Title: The Web of Life and Death
Characters: Hiro in Five Years Gone Universe, mentions of other characters.
Length: ~900 words
Rating/Genre: PG for angst, friendship
Summary: Episodes Collision and Hiros; in the future, just before Hiro teleports back to Peter on the subway, he stands and stares at the web of twine in Isaac's loft and thinks about Ando, destiny, life, and death.
Disclaimer: Heroes is the property of NBC
Notes: Written for the writers_choice challenge # 408: "Web" on LJ.
Beta by jaimie prufrock.
Hiro looked down on the endless maze of string hung across the lower level of the room as he had many times before. He had been working here in Isaac Mendez' loft for so long now that it felt like he had been here his entire life. Hiro's memory was nothing but Ando's death, and his own life - a tired, tireless existence, uselessly trying to fit together pieces from a shattered past and tie them up with a bow.
He breathed in and out, deep and soundlessly, feet planted firmly on the concrete. He let his arms hang limply at his sides. The sword strap secure across his shoulders was constricting, the katana feeling heavier than it should. Hiro adjusted it absently, letting his mind drift for a brief second back to how he had made it his, then he blinked against the plastic lenses in his eyes. He paid the watery, stinging discomfort no mind, as with every time his eyes betrayed his sorrow during the daylight hours. In the light, out on the street, with a fight around every corner there was no room for emotion, no room for distraction, like now - with the meters of string becoming swirls of color swimming in front of him before focusing back into graceful lines and arcs.
Distractions, he could not afford. But here in the relative safety of his lair, the hero's mind often wandered. There were times when he became lost in the miasma of colored yarn, timelines from so many lives connecting, by-passing...chance and fate all woven together in a tapestry. If only he could get far away or close enough to see it. But all his attempts had ended in bitter failure; every well laid plan to save Ando met with agonizing defeat. And with each passing day, Hiro's lifelong friend's face faded more and more from his mind, as though washed away with the tears he shed into his pillow every sleepless night.
The Bushido master knew what he had to do now. There was another place and time he could intercede. He hoped that by being selfless, by thinking about helping someone other than himself, he might finally find a way to stop all this. He might find a way to accept that Ando could never be saved, but that other people still could be, like the cheerleader.
The pain on Peter's face when he found out who that girl really was, the wanton destruction of someone so young, so innocent...yes, this was the right course of action. He would try young Peter Petrelli. A long shot, but the scarred, bitter man always said that he had been a naive "hero wannabe" when he was younger. Now he would get the opportunity, and maybe meet his long lost niece. It was a chance for new families to form. The Petrelli's were not the best of mankind, but Peter was better than most, and they were the girl's flesh and blood. Perhaps this was the missing piece that was needed for an entirely different puzzle to be made whole. Different people getting the chance to step up and be heroes. Perhaps even a younger Dr. Suresh could be saved from himself because of this change.
Anything is possible...well, almost anything, Hiro thought to himself, eyebrows drawing down in frustration, lips pressed together and his hands clenching into fists.
When he felt like this it usually meant that it was time to go to the roof for an ever quickening dance with his blade to both feed and relieve these dark feelings, but now, instead, Hiro finally and surprisingly easily, swallowed his pride along with his anger and conceded that he did not have to be at the center of this puzzle or its solution to solve it. He was not going to be the winner here. Gradually, he relaxed his fists. His pale, drawn expression closed off like a dam holding back the river of his grief and self-recrimination as the lonely warrior allowed himself to finally accept that it was his destiny to fail his fallen partner. Ando's thread was cut for good, and would never be restored to the maze with the others' laid out before the friend left behind.
From this distance, looking down at the string covered room time and time again, one thing had become apparent to Hiro - that the individual lines of each person, of their small lives, formed a web when interwoven within the context of each other, and of life. Touch one part and the whole felt it, each change causing ripples of reaction in every direction. Whether that could be used for good, or evil, or simply power, he wasn't sure yet, but Hiro still had hope that it was not too late for the result to be something honorable. Something that the world could live with, that would allow the world to live. Because that was what it came down to in the end. If he succeeded or if he failed - it meant life or death for them all.
With one last look at the web of twine, Hiro closed his eyes and effortlessly willed himself back through the tunnel of time - to a subway and two young men that he hoped held the key he had been looking for, before their web was destroyed in the crucible of destiny and the world's along with it.