Title- Eleven Years
Author- Victoria
Characters/Pairings- Peter/Emma, Sylar
Rating- PG
Summary- A lot can change in eleven years... especially if that time is spent in near-solitude. You learn things about yourself, and maybe along the way you realize things you wouldn't have seen otherwise. Peter/Emma.

◆ Eleven Years ◆

He pushes his hair out of his eyes, choking on plaster dust as he stumbles to his feet.

How long has it been, really?

Half a day, maybe.

Does that make it any less real?

It's a valid question. Part of him still hates Sylar for all the things he's done... but it's by far the smaller part. Yeah, a lot can change in eleven years. He can forgive his brother's murderer. But that's not the biggest change that's occurred inside him over the last eleven years (hours?). After spending so long in isolation, total except for the company of an ex-serial killer, with so much time alone with his thoughts, he's realized that he's very, very sick of being alone.

Self-imposed isolation and a careful distance maintained from everyone who was important in his life before. It seemed like a good idea. The perfect plan to keep anyone from getting too close, to keep anyone who might hurt him even more than he already had been, far away.

A decade of solitude was more than enough for him, though. If he's never alone in a room again, it will be too soon. From here on out, he's going to make a conscious effort to stay connected with the people in his life. Starting with one in particular.

Yeah, that's the other thing he realized. Being virtually alone with your thoughts gives you a lot of time to reevaluate anything and everything. And his thoughts tended in only two directions this whole time. The first was something along the lines of God, I hate him. The second was a source of concern and unexpected tenderness.

Emma.

For eleven years, he's been swinging a sledgehammer at an unyielding brick wall. Every single time a hammerstroke fell, it was her that he was thinking of. Her that he was fighting for. Every second of the time they'd spent together played itself over and over in front of his eyes. Sitting together at the piano in the rec room, unlocking melodies... Saving a young girl's life... Discussing powers and problems and trying to overcome their walls... (That may be the biggest irony of all. The two of them both have such impenetrable walls to keep everyone else out. Well, looks like he's officially battered his down).

And finally, he's come to a conclusion so simple, it seems like he should have known right from the very beginning: Emma is someone he could fall in love with.

He's not in love with her right now; that would be absurd, he hardly knows her. But over the few months they've known each other, she's let him in and he, her. Her undemanding beauty, her quiet strength, her compassion and her headstrong ways all appeal to him in a way he's never experienced before. He wants to get to know her, to have the opportunity to fall for her.

But that's not going to happen, unless they can stop whatever's coming. And so Peter responds with the only thing he can think to say:

Let's go save Emma.

Reviews make me happy. This may be a prequel to a multichapter fic if I get around to it, and if they don't just do it for me in the finale.
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