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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[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?"