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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[crashgirl82.livejournal.com]

I lift my glass and swallow the last bit of the golden fluid in the bottom of it. Every last bit of it is gone now, but he's still in my head.

My brother is gone, but he won't leave me alone.

The nightmares are always different, but the end result is the same: unbearable heat, scorching flesh, Peter's scream as he ignites high above New York City.

I don't know how I survived it, and I wish I hadn't. There's nothing here for me now except for what Peter has left behind.

I pick up the picture of myself and Peter at my wedding, and the sharp sound of the knock at the door startles me. I drop it, and the glass cracks right through the middle, separating us, just as we are now in this life.

Wherever you are, that's where I want to be, I think, as I slide back the deadbolt and expect to see my mother's angry face.

It's not Ma.

Maybe I'm dreaming again.

[chimeramimic.livejournal.com]

I know I'm staring. I almost blubbered about the wrong address and left the door before I see his eyes. I know him, inside and out, just like he knows me. Even through the hazy liquored up gaze and the intense beard he's sporting, I know him.

But what's happened? I look him up and down before I reach forward. The space between us is just that. Space. It's so easy to move my arm, so easy to touch his chest. He's really. I can feel my eyes filling with tears but I laugh, I laugh softly and shaking my head before my fingers slide into his beard. I tug.

Real too.

"Nathan. It's so good to see you."