Author's Notes: This story would not be possible without the contributions of fellow user dori4n, who's fellow love of this smaller "Heroes" ship, chatting about head canon, and Skype roleplaying helped to inspire and create this story. So if you like it please, make sure to check out their page and stories as well.

[Please see bottom of each chapter for translations to Japanese words or phrases used by the characters.]

He came back again. Or the delusion had. The immortal wasn't certain that he even cared anymore if he was actually hearing his old friend's voice, or just imagining that he was, it wasn't as though he was ever going to get out of this place. He would be here, dying but not rotting, and always coming back long after the time traveler passed from this plane. "If I was sure you wouldn't find a way out, I would give you air but..." A distinctive sniff, was he crying, the blond wondered a little surprised. Tears for him? He hardly deserved any such tenderness, or sympathy from him. "How can I know you wont just get out and kill me. You tried. You wanted to. You wanted to kill everyone, including me."

No Carp, the blond thought desperately. "Never you Carp," the ageless man whispered shaking his head despite the fact that there was no possible way that this man would hear or see him. Would know that this was not true. He would live, and die believing this. That his own one-time hero had wanted him to die. That he still did.

He would have no right to. After all the atrocities which he had committed over an unnaturally long life, in so many different names, but always with the same face? Burying him alive like this was understandable, the only thing that might have been more merciful would have been to kill him, but Hiro was hardly a killer, and he would not have wished his blood on the time traveler's hands no matter how much he had thought he did once.

But more importantly he couldn't find that bloodlust and thirst for revenge within him anymore. More and more he was beginning to doubt whether or not it had ever been there.

"I saw you on the roof. I know you killed my father. I... Couldn't believe it was you. I couldn't believe you were still alive... I couldn't believe you were doing this." Ah, yes Kaito Nakamura. The company. His proteges once, until they had found a new vision for the world, turned their back on him and left him to languish, forgotten in the his cell in the basement of one of the facilities he had thought and helped to build. Did he regret killing him?

No. In the end, in spite of all of the revelations he had experienced over a very long life, and what seemed an eternity in this box, he wasn't entirely repentant that he had. But hearing his one time companion and friend clearly choked up with emotion, he did feel sorry at least for having hurt him. How could he have ever thought that any injury to this man was simply collateral damage?

"Once... Before everything went to hell... We were friends, weren't we?" Silence. "I hope we were..." Yes Carp, he thought sadly. We were friends once. Before I screwed it all up, the immortal thought defeated as he heard the man take his leave of him once more.

.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.

He sat down, Adam thought listening to the distinctive rustling of clothes, the grass bending and blades breaking under the weight. The immortal made an effort to shallow and slow his breathing. If he'd bothered to sit beside the grave he meant to stay awhile, wanted to talk. Something was bothering him. The least he could do was try to be an attentive listener and postpone dying and regenerating until he was finished, and had left again. It was likely an unnecessary precaution. He'd long stopped crying to be let out, screaming to the heavens, or even talking most of the time. It wasn't as if there were anyone to hear him anyway.

"I miss you." Well now this was interesting, the blond thought, brows furrowing in confusion, his heart giving a hopeful sort of skip he couldn't afford to think too much about. The Carp missed him? The younger man's voice drifting down through the Earth to his eyes, seemed to reflect a similar confusion and disbelief. "How can I? How can I miss you? I... It's wrong, I have no right to." His voice is shaking now, as he tries to rationalize with himself. "I have friends, I have support, I am not alone and you... You are the enemy, you are the Nemesis, my Nemesis! I can't miss you!"

These last words sound angry, though whether he is angry with the man he has buried 6 feet under, but cannot seem to forget, or with himself, the immortal can't be entirely certain. There is a long silence that falls and seems to stretch into the infinite between them before he speaks again. And when he does, the shakiness, and shallow breaths betray that his emotions have gotten the best of him, he is crying. "I can't... I have no right. I put you here. I brought you to this point. It's all because of me, of what I've done. It was not supposed to be like that... No..."

I put myself here, Carp, the blond thinks shaking his head. He had had his ideas, a warp twisted idea that somehow he was doing the right thing. That he had the right to play God, to call a mass reset. He had given Hiro no other choice but to kill him, and even then the time traveler had proven himself a better man than that. And if this tiny man had not 'broken history' by meeting him, teaching him to be a hero, falling for Yaeko... Then the immortal most certainly had in the ages since. Who was to say what was supposed to happen, how it should be, which timeline was the right one anymore.

The silence that fell once more lasted for hours. At least, to the best of the immortal's estimation, marking the time only by the changes in noise around him, the sound of crickets softly drifting down to him. So long without words that he began to wonder if somehow this weary visitor had someone slipped away without his notice. Or perhaps even that he was just a figment of his imagination since he never heard him walk away. But after a time there was a long, and sad sounding sigh, the rustling of clothing, grass, the scrapings of shoes, and he heard the other man leaving again.

"I miss you too... Hiro," he admitted softly.