Adam Monroe

Peter?

Why, exactly, is Television Without Pity listing you as one of TV's Most Eligible Bachelors?

Clearly I need to have a talk with them about the definition of "bachelor."

I don't expect that conversation to go...pleasantly for them.

[ooc: For yearsguilt, thatsortofpower, its_myturn and youngerpetrelli]

I love you. I don't know if I say it enough.

I love you, and I appreciate you.

Thank you for being in my life. Thank you for giving me the chances you've given me, thank you for your trust, thank you for your love, thank you for being mine, and letting me be yours.

I just wanted to say that.

Adam

Bali is sounding better and better. Or Fiji. Or Bora Bora.

Somewhere warm, with rum and no responsibility or people who stab you in the back when you're just trying to help them.

Why the fuck I thought I wanted any of this is beyond me.

Considering leaving a note: "Keys to Company are in the upper left hand drawer if you want them, Angie. Taking the cats. Off to Bali. Fuck all of this. Love, Adam."

I don't really think that would go over well, but I'm not sure I care anymore.

[locked]

If someone could remind me of why I'm even trying when it's an exercise in futility, I would appreciate it, because fuck if I know. I never wanted to grow up to be the hero, anyway. I just wanted to...I don't even remember anymore. It all got twisted up and tangled around in far too many pairs of brown eyes that wanted me to be things that I never was, and blue ones that believed I was something and then when I tried to be...

Well, she walked away, too, didn't she?

So, what, I ask you, is the fucking point of hoping for anything?

Fuck all of it.

I was better off being the villain, but now I'm just tired.

What do I hope for? A beach. And a drink with an umbrella in it. And someone to rub completely unnecessary suntan oil on my skin and live without their fucking expectations and their fucking betrayals for just a few decades, for once.

I don't think it's too much to ask.

[ooc: Cross-verse, as it applies]

Please. I can justify anything I choose to. Call this what I will bother with justifying:

1. Killing Kaito Nakamura
2. Killing Harry Fletcher
3. Killing Paula Gramble
4. Killing Carlos Mendez
5. Killing Victoria Pratt
6. Killing whatshername.
7. My plans to kill Bob Bishop.
8. My attack on Angela Petrelli.
9. Forming the Company.
10. My using Maury Parkman.
11. Using Peter to escape.
12. My plans for the virus.
13. Seducing Elle.
14. Joining with White Beard. (I'm feeling nostalgic. Might as well toss it in.)
15. Drugging Hiro.
16. Marrying Yaeko's great-grand daughter.
17. Asking Claire to move in. (Not that needs justification, but I can and will should I be called upon to do so).
18. My arrangement and friendship with Sylar.
19. My school plans.
20. Anything else you feel the need to fucking question me on.

Discuss some aspect of your relationship that you feel has had a negative effect on you

He expects me to behave. To be "good." To be the hero. It's an expectation that has haunted me since the first time I fell in love, to be honest, and, well. It goes against my nature. I feel constrained by it, and as if I am unable to fully self-actualize. That's the phrase for it, in your lingo, is it not? "Self-actualization" - It was Goldstein who said that self-actualization is a driving life force that will ultimately lead to maximizing one's abilities and determine the path of one's life, wasn't it? Though I've always resonated with Maslow's definition: "the desire for self-fulfillment, namely the tendency for him [the individual] to become actualized in what he is potentially. This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming."

What I see myself as, who I see myself as, who I know that I could be, who I was...all of that I put on hold for him, because my vision for myself and his for me--though we might describe them in the same words--are so vastly different. It gets pushed off, that I have this or that misconception, that my ideas are good, but my methods to achieve them are wrong. That I am not like the villains of the piece because my motivations were for the good...

Who the hell knew you could become trapped by your own spin? I certainly didn't, but here I am, and there is part of me that...wants to be known clearly. Known for who--and what--I am. Accepted for that, loved for that, not for some carefully constructed spin story I've put together to keep myself free and to get what I want.

Oh, it's gotten me what I want. It's gotten me him, and for him I will keep playing the game by the rules he has set up. I know what life is like if I do not. I know what it is to be alone, to be reviled, to never truly be a part of something. I got over it. I would be fine. But now there is a chance to be something more, to have something more than I have ever had an opportunity for...and so, I smile. I behave. I suppress. I play the misunderstood anti-hero instead of the villain.

And I wonder how long until my need to be myself, not this creation I have crafted, snaps through and sends everything I have built to the dust, and just what we both will do then.

Patient Name: Adam Monroe
Patient Fandom: Heroes
Words: 450
Partner: Peter Petrelli - RP developed - various and sundry timelines/Peters to include: youngerpetrelli, its_myturn and yearsguilt

When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable. -Madeleine L'Engle

1651

His tongue darted out to taste the blood at the corner of his mouth, the coppery tang sharp there. It stung for a minute, and then it was gone, and he didn't understand that, but neither did he give it much thought, because the look in his father's eyes is not one he's ever seen before. Anger, annoyance, frustration, yes, of course. Three troublesome children will do that to the most patient of men occasionally. But this was different. This time when his hand flew it wasn't a case of not sparing the rod to spoil the child. There was fear in his father's eyes, and James didn't understand that at all. His bones still ached a bit from the accident, and now his father's hand flew again, and he fell.

"Stop it!" Mary threw herself between them as their father raised his hand again. "He didn't do anything!"

His hand collided with her cheekbone, knocking her out of the way, and James saw her fall.

"Demon," his father spit out, reaching for the poker, and James' eyes opened wide as he scrambled backward to get away.

"Father..."

"You're not my son."

The poker went up and James closed his eyes. He heard a thud, and looked up. Mary was standing over their father, the water pail in her hands. She dropped it after a moment, and held out her hand.

"Let's get mother and Stephen and go," she said urgently, her eyes glittering strangely.

He took her hand.

* * *

2008

He watched her across the room. Feet tucked up under her on the sofa, she was carefully going through each file Bob had compiled. Her fingers played gently through her hair, as she sorted the files in some system she was implementing after reading them. Narrowing his eyes, Adam leaned back in the chair and just watched the her. He still was kicking himself that it had never occurred to him she could be alive. Oh, not then, of course. He hadn't known. But he'd seen, countless times now, how these things ran in families. He had yet to find a family where one sibling had an ability but the others did not. It made Stephen's loss sharp again, the sight of her face reminding him of just how much they had lost. But he'd held him far too long. He was dead, there was no doubt. Whatever ability their brother had, it had not been their invulnerability. He would have, Adam had no doubt, done far better things with it than the two of them had managed.

Her pale blonde head lifted and she met his eyes across the space between them that hadn't lessened with their relocation, stretching through centuries of separation, through lives led they had yet to touch on. Adam swallowed and gave her a half-smile, watching the glitter in her eyes and knowing the man he was, so different from that boy she'd known, he had to wonder just who--and what--she'd become, and just what he was risking to find out.

1. She didn't let me know she was alive for 350 years. (Okay, she didn't know I was alive either, but still. Very annoying, that.)
2. She's bossy.
3. She likes to smack me upside the back of my head.
4. She thinks she can waltz back in and take over my life.
5. She treats me like I'm still 15.
6. I think she's after Elle.
7. She might have her eye on Peter, too.
8. But she was definitely flirting with Elle.
9. She randomly starts yelling about the whole virus debacle and telling me what an idiot I am.
10. She is completely and utterly unimpressed with my awesomeness.


[ooc: Crack!verse, mostly, though, really sort of in open, too. lol]