Disclaimer: Heroes belongs to Tim Kring.

Spoilers: 'Five Years Gone'.

Rating: PG - 13

Characters & Pairings: Niki, Jessica, Niki/DL, Niki/Peter

Prompts: 14. Sister; 33. Fire; 05. Destroy. Written for heroes50.

Summary: Jessica. D.L. Peter. Three people, three promises made and never kept. Niki's POV

Music: Whisper - Evanescence

Promises Broken

14. Sister

When she was ten years old, Niki Sanders had a blazing row with her twin sister over seating arrangements on the school bus. Penny Miller had approached her and asked to sit next to her and she had said yes, which infuriated Jessica and started the fight.

Niki told her sister that she was being silly, that it was a one-time thing, but Jessica considered it a personal offence and didn't speak to her for the rest of the day. Niki regretted her decision almost at once, because Penny might have been a nice girl who always shared her ham sandwich with her, but she wasn't Jessica, who could make her laugh until her sides hurt. She felt miserable the entire day and she tried to catch her sister's eye so she could see how sorry she felt, but Jessica paid no attention to her. Instead she hung out with some boys and girls in the eighth grade that usually skipped class to smoke stolen cigarettes in the back of the school building, the sort of boys and girls whose menacing stances were enough to keep Niki and most children her age away, but Jessica had always been the bold one.

By the end of the day she had lost all hopes of making up with her sister and at the sound of the bell she winced. All the other kids in her class lived in the opposite side of town, so when Penny waved her hand and disappeared around the corner, Niki was left alone, Jessica nowhere to be seen. With a sour mood and low spirits, Niki started the walk home, dragging her feet. Hal would be home soon, and facing her father on her own was always a grim prospect. Beer cans thrown at her head were never much of a welcome, and she seriously doubted there would be anything halfway decent to prepare dinner with. Usually it wasn't so bad, but without Jessica to lighten up the mood with her snarky comments it was harder to bear.

She turned around a corner, now only three blocks from home, and started walking down a half-deserted street, dragging her schoolbag behind her. There was an old lady with a small dog walking by, and some boys a few years older than her perched atop an averiated car, smoking and drinking beer straight from the bottle. They wolf-whistled when she passed by, but she turned her head and tried to ignore them. That didn't sit well with them.

'Hey, you! The one with the pigtails!' one of them called out 'Who do you think you are, all prissy? Give us a few bucks, will you?'

She hunched her shoulders but kept walking, hoping they would ignore her. It didn't work.

'Look at me when I'm talk to you, brat.' The boy, with furious red hair and a scar across his left cheek, hopped off the car and started to walk towards her. 'Didn't your Mommy teach you any manners?'

She started to walk faster, but with a few strides and his long legs he soon caught up with her.

'Skinny bitch, look at me.'

'Just – just leave me alone,' she stuttered, her lower lip trembling. He let out a nasty laugh and grabbed her by the arm, hard enough to leave a bruise. She cried, more out of surprise than real pain – in the Sanders household, you learnt to deal with pain pretty fast. You also learnt to distinguish an empty threat from a real menace, and the boy's tone made her look around for a way out in panic. The elderly lady just walked away, ignoring the scene entirely. The other two boys, on the other hand, exchanged an uneasy glance.

'Hey, Rod, just let the brat be.' One of them, the tallest, said. 'I bet she doesn't have any money on her, it's not worth the trouble.'

But the redhead – Rod – smirked, showing strangely pointed teeth to her. She shivered.

'Oh, I don't know.' He yanked her bag from her hands. 'Let's see what's in here –'

'Let her go.'

The voice was chilly enough to freeze a blazing hell and it sounded oddly commanding and dangerous, considering it came from a skinny ten-year-old girl with blonde pigtails. Rod turned to look at her and laughed loudly.

'Look, guys, there's a double.'

Jessica's eyes flashed and her nostrils flared in a way Niki was too familiar with.

'I told you to get the fuck away from my sister,' she hissed, sounding far more imposing than she should have. However, Rod was fourteen years old and rather taller than her, not to mention that his friends had jumped off the car, whether to back him up or just to get a closer look was hard to tell.

'Yeah? And what if I don't wanna? What are you gonna do 'bout it?'

It happened so fast that Niki nearly missed it. One moment, Rod was smirking smugly; the next, he cried in pain when a stone thrown by Jessica hit his forehead.

'You, bitch –'

He released Niki's arm to grab his forehead, and the girl seized the chance to kick his shin as hard as she could, making him cry again and fall on his knees.

'Run, Niki!' Jessica shouted, and she didn't need to be told twice. Grasping the strap of her bag firmly, she started to race, her sister hot on her heels.

It wasn't likely that the other two boys would bother to follow them, but they didn't stop running nevertheless, and they took a shortcut through the Fernandez's backyard, narrowly escaping their dog.

They didn't stop running until they reached the back of their own house. They came to a halt and stood there for a moment to catch their breaths. Then Jessica climbed up the oak behind their home with her sister's help, and once she was up there she stretched her hand to Niki. From the tree they jumped into the open window of their bedroom, which had proved years ago to be the safest way to avoid Hal when he was in a bad mood.

They didn't talk about what had happened until later that night, when they were lying side by side on the same bed as they usually did. Niki studied for a moment her sister's profile, illuminated by moonlight, before she leant over and whispered in her ear.

'I thought you'd never talk to me again.'

Jessica looked at her sideways and snorted.

'Don't be a dork, Niki. You're my sister.'

Niki frowned, confused.

'But you were very mad at me.'

She saw her sister scrunch up her nose, which indicated she was still a little annoyed with her but not enough to push her off the bed.

'Well, yeah. You went and sat with that stupid Penny Miller instead of me. Sisters don't do that.'

Niki felt guilt twisting inside her. Jessica was right. They had always sat together in every class and every bus trip since kindergarten and she shouldn't have let anyone else stand between them.

'Sorry, Jess. I won't do that again.'

Jessica turned her head to look at her in the eye, and she could see that her twin was no longer mad. Her eyes were twinkling, and her fingers intertwined with Niki's.

'Of course not. We gotta stick together, you and me.' She adopted the Big Sister tone she liked to use so much, even though she was only four minutes older than her, and squeezed her hand. 'Who'd keep you out of trouble if I'm gone, huh?'

-

33. Fire

When she was sixteen, Niki Sanders was arrested for reckless driving under the influence of alcohol. In truth it had just been three or four beers, way less than she could handle, but the cop was inflexible. She ended up handing over her wallet and sitting in a blissfully deserted – if rather small and stinky – cell at the nearest station. She had called her father to bail her out but didn't keep her hopes high. She rarely saw Hal these days. Their relationship had always been far from ideal, but ever since Jessica had passed away Hal had grown more and more withdrawn and stopped paying her any attention. It wasn't like she missed the yelling; however, Niki sometimes grimly wondered whether he even remembered that he still had one daughter left.

Across the narrow corridor there was another small cell, which unfortunately wasn't deserted like hers.

'Hey, gorgeous, what're ya doin' 'ere? Got caught walking the street?'

Niki didn't even bother to glare at the three guys that were now leering and wolf-whistling through the bars and instead stared at the nude wall. In her experience, guys were all the same and the only valid ways to deal with them were either ignoring them altogether or kick them hard and run before they could catch you.

A grave, silky voice was heard above all the wolf-whistling and catcalling.

'Leave her alone, Mitch, or you'll have a broken jaw to match your black eye.'

The three men fell silent at once. In spite of herself, Niki turned to look at her defender, and her eyes met with an intense, brown gaze belonging to a boy that was only a couple of years older than her, but whose calm stance made him look like a much older man. His skin was dark and his head shaved, his arms were lean and muscular. She could have found him attractive, if she hadn't noticed the ring and the tattoos that meant he clearly belonged to a gang, Linderman's probably.

Niki might have been young, she might have been careless enough to drive above speed limit with a few beers on her bloodstream, but she wasn't stupid. She knew what being involved with one of those gangs meant and her recklessness hadn't reached a suicidal level yet. Life had taught her the hard way to never show fear, though, so she held his burning gaze, raising her chin in defiance. He tilted his head to one side, appraising her carefully. Niki never looked down, even though the intensity in his eyes made her skin tingle.

Only an hour later a man came to bail him out but of course, men like Linderman always took care of their own. They had no use for gangs if they were locked up instead of doing their errands throughout the city. What did surprise her was that somebody had bailed her out as well. Nobody could tell her who it had been, and she seriously doubted her father would have bothered. It didn't matter, though: the door was open and she had no wish to stay behind.

Once she was outside, the young man from before looked at her again, his gaze as intense as ever, before disappearing inside a black car. She followed the car with her gaze until she lost sight of it, then turned around and started to walk her way home.

Only a week had passed by when a familiar black car nearly hit her – when she was supposed to be the reckless driver – and the same man from before stepped out the car, a look of concern and worry obscuring his face.

'Are you alright? Are you hurt? I can take you to the hospital if –'

She had to reassure him no less than five times that she was perfectly okey before he calmed down. Only then he did seem to recognize her.

'Aren't you the girl I saw in jail the other day?'

She nodded, not bothering to add any further information. He looked at her once more with the intensity that had begun to feel familiar, and then all of a sudden he seemed hesitant.

'Do you, ah, want me to give you a ride somewhere?'

His tone was somewhat strained, as though he felt nervous and were trying to hide it, and there was a softness in his dark eyes she hadn't noticed before. Niki, however, knew all too well what happened to girls that accepted rides from strangers, especially when they wore a gang's crest.

Although she smiled a little – because she couldn't help to feel a bit flattered – she refused firmly. His face fell for a moment, but then a stony expression covered his features once more. As he drove away, she honestly believed she would never see him again.

When she run into him again only three days later, she grew suspicious.

'Are you following me?'

He frowned, looking affronted.

'No, I'm not. In any case, it's you stalking me.'

One way or another, their paths kept crossing and Niki stopped worrying whether he was stalking her or whether her own subconscious made her show up wherever he was, she stopped wondering whether it was coincidence or fate. Somehow, their lives had intertwined and she wasn't sure she wanted to get away. There was something in him that drew her like a moth was drawn to a flame, and she didn't know if it was the aura of danger he cast, the softness in his eyes or the fire that seemed to burn underneath his skin and set her own in flames.

There was a blaze in his gaze, an incandescence in his voice when he spoke to her that rendered her helpless. She knew that she should have stayed away, she knew that if she stayed too close she would ignite and turn into ashes until there was nothing left of her. But she couldn't. She had been cold for so long that she longed for the fire that burnt in his soul, she craved for the heated passion of his touch, the combustion provoked by his kisses.

Ever since Jessica had left, a freezing numbness had invaded her body, depriving her from all warmth and the ability to feel. Her house had become a mausoleum where her steps echoed through the deserted halls, resembling the way her heartbeat echoed in her empty chest. Her skin turned into ice, ice that did not melt until he leant over one day and whispered in her ear that he loved her.

Niki didn't keep her hopes high, though. Every single person in her life had eventually abandoned her: Mom, Jessica, Hal, her friends, the occasional date for Prom– they had all left her behind, one way or another, and she didn't think he would be any different.

Until one day he showed up clutching a small box, which contained both a ring and a promise. She couldn't believe it at first. She had kept everyone at arm's length for so long that she had forgotten intimacy, she had forgotten trust. She had forgotten what it was like to give your heart away without fear of getting it broken into a million pieces, and she just couldn't give him hers. There were too many walls of ice surrounding her soul, walls it had taken her a long time to build. Walls that melted when she looked at her eyes, ignited with passion but also with love and trust, and she knew what her answer would be.

The odds were against them. They had no money and no prospects in a city that did not forgive past faults, in a world that had never showed them nothing but obscurity and harshness.

She took his hand nevertheless, not caring if his fire burnt her alive and the flames swallowed her whole, because she knew that she could no longer face the coldness of a life without him by her side.

-

05. Destroy

When she was thirty-five years old, Niki Sanders found out that hearts could be broken even when only shattered pieces remained of them.

She stared at her reflexion, fragmented in several mirrors around her. Her skin looked as smooth as ever, her eyes were still the exact shade of a summer sky, her hair sparkled golden in the light. She looked exactly the same as she ever had… but she wasn't the same. Underneath her skin, beyond what mirrors could show her, there were wounds that had never healed, there were scars across her heart, her soul was marred and defigured and all that had once been warm inside her had long ago turned into ashes. Behind her eyes there were only empty tunnels, inside her chest only coldness lay.

The last five years had killed everything inside her inch by inch until there was nothing left. Micah's death killed her heart; D.L's departure, her trust; the loss of most of their friends and allies throughout the years slained her hope. By the time they realized it was a war long ago lost, there was nothing of her old self left alive.

She had learnt her lesson. It had taken her nearly all her life, but she had learnt it at last: people always left. It didn't matter the way, it didn't matter their reasons. Eventually everything you held dear would either perish or abandon you, so the only way to survive through another day was to never get attached. It was hard, at first. But soon she managed to build walls around her heart that would not melt away with a caress, she made herself an armour of iron and bitterness that no regrets could tarnish. The world had long ago stopped being a place worth saving, so she stopped caring altogether. Letting go was the key: let go of all the things that had once tied her to life, of all the things that had bonded her to other people, let go of all feelings and regrets.

She had done it well. The armour shielded her from the blows that came from every direction, the mask was worn so often that she herself believed it to be her true face. She had made sure nothing would be able to hurt her ever again.

Then why did she feel needles piercing her skin from the inside? Why did her heart bleed in her hand, why did air slice her throat in its way in? If she couldn't feel, how could it hurt so much, so terribly?

He had left. Like everyone else before him, he made a promise to her, a promise never kept. He had promised her he would catch her if she ever fell while fighting side by side, back when they still were delusional and thought they stood a chance to win this war. He had promised her she could rest her head on his shoulder when she wanted to talk about the child she had lost and even when she didn't. He had promised her they would never have to fight again when their hopes were finally crushed by the weight of reality. He had promised her they would move on, together, with the pieces they had left of what they'd once been.

He had promised her that he would never leave her alone again.

She clenched her hands in fists and in her desperation she said the fatal words: You walk out that door, you don't come back here. She didn't have to look over her shoulder to see him walking away from her.

She should have known. She should have known that he would never be able to let it go, to let the past rest. She should have known that whatever had once made him the leader of the rebellion wasn't dead, just dormant, waiting for a flicker of hope to wake up again. She should have known that if the choice between fixing the world or staying with her was ever presented to him, he would be gone in an instant. And in another world, in another life that would have endeared him to her, would have made her love him all the more for it.

Not here, not this time.

She realized in a sudden that she had been wrong all along, deluding herself into believing that she had let go, when she still kept her child's picture close to her heart, when she still wore her long-gone husband's ring, when she surrounded herself with mirrors still hoping to catch a glimpse of her sister-doppelgänger-soul in them. But only her own reflection stared back at her, and she saw for the first time her foolishness, her naïvety. Because all the time that she had been telling herself not to get attached, all the time that she had spent building an armour and wearing a mask, she hadn't seen it. She hadn't seen how much of her own strength was drawn from his, she hadn't seen that the shelter that would protect what was left of her heart was built between his arms, she hadn't seen the ties forming between them throughout years and heartache.

All this time trying not to hold onto anything, and all she had done was cling to him, all she had done was build her new life in a way it was intertwined with his own. A life he had not hesitated to crush, had not hesitated to tear apart in his need to search for another life that no longer belonged to them and never would.

She stared at her reflexion once more and she saw it. She was alone. She had always been, would always be, no mattter the promises in the dark, the intertwined fingers, the warm whispers at night. The mirrors showed her as she truly was: alone.

With a last anguished cry of pain and heartache, she smashed every and each one of the mirrors surrounding her, she hit and bleed and shattered every shard of glass until there was nothing left but her own tears and her own loneliness reflected a thousand times.