If tomorrow never comes

He´d worked in a diner before. His past experience and a demonstration of his skills in that regard were the reason why they´d gotten the job. He and Shawn Spencer. Mohinder had settled with doing what he knew best to do, to earn the money they needed to pay the rent for their spare rooms. Rooms they´d taken right above the diner.

Nothing of this whole arrangement was coincidence. Everything was planned out. Even the diner. Although it had been a great deal of luck that there had been a diner across the street from the storehouse they were here to watch. A great deal of luck. Maybe fate was on their side for a change. Maybe they could do better this time around. And maybe, just maybe, they would be able to make things the way they´d once been.

Hiro put the plates down on the table, telling the guests to enjoy their waffles, and glanced out of the window, over the street and the parking lot, to the storehouse. The storehouse in which Sylar´s body lay in freezing, formed like Nathan Petrelli for the rest of the world. So far no one had ever come to disturb this setting. The store was a secret one, only known by the people involved in this cover up. And if things were really back to how they should be, this should not change, until two more months from now.

It had been five weeks so far. Five weeks of waiting. Watching. Blending in. Doing their best not to disturb anything, not to raise attention. So far things were going well. Hiro had kept track of the events happening out there. He was reading the paper, watching the news, occasionally checking the internet. As far as he could tell, things were going their way. The right way. The way history had meant it to happen.

Two more months, he reminded himself, over and over again. Two more months and they could go home. But in what condition?

He hadn´t only watched the world over these last few weeks. He´d also watched his two companions. Shawn and Mohinder. Two people he´d thought he knew. But now. What he´d learned these last few weeks had opened his eyes for another change, his and Matt Parkman´s mistake had caused. And this one might not be as easily repaired, as the replacement of Sylar for Nathan Petrelli´s body.

Shawn Spencer was the easier case of the two of them. He was different from the one Hiro´d met in Santa Barbara but not that different. He was a little more serious than his other self. Maybe a little more grown up. But he was still what Hiro remembered him to be, deep down in his soul.

When they´d gotten here to take this job, he´d actually advised him and Mohinder to stay outside, in case the white people in the diner should be having a problem with foreigners.

Hiro couldn´t understand why he should think that, until he´d realized that Shawn Spencer had mistaken a trip of three years backwards in time, with one that went several decades into the past. It had needed a discussion of about ten minutes to convince him that they were merely in the year 2008 and not at 1955 or even 1885.

The fact that there were no carriages driving through the streets, had helped a lot to convince him about that.

But that little episode had convinced Hiro that Shawn Spencer was still Shawn Spencer, underneath all that devoted and determined manners of that experienced government agent he´d been over the last three years. He was the third version of this man, Hiro had learned to know, since his unplanned trip to a future he never hoped to see again. A future that had been prevented in this version of reality, not by him, but by a combination of forces, under the lead of the President.

A well planned operation, a strategically placed bomb, invented by the President´s very own scientist and the threat for the world was defeated. Only that in this version of it, poor Frank Wieland had not survived this rescue mission.

Many of these so called rescue missions had ended with the death of the so called culprits. Just like in Central Park just before the Cheerleader, Peter Petrelli and Noah Bennet had died, trying to stop Sylar from blaming people with abilities, for that massacre Samuel Sullivan had done.

What a dark place a world must be when a murderer got celebrated as a hero, again and again. A reality that had, as it seemed, just doomed in the mind of Dr. Suresh, now that he knew the real identity of the man he´d worked for. And that was why he was the more serious case of the two men.

Shawn Spencer might not see the difference, the subtle details, but Hiro did. He´d known Mohinder Suresh long enough to understand, to notice that dwelling hate beneath the surface. The disgust the geneticist was feeling, against Sylar, against himself, and Hiro had no idea which one was the worse.

What would happen to them, Hiro wondered, when all this would be over? Right now they were living in a pocket in time. A place where they were neither strangers nor did they belong here. What would happen to them, as soon as the world changed – hopefully into what it had been before.

Would they cease to exist, since they were not really a part of it? Or would they simply forget that they´d ever been here? As if all this never happened? Hiro suddenly understood how less he really knew about that fragile construct of time and space, and how it was all connected. If he didn´t even know what would happen after all this was over … how should he even carry on? How should he know what to do? Or if it was the right thing to do?

Shawn Spencer seemed to know. Or maybe he just didn´t bother to think about it. He kept writing down messages, messages that were meant to be sent away to his cell phone, as soon as they were written. By now he obviously believed that Hiro´s theory was right, that he´d been the one who´d sent those messages. But if he´d already gotten those messages, why bothering with writing them? Didn´t he already have them?

"It seems my eidetic memory is falling a victim to shifting time." he´d answered, when Hiro´d asked him this question.

And so he kept writing them, scratching out words and adding new ones, in order to find the perfect references to bring over the instructions he needed. References only his other self would be able to understand when the time was up.

One of the first he´d sent – from a prepayed cell phone, so the number wouldn´t be traceable – was the one that had brought them here. The one that had made him understand what he had to do, when he´d been outside of the interrogation room.

"If I could go back where all this began …" Hiro´d read the message over his shoulder and he´d frowned. This quote was from Butterfly Effect, he knew that. But it was still confusing.

"This is not where it all began." he´d mentioned to Shawn. "That would be much further in the past."

"Hey, give me a break." Shawn had cried. "It´s not easy to find a references that actually fits our situation. It will do. I mean it´s not that they ever made a film out of this here." he gestured around the small apartment, they´d rented. A second later he halted, thinking this over. "Although I think it would make a great movie." he found. "Or maybe a TV show, what do you think?"

Hiro had tried to answer but Shawn had been faster. "I´d call it Time Special Agent. No? Or maybe Shawn´s Heroes. Or maybe …"

"There won´t be a TV show." Hiro had interrupted him gently.

"Maybe not." Shawn admitted. "But it would get great reviews if it would."

Hiro had not objected.

...

There was a butterfly sitting on the wall, in the corner of the sitting room, just under the ceiling. It hadn´t moved for days and Shawn assumed the poor thing had died in that corner.

He could have taken it down but he didn´t. Partly because he was too lazy to get a chair over there and climb on it. But also because looking at that dead butterfly kinda reminded him of why they were here.

He didn´t understand much of the real science behind that chaos theory Ian Malcom had talked about in Jurassic Park, but he knew that a dead butterfly could not cause a storm on the other end of the world. Maybe, just maybe, if they could keep the butterfly from waking up, coming back to life so to say, they could prevent the storm.

...

One night, circa two months into their stay, Shawn noticed the dark glare of the scientist, out of the window and over at the storehouse, when he exchanged him for his half of the nightwatch. Not that he hadn´t noticed this before but something about the guy´s mood was different tonight. Somehow more gloomy than usual. Maybe it was the bad tacco he´d had for dinner.

He threw him an asking gaze, but Mohinder barely reacted, barely glanced at him.

"Every time I see that door, I have to remind myself that I can´t just go over there and chop his head off for good." he spoke up, his voice low, his gaze never leaving the store on the other side. Shawn looked at him with a deep, worried frown.

"It´s been two months, Doc." he said. "Don´t you think it´s about time you get over that? He fooled me too."

"Did he also murder your father?"

Shawn sighed. This was not an easy subject but he felt that it was an important one. Damn, of course it was.

"He has been your best friend for three years." he emphasized. "And longer."

"No." Mohinder replied, way too calm for Shawn´s taste. "Nathan was my friend. Not this man. How would you feel if Gus suddenly turned out to be someone else?"

Shawn´s mouth dropped open at this. "That´s a ridiculous comparison." he cried. "Gus and I know each other since we were kids."

"I´m just saying." Mohinder insisted. "Sylar´s a murderer. A monster. And none of the stories Hiro has told us, will ever change that."

Shawn looked into this hard dark eyes of the man he´d worked with for two years and he just knew there was no way to get through to him. Not tonight anyway. He wouldn´t even listen.

"All right." he said therefor and sat down. "I got your point. Have a good night. I´ll take it from here."

Mohinder nodded and stood up, quietly passing the sleeping Hiro on the couch, on his way to the bedroom. After the door had closed behind him, Shawn´s eyes searched the corner under the ceiling. He didn´t know exactly why but he´d gotten used to the sight of that butterfly. If in a good way or a bad one, he wasn´t sure.

...

"You never told me where you learned to be a waiter." Shawn asked, a few days later. "I thought you´re working on a desk. Did your dad make you start in the cafeteria?"

Hiro chuckled. "No." he said. "I met a waitress, once upon a time in Texas. She taught me a lot of things."

Shawn smiled at that small man before him. "Good for you."

...

"Dammit." Shawn threw the pen down in frustration, leaning back in his chair. "I need to travel through time to get this done."

"You did time travel." Hiro recalled, frowning.

"Not like that. Some of these messages only make sense when I read them at a certain very specific moment. And since we won´t stay in the past for years, I won´t be able to send myself those messages when I need them." He buried his head in his hand. "Dammit. I sound like Lassie already. No references, please."

"How about Frequency?" Hiro asked, startling him.

"What?"

"To let yourself know what to do when the time is up."

"I can´t call myself, that´s why I send texts, I thought you got that." Shawn´s eyes wandered upwards to the dead butterfly under the ceiling. He sighed. "And in Frequency no one traveled through time."

"You don´t need to either. Don´t you understand? When John Sullivan needed his dead father´s briefcase to solve the case, he let him hide it somewhere, where no one would find it until he could go there and get it."

Shawn´s mind had started to race. That was it. That was it.

"Hiro." he exclaimed. "You are a genius."

...

The next day a car stopped in front of the storehouse. Not on the parking lot, but right in front of the gate. Shawn saw it by coincidence, when he delivered the breakfast for two customers. Outside on the sidewalk, he could see Mohinder, just getting ready to enter his taxi. He´d noticed the car too. Shawn was outside with him in no time.

"That´s Peter and Nathan." Mohinder told him.

"What are they doing here?" Shawn hissed, his nerves already making somersaults.

Mohinder shook his head. "Where´s Hiro?" he asked.

"Getting a delivery at the back." Shawn answered. "Dammit, what do we do now?"

For the first time since Shawn knew Mohinder, it was the scientist who took the lead and not the Special agent. Together they hurried over the street and snuck over to the storehouse, hiding just behind the corner, to watch what the two unexpected visitors were doing.

Through the open gate they could see how Nathan, the Sylar from this time, opened the freezer. Shawn could barely suppress a yelp when he saw this. Oh, this was not good.

Nathan/Sylar reached down to touch the body … and jerked away as if it had bitten him.

"What?" his brother asked, concerned.

Shawn realized for the first time that this was a man he´d only known as a name, on a casualty list. And now he was standing there, alive and well. God, that was weird.

"I saw … Mohinder." Nathan/Sylar said, shaking his head in confusion. "Leaning over that body."

"Mohinder?"

Shawn´s heart just about stopped at this.

"And Parkman." Nathan went on. "I heard his voice. He was angry."

Peter frowned. "I haven´t spoken to Mohinder in months." he said, taking out his cell phone.

"What are you doing?" Nathan asked but Shawn already knew the answer.

"Oh, no." he breathed, his hands clinging to the concrete of the wall. "That´s not good. We need to stop them."

"What?" Mohinder held him back before he could run in there.

"Didn´t you hear what he said?" Shawn hissed. "He saw that you slit his throat and now he´s gonna call your other you and that´ll screw up everything once again."

He was in the process of passing the corner, to stop this from happening, but once again Mohinder held him back.

"Wait." he whispered. "That´s not necessary."

"What? Dude, did you just hear what I said?"

"I heard you. But they won´t reach me."

"What? How do you know?"

"Because I can´t answer my phone." the geneticist answered calmly. "I was in a mental hospital at that time."

Shawn was confused. "What, as a doctor?" he asked.

"No." the doctor seemed hesitant. "As a patient."

"What?"

"It´s a long story." Mohinder shook his head. "Hiro wanted me out of the way to save his girlfriend and he got what he wanted. Let´s just say it´s highly unlikely that I answer that call."

As it turned out he was right. Peter shook his head and gave up. "He´s not answering." he found.

Well, that would be an interesting story to be told, Shawn thought to himself.

"I think it´s more about Parkman anyway." Nathan said, looking down at the body with a deep frown.

"Why do you think that?"

"Don´t know." Nathan shook his head. "´s just a feeling."

"All right." Peter agreed. "Then let´s get out of here and see that we find him … and talk to him."

Shawn realized just in time, that the two of them were heading back, towards them. They hurried away to hide behind the corner and watched the two brothers get back to their car, driving away.

After they were gone Shawn dared to breath again.

"Okay. Looks as if everything goes just the way it is supposed to be." he commented. „Doesn´t it?"

"It fits the stories Hiro told us." Mohinder nodded.

His gaze wandered back to the gate, Nathan and Peter had closed again, safely. Something about it made Shawn feel uncomfortable.

"Time is almost up now, isn´t it?" the geneticist murmured. "Sylar will take over Nathan´s body very soon now. And then he´ll start killing again."

"Well, it´s not Nathan´s body." Shawn mentioned. "It´s Sylar´s. Technically."

"Maybe we can still do something." Suresh mumbled, talking to himself not to Shawn, not even paying attention to him.

"What are you talking about?" Shawn grabbed his shoulder, making him look at him. Suresh´s gaze was almost feverish.

"Maybe we can stop Sylar before he can do any harm to someone." he said. "We know where they´re going. This might be our only chance. So far he´s clueless."

"Yeah, but that is not why we´re here." Shawn recalled. "We´re not here to screw with history. We´re here to make it the way it was. To make things right."

"How can we make things right, when we allow this monster to keep killing people?"

"Because that is the way it was supposed to happen." Shawn told him. "You think this is easy for me? I sacrificed my life to be here, my wife and my kid."

For a moment, Mohinder stared at him in shock, remembering their life back home. But this moment passed.

"We all have to sacrifice something, Shawn." he said. "But Sylar is a monster and he needs to be stopped. How could we live with ourselves if we wouldn´t do that? If we wouldn´t even try."

"By accepting the fact that this is not our call." Shawn replied adamantly. "We came here for one reason and one reason only. And I have too much at stake here to allow you to screw this up. I´ll not allow you to do this."

"Oh, so you´re gonna fight me?" Mohinder asked, daring him.

"If it´s necessary." Shawn replied.

Mohinder raised his brows at him, and the former agent halted.

"Only … I would prefer not to do it hand to hand." he confessed. "Since you have a slight supernatural advantage over me. I´d prefer to do it in a game. Poker. Or Battleship. What do you say? Two out of three? Whoever comes out short, steps back. Figuratively. We could also play rummy, if you like that better. Or maybe chess. I´m pretty much indecisive about that."

He held the gaze of the scientist, uncertain what he would do. But in the end he won. Mohinder cracked and dropped his head, laughing quietly.

"Nathan once told me you used this tactic to trick him into …" he stopped himself when he realized who he was talking about.

Shawn smiled at him, nodding understandingly. "I know." he said. "I remember that. It´s really hard to imagine that neither of us will remember any of this as soon as this mission is over."

Mohinder looked at him, frowning. "Why do you think that?"

Shawn only shrugged. "Dunno. Isn´t that the way it works? When the past is changed we´ll never have done all those things. So how could we remember it?" He shook his head. "It´s a shame though. Some of those memories are quiet nice. I´ll miss them when they´re gone." He halted, frowning over his own words. "That doesn´t make much sense, does it?"

Mohinder smiled at him. "Not very much, no."

Shawn mirrored the smile. "Now, now." he said, padding the other man´s shoulder. "Let´s get back to work, shell we? We still have somewhat over a month to go."

This time Mohinder didn´t object.

...

Three weeks later, Shawn sat awake at night, standing guard. He felt restless, even more than usual. The time was almost up, he could feel that. If he´d still pretended to be psychic, he would have claimed to have a vision about it. But that was not it. It was just plain and simple intuition.

His gaze wandered up to the corner, under the ceiling, in search for the by now familiar sight of the dead butterfly. Only this time he didn´t find it there. It was gone. Shawn frowned. Had Hiro or Suresh taken it down after all? But then a movement on the opposite wall drew his attention, and Shawn´s heart just about stopped, for a moment, his jaw dropping open.

The butterfly. It was alive. It fluttered up and down the wall, probably trying to find a way out. It flew up, missed to get a hold and fell down again. For a moment it was out of Shawn´s sight, behind the couch. Then it came up again. Eventually it sat down in the middle of the wall, its wings opening and closing a few times before they came to a rest, flat against the surface.

Shawn just couldn´t believe it. This had to be a dream. This thing had been dead. It had not moved for three months and now it was back to life? What the F?

But it was there, he couldn´t deny that. And it was very much alive, indeed. If that was a good sign or a bad one, or if it was a sign at all, he didn´t know. Maybe it was better not to ask that question.

After a while, Shawn got up, picked up the butterfly, carefully between his hands and let it fly out of the window. At least someone who had a simple way of doing something with his second chance. Somehow Shawn had the bad feeling it wouldn´t be so easy for the three of them.

...

Hiro had never forgotten the date when he´d heard the news, about Nathan Petrelli who´d died in a plane crash. So it hadn´t been a surprise for them when Noah Bennet had come a day earlier to collect the body.

When the car drove into the parking lot before the storehouse, in the middle of the night, they were ready. For everything that might be necessary. Even getting Noah Bennet in on their plan, in case he should discover the spike in Nathan´s head after all. It would be less than ideal to bring someone else in on something that was already as fragile as this mission, but if it should turn out to be necessary, they wouldn´t have any choice.

That at least was the theory.

Sitting in the dark, watching it actually happen though, was something completely different. Hiro´s heart was beating up to his throat and there were pearls of sweat on his forehead. Please, don´t, he begged. Please don´t see it.

He wiped the sweat off his face and put his glasses back on. This was torture. Noah Bennet opened the coffin, getting ready to load Nathan´s body onto the stretcher he´d brought along. He glanced down on the body for a long time. Or maybe it only felt long for Hiro, who expected him to frown and inspect the body closer any second. Did he frown? It was never easy to tell what this man was thinking.

Eventually Noah Bennet reached into the coffin and began lifting the body out. Carefully but firmly, legs first, torso last. Three quick lifts and shoves and the pale body of Nathan Petrelli – Sylar – lay on the stretcher.

Once again Noah Bennet looked down on it, halting, musing. Noticing? But then he closed the coffin and went to work, dressing the dead man. White shirt, nice pants, just the way Nathan would have dressed if he´d still been alive.

The whole time Hiro waited for Noah to notice something, a small edge beneath the hair at the back of the head, but he didn´t. When he was done he threw a cover over the body, guarding it from curious gazes, just in case someone should be on the streets even that late at night.

Hiro hurried further away, hiding behind the corner and watched how Noah Bennet loaded the body into the trunk of his car, efficiently but careful. He supported the neck of the dead man, bedding him in the trunk, as if he could still feel uncomfortable if he lay the wrong way. Once again Hiro held his breath. But Noah Bennet didn´t halt to inspect the back of the head. He closed the trunk and Hiro exhaled.

But loading the body in was only half of what would happen tonight. The other half of it would happen on the faked crash site. The place where he would bring him now. For the world to find him. For the world to finally learn that Nathan Petrelli had died.

When the car left the parking lot and drove away into the night, Hiro took a deep breath. He could see Shawn and Mohinder in the car, on the edge of their seats, anticipating him, Hiro to lead the way. And he did. Because that was the only way to follow Noah Bennet without letting him notice that someone was behind him.

Had they simply driven after him, he would have noticed. But he wouldn´t notice Hiro. And as long as Hiro always stayed in visual distance to the car, he wouldn´t lose it. And Shawn and Mohinder would be able to follow him, thanks to the little tracker he was wearing under his skin and a few changes on the GPS system in Mohinder´s taxi. The taxi company wouldn´t be too thrilled when they got their vehicle back and found their system damaged but that was a sacrifice that had to be made, for the sake of the space-time-continuum.

When the car finally stopped, Hiro was confronted with a new surprise. Peter Petrelli was there, waiting for Noah. What was he doing here? He wasn´t supposed to be here. That wasn´t part of the plan. But Noah Bennet seemed to have expected him. The way he faced him, they´d agreed to meet here tonight.

"I want to see him." Peter Petrelli demanded.

Mohinder´s car stopped behind Hiro, lights off, too far away to be seen by either Noah Bennet or Peter Petrelli. Hiro didn´t turn around to look at his companions. He just couldn´t turn his eyes off from what happened down there in that depression, where Noah Bennet now opened the trunk for Peter to see his dead brother.

"What is Peter doing here?" Mohinder whispered but Hiro could only shrug.

"Plane´s ready to go." he heard the faint voice of Noah Bennet down there at the car. "I can handle that Peter. You don´t have to have any part of it."

"Yeah, I do." was the stoic answer of the dead man´s brother and with that Peter Petrelli reached up and closed the trunk again.

Together the two men went to work, preparing themselves with parachutes and eventually the plane, with everything that was needed to stage the accident in which Nathan Petrelli would die to the world tonight.

Hiro felt the tension of his two companions more than he saw it, when they finally got back to the car, to get the body. Neither of them dared to take his eyes of what went on down there. They´d agreed to let Noah Bennet in on the plan if it was necessary, because they´d figured that he´d be able to handle a secret like that. But Peter? It was his brother. What would he do if he knew that he was currently carrying the body of his brother´s killer, instead of Nathan himself?

It only needed one touch, a brushing of his hand over the wrong part of Nathan´s/Sylar´s head and he would know. And then it would be over. Three months of waiting, guarding a body that was not even a real body, for nothing. And the world, the world as they knew it, would cease to exist. Once again. Hiro felt as if he would faint any second.

"Hey." Shawn Spencer spoke up beside him, supporting him with a hand to his back. "You all right?"

Hiro managed a nod. They kept watching. Noah Bennet and Peter Petrelli carried the body over to the plane. Vanished inside. For almost an eternity. Eventually the motor of the plane got started. And then it took off the ground.

"What do we do now?" Shawn asked, looking after the plane. But neither Mohinder nor Hiro knew how to answer that question.

A little later, they watched the plane make a turn over the area, flying a circle. And then something seemed to drop out of it, hard to see in the dark, but the two parachutes were hard to miss after they opened.

The plane went flying for another minute, quickly losing height. The three men were unable to take their eyes off it. Just before it went down, Hiro grabbed the arms of the other two men and closed his eyes, just long enough to bring them closer to where the plane would crash.

They could almost feel the body of the plane scratch over the trees and they clearly heard the cracking sounds when the metal was ripped open. One of the engines exploded and then the plane just crashed down, right between the trees, making one hell of a noise, as if the sky had come down on this forest.

And after that … nothing. No further explosion and no fire. Just the distant cries of the animals that fled the scene. Noah Bennet must have emptied the tank before he´d started the plane, probably knowing that a totally burned out wrack would not convince anybody that Nathan Petrelli had really died in there. Not if the body could not be identified.

The three men looked at each other, realizing that they´d all held their breath so far. Finally. Finally it was over.

"Can we go home now?" Mohinder asked.

"Soon." Shawn nodded. "Very soon."