Author's note: Please, note that English is not my first language. Any grammar or spelling errors are mine and mine alone, not of any of my wonderful betas. I'm from Spain, so my knowledge of the USA is second-hand, I try to research all my fics the best that I can, if I get anything wrong along the way, once again, it's fully my responsibility. And Wikipedia's.

This tale is classified 'T' (although I'm more comfortable with a movie-like 'R') for acts of violence (nothing you won't see this week in CSI), some strong language (nothing that you won't hear in your high-school yard), and some sexual elements (nothing that you... well, you know).

Also, a special warning: this starts as a Canon Paire fic, and you know what that means. The I-word, and angst in bucketloads. It will also feature loads of action and things – and people – exploding, so I hope there is a little bit of everything for everybody.

And fckng giant robots. (Just joking).

Special Dedication: To Theo, who has been my beta for so long I can't even remember, who is my brother from Down Under, and who goes through all sorts of pain and struggle to make my fics something remotely readable. Hermano, you are totally my hero.

Author's notes (Nov 29th, 2007): After some discussion with my betas (Hey there Sarah! Elle! Caity!) the story has experience some revamping. Now the former parts one and two are the new 'Prologue' and parts three and four are the new 'Chapter One'. Don't worry by the apparent disappearance of chapters, nothing of the story has been lost.

Oh, and before I forget: Peter, Claire and the rest of the gang, Heroes and all that encompasses it are not mine. They belong to NBC, Tim Kring and all that people from Hollywood. I'm just borrowing them for a little harmless fun.

Now, on with the freakshow.

---O---

DARK LEGACY

a HEROES fanfiction novel by

Nick Midian

Prologue: The Night of the Exploding Man

Only the strongest will survive

Lead me to heaven when we die

I am the shadow on the wall

I'll be the one to save us all


"Blow me away", Breaking Benjamin

Manhattan - New York
November 8th, 2006

Life always has a certain way of being ironic and a bitch at the same time.

When Nathan Petrelli joined the U.S. Navy and became a fighter pilot, those who knew him thought he had done so merely as a means to an end. After all, serving God and country was something that always looked good on your résumé when you had political aspirations, and as the first-born and heir-apparent of a family that was so often referred to as the New York Kennedys, nobody doubted where Nathan was heading to later in life.

Serve the country. Serve the community. Serve yourself.

There was a bit of truth in all this, obviously, but beneath the surface – as it usually happens – not everything was what it appeared to be.

The real truth was Nathan Petrelli simply loved to fly.

Up there in the deep blue sky, alone in the cockpit of his plane, miles away from the mundane, there was peace. There was freedom.

Freedom from his family, from his parents, from their expectations and their secrets. From Peter and a childish brotherly admiration he could never truly live up to. Freedom from the noise and the chaos. From living a life he was not really sure he had chosen for himself.

Even in combat missions during the so-called peacekeeping actions in Rwanda and the Balkans, when he had to drop a payload of death on people whose names he would never know, whose reasons for warring he would never understand; up and above in the cockpit of his F-18, everything was calm.

Up and above. Where there was order. Where there was just he and the clouds.

Oh yes, flying made him happy. Wasn't it ironic?

Wasn't life a bitch?

Now he was flying again, although Nathan wasn't at the controls of the Corinthian Casino-owned Bell helicopter quickly taking him away from Manhattan. He was not much in control of anything these days, to be honest.

Ever since the accident, the discovery of his impossible, incredible power and his father's death, Nathan felt like he was being swept away by a flood of wills and actions that weren't his own. They were Linderman's and his mother's, and God knew who else's.

Maybe deep down, as much as Petrelli refused to accept it, he was just a pawn; a little puppet dancing to the movement of his masters' hands that foolishly believed he could cut his strings whenever he wanted to.

Nathan looked out of the window, at the sleeping city sliding beneath the chopper. Millions of oblivious souls that ate, watched TV, slept and made love, completely ignorant of the impeding tragedy that quickly neared them all.

Or were they?

Manhattan seemed to possess an eerie quality that night. The streets were nearly empty, the usually blinding shine of the skyscrapers and streetlights muted and dull.

Maybe they sensed something. Maybe they all knew in some instinctive, primal way that these were their last hours on Earth and they – like wounded, dying animals – had sought the comfort and familiarity of their caves, to spend those last moments in the warmth and comfort of their families and homes.

Were they were all resigned then, like he was being asked to be?

'It can't be stopped. There is nothing I can do. The bomb is going to explode. They are all going to die. And you…

…you will do nothing.'

Linderman, Thompson, even his own mother seemed to be so absolutely sure it was so. Unavoidable and unstoppable. And it was all for the greater good.

Were they right? Was this truly the right thing to do? Was he doing a service to America, to the world…or was he just feeding the flames of his own vanity and greed?

Was he to become a messiah, or a mass murderer?

For Peter, it was all so clear - but then, his younger brother had always seen things that way, hadn't he? Everything was black and white to him; it was probably why he had become a nurse in the first place. Save people's lives and by definition you were doing good. Earn your brownie points and get into Heaven.

What did Peter know of shades of grey? What did he know of sacrifice? Of duty?

But then, what did Nathan himself know?

"You still have doubts," his mother's controlled voice dragged Petrelli's attention away from the outside view. The scenario was changing fast beneath them, the dark mass of the Hudson River replacing the bright city lights. It was like watching doom coming closer.

Nathan looked at his mother Angela, who was sitting in front of him. The interior of the helicopter was closer to the one of a luxury limousine, with plush leather seats and cushioned walls that dulled the noise of the turbines. Linderman's support reached them even from beyond the grave.

'I just hope the manipulative old bastard can't heal himself,' Nathan thought with an inner shiver, recalling that time in Vegas and other demonstrations of the man's power.

"Please, try not to do such a great job of hiding your disappointment, Mother," Nathan suddenly smirked. "It's confusing."

"You shouldn't be," she ignored his quip. "We've been over this already."

"Yes, I know," the just-elected Congressman sighed with impatience. "Responsibility, sacrifice, doing it for the greater good and all that nonsense. It's sound too much like a load of cr-"

"Nathan!" Mrs. Petrelli admonished him with a scowl. "Watch your attitude when you speak in front of me, will you? You are now a representative of the American people, and you have to start acting like one."

"It's kind of ironic that you should say that." He shook his head. Fishing inside his jacket, Nathan retrieved his cell phone and flipped it open. "Considering that I'm about to allow practically all of my constituents down there to die a very horrible death in a very short time."

"Sarcasm isn't a terribly attractive quality in a Presidential hopeful, either. Who are you calling?" Angela demanded.

"Heidi. I want to be sure she and the kids have arrived safely at Nantucket." He browsed the list in search of his wife's cell number.

"You shouldn't bother. You'll be seeing them personally in about half an hour."

Nathan's dark eyes instantly shot towards his mother. The Petrelli matriarch was absently rummaging in her handbag, looking for something. She almost looked like the woman he had thought she was, merely a week ago. "Where are those tissues? I swear, I had to have put them in here…"

"Mom? What did you just say?" She raised her eyes but said nothing, waiting for him to elaborate. Nathan said with narrowed eyes, "You said I would see them in half an hour. But it's impossible to make it to Nantucket within half an hour. Not by helicopter, anyway."

Angela arched her eyebrows for a second, and then she returned to look inside the expensive Prada handbag. "They're not in Nantucket, Nathan. And we're not heading there either, for that matter. We'll land in Jersey and set up shop in Newark. I know it's a less than desirable place to stay, but then public opinion will later praise your decision to stay close to Ground Zero and manage the post-crisis situation from the front lines instead of hiding in some socialite haven."

Nathan was speechless for a second, and his mother sighed at his astonished expression. "Oh, for the love of God, Nathan, stop being such a dunce about this, would you? Do you think we've left anything to chance? Our people have extrapolated every single possibility and squeezed every bit of data. We'll be perfectly safe. Do you think I want anything bad to happen to my grandchildren?"

'And what about Claire?' Nathan thought with a new inner chill, remembering how his Texan cheerleader daughter had furiously abandoned him and Angela. 'Isn't she your grandchild too? Or is she simply… as expendable as Peter? Like the rest of Manhattan?'

But he said nothing of this aloud. Instead, he weakly asked, "Do you know what's going to happen, then? The cold hard facts?"

Now her eyes settled on his own. And they were cold, calculating. "Yes, I do."

"Tell me."

"You don't need to know, Nathan, it'll only…"

"Tell me, mother."

Angela Petrelli sighed. "Kirby Plaza will be Ground Zero, you know that. Everything from Grand Central to Tenth Avenue, and from Central Park to Madison Square Gardens, will be destroyed in the explosion. Afterwards, the jet stream will carry the nuclear cloud northeast, mostly out to the sea. Fallout might affect the East Coast up to Massachusetts. Fortunately, we believe that the ionizing radiation will be relatively weak, the levels of secondary casualties shouldn't be too high, although the electromagnetic pulse produced by the blast will shut down all communications-"

"Oh, Jesus, please, please stop… stop…" Nathan sunk his face in his hands. "What are we doing, what the hell are we doing?"

"Nathan, I'm getting tired of this," the steel ice-cold in Mrs. Petrelli's voice. "I know it's hard for you, but it's the great men who make the hard decisions and the difficult choices. This is for the greater good."

Nathan was truly starting to get sick of hearing that. "How did I ever let you convince me-"

But Angela didn't let him finish. "Because you know it's the right thing to do! Nathan, look at the state of the world, for goodness sake! We're in the 21st century, we've had our eyes on the stars for decades ever since the Moon landings; and yet, children keep dying of hunger and AIDS all around the globe. People still kill each other over race and religion. There's hate and there's misery like there's never been before… and I'm not talking about remote places in Africa. I'm talking about the same streets you and I walk through every day. We need a common cause, we need something to bring us together to get over our differences. We need this."

At least she does believe in what she's saying, Petrelli thought bitterly. But it didn't help him to feel any more relieved. If anything, he now felt like he was drowning in a swamp of lunacy.

"Humor me here; but just how exactly is it going to help, mom? How many millions are going to die tonight? Linderman said it was going to be 0.07 percent of the world's population, but how many more in the next few years due to the radioactivity? The birth defects? The suicides? How many lives affected and destroyed by the economic chaos that will surely follow? How can anything good come out of this… this… monstrosity?"

How many millions indeed? Although right now he could only think of two specific individuals. Peter and Claire.

His hero-worshipping brother. His illegitimate daughter.

Two people in this world who, by all the laws of nature and society, he should care about and protect were the same two people he was sacrificing on the altar of the gods of power and greed.

There was an unmistakable look of disappointment in Angela Petrelli's eyes. "Don't be weak, Nathan. Don't be your father. You have a chance here to be better than him, to be the one the world needs. Don't waste it."

'My father was my hero. Even if Peter and I were going to stab him in the back that way before he died, he was one of the heroes.'

'The future is not written in stone.'

'Just help me, Nathan. Just… help me.'

The Congressman looked down at his phone. As he hadn't dialed, the device's screen had gone back to the wallpaper: a candid picture of Monty and Simon, his two sons.

"Is this the world you want your children to grow up in?" his mother asked, as if reading his mind. And hell, maybe she had done exactly that. Nathan couldn't be sure of anything anymore.

Nathan's eyes went back to her. Now they were mirroring her steel-like determination. "No, it's not."

She nodded and smiled, pleased. But the steel didn't soften in her son's expression as he added, "I won't let them grow up to find out that their father turned his back on eight million people, including their uncle and sister, and let them die a horrible death. I won't let them grow up in a world where the fate of innocents is decided by a cabal of a few… illuminated madmen."

Nathan reached for the opening handle of the side door with one hand, at the same time he released his safety belt with the other. "I'll see you in Jersey, mom."

"Nathan, don't!" Angela screamed as she realized what he was about to do.

But her words were swept away by the fury of the wind and the pounding of the helicopter's rotors as Nathan yanked the sliding door wide open.

He heard his mother calling his name again as he jumped out the helicopter, but her voice was too weak to overcome the raging storm of his own heartbeat.

After a couple of seconds, that was all that remained; his heart thundering in his chest, alive for the first time in what seemed like ages. That and the howl of the wind in his ears, as Nathan Petrelli went into free fall within the darkness of the New York night.

The helicopter soon left him behind and Nathan fell down towards the dark mass of the Hudson, the wind making his power tie flap and snap like a whip. He was still clutching the cell phone in his right hand as if it was a lifeline.

His speed decreased dramatically when he willed his body to start floating down like a feather. For an endless instant, Petrelli simply enjoyed the exhilarating sensation with his eyes closed, a large part of himself still unable to get used to the wonder of his own power.

His right thumb, however, moved over the keyboard of his phone, speed-dialing his wife's number. He opened his eyes, and the Manhattan city lights beckoned him forward like a lighthouse would guide a lost ship.

The flying Congressman brought the phone to his ear just in time to hear the call signal being replaced by his wife's worried voice. "Nathan! Where are you? What's going on? These men have practically kidnapped the boys and me at gunpoint! They say they work for Mr. Linderman, and you and they have brought us to-"

"Heidi, Heidi," he hushed her. "Please, listen to me…"

"Nathan…" Heidi Petrelli whispered, unable to hide the fear and worry in her voice.

"Heidi, I… I don't have much time..." There were so many things he wanted to tell her. So many things he had kept silent about over the years. Too many lies and half-truths.

If it had been to protect Heidi or himself, he was no longer sure. All Nathan knew was that it was time to come clean, and time was running short.

She fell silent, expectant. Nathan said, "I'm so sorry, Heidi. I'm sorry not to have been the best husband and best father I could've been. I'm sorry for the lies and all the unspoken truths. I'm sorry I never let you in. I'm sorry... I'm sorry for not having been the man you deserved."

Nathan was crying now, something he had almost forgotten how to do. And it felt liberating. Cleansing. "But I'm trying now, God knows I am. I can be that man. I can be that husband, that father... that brother. I love you more than life itself, and even though it might seem I'm about to waste all we've worked so hard for... you have to trust me, my love. I'm doing this for you. For us."

"Nathan..." Heidi was still worried, and now confused as well. "I don't understand anything, what's going on... please, tell me you're alright?"

The Congressman smiled as he started to move forward, gaining speed by the second. "I am, Heidi. I'm better than I've been for a long time. And I love you, with all my heart."

"I love you too, you know that. And I trust you. I know whatever you have to do, you'll do the best for me and the children. But please..." she pleaded sincerely. "Nathan, please, be careful. I'm scared for you."

"Don't be," his heart was thundering now again, bursting out of his chest. "It's not time for fear. It's a time of hope. I love you. Tell the boys their father loves them."

It sounded painfully much like a farewell; too much so for comfort. Heidi was crying too on the other end of the line. "We love you too, Nathan."

Nathan disconnected the phone before she could add anything more. If those were the last words he would ever hear from his wife, he could never have chosen a better ones himself.

He had needed them desperately. Needed them to push him faster, faster than ever.

Smiling, the man dropped the cell phone and let it fall into the dark waters of the Hudson.

And then Petrelli let the words, the thoughts, the feelings, the love and the hope push him forward, faster than ever before. Beyond the speed of sound. Beyond the wall of fear. Raising a curtain of pulverized water from the cold river on his wake, he flew towards fate.

Towards Peter and Claire.

Towards the exploding man and destiny.

Towards Manhattan.

---O---

Kirby Plaza - Manhattan - New York
November 8th, 2006

Peter Petrelli was a man on fire.

He burned from the inside, from a place deep within himself that he had never thought could even exist. A dark, angry, violent place.

And it felt like a raging inferno.

As his fists fell against Sylar's face, the young man only felt the fire burn brighter and hotter. As his knuckles hit the other man's flesh like pearls of thunder, he was filled only with satisfaction. And as the psycho's blood splattered the pavement, Peter Petrelli's inner fire only grew more and more intense.

Peter wanted to kill Sylar. He wanted to do so with every cell of his body, with every beat of his heart and every thought racing through his mind.

He wanted to kill him for Ted Sprague, the nuclear generator and falsely accused terrorist who had ended up without a brain in a black bodybag; with an expression of supreme terror trapped in his dead eyes. He wanted to kill him for Matt Parkman, the mind reader and former cop who was currently bleeding to death on the ground not far away. He even wanted to kill him for Mr. Bennet, the former Company man who lay sprawled on the pavement with broken ribs and God only knew what else. Peter definitely wanted to kill him for Claire, for hurting and scaring the young girl he'd only recently discovered was actually his niece. But above all, he wanted to kill the man for himself, for making him feel like this.

In his mind, Peter Petrelli was not supposed to be this way. He was supposed to be kind and gentle, always more worried about others than himself, always the dreamer looking up to the stars in search for answers and hope. He wasn't meant to be this violent beast, wasn't intended to be a tool of destruction and pain.

And he hated Sylar for forcing him to become one; for making him enjoy it.

The flames of his rage were also being fueled by Nathan's betrayal. His brother, his hero, the man he had always looked up and wanted to become and who had abandoned him in his greatest moment of need. This whole goddamned mess had forced Peter to look into Nathan's mind and see his big brother's true face. He tried to blame the telekinetic madman for that too, for forcing his hand and destroying the bliss of ignorance. But he couldn't, not really.

So he blamed Nathan for his betrayal. So he blamed himself for his own blindness.

On his knees, Sylar laughed at Peter and the sound of his mirth only inflamed his fire. His fists were closed so tightly, his nails dug into the palms of his hands painfully. He was about to cave the murderer's face in when he realized why he was laughing.

Peter's hands… they were shining.

"Wait, no! No!" He yelled.

Distraught, Peter moved away from his enemy, his eyes transfixed by the radiance being emitted through his own hands. The radioactive pulse grew in intensity and strength, and he didn't seem to be able to do anything to prevent it. He was losing control, quickly.

"Turns out you're the villain, Peter," Sylar laughed. "I'm the hero."

'No, no, no, NO!' It couldn't be like this. It couldn't end like this.

Peter panicked, looking around. He could feel Ted's power growing within him; becoming more and more hot and angry by the second. He felt the nuclear fire wanting to consume him, searching for release. His breath grew quicker and shallower as cold perspiration covered his body. Gaunt and pale, Petrelli knew he was on the brink of exploding. And in doing so, he would annihilate all that was loved and cherished by him. He would truly become the villain.

New York, his family, his friends… Claire.

Peter's dark eyes moved, as if guided by a force beyond him. 'Claire…'

He saw the petite blonde running towards Kirby Plaza, fastening her gaze onto her adopted father and taking a second to kneel at his side and check on him. And then her eyes, green even at a distance, moved to lock onto his. The fear and pain in them broke his heart.

But at the same time, the made a different kind of fire burn within his soul. One that didn't burnt. One that healed.

Claire's hands moved to retrieve the pistol at Mr. Bennet's side. She would do it. Claire would stop him, just like she had promised him she would. And that, taking a human life – his life – that way, that would surely destroy her soul. He could not allow that to happen.

'I will not allow that to happen.'

Peter's nails dug deeper in the soft flesh of his hands, so deep that blood ran free, wet and warm between his fingers. Somehow he willed his mind to tame the power, to leash it under his control, to use it to fuel him and not consume him.

With supreme effort, the young nurse somehow regained control of the thermonuclear ability.

Peter looked back to Sylar as the radiance faded. The serial killer's expression of amusement turned sour as he got back to his feet. Once again, they faced each other.

"I don't see any heroes here tonight, Sylar," Peter growled with a raspy voice, in reply to the other man's taunt. "In fact, I only see a useless, ordinary parasite when I look at you. And you know what? I'm gonna squash you like a roach."

The former watchmaker wiped his bloodied lips with the back of his hand. "Try me."

Peter moved forward, his right arm going back to deliver a new punch, but Sylar shot his own arm forward and Petrelli felt like a sledgehammer was crushing his chest. His ribs cracked soundly under the powerful telekinetic blow, and he was sent flying backwards. His feet slid along the ground until his own telekinesis kicked in and he anchored himself down, screeching to a sudden halt. Peter coughed though, and blood sprayed from his mouth to sprinkle his white shirt.

But the mimic didn't back down, and he used Nathan's ability to launch himself forward, crossing the distance to Sylar in half a second, punching him as he flew past.

Sylar's head snapped to the side as Peter turned around while levitating, in order to continue facing his enemy. But the psycho once again applied his mind power to the other man's body, and Peter – now unable to ground himself – was propelled towards the building behind him. The impact was so brutal that the wall's tile cover cracked before he fell down to the pavement.

"Peter!" He heard Claire calling his name as he fought to stay conscious. He was screwed up inside, and he knew it. Bones pulverized, internal organs smashed… Petrelli prayed for his niece's healing abilities to be strong and fast enough.

"Useless and ORDINARY??!!" Sylar yelled in rage, advancing towards him. He motioned with his hand and Peter felt his throat being grasped again by invisible steely fingers, his body being forced to slide up the wall. "I'm nothing short of EXTRA-ORDINARY!!"

'Anyone else probably would've taken more offense at the 'parasite' part,' the hero thought vaguely, unable to voice his thought aloud as his foe's mental fingers tightened and choked him.

"You are pathetic, Peter Petrelli, weak and unworthy. Just like all the others," Sylar continued, his voice becoming an inhuman reverberation and his physical hand joining his mental one around the young man's neck. "You're the real parasite around here."

Out of the corner of his eye, Peter saw Claire leaving her father's side and running towards them, Bennet's .45 in her hand. Sylar saw her too, and he grinned sideways at his prisoner. "Well. We know how this ends, don't we?"

Peter's mind immediately flashed back to just a few minutes earlier; to Parkman bursting onto the plaza with his weapon blazing and to the gun's bullets merely halting and flying backwards to hit the disgraced cop instead.

At least Claire could survive something like that. Probably. Hopefully.

"SYLAR!"

The deeply accented male voice stopped everybody in their tracks. Hiro Nakamura had blinked into existence, roughly twenty feet behind Sylar's back. The young man had just teleported in from Japan, having saved his friend Ando from Sylar's lethal grasp not long ago.

The villain rolled his eyes and said with disgust, "You." Then he turned back to Peter. "What is this, a freak show?"

"SYLAR!" Hiro called for his enemy again.

Annoyed, the taller man glanced at the Japanese young man over his shoulder. "Can't you see I'm busy here?"

"Sylar, come here and face me with honor!" Hiro declared dramatically, raising his sword.

The power-stealer again rolled his eyes. Sylar then looked pseudo-apologetically at his captured adversary. "Sorry about this, Petey-boy, but as you can see I'm sort of in the spotlight tonight. My fans demand my presence, but don't you worry, I'll be back in just a sec."

Sylar released him physically, but nonetheless kept him pinned against the wall with his telekinesis. Over his shoulder as he walked towards Hiro, the serial killer quipped, "You just hang in there!"

Claire ran towards her uncle, as Sylar went to face Japanese boy. She was scared and confused, too much was happening in too a short time. As the blonde teenager arrived at her uncle's side, she quickly tucked away the large handgun into the waistband of her trousers and desperately grasped the dark-haired man's hand with hers. "Peter! What are we going to do?"

The touch of her small warm hand on his was electrifying somehow, and bathed him with a tidal wave of calm, grounding and clearing his mind. Her presence had always had that effect; he had felt this way before that first time in the hallways of Union Wells high school, and the intensity of such an effect scared him a bit.

"Go away," Peter managed to growl, as his throat was still being squeezed by invisible fingers. He realized that he didn't want anything more than to protect her. "Go back to your dad."

"No, I can't leave you here like this!" The young Bennet refused the order, always the stubborn little Texan cheerleader. She tried to yank at him, get him from the wall, but it was like he was stuck with superglue to the cement.

He managed a small smile for her benefit. "Trust me, I have everything under control."

Claire darted a look at Sylar, who was now facing Hiro at arm's length. "You're a terrible liar."

"Haven't we gone through this before?" the power-stealer was saying as he arched his thick eyebrows at the sword-wielding time-shifter. "Didn't turn out like you thought it would, did it?"

"I am ready now," Hiro stated with his heavy accent. "I will kill you!"

He then released a powerful battle cry and raised his nagamaki sword, ready and poised to strike. More amused than concerned, Sylar raised his hand, about to send his enemy flying away with just a flick of his hand and a passing thought.

And that was when Peter made his move.

As Hiro started charging forward and Sylar was about to use his telekinesis, the younger Petrelli brother gathered all his will and strength and, in spite of the pain caused by his broken insides, used that same power on the powerful psychotic. Peter simply shoved his adversary in the back with all his might, in what was the mental equivalent of a sucker punch.

It maybe wasn't the most heroic action ever, but hey, Peter was trying to save the world here. He hoped karma would cut him a little slack on this one.

And it worked. Suddenly distracted and losing his footing, Sylar awkwardly stumbled forward, only to find himself in the oncoming path of the razor-sharp Japanese blade.

The nagamaki slammed through his chest, missing Sylar's heart by a mere fraction of an inch, and appeared out of his back covered in blood. For an instant, all that the powerful villain could muster was an expression of deep surprise and the hawking sound of a wounded animal as his lungs were painfully depleted of air.

Sylar's eyes locked with Hiro's as he struggled to understand what had just happened. But all he only saw his own reflection in the younger man's spectacles. And he didn't like what he found there.

Defeat.

Hiro tore the sword out and slashed the air with it, tiny droplets of red blood sprinkling the pavement as Sylar's body fell down. "Yatta!"

The invisible grasp on him vanishing, Peter also fell down, only to be caught by Claire's waiting arms. Petrelli coughed and grimaced in pain as the healing ability borrowed from the cheerleader rearranged and cured his ravaged insides.

"Is that it?" she asked, hopeful. "Did we win?"

"Peter Petrelli!" Hiro called, preventing him from answering. "I did it! I slayed villain! Yatta!"

For a moment, Petrelli was reminded of when he had met the future version of Hiro Nakamura on that New York train, when he'd been travelling with Mohinder Suresh. That Hiro had been at least five years older than his present counterpart, though, and had completely lost that look of exuberance. Perhaps that Hiro would now never come to exist. He certainly hoped so.

Hiro started running towards him and Claire, a big smile on his chubby face. He was so happy that he foolishly ignored the most basic rule of combat: never turn your back on a wounded enemy.

Sylar, life slowly escaping from him, turned around on the ground and telekinetically pushed Hiro hard and up into the air. The time-traveling Japanese found himself airborne and quickly nearing a lethal collision with a building. Instinctively, he closed his eyes and wished himself out of harm's way.

And just like he had appeared, Hiro vanished from existence in that time and place, finally manifesting himself over 300 years earlier in feudal Japan; but that was a tale for another time.

In the present time, Peter shook his head and finally answered Claire, "No, we didn't win yet."

"You… you all…" Sylar coughed, his lips and chin staining with blood. "You spoiled it all…"

Not far away Niki Sanders, her husband D.L. Hawkins, their son Micah and little Molly Walker were all witnessing the amazing events developing in the front court of Kirby Plaza. Even after all they had gone through in the last few months, there was still room for surprise and shock.

"Well," D.L. groaned, holding his wounded belly and bleeding from Linderman's bullet. "So much for our theory of us being the only ones with powers."

"How can he be still alive?" Micah asked his parents. "He just got run through with a big sword!"

"'Cause he's the boogeyman," Molly said with a scared little voice. "You can't kill the boogeyman."

"If he bleeds, he can be killed," a new voice said, close to them. Holding his cracked ribs in pain, Noah Bennet leaned on the wall by the Hawkins family. "He knows how everything works, that's his power. His original power...he knows how his own body works in perfect detail, and he's using his telekinesis to keep himself alive; to keep on ticking."

Bennet released a grunt of discomfort, as he let himself slide down the wall to sit at D.L.'s side. "I should have killed him when I had the chance. But he's using most of his concentration to stay alive now. His options are getting limited. He's like a wounded tiger, now's the time he's most dangerous."

"What can we do to help?" Niki asked. "There's got to be something!"

The man with the horn-rimmed glasses shook his head. "It's all in Peter's hands now. He's the only one that can end this."

If Petrelli's ears had pricked up at the mention of his name, his face didn't betray it. He let Claire help him to his feet as both of them observed Sylar doing the same on his own, albeit with a lot more effort. He felt the cheerleader shaking in his arms with fear, and it wasn't until then that he realized that he was embracing her.

'What for?' he wondered. 'For comfort? To protect her? Or is it… something else?'

This was neither the time nor the place to examine such thoughts. He wondered if there ever would be such a time.

"What now?" the cheerleader asked. "What do we do, Peter?"

'As if I had the slightest…' "You go back to your father," the man tried to sound calm as he separated himself from her. "I'll take care of this."

"Peter, you don't have to do this alone-"

"PETER!!" Sylar roared. He was plugging the wound on his chest with his hand, and his face was a mask of pure rage. "PETER PETRELLI!!"

"Go. Now," the nurse repeated intensely to his niece. "Please."

Claire finally yielded and nodded in agreement. She retreated, hurriedly moving back while alternatively looking at her uncle and Sylar.

"Give it up, Sylar!" Peter yelled. He elegantly levitated and floated until he was close to the psycho. He did it more for show than anything else, wishing he could convince the enemy to just lie down and die once and for all. "This is over, and you know it."

The young man once called Gabriel Gray merely shook his head. Sylar's eyes shone full of hatred and madness, with such fierce intensity that they seemed to be burning coals. "It's not over. Not by a long shot."

There was something wrong here, and Peter didn't like it one bit. A deep sense of apprehension settled down in the pit of his stomach and refused to go. The intensity of the blaze in Sylar's eyes was becoming brighter by the second. It wasn't only madness that caused it.

"Sylar, don't do this," Peter warned him, even though he was not sure exactly what he was warning against. "You are going down, don't try to drag everybody else with you. I won't let you."

"You still don't get it, do you Peter?" the watchmaker chuckled bitterly. "I was born to be special…"

"We're all special." Damn it, but that sounded clichéd even to his own ears.

"Yes. Just like Mohinder suspected, all the members of our species are special, but I am also… unique. And tomorrow, tomorrow Peter, everybody will know and remember my name. Everybody will forever remember the name of Sylar."

'Oh, shit!' Peter thought in numb horror, as he saw the glowing hands and realized the murderer was going to use Ted's stolen power to end it all.

The radiance was now spreading throughout the psychopath's whole body, as if each and every one of the pores of his skin were pulsating with living, destructive energy. Peter could feel the heat emanating from him and he knew he couldn't waste even a second more. He moved forward, trying to grab the enemy.

His heart raced like a wild stallion. In his mind, a decision had already been made. Petrelli knew he couldn't let Sylar destroy New York, just like he wouldn't have allowed himself to do so. If he couldn't stop the deranged lunatic from exploding, he would fly him up into the sky and let him detonate out of harm's way. If he couldn't get himself away from the blast wave in time, or failed to regenerate afterwards…

Well, Peter thought about all the brave people that had been gathered here tonight, by chance or fate, and considered his own life a price fair enough to pay.

But, of course, Sylar was not going to collaborate with that plan. As soon as he noticed Peter moving, he pointed his free hand at Petrelli and released a controlled burst of energy. In short, it was a nuclear strike at point blank range. It sent Peter flying once again, his clothes and hair enveloped in flames, his eyes blinded by the pure white flash.

His body traced an upward arc, burning not only with fire, but with a pain so intense that his mind threatened to shut down completely to escape from it; to run away from the truth - that he had failed, like his mother had predicted he would. He had been weak and now nothing, nobody would stop the exploding man.

'He is ruled by insecurities, he is weak...' Angela Petrelli's voice sounded in his head, obliterating everything else, even the cry of his own name in the distance coming from Claire's lips.

All of a sudden, strong arms held his body as he reached the zenith of his burning flight. He was embraced and in a delicious rapture, and Peter thought it was finally all over. He was dead now, and angels were taking him away to his eternal reward.

"Peter," he heard Nathan's voice. "I'm here, Peter. I've got you."

"Nathan?" Petrelli growled, hissing air though destroyed lungs. "Is that you? What are you doing here?"

He felt himself being floated down and gently placed on the pavement. There were hands on his body, strong male hands comforting him. "You get in trouble and I drop everything to fix it. Isn't that how things work?"

Now Peter knew it was a dream. Because they'd had that same conversation in Texas, back in the jail cell that he'd temporarily ended up in after rescuing Claire from Sylar's first attack. It had been a dream, had it not?

"No Nathan, the bomb...I couldn't... I'm sorry..."

"Shhh, it's alright, Peter. Everything's going to be alright."

And then there were other hands touching him, smaller, warmer. Claire. "Peter," he heard his niece's voice, and felt the tears in her words. "Peter..."

"Mom was right..." the young nurse cried with sightless eyes. "We can't stop it... It's all been for nothing..."

Nathan gently let his younger brother rest on the ground, supported by Claire's arms. He had finally flown into the midst of the battlefield after abandoning Angela and all her plans, only to see his little brother receiving the impact of Sylar's nuclear strike; and had only been able to grab him in mid-air before Peter crashed down to the ground. His sibling's ravaged and burned body was almost too painful to look at directly. The responsibility of what had happened weighed heavily on the eldest Petrelli brother's shoulders.

Yet, he managed a small smile as he shook his head and looked into the eyes of his biological daughter. "You were right. The future is not written in stone."

Claire looked back at him, her eyes full of tears. She shook her head in denial, already knowing what the Congressman intended to do, and not wanting to believe it. He simply smiled again, and placed a tender kiss on her cheek. Her tears were salty on his lips as he whispered. "You'll have to take care of him now."

"You were right all along, Peter," Nathan continued, turning to his brother. "You saved the cheerleader, so we could save the world. And we will, we will."

He stood up and started to walk backwards, away from him, towards Sylar. "I love you, Peter."

"Nathan, no," Peter coughed, still blind but far from stupid. "What are you going to do? Nathan? No!"

But Nathan Petrelli didn't say another word. His throat was too tight, too concentrated on holding back the tears as he turned around to face the exploding man.

Sylar had fallen down to one knee. The blow to Peter had depleted all his strength, he could barely do anything more than to keep himself alive as the frequency of his radiant pulses grew exponentially.

He raised his eyes to meet Nathan's. They were full of hatred, and impotence too as the suited man walked next to him and, without a word, grabbed him with both hands beneath his armpits.

And then Nathan flew straight up, taking the human nuclear bomb with him.

"Nathan, no!" Peter cried, shaking in Claire's embrace. "NATHAN!!!"

---O---

One second, and they had already cleared Manhattan's skyline.

Two seconds and Nathan and Sylar were well past MACH 1, breaking the sound barrier as Petrelli accelerated faster and faster.

Five seconds, fifteen thousand feet of altitude. As Nathan pulverized all climb rate and vertical speed records known to man, the heat emanating from Sylar's body became scalding, and started burning the newly-elected Congressman through his suit. He didn't let the madman go, though, even when he started struggling in his grasp. Petrelli ignored the enraged screams and insults coming from Sylar's mouth. He wouldn't let go.

Seven seconds, well into the stratosphere now and past the cloud layer. Beneath their feet, the Five Boroughs area had become a solid mass of light. They could even see the East Coast shoreline, from down in Baltimore all the way up to Connecticut. Embracing Sylar became a searing pain itself. Blisters appeared in Nathan's skin, and it was impossible to breathe without coughing.

Still, Nathan couldn't let go.

Fifteen seconds. Roughly fifty kilometers up in the dark night sky, where the stratosphere began to give way to the ionosphere. It had gotten damned cold. Oxygen became sparse. They should both have been unconscious due to the g-force acceleration alone, and yet they weren't.

Radiation poisoning was severe, lethal. Nonetheless the Congressman kept flying upwards, faster and faster until he was so high he could see the curvature of Earth, and the sun rising, far away in the east.

It was breathtakingly beautiful.

Nathan stopped, and opened his arms. They were so high now that they had passed beyond the exosphere, the upper limit of the Earth's atmosphere itself. And although he and Sylar immediately started to fall down, the optical effect was of them floating weightless and drifting away from each other.

He saw horror and fear in Sylar's eyes, and his mouth forming a scream of denial, but Nathan was already deaf by this point, blood pouring out of his ears, nose and eyes, which froze over immediately after leaving his body and became tiny floating rubies. He twisted away, turning his back on the homicidal lunatic and facing the sunrise.

It was beautiful, oh so beautiful up there in the sky, where everything was perfect and calm. Where there was freedom and everything was as it should be.

Where Nathan Petrelli, the flying man, was truly happy.

Twenty seconds, and Sylar reached critical mass.

A second sun was briefly born at Nathan's back. He closed his eyes as the white light finally enveloped him in its deadly embrace. He thought of his home, of his family; of Heidi and his sons, of Peter and Claire, and even his mother.

And he knew he had done right.

---O---

In the end, Charles Deveaux had been proved right, even though no one would ever know it.

It hadn't been strength that had saved the world just now. It had been heart.

It had been love.

---O---

Down at Kirby Plaza, it didn't seem like victory to the survivors of this terrible night.

Cradled in Claire's arms, Peter Petrelli finally healed from his terrible wounds, as his heart and soul broke down and withered away.

His niece saw it, Peter's eyes gaining back their sight just in time to witness the final act of such a tragic play. The streak of condensed steam left in Nathan's wake, the supersonic boom as he broke the sound barrier. The ring of fire, high, high up in the sky as Sylar fulfilled the prophecy of the exploding man.

Someone was crying, but it wasn't him. It was Claire, crying for the birth father she would now never truly know, rocking his body as hers shook with grief.

Peter couldn't cry along with her. He simply couldn't feel a thing.

He heard the petite blonde calling his name as people started gathering around them. He saw faces hovering over him. Bennet. Mohinder. The blonde woman with the super-strength. A dark-skinned boy with curly hair. A little girl.

Peter heard voices, asking, wondering. Above all of them, he heard Claire calling for him over and over.

But he couldn't answer.

Peter felt himself detaching from all that surrounded him. Everything was becoming blurred and distant, just like when he had gone into that coma in Texas. He was flying away, escaping from the pain.

He was...

...gone.

---O---

To be continued...