Full Circle

By Illyria13

Disclaimer: I don't own Heroes. I don't own the characters, spoilers, names, etc. If I did, we'd see a dark, psychotic Peter a lot more. And he wouldn't have had his awesome powers taken away 7 episodes into the third season, then given back at half-mass, and conveniently explained as 'only being able to hold one power at a time'. Really, how useless is that?

Timeline: Okay, this is where most people are going to get confused, so bear with me. I wrote this fic after watching the season 3 episode "Trust and Blood" and was inspired by the scene where Peter holds a gun to Nathan's head before flying off.

So I started thinking about the kind of future it'd be where Nathan continued his dastardly plan to round up all the people with abilities, and this fic was born.

Basically, imagine a future where most of the Heroes are dead or captured, Nathan is in charge, and Peter is kind of crazy with guilt and bloodlust. It's mostly an introspective piece, looking more at Peter's thoughts in the future after everything that's happened.

Also, Peter has his original power back of basically picking up any power he wants, and KEEPING THEM!

What can I say? I like him powerful.

To sum it up:

Era: Alternate 3x15, Future

Summary: You and your brother will never be through. You've fought together, died together, turned against each other, but in the end, it's not enough, because it's no longer about him and you. It's about what he's done to the people like you. And sometimes you wish you'd killed him when you had the chance.

//

"You either die a hero...or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain."

-Batman, The Dark Knight

//

You'd never thought it'd come to this, running and hiding and fighting and killing, trying to protect the few people you have left even when you cannot protect yourself. But you're here and it's now and there's nothing else to do except drown. Drown in the fury and the vengeance and the hate, swallowing power after power even as you choke on them, and the funny thing about power is that you've been warned against it. Power corrupts you've been told time and again, but since the world is already corrupted, you don't think one more person is really going to tip the scales. Even if that person is you.

With power, you have the chance to do something, stop something, be something more than a pawn on a chessboard. You've always been a lover not a fighter, but now you have no choice, not if you want to continue breathing. Not if you want others around you to keep breathing. So if taking power is the way to do that, to keep something in your world safe, then you will, without hesitating. Even if it costs you everything in your soul. Even if it swallows you whole and rips your sanity to shreds. Even if you're sinking under the hum of power rushing through your veins.

But you've lost everything, and you're all alone, and nothing will make this better, so you let yourself go and fall, into visions of blood and death and fear. And it's the only thing you've got now, this hunt and this wrath, burning you up inside, wiping away everything you ever thought you knew about yourself. It's all that you know, and you don't care, because blood on your hands soothes your soul in ways you could never have imagined.

It's easier just to let it. You're tired of pushing back the tide.

So you kill everyone in your path and don't even blink, because the screaming need to put a bullet in your brother's head is the only thing that matters. It's your drive and your reason and the single, solitary voice left in your brain but you're okay with that because there's nobody else you'd rather have in there than a killer. You used to have doubt, you used to have disbelief, you used to have fear. Not any longer. Those emotions were wiped out as you watched the world fall around you. All at the hands of one person, someone you'd loved once, more than even yourself. And even if you still love him, the desire to bathe in his blood is greater.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, but since you're already in hell, you can't help but think that it doesn't really matter what your intentions are.

But sometimes you wonder, when you scream in your head as you watch yourself die, if this is what Nathan meant when he said that these powers needed to be controlled, needed to be contained and the people harnessing them locked away. The world is in ruins and the human race has been split into two, humans and powers, and each is fighting to survive against the other. They're ripping each other to shreds and sooner or later, there won't be anything left of either side, and how could any of this be worth it? It's not, and you know this, but there's no way to make everyone see what they've done, and if they don't care, then why should you?

You wonder why you haven't just blown the whole planet sky high yet because there really isn't anything left to save. And then the answer is right in front of you, in your dreams and your head and the pulsing hot liquid that covers your clothes and hands.

You need a mission, need someone to save, some reason that makes you seem more than just one insignificant person in the world. Only now your mission isn't to save, it's to kill, to destroy the only member of your family you have left. It's your defining purpose, your driving fury, your oxygen and your food and your sleep, and you find that you don't care how long it takes you to complete it.

You will not stop until you do.

This is you now, what's become of Peter Petrelli, and it's worse than anything ever found in your nightmares, because this is real. This is your world kneeling at your feet and the closest thing you've got to home. And this is all you have left, a fight you didn't start, a world you never wanted, a ground littered with the bones of your friends, and it's all you can do not to scream.

You turned this fight into war because you were given no other choice. You tasted blood in the sea of fear of your enemy and no longer cared about reason or want. All you cared about doing was killing them off, one by one, getting rid of the humans that dared call you the monsters. But the humans were right about one thing. All of you were monsters, if only because you'd been forced to be that way.

You fight to survive because survival is all you know, for a man that can heal and fly and shoot electricity from his hands and pretty much do anything you want. Even if surviving is the very last thing you want. Once upon a time, you'd be happy to die for a cause, die protecting and saving innocent people. But now, there is no cause to die for, no people to save, and it used to eat you up inside until you realized that it took too much energy. Energy you needed to survive. Survive. There's that stupid, fucking, horrible, word again that you would hate if hate didn't also take up needed energy.

It'll never be better, never be okay. You've been damned since you were born for the greed and arrogance of all of your parents and nothing will ever make that okay. You can't change it, can't fix it, and can't even seem to stop from having to pay for it. You know now, you and all of the others with their abilities and their powers, that the cost of living is no longer worth the fight. But you'll keep doing it anyway, if only because you have nothing else. You aren't heroes but you aren't villains either; you're nameless soldiers in a battle that was a long time coming, forced upon all of you by your creators. And it is in the blood of those that made you that you fight against the humans.

You even fight against one of your own. Betrayal is something your kind feels as well.

You have your very own Judas that's turned on you all, who started the hunting and the slaughter and turned the world into ash. He's much more than that to you, though, because your Judas is also Cain to your Abel, and really, you should've seen this coming. Because he's always turned against you whenever you needed him most, just as he did when you forced him to see his own power all those years ago. His power to fly made him think he was God and it'd be okay if he'd simply turned that thought into faith. Instead, he turned it onto you, and everyone like you, and you find nothing okay about that.

It's laughable, really, because if anyone was God in this world, it'd be you. You, and Sylar. Two of a kind and two of the few left and now you do find something funny about that, because Sylar is your ally while your brother is your enemy and if that isn't a sign of a very fucked up world, you don't know what is.

Nathan turned you all over to a people that could only feel fear and didn't care about the consequences. He started this, all of this, and you are the only one who can end it.

Because he did more than just start this, he ended you, and killing him is the way to make this all right. Not right in the sense of restoring order to the world, not right enough to bring the dead back to life –Hiro-Tracy-Mohinder-Matt-Claire- not right in a way to make you finally breathe again, but it's enough.

It has to be. There's nothing else.

And you ask yourself, again and again, how many times are you going to do this?, because it seems like fighting against your brother and trying to save the world from his mistakes is all you've ever been doing. But the answer is simple even as it stings, too many, too much and acknowledging it doesn't make it unavoidable. It simply makes your heart hurt, burn and ache with a fierceness that could kill you if you let it. Because everyone is dying, everyone is hurting, and it's your entire fault, all of it, because you didn't kill your brother when you had the chance, before the world ended. And even when it began to decay, when the war started to destroy all that was left, you wouldn't do what was necessary. You did what you wanted, you did what you required, but you didn't do what was needed to stop it. Because you could have; you could have killed the Hunter and stopped the Tracker and forced the Afraid to discard their stupid plan to collect and imprison. You could have ended this all before it began but you didn't, and now it's far too late.

And these are the thoughts that haunt you, day after day, night after night, when someone breaks in front of you, when they cry out for mercy from killers who have none, when they die for a reason that's long been covered by blood.

This is all your fault.

Sometimes you wonder who really destroyed the world.

You're no longer sure it was him.

But you're going to stop it, going to change it, going to make all the guilt and pain and sorrow fade away. You can't right the world, can't fix it, can't turn back time because you no longer have that ability, but what you can do is something you've become very good at.

You can kill.

And you're going to start with your brother.

Some paths really do come full circle.

//

End.

Authors note: Please review? I'd appreciate some feedback on this. Even if it's just 'I hate it!' .