Heroes fic: Eternity (1/1)
Sometimes he hates her for tying him to eternity.
His brother dies and he thinks he should have died with him. His nephews die and he cries at their funerals. He can't die and it's all because of her. He wishes he never met her.
He was never one of those children who wanted to see the future. He didn't join in on conversations about hover cars or robots or the changes that the years would bring. When those changes do come it's so gradual that he barely notices until one day he wakes up and nothing's the same. It scares him.
She's there and he feels relieved that he'll never be completely alone. She's there and he loves her because she's the only one left. He loves her and he blames her and he tries to never think of both emotions at the same time because it's too much. She tries to kiss it better and that helps for a while, until the darkness begins to claim him again. He lashes out at her because she's the only one who can take it and the only one who really knows him anymore.
The people around them change, but they never do. He never looks a day older than 26 and she will always get carded. He wonders what he would look like if he ever grew old and what she would look like if they grew old together...which they are doing but it's not the same.
He changes his name every ten years and she does as well. She fakes immense joy in picking the names and backgrounds and places they'll live. "It'll be like a vacation," she says and he knows the smile is purely for his benefit. He misses when they were Peter and Claire.
He moans her name in the darkness, but sometimes she slips up and calls the name of the person he pretends to be. He feels like he's losing himself and Claire's not doing anything to stop it.
He leaves for days and months and years on end. She's always there when he returns. She'll go away too, when the closeness and life get to be too much, but never for as long. He thinks that she's afraid he really will leave.
He's considered it.
Some days he likes to imagine that he's the Highlander, roaming the earth alone for all time, but then she comes up behind him and puts her arm around his waist and leans into his back and he's not alone. She ruins his fantasy like she ruined his life.
Peter knows, empirically, that they have happy times together, but they slip by so quickly in his new sense of perspective that they hardly seem to occur at all. What chance do happy days, even the happiest of days, stand against years of sorrow?
Little things start to bother him as the years go by, in that way that minute details begin to grate if you spend too much time with someone. She goes to see the graves of her parents and brother and tells him she's going home. She changes her hair color every few years even though she knows he misses the blond. He can't stand that her kisses are always the same and the sex will never feel new.
He goes to the city and meets women that look older than her, but are ages younger. In their arms he feels the rush of difference, but misses her kisses and the way her skin feels against his. He's still surprised, after all this time, how much he needs her.
When he returns home, it shows in her face that she knows what he'd done. "Having a mid-life crisis?" she jokes through teary eyes.
"Never," he says. There's no mid-life if life goes on forever. He kisses her on the forehead and walks upstairs. She doesn't forgive him, but they never speak of it again.
He tries to show her in kisses and soft caresses how sorry he is and she pretends she doesn't notice. Sex with her is new and different now, like he wanted it to be, only instead of a flush of excitement he only feels her pain and his guilt. He misses the way they used to be.
One day he decides to die just for the hell of it and throws himself off the roof of a building. He lands in an alleyway and puts himself back together in front of the curious eyes of a drunken homeless man.
He becomes addicted to the black nothingness of death and kills himself as many ways as he knows how. Once he stands with a gun pointed at the back of his head, but he doesn't pull the trigger because he knows that he can't leave her alone. Instead, he shoots himself in the stomach and dies a slow death before his body knits itself back together again. He wonders if Claire ever wants to die just to do something different.
Sometimes he wishes Sylar was still around. Then he could give up fighting and just let Sylar finish the job. Maybe Sylar wouldn't want his brain, though. It's so messed up that even a person with the power to do so might not be able to figure it out.
He goes home and makes love to her like it's their last day on earth. He reads her thoughts and finds that somehow she's read his. She kisses him like she did in the beginning and he wishes this day could go on forever.
"I'm so tired," she says when he announces his plan aloud, "but I can't lose you."
"You never will." After all their struggles he knows it's true.
They take two 9 millimeters from the back of the closet and stand close together.
"You know the spot," he says, repeating words of a lifetime ago. "Where you pulled the glass out of the back of my head."
"I'll be able to do it this time," she promises.
They wrap their arms around each other in a tight embrace with the guns angled just right.
"On the count of three," Claire says. Her lips cut off his words before he can even finish the first number. The count continues unspoken and triggers are pulled in the middle of a passionate embrace, both participants hoping for a better eternity than the one they were leaving behind.