Author's Notes: Just trying to explore the machinations of Angela Petrelli and her sons, just a little bit. They tried to make her a sympathetic character, and I have no doubt she was a remarkable woman. But you can't do that to your children. You can't just run away and forget about your sister, not if you really loved them.

Playing Hero

Angela Petrelli winced as white-hot ashes drifted into her face, settling and burning there like bits of fire. Every few minutes she would wipe them off with her velvet sleeve. The warm cement dug into her bones as she knelt by the limp body of her youngest son. Above her head and across the parking lot, a school was burning to the ground.

Saturday. It was Saturday, so no children had been inside. No one at all, in fact, except for a teacher who'd decided to work that day, maybe correct some extra homework and prepare for the next semester. Another poor fool trying to improve his lot in life.

It was the sight of his car parked outside that had caused Peter to tear out of her grasp and sprint into the school, ducking under the flames. Less than a few seconds later, the teacher had leapt out of a second story window and landed heavily on the lawn outside, bruised, but alive.

Peter hadn't known that, however.

Which was why he was lying on the cement outside, wrapped in Angela's red overcoat, his neck bent at an odd angle, his burnt cheek pillowed on her leather purse.

Nathan, her eldest son, was pacing back and forth a few feet away, talking into his cellphone even as he kept glancing at the burning building, ready to help her move Peter if the fire intensified. They didn't want to risk it unless they had to, didn't want to cause Peter any more pain than he already suffered.

What a stupid accident to happen now, of all times, just when her precious younger son happened to be walking by with her, guiding her home after dinner with an old friend even as he argued quietly with Nathan about some nonsense or other. Peter was a compassionate, brave, reckless young man…the perfect hero. She couldn't shake the feeling of him yanking out of her grasp and racing into that inferno, a small, black figure swallowed by towering walls of vacillating flame.

She knew only too well; it was a miracle he hadn't died. Although not extensive, his burns were severe. Black ash and red blood and cracked skin ran along his forehead, arms, and legs. The poor boy had blindly pushed deeper and deeper into the blaze, searching and calling for the teacher, the nobody he'd never even met before.

Nathan was calling the paramedics now, telling them how to get there and exactly what to expect when they did. He was in complete control of the situation and taking care of everything for them with the skill of a butler or CEO. Not a single emotion in his face, not a single note of fear in his voice. Detached, cautious, effective. The perfect leader.

Nathan suddenly turned to her, his hand still clutching the phone a little ways from his head. He must have been put on hold. He glanced down at Peter, then at her, as if asking her to explain what he was made of, why he did things. "He always has to do this, doesn't he. Has to play the hero no matter what happens next. Hope he realizes it was for nothing!" The last word was almost a shout. Nathan hardly ever raised his voice. But he was stressed and tired and a hundred percent done with Peter's impulsive virtue. His face was, for the moment, the spitting image of his father's, full of disapproval.

And yet, Angela couldn't quite shake the memory of how Nathan had called Peter's name when they watched him run into the fire.

Putting a soothing hand on Peter's head yet at the same time making sure he was awake to hear this little exchange, Angela hissed back at her other son, "Nathan! He's badly burned." Neither agreeing with nor refuting what he'd said, she took up her usual position. On both sides of the fence, pretending to support them both while at the same time helping them tear each other down.

Nathan's lip twitched slightly and he turned away from her as the emergency line came back on with a chime.

Satisfied, Angela carefully ran her hand through Peter's hair. She soon realized he was more awake than she'd thought. His head shifted under her touch, his sooty eyelids fluttering weakly. Dry, cracked lips moved and he moaned aloud in pain. Angela murmured comfortingly to him, wishing her baby could stop hurting now when so much pain already waited for him in the future.

At a particularly pitiful whimper, Nathan turned suddenly, his dark eyes riveted to Peter. He walked slowly towards them, pocketing the cell phone. He glanced at Angela and when he spoke again, his voice was soft and gentle, not sharp as it had been for the past fifteen minutes. "Ma, the paramedics are on their way."

Then came the moment Angela dreaded. Nathan looked down at Peter and then, slowly, knelt down beside him. One hand rested flat on the cement, fingers just touching the coat draped over Peter's damaged body as Nathan leaned gingerly over him. His eyes travelled over Peter, as if he was touching him with his mind, trying to sooth his injuries with all the force of what he was feeling, feelings he couldn't express. "You'll be okay, Pete," he said finally in that same soft, quiet voice, his words swift and without any heavy emotion, yes, but the feeling behind them clear all the same, "the medics are coming and you're gonna be okay." He hesitated a moment. One hand touched Peter's shoulder. "I'll make sure of it."

Although it sometimes made her feel like a monster, one of Angela's many goals in life had been to keep her sons completely and irrevocably apart. Because it would make things easier. Easier for them and easier for what they had to do. You'd think it'd be a simple thing to accomplish when one child was a loving little fire that longed for reciprocated affection and tended to move away when no one loved back…while the other was a distant, unexcitable pillar perpetually bent on following someone else's ambitions. One showed too much love, the other too little.

One son was the perfect hero, the perfect martyr. The other was the perfect leader, the perfect villain. Both of them driven to destruction according to the grand vision Angela and others infinitely wiser than her two boys had created. Apart, they were malleable. Together, they had to be broken. Either way, the end would be accomplished. The only difference was how much pain would be involved.

And yet, no matter how many little incidents and arguments she managed to brew between them, no matter how angrily they shouted or how loudly someone, usually Peter, slammed the door on the way out…they'd always inexplicably come back together. Angela had had a sister once. She knew a deep, intimate connection when she saw one, she could understand its existence. The only thing she didn't understand was how the connection had grown that strong under her very nose, despite all her interference.

So she allowed herself a shiver of triumph when Peter, in response to his brother's rare show of tenderness, turned his head towards her. "Ma," he muttered feebly, one hand reaching for her, "it hurts."

"Of course it does, dear, I know," she whispered, taking his hand and gently rubbing the knuckles with her fingers. She waited a moment before glancing up at Nathan's face to gauge his reaction. She felt no joy in this. But it was necessary.

The politician hid his emotions as well as he always had, both pain and joy. The only sign of hurt at the rejection came from his eyes, the way he suddenly blinked, almost like a flinch. His hand withdrew. He stood up suddenly and the space he'd occupied before seemed to turn cold. His eyes seemed to be cast downwards, his lashes shielding them from the world and all its difficulties as he gathered the strength to join it again. "I'll wait for them on the street."

That was all he needed to say. One of her hands clasping Peter's, the other brushing tenderly through his hair, Angela just nodded. For this evening, for this hour, at least, she held all of Peter's love while Nathan stayed in the cold, hard shell nature had given him, the shell Angela had done her utmost to strengthen. It was enough.

Nathan met her gaze with that wary, doubtful look he'd worn since he first began to grow up and realize Peter was Ma's favorite. The look he'd worn since his father had forced him to retire from active service and enter politics. The look that always made Angela wonder whether this boy, her leader, her villain, her heartless child…whether he really did sense that she didn't, couldn't love him as other mothers loved their children, that he really was just a pawn on her chessboard, waiting for her to to use him, to change her game, to change him into something infinitely more powerful but just as surely under her finger.

But then the look was gone, meaning nothing once it was no longer there. Nathan turned away and the electric tension faded. He took a few steps towards the gates and then halted suddenly, biting his lip as he began wriggling his arms gingerly out of their sleeves. His shoulders arched and he hissed with barely controlled pain as he pulled off his blackened, shredded, suit with his red, blistered hands.

Sirens began wailing in the distance. Nathan dropped his ruined coat in a garbage bin before moving on to meet them.

Angela watched her cold, calculating son go. Then she turned back to Peter and tucked the coat more securely around his shoulders, whispering that it would be alright, that the pain would stop, if only for a little while. She smiled at her boy, the courageous, compassionate, impulsive one. The perfect hero.

She never told Peter who pulled him out of the fire.

FINIS