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Fandom: Heroes
Title: Waking Memory
Disclaimer: I own nothing but my own words.
Pairing: Hiro/Ando
Rating: PG
Summary: Set during "Five Years Gone". Future Hiro POV. Being with Ando again is almost more than he can take.
Title: Waking Memory
When Homeland Security broke through the door and I saw the Haitian framed by the broken glass of the window, I ran. Fighting wasn’t an option, not against such a superior number of men with guns more potent than my blade pouring in like cockroaches and with the Haitian’s power chocking the air like a sulfurous cloud. I looked about for my past self, but the Haitian was already there, holding him by the neck, so I did the only thing I could. I grabbed Ando and pulled him to me, ignoring his protests that we must go back, save Hiro. There was no time to explain. Just enough to clatter down the metal staircase and onto the street, one thought thundering in my head over and over. Save Ando. Do what I couldn’t do five years before, the most shameful failure of my entire life. I never slackened the pace, not for one second, tightening my hold on Ando’s hand as I felt sweat slick our palms. Ando returned the pressure and even as my breath hitched and my legs protested the strain, an endorphin rush of joy crashed through my being at the reality of that simple gesture. Ando was here, now, not a ghost or a memory, after five years of drowning in my own desolation. I don’t think I’ve been happier in my whole life. But I couldn’t dwell on it. He was in danger, again, and I had to protect him if it cost me my life.
I stopped only after making absolutely sure that we weren’t being followed, and even then I scrutinized the shadows lurking about, paranoid of even the slightest possibility of danger. I let go of Ando’s hand. I didn’t want to, but I had no more excuse to keep holding it. The cold of the night air bit into my palm, vanishing the warmth that his hand had imprinted on my skin. I hadn’t really looked at him until now. Back at the loft, I hadn’t dared, ducking my eyes when he approached me, focusing rather on my past self, that image I'd stopped seeing in the mirror so long ago. If I looked at Ando too closely, I might fall apart, like I‘d almost done the first time I saw him on one of my trips to the past.
I was afraid to travel there at first, knowing the effect it would have on me, but I could only figure out where the past needed to be altered by analyzing all of our actions: Peter’s, Suresh’s, Isaac’s, and mine and Ando’s. And as much as I struggled to drag the memories from my mind, there were crucial gaps that needed to be filled if my plan was to succeed. So I went back, and I saw myself and I saw him and my heart wanted to beat a hole through my chest. I watched him and my past self argue over road directions, discuss my powers, reminisce about a night when we both got smashed and we barely managed to stumble to his apartment. All lines in a play composed from my memories, shadows smudged by the footprints of time’s careless fingers, happening for the first time, and the rush of recognition swept over me in a gale as cold as winter and as searing as a flaming pyre. They were there, right in front of me, both ignorant, innocent, with no idea of what they were truly rushing towards, and I had to let them, though I wanted to scream at them, to warn him, but I couldn’t. They had a task to do. That mustn’t change. It’s the only way to stop the bomb.
Yet now, with him standing not a foot away, I don’t say anything. How can I? How can I cause him the pain of knowing that in this world he’s had the misfortune to step into, he’s already dead? I can’t. I won’t. So I keep it from my face. Through the bedlam of the last five years, I’ve learned how to mask my emotions so well that sometimes I forget to feel them. So it should be easy to look him in the eye and evade precisely that thing that he’s looking for in me. It isn’t. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in my life. I want to hug him, to feel his warm skin pressing into me, his living heart beating against my own. I want to say everything I never dared to say before, to say I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, and I will never let it happen again, I promise. You mean too much to me, you’ve always meant too much to me and my soul can’t take it. That’s why I choose to live in shadows, buried in a cave filled with nothing but moldy memories printed on pieces of yellowed paper that crumble in the light of the sun, like my soul would if I didn't keep my love for you hidden so far back in the deepest corner of my heart.
You’re so close, so damn close, yet I can’t bridge this small gap between us. I won’t burden you with this pain. It’s mine to suffer so that you never have to. So I let you stare at me as if I were a nothing more than a stranger when you learn of what I’ve been forced to become, because that’s all I am to you now. I’m not your Hiro anymore. He died in me the second Sylar threw you off that building, leaving a bleeding shell twisting itself into a crisscrossing web of deeply cut scars shrouded by layers of black fabric, nothing more than a ghost bearing a dead man’s face. The real Hiro, your Hiro, is back in the loft, at the mercy of men who’d gladly let this world fester until not even the bones are left to poke out from the ground. I must get you to him, so that he can go back and kill Sylar before any of this happens. So that neither me nor this rotten world will ever exist. So that you never have to look at me like that.
Title: Waking Memory
Disclaimer: I own nothing but my own words.
Pairing: Hiro/Ando
Rating: PG
Summary: Set during "Five Years Gone". Future Hiro POV. Being with Ando again is almost more than he can take.
Title: Waking Memory
When Homeland Security broke through the door and I saw the Haitian framed by the broken glass of the window, I ran. Fighting wasn’t an option, not against such a superior number of men with guns more potent than my blade pouring in like cockroaches and with the Haitian’s power chocking the air like a sulfurous cloud. I looked about for my past self, but the Haitian was already there, holding him by the neck, so I did the only thing I could. I grabbed Ando and pulled him to me, ignoring his protests that we must go back, save Hiro. There was no time to explain. Just enough to clatter down the metal staircase and onto the street, one thought thundering in my head over and over. Save Ando. Do what I couldn’t do five years before, the most shameful failure of my entire life. I never slackened the pace, not for one second, tightening my hold on Ando’s hand as I felt sweat slick our palms. Ando returned the pressure and even as my breath hitched and my legs protested the strain, an endorphin rush of joy crashed through my being at the reality of that simple gesture. Ando was here, now, not a ghost or a memory, after five years of drowning in my own desolation. I don’t think I’ve been happier in my whole life. But I couldn’t dwell on it. He was in danger, again, and I had to protect him if it cost me my life.
I stopped only after making absolutely sure that we weren’t being followed, and even then I scrutinized the shadows lurking about, paranoid of even the slightest possibility of danger. I let go of Ando’s hand. I didn’t want to, but I had no more excuse to keep holding it. The cold of the night air bit into my palm, vanishing the warmth that his hand had imprinted on my skin. I hadn’t really looked at him until now. Back at the loft, I hadn’t dared, ducking my eyes when he approached me, focusing rather on my past self, that image I'd stopped seeing in the mirror so long ago. If I looked at Ando too closely, I might fall apart, like I‘d almost done the first time I saw him on one of my trips to the past.
I was afraid to travel there at first, knowing the effect it would have on me, but I could only figure out where the past needed to be altered by analyzing all of our actions: Peter’s, Suresh’s, Isaac’s, and mine and Ando’s. And as much as I struggled to drag the memories from my mind, there were crucial gaps that needed to be filled if my plan was to succeed. So I went back, and I saw myself and I saw him and my heart wanted to beat a hole through my chest. I watched him and my past self argue over road directions, discuss my powers, reminisce about a night when we both got smashed and we barely managed to stumble to his apartment. All lines in a play composed from my memories, shadows smudged by the footprints of time’s careless fingers, happening for the first time, and the rush of recognition swept over me in a gale as cold as winter and as searing as a flaming pyre. They were there, right in front of me, both ignorant, innocent, with no idea of what they were truly rushing towards, and I had to let them, though I wanted to scream at them, to warn him, but I couldn’t. They had a task to do. That mustn’t change. It’s the only way to stop the bomb.
Yet now, with him standing not a foot away, I don’t say anything. How can I? How can I cause him the pain of knowing that in this world he’s had the misfortune to step into, he’s already dead? I can’t. I won’t. So I keep it from my face. Through the bedlam of the last five years, I’ve learned how to mask my emotions so well that sometimes I forget to feel them. So it should be easy to look him in the eye and evade precisely that thing that he’s looking for in me. It isn’t. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in my life. I want to hug him, to feel his warm skin pressing into me, his living heart beating against my own. I want to say everything I never dared to say before, to say I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, and I will never let it happen again, I promise. You mean too much to me, you’ve always meant too much to me and my soul can’t take it. That’s why I choose to live in shadows, buried in a cave filled with nothing but moldy memories printed on pieces of yellowed paper that crumble in the light of the sun, like my soul would if I didn't keep my love for you hidden so far back in the deepest corner of my heart.
You’re so close, so damn close, yet I can’t bridge this small gap between us. I won’t burden you with this pain. It’s mine to suffer so that you never have to. So I let you stare at me as if I were a nothing more than a stranger when you learn of what I’ve been forced to become, because that’s all I am to you now. I’m not your Hiro anymore. He died in me the second Sylar threw you off that building, leaving a bleeding shell twisting itself into a crisscrossing web of deeply cut scars shrouded by layers of black fabric, nothing more than a ghost bearing a dead man’s face. The real Hiro, your Hiro, is back in the loft, at the mercy of men who’d gladly let this world fester until not even the bones are left to poke out from the ground. I must get you to him, so that he can go back and kill Sylar before any of this happens. So that neither me nor this rotten world will ever exist. So that you never have to look at me like that.
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Awesome fic!
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Great job!
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I find it interesting that Future Hiro remained so detached from Ando the whole time he was there, which of course, led to this. I actually have a couple of more fics with the same theme that I've been writing concurrently with this one because the idea won't leave me alone.
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