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 look the other man had upon him was all but distracting. Hiro could feel his bright blue eyes staring at him as if they were piercing through his very soul and no matter how hard he tried, he was still blushing. On another hand, he had all the reasons to blush. He'd just found it in him to kiss someone, which in itself for the socially awkward Hiro Nakamura would have been quite an achievement but not only had he kissed someone, he'd kissed a man, enough to give his father a heart attack and a man he'd been admiring, worshiping, certainly loving, and wanting for far too long. Enough to make his mother proud of him.

And truth be told, Hiro was proud of himself as well. Only then did he took a moment to acknowledge where he'd sent them. Grass around them, the moon above their head and the stars as only witnesses to their proximity, to their kiss. Hiro looked up at them and... He smiled. He smiled a warm and grateful smile to the night above of their head because if he'd kissed Yaeko in the day light, revealing himself to her, taking off his mask and destroying in the same time all he'd built with his friend, he was happy he had kissed Kensei in the night, under the moonlight. This had to be private, this had to be secret, this had to be shared only by the two of them and no one else.

When he heard Adam's apology he frowned and looked at him again, his smile turning a bit sad but not fading. He sighed and shrugged in resignation. "No you are not." He replied but there was no blame in his voice anymore. "We have made... Mistakes. Both of us." He frowned a bit more for a second before his face went back to its usual moony expression, a sorry smile on his lips. "I wont say I forgive you because it is not true. You did what you did, you had your reasons. But that doesn't mean I..." You what? Hiro wondered. But the distress he heard in Kensei's voice caused him to act more than think. He'd never been very successful with thinking after all. Every time he's try to set a plan up it'd failed or fired up at his face.

Hiro took the blond's hand in his and looked up at him. "Past is past. Some things can't be changed. I left you broken and lonely for centuries, you killed my father. I know it had nothing to do with me but... Irony, sometimes." He offered. He knew it was not as comforting as he had meant it to be but that was the best he could do. He took one step closer again, looking up to the taller man, one hand squeezing his. "Kensei, it doesn't matter if I can't forgive this one thing. Or maybe one day, you will have redeem yourself enough, I don't know. But it doesn't matter now. No matter what, I'm not leaving you again."

Then he discreetly chewed at his lips and lowered his head, looking at his feet, not even daring to look at him above his glasses while asking "I was bad, wasn't I?"

"But I am sorry that I hurt you," he justified sincerely, and he truly meant it. "I didn't mean it. When I told you that I wanted to make you suffer," he continued, referencing his swear in Whitebeard's camp before Hiro had been forced to teleport away to avoid his own death. "I never truly wanted that. I was hurt. But I just- All I ever truly wanted was you," he confessed. "More than I ever wanted a drink, or anything my entire life," he admitted a bit embarrassed, though these words were no less true.

He was calling him by that name again. The one he had given up long ago being his, the name of his hero, despite all the bad things that he had done, somehow he was still Takezo Kensei to this man, he thought surprised, and wonderfully strengthened by this thought. "I will, Carp," he promised solemnly, when Hiro suggested that perhaps someday he would atone and redeem himself of all the bad things he had done. "Anata no tame ni," he swore. "To be with you, by your side, to be the hero you always thought and saw in me.. I would do anything," he whispered, blue eyes becoming a little bit teary with emotion.

His eyes grew wider at the man's shy and nervous assertion that he had done poorly, kissing him, not even looking up into his eyes anymore. So Kensei let one hand come up beneath his chin, slowly lifting it to meet his gaze once more. "Iya, watashi no ai, sore wa kanpekidatta," he whispered tenderly, the hand beneath his chin slowly sliding to his cheek to cup his face, and leaning down met his mouth with his once more, and this time Hiro didn't even need to use his powers for the immortal to feel as though the world had stopped spinning, because he was finally kissing his time traveling friend, and Hiro was-albeit still a bit tentatively-kissing him back, and he had promised not to leave him again, not to lock him away again in the now abandoned and forgotten about empty coffin, or any other prision. He was free again. And for the first time in even longer, far too long, the immortal was happy.

Translations:

Anata no tame ni- for you

Iya, watashi no ai, sore wa kanpekidatta- no my beloved, it was perfect