Title: One More Day
Characters: Hiro Nakamura, Claire Bennet
Spoilers: Vol. 2
Rating: PG
Summary: For Claire, time is meaningless. For Hiro, time is everything.
Now
"Do you have time for dessert?"
"I have all the time in the world for you."
She smiles and moves to the kitchen, casually picking up his empty plate as well as her own to take with her. Hiro reached for his wine glass, sipping slowly and watched as she moved around with the innate grace she had. Her blonde hair hung low on her back, the curls shining in the dim candlelight, though nothing outshined the coy smile that crossed her face as she moved to rejoin him at the table.
He wondered how he ever got so lucky.
"It's your favorite, New York-style cheesecake," she said as she set the small plate before him.
"Thank you, Claire," he replied sincerely, his accent softly lilting and very much music to her ears.
She nodded softly and used her fork to slice off a small bite, sliding it between her lips with an audible sigh of pleasure. "Where are you guys heading next?"
"Mohinder says Adam was spotted in Taiwan. Peter and I shall be heading there tonight."
Claire nodded, but as usual, any mention of Adam made her mood plummet. "Are you still planning on giving him the virus when you find him?"
"We would like to try," Hiro explained, setting his fork down as his sweet tooth abandoned him, "however there is no guarantee that it would work."
Claire pushed her chair back and stood, leaving her half-eaten dessert where it lay and moved to gaze out the window. Her dainty fingers slid through strands of her hair easily, braiding and re-braiding the same locks over and over again, her anxiety clear to anyone who knew her well.
Hiro knew her better than most and recognized the symptoms easily. "What is wrong, Claire?"
He'd stood and moved to stand just behind her, not touching her but offering her comfort with his nearness alone. She turned her head just enough to look at him over her shoulder. "You were friends with Adam once."
"Yes," he replied, unsure of what she was trying to say.
"Do you love me?"
"Yes."
"After I've lived through four hundred years alone, there's a chance I could be just like Adam," Claire said quietly, turning so that she could fully face him. "Will you still love me then?"
He had no answer.
2547
"You're younger than that last time I saw you."
The house was covered in ivy; from the outside it looked like it hadn't been inhabited in years. The small forest that surrounded it was one of the last remaining forests of its kind on the planet, kept that way only because it was privately owned. Walking up the path, he'd been almost certain that what he was doing was wrong, that he should immediately remove himself from this time and place.
The sound of her voice from the open doorway made all his doubts slide away.
She was still all golden sunshine and smiles, but her eyes were colder than he'd ever seen them.
"You should come in before you get radiated. The atmosphere is thinner than ever before, I doubt you've taken adequate precautions," she explained as she gestured for him to enter the house. He could do nothing but as she said and was pleasantly surprised to find the inside of the house was almost an identical layout and décor as that of their first apartment.
"You are not surprised to see me," Hiro noted as he sat down in the small chair and watched her move across the room, pouring him a cup of his favorite tea and handing it to him.
"No, I've been expecting you."
"How? I did not know I would do this until...just before I did it," Hiro struggled to explain.
Claire smiled and moved to sit across from him. "This is the first time you've visited me, but it's not the first time I've been visited. You come to me every century or so, keeping your promise."
Hiro gulped down his tea, burning the roof of his mouth and his tongue, but uncaring. His nerves were showing as he rattled the cup on its small plate as he set it down. "I was worried about you."
"You're always worried about me," Claire replied. "You bend time and space but you never stopped worrying about the indestructible cheerleader."
"I bent time and space because I worried about you."
Claire shrugged and stood, pacing the length of the room easily. Her hair hung longer than he'd ever seen it, weaved into a tight yet thick braid that hung down to her hips. It was darker than he remembered it, more bronze than the gold he remembered.
He could not resist standing and moving to her side. "Are you happy?"
She blinked in surprise. "Happy?"
"I need to know," Hiro explained, reaching down and twining his small fingers with hers. "Are you happy?"
She smiled and moved into his arms as if it was the most natural thing in the world. "You're here."
It wasn't an answer.
Then
"I cannot imagine a future without her."
"The problem is, Hiro, she's going to have to imagine one without you," Peter replied quietly, speaking out of the corner of his mouth as he continued to gaze through the window next to him onto the street below.
"What do you mean?"
Peter sighed and took his eyes from searching out their target long enough to glance at Hiro in sympathy. "Claire, like Adam, is going to live forever, or at least a lot longer than you. You can stop time, but it doesn't stop for you, Hiro."
"What does that-"
"It means that she's afraid," Peter said roughly, turning from the confused younger man to stare out the window moodily, no longer trying to hide himself in the shadows. "I couldn't think of anyone else I'd rather have for Claire. You're a good man, strong and wise, but sometimes you're so naïve."
Hiro remained silent.
"She's talked to me about it, but she doesn't want to talk to you about it. She's afraid of what you'll say."
Again, Hiro remained silent, content to hear what Claire's confidante was willing to tell him.
"She's afraid of what she's going to become after you're gone. After all her family is gone." Peter shrugged. "We both see Adam and see what he's become and we both know that there is a very real chance we could become the same way, given time."
Hiro opened his mouth to speak, though he didn't know what he could say to comfort his friend. Before anything could come out, however, Peter gestured sharply for silence.
"I see Adam. He's alone, walking this way."
Hiro pushed aside his personal problems and focused on saving the world.
2109
The pictures on the walls progressed from the early days of their relationship, when he could only coyly wrap his arms around her and blushed the entire time in front of the camera, to the most recent, if one could call thirty years old recent, where they sat happily together, him pleasantly lined in the face, his hair shockingly white.
She remained the same, always.
There were linen cloths covering the furniture, and an unhealthy amount of dust covering that. The house was dim, completely so, and only the streetlights outside provided enough light for him to navigate the halls.
A thin line of light was present under one of the doors and he moved to it quickly, pushing it open and stepping inside before he fully comprehended what he saw inside.
She looked terrible, her skin sallow and pale. Her eyes were dim and lined with red. Her hands shook as she slowly pulled a brush through her lack-luster hair.
She was not the girl he remembered.
His sudden entrance into the room had her eyes sliding to meet his in the mirror and she turned with more movement than her fragile condition seemed capable of surviving.
Her mouth formed the word before she could speak it, her voice cracking as she struggled with it. "No."
Hiro felt her pain as clearly as his own, and he moved to her, to comfort her because he knew no other thing to do in this moment. "Claire..."
She jumped from the chair, the brush hitting the floor with a loud clatter. She shook as she stepped away from him, backing into the wall to stare at him as if he were the devil come to life. "No."
"Claire-"
"No! Not now. Not here!" Claire said, her hands clenching in her hair, pulling small strands out to fall unheeded to the floor. "Leave."
Hiro froze, unsure of what to do. She was clearly going through something, something deeply disturbing to her, but he didn't want to leave her alone like this.
Tears slid down her cheeks, and her eyes slowly glazed over until she was clearly lost in her thoughts. When she spoke, her voice was small and tinny, the voice of a child lost coming out of the immortal cheerleader's mouth. "I know you want to keep your promise, but I haven't had enough time. I need more time."
He couldn't hold back the question on his lips. "More time for what?"
She turned away, pressing her feverish forehead to the wall behind her, sinking to her knees as all strength fled from her body. "More time to grieve. More time to forget. Just...more time."
The door clicked quietly behind him, echoing but still unheard over the noise of her heart-breaking sobs.
Later
"Time is little more than your playground, Hiro. You can do things that have only been imagined before, things that haven't been imagined yet. You can see any historic event of the past and go into the future to see what happens then," Mohinder said excitedly, his subject matter as always so fascinating to him that he rambled. "You're still only human, however."
Hiro brushed a hand across his temple, lingering on the few grey hairs that had recently grown in. "I am very aware of that, Mohinder."
"It's like those months you spent with Charlie," Mohinder started to explain. "When you came back, for Ando it'd only been a few days, but for you it'd been several months. You had aged months. The same goes for the time that you spent with Adam in the past. Those months you spent there also aged you, though the time you spent in the past was much longer than the time that passed in the present time."
"What you're saying is that...I'm going to die."
Mohinder sobered, his excitement over having an attentive listener dimming. "Yes, most likely of old age years before it would seem to apply. You've accumulated years of time spent in other eras. By birth date, you're only in your early thirties, but physically you're closer to early forties." Mohinder sighed. "The more you move through time, saving the world and preventing disasters, the less time you have in the present."
Hiro stood and paced slowly, moving from the couch to the window and back again. "It's...it's not like I can just stop. There are so many dangers coming, so many wrongs to prevent, so many things I need to do. I can't just stop trying."
Mohinder shrugged. "No one has asked you to stop."
2390
She was sitting with him at a table near the window, sipping from a glass of wine and laughing at something he'd said. They looked like a perfectly matched set, both studies of lightness, golden skin and pale hair, blue eyes clashing over the table as they spoke.
Hiro found himself on the outside looking in, and unwilling to break this sudden tension between them.
She'd seen him, he knew, her eyes alighting on his figure just across the street, her lips curving at the corners before she turned her attention back to her lunchtime companion.
She looked different than he'd ever seen her. Her hair was short, pixie-cut, and made her cheekbones stand out sharply, and the comparison of it all made her eyes seem bluer than ever. Her clothes were of high quality, though the style was not what he was used to seeing her in.
Adam reached across the table, using his napkin to brush some crumbs from the edge of her lips and she smiled as he did so, tilting her head just so to convey that she appreciated the gesture.
Hiro's stomach clenched in an uncomfortable feeling that could only be jealousy.
In the beginning, Hiro had unwittingly fallen in love with the Princess, stealing her heart from Kensei without realizing it.
Had their roles reversed in the years since?
He stood there, watching their interactions, noting every smile, every wink, every laugh, every touch. She spoke softly to Adam, sometimes leaning close to be heard, and she allowed him the small indulgence of brushing his fingers along her cheek as he bid her goodbye.
When she was finally alone, she turned to him once more, her eyes betraying the quiet contentment she'd feigned for Adam.
Her eyes were full of emotion, and Hiro was reassured again.
She pressed her hand to the glass between them and she yearned.
Now
"After I've lived through four hundred years alone, there's a chance I could be just like Adam," Claire said quietly, turning so that she could fully face him. "Will you still love me then?"
He had no answer.
He had only a promise.
He turned her to him, grasping her hands in his, his eyes locking on hers and unable to look anywhere else. "You will never be like Adam. I will not let that happen."
"You won't have a choice, Hiro. You'll...you'll be dead long before then," she replied as a solitary tear slid from one of her shining eyes.
"I can bend time and space. Nothing is impossible," Hiro said with a smile.
She shook her head sadly, wrapping her arms around his soft form, seeking the only comfort she could find.
Hiro held her and felt his love for her rise to the surface, blocking out all thoughts of anything else.
"One lifetime is enough for me, Claire. To love you the rest of my life is all I want."
"Am I greedy for wanting you for the rest of mine?"
Hiro smiled, brushing his lips across her brow. "No, you are not greedy." He cradled her face in his hands, lifting it so that he could look her in the eye. "I promise you, Claire. I promise that I will be there when you need me. I don't care the time, don't care the place, I will be there."
And he was.
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