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.]

The immortal had all but forgotten about the other man, focused as intently as he was on Hiro, but he did have to admit when he happened to look over to see Ando staring unseeingly, unblinkingly onward at him was a little-irritating, so if it helped the time traveler to get rid of him, so be it. The blond listened intently as Hiro continued to talk, explaining how he had built himself on the legends of the great Takezo Kensei, and then hoped to build him to the hero he'd learned about. That he might have been the legendary man, but the immortal could just as easily have been him too, that perhaps he had been once. Even now to profess such faith in the man he had been made it difficult for the immortal to keep up his emotionless mask.

Perhaps the carp was right. Perhaps there was no Takezo Kensei, just an idealized man to aspire to be. He had fashioned the name himself afterall, and it was a pretentious name at best. But then, the immortal thought-this extraordinary time traveler would hardly have been bothered to travel back in time, much less stay and befriend a simple drunk named 'Adam', or any of the other names he had tested out before or since then.

What else are we to each other? Oh Carp, the blond thought shaking his head, once more avoiding the smaller man's gaze, for fear of coming undone under it. You are so much more than an enemy, and so much less than I should have liked, but he bit his tongue, listening to his explanation of the word he'd used. 'A person you loved the most,' he thought his words echoing in the blond's head. But Hiro didn't love him. Love and admiration were two entirely different things.

"Traveling between time and space, 'righting wrongs,' you don't think that is playing God," he asked genuinely curious to here the man's logic and explanation. "I have seen evil Carp. Not just hurt, or bitterness, or revenge-true, lasting, unforgiving, and indiscriminate evil. I have seen it. Sometimes I have killed it, but it regenerates better and faster than even I do. It always survives. It always comes back, more savage than the last. Hate, war, torture, rape, death... You can flit in and out of it, fly away back to your own time, but I have seen nearly 400 years of it," he continued, voice choking a little on the words, before he regained control of himself. "I had to live Hiro, through 400 years of it. And I'm tired of seeing it. I'm tired of fighting it. I'm just tired," he continued, knowing that while his body was ever regenerating, never tiring, his mind had never been more heavy.

"I wanted to destroy it, but every hydra head I cut off two more grew back. So I sought to destroy it the only way I thought I could, the only way that would truly make a difference. And you locked me in here," he gestured to the coffin. Maybe he had deserved it. Perhaps Hiro was right to put him away, keep him from the world, but if he only had this one opportunity to explain his reasons why he had wanted to do this, he wasn't going to pass it up. "I only wanted what any man does-a sense of peace, my health-" he laughed at this, he supposed he would always have that. "Happiness, someone to love-and to love me," he concluded, though with this last item his voice was a little less steady, a little softer as he exposed a potential weakness, a flaw, his vulnerability, perhaps even his loneliness to this man standing across from him. "I had that once. Once, so very, very long ago, then you took it from me. And I've found nothing and no one like it since."

Hiro listened. He'd hoped he could have convinced him but apparently, it was easier said than done. He listened to the man explaining him how he saw the world, what he'd been through, how he'd witnessed the worst of humanity and survived it. How he fought it, tirelessly until his mind threatened to break, and Hiro, sweet hearted Hiro couldn't help but feel an incredibly heavy sorrow clenching inside of his chest. So... That was what is was all about? Pain, desperation, a man giving up.

"It is..." What was it again? Righting wrongs through time? Wasn't Adam right after all? Wasn't Hiro playing God as well, in his own little paradigm? Suddenly the cool air around them felt cold and the little man shivered, folding his arms around himself. Hiro might have a copious amount of certainties about what was right and what was wrong, but forced to face his own possible wrongs, his own mistakes, his own vanity, the little hero suddenly looked like nothing more but a lost young man. "I know what the future can be like. I know what can happen if only one thing goes wrong. I... Try to avoid it."

Suddenly, though, Hiro seemed to come alive again, leaving his tree to pace before the other man who was standing still, his emotions and the conflict created by what this man had said written all over his face. "But in 400 years don't tell me you've seen only bad things!" Oh, he had his passionate voice again. "There have been wonderful things done through the world! You can't... You can't deny all the beauty for the sake of the ugly things Kensei, you just can't. There is hope, there is always hope if you look for it carefully enough. I've seen the world on the edge of destruction more than once but I fought back. And it worked, we saved it." The immortal listened, but still recalled he'd said once on this very grave that he felt like fighting the wind, righting a wrong only to witness a new crisis. He was idealistic, and perhaps hellbent on trying to convince him that this life was worth living, the Earth and humanity worth fighting for, but the blond also knew that he understood what he was talking about.

"But how is it that you, or any of us get to decide what's wrong? People die. Sometimes they're meant to. It doesn't make it any less tragic, but maybe a tsunami is supposed to happen, or maybe this or that disaster stops another worse one from happening later. There are hundreds of futures. Do any of us really know the right one?"

"I saw beautiful things," he acknowledged nodding. It would have been a lie to say anything to the contrary, the world did have beautiful things to offer. "Sometimes I touched beautiful things, but they never lasted as long as the ugly things, and in the end I was alone. I saw beautiful things, and I saw terrible things, but I had no one to share either with. No one like me that could live and heal forever, or even someone that could understand what I was and not be frightened or repulsed by it."

This time the time traveler looked down and stopped moving when Kensei suggested that Hiro had taken everything from him. "I know I failed you. I should have left. As soon as you and the princess had found each other, I should have gone back in my time and everything would have been perfect. You would have become this hero, I know it. But I stayed." He dared to look up with the most miserably dejected face anyone has ever seen, a look which was despite it's intensity nothing short of sincere. "But I was a part of the great Takezo Kensei's story... I know, it was not my place, I shouldn't have. I shouldn't have taken Yaeko from you. This was a mistake, an incredible, horrible mistake."