watchmakersylar | The Man in the Mirror

Title: The Man in the Mirror
Rating: PG
Genre: Het
Wordcount: 1400+
Pairings or Characters: Nathan!Sylar/Heidi
Warnings: Off camera so work safe.
Summary: Nathan!Sylar doesn't like Angela's advise on how to cure his midlife crisis, and he goes to Heidi instead.
Prompt: "Every man is guilty of all the good he didn't do. ~ Voltaire"

heroes_contest #18
"Most of what we are is what people expect us to be. I mean, if you take them away, nothing means anything." - Nathan for

scifi_muses
34/100 #5 Outsides for

100heroesfics

He was confused. He was lost, and he was frustrated. He knew what he’d done, and he understood why they couldn’t forgive him. But it hurt. It had been weeks since he’d been left to himself. Not even his mother could stand to be around him. Nathan knew there was something wrong, and he knew it was his fault. He’d been a shitty father, a crappy son, and the worst kind of husband.

“No wonder I’m alone,” he said to his reflection as he leaned over the sink. He was in his office, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone to his townhouse. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, Nathan.” A churning wave of nausea sent him over the toilet where he threw up until the chills stopped running down his spine and his stomach was emptied. “I don’t think I like sushi.”

Peter hadn’t returned a single call. Something was happening that he couldn’t understand, and Angela’s answer to go screw some intern wasn’t the person he wanted to be. He’d done so many shitty things in his life, cheating on tests, cheating on his wife, the last thing he wanted to do was find some bimbo to sleep with. It wasn’t about sex or feeling old. It was because he didn’t feel like himself, and the person he was closest to in the world wanted nothing to do with him.

“Fuck it.” He slammed the phone down before he dialed Peter again. “I’ll find someone else to talk to.”

***
“Nathan?” Heidi stared at him standing on her front porch. Her blue eyes filled with a mixture of surprise, sadness and suspicion. “What are you doing here? The boys are asleep, not that you’ve been to see them in months.”

“I know.” His face was crestfallen. “I’ve been…” Useless. “Busy.” Lonely. “But I didn’t come to see the boys, Heidi. I came to see you.”

“Why would you come see me?” He could see her trying to decide whether to invite him in or leave him outside where the neighbors could see. Either would keep the gossip mongers up and down the street going for days.

“Because I miss you.” But he didn’t miss her. He knew he should. This beautiful woman had been his wife, she was the mother of his children, but he felt no lingering love or hate. All Nathan could feel was confusion and the pressing weight of isolation. “Can I come in, please?”

“Sure, Nathan, but try not to wake up the boys. Can I get you a drink?” He was surprised that she’d ask that, since he’d been kept away from the kids for being a bad drunk after Peter vanished. The memory replayed like he was watching television of the meeting between their lawyers giving her total custody.

“Ice tea would be nice.” He walked around the living room, his fingers trailing over the furniture. He wasn’t consciously aware of all the information his questing hand was feeding his brain.

“Nathan?” He jerked his awareness from a moment in time on the sofa where Heidi had been kissing another man. “Are you there?”

“I’m here. Sorry.” He took a very deep breath and let it out slowly before taking a sip of the tea. It was unsweetened, and he frowned. “Sugar?”

“You drink your tea black, Nathan, or did you pick up Peter’s sweet tooth?” She smiled, and he couldn’t help but smile back. What kind of idiot was he to divorce her? “I’ll get you some sugar, two spoons?”

“Make it three, please.” He sat down, picking up a throw pillow, playing with the fringe until she came back. He grinned when she sat down next to him, and took a long drink from the tea. “That’s better, thanks.”

“Why are you here, Nathan?” Heidi turned to look at him.

Nathan shifted to meet her gaze, one arm draped over the back of the sofa. He couldn’t pry his eyes away from hers. “Because I’ve destroyed everything that was good in my life, Heidi, starting with you and the boys.”

“You’ve done some bad things, Nathan. I doubt the boys and I were the start.” She winced after she said it and reached over to run her fingers over his, playing with his Annapolis ring for moment.

“Ouch.” He chuckled and turned his hand over to play with her fingers. He could feel that she still cared about him, and it felt so much better than anything had in weeks. “I deserved that. I fell into a trap, Heidi. The more I tried not to become my father, the more I did. I’m turning over a new leaf now. I want to be a better person, a better father.”

“Are you sure Angela will allow it.” He couldn’t miss the wave of hate that was hidden behind the words. “She has a path in mind for you. She’s started to try to get to the boys.”

“I won’t let her hurt them.” The words came out with a nasty edge to him that he couldn’t hide. “She won’t make them like me too. I promise.”

“Oh Nathan. I wish I could believe you.”

“Give me a chance to prove it to you and the boys? Please Heidi. I can’t stand being cut off like this. I want a family. I want my family.”

“If you’re lying, Nathan, or you hurt the boys, I’ll shoot you myself.” She twined her fingers with his, and then after taking the glass of tea from him pulled him into a hug. “But you know I’m a lousy shot.”

“I do?” He blinked, his eyes shifting to a brown so dark they were almost black as he hugged her back. “That’s a good thing then.”

Heidi woke in the middle of the night. She was sore but it wasn’t from anything she didn’t want. Nathan was sleeping besides her, his head on the pillow and a quiet snore slipping out. She wanted him again so kissed the back of his neck to wake him, while her hand slipped under the sheet to tickle other parts of him awake.

She screamed when he rolled over into her touch, wearing the face of a stranger, and grabbed the glass of water she kept on the nightstand. He woke up, his eyes filled with confusion and pain as she smashed the glass into his face and scrambled off the bed.

“Heidi?” He blinked at her, wiping water and blood from his face as it shifted and changed back into Nathan’s. He picked up the shards of broken glass in the bed, and looked at her with the same lost expression Simon wore when he was afraid. “What the hell?”

“Nathan?” She clutched the sheet around her naked body, still afraid and so confused that she thought she was losing her mind. “I thought you were someone else.”

“Don’t be silly,” he said with the patented Petrelli’s smile, the one that was on campaign posters and the cover of gossip rags. “Who else could I be?”

*** Two Weeks Later ***

The first morning sunlight was filtering through the curtains sending a golden sunbeam onto the bed. Heidi leaned against the pillows, her fingers stroking through his hair. He was sound asleep, the stubble on his cheek prickling her thigh. She wanted to ask him so much. First and foremost who was he and why was he Nathan when he was awake? The person she saw in the darkness was so much more than Nathan had ever been.

She’d watched him for weeks. How he’d be the stranger until he came near a mirror. She’d taken to throwing a spare sheet over the one in her bedroom, claiming it was to keep the sun from reflecting off it into their eyes in the morning.

“I love you,” he said, stirring against her, with the voice that wasn’t Nathan’s as he started to wake up.

“I love you too. Go back to sleep. It’s Saturday, we can stay in bed all day.”

“No we can’t.” He rolled over still wearing the other’s face. “We are taking the boys to the Zoo, remember?”

“I know, but we’ve got hours. It’s only six in the morning, and I don’t want you to go.”

He squinted and curled back against her. “I don’t want to go either.