Title: The Time Traveler's Wife
Genre: Romance
Rating: T
Pairing: Hiro x OC
Spoilers: N/A
Summary: "Yes, that's right. You're going. You've been gone for ages. You're already gone. You're still here. You've just arrived. I haven't even met you yet. It all depends on who you are and how you look at it. Strange business, time."
Word Count: 506
Warnings: N/A
Disclaimer: Not mine. Summary belongs to Doctor Who.
A/N: I am pretending Heroes: Reborn doesn't exist.
He knows that he shouldn't stay, that the him from this time could come back any day. Any moment he could hear a key in the door and it would be him. He knows that this is in his future, that if he is patient and steady, that this will be his future.
But it is so hard to force himself to leave.
Most mornings it is Amanda who wakens him. Four years old and wide awake at 7 AM, she crawls into their bed, insistent and hungry, demanding attention and food. Jamie snuggles deeper into their blankets, eight months pregnant and continuously tired, she won't fully wake for hours. So it is Hiro who wakes (without much prodding), to make breakfast for his daughter.
The first morning, he doesn't know his way around the kitchen, so it's cereal and juice. But as the days, weeks, go by, he is more familiar. An omelet. French toast. Pancakes. He and Amanda are normally covered in flour or batter by the time they start eating, but she adores it. She takes in everything he does with bright-eyed wonder and intelligence. He thinks suddenly, so suddenly that he feels his stomach drop out from under him, if she will be gifted like he is, but if they don't know about him, he isn't the Hiro to tell them.
So instead he spends his mornings cooking with his daughter, then watching cartoons and playing with action figures. When Jamie wakes up, he cooks for her. She'll work in her office for a few hours – drawing comic books – and Hiro and Amanda will play until she falls asleep for her nap. Jamie never asks him about his work, and Hiro doesn't want to bring up if he should be at a job somewhere, content to just coast by. At night he reads Amanda comic books. Then he curls around his wife, one hand pressed to the tiny fluttering movements of his son, and falls asleep.
His life is perfect.
But he know that it cannot last. He knows it has lasted longer than it should.
One morning, while he sits with Jamie as she munches on a bagel, she looks up at him. "I know it a long way off, but I want to start planning an anniversary trip for next year." At his started glance, she looks rueful. "Well we couldn't go anywhere this year," she says with a pat on her stomach, "and last year you were working." He wants to ask about that, but doesn't. "I know my parents will take the kids," she emphasizes the plural with a big smile, "to give us some time away. What do you think?"
His heart is full, both because he is happy, and because he knows that he is not the Hiro that she should be planning her future with, not yet, anyway. But he smiles and agrees, feels his heart clench when she beams at him.
It makes him feel all the worse because he knows that he has to leave tonight.