Fic: Loss (Peter/Niki, Nathan, PG-13)
Title: Loss
Characters/Pairings: Peter/Niki, Nathan
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: References to sex, language
Spoiler alert: Spoilers through "Landslide"
Notes: Set during the future from "Five Years Gone"

Summary: "That's not Nathan."

***
"It has been said that this is profiling," Nathan's voice was saying from the television. "I disagree. What we are doing is containing a very real threat to our lives, our homes, and our world. Just as we would not let someone walk into a grade school with a bomb strapped to their chest, we cannot allow people whose very existence could be deadly to roam the streets uncontrolled."

Peter shut off the TV from across the room with a sharp flick of his hand and stood.

Niki glanced up from her magazine, eyes narrowed.

"That's not Nathan," Peter said, pacing across the room to the full-length windows. "It's not."

He pressed his palm to the window pane, looking out over the Vegas lights coming on as evening set in. He felt his insides quiver with the need to fly as his mind swirled with thoughts of his brother--his real brother, the one who would never, never--

"You can't trust anyone," Niki said. "You can't really know anyone."

"I knew Nathan," he said, staring at the condensation forming around his hand on the glass and remembering Nathan's real smile, not the fake politician's leer for the cameras.

He saw Niki approaching behind him in her reflection in the glass, and by the hard set of her eyes he knew tonight she was more Jessica than Niki--and he needed to stop thinking that way if he ever hoped to convince her to stop thinking that way.

There was no Jessica. Only this, only Niki's cold side, her angry side, her side that said things like, "Did you know I fucked him once?"

He turned around, searching her eyes for signs of a cruel joke, and inadvertently catches her thought, I did, but he couldn't tell if it was true or if she was thinking it for his benefit.

"What?" he said, "When?"

"Four years ago. Here in Vegas. He was here to see Linderman. They wanted to make sure he was under their thumb, so they had me screw him." She shrugged and sneered. "Somebody's probably still got the video."

"You?" he said. "You were the blonde in Vegas?"

"Yup." She pressed up against him, pinning him to the glass, straddling his hips, "That was me."

"Look, Niki, you don't understand-- his wife--"

"He didn't take much convincing," Niki said, her lips on his jaw. "He was all over me from the start. Like a poodle humping my leg."

He gritted his teeth and pushed her shoulders back, but that only left him with her hips settled more firmly against his crotch. "Don't talk about--"

"He has a great cock," she purred, "Big and thick and he knows how to use it." And here he caught her thought again, as clearly as if she'd projected it and maybe she had--it was an image of what she was describing, Nathan's erection. Peter huffed in a breath and closed off his mind.

"Don't," he said.

Then suddenly she slammed away from him, shoving off from his shoulders hard enough to knock his head against the glass and make it rattle. "He rigged the fucking election, Peter."

"What--"

"Oh, you didn't know about that, did you?" she said, her eyes blazing, and he didn't know where this fury was coming from, why she wanted so badly to hurt him, tonight. "Linderman kidnapped Micah, took him to New York, to rig the election for him. And he knew."

"No--"

But she didn't stop, just pushed on. "He didn't give Linderman up until he saw he'd won. He knew. That bastard is the reason Micah's dead--"

"NO!" Peter roared--pure fury--and the next thing he knew, Niki was pulling herself up from the floor, five feet away.

She rubbed her shoulder and opened her mouth to say something.

Peter stopped her. "Don't. Just don't. You didn't know him."

"Fine," she said, tossing her hair. "Be deluded." She stalked off, grabbing her magazine from the coffee table as she went.

Peter looked after her for a second, then headed for the door, taking his coat and heading up to the roof.

The sun had dropped below the mountains and the stars were coming out in the purple evening sky. A firm, steady breeze blew across the roof. Peter walked to the edge and stepped up on the short wall, inching out until his toes stuck over the rim. He buried his hands in his pockets and stared out at the growing darkness while bathed in the neon gleam of the Strip.

He couldn't mourn Nathan if no one else believed he was dead. He couldn't avenge Nathan if he didn't know who was responsible. So it was with dry eyes that he said to the night, "My brother was a good man. And my brother is dead."

Then he shook off the photons from the neon lights with a flash of Claude's laughter, thought about love, and flew.

---
End