Shadows stretched like cats across the wall, only lazily mimicking the blinking the havoc of never ending streetlights that was Las Vegas. As the red numbers of the clock glared at her in the dark, a quiet breath escaped Nikki, and restless she rolled from her left side to her back, another long sigh released as she tried to settle into place. She turned her head to the right, the pink tip of her tongue slowly drawn across her lower lip just before she drew it between her teeth. He hadn't even stirred in her restlessness, and though she should have been glad not to have woke him, her own loneliness was like a bully inside her, pounding its way into the outside world.
Grey, half-tones managed to illuminate the room through the slatted blinds, and the light drawn to his face shed first over the sweet curve of his mouth, and then into the long shadowed scar he wore—reminder of a war that never ended in their hearts, but raged on without them in the world outside. Nikki hesitated, her ready hand nearly half-drawn to touch him as she folded in on her right beside him. He didn't move, but the tightness in his drawn mouth spoke of unconscious awareness, a ready mind simply waiting to spring. She tried to imagine a Peter Petrelli before the burden of all this darkness, a Peter whose calm resolve and loving kindness drove him to care for the dying. She saw flashing images of a smile she barely knew, imagined a light in his eyes she'd never seen, and then her own face crumpled further into sadness. He was still so young, nearly six years younger than she was, but his face told the story of a warrior long-lived and battle scarred, deeply tormented by the memories he relived nightly in his sleep. Somewhere inside he struggled with himself against continual attempts and failures to save a past that none of them could change.
He was only twenty-eight, and yet such burdens pinned his shoulders to the ground. She couldn't remember the last time he had smiled, but perhaps such trivialities had been overlooked in the struggles of her own unending grief. She'd been so tough once herself. No, that wasn't right either. Nikki had never been tough. It was always Jessica that had been the strong one, and even Jessica was gone now, gone with Micah and DL, and while she had Peter to take her in his arms, to bring her back to earth with nothing more than the reassurance of his kiss, Nikki couldn't help missing the once so certain part of her life. Once so certain, yet now nothing more than ashes and dust, and suddenly the emptiness became too much for her, and like so many other nights the anguish that corroded her from the inside out rose up into the back of her throat, and she felt herself choking on the salt of her own tears.
He had been so good to her, and still was. In fact it would break him to see her crying, and knowing this she tried to steady herself, to push the tears away, but she wasn't that strong. She couldn't do it all on her own anymore, and though she hadn't wanted to wake him, she now found herself desperately longing for the lingering security of his arms around her. At first she hesitated, and then the pressure of her own fear pushed her. Reaching out a hand, she swallowed first, and then gently touched his shoulder.
Peter reacted like a cat, the sleek current of muscle flashing to life as he bolted upright with a sharp gasp. Instinct moved him to seek her out in the warm folds of blanket, and Nikki gratefully buried herself in his arms, her face pressed firm into the hollow crevice of his neck. Firm fingertips pressed into her flesh, and while one hand trailed slowly down the curve of her spine, the other tangled into the length of her hair.
She couldn't help herself. The comfort he offered so freely stifled her, brought out all of her fears as though like a magnet he drew them into himself.
"Shh," warm breath caressed her ear. "It's all right."
"No," she shook herself against him. "No, it isn't right. Nothing's right. Wrong, it's all gone terribly wrong, and it shouldn't be this way. None of it should."
Peter swallowed, she felt the movement of it against her, and then his serious tone agreed, "You're right, it shouldn't be this way." He lowered his face against her head, and he kissed her there before he added, "But this is where we are, and we can't change it. Believe me God knows I'd change it in a heartbeat if I could."
Surges of the past moved through her mind. She could still see Micah, her baby boy, her only hope in a world all wrong, and once more the agony of it constricted in her throat and made it hard for her to breathe. Yes, she missed DL—after all they had been through in one lifetime together how could she not miss him, but Micah was different. He was a part of her—flesh of her flesh, blood of her blood. During moments like this, when the world loomed over her like an angry shadow, she tried to remember what it felt like when she'd carried him inside her womb, when the only protection he needed from the world was the strength of her body, and the memory was all but forgotten. Fleeting in the strands of time, she sudden panicked as the fear of truth gripped her: would she one day forget Micah entirely? Would the memory of his face only come to her with the aid of photographs, the sound of voice only remain on the few snippets of home video she had managed to salvage. . . Each horror unearthed another horror until she was sure she would crack and lose herself again to the darkness she'd once called Jessica.
Sobs wracked her body, and Peter lifted her away from to try and brush away her tears. As though he knew what she was thinking, he pressed his face against hers, kissed her just beside her ear and whispered, "I wish I could take all of it away so you didn't have to feel it."
"Nothing could take it all away, Peter," she brushed her hand across the tip of her nose and sniffled. "Nothing."
In the dark she knew that he had closed his eyes in the same firm resolve that often placated him in moments of deep sorrow. What she didn't know, however, was that inside of him grew a whirlwind of bitterness and rage that took every fiber of his being to control. When he slept, he often dreamed of that day, the day when he had destroyed all of their hope—when he had let go of himself. Sometimes in his dreams the great unleashing of that phenomenal power was so real that he woke with a cry of fear, sweat pooling in the sheets beneath him. In the dark he would scan the room for some evidence that he'd given off even the slightest radiation, but then she would sigh in her sleep beside him, and he would sigh too—thankful it was all just a dream.
But the real horrors were the reality they lived in now, the reality beyond their control. Claire, his wonderful niece and his mother too, both of them dead. Simone was dead, hundreds of thousands of people he didn't even know were dead, and everyone of those deaths was his fault. His shame forced him to play dead himself, and dead was what he felt like inside. While the alienation of his game had separated him from the only member of his family still living, Nathan had changed so much himself since he'd become the president that Peter became convinced that he was better off playing possum. God only knew what Nathan was capable of.
He couldn't blame Nathan though, try as he might. Nathan was still alive, living out all of his dreams and his life as though nothing had ever gone wrong. He was persecuting everyone like them, and as time grew, so did their numbers. Children, adults—people from all over the world with such extraordinary power. In the end it had been all Peter, all his lack of control, and nothing else. He'd let them all down. He'd destroyed everything in the world he'd ever loved.
Sometimes when he dreamed himself reliving the horror, it was just as he first envisioned after that first time he'd met Claire long before it had happened. Save the Cheerleader, save the world. Claire was there, reaching out to him, her face marked with anguish and betrayal, and Simone was there too. Beautiful Simone running to him, out into the street, one arm stretched toward him while Isaac held tight to the other, his expression twisted with the agony of holding her back. Sometimes in the dream he would remember that Simone was dead, that his love had killed her long before the explosion, but it never offered much comfort. Nothing offered comfort in the end. Nikki was there in the dream, her little boy and the man who had fathered him—Peter had killed them too. Hiro's closest friend, Ando, and so many other faces, faces that meant nothing to him, but in the end meant everything.
Nikki's pain, the struggles of the world around them, it was all Peter's fault and there was nothing he could do to change any of it. He thought of Hiro then, how dark and bitter he had become, when once he was so innocent and alive. Hiro had always been full of hope, but Peter had destroyed that too. And like a coward he let the world, he let those few he kept close to him go on believing the explosion had been Sylar because if any of them ever came to know the truth he'd have nothing left at all. . . nothing but his own guilt and self-loathing.
"All I ever wanted was to be strong," he murmured.
From across the bed Nikki looked at him, the shadow of her beautiful face painted in a shimmer of tears. "You are strong, Peter," she swallowed her grief for a moment. "You're the strongest man I've ever known."
He reached across the darkness then and lifted Nikki's chin. She had no idea who he really was inside. She was right when she said nothing could ever take it all away, and sometimes he wished that in her own grief she wasn't so quick to point that out, but as long as she went on believing he could save her from her grief, from herself, Peter could sleep at night—even if that sleep was thin and troubled.
"Come here," he whispered, opening himself to her pain. She fell into him, her tears dampening his shirt, the weight of her momentary surrender almost more than he could hold, but for her he could be strong. After all, it was him who had destroyed her hope, who had taken away everything she had ever loved, and as long as she never knew that, as long as she was in his arms, he could give her what strength he had left. And as his punishment he kept no strength, no vigilance—he kept nothing for himself.
d.