Changing Fate
Passing the metal detectors in the lobby was the easier part of the whole operation. The damn thing went off about the needle in Matt´s pocket but that was something he could fix easily. Just a tiny mental push, and the security guard didn´t hear it anymore. What made him really worried though was the timing. When this was supposed to go down the way it should, they had to be precise. And fast. And even more important, they must not hesitate. Not once.
He remembered the way up to the suite only too well. That was nothing one would forget so easily. Being called here by a mother that desperately wanted her son to be saved, only to find that they´d been too late already. Matt had rarely seen Angela Petrelli as a person that could show emotions, but on that day, when she´d held her dead son in her arms, crying, sobbing into his shoulder, he´d seen her heart. And it was nothing he ever wanted to see again. It was too painful, too horrible to watch.
The doors of the elevator opened, revealing the floor that would lead them to that infamous suite, that once upon a time had cost Nathan Petrelli his life.
They didn´t take the main elevator, the one that started down in the lobby, but the one in the back of the hotel, the one that opened in a pocket between the corridors, just where the two sides of the big building came together. Hidden. Unnoticed. Safety first. They couldn´t risk to run into any of the actual participants of this act that was about to happen up here very soon. At least not yet.
"We´ll have to split up." Matt told Perkins. "I´ll go and find Claire. You take care of Nathan."
But instead of doing what he was told Perkins stopped, grabbing his collar.
"You don´t think I would let you wander off alone, Parkman." he growled, but once again he underestimated the determination of a husband and father.
In an instant Matt had grabbed the hand on his collar and turned the table around, pushing Perkins against the wall, too quickly for the other man to respond.
"I´m not going to run off." he hissed into his face. "I´m trying to save my family with this. So stop mistrusting me and start helping."
With a jerk of his hand he let go of Perkins again, meeting his furious gaze fearlessly. For a moment it looked as if Perkins wanted to jump at his throat, to make him pay for this attack he´d just dared. But a sound interrupted the moment and made them both flinch and turn. Something further down the corridor had crashed very loudly, almost violently and somewhere inside Matt something sunk down to the bottom. Because that sound was unmistakable and the meaning of it striking.
"Go." they heard the voice of a girl, demanding. Claire Bennet´s voice.
The sounds they heard next were even worse than the first, giving them only the slightest idea of what was really happening behind that corner. They started to run. And then a door got thrown shut, muffling the sounds of the fight.
The two men reached the corner, peeking around it, at Claire Bennet who was standing before that door, trying to open it, but the handles just wouldn´t give in to her demands. Through the crack in the doors she, and only she could see what was happening beyond that border she wasn´t meant to cross.
Matt swallowed dryly, almost unable to stay were he was, hidden and unseen, as if he wasn´t here. As if he didn´t know the people who were fighting for their lives over there.
All of a sudden Claire let go of the door and turned around, facing in his direction. Matt´s heart just about stopped. How he managed it to move and hide behind the corner, was beyond him. Had she seen them? Had she heard anything, seen anything? Matt had never been one for religion, but in this moment he closed his eyes and prayed.
The sounds of the fight ceased and a moment later, he could hear Claire opening the doors, at last, to enter the suite. Everything was quiet after that and Matt didn´t quiet dare to peek around the corner again, afraid that Claire might still be looking.
Perkins was braver than he was. Or maybe he just didn´t care as much, Matt didn´t know.
The agent didn´t flinch back into hiding, so Matt assumed that Claire wasn´t there anymore. And he was right. The corridor was empty. Matt could only imagine what the young woman was seeing in that suite. But he knew it was not the dead body of Nathan Petrelli. Not yet. And if things would keep going the way they went down once already, she wouldn´t know about his death before the funeral, three months later.
"That´s it." Matt whispered and beside him Perkins tensed. "It´s happening. Any minute now."
A muffled groan came from inside the suite. Matt recognized the voice at once. Peter.
"Are you all right?" they heard Claire ask. "Where did they go?"
"The window." Peter answered out of breath, his voice almost too faint to understand his words.
"Can you fly after them?" Claire asked and a moment later – Peter must have given an answer, too quiet for Matt to hear – she urged him: "Come on, we have to find them. Come on."
"Here we go." Matt whispered, getting ready.
When Claire and Peter left the suite and hurried down the corridor, he flattened himself against the wall, until they were gone.
"I´ll be back soon." he told Perkins. "You stay here. Watch what happens. When Sylar´s gone, bring the body to the roof. I´ll meet you there."
A cry emerged from behind them, inside the suite, and then a sound as if a piano just cracked in half. Matt forced himself not to think about it, to not to care.
"What about the others?" Perkins demanded to know. "They´re supposed to see him dead before we leave."
"Don´t worry, they will." Matt pointed at his own head. Once again he had to force himself to focus and ignore the choking sounds from the suite ahead, the sounds of a dying man. He closed his eyes, briefly. "You have twenty minutes before I get here with Angela Petrelli." he told Perkins. "Now hurry."
And with that he was on his way down the hallway, following the way Claire and Peter had taken. He caught up with them halfway down the staircase.
"Claire." he called out for them. "Peter."
The two of them stopped, on a landing, and swirled around to him.
"Matt." Peter cried, surprised, while Matt took the last few steps down to them.
"Good." he breathed. "I thought I lost you."
"Angela was going to look for you." Claire told him. "She said, she had a dream."
"I know." Matt gasped, still catching his breath. "I know, she told me."
"What happened?" Peter wanted to know, worried.
"Nothing. Not yet." Matt assured him and faced the cheerleader. "Claire, I need your help."
"We need to keep going." Peter urged. "Sylar is after the president."
"I know. Don´t worry, it´ll be quick."
"What do you need?" Claire asked, ready to help, even in this moment of hurry.
"I vial of your blood." Matt answered, getting the syringe out of his pocket.
"What? What for?"
"To save your father´s life." Matt answered, freely.
"Oh my god, did Sylar …?"
"No." this time Matt lied, just as freely as he told the truth. "I only want to be prepared for everything. Your grandmother´s dream must not come true and your blood … it can heal everything. So if anything happens to Nathan, I can cure him with that."
Claire only nodded, overwhelmed by the mere idea of Nathan needing her blood to be saved.
"Of course." she breathed and quickly rolled up her sleeve, allowing Matt to extract the blood from her vein. Only that Matt´s hands were shaking. He´d never done anything like this before and even his own mantra from earlier, that he must not hesitate, was worthless now.
In the end it was Peter who saved him from his own weakness, by taking the syringe out of his hands.
"Here." he said, gently. "Let me do it."
When he was done, he handed Matt the syringe, now full of the miraculous blood and Matt nodded at him, gratefully.
"Thanks." he breathed and fixed his eyes on both of them. "You don´t need to remember that I was ever here, understand?" he told them and they both nodded, obediently.
"Understand." Peter said, pulling on Claire´s arm. "Let´s go." he urged her and the two of them kept running down the stairs.
Matt looked after them, only for a second before turning around and heading back up the stairs. He needed to get back to the suite before Angela Petrelli and his younger self would get there.
...
It was the weirdest thing ever, a strange out of body feeling deep in his guts, when he watched himself walk down the corridor, along with Angela Petrelli, who still believed that he, Matt, would be able to save her son Nathan from getting killed. When his younger self entered the suite, only one moment before Angela Petrelli could, he stopped dead in his tracks.
"You don´t wanna see that." he told Angela, trying to keep her away, outside of these doors behind which her son had been murdered.
His intentions were good, Matt remembered that. He hadn´t wanted her to see her son lying in his own blood, but her anger had been too fierce. Is too fierce. She was struggling against his younger self´s grip, demanding to be let through, insisting that she needs to see. And Matt let go of her, giving up at last. Just the way he remembered it.
This version of him, the one he was three years ago, had no idea that the body he and Angela Petrelli were looking at, was not really there. That it was merely an illusion, created by his own mind, made up by his three years older self, who was hiding in the back, unseen, watching, hating himself for doing this.
When Angela cried out in despair, loud and forcefully, Matt closed his eyes and wished himself someplace else. Wished that he could show her something better instead. Something that would make her happy instead of destroyed and devastated. But he couldn´t. He mustn´t.
He watched her fall down next to the empty chair and close the eyes of someone that wasn´t even there anymore. Only she didn´t know that. All she saw was her dead son, sitting in this chair before her, his blood all over his chest, where it ran down after leaving his throat. Matt watched her curl her arms around a body that was nothing but thin air, holding her dead son close, as if she could bring him back with that. Her sobs were desperate, confused … and heartbreaking.
"I don´t understand." she breathed. "My dream. You were supposed to save him."
Matt, the older one, the one that was hidden from the face of the world that was currently circling around the sun, heard the words that had been meant for him three years ago, and for a moment his own breath stopped. He´d forgotten about that. How could he forget that?
Her dream. She´d always insisted on it. That he was the one that was supposed to save Nathan, that her dreams, though confusing and gibberish, never lied about what they showed her. And now that he was watching this scene again, a scene that had happened so long ago, Matt suddenly knew that she´d been right. He´d needed three years and a threatened family of his own to do it, but in the end he´d done it. Or he would, very soon.
He´d come back and fulfilled the prophecy of her dream. Only that no one would know about it. Not for the next three years. And to make sure of it, Matt had to finish this, no matter how painful it would be to watch this all over again. He simply had no choice. Just like his younger self had had no choice when he´d planted Nathan´s memories in Sylar´s head. Simple and plain.
And so he stayed, watched, and made sure everybody who entered this suite would see a dead body where there was nothing else but an empty chair. He stayed and watched until Sylar, the murderer had been erased from his own mind – his evil soul unknowingly transferred into the back of Matt´s mind, until he would rise again, nearly driving his host insane – and a new, a false Nathan Petrelli had woken up under the watchful eyes of his mother and the only two people in the world, who knew who he really was, underneath.
When the four of them finally left the suite, locking the doors so no one would find the dead body of Nathan Petrelli inside, Matt turned his back to the scene and finally, finally left it behind. He´d done everything he could. Now history would have to find its own way to deal with the fact that there was no body in that suite anymore. He could only do so much. Everything else was now in the hands of fate.
...
Hiro knew he should feel better, that he should feel relieved, maybe even happy. They were in the process of resurrecting Nathan Petrelli after all. And the way things had turned out, it actually seemed that Matt and this man Perkins that was just injecting the cheerleader´s blood into Nathan´s veins, it seemed as if they´d truly done everything right. As right as something so wrong as changing history could be.
Hiro sighed and shook his head, while Nathan Petrelli´s wound started to heal. It was still not right. It still felt wrong. He still couldn´t believe that what they´d done here today could lead to anything good. Man was not supposed to play god.
Something bad had happened here today, unseen by the world – yet – unnoticed by anyone and completely out of time, hidden in a pocket of the universe. Something they couldn´t quiet estimate – yet – and no matter what, they wouldn´t be able to undo it. Ever. Time and space, this was a construct so fragile that even the tiniest change in it´s balance could rip it apart and destroy it´s set path forever.
And this was exactly what they´d done here today. Hiro had no idea what the damage would be but it would be irreparable.
"Hiro." Matt Parkman addressed him, looking at him apologetic. "I´m sorry." he said.
Hiro only looked at him. He knew he was sorry. But that didn´t change a thing.
"What we did was wrong." he spoke, quietly but profoundly, convinced about the truth in his words.
"Just shut up, Pikatchu." Perkins demanded.
Hiro ignored him, still facing Matt, the man he´d considered his friend. A hero, just like him.
"We just drastically altered time, Matt Parkman." he stated the facts in a calm disappointed tone. "A hero doesn´t do things like that. A hero would never put his own interests over the world."
"My own interests?" Matt shot back. "It´s my family we´re talking about here. My wife and my little boy."
Hiro only looked into this furious face of his old friend and didn´t say anything. There was nothing he could say.
"Don´t worry." Matt went on, grimly. "We thought of everything we could. Angela and my past self saw the dead Nathan and Sylar became Nathan, just the way it was supposed to happen." he told him. "Nothing has changed."
Hiro only shook his head, knowing that this wasn´t true.
"I´m sorry if you disagree." Matt replied.
"You will see that I´m right, as soon as we go back." Hiro foretold him sadly, but Matt only shook his head.
"No, you will see." he promised. "As soon as we´re back, everything will be all right."
"You took a very important piece out of the puzzle. The universe is not in order anymore."
"I did everything I could to keep this so famous order intact, okay?" Matt shouted at him. "What do you want? I just saved a life."
As if to underline his statement, Nathan Petrelli took a rasping breath, waking up from the dead and began to cough, dryly. Perkins stood up and stepped back from him. After the coughing fit was over Nathan turned his head around, facing the three people that stood around him.
"Parkman?" he asked, disoriented and confused. "What happened?"
"It´s all right, Nathan." Matt spoke, fixing his eyes on him. "Just stay calm. We´ll explain everything later."
The recently resurrected man on the ground, frowned deeply and lowered his head, as if to think something through, something that was very important to him. Matt turned back around to Hiro.
"After all this is over, the body will vanish in a store for the next few weeks." he told him, still trying to convince him that everything was fine. "For everything that happens after that …" he shook his head. "Time will have to show. I can only do so much."
Hiro never looked away from him, a sad smile gracing his lips. "And now you can´t do anything anymore."
How much truth really was in his words, Hiro still had to learn himself yet.
...
They arrived at the exact same room, where they´d left Shana Stockwell and her men behind, exactly three days after they´d left her there. Just the way she´d demanded it. The first thing Hiro noticed when they arrived, was that the room had been changed. The tables were arranged in a semicircle now, but the men who were sitting around it, didn´t look like Shana´s men.
Shana´s men had been wearing jeans and jackets, these men were wearing suits and ties. And the only blonde woman Hiro could make out in the room was not Shana Stockwell. It was Juliet O´Hara, the detective from Santa Barbara. How …?
The moment when the four of them appeared, her head swirled around to them and her eyes went big. In an instant she´d reached for her gun, her other hand shooting up to her face.
"Security breach!" she shouted into her sleeve and next to her, Carlton Lassiter pulled his gun.
"Freeze!" he yelled at the top of his lungs. "Get the president out of the way! Move! Get them! Take them down!"
All along the table, the men jumped out of their seats and retrieved to the other side of the room. Hiro recognized Mohinder Suresh in one of them and he was pretty sure he was recognized in return. Still the geneticist was fleeing from them along with the others, making the way free for the secret service agents that moved in on them, guns drawn and ready to fire. Everything after that, happened in a haze.
Hiro got grabbed from behind and within only a few seconds, he and his four companions were surrounded. Perkins tried to fight and got knocked down. Matt Parkman struggled too but mostly to avoid ending up like Perkins. Nathan Petrelli stood between all this like a sleepwalker, his gaze still overclouded with the mental order Matt had given him, to wait for further instructions.
But the thing that really caught Hiro´s attention, was the man Juliet O´Hara had dragged away from all of this, behind her back, where he would be save. It was Nathan Petrelli who stood there, staring at the four intruders with surprise and disbelieve.
"They´re Specials." Juliet shouted now. "Don´t take any risks. Sedate them. Now."
Hiro felt a stitch in his neck and a moment later the world around him began to swim. It was the image of Nathan Petrelli, who had his hand on Juliet O´Hara´s shoulder, both of them watching him fall, that stayed with him when he slipped into unconsciousness.
I know I don´t have to tell you guys that, but you can leave a review. I always like to hear your thoughts about what happened.