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

[changehistory]

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.

Comments

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

"I'm sorry," Adam said softly. "I should have left a note. I didn't expect to be out for so long, and once I was, I just didn't think."

He sipped at the whiskey, frowning a bit as he turned the glass in his hand over and over again. Everything seemed flat from where he'd tried so hard to pull it all together. There was no purpose, since he'd failed, and he was forced to face that so much had turned, so much had gone wrong.

So many people he cared for, or had once, had turned their backs on him and he was truly out in the cold. Not alone, he reminded himself, looking over at Jack, but it was so new it was hard to allow it to comfort the holes that seemed to have been punched so deep in his soul.

"I'll be all right," he said, trying to put some conviction in his voice. "Eventually."

[onlysayinghello.livejournal.com]

Taking another sip Jack shook his head, "Things come up, it happens. We're not joined at the hip, if you need space don't ever feel that you have to apologize for it."

Glancing around the bar he smiled lightly, "Still of all the places for you to end up at the end of the night, this one is a nice one."

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

"I didn't want to worry you, though," Adam said with a smile that didn't quite meet his eyes.

He glanced around the bar, as if taking it in for the first time. "I suppose it is. I just...it looked warm and it had alcohol, and both of those sounded like a good combination."

[onlysayinghello.livejournal.com]

Finishing his drink Jack nodded, "I worry. Somehow you go from a con man of a coward to actually caring and this worry gene pops up. I can't help it now, apparently I'm a caring kinda guy now."

Jack was trying to put some light quality to it all, to make it seem not as important that he'd spent a good hour trying to track him down, but really Jack just held onto a simple hope that if he hadn't found him that eventually he would have returned.

Pouring himself another glass and taking a swallow right off the bat he tried to meet Adam's eyes, "So do you want to talk about it? Or can I just try to get you drunk so I can have my way with you later?"

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

Adam poured himself another as well, almost automatically. "It is very strange how that happens. One little thing changes and suddenly life itself is altered, different. New and old clash and collide..." God, how much had he had already?

He gave Jack another smile, a valiant try and shrugged when it turned a bit rueful.

"It's nothing really to talk about. Just walking off some ghosts and finding others I wasn't expecting. The history itself would bore you. I would really love it if you got me horribly smashed and took full advantage of me. "

[onlysayinghello.livejournal.com]

Jack was well accustomed to the old and new colliding across his life, and he knew how much it eventually would probably all overlap, creating an existence that only he truly would be able to record as fact. It was a long road ahead of him and to think that all he truly had was actually ahead of him made him realize how little he could actually return to. All of his history was being rewritten in a time before he was meant to exist and for some reason or another... it actually seemed to suit him.

"Well I love to be bored, but on the latter note?" Jack grinned and leaned out of the corner to call out to the barkeep, "Another bottle?" He laughed a bit because he knew really it wouldn't actually be the two of them drowning their time in the bar, but the thought of it was at least something to laugh about. The men time forgot trying to forget all their time... quite the ironic sentiment.

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

"Another time then, I'll tell you and bore you with the sorry details of my life in the latter 20th century. Most of it is a bit on the horrifying side, and a lot of it is just sitting around waiting for nothing. So." He shrugged and flashed the bartender a bright smile when he delivered the whiskey. The things the Company did to him, the things he'd done to others, the way it all traced back and the man he used to be when first he walked these streets...sometimes it hurt to look at it all. Today had been one of those days.

Pouring himself and Jack yet more, he gave him a wry grin. "This sounds like the better plan for tonight.

[onlysayinghello.livejournal.com]

Jack shook his head in disagreement, "You would never bore me, trust me I've been bored by life stories, and I can tell you in all fairness that I don't find anything about the life you've lived boring. Horrifying, perhaps," Jack teased letting his hand rest upon Adam's forearm. His thumb rolled gently against his wrist just giving some sort of an easing connection. Jack could tell the day had worn on him harder than most, and he was sure it was because of the location, and the timing of everything. They still had a long way to go in their own issues, but Jack also knew it wasn't going to even start until Adam could face his past and not worry about it bleeding into his future like a wound that wouldn't heal.

Smiling back at that grin Jack took a sip of his whiskey, "See? I have good ideas every so often about what to do in London."

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

Adam shifted his hand a little, turning it so his palm met Jack's, fingers curling softly against his.

"Horrifying perhaps. Not things I've really any wish to relive. I'd rather forget and move on, and find justice somewhere in the future, but I don't know." Now that the horror of the grave was sliding into the recesses, others were drifting forward, all crowding around him as if his mind sought valiantly to remind him that he had survived worse.

He wasn't sure you could call it survival, frankly, at least not yet, but it seemed a start with Jack there beside him and a bottle between them. "There is always something decent to do in London," he said in staunch support of the city that had birthed him. "This is just the best in a long time. Here, with you."

[onlysayinghello.livejournal.com]

Jack nodded letting his fingers clasp a bit tighter against Adam's own grasp, feeling more than just a level of comfort in his touch, but a common bond that one more they could share, that something else they had both seen, both lived through could force them to examine their lives a bit closer than they'd expect any other person to do. That this was someone that he could tell truths to and no worry about being judged or thought to mad, or just a little bit unhinged at the endurance, and despite Adam saying he'd rather forget and move on Jack knew deep down that everything would be revisited because it was the only way for both of them to actually move on.

"That's true, London has it's share of events and busy corners, and busier streets and then there's the quiet and the serene spots that some people cling to like the shadows. It's just not too often you find yourself with common company in those dark recesses." Jack was unsure where his slightly melancholy mindset had brushed in from and he wanted to dismiss it as quickly as he could as well, to instead focus on the hand warming to his touch, and the alcohol that could be warming his body.

Keeping his hand to Adam's Jack shifted closer to him, moving around the edge of the round table so that he could share that same sentiment, "I think I'm getting a new perspective on the place as well, of course the last time I was in London was before I took over Torchwood. It was being run by the government, but people that weren't exactly being smart about it all. I watched a ship hover over the city and then I saw it shot down from the sky as it was leaving... then the Prime Minister lost her seat and I rebuilt it, made it something that was actually good for something."

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

Adam shifted closer as well, winding his fingers loosely through Jack's. "The last time I was in London was almost fifty years ago. Long before I met the first of the Twelve, before I formed the Company..." How much had he told him? Sometimes it seemed hard to remember, when it all came out of him in fragmented fits and starts, in between sleepless nights and nightmares when he slept.

"It seems I cycle around. I lived here for a while, after the Second World War, until I went to America. But these streets..." He glanced at the darkened windows of the pub, the way the lights cast a bit across the sidewalk, then faded quickly. "I grew up on these streets. They weren't like this. It wasn't a kind part of town at all. There's a bakery where the building was where we had a room..."

He glanced back at Jack, lips curving in a slight smile that was more sad than anything else. "I haven't thought of that time in a very very long time." With a shake of his head, he took a sip of his whiskey. "Was there really a ship--a space ship--hovering over London? Truly?" Sometimes it was so much easier to focus in on Jack and his stories than revisit his own.

[onlysayinghello.livejournal.com]

Hearing the wistful tone, the almost sorrow in how everything had changed around him Jack knew exactly how it felt to watch a world cave in around him. The only difference was that this was never Jack's world, this was always just building to become a world that one day would become his future... which even now Jack was unsure of how accurate that was now.

The change in subject wasn't unwelcome but Jack wasn't sure if it was because he wanted the change or that he just wasn't ready for that much discussion of a world slipping away. Still he knew he'd rather talk about things that made drinking less of a thing to numb the past and more to move forward, "Well that was just the second one, there was one that crashed right into Big Ben. But the larger one yeah, floating right above the city. Thousands of people just marched onto the street and stood on the ledge of roofs, it was some form of Blood Control I'd learn later. All the B negatives, or O positives... it was an insane day."

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

"Crashed into Big Ben?" Adam asked, eyes widening a bit. "And...why? I mean, why did people stand on the ledges of roofs? What did they hope to accomplish with that?" Hostages? But if you were taking something over, he thought, you hardly needed hostages.

He took another drink of his whiskey, but he was engrossed in wanting to hear the story as well, to forget his own, partially, but just to learn about Jack's world as well.

"Do people still maintain there's no such thing as aliens?"

[onlysayinghello.livejournal.com]

Laughing lightly he grinned, "I wasn't up there when it happened, I was down on ground level watching the panic. It was when Torchwood was just a buzz around those that knew things. Harriet Jones was the Prime Minister and after the ship was destroyed, things for her fell apart. Torchwood fell apart, and I took what was left and rebuilt it. I made it something that could actually do something to help everyone with all the chaos that was going around."

Jack shrugged for the moment finishing off his drink and pouring himself another, "With everything they've seen? It's hard to deny it all, but somehow they still manage to do it. Maybe not all of them, but most of them just feel safer thinking that it's not out there, that it's all a hoax. The press helps too, putting out sometimes so much information that it's hardly easy to just accept it all as the truth."

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

Adam frowned a bit, thinking, fiddling with his whiskey glass. "People don't like their worlds to be interrupted, being forced to think about something outside of their safety zones. Aliens. Humans with abilities--it all comes down to the same problem in the human brain. They don't want to change their world view, or stretch out what this or that means to them."

He reached for the bottle as well. "But the people of London--how do you deny a spaceship in the middle of town? Just...how? If Nathan had gotten his speech out--would they have believed him?" He knew he was blurring the lines, merging the stories, but the alcohol connected them, along with the visits to the places he'd known once more, seeing how things had changed and not.

[ooc: I so didn't get this notif...]

[onlysayinghello.livejournal.com]

Jack exhaled slowly before taking another measured sip of his drink. Truth be told he still wasn't sure how many people wanted to deny it, or even if they just chose not to talk about it. Much like the unwanted topic at the dinner table, people just went on with their lives figuring that things were just easier not knowing the truth.

"People believe what they want to Adam, it's always been that way. They can see a miracle and either believe it to be a real miracle, or the work of the devil. It's all just a giant act of faith on their part. What matters is that the impact we make on those people is one they want to believe in, that's the reason I can go on. Because I know that I want to make it a place where the things I do protect people, and they believe that what I do is for the best." It was a bit lofty sure, but he was in that whole zone and the drinking wasn't exactly curbing his usual reserved speech section of his thoughts.

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

"My father thought I was a demon," Adam announced, the day catching up with their talk of the impossible. "As did my first wife. Demon. Satan's spawn. He threw us out and she ran away, and for centuries I thought maybe they were right..." It was his time, his people, his creed, after all. He wasn't from some distant future where humanity had evolved even further, seeing the stars, other planets, other times, other species they mingled with. He was from a time where they burned women at the stake to purify the devil out of them, and called midwives Satan's whores and put you in stocks and threw vegetables at you for speaking out of turn.

"Belief...sometimes I wonder if we give it the power we do, or if...somewhere there has to be a truth that goes beyond anything people believe about it, doesn't there? What happened with the ships. What I am. What Nathan and Peter and Hiro...the things we do. What you are. It's true. It's real. People can deny it or refuse to believe all they please, or they can embrace it as absolute truth, but what they believe doesn't change the fact of what is."