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.]
Hiro was not smiling. The smaller, younger man was standing with his arms crossed above his chest, looking as serious as it was possible for a man with such a young and innocent-looking face to look, and took a moment before replying, glancing briefly at Ando.
"Because I wanted to talk to you. Only you. He would not have understood," Hiro replied finally, trying not to show just how much hearing his old nickname had affected him. How he had missed it, in spite of himself.
The time traveler had never looked more serious, or more solemn in all the time Kensei had ever known him, all five feet and six inches of him, he thought suppressing a smile. How long had he screamed, pounding against the confines of the coffin, broken his nails-even fingers, his wrist- only for them to mend again, shouted until his voice was hoarse, until there was no more air left for him to breathe-until he died, only to wake again in the same box, still 6 feet under? How long had he sworn to himself that he would finish what he had tried to start, that he would have his revenge? Sworn that he would kill this man for everything that he had done to him? And when was the exact moment that he had realized he could never have done so, any more than Hiro could have killed him? That in fact, it hadn't been the fact that he had kissed Yaeko that had broken his heart so, but that he hadn't kissed him-and never would. That for all his talk of bravery, his heroism, and all his Carp's idolatry of him as a child, for all Kensei's efforts he would never be the hero that this man had once believed he was. -Would never be good enough. The virus, his plan to purge Earth of everything ugly, evil, tainted, or unworthy was proof enough of that. Where had that gotten him besides buried alive?
"You could have kept my 6 feet under and left him at home, to do that Carp," the ageless man replied finally, shaking his head, for the first time acknowledging that he had in fact heard him when he had come to see him so many times now, waiting to see how he would take this unexpected news.
Hiro was small, not so strong, usually shy, private, raised in the Japanese tradition of honor, and all those things. He was an ordinary man, with an extraordinary gift. Hiro, wanted to be a hero, but he was struggling, and... if he was honest with himself, failing most of the time. Here in front of his one time hero he had to look like Superman, he had to hide every single crack he could because... Because he had condemned him to so many deaths, so much agony that Kensei could do nothing, but hate him now, just as he had hated him then. So he had to remain still, too look strong and unmoved when he replied. "I said talk to you, not at you," but he understood the meaning of Kensei's words and what he was implying. He had heard him. All the times Hiro had come here to speak, all the things that he had said, Kensei had heard. "If you ever replied to me I never heard you," he replied. Then slowly, a little defeated, the little Japanese man uncrossed his arms, and let them fall limp at his sides, resisting the urge to bow his head in shame, but only just. "I need your help," he repeated again. "We all do, but..." he peered sideways at Ando. "I thought... I hoped I could convince you before anyone tried to threaten you."
"You seemed content enough talking at me these last few-hundred deaths or so," he replied forcing his voice to remain calm, even, not to betray everything, or even anything that he was feeling, pausing trying to account for the time that had passed, before marking it the only way that he could keep track of time in his underground prison. Would this bother the little man? True he continued to regenerate, but for a man who didn't want to kill him he'd certainly chosen the next best thing. When Hiro indicated that if he had replied he'd not been able to hear him, he merely shrugged. "I had little to say to you Carp," he replied bitterly. "At first," he added a bit more truthfully. "Besides you had no need to so finely tune your ears. What better did I have to do? It was the only sense you left me with. I could not eat, it was too dark to see, often too cramped to move," he listed trying to elicit some kind of reaction or response of sympathy from him.
"So you thought you would bribe me instead? What was it you offered? A bigger box.. with a vent? How is it you thought that you would be able to convince me better than someone else? I tried to help. I was trying to help when you shoved me in this damnably small box," he replied stubbornly at his request. "It's not true you know," he continued, deciding to give him at least this, at least one of the things he had said to him from beneath the ground this man hadn't heard. Perhaps the most surprising and important thing he could admit to a man who probably thought he hated him. "What you said about the virus- I wouldn't have let you die. My blood would have cured you," leaving the implication hanging in the air that even now, despite everything, all the wrongs that Hiro had committed against him long, long past, he would have saved him from the clutches of death, that perhaps he didn't hate him so much as he liked to pretend to in order to maintain the facade of the cool, calculating and indifferent Adam Monroe.