Fic: Losing Your Way 1/2
Title: Losing Your Way 1/2
Fandom: Heroes
Genre: Gen
Characters: Peter, Adam, Nathan
Warnings: Unpleasant themes, mild gore
Rating: R
Spoilers: All of season 2
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, I'm just borrowing them.
Summary: "I want to think someone would come for me-" Peter shakes his head, one quick movement. "I need to think someone would come for me."
Peter didn't find out about Adam for two months. He had more important things to worry about.
His brother died, and then his brother came back, and though the first was the more terrible it was the second which proved to be complicated. Not actually bringing him back, because Claire was the same as Adam in all the ways that mattered. No, it was engineering his return from the dead carefully enough that it wasn't a resurrection splashed across the morning news. Nathan never finished his public address. It was impossible to feign recovery from bullet wounds when your chest was unmarked. It was easier to claim a bullet proof vest, to rearrange a few memories. To say as little as possible past the necessary, and then withdraw.
Staying in the glare of the public eye would have raised too many questions, questions that couldn't be answered without peeling back the lid on everything, and they'd decided not to do that yet, to postpone that, until they were certain they could. Until their enemies had faces, and if they looked long enough, and hard enough, in the right direction it was impossible to hide. So instead Nathan seethed quietly, and he did impotent fury like no one else.
But after that, when Peter did find out where exactly Adam was - there's only so long you can leave a man buried alive before your own nightmares started to eat at you.
Peter wakes up two nights in a row absolutely certain that he'd been buried in Adam's place. It took him less than a week for the idea of it maybe being a fitting punishment to become a creeping realisation that Adam had been buried alive for almost two months. And if Adam was so easy to judge after four hundred years, what was to stop Peter from being judged in the same way? What were the rules when you owned power that made you impossibly different from everyone else, who made the rules then? When you broke...did you deserve to be helped like other people. Or punished in ways ordinary people could never understand. In ways ordinary people would call monstrous.
Monster or not, that was a sort of cruelty that Peter didn't want to be a part of. He'd been all the way to the edge before and looked over, and he'd like more than anything else to say he'd never been tempted. But Adam hadn't been left to die, he'd been left to live and that was worse.
***
The third time Peter has the dream is one time too many. He heads downstairs, finds Nathan in the kitchen.
"I have to dig him up," Peter says flatly.
Nathan looks at him over his coffee for a long moment, takes a sip, then raises an eyebrow at him.
"Why?"
"He's buried alive," Peter says quietly, and that's all the explanation there need be. It took him too long to realise that. "I can't leave someone like that, no matter what they've done." He's not pleading anymore, he's not asking Nathan, he's warning him. But even after everything he's still afraid of a no. "I want to think someone would come for me -" Peter shakes his head, one quick movement. "I need to think someone would come for me."
Nathan sets his coffee down, all half expression and consideration.
"You know what you're digging up?"
"Yes," Peter says carefully. "I know what I'm digging up."
"And if you have to kill him." Nathan's voice is quiet but brutally firm. Peter's knuckles whiten round the edge of the counter.
"I can do that too." Peter hopes he's right. He really hopes he's right.
Nathan tips his head to the side, and Peter knows him well enough to wait for the yes.
***
The cemetery is cold, bitterly cold, which seems ridiculously appropriate, considering they're here to unearth the dead. No, that wasn't right, they were here to unearth the living.
Nathan walks beside him, silent save for the occasional exhale, which produces a plume of warm air, and the faintest sigh. Peter can't help but imagine the sigh manages to be disapproving. They owe each other a lot of things, and Peter thinks it's finally easier to just follow without questions when they ask each other for favours, rather than to hash it all out where it will be complicated, where they'll be forced to admit the things they've done, the things that they would have done.
Though Nathan did earlier stoop to complaining about what the graveyard was going to do to his shoes.
Peter spots the grave ahead of them, though he's not sure if you could call it a grave. It's more of a prison, or a tomb. It looks like nothing, just flat ground and still grass. Nathan eyes him over the collar of his coat, hands shoved in his pockets.
"This isn't one of your better ideas," he says quietly.
"Nathan -"
"I know, just get it done." Nathan looks away, but it's not dismissive, he's watching, he's watching the dark. Looking out for random interruptions, though with Peter's powers there's really no need, no need at all.
Peter thinks Nathan will still keep trying to look after him, even if he absorbs enough power to rip the world in two. Nathan has rather selective blind spots, and Peter finally understands what enormous weaknesses they are. Which is why he's determined to cover them himself. For all Peter's power he's brought a shovel. There's a sort of grim humour to that that he appreciates for a second. Life and its practicalities prove damn hard to shake off.
Or maybe it's a fear that if he starts to believe he doesn't need things it's only so far to not needing other things, rules, morals, people, and he's seen where that leads. So he has the shovel, though he doesn't need it, but he'll use it anyway. He thinks maybe killing Adam may be the only option in the end, if it's even possible. But that has to be better than staying underground, than living in a box.
They weave their way across the grass, until they find the bare space between two graves, the bare space Peter knows is where Hiro buried Adam Monroe alive. But there's a problem. The ground is wrong, it's flat, undisturbed, hard, untidy. Adam hasn't been underground for two months. Peter assumed Hiro had buried him when he disappeared, assumed that the timeline of events was a line, and not, as Hiro could quite easily make it, a curve.
Adam's been buried alive for much longer than two months.
Peter swallows and shakes his head.
"Nathan?"
"What?"
Instead of answering he slams the shovel into the ground, dragging great piles of earth up and flinging them to the side. The hole grows under his intensity, Nathan standing on the edge, hands in his pockets, coat hem drifting ever so slightly every time the wind decides to pick up. The pile of soil beside the grave grows as Peter sinks. Nathan doesn't offer to help, this is something Peter needs to do, and Nathan doesn't have to be told that. The fact that he's here, the fact that he would hollow out the ground if Peter asked, that's more than enough. Peter doesn't think Nathan's coat would survive the adventure.
"I don't know what he's going to be like," Peter says simply. "I don't even know if he's going to be sane when he comes out. He's been here longer than we thought and -"
The shovel hits something solid, something that isn't dirt, and Nathan grunts pointedly.
Peter starts clearing off the top of the coffin. "But it's Adam, so he could just be really, really pissed off."
The lid looks unremarkable, a dull grey curve that's so familiar in shape that Peter is smoothing the dirt aside without seeing it. Nathan comes to the edge of the grave, mud trickling down past the edges of his shoes. He honestly doesn't know what Adam's going to do. Peter grips the edge of the lid, pulls.
It comes open surprisingly easy under the pressure of his fingers.
Swings up.
The first thing Peter does is try not to throw up. Until the back of his throat stings, and there's just the desperate, absolutely desperate need to breathe.
"Jesus fucking christ," Nathan says bitterly, then shuts his mouth and turns away.
The coffin is a mess, wooden splinters and shards coat the insides and the insides are...a human being cannot live inside a coffin.
It looks like the inside of hell. It smells like the inside of hell.
"Oh my god," Peter says weakly, and speaking makes him retch again, makes him recoil far enough that he doesn't feel like he's inhaling rot with every breath. There are no words. Peter doesn't want to get closer, he wants to crawl away across the grass, and dry heave until his eyes water. He hears Nathan step back, hears him inhale cold air and cough sharply. Peter forces himself, forces himself to reach out a hand. Adam's skin is freezing, but there's a pulse. His eyes are shut, but he's alive, though he isn't reacting to either of them, he isn't reacting to anything at all.
"Adam?" Peter tries. "Adam."
There's no clean skin to grip, and after a frustrated pause Peter stops looking for any, he loops a hand round a slim, tacky wrist and very carefully pulls Adam out of the rotting mess he's been laying in. There's a dull crack, deep and horrible and Adam makes a noise that at least confirms he's still there somewhere, it's low and animal, and other than that he doesn't react at all. Peter clenches his teeth around what wants to be some sort of horrified noise, he knows if he doesn't hold it, it won't be alone.
"Nathan, help me," Peter says quietly, and it comes out thin and desperate. Nathan grits his teeth and offers a hand, then two, and together they haul what's left of Adam out of the ground.
***
The ride home is silent, Nathan drives slowly, mouth a thin, hard line, and Peter has almost no memory of the trip.
The car will probably have to be burned.
There's nowhere else to take him, nowhere they know well enough. Getting him to the bathroom wrecks both the front door and three carpets, a trail of ruin from the car to the stark white tiles. Adam's easy enough to pick up, he may be layered in filth, but he weighs nothing like what he should. He's reduced in the most basic of senses, and fragile in a way that makes Peter aware of every place he holds him. His skin is drawn over his bones tightly enough that Peter knows even the slightest pressure will bruise, and though the marks won't even have a chance to bloom it still makes a difference. Peter feels like he could shatter him if he squeezes too hard. He holds his breath when he lifts him, jerks his head away when Adam's head threatens to roll towards his own.
He slithers out of Peter's hold into the tub, sharp bones thudding where they land and though Peter sways away the air he drags in is still too thick, rank. He coughs, leans over and turns the water on. There are layers on top of layers, some long dried, and the bottom of the bath swirls dark, thick and rusty where it pools under Adam's folded limbs, under the tangle of his hair.
Peter leans down very carefully, and puts his hands on wet skin.
Adam stiffens the moment Peter touches him, flings his head back hard enough to send him sprawling on the bathroom floor. Then he starts screaming like a banshee. He tries to back-pedal in the small space, ends up smearing red and black across the tiles. By the time Peter gets to his knees, hands reaching for Adam's arms the spray has already been redirected and everything, everything is soaking wet.
There's no strength to Adam at all, he's all sharpness and panic, slipping on the enamel of the bath, all skid of thin legs and desperate squeaking slide of fingers. His eyes are open, but they're flat, skidding wildly from side to side, and Peter is almost certain that whatever he's seeing it's not this room, or them.
"Adam?" He's trying to escape both Peter and the fall of water, recoiling from every touch of fingers. Blind panic is ensuring that occasionally a hand, or elbow, catches Peter hard enough to spatter blood across the edge of the bath. "Adam!" It would be funny if it wasn't so damn terrifying, and for all his extra strength Peter can't hold him. He's soaking and most of his clothes tear like they're rotten, and he's slippery underneath, slippery and he smells like rot and old death and, Jesus, worse things.
His nails are literally clawing open the skin on Peter's arms, and it fucking hurts and there's fresh blood everywhere.
"Nathan." It's a hiss of desperation that can't help but be panicked. "Nathan!"
Nathan's fist slams into Adam's face hard enough to send him back a foot, his head smacks into the tiles, leaving a splatter of red, then he slithers down in one movement, silent and utterly still.
"Jesus." Peter's breathing too hard, shocked at the sudden silence.
Nathan's obviously expecting some sort of protest, but instead Peter just nods shakily. He lifts the scissors off of the sink and starts cutting his clothes away. In most cases he doesn't need them, the material is rotten, and caked in old blood and filth. Peter already feels like he's choking on it again.
Nathan has moved to stand by the door.
"I'm gonna need some bags or something," Peter says at last. Nathan slips out of the door without a word. For one taut second Peter wishes desperately that he could leave too. Then he leans down and maneuvers Adam under the spray, searches for something he thinks might just drag Adam's skin clean, brush, sponge, bathroom cleaner. Something quick, something that will work. Adam's skin grows back after all. It's the wrong thing to think, and Peter has to lean his head against the bath for a second, breathe through his mouth until the urge to heave goes away.
It's impossible to be quick and gentle, impossible to be quick and methodical, but Peter can care later, when he can breathe properly again. When Adam looks like he should be something alive again. Peter's pretty wet, and none too clean smelling himself by the time he's finished. The bath isn't designed for this sort of arrangement. But Adam's clean at least, clean and too thin, all hollowed out lines and much longer hair, the hair more than anything else gives a better clue about exactly how long Adam's been in the ground. It falls past his eyes, a drag of dark blond, soaking wet, edges trailing the curve of his nose, all the way to his jaw.
Peter touches the strand, pulls it as far down as it will go and swallows.
The last time he saw Adam his hair was as short as his own.
It's a year, or more, more than a year, and the thought is just too much for him to think about. He can't even imagine, he doesn't want to imagine. So he doesn't, he leaves it, leaves it alone in the back of his head, where it can't make him feel dizzy with how horrific it is. Peter, thankfully, has some experience shaving other people. He can get it done quickly enough that Adam stays out until he's dumping everything in the trash. Though when he does come back it's not loud, he just tips his face against the cold wet line of the bath, into the trail of warm water, breathing in quiet shallow lines, back trembling.
The bathroom door opens and Nathan slips back inside bringing cold air and plastic. He turns his nose up at the smell while Peter dumps what's left of Adam's clothes.
"He doesn't look much better."
"He hasn't eaten for more than a year," Peter says quietly. "He's been locked in a box." Peter leans in and turns the water off, then folds his arms round Adam's chest.
"Could you -?"
Nathan bends, catches Adam's waist and hauls him up, soaking his suit all the way through. He pulls a face when Adam's head rolls, wet hair pressed into his cheek.
He pulls a face but doesn't jerk away, saves the look for Peter.
"Take that out." Nathan nudges the bags with a shoe. "I'll get him upstairs and put him in something of yours."
"Well he'd fall straight out of anything of yours." Peter pauses. "Will you be ok?"
"If he so much as twitches I'll drop him down the stairs," Nathan says simply, and it's not an attempt to lighten the moment, it's the absolute truth.
Peter's surprised to discover that he finds it comforting.
He sighs, hefts the bags and slips out of the bathroom.
***
It's cold outside, cold and damp, and the clean air is a shock that has him swallowing raggedly for a second.
He stops, drops everything in his hands and presses them against the wall. He's breathing like he might fall apart, or throw up, and he thinks if he lets the whole night catch up to him right here then he just might. But he can't. He can't do that here, can't do that now. He wants to get this done first, wants to wash this off
His eyes move sideways and there's a long smear of blood on the edge of his bicep. He's not sure if it's his or Adam's. He knows it can't be the only stain on him but it's the only one he can see. He swallows, rubs it with the sleeve of his t-shirt until it's gone. Then he shuts his eyes.
"How did you do that Hiro...how in God's name could you do that?" He concentrates on one breath after the next, on letting it fall free and not whistling out in snatches. What was he doing? What on earth was he doing? He has enough problems already, they have enough problems. And Adam is, after all, the man who'd manipulated him into helping him carry out his own horrific crusade, a crusade that would have doomed everyone.
But no one else had known, and Peter honestly doesn't know whether anyone else would have bothered to dig him up. So what else could he have done? Leaving him in the ground was never an option. Leaving him in the ground and knowing would have been a thousand times worse.
***
Adam is completely still in Peter's old bed, laying like he's still buried, arms at his sides like they've fallen there. The sheets do nothing to give him weight, if anything they make him look smaller and that's something Peter has experience with, something he's never gotten used to, no matter how many people he's seen fade to nothing under clean white sheets.
His hair is leaving damp spots and trails on the pillow, spread out in strange directions, and it makes him look impossibly young. But the narrow, starved lines of his face give him a breakable quality. Adam's clean now, as clean as they could make him, his skin now an unpleasant almost translucent white that's nothing close to healthy. The ability to heal anything. Adam better hope that's true. Peter's hands fold round the end of the bed. Or perhaps not, depending on how much of him is left after spending more than a year in a box.
The room is completely silent. From this position it's almost as if Adam isn't breathing at all. Peter is compelled to lean forward, to hold his own and try to catch -yes. Adam is breathing, impossibly slowly, shallow, it's the least amount of effort needed to stay alive, and every breath is utterly silent. Peter slowly leans back, relaxes his hands and the illusion of death steals back over him. He has no idea how long Adam is going to lay there, he's not dead...Peter doesn't even think he's asleep, he's just not there.
He's half afraid to leave the room, not because of what he thinks Adam might do, but to make sure there's something there, to make sure that something impossible hasn't been hollowed out completely.
***
"Do you think I did the wrong thing?" Peter asks quietly. He's sat in a chair in the study, hands held loosely over his knees.
"I think you did a stupid thing," Nathan says carefully.
Peter has to swallow something furious. Nathan isn't the one fighting him here. No one's fighting him, his own skin is crawling and he feels sick and adrenaline is still making his pulse too fast and too loud. But no one's fighting. It makes it worse.
"Do you think I should have left him there?"
Nathan's mouth pulls sharply into a thin line.
"No, Jesus, no you shouldn't have left him there. No one deserves to be left like that, no one." Nathan pours himself a glass of Scotch, ridiculously generous, but considering the night they've had it's probably fair.
Peter holds his hand out. Nathan eyes him for just a second, pours a second glass and passes it to him. It's vile and it stings all the way down but if nothing else it gives Peter something to hold, something to touch.
"So what do I do?"
"That depends," Nathan says carefully.
Peter pauses with his glass half raised.
"On what?"
"He's been in the ground a long time. He might not have come back all the way."
"You think he might be crazy?"
Nathan finishes his drink in one long swallow. "God knows."
"My mind fixed itself," Peter says carefully. "When I couldn't remember, it fixed itself."
"You were missing parts of your memory. You said thinking about us brought them back, regrew them or something."
"Yeah."
"Adam's not missing anything, he's just broken."
"Broken can be fixed."
"And why do you seem to think that's always your job?" Nathan's not angry this time, just curious.
Peter shakes his head.
"I let him into the vault Nathan. I'm the reason there was ever a threat in the first place."
"You would never have done what Hiro did, never."
"Nathan I've done bad things." Peter's voice is quiet, but it's level.
"Not like that, you don't burn like that Peter, you lash out quick and hot you don't smolder, you don't have that sort of anger, the sort that burns for years. You need that for something like that. You need determination."
"That sounds a lot like you." It's not an accusation, just an observation.
"I might have been able to do something like that, before. It would have eaten away at me, but I would have done it."
"And now?"
Nathan swallows, turns and refills his glass. He does it slowly, methodically.
"I'm going to be dreaming about that for fucking years," he says bitterly.
Peter runs a hand over his eyes, he's tired but the very last thing he wants to do is lay in bed, in the dark.
"Do you really think he's been down there more than a year?" Peter asks carefully.
Nathan shakes his head roughly, like he doesn't want to talk about, like he doesn't want to even think about it.
"Yeah," he says at last.
Peter drags his hands over his face and makes a noise into them that means nothing at all, but perfectly conveys the impossible horror.
"When he wakes up -" Peter stops, swallows, because he doesn't know, God help him, he has no idea what Adam will be - what Adam will be when he wakes up.
"Are you certain he will wake up," Nathan says into the silence.
Peter can't answer that because he isn't, he isn't at all.
Fandom: Heroes
Genre: Gen
Characters: Peter, Adam, Nathan
Warnings: Unpleasant themes, mild gore
Rating: R
Spoilers: All of season 2
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters, I'm just borrowing them.
Summary: "I want to think someone would come for me-" Peter shakes his head, one quick movement. "I need to think someone would come for me."
Peter didn't find out about Adam for two months. He had more important things to worry about.
His brother died, and then his brother came back, and though the first was the more terrible it was the second which proved to be complicated. Not actually bringing him back, because Claire was the same as Adam in all the ways that mattered. No, it was engineering his return from the dead carefully enough that it wasn't a resurrection splashed across the morning news. Nathan never finished his public address. It was impossible to feign recovery from bullet wounds when your chest was unmarked. It was easier to claim a bullet proof vest, to rearrange a few memories. To say as little as possible past the necessary, and then withdraw.
Staying in the glare of the public eye would have raised too many questions, questions that couldn't be answered without peeling back the lid on everything, and they'd decided not to do that yet, to postpone that, until they were certain they could. Until their enemies had faces, and if they looked long enough, and hard enough, in the right direction it was impossible to hide. So instead Nathan seethed quietly, and he did impotent fury like no one else.
But after that, when Peter did find out where exactly Adam was - there's only so long you can leave a man buried alive before your own nightmares started to eat at you.
Peter wakes up two nights in a row absolutely certain that he'd been buried in Adam's place. It took him less than a week for the idea of it maybe being a fitting punishment to become a creeping realisation that Adam had been buried alive for almost two months. And if Adam was so easy to judge after four hundred years, what was to stop Peter from being judged in the same way? What were the rules when you owned power that made you impossibly different from everyone else, who made the rules then? When you broke...did you deserve to be helped like other people. Or punished in ways ordinary people could never understand. In ways ordinary people would call monstrous.
Monster or not, that was a sort of cruelty that Peter didn't want to be a part of. He'd been all the way to the edge before and looked over, and he'd like more than anything else to say he'd never been tempted. But Adam hadn't been left to die, he'd been left to live and that was worse.
***
The third time Peter has the dream is one time too many. He heads downstairs, finds Nathan in the kitchen.
"I have to dig him up," Peter says flatly.
Nathan looks at him over his coffee for a long moment, takes a sip, then raises an eyebrow at him.
"Why?"
"He's buried alive," Peter says quietly, and that's all the explanation there need be. It took him too long to realise that. "I can't leave someone like that, no matter what they've done." He's not pleading anymore, he's not asking Nathan, he's warning him. But even after everything he's still afraid of a no. "I want to think someone would come for me -" Peter shakes his head, one quick movement. "I need to think someone would come for me."
Nathan sets his coffee down, all half expression and consideration.
"You know what you're digging up?"
"Yes," Peter says carefully. "I know what I'm digging up."
"And if you have to kill him." Nathan's voice is quiet but brutally firm. Peter's knuckles whiten round the edge of the counter.
"I can do that too." Peter hopes he's right. He really hopes he's right.
Nathan tips his head to the side, and Peter knows him well enough to wait for the yes.
***
The cemetery is cold, bitterly cold, which seems ridiculously appropriate, considering they're here to unearth the dead. No, that wasn't right, they were here to unearth the living.
Nathan walks beside him, silent save for the occasional exhale, which produces a plume of warm air, and the faintest sigh. Peter can't help but imagine the sigh manages to be disapproving. They owe each other a lot of things, and Peter thinks it's finally easier to just follow without questions when they ask each other for favours, rather than to hash it all out where it will be complicated, where they'll be forced to admit the things they've done, the things that they would have done.
Though Nathan did earlier stoop to complaining about what the graveyard was going to do to his shoes.
Peter spots the grave ahead of them, though he's not sure if you could call it a grave. It's more of a prison, or a tomb. It looks like nothing, just flat ground and still grass. Nathan eyes him over the collar of his coat, hands shoved in his pockets.
"This isn't one of your better ideas," he says quietly.
"Nathan -"
"I know, just get it done." Nathan looks away, but it's not dismissive, he's watching, he's watching the dark. Looking out for random interruptions, though with Peter's powers there's really no need, no need at all.
Peter thinks Nathan will still keep trying to look after him, even if he absorbs enough power to rip the world in two. Nathan has rather selective blind spots, and Peter finally understands what enormous weaknesses they are. Which is why he's determined to cover them himself. For all Peter's power he's brought a shovel. There's a sort of grim humour to that that he appreciates for a second. Life and its practicalities prove damn hard to shake off.
Or maybe it's a fear that if he starts to believe he doesn't need things it's only so far to not needing other things, rules, morals, people, and he's seen where that leads. So he has the shovel, though he doesn't need it, but he'll use it anyway. He thinks maybe killing Adam may be the only option in the end, if it's even possible. But that has to be better than staying underground, than living in a box.
They weave their way across the grass, until they find the bare space between two graves, the bare space Peter knows is where Hiro buried Adam Monroe alive. But there's a problem. The ground is wrong, it's flat, undisturbed, hard, untidy. Adam hasn't been underground for two months. Peter assumed Hiro had buried him when he disappeared, assumed that the timeline of events was a line, and not, as Hiro could quite easily make it, a curve.
Adam's been buried alive for much longer than two months.
Peter swallows and shakes his head.
"Nathan?"
"What?"
Instead of answering he slams the shovel into the ground, dragging great piles of earth up and flinging them to the side. The hole grows under his intensity, Nathan standing on the edge, hands in his pockets, coat hem drifting ever so slightly every time the wind decides to pick up. The pile of soil beside the grave grows as Peter sinks. Nathan doesn't offer to help, this is something Peter needs to do, and Nathan doesn't have to be told that. The fact that he's here, the fact that he would hollow out the ground if Peter asked, that's more than enough. Peter doesn't think Nathan's coat would survive the adventure.
"I don't know what he's going to be like," Peter says simply. "I don't even know if he's going to be sane when he comes out. He's been here longer than we thought and -"
The shovel hits something solid, something that isn't dirt, and Nathan grunts pointedly.
Peter starts clearing off the top of the coffin. "But it's Adam, so he could just be really, really pissed off."
The lid looks unremarkable, a dull grey curve that's so familiar in shape that Peter is smoothing the dirt aside without seeing it. Nathan comes to the edge of the grave, mud trickling down past the edges of his shoes. He honestly doesn't know what Adam's going to do. Peter grips the edge of the lid, pulls.
It comes open surprisingly easy under the pressure of his fingers.
Swings up.
The first thing Peter does is try not to throw up. Until the back of his throat stings, and there's just the desperate, absolutely desperate need to breathe.
"Jesus fucking christ," Nathan says bitterly, then shuts his mouth and turns away.
The coffin is a mess, wooden splinters and shards coat the insides and the insides are...a human being cannot live inside a coffin.
It looks like the inside of hell. It smells like the inside of hell.
"Oh my god," Peter says weakly, and speaking makes him retch again, makes him recoil far enough that he doesn't feel like he's inhaling rot with every breath. There are no words. Peter doesn't want to get closer, he wants to crawl away across the grass, and dry heave until his eyes water. He hears Nathan step back, hears him inhale cold air and cough sharply. Peter forces himself, forces himself to reach out a hand. Adam's skin is freezing, but there's a pulse. His eyes are shut, but he's alive, though he isn't reacting to either of them, he isn't reacting to anything at all.
"Adam?" Peter tries. "Adam."
There's no clean skin to grip, and after a frustrated pause Peter stops looking for any, he loops a hand round a slim, tacky wrist and very carefully pulls Adam out of the rotting mess he's been laying in. There's a dull crack, deep and horrible and Adam makes a noise that at least confirms he's still there somewhere, it's low and animal, and other than that he doesn't react at all. Peter clenches his teeth around what wants to be some sort of horrified noise, he knows if he doesn't hold it, it won't be alone.
"Nathan, help me," Peter says quietly, and it comes out thin and desperate. Nathan grits his teeth and offers a hand, then two, and together they haul what's left of Adam out of the ground.
***
The ride home is silent, Nathan drives slowly, mouth a thin, hard line, and Peter has almost no memory of the trip.
The car will probably have to be burned.
There's nowhere else to take him, nowhere they know well enough. Getting him to the bathroom wrecks both the front door and three carpets, a trail of ruin from the car to the stark white tiles. Adam's easy enough to pick up, he may be layered in filth, but he weighs nothing like what he should. He's reduced in the most basic of senses, and fragile in a way that makes Peter aware of every place he holds him. His skin is drawn over his bones tightly enough that Peter knows even the slightest pressure will bruise, and though the marks won't even have a chance to bloom it still makes a difference. Peter feels like he could shatter him if he squeezes too hard. He holds his breath when he lifts him, jerks his head away when Adam's head threatens to roll towards his own.
He slithers out of Peter's hold into the tub, sharp bones thudding where they land and though Peter sways away the air he drags in is still too thick, rank. He coughs, leans over and turns the water on. There are layers on top of layers, some long dried, and the bottom of the bath swirls dark, thick and rusty where it pools under Adam's folded limbs, under the tangle of his hair.
Peter leans down very carefully, and puts his hands on wet skin.
Adam stiffens the moment Peter touches him, flings his head back hard enough to send him sprawling on the bathroom floor. Then he starts screaming like a banshee. He tries to back-pedal in the small space, ends up smearing red and black across the tiles. By the time Peter gets to his knees, hands reaching for Adam's arms the spray has already been redirected and everything, everything is soaking wet.
There's no strength to Adam at all, he's all sharpness and panic, slipping on the enamel of the bath, all skid of thin legs and desperate squeaking slide of fingers. His eyes are open, but they're flat, skidding wildly from side to side, and Peter is almost certain that whatever he's seeing it's not this room, or them.
"Adam?" He's trying to escape both Peter and the fall of water, recoiling from every touch of fingers. Blind panic is ensuring that occasionally a hand, or elbow, catches Peter hard enough to spatter blood across the edge of the bath. "Adam!" It would be funny if it wasn't so damn terrifying, and for all his extra strength Peter can't hold him. He's soaking and most of his clothes tear like they're rotten, and he's slippery underneath, slippery and he smells like rot and old death and, Jesus, worse things.
His nails are literally clawing open the skin on Peter's arms, and it fucking hurts and there's fresh blood everywhere.
"Nathan." It's a hiss of desperation that can't help but be panicked. "Nathan!"
Nathan's fist slams into Adam's face hard enough to send him back a foot, his head smacks into the tiles, leaving a splatter of red, then he slithers down in one movement, silent and utterly still.
"Jesus." Peter's breathing too hard, shocked at the sudden silence.
Nathan's obviously expecting some sort of protest, but instead Peter just nods shakily. He lifts the scissors off of the sink and starts cutting his clothes away. In most cases he doesn't need them, the material is rotten, and caked in old blood and filth. Peter already feels like he's choking on it again.
Nathan has moved to stand by the door.
"I'm gonna need some bags or something," Peter says at last. Nathan slips out of the door without a word. For one taut second Peter wishes desperately that he could leave too. Then he leans down and maneuvers Adam under the spray, searches for something he thinks might just drag Adam's skin clean, brush, sponge, bathroom cleaner. Something quick, something that will work. Adam's skin grows back after all. It's the wrong thing to think, and Peter has to lean his head against the bath for a second, breathe through his mouth until the urge to heave goes away.
It's impossible to be quick and gentle, impossible to be quick and methodical, but Peter can care later, when he can breathe properly again. When Adam looks like he should be something alive again. Peter's pretty wet, and none too clean smelling himself by the time he's finished. The bath isn't designed for this sort of arrangement. But Adam's clean at least, clean and too thin, all hollowed out lines and much longer hair, the hair more than anything else gives a better clue about exactly how long Adam's been in the ground. It falls past his eyes, a drag of dark blond, soaking wet, edges trailing the curve of his nose, all the way to his jaw.
Peter touches the strand, pulls it as far down as it will go and swallows.
The last time he saw Adam his hair was as short as his own.
It's a year, or more, more than a year, and the thought is just too much for him to think about. He can't even imagine, he doesn't want to imagine. So he doesn't, he leaves it, leaves it alone in the back of his head, where it can't make him feel dizzy with how horrific it is. Peter, thankfully, has some experience shaving other people. He can get it done quickly enough that Adam stays out until he's dumping everything in the trash. Though when he does come back it's not loud, he just tips his face against the cold wet line of the bath, into the trail of warm water, breathing in quiet shallow lines, back trembling.
The bathroom door opens and Nathan slips back inside bringing cold air and plastic. He turns his nose up at the smell while Peter dumps what's left of Adam's clothes.
"He doesn't look much better."
"He hasn't eaten for more than a year," Peter says quietly. "He's been locked in a box." Peter leans in and turns the water off, then folds his arms round Adam's chest.
"Could you -?"
Nathan bends, catches Adam's waist and hauls him up, soaking his suit all the way through. He pulls a face when Adam's head rolls, wet hair pressed into his cheek.
He pulls a face but doesn't jerk away, saves the look for Peter.
"Take that out." Nathan nudges the bags with a shoe. "I'll get him upstairs and put him in something of yours."
"Well he'd fall straight out of anything of yours." Peter pauses. "Will you be ok?"
"If he so much as twitches I'll drop him down the stairs," Nathan says simply, and it's not an attempt to lighten the moment, it's the absolute truth.
Peter's surprised to discover that he finds it comforting.
He sighs, hefts the bags and slips out of the bathroom.
***
It's cold outside, cold and damp, and the clean air is a shock that has him swallowing raggedly for a second.
He stops, drops everything in his hands and presses them against the wall. He's breathing like he might fall apart, or throw up, and he thinks if he lets the whole night catch up to him right here then he just might. But he can't. He can't do that here, can't do that now. He wants to get this done first, wants to wash this off
His eyes move sideways and there's a long smear of blood on the edge of his bicep. He's not sure if it's his or Adam's. He knows it can't be the only stain on him but it's the only one he can see. He swallows, rubs it with the sleeve of his t-shirt until it's gone. Then he shuts his eyes.
"How did you do that Hiro...how in God's name could you do that?" He concentrates on one breath after the next, on letting it fall free and not whistling out in snatches. What was he doing? What on earth was he doing? He has enough problems already, they have enough problems. And Adam is, after all, the man who'd manipulated him into helping him carry out his own horrific crusade, a crusade that would have doomed everyone.
But no one else had known, and Peter honestly doesn't know whether anyone else would have bothered to dig him up. So what else could he have done? Leaving him in the ground was never an option. Leaving him in the ground and knowing would have been a thousand times worse.
***
Adam is completely still in Peter's old bed, laying like he's still buried, arms at his sides like they've fallen there. The sheets do nothing to give him weight, if anything they make him look smaller and that's something Peter has experience with, something he's never gotten used to, no matter how many people he's seen fade to nothing under clean white sheets.
His hair is leaving damp spots and trails on the pillow, spread out in strange directions, and it makes him look impossibly young. But the narrow, starved lines of his face give him a breakable quality. Adam's clean now, as clean as they could make him, his skin now an unpleasant almost translucent white that's nothing close to healthy. The ability to heal anything. Adam better hope that's true. Peter's hands fold round the end of the bed. Or perhaps not, depending on how much of him is left after spending more than a year in a box.
The room is completely silent. From this position it's almost as if Adam isn't breathing at all. Peter is compelled to lean forward, to hold his own and try to catch -yes. Adam is breathing, impossibly slowly, shallow, it's the least amount of effort needed to stay alive, and every breath is utterly silent. Peter slowly leans back, relaxes his hands and the illusion of death steals back over him. He has no idea how long Adam is going to lay there, he's not dead...Peter doesn't even think he's asleep, he's just not there.
He's half afraid to leave the room, not because of what he thinks Adam might do, but to make sure there's something there, to make sure that something impossible hasn't been hollowed out completely.
***
"Do you think I did the wrong thing?" Peter asks quietly. He's sat in a chair in the study, hands held loosely over his knees.
"I think you did a stupid thing," Nathan says carefully.
Peter has to swallow something furious. Nathan isn't the one fighting him here. No one's fighting him, his own skin is crawling and he feels sick and adrenaline is still making his pulse too fast and too loud. But no one's fighting. It makes it worse.
"Do you think I should have left him there?"
Nathan's mouth pulls sharply into a thin line.
"No, Jesus, no you shouldn't have left him there. No one deserves to be left like that, no one." Nathan pours himself a glass of Scotch, ridiculously generous, but considering the night they've had it's probably fair.
Peter holds his hand out. Nathan eyes him for just a second, pours a second glass and passes it to him. It's vile and it stings all the way down but if nothing else it gives Peter something to hold, something to touch.
"So what do I do?"
"That depends," Nathan says carefully.
Peter pauses with his glass half raised.
"On what?"
"He's been in the ground a long time. He might not have come back all the way."
"You think he might be crazy?"
Nathan finishes his drink in one long swallow. "God knows."
"My mind fixed itself," Peter says carefully. "When I couldn't remember, it fixed itself."
"You were missing parts of your memory. You said thinking about us brought them back, regrew them or something."
"Yeah."
"Adam's not missing anything, he's just broken."
"Broken can be fixed."
"And why do you seem to think that's always your job?" Nathan's not angry this time, just curious.
Peter shakes his head.
"I let him into the vault Nathan. I'm the reason there was ever a threat in the first place."
"You would never have done what Hiro did, never."
"Nathan I've done bad things." Peter's voice is quiet, but it's level.
"Not like that, you don't burn like that Peter, you lash out quick and hot you don't smolder, you don't have that sort of anger, the sort that burns for years. You need that for something like that. You need determination."
"That sounds a lot like you." It's not an accusation, just an observation.
"I might have been able to do something like that, before. It would have eaten away at me, but I would have done it."
"And now?"
Nathan swallows, turns and refills his glass. He does it slowly, methodically.
"I'm going to be dreaming about that for fucking years," he says bitterly.
Peter runs a hand over his eyes, he's tired but the very last thing he wants to do is lay in bed, in the dark.
"Do you really think he's been down there more than a year?" Peter asks carefully.
Nathan shakes his head roughly, like he doesn't want to talk about, like he doesn't want to even think about it.
"Yeah," he says at last.
Peter drags his hands over his face and makes a noise into them that means nothing at all, but perfectly conveys the impossible horror.
"When he wakes up -" Peter stops, swallows, because he doesn't know, God help him, he has no idea what Adam will be - what Adam will be when he wakes up.
"Are you certain he will wake up," Nathan says into the silence.
Peter can't answer that because he isn't, he isn't at all.