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It was twelve hundred hours and the sun blared at a perfect ninety degree angel over his back. Peter Petrelli could feel its rays burning against the back of his neck. His cloths clung to his body, heavy and wet in the summer heat. Even so the eighteen year old wiggled on his stomach, deeper into the bushes and the dense underbrush. He held his gun in front of him. His left hand rested on the barrel of the weapon, his right rested on the—
To be honest he didn’t know what that end was called.
He had never been the warrior of the family, that had always been Nathan’s job. His “brave” and “courageous” older brother who had been all too willing to go to war. Hell, he’d signed up for it.
Peter, on the other hand, had always considered himself more of a lover than a fighter. Which was why it was all the more confusing why he was crawling through the dense underbrush with a loaded pistol in his hands, ready to shoot the first person on sight.
He wasn’t going to take any chances.
A twig snapped behind him.
Peter’s heart almost stopped. He held his breath and prayed that whoever it was would pass by without noticing him. He couldn’t see if they wore the enemy red or the allied blue. He didn’t care. He didn’t want to be found, no matter what. He curled himself as tightly as he could under the bush, thorns and leaves nipped at his slick skin. The cool end of his gun rested against his cheek and he tried to forget where he was, the tang of the tropical heat on his tongue, the unrelenting prangs of hunger that gripped his stomach in excruciating craps—
A stream of water shot through the bushes, slapping him in the shoulder. Peter barely managed to stifle a laugh.
“I found him, Simon I found him!” The younger of his two nephews screamed through the hedges.
“Where Monty! Where!?” Simon, the older of the two yelled back.
“Over here. I-I think I hear him laugh over here!” Monty chattered, his voice squeaked in excitement.
Peter could hear the boys tramping through the hedge just to the right of him, heading the completely wrong direction. He did his best to hold down a smile. With as much energy as he could managed in the middle-of-the-day July heat the teenager jumped up from his hiding spot in the bushes.
He held his water gun up in the air, like some ancient dead guy about to win a mighty conquest “I’m right here!” He yelled at the top of his lungs as he unleashed a torrent of water on the two young boys.
Their shrieks of terror sounded more like giggles of delight.
Between giggles Simon managed to get stutter out a “You will be vanquished, foul villain!”
Peter felt his heart swell with pride as he pummeled his nephew with water. Apparently watching all the Lord of the Rings movies with Simon had taught him something. Who said fiction wasn’t educational, thanks to fiction he was about to be “vanquished”.
Monty was still convulsing on the ground in a giggle fit when Peter managed to pull himself out of the hedge. Simon stood in front of his brother as a human shield, the bright red tip of the water gun aimed right at Peter’s chest. “You ready to die, villain?” The boy said, totally excited to kill someone with a water gun.
“Can I call for backup?” Peter asked, pumping his own bright blue water gun, the brackish water sloshing around inside.
The boy moaned.
“Come on,” Peter grinned a crooked smile “You have backup.”
“Monty doesn’t count.”
“Sure he does.” Peter used his water gun to gesture towards the ground “Look at him, he’s the perfect back up.”
Monty entered another round of three year old giggles. It wasn’t his most solider-like moment.
Simon started down at his brother with contempt. “Fine.” He grumbled, not moving the water gun from Peter’s chest.
Doing his best not to move away from gun-point, Peter managed to turn his head to glance at the patio where his sister-in-law sat, perfectly dry, reading some mystery novel while she let Peter tire out her children for the day. “Hey Heidi—“ Peter yelled at the top of his lung across the yard.
Heidi licked a finger and turned a page of her book. “No, Peter.”
“Aw come on, I hadn’t even asked yet.”
“You don’t need to ask. The answer’s no.”
“Just this once—“ He pleaded, not really wanting to get pelted with water straight in the chest.
She sighed and put her book down, lifting her sunglasses so he could see the amusement in her eyes. “Didn’t you say that last week too?”
“Well,” he grinned “yeah. But this is the last time I promise, scouts honor.”
His sister-in-law rolled her eyes, but she picked up the extra water gun on the edge of the patio. She strolled over, completely void of the sense of urgency that any solider in a water war should have, and joined him at gun point “I didn’t know you were a boy scout.” She said, pumping up her gun.
“I wasn’t but it sure got you over here, didn’t it?”
A torrent of water hit him in the face. He couldn’t see. The taste of city sewer water flooded his sinuses. He gasped for air. The water just kept coming and coming and it seemed like it was never going to end—
And then it stopped. Heidi stood next to him with a completely empty water gun.
“What the hell was that for?” he gasped, forgetting about the kids that had lost interest in the adults and had started playing their own water gun game.
Heidi shrugged, grinning at her brother-in-law with a smile almost as impressive as her husbands. “That,” she said casually like she hadn’t just blasted him in the face with a gallon of water “was for lying to me.”
“About being a boy scout, come on that’s kinda harsh.” He spat out some of the stagnant tasting water on the grass, pushing his dripping hair out of his eyes so he could see her smug expression unimpeded.
“Oh, also, there was no way in hell I was going to let you beat my kids at a water gun fight.”
Peter let a laugh bubble out of his mouth. That was what he loved about Heidi. Like his mother she wasn’t going to let anyone take a beating on her kids, unlike his mother she wasn’t completely insane and controlling. You know, you win some, you lose some.
She handed Peter a towel with a slightly tattered looking picture of Winnie the Pooh and a pot of honey. He shook off his hair into it. “So”, he said while he tried to wrap the towel around his skinny waist “where is Nathan on this damn hot summer’s day?”
He knew that was the wrong question to ask. The little lines framing the corners of her mouth darkened. She folded her arms. Everything about her seemed tense.
“Heidi,” Peter asked without hesitation “is everything alright?”
Heidi bit her bottom lip, her eyes seemed lost in thought. For a moment Peter thought that maybe she hadn’t heard, but then she said “Of course Peter, everything is fine.”
A line of sweat trickled down Peter’s back. “Then where is he?” he pressed. “What sort of dad stays at work on a day like this? Well you know, other than my dad, but I think we can both agree that he’s an ass hole. But Nathan isn’t like that. He isn’t like that, is he, Heidi?”
The boy’s blasted their water guns in the peripheral of Peter’s vision. Somehow Monty, despite the fact that he was half the size of his older brother, had managed to get both the guns and now seemed to running some sort of French-style reign of terror of the backyard.
A few years ago he would have been over there, Peter realized. He would have been playing water wars right now, totally engrossed in childhood summer time politics. But now he had no desire to join them. Not even the slightest urge to abandon his sister-in-law in favor of summer time games. All he wanted was for Heidi to answer his question. He could feel the need for answers slowly creeping out, devouring him from the inside out.
He shivered. Even though it had to have been pushing ninety and a layer of sweat covered his skin.
Heidi watched her children play with a glazed over expression. When she spoke her voice sounded as distant as Peter felt. “Does he ever seem like he’s hiding something to you, Peter?”
Peter felt a knot in his stomach tighten. Yes, of course he did. That was the very definition of his brother, it was the very essence of what made Nathan “Nathan”. He was always hiding something. There was always some unknown motive. Every word that he spoke had a double meaning, a riddle or a puzzle that the person the receiving end had to struggle to decode. Talking to Nathan sometimes was like having two conversations at once; the one that you were having with him, and the one that he was having with himself.
It was inferiorating, and worst of all it was isolating. As a kid Peter had always wondered why his brother hadn’t had many friends, only to find out later that most people couldn’t stand the riddles and the games. Apparently that isn’t how friendship is supposed to work. He couldn’t imagine that would make a marriage easy.
So instead of telling the truth, Peter decided to lie. “No, of course not.” He said easily with a smile “Why do you ask?”
He felt nauseous and wished that he really was in a war zone in the middle of the tropics, instead of in a sunny back yard at the peak of Summer in New York.