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They had lived a lifetime behind a Wall.
Years of strife and anger and sadness and self-flagellation, mixed with quiet pocket moments of happiness, guilt, loneliness.
How could he ever explain to anyone just what that time meant? A time where they were the only two in the world and how he hated him and needed him, how he wanted to hurt him and how the urge to reach out and touch him was sometimes too much to ignore.
Birthday's, Christmases, other holidays, spent alone (or together.)
It should have been easy, perhaps, but no, he couldn't do it alone. He needed him. And that was the crux of a lot of his problems for a long time, even more than the fact that they had been trapped there. Even more than Sylar didn't think he deserved to go back. Even more so that Gabriel had felt true remorse, for things he couldn't change, but that he wanted to do better.
It had made Peter shirk away from him for a time, spending a long time alone in one half of their empty New York, trying to sort things out within himself. He was used to having someone by his side. Nathan had been his rock, for his entire life, the person he had looked up to most and he had been taken away from him.
He had wanted to kill Gabriel once. Couldn't see past his anger, his hatred. Couldn't see anything but the times when his brother would pat him on the shoulder, give him that "Pete" in that wry way speaking of his.
When Nathan had helped Peter fly.
Family was something that was scattered in Peter's life; his mother loving but also distant with secrets that he didn't know until much too late (and Nathan had only known a bit of), their father even colder and turning out to be a true monster. And then only learning of Claire later and how he hated how much she had been dragged into other people's messes (even if she also made some of her own.)
Now he was basically on his own. There was his mother, but she had disappointed him and he was still wrestling with that. And there was Claire but it wasn't right to foist his years of baggage onto her slight shoulders, no matter how much she could heal from anything.
Nathan was gone.
Reconciling his loss and the fact that he could no longer hate the man who had killed him had dug out the deepest parts of his soul.
Forgiveness was painful.
But loneliness was even more so.
And then: catharsis.
He looks at Gabriel and sees him, flaws and all, for what truly feels like the first time.
And the Wall breaks.
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