A Long Trip Home

[chimeramimicry]

The door is two yards away but I can't move from the top of the stairs.  It's been months, four or so, since I've been here, in this spot.  Gone were the days of trudging up the stairs with my satchel on the way home from work because my building's landlords refused to fix the elevators properly.  Gone too was the pleasure I had of returning to this apartment I paid for with my own money and not from my trust fund.  I donated all of that to charity the moment I turned twenty-five and finished paying off my loans to school.  It was two years ago.  It feels like forever.

I'm not the same man I had been.  I'm not a child anymore.  At least, I want to think that.

I'm still clutching the photograph of my brother and I in our tuxedos.  There's a smudge on it from my thumb and full of creases.  I've not let it go since I opened that box containing everything that I am.  Everything I was.  I left Ireland without looking back.  There was, there is only one thing on my mind.  Nathan.

Nathan.

Nathan.

I know he's here.  I've always felt a connection to him.  Mohinder Suresh called it part of my empathy, to feel things like that.  Funny to be so empathically linked to someone I spent my whole life pining for, who has always had a life to live without me.  He's never had time for me.  Never.

"Just walk, Peter," I whisper to myself as I move to a door I have not touched in a long time.  I swallow.  And knock.  I know he's in here without knowing it.  I almost lose the nerve to knock.  Please answer, Nathan.  Please.

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[law-anddisorder.livejournal.com]

How many days has it been? Five, six? My brother is now my tormentor. He doesn't love me, not when he's doing this to me. He keeps telling me he does, whispering it into my hair when I'm shaking and crying, when I'm silent and refuse to talk to him. There's one day I spend completely out of the restraints, and I think maybe it's over, maybe he'll give in, but when I try to hit him, try to escape, he stops me with that Godforsaken telekinetic power, ties me to the bed again. I call him the worst names I can think of. I tell him I never loved him, that I only used him. He laughs and tells me he loves me anyway. I tell him that I'll take him away, spend the rest of my life with him, give him all of me, everything he's ever wanted. He just smiles and shushes me, kisses me, holds me.

He's killing me.

Sometimes I'm all right, and it's like we're just on vacation together, and we laugh and talk about sports, about my children, about when we were younger. Sometimes it's so bad I'm heaving nothing but bile into the ice bucket Peter's reserved for just that purpose. Sometimes I can't keep down anything that's not water and crackers. He loves me still.

There's some kind of medication that he's got stashed away, and I do my best to make him give it to me. But my tormentor, my brother, he always knows when I'm faking it, making it out to be worse than it really is, and when it's really bad and I need it. Then I feel the cool swipe of alcohol against my arm, a quick, almost painless slide of a needle under my skin. It never hurts after that, and it lasts sometimes for hours.

Maybe a few days more go by, I'm not sure anymore. They're marked by the good times and the bad times. Peter stops me from cutting myself with the safety razor that he leaves unattended while shaving me. He sings to me and rocks me as if I'm his child, and he tells me he loves me. But he doesn't love me. Not when he's hurting me like this.

Today I wake up, and something is different, maybe. I can't trust myself yet. I don't know. I'll let Peter decide. He's his brother's keeper. My tormentor. My savior.

[chimeramimic.livejournal.com]

I'm so tired. My body regenerates itself with or without sleep, but the mental exhaustion is not something that even Claire's powers can cure me of. I am in the shower myself, sobbing away the pain I gather from him and purge when he is passed out, when my brother stirs. I don't need super hearing to figure that one out. Washing my face -- though it will take some time for the redness to leave my eyes -- I leave the shower and dry as quickly as possible.

Nathan's sitting up in bed. His hands are tied, but not to the headboard. He can get up, grasp things, feed himself...but he's still impaired. He can not get too far. And that's the point, really. I have to watch him at every step of the way. He's worse than a child. Worse than my patients.

It's all I can do not to break down on a daily basis.

This morning, though, his eyes are clear. He's not really looking at me, just at the sun spots on the wall, watching them as if he can actually see their patterns. I can't get my hopes up though. "Nathan?" It takes him a moment, but he looks at me with those striking eyes of his and I edge closer to the bed, t-shirt and hair sticking damply to my skin.

I smile. He does not, but I'm use to that. My lips find his the moment I crawl into bed with him, hands on either side of his face. He tastes stale, like morning breath.

"What do you want for breakfast?"