A Month of Stolen Time

Warnings: Slash. OT3. The wildly improbable Peter/Hiro pairing (eventually). Spoilers for 2nd Volume.
Set: Post 2nd Volume finale.
Songlist: Stabilo (I am in total love with this band since Don’t Be So Cold)

So we’re here
Sound the alarms
Throw up your arms
We’ve brought the entire army and we’re starving

Don’t Look in Their Eyes - Stabilo

Day Six
Hiro

Hiro does not get the chance to open his eyes before he finds himself toppling forward, chin hitting what feels like gravel at a painful angle and making him bite his tongue. He rolls over onto his back, slightly dazed and tasting blood, and stares upwards. He can see the night sky, blinking with stars, and a small, metallic shaped v obscuring a portion of it. It takes a moment to register.

“We made it!” he cries out giddily when he realizes what he is looking at. “Kensei, yatta!”

The silence that follows is unnerving from a man who delights in teasing him. After a moment, a sick feeling pools in Hiro’s stomach and he sits up on his elbows. The concrete feels cold and slightly damp against his fingers. Kensei is standing at his feet, looking down at him, expression carefully incensed.

“You,” he says, in a deceptively calm, soft voice. “You. I never thought…that it could have been you. Because I trusted you.”

He sounds betrayed, self-deprecating, and what is worse, unflinchingly sure. Hiro scrambles to his feet with his heart in his throat. Coldness is beginning to register, and he sticks his fingers in the pockets of his coat and sticks his chin out.

“No! No— that is a lie! Sylar lied!”

The protest comes to his lips with the ease of practice, but Kensei doesn’t even seem to hear him. He doesn’t even react to Hiro’s movement; doesn’t move to seize him or hit him, though he must know the time-traveller can be gone in a flash. Hiro is not sure what that means.

“You told me that I was Takezo Kensei; that Takezo Kensei was a hero,” Kensei says suddenly, voice flat. “Peter told me I was Adam Monroe, and a bloodthirsty murderer at that.” His eyes meet Hiro’s and then slip past his shoulder. “Could I be both? For I feel more like an Adam today.”

“Kensei—” Hiro says, but he knows somehow, that it is too late. “Please,” he says eventually, soft. “Please.”

The blonde meets his eyes, and the harshness of his expression gently eases away. He swallows and flicks his tongue over his lower lip.

“Who is Sylar?” he asks in a tone that is still expressionless but somehow less flat than before. “How did he find us? Why was he trying to kill us?”

Hiro takes a deep breath, feeling almost dizzy with relief. There is a little stone fountain standing a little way away, brimming with water and leaves from the trees above, and Hiro walks over it, his fingers curling around the marble rim shakily.

“Sylar can steal powers. He cuts open a person’s head and…and…and steals their power.”

There is a short silence. “I see,” Kensei says behind him, voice cold, and Hiro realizes he thinks he’s being lied to again.

“It’s true!” he blurts out earnestly, not daring to look around, addressing the water. “Sylar killed the painter Isaac Mendez. Mr Isaac could paint the future! He wrote a comic book with me and my friend Ando in it.”

“Of course he did,” Kensei says, tone warmer and closer, and Hiro jumps as he feels fingers on the nape of his neck. After a moment, though, the fingers trace a line down his neck in a familiar motion and Hiro releases a shuddering breath. It is going to be alright. What they have shared is…enough. It is going to be alright.

“Kensei,” he sighs shakily, and he lets the arms encircle him from behind. Kensei’s lips brush the back of his neck, and Hiro turns his head to the side and murmurs, exhaustedly, “I thought I had lost you again.”

The fingers on his neck stop, and Hiro curls his head back searchingly. Then Kensei makes a sound that Hiro can’t quite identify but that he remembers, from a long, long time ago, and his heart goes still in his chest.

“No, Hiro,” Kensei’s voice answers slowly from behind him. “You will never be rid of me.”

Suddenly—water. Hiro scrunches his eyes shut automatically, clamps his mouth shut, and tries to move his arms before realizing that Kensei is still holding him. It is somehow less comforting now. He jerks his head back sharply only to have it thrown forward again, eyes flying open this time to stare at the stones lining the bottom of the fountain. He can feel his hands, impossibly still connected to his body, dry and warm pressed against the small of his back by Kensei’s own. Hiro finally makes a small sound of protest between his clenched lips, humming his call for help uselessly into the water. It is only when he feels Kensei’s thumb stroke a line down his palm that horror fills him and he opens his mouth to scream.

Water rushes in and forces the sound back down his throat before hastening after it.

“Did you really think…” Kensei says in that oddly lethargic way of his, drowning out the undignified choking sounds Hiro is making with the smooth blanket of his voice, “…that I would believe you?”

Hiro lashes out and something must connect because, above him, Kensei hisses like an angry cat. The sound drifts down to Hiro through a sea of static: hs, hs, hs, all broken up and sibilant like a fire being quenched. Peter was right, Hiro finds himself thinking as his dizziness creeps into his mind, all along. Kensei—Adam—cannot change. He is going to hold me down here until I breathe in more water and die. And he will not hesitate.

But even as he thinks this, even as he feels the energy seep from his limbs, he also feels his body being tugged backwards. The next breath he takes is half water and half air, and then he is on the ground again, choking up water. Gravity is working against him so he rolls over onto his side and then it is much easier: he retches until he feels completely empty. It doesn’t make his lungs ache any less, but at least his windpipe no longer feels sodden and submerged. He lies there for another long moment feeling sick and relieved and deeply horrified before noise reaches his ears. It is like a radio suddenly being turned up; Hiro hasn’t noticed the absence of sound until it returns, almost painfully loud.

“What the hell was that?! What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”

Peter. Hiro can’t quite get the word past the burning in his throat yet, but it occurs to him after a moment that it doesn’t matter. He thinks it fiercely instead, infused with gratitude, a sigh in his mind. Peter.

Don’t move. The thought is so clear it is disconcerting, as though Peter is standing right next to him, whispering in his ear. Hiro clings onto it and the dizziness abates slightly. I’ll take care of it.

“He buried me alive, Peter,” comes Kensei’s voice, appealing and innocent, miles above him. “However much you hate me—whatever I have done—he buried me alive.”

“Shut up,” answers Peter, sounding like he always does when he’s angry. “I should have killed you—I should have killed you the moment you shot Victoria and I first suspected the kind of person…”

There is a long silence aside from Hiro’s breathing. And then Kensei’s voice fills the quiet.

“Well. It was worth trying.”

The sound of battle is something Hiro is fairly familiar with by now, but he still can’t help but feel worried as it goes on above him. Gasps of pain, hisses, angry shouts—the problem is Hiro can’t tell which sounds belongs to whom, and he is entirely too protective of Peter these days to be okay with that. It is enough of an incentive for him to make it onto his knees and raise his head, locking his elbows against the gravel for balance.

What he sees almost makes him throw up again.

“No! Please don’t! No—don’t!” He says the only thing he can think of. “Stop it!”

Peter does, but he also turns to look at him with cold eyes. Adam is suspended in midair mere centimetres away from him, a tear in the sleeve of his shirt and an alarming amount of redness soaking the material. There is no visible wound. “It doesn’t work like that, Hiro.”

It is like a punch in the stomach. Hiro feels winded, horrified by his mistake. “No,” he answers, throat tight with more than burning, eyes glancing back to Adam unintentionally, “No, I know, I’m sorry. I didn’t—I did not mean it to mean that. I meant it to mean—”

“I know what you meant,” Peter interrupts; he almost smiles and stares at the ground. “And…you know…what I…”

“Yes,” Hiro answers, and for some reason his throat tightens even more. “But please don’t, Peter Petrelli.”

Peter shrugs, but the gesture is anything but nonchalant. “Then tell me what else to do.”

Hiro hesitates. He looks at Kensei and sees Adam stare back at him, sharp and calculating, eyes darting for exits, and suddenly knows this is the only choice.

“Okay. O-kay.”

Kensei makes a sound and Hiro reluctantly glances up to meet his eyes. The total betrayal on his face is familiar, as is the hatred, and the shock Hiro sees there is no surprise either. What does take him aback is the fear. Horror clouds Kensei’s—Adam’s—blue eyes, and Hiro finds himself realizing, belatedly, that it is only natural that the immortal be terrified of dying.

Then Kensei speaks, and any feelings of pity Hiro might have had vanish. “I did promise you would suffer.” He laughs. “Do you feel like a heroic now, Hiro? Does murder feel heroic? Because if so, then that would make me your namesake.”

Peter growls in the back of his throat, but Hiro forestalls him by speaking.

“I gave you a second chance,” he tells Kensei blankly. He shakes his head, and forces the word past his lips: “I…was a fool…to trust you again.”

“You!” Kensei answers, outraged and amused by this idea. “You? No, rather, I was the fool. It was I that gave you a second chance, Hiro. I remembered your first betrayal the day I woke up from nightmares of what happened the second time I trusted you. And yet, like the fool”—he spits the word—“that I am, I trusted that perhaps, though you had stolen my life and my princess, you might be a changed man. After all, were you not here, helping me? Had you not saved me from my eternal suffering beneath ground at the hands of some anonymous lunatic? And so…I trusted.”

“You make it sound like one of the Deadly Sins,” Peter spits at him, but Kensei does not take the bait and refuses to be distracted.

“So this, carp, is the third time you’ve betrayed me. I am growing tired of it now. Kill me; and let there not be a fourth.”

Hiro stares at him for one long, aching moment. Then he looks at Peter and calmly orders, “Do it.”

Kensei drops. His head hits the stone edge of the fountain with a sickening sound. The blonde’s eyes fly open, lips parted but silent, staring at Peter who is clinging to the front of his shirt, half kneeling. It is at that moment that Kensei seems to realize that he is being cheated of his victory, that death is not what is in store for him, and his entire face contorts as though in pain.

“No!” he yells at first, breathless, outraged, struggling, incensed, “No, no, no!” But after a moment he seems to realize the futility of it and sinks into venomous passivity, bottom lip curled insolently as Peter holds onto his jaw and turns his head into the light.

“Can you do this?” Hiro asks as flatly as he can.

Kensei’s eyes, below Peter’s palm, flicker to look at him. They are blazingly reproachful. Will this, perhaps, be catalogued as the forth betrayal? Hiro doesn’t like the way he’s counting.

“I think so,” Peter answers, and Hiro gladly looks away from Kensei to look at him instead. He looks overwhelmed, blinking too much, and swallowing between every word. “Yeah, I—I think so.”

“Then do it,” Hiro says in a voice just as emotionless as before, and Kensei’s eyes find him again, full of a blinding hatred that is all too familiar. The silence surprises him, though the hatred does not: after all, there are a thousand things Kensei could say to weigh on Hiro’s conscience, and yet he chooses not to speak. Perhaps he knows that his silence will be worse. Because though Hiro wants to think of Adam, wants to blame Adam, all he can think of is Kensei promising, you will suffer with the exact same gleam in his eyes and in the end, he knows, it comes back to him—his betrayal and his fault for all the betrayals that followed.

“Cover his eyes,” Hiro finds himself saying, unable to bear it anymore. “Please.”

“Don’t say please,” Peter answers, curtly, and that more than anything betrays his distress. Still, he obeys—something he is becoming painfully good at – moving his hand and covering that blue gaze. Kensei—Adam—hisses in response, instinctively trying to jerk away, but Peter’s hold on him is firm and he only manages to hit the back of his head against the rim of the fountain again.

It takes an eternity. Being shielded from Kensei’s glare all the while is a blessing, but it also makes Kensei look oddly vulnerable—weaponless. He is slumped against the side of the fountain, head supported by Peter’s fingers, one of his trouser legs bunched up around his calf, exposing a slender white ankle. His mouth, such an expressive part of his body, is a more crooked line than usual, and staring at him for this long, Hiro can’t help but notice that his top shirt button has also somehow gotten undone. He thinks Kensei must be in much the same state.

Eventually it is over. Peter lets go and backs away, and the sound of water running fills the silence that follows. Kensei’s head falls onto his right shoulder; he looks no different than a moment ago, and for some reason, this is the most unbearable.

“How much did you take?” Hiro asks, not wanting the answer but desperate to fill the silence.

Peter doesn’t look at him, backing away from Kensei’s slumped form. “I don’t know. I tried…to only take what I had to. But I…I don’t know. I’m sorry, Hiro.”

After a moment, Hiro swallows and nods. He should be okay with this answer. Kensei – Adam—has just tried to kill him. Why should Hiro care if he cannot remember what they were on the verge of? Why should it matter if Kensei—Adam—cannot recall kissing him, teasing him, charming him and catching him and reeling him in like the carp that he is? It shouldn’t matter.

“It doesn’t matter,” Hiro says, aloud. “It doesn’t.”

Peter makes a little laughing, choking sound, unconvinced and clearly aware of what he is thinking. It makes Hiro feel guilty. None of this is Peter’s fault, after all; in fact, Peter has heroically been trying to prevent this very disaster since the beginning. Hiro thinks about saying all of this, thanking him—with an inkling this is somewhere involved in their unspoken bargain—but he can’t seem to get the words out.

“I’m sorry,” he says instead, suddenly ashamed of what he cannot help but feel is taking advantage and too upset to know better than to voice it. Peter’s jaw tightens a little, but after a moment he sighs and answers, “don’t be,” with only the barest hint of impatience in his voice. “I asked you to.”

“No,” Hiro answers for some reason, unable to leave well enough alone. “No, that’s not—you told me this would happen. And I did not listen.”

This time Peter can’t find patience. “Don’t,” he says tersely, the beginnings of panic lurking on his face. “Just don’t.”

And Hiro understands—Peter doesn’t want him to be sorry, can’t bear for him to be sorry…but he can’t do it anymore. He can no longer find the energy to act confident, to have an answer for most questions, to think of tasks for Peter to find relief in fulfilling—to be in charge. After all, why should Peter listen to anything he says? Hiro has been wrong all along. How can he even begin to tell somebody else what to do?

Hiro glances up to realize Peter’s hand is on his arm. He feels so tired; too tired to act for even a moment longer, and so he lets Peter hug him, lets Peter pull him back down to the concrete and make him sit there, cross-legged, in loose-limbed, heavy-lidded silence. Peter kneels in front of him and touches his cheek with his fingers, slow, apologetic. It is a simple gesture, but it is accompanied by a realization that nearly stops Hiro’s heart. The muscles in his face tense beneath Peter’s fingers and Peter’s expression of distraction clears.

“It’s alright,” he appeals to Hiro distinctly, soothingly. “I think I’ve got the hang of it now.” He shuffles closer. “I’ll be careful, I promise.”

“Please,” Hiro mumbles, unsure what he is asking for, and Peter kisses his forehead and then pulls back to rest his hand there instead, as though checking Hiro for a temperature.

See you in a little while, Hiro wants to say in his emphasized, halting English. His eyes close before he can.

A/N: They are going to cheer up eventually, I swear. God dammit, Sylar! They were almost getting over all the angst and then you showed up. But I suppose now at least Hiro & Adam can go back to being happy chappies. Peter, of course, is just going to get angrier. What is with him?

A/N 2: And, um, sorry this took so long. ( Uni is fail at the moment, guyz. BUT IT IS ALL OVER NOW. YAY.

A/N 3: OMG, 3000 word chapter. To make up for the wait. Love you all, as usual. Fandom is ultimate anti-drug after all.