Title: Funerals
Author: Ever1
Length: One shot. Roughly 900 words.
Fandom: Heroes
Pairing: Hiro/Kensei
Summary: It seems like this is as dead as Kensei will ever be, and Hiro has been attending funerals for him ever since.
Genre: Angst/Romance
Rating: T
Warnings: Slash. Clichés. Spoilers for 2nd Volume.
Set: Post 2nd Volume finale.
Songlist: Bukowski, Modest Mouse

Funerals

Now every time Hiro goes to a funeral, there is an extra grave he has to visit.

He has been going to a lot of funerals lately, nearly every week, sometimes to mourn the passing of a friend or another one of his siblings, sometimes just to listen to a stranger’s eulogy. The weather has gotten colder since his last visit, and he wraps his arms around himself protectively as he sits clumsily on the grass in front of a familiar headstone.

“John Waters was a good son. He was a good husband. And he was an amazing brother.”

The funeral he is meant to be attending is going on behind him, but Hiro doesn’t dare turn around. He is wearing black himself, so as not to be conspicuous, but the sight of the congregation of mourners might be more than he can bear yet. Instead he sits, back stiff, and listens. The eulogy is cracked and fragmented and it reminds Hiro of the way he speaks English himself. It makes for good background noise, accompanied by the sound of the wind rattling through the branches of trees and the hum of oh-so-distant traffic. It almost makes him feel peaceful.

It almost shuts out the screaming.

The sun, high in the sky when he arrived, is closer to the horizon line when the service is over. Hiro doesn’t have to look around to know the people are leaving; his hearing has become especially acute since he left Adam Monroe buried alive in the coffin beneath his crossed legs. It seems like this is as dead as Kensei will ever be, and Hiro has been attending funerals for him ever since.

“That’s yet another service for you, my friend,” Hiro tells him in his shaky English. “You have not been forgotten.”

He pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose, and when he lowers his hand he finds himself pushing it into the grass. “Kensei? Can you hear me?”

He knows he’s alone now – just him and Kensei, that is – so he uncrosses his legs, methodically, and tilts sideways till his cheek hits the ground. The dirt feels cool and moist, touching the corner of his eyelid; after a moment he takes his jacket off and presses himself into the grass until he stops shivering.

“Kensei?”

Time stretches on, and, not for the first time, Hiro considers freezing it and freeing Kensei – Adam – from his well deserved prison. Because if the screaming is torment, the silence is so much worse. He could do it, he knows. He is more than capable of reneging on his morals for Kensei’s sake, and that frightens him more than he cares to admit. Everything he has grown up wanting to be…a hero…It terrifies him that he would throw it all away in one second, for one man.

“I wish you could hear me,” Hiro says, achingly honest. He turns his head to put his ear against the ground and waits for a while, listening for an answer. It’s negative, and Hiro amends his sentence: “If you could hear me…”

“I think I’d say how sorry I am. I am sorry, Kensei.” He closes his eyes and tries to really imagine Kensei’s face and his reactions. “I don’t think you’d believe me, so I’d insist – so sorry; promise.”

He thinks of Kensei’s blonde hair and sleepy smile and the light in his eyes and tries very hard to picture the snarl he would expect in response. It shouldn’t be hard, since he’s seen that expression before: Takezo Kensei, Adam Monroe, sprawled on the floor and telling him, sincerely, almost regretfully, “As long as I have breath, everything you love I will lay to waste.” But all he can think of is Kensei in his dark coat jacket with his sword slung over his shoulder, looking oddly right in modern clothes, one hand behind his back and saying, unashamedly, “You were more than a friend to me.” He thinks his heart might just stop.

“I would also ask you…why you let me do it. You could have stopped me. You could have saved yourself. You knew what I was doing. But you still did not stop me. You are a better man than you believe, Kensei.”

A better man than I am, Hiro thinks angrily. “I should have faced you as a hero,” he words aloud.

It is true. He remembers the alternative too well; he doesn’t know if he will ever forget it, dragging Kensei’s frozen body over to the coffin and tucking him in. Kensei, with his perfectly blank expression, inert and paradoxically powerless as Hiro knelt by the open coffin, crying, kissing, apologizing, before heaving the lid into place.

“You’d call me…” he almost falters “carp.” And now he is shameful: “Maybe koi. If I am lucky.”

His English grammar is all over the place. So is his wishful thinking. He gets to his knees.

“I’ll see you next week,” Hiro whispers into the dirt, fists clenched around flowers. “But I think it will feel like years, for you. I imagine that time passes slowly, down there.”

“Goodbye, Kensei.” He hesitates, breathes deeply. “God-send. You were the one meant to cut your heart out, not me.”

A/N: Comments are love. Sorry for using the already overused By the Grave cliché. In my defense I couldn’t help myself. It’s such brilliant fodder for angst fic!

A/N 2: I love this pairing. I swear to god. And not only because I have mad love for Adam/Kensei. That only serves to amplify it. Seriously though. How could anyone sane watch him march down the hall, with that pretty coat on and that slightly psychotic expression looking all clean cut and classy and then swordfight the hell out of all the guards and not…guh?