Heroics (Heroes, Nathan, Landslide Spoilers)
Title: Heroics
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Some spoilers for Collision/Hiros, Homecoming, .07%, Hard Part, and ep 22: LANDSLIDE. Also some vague spoilers for the Nathan graphic novel. Possibly some for Five Years Gone, but if there are, you won't recognize them unless you've seen it.
Pairings: Established Nathan/Heidi, and if you'd like to squint, Nathan/Peter
Characters: Nathan
Genre: Character introspection, and hints of angst.
Warnings: Speculation!fic
Summary: In the moments before the election results, Nathan reflects on bombs, destiny, heroics, and Peter.
Disclaimer: I would never allow the bomb to go off if I owned Heroes.
AN: This was a random inspiration after watching a few spoilery clips of Landslide, and written in one sitting on paper, then transferred to computer.
--
Heroics
"Your Father was weak."
"My Father was my hero."
He frowned softly as he sat back in his chair. Today had been a much worse day than he'd anticipated, and they weren't even announcing the results yet.
His brother and newly recovered daughter had been missing all day when she should have been leaving, that Hiro kid had lost all faith in him--he was still working on convincing himself it had been a good thing for the kid. Now...Now Linderman had cheerily informed him that they--whomever 'they' would all end up to be(perhaps his milkman was in on this grandios plan once upon a time, but quit to save the world one empty bottle at a time)--would be pushing forward with this sadistic plan whether or not he cooperated with them.
So much for prophetic paintings and great destinies for great men. Apparently those were irrelevant if you showed signs of independant thought processes.
He sighed, glancing at said painting. His mother never told him where Peter had gotten that suicidal need to be a hero. Probably because she was afraid he'd hop onto the bandwagon, and she'd be short a pawn.
One could only wonder what Linderman's machinations were in revealing it. No...no...it wasn't too hard to guess. It was just another approach at the same manipulation game he had played all along. Just another ploy to get him to walk willingly into the darkness Hiro already believed him to be consumed by. Just like the ego stroking, the destiny speeches, and the analytical arguments.
Now they'd gotten desperate enough to attempt appealing to Nathan Petrelli's dormant heroic side. He almost didn't believe he had one. (If not for a few burning buildings here and there, that hardly construed as heroics, really.)
Nathan shook his head...it was Peter's job to be the hero. He just took all the blame in the family. It worked out wonderfully, like two diametrically opposed twins filling in for the other's gaps. Peter was the good guy, he was the insufferable ass. Peter was more emotional than most highschool girls, acting on irrational impulses, while he stuck to cool logic and reasoning to guide him unerringly through life.
For the first time in Nathan Petrelli's life, Peter's way of doing things was starting to rub off on him.
Linderman had assured him that his wife and children would be out of New York when it happened, and he himself would fly out with Linderman after the results were announced. Peter and Claire couldn't be killed. Only .07% of the world need be 'sacrificed', and none of those had to be from his family.
For that, Nathan felt selfish, cowardly, and completely unworthy to be a 'hero'. Therein lay the quandry that he now agonized over. His brother had been willing to die for a nameless girl on the word of a man he barely knew, and his father had died because he couldn't live without being a hero.
Now they expected him--Nathan Petrelli, who swore as a child to be just like his father--to become some hero who 'unites a world', and sacrifice nothing of his own for it.
Everything inside of him screamed that he stay here, with Peter and the people he promised to protect and lead. No matter what it came to, he wanted to be there, so that he wouldn't fail the only person that really mattered in his life. He'd done that too many times already.
There was just one nagging problem with it all. If he stayed, the bomb would still go off (even if he had gone on that mad quest with Hiro), and...then who would be there to protect Peter? He had always been the one to clean up Peter's msses, to take the fall for Peter's broken vases, and chase away the bullies who thought the daydreamer was an easy mark.
And that slimeball was counting on that fact. The fact that all of his heroics and high-standing morality took a backseat to the wellfare of Peter, his brother. They'd known it all along, and manipulated him into a corner so small, his elbows were touching each other.
Nathan plucked up a photo of Peter--he couldn't have been older than 16 in the picture, and no one could match up to his hero, his older brother Nathan.
Hiro reminded him of Peter sometimes. After this, Peter would look at him the same way Hiro now did. Nathan wasn't nearly naive enough to think Peter would ever understand why. Of course Peter would believe, like Hiro, that he somehow had wanted this bomb(if not planned it).
He would lose Peter, and probably Claire, forever.
He chuckled to himself. Maybe he was losing just as much as everyone else. It did nothing to ease his guilt.
In the end, however, his logic was undeniable. It was as he told Hiro...no one could stop the bomb...not any more, and probably never before--not with people like Linderman forcing it over 20 years. All he could do was give his life to picking up the peices.
He swore to himself that before he went out, he would prove himself a hero again in the eyes of the only one that ever really counted.
A rap on the door announced the presence of a campaign aide. "The results are about to be announced, sir, you have to get ready for the presentation."
Nathan frowned softly, and nodded. "I'll be right out."
The man nodded and disappeared.
Nathan's gaze fell once more onto the photo still in his hands, and shook his head softly. "I'm sorry Pete...I only wish you could believe me."
END
--
AN: I felt like Nathan's been getting a really bad rap lately, like he's in on the plottings because he's got stars in his eyes at the idea of presidency, when to me it seems more like he's being pushed into this, without any real choice in the matter. Especially after the clip with him and Hiro, I'm worried everyone is looking at him as the villian, because of Five Years Gone. Thus. The fic.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Some spoilers for Collision/Hiros, Homecoming, .07%, Hard Part, and ep 22: LANDSLIDE. Also some vague spoilers for the Nathan graphic novel. Possibly some for Five Years Gone, but if there are, you won't recognize them unless you've seen it.
Pairings: Established Nathan/Heidi, and if you'd like to squint, Nathan/Peter
Characters: Nathan
Genre: Character introspection, and hints of angst.
Warnings: Speculation!fic
Summary: In the moments before the election results, Nathan reflects on bombs, destiny, heroics, and Peter.
Disclaimer: I would never allow the bomb to go off if I owned Heroes.
AN: This was a random inspiration after watching a few spoilery clips of Landslide, and written in one sitting on paper, then transferred to computer.
--
Heroics
"Your Father was weak."
"My Father was my hero."
He frowned softly as he sat back in his chair. Today had been a much worse day than he'd anticipated, and they weren't even announcing the results yet.
His brother and newly recovered daughter had been missing all day when she should have been leaving, that Hiro kid had lost all faith in him--he was still working on convincing himself it had been a good thing for the kid. Now...Now Linderman had cheerily informed him that they--whomever 'they' would all end up to be(perhaps his milkman was in on this grandios plan once upon a time, but quit to save the world one empty bottle at a time)--would be pushing forward with this sadistic plan whether or not he cooperated with them.
So much for prophetic paintings and great destinies for great men. Apparently those were irrelevant if you showed signs of independant thought processes.
He sighed, glancing at said painting. His mother never told him where Peter had gotten that suicidal need to be a hero. Probably because she was afraid he'd hop onto the bandwagon, and she'd be short a pawn.
One could only wonder what Linderman's machinations were in revealing it. No...no...it wasn't too hard to guess. It was just another approach at the same manipulation game he had played all along. Just another ploy to get him to walk willingly into the darkness Hiro already believed him to be consumed by. Just like the ego stroking, the destiny speeches, and the analytical arguments.
Now they'd gotten desperate enough to attempt appealing to Nathan Petrelli's dormant heroic side. He almost didn't believe he had one. (If not for a few burning buildings here and there, that hardly construed as heroics, really.)
Nathan shook his head...it was Peter's job to be the hero. He just took all the blame in the family. It worked out wonderfully, like two diametrically opposed twins filling in for the other's gaps. Peter was the good guy, he was the insufferable ass. Peter was more emotional than most highschool girls, acting on irrational impulses, while he stuck to cool logic and reasoning to guide him unerringly through life.
For the first time in Nathan Petrelli's life, Peter's way of doing things was starting to rub off on him.
Linderman had assured him that his wife and children would be out of New York when it happened, and he himself would fly out with Linderman after the results were announced. Peter and Claire couldn't be killed. Only .07% of the world need be 'sacrificed', and none of those had to be from his family.
For that, Nathan felt selfish, cowardly, and completely unworthy to be a 'hero'. Therein lay the quandry that he now agonized over. His brother had been willing to die for a nameless girl on the word of a man he barely knew, and his father had died because he couldn't live without being a hero.
Now they expected him--Nathan Petrelli, who swore as a child to be just like his father--to become some hero who 'unites a world', and sacrifice nothing of his own for it.
Everything inside of him screamed that he stay here, with Peter and the people he promised to protect and lead. No matter what it came to, he wanted to be there, so that he wouldn't fail the only person that really mattered in his life. He'd done that too many times already.
There was just one nagging problem with it all. If he stayed, the bomb would still go off (even if he had gone on that mad quest with Hiro), and...then who would be there to protect Peter? He had always been the one to clean up Peter's msses, to take the fall for Peter's broken vases, and chase away the bullies who thought the daydreamer was an easy mark.
And that slimeball was counting on that fact. The fact that all of his heroics and high-standing morality took a backseat to the wellfare of Peter, his brother. They'd known it all along, and manipulated him into a corner so small, his elbows were touching each other.
Nathan plucked up a photo of Peter--he couldn't have been older than 16 in the picture, and no one could match up to his hero, his older brother Nathan.
Hiro reminded him of Peter sometimes. After this, Peter would look at him the same way Hiro now did. Nathan wasn't nearly naive enough to think Peter would ever understand why. Of course Peter would believe, like Hiro, that he somehow had wanted this bomb(if not planned it).
He would lose Peter, and probably Claire, forever.
He chuckled to himself. Maybe he was losing just as much as everyone else. It did nothing to ease his guilt.
In the end, however, his logic was undeniable. It was as he told Hiro...no one could stop the bomb...not any more, and probably never before--not with people like Linderman forcing it over 20 years. All he could do was give his life to picking up the peices.
He swore to himself that before he went out, he would prove himself a hero again in the eyes of the only one that ever really counted.
A rap on the door announced the presence of a campaign aide. "The results are about to be announced, sir, you have to get ready for the presentation."
Nathan frowned softly, and nodded. "I'll be right out."
The man nodded and disappeared.
Nathan's gaze fell once more onto the photo still in his hands, and shook his head softly. "I'm sorry Pete...I only wish you could believe me."
END
--
AN: I felt like Nathan's been getting a really bad rap lately, like he's in on the plottings because he's got stars in his eyes at the idea of presidency, when to me it seems more like he's being pushed into this, without any real choice in the matter. Especially after the clip with him and Hiro, I'm worried everyone is looking at him as the villian, because of Five Years Gone. Thus. The fic.