Nathan's Christmas Carol
Title: Nathan’s Christmas Carol
Rating: R (mostly for language and dark themes)
Summary: A bit of Heroes, a bit of A Christmas Carol - with a few changes, of course.
Spoilers: Mild S3
Disclaimer; Heroes is not owned by me, but by Tim Kring. I’m simply borrowing these characters for non-profit entertainment.
A/N: By now I’m sure you’re all thinking “Wtf? What about Peter’s powers?” This chap holds the answer.
~~
Chapter 2/4, Past:
“Tracy?” Nathan asked as he squinted in the darkness of his bedroom.
The blonde laughed. “Try Niki, Senator,” she smiled.
He swallowed, then blinked. “Niki? But you’re -” He was too stunned to correct her about being President now.
“I am. But I’m also here for you. It’s Christmas Eve and I know what happened to your brother. I’m here to give you a glimpse back.”
“You’re here to Scrooge me?” he almost laughed. The disbelief had made him delirious, he decided.
“Yes.” She was serious and it showed. “You have to understand what Peter was facing. What he was going through. It won’t be easy but it’s what you need.”
“So I can move on?” he snapped. There was no moving on from Peter’s death. That he already knew.
“So you can know that even as he was dying, every time, there was no one he loved more than you. That his love of you was what caused his outburst tonight.”
“You’re saying I killed my brother,” he nearly growled.
“No. But you deserve to know what led to tonight.”
With that there were no more words, suddenly Nathan’s surroundings changed and he was back in his family’s living room.
The tree looked the same, the staff having been told how it should be decorated. But this time he was seeing his younger self and Peter clamoring beneath the tree. He guessed it was his first Christmas home from college. The playful shoves and banter gave it away after a while.
“Why are you showing me this?” he asked. It was too soon for happy memories.
“Would you prefer this?” she asked as she took him forward in time, letting him see a Christmas that Peter had spent alone. It had been one of the years Nathan had promised he would be home but had been snowed in during a last minute trip to Washington.
Without Nathan Peter had spent dinner with their family but hadn’t stayed any longer. What he was seeing now was something Peter had hidden from even him. He had sat at his apartment, his roommate having gone back home for the holiday and all Peter could do was sit staring at his brother’s pictures from previous years and sulk about being without him again.
Nathan didn’t know what to say. What could he say? All his brother had wanted was to spend time with him and though Nathan had tried to be there for him at ever turn he was seeing just how many times in the recent years he had failed him.
Then his surroundings changed without warning again. He knew in an instant where they were. Suresh’s lab, couldn’t have been more than a year ago.
In silence he watched as Peter allowed the scientist to stick the needle into his arm. He heard his brother tell him that he didn’t want certain abilities anymore.
That living forever alone would be too much. That watching the person he loved most die of old age while he would be young forever was too much. Sure there would always be Claire and Sylar but they had each other, he couldn’t be an immortal third wheel. He had always been afraid to face the world alone, Nathan knew that, but he had never known he was this serious about it.
But it wasn’t just the pain of watching Nathan die that hurt Peter. It was the fact that as the decades and centuries and millennia would pass he knew he would begin to forget him. A look here, a conversation there, the pictures would fade, he would forget the sound of his voice, the look in his eyes when he would look to him. He couldn’t live like that. He wouldn’t let himself.
Nathan still watched as Mohinder worked. He never asked Peter if he was serious. He never asked why he wanted to give up his immortality. Or even who the person he couldn’t stand to watch die was. He knew.
“Was it worth it, Nathan?” Niki’s voice finally broke into his troubled thoughts.
“I never knew -” a choked sob nearly escaped the man’s throat at knowing Peter had given up so much for him, asking nothing in return but to be with him in whatever way he could be. “He never -”
“Did you ever give him a chance to? Brushing him off when he asked to see you? Trying to get him to disappear just so he wouldn’t hurt your campaign? Comforting someone after you’ve hurt them is good, but caring enough about them to not hurt them in the first place is better.”
Another change of scenery followed, this time it was one of his own memories. One he had fought like hell for years now to forget. The pain he had felt when he believed Peter was dead the last time. He saw himself in that dark room, staring at that picture from his and Heidi’s wedding day. He and Peter had been so happy that day, all smiles in that picture.
He himself had been as shattered as the frame. He hadn’t truly stopped crying that whole time, not until his brother came back to him like he knew he would. He still remembered how hard he had hugged him, remembering how he had never again wanted to be apart from his brother.
It was wrong, he knew, but that didn’t change that he loved him. That was why he had still fought his own needs and tried to keep his distance from the younger man. He knew what could come of it and he knew his reputation would suffer horrifically. Yes, it was a horrible excuse and he knew neither of them would forgive him for it.
He knew he didn’t deserve forgiveness for it either, but that had also been part of the reason he had married Tracy. To try to take his mind off of how he felt for his brother. Yet that never changed how when he would close his eyes when he made love to his wife, wondering and fantasizing what his brother would be like, how it would feel to finally be one with the man he loved more than anything.
“Get me out of here,” Nathan soon demanded. He couldn’t take that memory any more. He had still never completely recovered from that pain, not even when Peter had come back to life.
“One more, Nathan,” Niki told him, interrupting his thoughts and changing their surroundings once more.
“You go, I go,” he heard himself tell Peter as they flew up to the night sky.
Now he was standing on a rooftop with Niki, watching from below, never knowing what those words had meant to Peter.
“It was one of the few times he really knew that you loved him,” Niki stated. “But then there was a question in his mind. Wondering if you weren’t sacrificing yourself for the greater good because you thought he would screw it up otherwise.”
“No,” he stated with a shake of his head, finally looking back to her, his fury darkening his features. “If Peter was gonna die I knew I couldn’t face that. I knew I couldn’t live with myself if he died, especially not when there was something I could do to change it. To save him. He dies, I die. The world knows that now,” he went on, curious now to see what would happen if he stepped off the roof’s ledge.
Would fear get the better of him at the last moment and cause him to take flight to save himself? Would he let himself fall in the hope of being reunited with his brother?
“President Petrelli Commits Suicide in Wake of Brother’s Tragic Accident,” he knew the newspaper headlines would read. Their mother would be horrified, devastated and embarrassed all at once. Claire would be racked with yet more grief herself. Then again it was no secret she loved Peter more than him. After all he had considered her a liability for the majority of her life.
All of that thinking had caused him to absentmindedly walk to that ledge. They were at least twenty stories up, he wouldn’t stand a chance unless he flew. It was then a strange calm fell over him. Maybe it was weak, but he couldn’t care. Life without Peter wasn’t worth living. He knew that now.
“Nathan, don’t,” Niki told him, far too calmly for someone watching another person make sure a strong decision.
“Why not?” he asked, briefly turning back to her. “What do I have here? A daughter who the world can’t know about, a loveless marriage, powers I have to hide at every turn and now a dead brother. I’ve lived with these secrets and these lies long enough. And after what I said to him tonight, the last things he heard me say to him, I deserve to be in hell.”
With that he stepped off, heading straight down. He thought of Peter as he fell, remembering how he had been there for him when he jumped. How he had caught him, how he had lost control and how Peter actually saved them both.
Nathan gasped as his eyes shot open. It had been a dream, he soon realized. He hadn’t really fallen. He hadn’t really jumped. He was still alive.
Without a second thought, not even looking to the clock beside his bed, he grabbed his cell phone from the nightstand and dialed Peter’s number. He needed to hear his voice, he needed to know he was still alive.
Voicemail. Of course, Nathan mentally kicked himself. It had to be three or four in the morning by now, he’d be asleep.
“Hey, Pete, it’s me. I just wanted to see if you were feeling any better. I love you,” was all he said in his message. But then something caught his eye as he hung up his phone.