I had this fic for a very long time whritten in my notebook (yes, the paper one) along with some other fics. I was hoping to polish them and then post them, but there was never enough inspiration to do that. So, considering that everythin changes with every new episode, I thought "Screw polishing" and decided just to post it all anyway.
Remember that English is not my first language, so if you see some mistakes - just let me know.
Yours truly, Maniac.
"Noooooooooooooooooooooo!"
Tommy stops time, once.
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He's looking in awe at everything frozen: bullet hanging in the mid-air; heatwave coming out of a Luke's hand; Emily, scared as hell; blood, that stopped seeping out of Casper's forehead. It's amazing, and a little bit terrifying, and totally awesome. What's even more awesome, is that he did it. (But to be fair, Hiro could do that, and since he has Hiro's powers, it's kinda reasonable, but still incredible).
Decision comes instantly – he moves Luke and a bullet, so no one would've got hurt, not even those, who were trying to kill him more than once. Casper's lifeless eyes watching him work with imaginary approval, and all Tommy can think about is that no more people are gonna die today. Not on his watch.
That's when he notices a pretty blond girl at the back door, caught in the movement, frozen like everyone else. Something in her strikes him familiar, even though he's certain that he never saw her before. Something about her feels important, it's like he's drawn to her, and he have to make himself leave her here and follow up with his very simple plan.
He doesn't know when time can start going again, it could be any moment, so he takes Emily and teleports far far away.
He's ready for a sudden change that always goes with teleportation, ready for a frenzied movement of the hospital to replace stillness and quiet of the frozen in time Ice Cream Bar, but everything in the hospital is frozen too. Tommy closes his eyes, takes a deep breath and wills for time to go back to normal.
Nothing happens.
So he tries again, and tries, and tries, and it's always the same result – nothing. After what feels like a few hours of trying, Tommy is desperate and the world is still frozen in one moment.
The wall is just as strong when he punches it in frustration, and now, in addition, his hand hurts.
He's checking up on his mom and grandad, and on Emily. Then, he's checking up the situation back at the café. Everything is still just like he left it, and, after that brief break, he goes back to trying, until he's exhausted, but it's still not working.
When he goes to sleep, he just hopes that when he'll wake up, the Universe will return to it's own axis.
Apparently, he's not that lucky.
Countless times of tryings later, Tommy starts to look for an answer in his favorite comic-books: if his power is actually Hiro's, than, may be, something like that happened to Hiro too. But the only thing he finds is a story how Hiro got stranded a few centuries in the past without the ability to return back.
To be fair, it was something, just not what he was looking for.
Next thing, Tommy tries physics. He reads dozens of books, trying to understand how exactly his powers work and how to stop them. He reads almost without breaks for food or sleep, he's frantic to get everything back to normal. He only stops reading to try out some new idea, but none of them are working.
He's pretty sure that it's been more than three months, but he can't be certain – it's still the same moment it was when he did it.
His next idea is to find information in a places that research EVOs: he goes to Primatek and to Renautas, finds bits of information that lead him to some other places, where he finds some other bits of information, but none of it is particularly useful. He hopes that he can find what they did to stop Hiro and use it on himself, but he can't find anything. Whatever they did, they hid the traces very well.
What he does find though – is a prophecy, made by his grand-grandmother Angella Petrelli, something about the end of the world and him and his sister saving everybody. What follows is a shocking discovery that the girl he felt so strongly about in a café is his twin sister. He finds where she lived before, tries to imagine what kind of life she had. He finds her diaries and sits in a café next to her, reading them and talking to Malina, even though she's still frozen and can't respond to him. Tommy's imagining what would their lives be if they weren't separated, what's Malina actually like, and one moment he realizes that no matter of the fact that they never met, never talked, he does love her.
Tommy spends most of his time in a café with Malina now – but, of course, he cleaned up there a bit. Meaning, that he removed Casper's body in the back, and Luke and Joanne on the street outside. And one time, when he's checking on Casper again, he remembers the words that he said himself back then.
No more people are gonna die today.
Of course, back then, he meant it locally, but could that be a reason that he can't unfreeze time? Did his powers took his words seriously and stopped time so he could save literally everyone?
So he spends next months changing trajectories of bullets and removing victims of crimes to the safety all over the world. He's working himself to the exhaustion, to the point where he cannot stand upright, but he also can't stop – the sooner he ends with this task, the sooner everything will be back to normal, he thinks.
Except, there's no way he can save everyone, no way to even find everyone who needs saving. It's more often that he starts to think that this task is impossible, until, one day, he just breaks.
He's in the other part of world, and it's night there, and he already been there before, when he realizes that stars are in the wrong position. He turned out to be powerful as hell, considering that he stopped time for the whole planet, but he wasn't powerful enough to freeze entire universe. Without even realizing it, he made the Earth stop spinning.
It was literally The End of The World, and it was only a matter of time – the irony isn't lost on him – when the visible picture will catch up to reality.
That's when it dawns on him: the prophecy and all – the world is ending now, and he has a power to stop it because he's the one causing it.
He's a fundament, the core of this problem. If there would be no him, there would be no problem.
He's not counting time anymore – futile task anyway – but he thinks that it's been about a year or, maybe, more. He's grown for over an inch and his hair's long – lower than shoulders. Above it all, he's broken inside – he knows loneliness and desperation better than anyone in this world.
So with his mind made up, he goes for the last teleportation round – to say goodbye to people he loves. He goes to his mom, his grandfather and Emily. He goes to the house, where Renautas found Hiro, his father, the house where they apparently lived. He goes to his favorite places on Earth. In the end, he returns to the Ice Cream Bar.
His goodbye to Malina is the hardest one – it's hard to think that you didn't get to spend enough time with people you love, it's harder when you didn't get to spend with them any time. He writes letter to her in her own diary; it's long and a bit chaotic, but it's filled with emotions and Tommy hopes that she will understand everything he was trying to say.
He kisses Malina's forehead and picks up the knife he just brought from the kitchen.
It's nothing like what he's imagined it would be – it's paintful, and hard; the knife doesn't go into the flash easily, and he has to make a conscious effort to fight his survival instinct and keep pushing the iron into his abdomen. (He thinks he should've just find a gun, but he wasn't sure that it would work – what's with all being frozen).
His vision gets darker and he cannot see anything when he hears a girl's – Malina's – scream.
"Noooooooooooooooo!"
Tommy's almost gone, when he feels something wet on his face and realizes that this is his sister crying over him.
With the last shreds of his consciousness he thinks, 'I did it. I saved them all'.
And just like that, he's gone.
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He always thought that it was just a cliche, but he actually sees his life flashing before his eyes. From the moment he plunged a knife into his belly and backwards to every other moment of his life. There is no erased memories in death, so he remembers it all: his grandfather, short moment of seeing Malina through the bushes, his father and their happy life. Time travel. His birth.
And in the very end he sees her. His mother.
She's beautiful, and it's not just her looks, it's the way she looks at him – with such warmth and sincerity and love.
It pains him a bit that she wasn't there with him and Malina, pains that even though she was immortal, she died so young. Pains that he was a reason for that.
"Did you came to take me?", he asks, and she laughs, happily, heavenly.
"No, silly, of course not", she answers and comes closer to him. She kisses his forehead and says, "I love you and your sister very much, but you can't come with me. Remember, that a part of me always have been and always will be with you".
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The world is saved and everyone goes on as if nothing had happened – to them, it hadn't happened, really.
Some number of people – a high number it is – miraculously avoids certain death, but aside from that, no one noticed a thing, yet.
A young girl cries over her twin's body in the Ice Cream Bar in Carbondale, Illinois.
The world goes on as usual.
Nathan wakes up, once.