heroes fic: incontrovertible
Fandom: Heroes
Title: Incontrovertible
Rated: PG
Character: Peter
Warning: Character Death
Notes: I started writing this after the season finale and didn't finish until just now. Therefore, this is an au, as the season opening proved it wrong. LOL. Anyway.
[ incontrovertible ]
by kHo
The first time he tries he makes sure to put his affairs in order.
He has dinner with his mother even though he can’t stand to be around her anymore. He’s not sure if it’s her relief that he’s okay or her stoicism about Nathan’s death that makes him resent her more. All he knows is that looking at her makes his gut twist and his fists clench at his side.
“He did what he had to, to protect you,” she’d said when it happened, her face calm and eyes dry even as she wiped his tears away. “You were always more sure of his love for you than I was. I’m glad you were right, for your sake.”
At dinner he lets her talk about fate and incontrovertible truths and run her fingers over his arm. He doesn’t jerk away when his skin crawls and when he leaves he kisses her on the cheek and actually loves her again in that moment.
He buys groceries for Heidi and takes the kids shopping at the mall for new clothes. He lets them eat fried ice cream and all the candy they want and when they ask questions about their father Peter tries to answer them the best way he knows how. How he thinks Nathan would have.
Sitting there answering their questions he has a flash of the day that will come when they’ll ask him for advice because they don’t have a father for that anymore and he has to close his eyes and take five deep breaths to keep from vomiting.
He goes to the Statue of Liberty and looks out at Manhattan and remembers what it had looked like after a nuclear explosion. It’s fresh, right there on the tip of his brain, the taste of charred flesh and burnt ash on his tongue. He reminds himself it was worth it. It was all worth it to save New York, to save the world. He knows it’s true for millions of people but for himself it feels like a lie.
He doesn’t like what it says about him that there’s a very large portion of him that would rather New York be obliterated than to have to go on living knowing that Nathan had died because of him, but he’s not self-deluded enough to try and pretend that he feels otherwise.
He goes to Odessa and takes Claire out for dinner. She smiles at him like he’s her hero and he doesn’t have to read her mind to know that she really does feel that way. She asks about Nathan and her eyes fill with tears when he tells her about him.
He tells her the unvarnished truth because she’s already seen the ugliness that Nathan had within him, but she also knows that underneath all of that was the most loyal and loving man Peter had ever known. He talks about the good, the bad, the ugly, and she makes a joke about how she’d always wished Clint Eastwood could be her father.
They sit in his car outside of her house for three hours and he starts to cry when he tells her that the last thing that Nathan said to him before everything went white was to take care of her. She hugs him close and her fingers tangle in his hair as she cries with him.
When he leaves he kisses the place where her hair meets her temple, like Nathan had with him so many times, and tells her he loves her. She smiles and tells him she loves him too but underneath it he can hear her fear and worry bleeding through. He smiles and hopes she gets it when it’s all over.
He goes to Nathan's grave and no words come to him. He kneels there with one hand on the cold stone slab and thinks of how warm Nathan's shoulder had once been.
Then he takes out the .45 and shoots himself in the head. Thirty minutes later he wakes up, head pounding, bullet imbedded in the ground beneath him, dried tear tracks of blood on his face.
He’ll try forty-seven more times before he finally gives up, dreams of himself in a cemetery surrounded by the graves of everyone he’s ever loved fermenting in his mind.
Title: Incontrovertible
Rated: PG
Character: Peter
Warning: Character Death
Notes: I started writing this after the season finale and didn't finish until just now. Therefore, this is an au, as the season opening proved it wrong. LOL. Anyway.
[ incontrovertible ]
by kHo
The first time he tries he makes sure to put his affairs in order.
He has dinner with his mother even though he can’t stand to be around her anymore. He’s not sure if it’s her relief that he’s okay or her stoicism about Nathan’s death that makes him resent her more. All he knows is that looking at her makes his gut twist and his fists clench at his side.
“He did what he had to, to protect you,” she’d said when it happened, her face calm and eyes dry even as she wiped his tears away. “You were always more sure of his love for you than I was. I’m glad you were right, for your sake.”
At dinner he lets her talk about fate and incontrovertible truths and run her fingers over his arm. He doesn’t jerk away when his skin crawls and when he leaves he kisses her on the cheek and actually loves her again in that moment.
He buys groceries for Heidi and takes the kids shopping at the mall for new clothes. He lets them eat fried ice cream and all the candy they want and when they ask questions about their father Peter tries to answer them the best way he knows how. How he thinks Nathan would have.
Sitting there answering their questions he has a flash of the day that will come when they’ll ask him for advice because they don’t have a father for that anymore and he has to close his eyes and take five deep breaths to keep from vomiting.
He goes to the Statue of Liberty and looks out at Manhattan and remembers what it had looked like after a nuclear explosion. It’s fresh, right there on the tip of his brain, the taste of charred flesh and burnt ash on his tongue. He reminds himself it was worth it. It was all worth it to save New York, to save the world. He knows it’s true for millions of people but for himself it feels like a lie.
He doesn’t like what it says about him that there’s a very large portion of him that would rather New York be obliterated than to have to go on living knowing that Nathan had died because of him, but he’s not self-deluded enough to try and pretend that he feels otherwise.
He goes to Odessa and takes Claire out for dinner. She smiles at him like he’s her hero and he doesn’t have to read her mind to know that she really does feel that way. She asks about Nathan and her eyes fill with tears when he tells her about him.
He tells her the unvarnished truth because she’s already seen the ugliness that Nathan had within him, but she also knows that underneath all of that was the most loyal and loving man Peter had ever known. He talks about the good, the bad, the ugly, and she makes a joke about how she’d always wished Clint Eastwood could be her father.
They sit in his car outside of her house for three hours and he starts to cry when he tells her that the last thing that Nathan said to him before everything went white was to take care of her. She hugs him close and her fingers tangle in his hair as she cries with him.
When he leaves he kisses the place where her hair meets her temple, like Nathan had with him so many times, and tells her he loves her. She smiles and tells him she loves him too but underneath it he can hear her fear and worry bleeding through. He smiles and hopes she gets it when it’s all over.
He goes to Nathan's grave and no words come to him. He kneels there with one hand on the cold stone slab and thinks of how warm Nathan's shoulder had once been.
Then he takes out the .45 and shoots himself in the head. Thirty minutes later he wakes up, head pounding, bullet imbedded in the ground beneath him, dried tear tracks of blood on his face.
He’ll try forty-seven more times before he finally gives up, dreams of himself in a cemetery surrounded by the graves of everyone he’s ever loved fermenting in his mind.