Usually when Peter woke up in the morning, he felt refreshed. Renewed. A single moment when he was moving between conscious and unconscious when it was like coming up from the grave, not remembering who or what he was but only that he was alive, and there was another day open for him. But his dreams had not been good, and his life had not been good, and today he didn't feel refreshed. His mouth was dry and his thoughts were lead-weighted with the reality he hadn't been able to shake in nearly ten hours of sleep. It was a chore to sit up—he had to force himself to swing his legs out of bed and to stand on the chilly concrete floor. There was nothing pulling him up today, hadn't been for a long time. He had to make it on his own motivation, and it was getting just a little less possible every morning.

He walked past his reflection in the mirror without looking—the quick flash of himself in his peripheral vision was enough to scare him. He could see himself hardening, retracting, rotting. He could remember Omicron-Peter, and his eyes with such honest blank hate, the all-over darkness and anger in the man who it would be so easy to become. He couldn't help it—it was like falling from a cliff and not even grabbing for the edge, paralyzed by circumstance and a rapidly decreasing ability to care. All he had to do was look out the window and see the New York gray, the soot and dirt and smog and small, smutty people with their eyes on the pavement. And there it was, the bitterness, wanting to hate the city and blame it and let it chew him in half.

He walked into the kitchen, passing Hiro at the counter without a word, and Hiro's look let him know that his friend was feeling it, too—the depression like intensified gravity, trying to pull them flat to the ground. Wordlessly, Hiro handed him a cup of coffee, and Peter sat with his cup in hand on the nearest stool, facing the window and not turning, staring masochistically out at the thousand shades of grey. Hiro sat down next to him and they were still—marble-carved park statues, completely out of momentum. Peter felt the coffee growing cold under his hand, and he felt like he would never move again.

Perhaps it was a defense mechanism; perhaps his mind felt his body going sedentary, inert, and instinct kicked in to correct the situation. Suddenly, without quite knowing what he was doing, Peter jumped out of his stool, surprising himself with the abrupt motion. "I—" he said at Hiro's startled look, trying to explain what he was doing. "I don't know. I have to go. I have to do something. I'll be back."

He closed his eyes and ripped himself out of the Loft, heading somewhere on pure reflex, teleporting away to wherever his body seemed to want to take him. He only had time to hope he knew what he was doing before it was done, and he was somewhere completely new.

His first impression was of color—not the primary Technicolor of Iota universe, but normality, greens and browns and blues that were such a stark contrast to his own destroyed New York City. He could see the skyline in the background, whole and unruined, and there was grass under his feet in an actual lawn, which was certainly not normal for him now. He was so absorbed in the change, sucking it into himself like sunlight, that it was not until someone stepped right in front of him that he remembered why he was there.

He jumped back instinctively, remembering all the responsibility that came with this trip, but the person was not alarming—it was only himself. Strange, that he wasn't frightened at the sight of his own face anymore, but in truth it was much less frightening than some of the people he'd met. After the last universe, though, he was decidedly on his guard—so he backed away from himself, watching warily for attack.

Rho-Peter put his hands up immediately, smiling—laughing. Not even alarmed, not even seeming surprised. "Hey," Rho-Peter was saying "Hey, it's all right. Don't worry." Well, this is a new one, Peter thought. He swept the area again for some kind of trick, any double-cross to undermine the apparent perfection, but all he saw was a familiar background, a yard and a house—his house, the old, ostentatious Petrelli mansion. Just his house, and Rho-Peter smiling like he knew him. "It's okay," Rho-Peter repeated. "I know who you are."

Peter snapped his eyes back to the man, alarmed and confused. "What?" he said, ready to bolt or disappear or defend himself. "How do you know who I am?"

"Because I was you," Rho-Peter explained. "I've been you. I came to exactly this place on exactly this day and time. I knew you were coming."

"Wait," Peter said, trying to wrap him mind around this new twist. "This…is the future?"

"This is a future," Rho-Peter allowed. "It's certainly the one we ended up with. This is what we got when we saved the world."

"You did?" Peter said, feeling himself start to light up inside, coming open to the hope that there was a light at the end of the tunnel, or even that there was an end to the tunnel at all. "You mean you actually did it? The bomb went off and then you went back and fixed it?"

"Sure did," Rho-Peter confirmed with a smile—a surprisingly real smile with none of the bitterness Peter was used to seeing on his face. "I went to every universe you have, Peter—the school universe and the Simone-in-the-kitchen universe and yikes, the stripper universe. Wasn't that a nightmare? Yeah, I did all of them, and in the end it turned out just like we wanted."

Peter could feel himself starting to trust this person—because of his knowledge and the proof of his experiences, but mostly because of the hope he was offering like a lifeline, saying all the right things to bring to life a person nearly dead, light and resuscitation. "Really?" he said, animated, thrilled. "How? How did you do it?"

"Ah," Rho-Peter said ruefully. "You know I can't tell you that. I'll wreck the space-time whatever. But hey, let's not talk about that—come inside! Meet the family, we've got dinner waiting for you."

Before Peter could respond to this odd statement, Rho-Peter was already striding across the so-green, alive and carefully-cut lawn, leading him into the familiar house. "Leah!" he yelled as they got in the door. "Milo! Honey, come in here, come meet Peter!"

There was a clatter of small feet and a slower click of heels, and two children ran down the stairs without checking their momentum in the slightest, barreling into the side of Rho-Peter's legs hard enough to make him stumble back, laughing. One boy and one blond little girl, all energy and big eyes as they looked up at the double of their father. The girl giggled, a little confused but delighted by the trick, and Rho-Peter said, "Milo, Leah, this is your daddy when he was younger. He's come to visit."

A gorgeous blond woman walked in from the side door, drying her hands on a towel as she came into the hall, smiling at him with genuine welcome. It took him a moment to recognize her—he'd only seen her once, in another universe, and hadn't exactly been smiling. "Hi," she said, reaching her hand out to him. "I'm Elle. Just a hint—I'm allergic to roses. Remember that."

"Elle," Rho-Peter complained as Peter shook her hand. "Don't tell him that, you'll ruin it for him! That's a great story!"

"Oh yeah, great," she responded. "Maybe great for dinner parties, babe, but not so great for the one who has to be rushed to the hospital because her face is swelling up like a balloon. Believe me," she said conspiratorially to Peter, "just bring carnations or something. You won't regret it."

"Always the practical one," Rho-Peter said, wrapping an arm around her waist. "Kids, why don't you go set the table? Everyone else will be here soon."

"Everyone else…?" Peter said, still completely disoriented by the happiness that he wasn't used to, didn't quite believe in anymore.

"Well, Peter and Hiro knew you were coming," Elle explained with a grin. "So we figured, why not give you a nice dinner? Of course, we don't remember it, but they've told us how bad things are for you at this point, so we thought the two of you might appreciate a little break."

"Yeah," Peter said, feeling delirious. "Yeah, that's—what do you mean, the two of us?"

"We'll keep everything warm," Rho-Peter said. "Go get Hiro and bring him back—we've already got his place setting."

"Right," Peter said. "Right. Okay. I can do that."

He didn't want to close his eyes on this one, didn't want to take the chance that it wouldn't be there a second time, but he'd seen Hiro this morning and he knew his friend needed this as much as he did. So he quickly threw himself back home, barely waiting for the Loft to materialize before he spotted Hiro, still in the kitchen, and grabbed him. "Hiro!" he said. "Come on, we have to go, it's fantastic, wait till you see!"

Hiro knew instantly that something had gone right—there was an energy to his friend that hadn't been there this morning, a snap to his movements and a spark from his eyes. Peter was very excited about something, and he wasn't going to give Hiro a chance to resist. "What is it?" he tried anyway. "Where are we going?"

"There's this universe," Peter explained hurriedly, words tumbling out over each other. "There's this place where we did it, we saved everybody and everything is perfect and they're making us dinner, come on, we have to go!"

Before Hiro could say another word, Peter was closing his eyes and sending them back, too terrified of missing anything to wait any longer. They appeared back in the entryway of the mansion, and Peter could see Hiro reacting exactly as he had, eyes popping open at the normality and perfection of their surroundings.

"Oh good, you're back," Elle said, crossing the hall with a smile. "Nice to meet you, Hiro, I'm Elle."

Behind them, the doorbell rang, echoing against the marble floors and startling Peter, who wasn't used to the sound anymore. Elle maneuvered between them and pulled the door open, revealing a second Hiro standing on the steps with a redheaded girl and a very small child on her hip. "Hiro, Charlie!" Elle greeted them. "Come on in, we're just about to start." She herded them inside, and as they moved toward the dining room suggested, "Why don't you talk to yourself, Hiro, he looks a little confused."

Peter was glad he wouldn't have to do the explaining—he was so sick of explaining, and now it was one less worry as Rho-Hiro grinned at his double, perfectly happy to tell the story. The doorbell rang again as they filed into the dining room, and Peter turned back instinctively, just in time to see Elle open it again for the last person he'd expected to see and the first he would have wanted—Nathan.

He stood frozen where he was, unsure what to do—dying to go to his brother but knowing it wasn't really his brother at all, not sure of what was acceptable in this situation. Nathan solved the problem for him. He dropped his coat in Elle's arms and crossed the hall in three quick steps, grabbing Peter and pulling him into a hug.

Something inside him broke, something he'd thought was essential for survival but not here, not in the place he was trying to get to, and before he knew it he had nearly collapsed against Nathan, wrapping his arms around his brother's neck and burying his face in his shoulder like he used to when he was eight and he'd skinned his knee. He wasn't sure if he was crying or not—his eyes were stinging but he couldn't quite remember what it felt like, hadn't done it in awhile—but he hoped not, didn't want to dump his emotional baggage on this stranger who was kind enough to pretend to be what he needed. All he could think was that this was his brother, and he'd needed this kind of hug for so long but it hadn't been an option, and now it was and it felt real.

"It's okay," Nathan was saying, hugging him tight enough that it was hard to breathe, but that didn't seem to matter very much. "Everything's fine, Pete. You're going to fix it, everything's going to be fine. It's going to be okay."

---

Peter stared at his empty plate with extreme annoyance, as if it had somehow deviously sucked his food away, contrived some evil plan to finish dinner too quickly. He hated his plate for being empty, because that meant that dinner was over, and dinner being over meant that he had to go. He exchanged looks with Hiro across the table and knew that his friend felt the same way, that it was wonderful just to be here but it would hurt to leave, that they wished—

"Can't we just…stay here forever?" he said before he could think about it, vocalizing what he'd been thinking for the last hour.

"Sorry," Rho-Hiro said ruefully. "You know how it would mess things up."

"The longer you stay, the more you're going to want to stay," Rho-Peter said. "We wish you could. It would make things easier, wouldn't it? We're just going to have to tell you what we were told at this point in our lives—just go quickly and try not to regret, and remember that this is your future, if you work it right. It won't hurt for very long."

Every impulse in his body screaming against it, Peter stood, pushing his chair away from the table. He looked at Hiro, then looked around the rest of the table, storing away this universe in snapshots, trying to burn it into his brain. Nathan and his wife, his kids, Nathan smiling, but most of all Nathan. Claire, who'd come in late and flushed from teaching gymnastics to very energetic students. Hiro and Charlie and their strange, beautiful redheaded baby, and his own children and smart, gorgeous wife. It was a good future.

He took it in one last time and then got ready to sacrifice it, to leave and make it for himself. He knew what was possible now, so there was a reason to keep breathing, a visible goal. He could do this. "Ready?" he asked Hiro, as the people around the table smiled up at him, encouraging, sympathetic.

Hiro's eyes said no but his mouth lied and said, "Ready."

They closed their eyes and disappeared.