Just then, Hiro appeared from nowhere and collapsed in a bleeding heap on the floor.

Instantly, Sylar was forgotten as Peter stared in horror at his friend, staining the carpet crimson with his blood that was pumping out too fast, too much blood to mean anything good. "Damn it!" he said frantically, dropping to the floor beside his friend, rolling him over to check the damage. "Damn it, Hiro, what the hell?" He had a gunshot wound in his chest—not close enough to be a heart-shot, but judging from the torn way Hiro was breathing, he'd probably punctured a lung and that was bad, way beyond the capabilities of a former nurse. He pushed hard on the wound, desperately trying to stop the bleeding, glancing up for help.

Sylar was already on it, a cell phone to his ear and a concerned look on his face that Peter had never seen from his enemy, a worry so genuine that it confused him. "Yes, hello," he was saying urgently. "We've got a gunshot victim here, Chandrah M. Suresh High School, 1387 Philadelphia Drive. Please hurry, it's very serious—"

Suddenly, the door burst open, Eve, Monty, and Simon drawn back by the noise—they stood frozen, wide-eyed at the bloody carpet and the injured man, and Peter thought no, they don't need to see this! "Mr. Grey," Eve was saying in a small voice. "What…"

"Monty, come here," Sylar (or Mr. Grey, he supposed—that was what they seemed to call him here) said in a crisp, no-nonsense tone. Simon looked like he was about to protest, but Monty trotted obediently over, reluctant to come close to Hiro but still doing as he'd been told. Mr. Grey bent down until he was eye-to-eye with the boy, and said, "This man is badly hurt, Monty—we're going to try to get him to the hospital, but we're worried that he might die. Do you think you can help him?"

"You can't ask him to do that," Simon said sharply, stepping forward, but Mr. Grey held up a hand, and the brother was stopped in place by the force of his authority.

"Monty, can you help him?" he repeated.

Monty's face was screwed up, twisted with several different emotions, but determination seemed to be winning. "I'll try," he said.

What the hell? Peter was thinking bewilderedly, going crazy from the sound of Hiro's wet, labored breathing, watching as the boy knelt beside him and placed both his hands on Hiro's shuddering chest. He closed his eyes, eyebrows shooting down in a fierce, endearing way, as if trying to force something out of himself. His knuckles went white, pressing so hard that Hiro began coughing, and Peter started to get worried—the boy was shaking, teeth gritted—

Then suddenly he broke contact, falling backwards away from Hiro, ashen-faced and frightened. "I can't," he said miserably. "I'm sorry, I can't. It's not working."

Immediately, Simon was at his side, murmuring soothing words, glaring daggers at the rest of them. "It's okay," he said, voice thick with anger. "It's okay, Monty, you don't have to do this." He pulled Monty away over to the side of the room and hugged him, keeping the boy's head tucked into his shoulder, making sure he didn't see Hiro bleeding out on the floor.

The paramedics had finally come, streaming in the door with professional practiced quickness. They crowded around Hiro, blocking him from view, and suddenly Peter was as helpless as everyone else.

---

Peter felt dead. He felt like he'd been sitting here for hours—he had been sitting here for hours, as still as Hiro on the hospital bed. Waiting. Waiting for something to happen, for Hiro to breathe on his own, to sit up and grab his sword and tell Peter to get going, they had work to do—they had to save the world. At this rate, Peter was thinking the world wasn't going to get saved. He wasn't sure he could do it without Hiro. He wasn't sure he knew how.

He'd lost so many people to the place their world had become, to the quiet violent struggles that made up their wars. There had been so many of them before it all began, and now there was just…him and Hiro. And it was about to be just him.

Punctured lung, they'd told him. They'd reinflated it, put him on a respirator, but the tissue wasn't knitting, and there was still blood in his lungs. He was choking. Complications, they'd called it, when he demanded to know why they weren't doing more. Hiro was going to die in this clean white hospital, in another universe, and he wasn't even going to know it was happening.

"I'm sorry," said a voice behind him, making him jump out of his chair, all paranoid nerves.

It was Mr. Grey (Sylar) behind him, which made him even more nervous, but so far this incarnation of the killer hadn't done anything threatening, so his forced his hackles down. "Don't say that," he said testily. "He's not dead, there's nothing to be sorry about."

Mr. Grey didn't seem to take offense at his tone, sitting down on the chair beside Peter. "Mohinder told me you're from a parallel universe. This man—I assume he's Hiro Nakamura, from your dimension?"

Peter couldn't muster up anything past a short "Yes," still watching Hiro as if he thought he might die if he took his eyes away.

"Akane wants to see him, but her dad—our Hiro Nakamura—won't let her," Mr. Grey continued conversationally. "He says they could cause a rift, and I'm no physicist but I'm inclined to agree." A pause. "I'm Gabriel, by the way."

Peter didn't respond, just set his chin on his hands and continued to watch Hiro, watching the monitors beep dully, keeping him alive.

"I'm getting the feeling that, in your universe, I'm not one of the good guys," Gabriel said delicately.

"Not really, no," Peter told him, but just speaking it out loud helped him deal with the Sylar-doppelganger, got it off his chest. "Look, I'm here for a reason—I'm supposed to find out about your dimension so we can map it in a timeline. Would you mind telling me about this school of yours? I've never seen anything like it?"

Gabriel smiled fondly, glancing down at his hands. "The Chandrah Suresh School for Specials," he explained. "Ever read any of the X-Men comics? We got the idea from them, embarrassingly enough."

"Who did?" Peter asked, curious enough to drag his gaze away from his friend. "You and Mohinder?"

"Me and Mohinder's father, Chandrah," Gabriel corrected. "He died just before the school opened, hence the name. He—I guess you could say that he saved me. He took me in just as I was about to die of despair and normality. He told me that I was special."

But you weren't, Peter thought. He'd heard this story. Dr. Suresh had found no abilities in Sylar, nothing special about him at all…until the first time he stole someone else's power, smashed their head open and made himself special. He kept the thought to himself—perhaps it was different in this timeline. "He found my ability to—figure things out, to see how they worked, how the pieces fit together. He told me I was just the kind of person he'd been looking for, to help him with his project. They were out there, you see—scared, lonely, growing up with nobody to explain to them what was happening to them. We could help them."

"If you don't mind me asking," Peter said, wondering if this was okay to speak about, wondering why it seemed to be a sensitive subject. "Monty Petrelli? Can he—heal people?"

"Theoretically," Gabriel said with an unhappy smile. "He's got the ability, it's just sort of…stuck."

"Stuck? What do you mean, stuck?" Peter said crossly, imagining Monty laying his hands on Hiro and the color coming back into his friend's face, Hiro sucking in a breath and sitting up—

"Actually, that's sort of your fault," Sylar said sardonically. "When you died—well, let's just say that Nathan wanted his son to fix you, and he couldn't."

"Oh," Peter said lamely, thinking of the pain in Monty's eyes when he couldn't heal Hiro, the flashing protective anger in Simon's. "What about Simon?"

"Simon's just your run-of-the-mill telekinetic," Gabriel explained. "His real ability is protecting Monty from his father."

"He doesn't—" Peter said, appalled.

"He's never touched the boy," Gabriel corrected quickly. "It's not like that. It's just…Nathan hates him for not saving you. He tries not to, and he tries to hide it, but Monty knows. You can see it in his eyes, and in the breakdown of his ability. Ever since your death in this universe, he hasn't been able to heal predictably—I don't know what Monty would do without his brother constantly telling him it's all right."

Peter had his mouth open to say something—he wasn't sure what, perhaps that he was sorry—when suddenly, there was a sound in the hall that made his head snap around, made him jump out his seat and ignore everything else. Nathan. Nathan's voice. Nathan outside in the hall.

Gabriel jumped out his seat as well, grabbing Peter by the arm and dragging him bodily across the room, shoving him down on an unoccupied bed and pulling the curtain shut in front of him. "He cannot see you," Gabriel hissed when he tried to protest. "Do you know what it would do to him? Stay here."

Peter gave up and let Gabriel pull the curtain around him, burning with the thought of being feet from his brother and not seeing him, not seeing him alive as he hadn't in years. What about what it'll do to me? he complained to himself. I've sort of got the same situation, don't I?

He heard the door open, three sets of footsteps coming in, and he tucked his feet up to the frame of the bed, dutifully hiding from his brother despite the fact that all he could think about was hugging him. "Mr. Grey," came Nathan's voice, curt and crisp as September air, emotionless.

"Mr. Petrelli," Gabriel murmured perfunctorily back.

"I'm sorry about this—I realize this isn't exactly a petting zoo, but my boys really wanted to see this other Hiro Nakamura. Apparently they saw him injured, or something like that, and you know how sensitive they are." He spat the word like he couldn't stand to have it in his mouth, and Peter was shocked at the sullen bitterness in his brother's voice. He'd never heard Nathan like this—sarcastic and sharp, yes, even mean…but never this dark, never so poisonously angry. "They wanted to see how he was doing."

"I'll be honest with you," Gabriel said evenly. "He's not doing well. The doctors aren't sure—" He stopped, perhaps remembering Peter hiding behind the curtain, the furious helpless way Peter had looked at Hiro.

There was an awkward pause, humans trying to deal with the idea of death. "I couldn't fix him," Monty said suddenly, voice sounding thin in the sound-swallowing room. "I tried."

Another long silence, but a tense one, charged with years of family issues—Peter couldn't see Nathan's face but he could imagine it, his brother's chin dropped to his chest, that small vein in his jaw working as he tried to control himself, to fight back the thousand cutting things that his mind invented so easily. "It's okay, Monty," he said finally, and he almost managed to sound sincere—almost. Peter was sure his son could tell. "You don't have to."

"Dad, I think we'd better go," Simon's voice bit into the tension, quick and concerned. "I've, um, got a paper I need to finish."

"We should get going," Nathan agreed. "It was nice to see you, Mr. Grey."

Peter heard retreating footsteps and a door opening—closing. Finally. He tore the curtain away and hopped off the bed—then froze. Monty Petrelli was still here—standing by the bed—how could they have left him, how could they have not noticed? What is he doing here? What is he doing, period? Peter moved quickly forward, came up beside the boy just in time to see Monty lay his hands on Hiro's chest.

"Hey—Monty," Peter said, confused but feeling as if he should stop the kid, feeling as if something was wrong. "Monty, what are you doing?"

Monty was ignoring him, all attention focused on his hands, and Peter remembered his first try, the torn-apart look on Monty's face when he failed the things he shouldn't have attempted. This wasn't healthy—he had to stop it.

Suddenly, Hiro sat up.

He lunged upright like a drowning person breaking water, gasping like he'd never breathed before and thought he might not breathe again, desperate sucking breaths. Monty fell back, dizzy and frightened, eyes popping wide as saucers. Peter was grabbing at Hiro's arm, checking him for wounds but the gunshot was just gone, his chest as whole as it had ever been. Healed.

"Peter—" Hiro was saying breathlessly, bewilderedly. "What—where am I? What is this?"

Peter turned back to look at Monty; the boy was standing straight now, pale as chalk with his chin lifted defiantly, small fists clenched at his side. "They said I didn't have to," he said. "They said it was okay but it wasn't." He fixed Peter with a look, dead-on determination far too intense for his age. "I had to."

---

AUTHOR'S NOTE: It's coming a easier now--I think the block might be broken. Simon and Monty helped. I liked them. Anyway, thank you, everyone who encouraged me! These past couple chapters I've literally been writing for you guys, because it was so HARD. If I'd been writing w/o feedback I honestly would have stopped. So thanks! I love my reviewers!