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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She inclined her head slightly, acknowledging his respectful gesture as he settled back into his own chair, her face betraying none of the enjoyment she got out of catching him so far off his guard.

"I do see. I also daresay, were I to go back to the spot where I grew up, I might want to drown my sorrows in a bottle afterwards as well," she remarked, canting her head at the whiskey. She took a sip of her brandy, then leaned back in her chair, getting comfortable. "Did you come just to reminisce?"

"I don't know why I came," he said truthfully, leaning back some in his chair to study her in return, though his gaze was a little less soul-probing sharp than usual. "Perhaps going back to the beginning to see where I went wrong to get to where I am now."

The candor was unexpected, and she blinked, both her eyebrows going up. "I didn't realise you were displeased with where you are now, Adam."

"Ah, well. It is better than where I was two months ago, but it is nowhere near where I hoped to be."

The Rani nodded slowly, studying his face. She drained her glass, and snapped her fingers to get a waiter's attention, to get a refill.

"And where did you hope to be?" she asked, picking up the bottle and refilling Adam's glass.

He smiled a little in thanks, taking the glass.

"At the dawning of a brave new world," he said, feeling truthful for once.

"Really?"

She set the bottle aside, getting out of the waiter's way as he switched her empty glass for a new one, and then she settled back in her chair again, swirling the amber liquid around in the bottom of the glass before taking a sip.

"How did you propose to arrive there? And what went wrong?"

He studied her for a very long moment, then gave her a wry smile.

"I meant to restart the world. My past caught up with me and stopped me."

She chuckled softly, ruefully, raising her glass to her lips once more. "I tried that once. Only it was the entire universe. But the same thing happened. My past--or more correctly, someone from it--jumped up and put a halt to things. My sympathies, Adam."

Her eyes met his across the table. "Is that truly all that's driven you to plumb the depths of a bottle this evening?"

"Oh, yes. Someone for it, jumping in at the last minute, changing history or the future or whatever it is...bastards." The last was a bit more vicious.

He glanced up at her, and shrugged. "That's part of it. For thirty years they kept me locked away to stop me, and all I thought of was my revenge, getting out and unleashing hell upon them for their sins. Then a boy I thought made the world go 'round stopped me and tossed me in a coffin and buried me alive. Then more of my past came wandering 'round and made me think about all my missed opportunities." He took another long drink. "It's been a bad month."

She stared across the table, stunned. "Buried alive? Adam... I'd no idea. That's... incomprehensible. Particularly when such a fate is visited upon you by someone you cared for, or thought important. You're too right it's been a bad month."

She hooked an arm over the back of her chair, relaxing. "Tell me more about those missed opportunities?"

"Did I not mention before?" He frowned a bit at the whiskey. "Yes. Buried alive. Not fun, nightmare, added on top of 30 years of torture. I think I deserve the whiskey."

He glanced back at her and forced a smile. "It is what it always is. You meet a girl. You think you've finally found someone like you. You send her off to seduce someone to your cause, and the next thing you know she's marrying him and raising children, and you are forced to smile and be his friend because, after all, it was all your idea."

"You deserve the whiskey, yes." She snapped for the waiter again, fishing her American Express card from her jacket pocket and handing it to him when he approached. "We're opening a tab. I want you to replace the bottle with more of the same, but I want the finest selection you have available. If the bottle gets low, you're to bring another at once--I shouldn't have to request it. Bring another glass as well, as I'll be switching to the whiskey when I've finished the brandy I have."

She sent the waiter on his way, then turned her attention back to Adam, frowning. "You hadn't mentioned, no. Not about the burial... not about any of this. I only knew of your extended above-ground incarceration. I'd no idea things had been so trying for you."

He watched her interaction with the waiter with an impressed smile, arching an eyebrow.

"Oh very well done."

He fiddled with his glass, watching her for a long moment, then shrugged. "It's not something that's overly pleasant to talk about, nor, really are the things that went on during the incarceration. I didn't want to burden you with them so early in our acquaintance, though you've caught me in a rather confessional mood tonight. I even went to church."

She shrugged elaborately, grinning. "I've found that if you make your expectations clear, it's harder for anyone to fail you in them."

She fell silent, absorbing his words as she finished off what remained of her brandy. "Did you really?" she asked, setting the glass down. "Well. I appreciate your earlier concern for burdening me, but I'm a pretty tough girl. I can handle things."

"A good lesson and one I should make sure to incorporate into any future schemes," he said with an ironic smile.

He shifted the whiskey between his hands again before sipping at it again. "Yes. I really did. And truthfully, no matter the length of the acquaintance, there's somethings I haven't spoken to anyone about. Perhaps it is not your toughness that is in question."

"I'm oddly touched to know I inspire you so. Thank you, dear."

The last sentence was murmured up at their waiter, who had returned with the whiskey and extra glass. He uncapped the bottle and poured a generous measure of whiskey into the Rani's glass, and then he bowed slightly, taking away her brandy glass and the bottle Adam had started with.

Her eyes followed him briefly as he retreated. "If it's my discretion that's called into question," she said, turning her gaze back toward Adam, "it may be relied upon. If it's my interest... I consider you a friend. I ask because I'm concerned, not because I care to gawk at any spectacle or share in some gossip."

He smiled a little at the inspiration comment, before glancing down at his whiskey. Barely acknowledging the waiter, he fiddled with the glass a bit. She was the least connected, emotionally. A friend, and he treasured the word, but she was not in his bed, nor did she know what he had been before, or became. He found it hard to believe she would care.

Perhaps she was the one to tell, even if all he managed were spare facts.

Still studying his whiskey, he spoke in soft tones. "You are a scientist. What would you want to do, whether you would or no, if you captured a man and were holding him captive and knew that his cells could regenerate from any injury, any illness, no matter how severe?"

The Rani studied Adam for a few moments, sipping her whiskey, before giving him a knowing nod. "I know, in past lives, I'd have tested that man. Even in this one, I daresay I'd be tempted."

She thought about that for a moment, and then a rueful smile came to her lips. "Scratch that. I have been tempted. I've... experimented upon Byron just a bit, here and there. But always with his fully informed consent."

A pause, and then: "...Right, so perhaps that incident with the bridge, there wasn't as much consent. But that was also perhaps less an experiment and more a fit of pique. But I digress. As a scientist, yes, Adam, the temptation for experimentation would be there. It would just be a question of ethics, and consent."

She regarded him thoughtfully over the rim of her glass before taking another sip. "I gather neither of those were present, when you were experimented upon by these people? If that is in fact what took place..."

"Neither consent nor anesthesia," he said, almost shortly. "Unless, of course, they were testing the effect of anesthesia on the quickness with which I could regenerate something as opposed to how quickly I did so when fully alert." Or as alert as one could be in that much pain.

"After the first few years, they had run most of the tests they 'needed' to, to understand my ability. After that, I think they just thought it amusing to see what they could devise."

"They should be thoroughly tortured in return for what they've done," the Rani said quietly. Anyone who'd known her in times past might have found that statement, that reaction to Adam's story at best surprising and at worst hypocritical, considering her own history, but she genuinely meant it.

"Did this last the entirety of your captivity?"

Adam looked up a bit, surprised, then frowned. "I'd settle for them dead, though I suppose torture has its satisfaction."

He shrugged and drained his glass in one long gulp, the burn helping to steady him. "Yes. More or less. There would be months with nothing, then it would start again."

"I fear I'm something of a vengeful sort at times," she said, reaching for the bottle. She refilled Adam's glass, and topped off her own. "Congenital condition. I despair for a cure."

The Rani sat back in her chair again, watching Adam. "Regardless. Even in a genuine scientific inquiry, once the questions have been satisfied, continued experimentation is just so much cruelty. It's needless. It shouldn't have continued."

"Mmm. Something else we have in common," he murmured with a half smile.

"For genuine scientific inquiry, I would have given them what they needed," he said softly. "But what they wanted was not...They couldn't kill me, but they wanted me to suffer for my sins."

She arched an eyebrow, watching him closely. "Is that so? Dear me, Adam. It's getting downright spooky, how alike you and I are..."

She sipped her whiskey, listening, her eyes tightening a bit. "I see. I'm rather not a fan of those who would decide the sins of others, and make them suffer for them as a result. And when I say I'm not a fan? I mean I want them wiped out."

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