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He loved the feeling of falling.
The wind pressed up against his back as he let all the tension out of his body in a single breath. His spine went slack and he let himself plummet face first towards the ground. Some primal part of his head was too terrified to even breath, another part of his brain wanted to let out a whoop
The ground came closer.
He tucked his arms in along his torso and forced his eyes to stay open. The wind bit burned his face, his eyes watered. But he had to take in this view. The New York sky line was etched on top of an infant sunrise. The black night sky had just begun to reveal the light blues and purples of dawn and only a few office lights from over worked interns and taxis drivers lit up the streets.
It was so beautiful that he didn’t even notice when he collided the street.
Nathan bolted up. His pajama shirt plastered to his chest in a thick layer of sweat. His heart thundered in his ears, his eyes darted around. He should be dead right now.
Was this heaven? Was heaven a dark room that looked just like his bedroom? He wasn’t on the New York sidewalk, a puddle of blood and gore on the pavement. He wasn’t screaming because his spine had been broken into hundreds of tiny pieces.
And most importantly, Nathan hadn’t flown.
Nathan Petrelli was in his bedroom and he was perfectly normal. Where he had been asleep all night. The early morning sun squeezed between the blind shades and fell across his bed. The only hint of New York City was the poster of the skyline on his wall.
Still his heart raced in his chest.
It had felt so real. The window sill had scraped against his feet when he pushed off into the open air. There had been a rush of wind that hit his face when he soared upward. Home faded into the mass of other buildings until he couldn’t see it anymore. That high above the city the air tasted like sea salt and ozone, thin and lacking.
Part of him wished that it had been real. Of course that part also was pretty relieved that he wasn’t dead.
The taste of ozone flooded his mouth.
Nathan shivered.
If it had been real how would he even explain it to his parents? ‘Hey ma, I flew last night and I’m going to out late studying tonight. Is that okay with you?”
Yeah that would definitely have gone over great.
Nathan let out a moan a stretched his back, he slipped out of bed and walked over to the shower. The hot water slammed any sleep that had been remaining in him. The thoughts of sunrise replaced by physics and girls.
In fact getting ready in the morning was completely normal for the most part. He almost forgot a textbook, but that still seemed fairly normal. Nathan was finally starting to relax and forget about the dream when he went down for breakfast.
He sat across the table from his little brother Peter, who has having a particularly hard time buttering his toast this morning. Peter held the knife awkwardly in one hand, the toast in the other, his eyes narrowed in intense concentration. The butter slid off the knife for the fifth time in a row.
Nathan tried to hide a smile “Petey, do you want me to do that?”
“Nope.” Peter shook his head with the same funny determined look on his face. He went in for another try.
“Okay well you’re the one who's going to have to tell ma when all the butter is on the table.” Nathan took a bite from his own piece of toast.
Peter managed to navigate the knife carefully so the butter at least made some contact with the toast. This was obviously good enough for him, because with a giant glob of butter in the middle of the bread he took a bite. After a few moments of tentative chewing he somehow managed to speak “Hey Nathan why’d you open your window last night?”
The words caught in Nathan’s throat “I didn’t open my window Petey.”
Peter ignored him. “I like the window open. But isn’t it cold outside? My teacher said that October is fall and fall is cold and why would you open a window when it’s--”
“Peter I didn’t open a window” Nathan took another bite of his toast and tried to look calm.
“Sure you did. I heard the window scrape open like it always does. I’m not crazy Nathan.” said the elementary school student who had told everyone in his class last week that the school had night classes for ghosts.
“Of course you’re not Petey, I’m just saying that sometimes you have an overactive imagination.”
“And then you jumped out.”
Nathan put down his toast. Any smile that had been left on his lips disappeared, his face turned hard and cold. He did his best to be expressionless. Like dad. Look like dad when he’s lying to ma. “I jumped out? Of the second floor window? Petey I think you need to eat less sugar before bed.”
“I know what I saw, Nathan.”
“What you saw,” Nathan pushed his chair into the table, suddenly not as hungry as he had been a moment ago “didn’t happen. It was a dream Peter.”
“Yeah, we both had the same dream.”
“Exactly.” Nathan lied. Peter was always reading books about magic and super powers maybe he would think that shared dreams were a perfectly normal part of the eight year old experience. “I had a dream last night that I was flying, you obviously had the same dream as me.”
Peter nodded slowly, “You’re joking. You don’t believe in that stuff.”
“I swear to god that shared dreams happen. And that’s what happened last night.” I didn’t fly. I’m normal.
Peter smiled “Cool” he whispered under his breath before plopping out of his chair and running up the stairs to get his backpack.
“Make sure not to forget anything, I’m leaving in five!” Nathan called up the stairs with the proper amount of fake enthusiasm.
“Okay!” Peter chimed down. There was a slam and a crash and Nathan seriously didn’t want to know what his little brother had just knocked over.
Nathan gathered up the dishes and put them in the sink, staring blankly while he went through the motions of every school morning. He skimmed the usual note from ma about how she and dad wouldn’t be back until late and how there was food in the freezer for him and Peter. Everything felt so unnervingly usual.
That’s because everything is business as usual, nothing happened last night.
But hadn’t it? He had dreamed about flying last night and then Peter said he had heard the window open. The bottoms of Nathan’s feet ached under the thick woolen socks he’d put on so he didn’t have to see where the sharp pieces on the old window sill had cut the bridges of his feet open.
He was over reacting. He was perfectly normal, and besides his grades he could even be considered boring.
Boring, uninteresting, Nathan.
He let out a slow breath and closed his eyes. The tension that had built up in his chest slowly released. “I’m fine” Nathan whispered under his breath “I’m fine. It was only a dream and now I’m going to go to school and not think about it for seven hours. And then I’m going to come home and make dinner and play video games with Peter and I’m not going to fly. Because that is physically impossible.”
He finished washing off the dishes, stacked them neatly on the drying mat by the sink, looked down to grab his backpack and head to the door.
Instead he froze in place,terrified to move. He stood perfectly still, gripping the edge of the sink for support. Somehow he managed to cough down the vomit that was coming up his throat with rough croaking noises.
Nathan Petrelli was perfectly normal besides the fact that he was floating a foot above the ground.
His mouth tasted like ozone and sea salt.
“Hey Nathan I’m ready.” a slightly annoyed sounding Peter yelled from the front door.
Nathan let out a long breath. His entire body shook, but his voice remained perfectly even. “I’ll be there in a minute just let me finish with the dishes.”
Nathan closed his eyes as tight as he could and opened them again. Nothing changed. He wasn’t asleep. He wasn’t seeing things. This was happening and he had school in twenty minutes and his little brother was waiting at the door to get walked to school and he was floating above the kitchen floor and he didn’t know how to get down because this wasn’t physically possible. He wasn’t going to freak out. He was seventeen years old. Practically an adult. He could handle a this. This was all his fault. How this was his fault, he wasn’t sure, but he had obviously done something wrong and he was going to fix it.
He eyed the phone at the edge of the counter.
Or he could just call ma she would know what to do...
“Nathan?” Peter called from the hallway his shoes squeaking on the wood floor as he walked towards the kitchen “Nathan we’re going to be late. Come on.”
A wave of panic washed over Nathan and his feet thunked on the floor.
Peter’s face poked around the corner “Can we go now?”
“Yeah. Sorry I was just...doing the dishes.” His voice shook and he felt as if he was going to throw up in the sink, but he was okay. He wasn’t sure how he’d gotten down, he didn’t really care how either. He was just glad to feel solid ground against his feet.
Of course he was almost late for class.
Almost.
Nathan slipped into an empty seat in the back of home room right as the tardy bell rudely announced the beginning of another school day. He might have actually been on time if Peter hadn’t felt the need to drag him into his third grade classroom in the building across the street and tell his entire tribe of eight year olds about their “shared dream”. Nathan stood in the door trying to shake his head as inconspicuously as possible to the teacher at the front of the room that was giving him a suspicious look. Suspicious as in should-you-really-be-taking-care-of-children-for-the-love-of-god. Thankfully he had plausible deniability on his side and was able to run across the street to the high school building.
The physics teacher gave him a cold look, not so unlike the look that Peter’s teacher had given him. Maybe they were related, or decided that today was the day do give the Petrelli kid a good glare. Nathan tried his best to smile politely in response. It probably looked more like a grimace.
The teacher let out a leisurely sigh and lulled straight into lecture, writing in rough lines of physics on the board. Nathan started to copy them mindlessly, but his eyes wandered away from the board and out the window.
It was a clear day outside, probably one of the last before winter started. The air was probably crisp and cool and calm, strangely still in anticipation for winter like everything was holding its breath.
Nathan put down his pencil midway through the gravitation problem he had halfheartedly copied.
He leaned over, pressed the side of his head against the cool window, closed his eyes, and imagined what outside look like from above. The air would be thinner up there, and that high up there would be a wind. His short hair still managed to get in his eyes when the wind screamed from behind, from the west, and the tie of his school uniform flapped in the breeze. The sky was bright blue with the horizon still dotted with the yellows of dawn. The streets were crammed, cars of every make and model scrunched together on streets while impatient pedestrians in suits and pencil skirts crowded the cross walks.
Nathan wondered where they were going, work probably.
But that was boring, instead he thought about where Peter would have thought they were going. Someplace fantastic. Maybe to an underground city. A city that looked exactly the same as this city, except it was upside down. And everyone in the upside down city was dead. And it was the job of a few of the people, the ones in suits with cool hats, to keep the upside down city and the actual city from every meeting.
Yeah, that would be what Peter would have seen.
Instead Nathan just saw people and cars and smog and fall leafs.
He felt someone shake his shoulder and Nathan came to the painful realization that he wasn’t flying, he was in homeroom. A ball formed in his stomach and he could feel himself falling in the dream, plummeting towards the ground. The trees and the people below getting closer and closer and closer--He opened his eyes and glanced at the clock. He’d been asleep for two hours, sleeping right through Physics and half of English.
The girl next to him gave him a disgusted look when he tried to ask for her notes.
Why’d you even wake me up then? Nathan thought bitterly. His muscles ached like he had actually hit the pavement twice in one morning.
The rest of the day was so uneventful that Nathan almost wished that he had opened the window when he walked into home room and just jumped out, just to see what would happen. Maybe he’d even fly. Not that he particularly wanted to, but it seemed a whole lot better than french. Lunch followed french, math followed lunch, and theology followed math. All were unbelievably uneventful. His thoughts were wrapped up in clouds and he tried his best to bring them down to earth.
He was mostly unsuccessful.
Nathan had never slipped out of class so fast when the final bell rang. Even when people tried to stop and talk in the hall he gave them a cold glare and walked right past. It took all of his restraint not to flat out run. He was outside on the sidewalk in front of the primary school when Peter was walking down the front steps. Even Peter looked surprised to see him.
“You’re early.”
“No I’m not” Nathan muttered, even though he knew he was.
“And you’re out of breath, did you run here?”
“No.” Nathan hadn’t. He had quickly walked. “Do you want to go home or not?”
Peter nodded and took his spot in front, leading the way home. They walked in silence for awhile. Which was strange. Peter almost always had something to say but today he was completely quiet. Sometimes Nathan would see his eyes wander towards the sky, and then to Nathan, and then quickly down the the ground.
“What is it Petey?”
“Nothing.” Peter said too quickly.
“You know for a Petrelli you’re a terrible liar, did ma ever tell you that?”
Peter looked like he was going to deny it, but then he nodded. Like the terrible liar he was. He kept walking, his eyes on the ground.
Nathan sighed, and stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “Peter are you going to tell me what’s wrong or are you going to pout the entire walk home?”
Peter made a whining noise that Nathan assumed was a “Yes”.
“Fine. You have until we get back to the house to tell me what’s wrong, and if you don’t I’m not going to help you get through the fifth dungeon in Legend of Zelda tonight.”
The whimpering noises stopped so abruptly that Nathan was afraid that Peter had accidentally swallowed his own vocal cords.
“They didn’t believe me.”
“Who didn’t believe you?” Nathan asked, squatting down so he could look Peter in the eye.
“The kids at school. They said that you couldn’t fly. They said that if you could fly then I should be able to fly. So I got up on the swing set at recess and made it go as high as I could and then I jumped out of it when it was at the very top--”
“Oh god Petey--”
“--and I didn’t fly. I fell in the dirt.”
“You okay?” Nathan wanted nothing more than to touch his little brother face, to comfort him and to hug him. But he remembered what ma had said about smothering his brother and how Peter needed to grow up, so he kept his distance.
“Yeah I’m fine.” Peter said grudgingly, his pride more wounded than his scraped up knees “They sent me to the office because I was ‘disrupting class’ and then nurse and stuff.”
Nathan’s heart dropped “Did they call dad?”
Peter returned a relieved expression “Nah, ma.”
“Thank god. You got lucky Peter.”
“I know.”
“Last time you got sent to the office dad said that if you got in trouble again he would do more than ground you.”
“I know.” Peter looked like he wanted nothing more to curl in on himself.
“Do you Petey? Because I don’t think you do. You don’t want to see dad mad. Trust me on that.” Nathan shivered and tried not to think about the time he ran out of gas on the interstate two hours away from home in the middle of the night with a girl in the passenger seat.
Peter just nodded again and stared at a crack in the sidewalk.
“What did ma say?”
“What she always says. That I’m ‘special’. They let me go to class after that.”
The ‘special’ excuse. Sometimes it seemed as if it was their mother’s favorite adjective to use to describe her children. Particularly Peter. Nathan was never sure if their mother thought that being ‘special’ was a good thing or if she was using it in a condescending way. Because she always seemed to use it whenever things went terribly wrong.
They started to walk home again.
“You didn’t tell her,right?”
“About the dream? That you can fly?”
“Yeah.”
“Nope.”
“Good. And I can’t fly Peter, I told you that remember?”
“Yeah.” Peter said raising his eyebrows. “But seriously is it more likely that we had a shared dream or that you can fly?”
Damn this kid.
“Sometimes I don’t think that you hear yourself when you talk Petey.”
“Nope.” Peter responded, taking the front steps two at a time while Nathan rummaged for the key in his backpack, not listening to a word that Nathan said.
Just like normal, thank god.
“Did you find the fifth piece?” Nathan asked, putting a bowl of mac and cheese next to his little brother who was currently absorbed in his video game. The blinds in the living room were closed as tight as he could get them even though only a lingering hazy purple daylight remained outside.
“Almost.” Peter slammed his finger down on the A button. The skeleton-monster-thing was sliced in half by a tiny pixelated sword.
Nathan leaned over and took the controler from his brother “I’ll play for awhile. Ma will be home soon and if you haven’t eaten she’ll kill me.”
“Yeah like she’d kill her favorite.” Peter laughed before adding “Promise you won’t find the piece of the triforce?”
“Promise.”
Peter then attacked his mac and cheese with as much vigor as killing the monster, devoting his full attention to each fork full of fake cheese and slightly limp noodles.
“You know that you’re dinner isn’t the final boss, right Petey?” Nathan led Link through the dungeon, awkwardly moving the little character through a jumbled mess of doorways and passages. He mostly tried to avoid killing the monsters or actually finding the triforce piece, that was Peter’s job afterall.
“Okay I’m done!”
“Really? It took you less than five minutes to eat that entire bowl. That’s not natural.”
Peter obviously didn’t care about his unnatural ability to eat mac and cheese, he leaned over and grabbed the controller out of Nathan hands “Did you find anything?”
“Of course not.” He responded, trying not to smile while his brother was reabsorbed into the game. Everything was quiet except for the music coming from the video game, and occasionally Peter would start yelling when there were too many monsters, fling the controller across the room, and stalk out.
Nathan usually picked up the controller after that and went ahead and beat the monster.
He pulled his physics homework out of his backpack, waiting for the usual nightly video game routine to unfold. Until then he was going to try and get work done.
He had managed to situate his textbook on his lap and was just getting out a pencil when Peter broke the extremely noisy silence.
“What would it be like if Link could fly?”
Nathan put down his pencil and sighed “Petey why would Link be able to fly. Isn’t he an elf or something?”
“He’s Hyrulian.”
“Fine, Hyrulian. I am pretty sure that being able to fly wouldn’t help him in a dungeon.”
“Yeah…” Peter bit his lip, and was quiet for a few seconds while he killed more of the monsters. “But that doesn’t mean he can’t. Maybe he just doesn’t want anyone else to know because he doesn’t think anyone else in Hyrule can fly and he’s afraid that no one will want to be his friend. Which isn’t true, but he’d wouldn’t know that unless he told someone.”
Nathan ran his hands through his close cut hair and sighed “Peter what is this about?”
“It’s about if Link can fly.”
“Really Peter? Because it feels like you weren’t listening to me earlier.”
“I was listening to you, but you were lying. Did ma ever tell you that you’re a terrible liar Nathan?”
Nathan had turned off the TV before he even realized that he had gotten up, he walked up the stairs, an angry tension that he didn’t dare act upon building in his gut. Peter was yelling at him about how he hadn’t saved yet and that he had found three pieces today and that Nathan was the worst brother ever. Nathan tried to ignore him.
He didn’t want to yell at his brother and make him cry.
That was their dad’s job.
He threw open the door to his room and opened the window part of the way up without a second thought. He was pulling off his shoes and socks when Peter, with puffy red eyes,appeared in the door.
“N-nathan w-what are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing Peter?”
“It looks like you’re taking your shoes off.”
Nathan threw his socks in a pile on the floor and pulled the very top part of the window fully open so that the fall breeze filled the room. “You wanted to see if I could fly Peter. I know that’s what you want. And you aren’t going to stop saying that I can until I show you that things like-like flying aren’t possible! Those video games you play and those stories that you make, they aren’t real! Ma’s been telling me for awhile that I need to stop protecting you and I’ve been ignoring her but maybe she was right because this is insane Peter!”
He hadn’t realized he was yelling until he realized that Peter wasn’t making a sound, he just stared up at his big brother his terror on his face and sadness in his eyes. Still Peter Petrelli didn’t cry. Nathan almost wish that he would have, it would have made him feel less terrible than watching his little brother struggle to hold himself together.
His voice caught in his throat. “Petey, I’m sorry--”
Peter’s voice was so small that Nathan barely heard it “You’re doing it.”
“I’m doing what?”
“It.”
“What is ‘it’?”
“Nathan, you’re flying”
“No I’m--” When he looked down his stomach churned with the mac and cheese he just ate, the floor was a foot too far away.
“Yes you are. You’re flying!” somehow Peter managed to smile even with his puffy red face.
“Yeah,.” Nathan tried to sound calm but his voice shook “I guess I am--”
His little brother was hugging him. The kid that he had just been yelled at less than two minutes ago had run forward and now had his arms wrapped around Nathan’s legs. “Why’d you lie to me?” he whispered.
Nathan didn’t want to say anything, some small part of him still was hard at work denying all of this. Maybe he was in a coma and this was some strange dream. Or maybe something he’d eaten had been laced with drugs and this was some extended drug trip. None of these things made sense but his brain was still hard at work trying to deny every last bit of it. And somehow, despite the fact that he was dangling a foot above the ground and had no idea how to get down, it wouldn’t feel quite real until he said it out loud.
So instead he just murmured “Old habits die hard I guess.”
Peter smiled, if not a bit sadly “Can we go now?”
“We’re going somewhere?”
“Of course” Peter was grinning now as he attempted to jump the foot gap between Nathan the ground. “You can fly. Ma and dad aren’t home yet and it’s not past my bed time yet away. You’re gonna just climb out the window and…”
“Fly?”
“Yep.”
“Petey I don’t even know how to get down right now. How do you know that it’d be safe?”
Peter had managed to wiggle his way up onto Nathan’s back and had his arms wrapped around his neck. “Because I trust you.”
“Great your trust will keep us safe then.”
Peter must have not caught the sarcasm because Nathan felt his little brother’s arms hug tighter. “Yep.”
Nervously, Nathan climbed up on the window sill every last ounce of good sense screamed for him to get down. The cool night air cut straight through his t-shirt. His breath was shaking and shallow in his chest, he could feel Peter’s heart racing in excitement. “Ready?”
“Yeah.”
Nathan pushed off from the window as hard as he could. The sharp pieces of the window lock cut into his bare feet. He squeezed his eyes shut and held his breath, waiting for something to happen. If they were going to die they were at least going to get it over with quickly. The two Petrelli boys that jumped out a window one night and broke their necks.
Nathan probably should have thought of this before actually jumping.
“Nathan you can open your eyes now.” Peter laughed.
Tentatively Nathan open his eyes.
They weren’t dead, much to his own personal surprise. The sidewalk was two stories down, abandoned, bathed in thick yellow street light. They were surrounded by a canopy with thick leaves that scratched and snapped at their faces. Even in the fresh darkness of night Nathan could still make out some of the reds and yellows of October that had begun to bleed in.
That would have been enough for him, standing in the middle of the tree while the wind blew through making the branches. He could have stayed there, a few feet from his bedroom window with his little brother squirming on his back all night.
But then he heard Peter whisper “Let’s go higher.”
And before Nathan could even think they were going higher. They raced out of the canopy, branches whipped against his cheeks, the vision in his peripherals blurred, he wanted to close his eyes but he didn’t dare even though he could barely see in the low light. Was there a way out? Oh god what if there wasn’t a way out of the trees and he was flying in the wrong direction, plunging towards the ground--
They broke through the canopy into the open air above.
“Wow” He breathed, his breath a cloud of warmth in the cold air.
“Yeah” Peter grinned and leaned over his brother’s shoulder to get a better look.
The city was stretched across the skyline in the distance, the lights of over worked office workers and apartment dwellers keeping the city bright and full of life well into the night. The dying remnants of a sunset clung to the horizon.
“It’s just like my dream.” Nathan whispered quiet enough that Peter couldn’t hear over the wind.
“Come on Nathan let’s go higher!”
Nathan paused. He knew this was a bad idea. Their parents could be home any minute and the first thing they would do if they found an empty house would be to call the police. Which would obviously end badly. “Peter I think we’ve gone high enough, let’s go back down now.”
“Come on Nathan, we never get to do anything cool.” Peter whinned “I promise that I won’t tell mom and dad about any of this.”
“Yeah because you’re great at secrets. Anyway I can feel you shivering and it’s only going to get colder and windier up there.”
“I’m fine!” he said between chattering teeth “Just five more minutes.”
“Fine. Five more minutes and then we’re going home.”
Peter’s laugh was lost in the wind as he pressed higher. The wind bit against Nathan’s bare arms and face and flowed down his throat. His choked for air and pressed higher. His eyes stung with tears and his lips burned from the lack of moisture but he pressed higher. The house shrunk smaller and smaller into a jumble of buildings below until it was finally indistinguishable in the sprawl of concrete, it all grew dark and hazy when they entered a thick layer of dewy clouds. His head felt light and fuzzy and his vision flickered with small black fleckles. He swayed back in forth in the air, his muscles jolting. “Peter I-I think that we should head down now.” His managed to slur.
“But you said five minutes it’s only been--”
He heard screaming.
The wind pressed up against his back as tension filled every cell in his body.
Peter wasn’t on his back.
Nathan was plummeting face first towards the ground. Some primal part of his brain was too terrified to even breath, his eyes scanned through the clouds look for a little face or a hand or another scream or something anything oh god anything oh god oh god. Why was it so quiet? He should have heard Peter again by now--
The ground came closer.
He tucked his arms in along his torso and forced his eyes to stay open even though they were filled with tears. The wind bit burned his face.
“Petey!” He shouted, choking on wind and sadness “Peter where are you? Peter!”
No response.
He flew over the tree tops so close that the twigs from the tree tops bit into his skin.
“Peter! For the love of god Petey please answer.” His eyes frantically jumped from place to place on the skyline almost hoping that he wouldn’t find anything.
“Oh god.” he could barely breathe.
Crumpled up on the sidewalk in front of his bedroom window, bathed in the friendly yellow street light, was a small body.
“Oh god.”
He fell the last fifteen feet, he barely felt the ground when he slammed into it. He let out of low moan and managed to stumble over to his brother. Every muscle and bone in his body ached and creaked with pain and exhaustion. His head spun but all he could think about was the little body on the sidewalk.
“Peter,” he breathed “say something Peter.”
Peter didn’t say anything.
Nathan knelt down and rested his brother’s small eight year old head in his lap. He knew that he should move him, but he had to hold his brother, he had to tell him that everything would be okay. Even though it wasn’t. There was so much blood. Even in the low light Nathan could see it glistening on the sidewalk and oozing from the back of Peter’s neck all over Nathan’s shorts and T shirt. He didn’t care.
Peter’s small chest shallowly rose and fell.
He wasn’t dead, not yet at least.
Nathan gently stroked the blood and sweat soaked hair out of Peter’s eyes and tried to ignore how his limbs were sticking out at all the wrong angles.
“Everything is going to be okay Peter. I’m going to fix everything.” He choked back a sob and touched in forehead to Peter’s. It was so hot, even though it was freezing outside. Nathan let out of a long exhale and counted down from five.
Five. He had to do something, they couldn’t stay here. Sooner or later someone would come along and ask why a teenage boy had a horribly mangled bloody child in his arms.
Four. He couldn’t take Peter inside the house, his parents would be home soon and he couldn’t explain this to them.
Three. He could run away, find help somewhere where no one could find them.
Two. He couldn’t move Peter without killing him.
One. There was nothing he could do and this was all his fault.
He let the breath out, a chill running down his spine.
For the first time since he had landed Nathan took his eyes off his brother and looked up at the front door to their house, locking eyes with his mother. He didn’t know how long she had been standing there, but he had never seen a more toxic combination of disappointment and panic.
“You always were good at lying Nathan, I like to think that you got that from me.” Her lips were pursed. Everything about her was stiff and formal as she walked down the front steps and examined the crumpled form of her son. Her voice didn’t even waver when she called into the house “Arthur call Linderman. It happened again.”
“Ma” Nathan breathed, he hugged his brother closer to his chest. “Ma this is all my fault.”
She circled around him, her eyes distant and cold, examining every movement with a critical gaze. “Oh I know Nathan. It always is.”
Nathan bit his lip and tried to keep the tears in his eyes. He tried to look strong and in control even though he didn’t feel it. He felt empty, like someone had pulled the plug on all his other emotions and all that was left was a void. “He trusted me and I let him down.”
“Like you always do.”
“Ma, what are you talking about?” He croaked.
“Oh Nathan,” She barely even looked at him “do you seriously think that this is the first time something like this has happened? How many times do you think that this exact scenario has played out. Every time. You manifest, Peter finds out, and he somehow convinces you to do something that gets him killed. The first time you ran into a car on the road trying to land. The second time you went too high and you both ran out of air. And now this.”
His stomach churned “I don’t remember that--that didn’t happen. I would never--”
“Don’t kid yourself Nathan. You would. You hurt everyone that you touch, anyone that gets too close ends up dead. Every time your father and I wipe your memories,and every time Peter ends up dead because of you.”
“He’s not dead yet ma.”
“You got lucky. But we can’t count on luck again.”
“Yeah that’s why we need to get him to a hospital. He’s losing blood and I think his spine might be broken. Please ma just look at me. Look at me and tell me that it’s going to be okay.” Nathan begged. He wanted nothing more than to curl into a tight ball. Or to run away. But he couldn’t. Even if he wanted to run he wouldn’t dare leave Peter, not for a second.
“Everything is going to be okay Nathan.” His mother lied, glancing back into the house. From inside Nathan could hear his father saying “He’s on his way”.
“Who's on his way, what is going on?” Nathan pleaded.
“Even if I told you Nathan. You wouldn’t remember.”
His father walked down the steps, he wore the same cold controled look as his wife. Without a pause to examine his dying son he put his right hand on Nathan’s temples and said “I am very disappointed in you.”
Nathan bolted up. His pajama shirt plastered to his chest in a thick layer of sweat. His heart thundered in his ears, his eyes darted around. He should be dead right now.
Was this heaven? Was heaven a dark room that looked just like his bedroom? He wasn’t on the front stoop of his house, clutching a puddle of blood and gore in the form of Peter. He wasn’t screaming because his little brother’s spine had been broken into hundreds of tiny pieces.
And most importantly, Nathan hadn’t flown.
Nathan Petrelli was in his bedroom and he was perfectly normal.