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: 731
Warnings: N/A
Disclaimer: Not mine. Summary belongs to Doctor Who.
A/N: I am pretending Heroes: Reborn doesn't exist.
He knows he can't stay in this timeline for much longer, at the very least he has to go back to his time to keep his job or tell Ando what's been happing – or will happen, as it were. But the thought of going back to a world where Jamie doesn't exist is a dismal thought, and he doesn't want to. But he has to.
He memorizes this exact moment, Jamie sleeping in the bed in the new apartment they had moved into together, the way her hair looked in the early morning light, the soft smile on her lips. He promised he would come back to this exact moment.
With one soft brush of his hand through her hair, he vanishes, not looking forward to life without her for a while.
He opens his eyes and knows immediately that he did something wrong. He frowns. I have to stop thinking about other things when I teleport. He looked around. It was hard to tell where he was, it still looked like LA… but something felt off. He looked a little closer at where he was. A park? No – a cemetery, there was a dotting of flowers against the tombstones. There were a scatting of cars parked out front and they looked – they looked new. Not like, that's the latest model new, but something from a futuristic comic book new. Hiro frowned, taking a few hesitant steps closer.
He leans back when a group of people suddenly exit the gates. A trio of middle-aged couples and a smattering of children ranging from kids to teens. Some of the adults look familiar –
"Aunt Amanda, are you alright?"
He starts, looking closer at the woman who answer. "Yes, dear, I'm alright." Her smile is a little watery. "I just miss your grandparents, that all."
What?
"It's hard to believe they've both been gone for five years, isn't it?" The man who is speaking, could that be his son? "But at least they're together now."
The conversation trails off as the turn a corner and head towards the cars, but Hiro inches closer, warring with himself as to whether or not he wants to know his own future this much.
But he had always been too curious, too headstrong for his (and other people's) own goods, so he finds himself suddenly before a pair of interlocking headstones, reading the engraving there.
Hiro and Jamie Nakamura
Married 64 years
"I love you. Until the end of time."
He is suddenly, painfully, crying, sobbing uncontrollably at his own gravestone. It is surreal and shouldn't be possible, but since when was anything in his life possible? He'd traveled to the Feudal Era, why not to after his own death? But Jamie was gone, too. Gone, gone, gone. There were no moments after this.
Suddenly he knows he is not going back to his own time. There are too many moments with Jamie to soak up, to live. He does not want to miss a single one, does not want to regret a single moment between the first date at the fireworks and this moment here. He wants his children and his grandchildren to know how much they loved each other, every day of their lives.
He wants his every moment, for the rest of his life, to be for her.
It would take some planning, he knows, to make sure he doesn't overstep his own timeline too much. But he remembers which futures we went to, they are seared into his mind like photographs. When he returns, he will write them down, make sure to keep track. He will tell Jamie, make sure she is marrying him for all of him, make sure she knows what to do in those moments so they can have the perfect lives for six decades.
He could do this, he could make it work.
And he knew exactly what moment to start in.