changehistory | 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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He nodded again, taking a thoughtful sip of whiskey. "So, you'd have to be very, very specific when dealing with them?"

"Extremely specific," Bela sighed. "Otherwise what you could get is not quite what you wanted."

Adam frowned a bit, still thinking. "I know people like that."

"Do you really?" Bela said, raising an eyebrow. "They're a pain to work with, aren't they?"

"They really are, yes, but once you get the hang of it...it can work to your advantage," he commented.

"Very true," she nodded. "Paint them into corners they don't want to be painted into because you know the value of well chosen words."

"It certainly has its appeal," he said with a slow smile.

She smiled back at him, finishing the rest of her glass and placing it back down on the table. Her body felt warm and lazy from the whiskey, and she just leaned back in the chair, watching him for a moment, before tilting her head to the side slightly.

"Are you alright, Adam?"

"I am always all right," he said with a slightly sardonic smile, traced with a bit of darkness from the day and the tenor of his thoughts. "It is a skill perfected over centuries."

"I'm sure you have," she nodded, licking her lips slightly. "You just -- seem like you've fallen on darker days since we last saw each other."

"Perhaps the last few decades finally caught up with me," he murmured. "Or, well. Shortly after we first met, I found myself unceremoniously dumped in a grave surrounded by concrete. I've not fully...recovered, one might say."

Her eyes widened slightly, surprised at the answer, and not quite sure what to say at first. "I'm sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do?"

He shrugged a little, eyes dropping to his whiskey. "I got out. It's done, for now. Just...nightmares."

She nodded slightly, averting her eyes back to the glass. "Well, I'm only a phone call away if you find something there is."

"Would have been nice to have had my phone on me in that coffin," he muttered. But Hiro hadn't been that stupid.

She chuckled slightly. "I'm sure it would have been. But there are other ways to communicate -- you just have to get creative."

"Oh, I'm all for creative," Adam murmured, perking up, though for once his look was more intrigued for his own sake than laced with sexual innuendo.

She tilted her head to the side again, thinking for a minute. "If I'm getting to close for comfort, let me know -- I'm not looking to make you uncomfortable."

She paused again after that, before crossing her legs under the table and leaning back in the seat again as she began to talk. "I'm presuming that even with your abilities, there is some form of death involved. You suffocate, black out, and are for all intents and purposes dead, yeah?"

"I'm not uncomfortable," he said with a slight smile, that faded as he listened before nodding.

"Yes. Or starve, though there wasn't enough time for that, really. Only when air got in did I revive again."

She nodded, biting her lip slightly. "I've seen this with people in comas -- The spirit separates from the body, and they're able to communicate through Ouiji boards or other talking boards. If you could find one being operated by someone you trusted -- you could communicate with them."

Adam's eyebrows went up. With everything she'd told him, it wasn't doubt that such things were possible, but the concept would never have occurred to him. "I don't remember anything from when I was...dead, though."

"You usually don't. It's a very strange phenomenon, but I've seen it done, so it is possible."

This was more difficult to explain than she had thought. It was really more of a separate plane of existence than anything else, and she shouldn't be surprised that the metaphysical self's memories and experiences didn't translate over into that of the conscious mind.

She paused for a moment, trying to think of a way to explain it better, but words seemed to be failing her this time around. "From what I understand, the spiritual consciousness still has the same knowledge and experiences that the conscious mind has, so it can use those resources to their advantage, but when the soul and body rejoin, the memories aren't present."