Four Times Nathan Saved Peter

by silverlake7169

A view on the brothers throughout the years, all the ways their relationship changes, and one way it doesn’t.

Title: Four Times Nathan Saved Peter (And One Time He Didn't)
Author: lj userrangergirl
Fandom: Heroes
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Nathan, Peter
Words: 5,095
Summary: A view on the brothers throughout the years, all the ways their relationship changes, and one way it doesn't.
Spoilers: The whole season, pretty much. Specific for Genesis, Don't Look Back, Six Months Ago, Landslide and How To Stop An Exploding Man.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.

1

They are seven and nineteen the first time their father tries to kill himself.

Nathan's home for the Christmas break, his first return since the semester began, and nothing in the house has changed but everything is different, distant and separate and too small. He doesn't belong here anymore but Stanford isn't home either, yet, and while he tries to think of this as progress and a sign he's growing up, it mostly feels like loss.

He's already on edge, nervous even, not daring to get too comfortable as though there's some higher power telling him disaster is just around the corner, and he's on his feet even before he hears his mother's stifled scream from across the hallway. The first thing he catches sight of is the blood, dripping steadily onto the off-white linoleum, and he has to wonder at his father's timing. Two days after his eldest son comes home for the first time in months seems a pointed choice, and Nathan knows his father hasn't really forgiven him for choosing Stanford over three generations of Petrelli tradition at Columbia.

The truth was, he'd known that if he went to Columbia he'd spend every minute with a nagging voice in his head asking whether it was him they'd accepted, or his name. Stanford was ten states away and on the opposite coastline from New York; the Petrelli name held no sway, there could be no question of any special favours being called in on his behalf, and when the acceptance letter arrived he had taken pride in the fact that it was his, and his alone.

His father hadn't seen it like that, of course. He'd taken Nathan's choice as a personal slight, an indication that his son considered himself superior, too good to follow in his father's Ivy League footsteps. He doesn't know Nathan's spent what feels like every minute of his life striving for his approval, that he'd give anything to grow up to be half the man he is, that he's his idol and his hero and all the other clichéd truths he'd never dream of voicing. He has no idea.

More than anything, now, he's wishing he'd made more of an effort to tell him.

He kneels, numb, applies pressure in what he hopes are the right places, holds together torn flesh while his mother makes a tremulous 911 call in the background. And it's only after several moments, moments he spends almost mesmerised by the slow, rhythmic pumping of blood beneath his fingers that his mind starts to clear and he remembers.

Peter.

Turning, numb, he's just in time to see his brother appear in the doorway and stop, frozen, eyes wide and staring.

"Shit", Nathan murmurs, rising unsteadily, reaching. Too late. "Pete, don't-Don't look." He takes hold of Peter's shoulders, pushes him gently out into the hallway away from the scene he never should have witnessed. Peter keeps staring, silent and haunted, his shirt now stained with blood from Nathan's hands, and Nathan holds onto him, pulls him close and doesn't let go when the paramedics arrive.

Later, wedged into a cold hospital chair, he clutches at lukewarm Styrofoam and listens to their mother tell the first of many lies, the ones they'll be repeating for years to come. All that time and it's never questioned, though he's sure on some level Peter has to remember, has to know a heart attack does not draw blood, does not leave gaping wounds that need dressing and redressing for weeks on end.

Nineteen years later, when he's older and smarter and more tired than he can say, he will stand in Peter's draughty apartment and listen to himself say he had a heart attack. He'll remember it's for the best, the lie, that it's for Peter's sake, and even when his stomach is sick and his own words ring foreign and false in his ears, he will hold on to that. When Peter turns and looks at him, eyes bright and piercing, boring into Nathan like fire on ice, he will not flinch.

There's a fine line between protection and deception, it turns out, and he's learned not to look too closely at the places where it's blurred.

2

Nathan completes his service in the navy when he's twenty seven, and coming home on a Friday with a feeling somewhere between relief and anticlimax, he's greeted by the sight of Peter returning from school sporting a poorly-disguised black eye. So much for a quiet few days at home.

He notices immediately, of course, but for reasons he'll later struggle to understand he doesn't say anything for a few days. On some level, he thinks he's waiting for their parents to notice, for one of them to intervene in his place. He hasn't been home for any length of time in nearly two years, and though he'd kept in touch he feels awkward trying to reinsert himself into the role of big brother, jumping in where he left off when he doesn't really know the first thing about what's been going on with Peter for months.

All of that becomes very irrelevant, however, when on the third day he's home he notices Peter limping. It's such a slight thing that he probably wouldn't have noticed if he weren't already paying closer attention than normal, but it's enough to shake him out of his reticence.

"Peter, what's going on?"

Peter turns to him with what looks like genuine confusion.

"What do you mean?"

Nathan indicates towards Peter's left leg. "You're limping."

"Oh. Yeah. I slipped up on some stairs, busted my knee."

"Can I see?"

Peter frowns, turning away with an impatient shake of his head. "It's fine, it's just a bruise."

"Hm. And the eye?"

Caught off guard, Peter stops, his back still on Nathan.

"My eye's fine."

Nathan clenches his jaw, becoming more determined with every unconvincing denial he hears.

"No. A couple of days ago, you had a black eye. It's still puffy around the edges."

"It's nothing."

"Listen, if you're getting picked on-"

"No," Peter answers immediately, whipping round to face him. "No, it's-It's not like that. Nothing's going on. I'm serious."

Something in his tone, the utterly unconvincing bold-faced denial, makes Nathan snap in response.

"For God's sake, Peter, I know I've been away and maybe you're pissed about that, but don't treat me like a stranger. Alright? I can tell when you're lying to me."

Peter sighs, bowing his head to push his fringe out of his face, and his silence speaks volumes. Figuring that this is about as close to an admission as he's likely to get, Nathan steps forward and, in one fluid motion, lifts up Peter's shirt.

It isn't as bad as some of the horror images he had in his head – there's a light smattering of bruises around Peter's ribs and a single angry purple mark on his right shoulder. Not serious injuries, then, but enough to make Nathan's breath catch in his throat, hot anger clouding his vision. It's a moment or two before he trusts himself to speak.

"How long's this been going on?" He closes his eyes briefly as he says it, bracing himself; there's a part of him that would rather not know.

"Not that long." Off Nathan's look, he shakes his head emphatically. "I swear. It's just these two guys, they're kind of…I don't know. They're not big on rich kids. Or kids who do their homework."

"Sounds like they're at the wrong school."

"Yeah. I'm just an easy target, I guess."

Nathan can't argue that point; Peter's always been slight, but adolescence has lengthened his body to the point where it doesn't quite seem to fit him anymore, leaving him lanky and awkward, never quite comfortable in his own skin. The idea of him in a fight doesn't bear thinking about.

"Why the hell wouldn't you tell me something like this?"

"Nathan, I'm fifteen. I'm too old to be getting picked on, running to my big brother to solve all my problems."

"What, you think you hit eighth grade and kids suddenly stop being jerks? It's nothing to be ashamed of, Peter, you should have told somebody by now." Inwardly, he's cursing their parents, their perpetually absent father and apparently blind mother; how, how could they have failed to notice this?

"You sound like an after-school special." But Peter's smiling a little, now, apparently relieved to have the truth out in the open, and Nathan can't help the corners of his own mouth quirking upwards in response as he reaches out to ruffle Peter's hair.

"Look, I'll deal with this, okay?"

Peter's expression turns to worry. "Wait, what are you going to do? If they know I told you–"

"Believe me, you won't need to worry about them anymore. Just tell me their names."

The next day, he's on the phone to the school, recommending to the headmaster that it would be for the best if Bruce and Randall Morgan were no longer enrolled at Trinity High. The fact is that their father's made significant donations to the school over the years and, as he explains to the headmaster when they speak, had hoped to continue to do so for many more to come. He would, of course, hate for anything to jeopardise that relationship. Nathan neglects to mention the fact that his father doesn't know the first thing about Peter's situation, is currently several thousand miles across the Atlantic and has no reason whatsoever to stop sending the school cheques.

The threat of losing Mr Petrelli's hefty annual cheque apparently outweighs the cost of expelling two known slackers, and by the end of the week he receives confirmation that both boys have been removed from the school. Peter, even after hearing this news still seems nervous, apparently worried that the pair might come after him with more reason than ever, but as far as Nathan knows he never hears from them again..

Nathan never tells Peter how he did it, and Peter never asks. He kept his promise, and that's all that really matters.

3

Four months after he starts at the District Attorney's office, Peter turns up at his doorstep shaking.

It's past midnight, and he's thinking dimly that he needs to get to bed. Heidi's been on his case lately for burning the candle at both ends, saying he's always tired, always run down, that he's letting work take over his life. He doesn't want to tell her he's just trying to stay afloat.

It's not as if he'd expected the job to be a cake walk. The hours are long and the workload is endless, but those things wouldn't matter if he was still entirely sure he believed in what he was doing, and if he's honest, he's beginning to understand why people say lawyers can't be trusted. It's not true, really, there are good people in his line of work, good people with good intentions working to do good things. But the system stinks, in more ways than he ever understood before, and while he's still just about idealistic enough to believe he can change things he's starting to wonder whether he isn't the one being changed.

Eyelids heavy, he runs his eyes down yet another deposition transcript and feels profound, humbling relief when the silence is broken by the doorbell.

When he opens the door and sees Peter standing there, trembling, clothes soaked with rainwater and eyes shining with something that might not be, he's strangely unsurprised. He smiles, in spite of himself; it feels like a long time since he's seen his brother.

"Hey, Pete. Not that I'm not pleased to see you, but isn't it a little-" He stops, getting a better look at Peter's face. "What's wrong?"

"Can I come in?"

Peter's voice is uneven, brittle, and he sounds oddly breathless.

"Yeah, of course." He stands back from the door. "Just, uh-try not to drip on the rug."

Peter enters and stands, slightly awkward, in the hallway as Nathan closes and bolts the door.

"New?"

"What?"

"The rug." Peter sniffs, pushing his soaked hair out of his face.

"Oh, yeah. Turkish. Gift from Heidi's parents." He has no idea why Peter's asking, or why a couple of weeks without contact has reduced them to small talk.

"Nice."

"Yeah." He pauses. "So. I'm going to go out on a limb and say you didn't pay me a surprise late night visit just to admire the upholstery."

Peter doesn't answer; he's not looking at Nathan, eyes darting restlessly around the foyer he already knows well, and Nathan is reminded less of a cornered animal than of one looking for shelter, for sanctuary. He moves towards Peter, cautious but determined, reaching for his shoulders as if to hold him in place, keep him tethered.

"Jesus, you're soaking. Did you walk here? From your place?"

"From the hospital."

"It's twenty-seven blocks, Peter."

"Yeah, I-I needed the walk."

"And the shower, apparently." He looks into Peter's face, tries to catch his eye, but he's still averting his gaze, blinking rapidly. Nathan reaches out, touches his cheek. "Hey. Hey, look at me. What's going on?"

Peter finally looks, eyes gazing achingly into Nathan's, and he really is trembling now. "I did something-uh. I did something I probably shouldn't have. And now I'm kind of-I don't know what to do, and it's-" He breaks off, voice shaking too violently to control, taking shallow, desperate breaths.

"Okay, alright. Sssh." Nathan keeps his hands in place, cups one side of Peter's face and runs his thumb across his cheek, soothing. Half-dreading what he might be about to hear. "What did you do?"

Peter swallows, turning away from Nathan like he can't bear to look at him while he says this. "This patient, he's-he was terminal. Brain cancer. Grade 4 astrocytoma, it's one of the worst there is. He had maybe a month left, tops, but there was...there was a lot of pain. Too much. He'd been there for weeks already and it was only getting worse, every day-" Peter breaks off, taking a shuddering breath, and Nathan braces himself because he knows, deep down, where this is going. "I OD'd him."

Nathan doesn't react, even as his stomach turns and his mind races. He is silent, letting Peter tell his story in stops and starts and aborted sentences. The patient, it transpires, was fifty-six, with no living family and no health insurance, which went some way to explaining how he ended up in the kind of understaffed hospice that allows interns to be left alone with terminal patients. Peter, of course, had spent long periods at his bedside, kept him company as best he could, watched his condition decline to the point where he was barely mobile and in constant pain, slowly losing his mind.

"He told me," Peter says. "He said, right when he first came in, that he didn't want to suffer, that if he was gonna die he wanted it to be quick. I didn't want to tell him that it wasn't-that it wouldn't be like that. That he'd die slowly, in a lot of pain, and that he'd probably lose his mind first."

"Why didn't he appeal to the board, make a case for voluntary euthanasia? If he was that sick-"

"It's only voluntary if the patient's considered competent. Because the disease might have been affecting his brain by the time he was admitted, the committee wouldn't go near it. He didn't have any living family..."

Nathan closes his eyes for a moment, trying to process, as Peter carries on after a small pause.

"Tonight-I was alone with him, again, and he was...God, he was in so much pain. The morphine wasn't really helping anymore, but he was at the maximum dose. Just-just sitting there, having to watch, knowing there's nothing more you can do, it's the worst feeling there is. And he wasn't-he wasn't really coherent, anymore, but he kept looking at me, like he was begging me to-" Peter tears his gaze away from the ground and looks at Nathan properly, eyes shining, pleading silently for something, for understanding, for salvation. "I had to. I had to."

"I know," Nathan says quietly, nodding, grip tightening briefly on Peter's shoulders. "I know. I understand." And he does. He knows his brother maybe better than anyone and knows that Peter, Peter who feels other people's pain more than he should, sometimes more than his own, would never be able to spend days on end watching that kind of agony and do nothing.

At Nathan's response something in Peter seems to shatter, his brittle defences collapsing against the weight of relief, and he's trembling more violently, suddenly. He's almost in Nathan's arms already and it takes only a moment for him to make the final step, pushing his face into Nathan's shoulder and holding on to him like he's never going to let go.

"Oh God," Nathan hears him whisper, the sound muffled against soft fabric, "oh God, Nathan-"

He holds Peter without a word as he shudders, the reality of taking a human life apparently hitting him for the first time, and tries to figure out what he's going to do. For this to get out is unthinkable; quite apart from the impact it could have on his own career, Peter would, at best, be kicked out of school, and at worst face criminal charges.

"It'll be okay," he says soothingly, as Peter chokes out a sob, "it's okay. I'll fix it. It'll be okay." He carries on like that, telling Peter not to worry, everything's going to be fine, he'll keep him safe, and eventually he even starts to believe it himself. He will find a way. He has to.

In the end, it's easier than he'd expected. He may be new to the DA's office but he's been in the game long enough to learn the ins and outs, to know who to call and what methods to employ to get what he wants. It takes him only four phone calls, two favours and a single bribe to ensure that there's no evidence left at the hospital to implicate Peter, or suggest that George Madison died of anything other than natural causes.

It's his first taste of something like corruption, and it isn't nearly as bitter as he'd wish.

4

At a certain point, he realises he's stopped trying to save Peter.

His relationship with his brother is just one of the myriad things that's changed and slipped away, recently, somehow become second priority. The campaign is first and foremost on his mind, it has been for months, and the clarity of the goal has taken him over to the point where he's more than single-minded, more than ruthless. He has to win, no matter what he must be elected, and that's the single thought he holds onto each day, the mantra that governs his every waking moment. It's not a modest goal, but it is simple, and he's always been happiest when he's striving for something even when he can't really remember why.

He finds it easier, nowadays, not to question himself too much. He's grown older, lost too much, stopped believing that people are inherently good and that the world is painted in shades of black and white. His life is what it is; he's adapted and adjusted and learned to live in the grey areas, followed the path that was laid out for him because he is the oldest and the anchor and there is no alternative. There never was.

Sometimes in his more self-indulgent moments, he fantasises about a different life. The scenarios vary but they all involve moving away somewhere, anywhere, maybe to Europe, somewhere where nobody knows his face or his family's name. He'd take some minimum wage job, live in a shabby but cosy apartment and exist solely for himself, screw up and make bad decisions and know what freedom feels like. He's never known, and for all he knows it could feel like hell, but god knows there are days when he'd give anything to find out. If it didn't sound so horribly maudlin, he'd say he dreamt of flying away.

It feels fitting, then, that when he actually gets his wish it's his wife who pays the price. Irreversible paraplegia, they tell him, caused by thoracic spinal cord injury, and he lets the words wash over him as he stares unseeingly at Peter through smudged glass.

He's a busy man, in any case, and dreaming takes up time he doesn't have anymore. Peter, on the other hand, seems to have time for nothing else. He'd showed up that night like Nathan knew he would, all wide eyes and soothing caresses, speaking words of comfort that didn't reach him, barely even registering against the sickening storm inside his mind.

My wife's in surgery, and you're dreaming. That's great.

It never used to bother him, Peter's dreaminess. He'd revered it, even relied on it; Peter was innocent enough for both of them, his idealism giving Nathan the impetus he needed to carry on at times when reality became too much to deal with. Nathan used to cherish that in him. At some point, he realises, he's come to resent it. All it does now is serve as a reminder of what he can't be, what he can't afford to be, what he's never had the luxury of being because he's always been the one with the knowledge, the one with the duty and the cross to bear. Peter has the luxury of innocence because he's never had to confront the world as it is, hard and cold and unrelenting, never had to watch blood pumping from his father's arms or identify his body after it's pulled, finally, from a locked car inside the family garage.

And so he starts to pull away, slowly, methodically severing the ties to which Peter still clings determinedly. When he does see his brother, less and less frequently as the weeks go by, he treats him with the same fine balance of benevolence and condescension, the same dismissive tone and easy, false bravado, as he'd use towards any nameless backer or political associate, keeping him at more than arm's length because it's so much easier not to let people reach him anymore. I'm a shark, Pete, he tells him, with a hint of the Vote Petrelli shit-eating smile he's perfected, trying to ignore the way Peter's looking at him like he can see right through him. Like he always has.

He'd stopped trying to save Peter a long time ago.

And yet he'd still dropped everything without a second thought to come here, to stand in a dingy alley in the bad part of town and squint up at his lunatic of a brother from the bottom of a fifteen-storey building.

"I've been up here all night, thinking about this," he hears Peter yell. "Thinking about my destiny."

"What you doing, Pete?" He tries to keep his tone casual, neutral. If his stomach wasn't churning subtly with fear he'd have to roll his eyes at his words, at the sheer depths of Peter's naivety. It's so easy for his brother to be enamoured with his power, his destiny. His so-called gift didn't start with tragedy, he doesn't have to spend his every waking minute reliving a single moment in time, endlessly replaying and questioning it, torturing himself with all the things he could have done and all the ways he could have changed it, all the while trying to escape the knowledge that there's nothing at all he could have done because this thing, this power, is bigger than he is and for once in his life he is absolutely powerless.

"It's my turn to be somebody now, Nathan!"

Jesus, what the hell is he doing? He strains his eyes upwards, trying to get a look at Peter's face, but he can't make out anything beyond the silhouette, standing what looks to be precariously close to the edge of the roof. A thrill of dread goes through him, and there's no disguising the hint of panic in his voice this time.

"Come on, Peter, quit screwing around."

A long, agonising silence; every muscle and fibre in his body is screaming at him to act, to do something, anything, but he knows that Peter has time to take that final step a hundred times over before he'll get to the roof. He opens his mouth to speak, and it stays open as he watches the outline of his brother move, sway sickeningly at the edge and begin to fall, spread-eagled against the sky, and oh God no, no, Peter, please God no, please.

And without thinking, without pausing, he is flying, some primal instinct taking over from his brain to take him into the air and across Peter's path of descent. There's nothing very controlled about it, nothing graceful; his shoulder collides painfully with Peter's chest and he grasps blindly, clumsily for anything to hold onto. His hand finds Peter's and he clutches desperately with both of his own, Peter's name tearing itself from his throat before he even has time to draw breath.

"We're flying, Nathan," Peter breathes, eyes wide with something that isn't fear, and he's right, Nathan realises with a jolt; he's not holding Peter up anymore, they are both flying and this is making less and less sense by the second. "We're flying. How did you-?"

"I don't know." He really doesn't, and in that moment he doesn't much care; he's concentrating on trying to find purchase, pulling Peter closer and into his arms, thinking dimly how the movies always make this look so damn easy. It's no good, his grip is slipping, Peter's losing control and the pull of gravity is too much, too strong. He falls, and Nathan doesn't hear himself scream as he clutches at empty air.

5

They're flying again, and he's done this a dozen times but it's never felt like this before, like living. Like everything he's ever wanted.

He feels vaguely like the past few days have been some kind of out-of-body experience, a waking nightmare that he's only beginning to surface from. When he tries to recall where it started, or the point where he came back to his senses, it's a useless effort; everything's a blur, a lurid montage of faces and flags and theoretical bloodstains, eyes watching him from every angle. The trusting, applauding crowd of onlookers, blissfully ignorant of their fates, as he'd made his election speech and tried hard not to choke on the words. Claire's final act of defiance, her eyes blazing like fire and steel, shining with the kind of strength he's never had. His mother's icy gaze, hard and cold, her hold over him finally breaking after what feels like a lifetime of subjugation, his own eyes finally open and seeing her for the first time, seeing her for what she is. What she's become.

It's all blending together seamlessly in his mind, and he supposes it doesn't really matter much anyway. Not now.

"I love you, Nathan."

In that single moment he is redeemed, he is delivered from evil in all the ways that matter. The things he'd done, all the others he'd been willing to, the way he'd ached when Peter backed away from him in horror. The moment, fleeting but intense, when he'd felt like he was dying, when Hiro (another poor innocent, he'll be destroyed too, sooner or later and Nathan's glad he won't be around to see it) had looked at him, devastated, calling him names he'd more than earned. It's all irrelevant. The look in Peter's eyes, that hope and love that's never really died, never given out no matter how Nathan tests it, is all he needs to make everything else seem distant, all the days of betrayal and darkness and shades of grey he doesn't know his way around anymore.

All that exists now is them, the feel of Peter in his arms, real and solid, the rush of air around them and the light growing brighter and brighter, blinding them both. For the first time, he's flying and it doesn't feel like a burden, like a curse. It feels like freedom. Finally he is finished, he's flying away for the last time, and with his brother in his arms. In the end, he couldn't have asked for anything more.

The air pressure is getting worse; they'll be breaking atmosphere soon, and as he feels his skin beginning to burn he sends a silent apology to Heidi, to the kids, feeling a sudden terrible pang for the sons he'll never see again, who will grow up without a father and without really knowing who he was. Maybe that's for the best. He forces his family from his mind before his resolve starts to crack; he can't falter now.

He can't see Peter anymore, the light between them forcing his eyes closed, but he can feel him trembling. His limbs heavy, he reaches numbly for Peter and pulls his head into the crook of his neck; feeling a vibration against his skin that could be an attempt at speech or an incoherent cry of pain. He doesn't want to think about how they must look by now; the burning is almost unbearable and it takes every ounce of strength he has left to keep hold of his brother, to not let him go.

Neither one of them has voiced it, but they both know there's a good chance that Peter will not come back from this. Claire's power has its limits, they know only too well, and if a shard of glass in his brain was enough to kill him it's safe to assume that every atom of his body being blown apart isn't any less deadly. Peter's mouth is still moving against his neck, words he can't hear, and he rests his fingers on what he can still identify as Peter's hair, stroking, trying even now to soothe him though it's only a matter of time before they're both screaming.

He can't save Peter, but he'll burn with him, and that's almost enough. When the sky collapses around them, seconds later, he's smiling for the first time in days.