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AN: Well, here we are; my personal idea of how Nathan and Peter survived the explosion at the conclusion of 'How To Stop An Exploding Man'. Hope it meets with your approval; I think I've covered the essential details, but you never know what you might miss

Seeds of the Future

Peter Petrelli knew he was going to die…

… When he jumped from the top of a block of flats, the ground hurtling towards him as his supposed powers of flight failed him…

… As he fell from the roof of Claire's school, struggling with the man he'd come to know as Sylar, feeling a sharp pain in the back of his head…

… As he fell into unconsciousness, his visions playing out the destruction of New York and the death of his would-be allies like it was nothing more than a demented home movie…

… As he lay on the taxicab, his body wracked with agony, seeming unable to fly or even heal from the damage caused after he tried to put Claude's lessons into action…

… As Sylar began to cut into his skull, pinned to the ground like a butterfly trapped in a collection of some sort…

… And as he stood in the centre of Times Square, his body glowing with radiation as he rapidly transformed into the bomb that he had been trying to stop for the last few weeks, staring desperately at the only person left who could end this.

"Do it," he pleaded, as Claire Bennet- blonde, beautiful, innocent Claire Bennet- pointed a gun at him, her hands shaking as she tried to aim the weapon. "Do it! You're the only one, Claire."

He deserved the fate that awaited him now; he may not like it, but he knew for a fact that he deserved it.

Not only because of the fact that he had become the very thing he had wanted to stop and this was the only way to prevent the disaster he'd fought to avert…

But because- even now- looking at the young woman before him, knowing who she was and how she was related to him, he couldn't stop himself from wanting to take her in his arms and kiss her… do… things to her… remove her clothes… touch her… feel her fingers on him… All things he should not be thinking about when his newly-discovered niece was the subject of the thoughts in question.

He deserved to die for thinking of her like that.

But, even now, Claire either didn't see how he felt about her, or just couldn't bring herself to do it in spit of that.

"Tell me there's another way," she sobbed as she stared at him, her face wet with tears as the gun shook in her hand. "Please…"

"Shoot me!" Peter insisted, trying not to pay too much attention to the pain in her eyes; he couldn't afford to focus on what he was doing to her, or he would lose the resolve he so desperately needed right now. "There's no other way!"

For a moment, as Claire tightened her grip on the gun, Peter braced himself for the bullet that would soon lodge itself in his body somewhere, the bullet that would finally end all the thoughts he wished he didn't have but could no more stop than he could stop his own heart from beating…

Then, with a brief SWOOSH! sound, Nathan landed in front of Claire, positioning himself directly between his brother and his daughter as he turned to look at the young blonde before him.

"Yes, there is, Claire," he said, his voice soft as he pushed the gun in Claire's hand down towards the ground. Feeling the power surge through him, Peter tried to take a step back, even as he knew it would accomplish nothing; according to Issac's painting, the explosion would take out all of New York, and he thought stepping back a few feet would give Nathan and Claire any kind of protection from what he was about to do?

"The future isn't written in stone," Nathan said as he looked at Claire, his eyes reflecting his concern for his daughter for the first time since Peter had seen them together.

For a moment, Peter almost wished that he could see them continue to develop that bond, even as he knew how hard it would be for him to see Claire be accepted all the more by his family, leaving him unable to do anything more than look and dream of what could never be…

"I took his power, Nathan," he said, drawing his brother's attention back to him as he tried to convey the severity of the current situation to him. "I can't control it. I can't do anything-"

"I'm not leaving you, Peter," Nathan interrupted, looking critically at his brother. Even as Peter tried to back away in an admittedly futile effort to protect Nathan, his body bursting with light as the power contained within him grew, Nathan continued to walk towards him, a resolved expression on his face as he moved.

"There's another way to end this," Nathan said simply, as he stood in front of his brother. "And you know it."

Peter shook his head; he knew exactly what Nathan meant, and he wasn't going to allow it.

"I can't let you die," he said, as he stared at Nathan.

"And I can't let everyone else," his brother replied simply.

With that, he turned to look briefly at Claire, before turning back to smile slightly at Peter. "You saved the cheerleader... so we could save the world."

With that simple sentence, for the first time since his powers had first manifested, Peter finally found it within himself to see Nathan as his brother rather than a potential enemy.

"I love you, Nathan," he said, allowing himself a slight smile as he looked at his brother.

"I love you too," Nathan replied, briefly returning the smile before he looked up at the sky, staring reflectively at the stars before turning back to look at him. "You ready?"

"Yeah," Peter replied, nodding in response.

It was a slight lie, of course- how could you ever be ready to die?-, but, when the alternative- die and take New York with him- was even more unacceptable, he had no choice but to say that he was ready.

If nothing else, at least Claire might feel less pain at what was about to happen if she thought he had accepted his fate…

With that, Nathan stepped forward, wrapped his arms around Peter, and flew them both straight up into the sky, moving at a speed that would have made most aeroplanes look slow.

As the two of them neared the top of their flight, Peter smiled slightly as he allowed himself a brief glance downwards at the sight of New York spread out below them.

He was out of harm's way.

Claire and the others would live no matter what happened now; he doubted he would even damage the highest of skyscrapers if he exploded this far off the ground.

Now all he had to do was ensure that his brother got out of this unscratched, and he could die with a clear conscience.

Staring resolutely at Nathan, he smiled slightly as he 'felt' the familiar feeling of flight powers- the first powers he'd ever copied- fill him once again, temporarily breaking through the pain of Sprague's radioactive powers because of Nathan's close proximity; at least that part of his hastily put-together plan seemed to have worked out as he'd hoped it would.

Here goes nothing… he reflected to himself.

Before Nathan could react, Peter, exerting all the superhuman strength he must have copied from that blonde woman in Times Square- he briefly regretted never having had the chance to know her better-, broke free of Nathan's grip on his arms, simultaneously hurling himself away from the skyscrapers below him as he sent Nathan flying in the opposite direction. He didn't know what way he was going, but that didn't matter; all that mattered was that he wasn't in a position to hurt anybody in New York when he exploded…

Then, just as his brother vanished into the distance of the starry night sky, he felt the energy that he'd been fighting to contain since the whole thing started be expelled from his body. As the raw power burst from all around him, Peter desperately strained to access Matt Parkman's telepathy to determine his brother's location, praying that Nathan had managed to get far enough away that the explosion wouldn't affect him. He vaguely registered something that sounded like Nathan practically screaming in pain and rage at what Peter had done, but the pain seemed to be purely mental. Physically, it seemed to Peter that Nathan was far enough away from him at the time of the explosion to escape the worst of it, while his body- enhanced just enough to endure the friction of travelling at the speed of sound without any damage- was strong enough to cope with what parts of the explosion did reach him.

Nathan would survive.

He'd be a bit singed, and might need to go through a quick decontamination before he made contact with anybody else in case there was any residual radiation on him from the explosion, but he'd survive nevertheless.

As Peter felt himself hurtle towards the distant shoreline, the explosive energy that had once burst from his body rapidly fading, he briefly allowed himself to wonder if he could say the same for himself. Judging by the speed and direction in which he was flying/falling (He wasn't sure if he couldn't control his descent in his current state, but he couldn't summon the mental energy to try), it looked like he'd end up hitting the ground somewhere near one of the main roads out of New York. It wasn't going to be a pleasant place to land, but at least he'd be far enough away from the city to avoid hurting anyone, to say nothing of giving his body time for the radiation to 'die' if it still remained at least somewhat radioactive after his… death.

He was under no illusions that he could survive this one; after the amount of energy he'd just expended, he considered himself lucky that he was actually still conscious in the first place.

As the ground drew closer and closer to him, he allowed himself one last thought before he met the surface below him, his entire being focused on one person, and the feelings she'd awoken in him that he knew he shouldn't possess but couldn't stop himself from feeling.

Claire…

Even though he knew it was wrong with every part of his being- even though he knew that, even if he somehow survived this crash, he would never be able to be with her the way he wanted to be-, a part of him would always love her.

Then there was a sudden pain in the back of his head as he struck the ground- for a moment he was surprised that his head was still attached to the rest of him-, and then he knew nothing more.