changehistory | Open 'verse RP [Open -- Separate threads fine]

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Open 'verse RP [Open -- Separate threads fine]

He'd come home out of some weird need to find his roots, again. Or something. At the current moment he couldn't remember. Souvenir shops lined the streets he roamed too long ago. The house had burned over three centuries before and even the alleys were swept now. There had been nothing to bury, and no money for more than a mass grave had there been, so there were no markers, nothing to see, nothing to kneel at.

Wandering into the new St. Paul's, built after he left, after the fire that took them, he nonetheless felt something settle. He sat in a pew for hours, trying to remember what it had felt like when he came home, saw this, sat here the first time, a different man. Not Matthew. Not Takezo Kensei. Something else, someone else. A man without country, time, family.

For a time, he'd thought to find it again, but now the dream seemed farther away than it had even when trapped in that cell, and he was cold.

It was well after dusk when he left. He found a pub, a table in a corner, and with a wry smile that cursed all the years in between, he ordered a whiskey and asked the bartender to leave the bottle, working to bury himself in the one thing left that had any familiarity or link to the old.

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Adam smiles back. "We should get out of here, carp. Wander. Have you ever been to London?"

Hiro shakes his head. "Never."

"Then you should not just see the inside of a pub," Adam decreed, standing--surprisingly steady, but he's had a lot of practice.

Hiro is listing a little, but still on his feet. "Show me."

Adam reaches out and winds his arm through Hiro's to hold him up and guide him out both. It's December and freezing and he doesn't even care, just pressing close to Hiro as they walk.

That it's dark is more of a problem but he wanders in the direction of the river without needing much guidance. These are his streets after all, even if they're paved now.

Hiro is looking at everything, his face alight with curiosity. London has a lot of history, like Japan. It's a strange feeling. He can feel the ages of things - a new ability developing, perhaps? He can't pinpoint exact years, but he can feel the old beneath the new. Feel layers around them.

Where it was cold and lonely and desolate wandering through these streets before, somehow it seems far more pleasant with Hiro's company. Lamplight flickered from streetlights, lighting up corners. The sound of the water reached them just before the bridge came into sight.

"Tower bridge," Adam said, nodding at it. "That down there?" He pointed to a less elaborate bridge. "That's London bridge. Most people think they're the same who never come here, but they're not. London Bridge was here before I was born, even. Tower Bridge wasn't constructed until the 19th century."

He looks down at the older bridge. "Why build this one? That one looks as good as this one or is there too much traffic for that bridge?"

Adam nodded. "When the Industrial age hit, they needed a crossing downstream for traffic that happened as the East End developed, so they built this one."

Hiro nods. "Like Japan. So many highways, so many bridges. Things that go one way only. This city is built with so much stone. What happens during earthquakes?"

"I don't think there's been an earthquake in England since the 60s and not a bad one since the 19th century sometimes. Colchester that one was, and it destroyed a lot of buildings. But it was the worst since at least a century before I was born. I..." Adam paused, considered. "I don't think London's ever been damaged."

"Honto? They are very lucky. It must be very nice to live in an area where you don't have to worry about that kind of thing."

"Well, they still have them, but it's not California or Japan," Adam agreed with a small smile, tucking his arm even closer to Hiro's, snuggling as they walked.

*Hiro's arm goes around him as he snuggles close.* This city has so much history. Center of so many stories and myths. Were you born near here?

Adam nodded a little. "I don't remember it well, the house where I was born. I was still young when we fled. But we came down here, and these ... I grew up walking these streets."

"You had to leave your home?"

"Yes," Adam said, quietly.

"Why did they do that?"

"My father accused my mother of being a witch," Adam said, briefly. "If we hadn't fled, they would have come for her and killed her."

"Why would he do that? Didn't he love her?"

"He thought she betrayed him. With Satan."

"Honto? How could he believe such a thing?"

Adam shrugged. "I don't know. There was an accident. I don't remember much, but right after...he started screaming at her that she had clearly lain with the devil to produce...me."

"He saw your power? That would explain much. He did not understand what we know now." He leans against the railing of the bridge. "How did it feel to watch the world go from that kind of superstition to scientific thinking? I know that back in Japan, I felt a little superior because I understood the genetic principles that made us different. But you grew up with such a different mindset than you must have now."

"I don't know," Adam said. "He saw something. I don't remember what happened."

It was clear from his tone, that no matter what he saw, he didn't feel it excused anything, even if it explained it.

He shifted a little, with a sigh. "It seemed...strange. To watch the fall from religious fervor, to scientific, to watch as men lost faith in one thing, and set up faith in something else entirely, that I worry time will prove is just as fallible."

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