Title: Let My Spirit Carry Me

Author: Cszemis

Summary: Peter and Hiro decide to take an afternoon off from their mission to save the world. Unfortunately for Nathan that means he has to take an afternoon off too.

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He took one glance at their identical grins and considered.

“No.”

He slammed the door in their faces and spun on his heel, striding back to his study. He still had to read over his speech for when he addressed the housing association in his district. He had to make notes for himself for when he should pause, place emphasis, smile, every little weapon in a politician’s arsenal. And he did not need any distractions, certainly not from those two.

“Come on Nathan!” one of them, his brother, called to him and pounded his hands against the door, “everyone needs a day off. Even you.”

“This is how I spend my days off,” Nathan grumbled and settled back on his leather recliner, pulling the speech back onto his lap. He lifted his cup of coffee to his lips and barely tasted the stuff when he swallowed. It kept him awake and that was all he needed.

“Mr Petrelli,” Hiro Nakamura called, “I won’t let you get caught. I have power! We go to Grand Canyon!”

“Let us in, Nath,” Peter chimed along with Hiro, “if you keep working this hard you’re going to get wrinkles!”

Nathan fumed, looking at the sheets of paper but unable to see the words in front of him. They blurred while he considered how exactly he should kill Peter. He wondered how likely it would be that his overly enthusiastic companions would get bored and wander away. And he realised that at any moment one his neighbours would probably be phoning the police or even worse, the press, to complain about the banging and shouting outside his front door.

“Nathan, we’re just going to have a little race around the Grand Canyon or something. Everyone’s under too much stress.”

“We save cheerleader,” Hiro explained, “then we have a little break and then can save world all refreshed.”

“Can’t you just have a coffee like a normal person?” Nathan got up and went back to the front door, opening the door with his scowl.

Peter was in the door before Nathan could even step aside to let him in. He trod on one of his brother’s toes and barely seconds later Hiro was inside too, waving a video camera in Nathan’s face.

“We can record the flight,” the Japanese man grinned, “put it on youtube.”

Nathan blinked, scandalised, able to imagine all the horrible headlines that would appear after such a video, “We’re not going to do any such thing!”

Peter waved a hand as if to wave away Nathan’s fears, “alright, we won’t put it online. But I think it’d still make a pretty good movie to show people that are just like us. It’d break the ice.”

“It’ll destroy my career!”

“It could help it,” Peter shrugged, “if people could see how fun you can be and how you can identify with everyone that’s different. You’ll have every special person in the United States vote for you if you run for President.”

“Now that’s a pretty big segment of the public isn’t it?” Nathan snapped sarcastically, “we’re talking about a landslide election there aren’t we?”

"Think about it though," Peter smirked, "you'd be the only President not to use Air Force One."

“I’d vote for a flying man,” Hiro smiled.

“Are you American?”

“No. I’m from Japan. Tokyo.”

“Are you registered to vote in New York’s 14th Congressional district?”

“Sorry. No.”

“Then I couldn’t care less who you would vote for,” Nathan told him.

“Hey, hey,” Peter took Nathan’s arm and led him aside, leaning his head close to his brother’s face, “you do owe this guy. He could have wrecked everything you ever worked for by telling everyone you can fly. He just wants to have a recording of his favourite special person. You can’t snap at him like that.”

“He has nearly ruined my career,” Nathan replied, “every time I see him he waves his arms in the air and shouts ‘Flying Man’. Someone someday will hear him. Then what am I supposed to do?”

“Well,” Peter chuckled and assumed a politician sort of smile that Nathan realised with a start was too similar to his own, “if you allow him this then you can ask him not to call you ‘Flying Man’ anymore. Fair enough deal, hmm?”

Nathan thought for a moment, the brothers looking into each other’s eyes.

“Alrighty then,” Nathan finally nodded, looking away.

Hiro clapped, which was difficult with the video camera and he nearly dropped it.

“Although I like ‘Flying Man’,” Peter smirked, “It’s not as good as something Marvel might have come up with but I like it.”

The politician had to resist the urge to spin around and slap Peter. Instead he shrugged his shoulders, “so where were you boys intending to film this thing?”

“Well I said Nevada but Hiro wants to go to the Grand Canyon.”

“You can weave in and out and do tricks!” Hiro prepared his camera.

“I’m not a performing monkey,” Nathan said, “And if you think I’m flying all the way there then you guys are in for a big surprise.”

Peter half chuckled and Hiro looked up from the video camera. Something in the Japanese man’s eyes twinkled and he tapped the side of his nose.

“I have big power,” he told him, “you not seen it yet.”

“Has it anything to do with waving your hands around in the air?” Nathan asked bitterly.

Peter stepped close to Nathan and Hiro, placing a hand on both of their shoulders, “you really need to see what this guy can do, Nath. It’ll blow even your mind.”

“What I want is another cup of coffee,” Nathan replied, looking curiously at Peter’s hand on his shoulder.

“Do your thing, Hiro,” Peter winked at him.

Hiro Nakamura scrunched his eyes closed and started shaking, his cheeks and ears wobbling ever so slightly. Nathan’s on the other hand widened with surprise and he tried to step away, but Peter held him tightly. Something in Hiro’s mind connected with the time and space continuum and Nathan barely had a moment to protest.

“But I want another cup of coffee!”

Unfortunately for Nathan, fortunately for Peter and Hiro, the trio soon found themselves stumbling over rocks on some massive plateau. The politician shook his head in an effort to clear his mind, the sudden harsh sunlight burning into him. Peter swore under his breath beside him and finally let go of his brother.

Hiro opened his eyes and looked around him, the most extraordinary smile spreading over his face.

“Yatta!” he screamed in Nathan’s ear.

“Could you not?” Nathan asked, “and what does yatta mean anyway?”

“He did it,” Peter had moved away from them both and stood on the edge of a cliff, the world around him a series of canyons and rocks. He was almost overwhelmed by the sheer size of the place and swayed when his human mind tried to consider how long this ancient landscape had existed, how water and natural forces had spent so many millions of years creating such a place.

Filled with a older brother’s anxiety Nathan spoke, “Come away from the edge Peter. You could fall.”

“Can’t my big brother catch me then?”

“Please? I don’t want to have to tell Ma that her son is a big splat at the bottom of this place.”

“You know,” Hiro turned on the video camera, “you should never catch a falling person.”

Peter turned his head, “why?”

“Because the change in force, stopping someone suddenly in mid air, they would break neck.”

“Come away from the edge right now Peter!”

“Then why do all superheroes in the movies do it?” Peter did what he was told and moved away from the edge, “they catch people all the time.”

“You can only catch someone,” Hiro explained, “if you are going same speed as them and then you slow down. But might still hurt. Physics and the human neck don’t mix.”

Nathan paled as Peter turned to tell him, “If you catch me you gotta slow me down first!”

“I thought you were a sponge,” Nathan said, “as long as I’m here it’ll help you to remember how to use your powers. Nobody has to be falling today, ok?”

Hiro focused his camera on the pair and altered his zoom, Nathan’s uneasy expression and Peter’s recording onto the tape.

“The Petrelli brothers,” Hiro watched them through the viewfinder, “aerial extraordinaires!”

“Cute,” Nathan was beginning to regret coming out here now that he could see the little red recording light on the device. He was about to tell Peter so when he realised his brother had vanished. He didn’t waste anytime looking around, he only had to look up.

Peter hung in the air smirking, his open jacket billowing slightly in the wind, his hair falling in front of his eyes. Hiro turned the camera upwards, the sunlight reflecting off of the lens for a moment. Nathan shielded his eyes with his hands and sighed mentally, still unable to understand to this day why Peter enjoyed using his powers so much, why he rejoiced being different with his over enthusiasm.

“Come on up, Nath,” Peter called down to him, “the sky is lovely.”

Career wise, academic wise, Nathan Petrelli may have been a high flier but ironically he did prefer to keep both of his feet on the ground. He gave Hiro’s camera a cursory glance before he too was in the air. He probably didn’t use his powers as frequently as his little brother but he had far more control, it took very little effort on Nathan’s part to leap into the air and stay up there. And while Peter struggled to remain airborne, Nathan hung there as if he had been flying all his life, crossing his arms over his chest.

“You make this look too easy,” Peter muttered, “you make everything look too easy.”

“Be thankful you’re in the air,” Nathan admonished him. He flew forwards and touched Peter’s sleeve, “a few weeks ago you would have already have been flat on your face.”

There was something like fear in Peter’s eyes, “sometimes I worry that I can’t control any of this.”

“Well it’s a good thing that I’m not going to let you go isn’t it?”

“Don’t hold my hand,” Peter inched away, “I’m not a little boy anymore.”

“I was just going to hold your elbow,” Nathan shook his head, “now do you want to put a show on for our friend down there or do you want to float here all day?”

Peter nodded. Hiro shouted out something positive in Japanese and Nathan led them both out into the open space, the ground opening out for miles around. Hiro ran closer to the rim overlooking the vistas, zooming in and trying to find them through the viewfinder.

“Big place,” Peter remarked as he looked down, and down, and down.

Nathan nodded, “in some places it’s over a mile deep and it’s 277 miles long with layers that expose Proterozoic and Paleozoic rocks, that’s the reason for all the colours. Geological stuff.”

“Why do you have to know such things? Why can’t you look at it and just appreciate it, not clutter it with facts and statistics?”

Nathan didn’t answer. Instead he sped them up, weaving in and out some of the cliff sides as close to Hiro’s camera as he could. He heard Peter swear under his breath again but he stretched Peter as far away as he could without letting go of him entirely. The kid had to get used to this if he wanted to fly regularly.

They soared through the air, the many thousands of colours spread out below them like some giant mosaic, lit up by the majestic sun that hung over Arizona. Peter wrenched his elbow free from Nathan’s grip and clasped his hand instead, holding on so tight that he almost broke it. But Nathan did not even wince, the corners of his lips twitching with amusement instead.

The words “I thought you were not a little boy anymore,” were on the tip of Nathan’s tongue but even if he did say that to Peter the wind rushed around and caressed them and buffeted them, meaning that Peter would probably have barely heard him. All the air in Peter’s lungs had been shocked out of him by the wind and by this feat of self propelled flight. Nathan was hardly phased at all.

They were far across the canyon in what felt like an instant to Peter. But to Nathan this was a kid’s flight, even as hundreds of cliff faces rushed past, and all the colours merged into one. He kept his eyes on the horizon, evading what were likely tourist spots and all those other cameras. It was Peter who looked down, nothing supporting him but emptiness and Nathan’s hand. But he did admire the landscape as jutting levels of rock soared past his head.

Nathan weaved them in and out of the intricate and colourful landscape, almost enjoying himself. And seeing Peter so distracted he did what seemed unthinkable. He let go.

And Peter flew on unaware.

Nathan smiled, allowing himself to feel like a superhero for even a second. This did feel incredibly wonderful; the wind caressing his face, his short hair waving around his head. Peter seemed to be enjoying it too, still unaware that Nathan had let go. His eyes were closed but not with fear, rather with exhilaration, his heart racing, his pulse thundering in his ears.

He only realised he was flying solo when he opened his eyes again. He almost stalled like a car and descended several feet and yet miraculously stayed airborne. He looked up and met Nathan’s eyes; they were shining with pride.

It was several minutes later that they landed back with Hiro Nakamura, the younger man shaken and overwhelmed. All his powers seemed to come at him at once but he fought to keep them under control.

Nathan touched down smoothly and gave one of his rare warm smiles to Hiro, “that enough for you?”

Hiro was open mouthed with shock, his glasses almost misted over because of his excitement. There was probably a lot of the flight he had missed with his camera because while he had wanted to keep the image on a tape to play for generations of special people, he had also wanted to keep the image burned into his mind and heart, something the video camera had almost prevented.

“That was amazing!” Hiro tried not to gush but it was far too hard not to.

Peter sat heavily down on the ground, “as long as you got what you needed.”

“I got enough,” Hiro gestured with the camera but he was barely focused on it anymore, more interested in watching them instead.

Something slightly mischievous filtered in Nathan’s face. Normally with his stiff upper lip and serious disposition, the world heavy on his shoulders, he would never have considered speaking the next few words in an entire lifetime’s worth.

“You want to see something really cool?” Nathan raised an eyebrow and a smile.

Hiro nodded.

Nathan seemed to explode from the ground, rocketing into the air so quickly that Peter’s breath caught in his throat. The politician soared away until he was merely a blip in the distance. Then there was a crack and what seemed to be a small explosion. Hiro almost dropped the camera again when Nathan Petrelli broke the sound barrier with nothing more than his own abilities.

And white vapour trail was the only sign of Nathan as he completely disappeared from inadequate human eyes. Poor Hiro had not been able to catch the moment on his video camera, struck dumb by the sight, or now lack of one.

“Flying man,” he breathed in amazement. He shook his head in disbelief.

Now calm, Peter watched the skies as his brother left him on the cliff rim, “yeah… my brother. He’s one hell of a guy.”

He kept his gaze on the clouds for his brother’s return. So the afternoon had not been exactly refreshing for Peter Petrelli and had been far too exciting for Hiro. But one of the trio had not felt so good for months.

And it had been about time for Nathan Petrelli to have an afternoon off and be himself. The high flier, if not career wise or academic wise.

If only such afternoon’s could have lasted forever.

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Written because there’s far too much Petrelli angst around. Read again and Review if you liked it!