“We’re tearing each other apart,” said Hiro. “Living in the present. Destroying as we want to. We’re taking revenge.”
“We’re helping people-”
“I don’t believe that anymore,” Hiro cut him off. “And neither do you.”
It was all so fast, happening too quickly - “Hiro,” Peter began, then, “I need you.”
“You’ll learn to live without,” Hiro told him. “I did.”
“But,” and Peter couldn’t find another protest, inside him. “But it’s our anniversary,” he said, softly.
Hiro glanced up.
“Three hundred days.” Peter’s throat choked. “We’ve been together three hundred days.”
“I’m sorry, Peter.”
Peter came back, on day three hundred eighteen, but Hiro wasn’t there. The loft was deserted. Instead of Hiro, all Peter found were two lengths of string stretched the length of the loft. One, labeled “Peter Petrelli” - the other, “Hiro Nakamura”.
On day three hundred nineteen, Peter Petrelli arrived in Las Vegas. He never looked back.