[TM] 309 What have you forgotten?
Nov. 22nd, 2009 08:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
changehistoryOver the course of three and a half centuries, he's certain he's forgotten hundreds of things. The sound of his mother's laugh, the curve of his firstborn's smile, the feel of homespun cloth against his skin. Some memories he's worked to lose; others have been lost in the mists of time even as he tried to hold on to them. A few he doesn't miss, but there are some he'd give anything to get back.
One of them is the memory of what it felt like to be safe.
He went to Michigan looking for it, because, truly, he isn't sure he ever felt safe before he haltingly told Angelica his secret and found only acceptance in her gaze. She gave up everything for him--a normal life, a chance at being truly part of a community, the opportunity to grow old with the man she loved. She watched while girls threw their caps at him, thinking her his mother, then his grandmother, and though she never doubted him, nor did he give her cause, he can't imagine it was easy for her. Through it all, though, she never complained, and her absolute acceptance gave him something he'd never had in his life--a place that was his, a home where he belonged, arms in which he could rest. Thoughts of vengeance and power were pushed back in the light of her love, and for those six decades he could rest.
He didn't know if he had since.
He couldn't breathe again. He'd come back too soon, Baileigh's upset and Molly's pleas and Sylar's need for Mohinder driving him toward guilt that built upon the guilt he was already feeling until he had to go back, no matter what. He tried to bury it all in holiday preparations and forced cheer, figuring that would help, but the frenetic mania just left him exhausted, and where last year he'd steamrolled over any dissension with a smile, this year it made him want to throw in the towel and say fuck it all, and that...wasn't the attitude that he wanted to bring to something he loved so much.
He had to pull it together, to find that place, that memory at least, if nothing else, and a way to recreate it. They'd taken so much from him. He hated that they'd shattered even the memory of security, of safety, that they'd taken his ability to trust, to believe in people. Instead he waited each day for the storm to come, for the other shoe to drop, for the world he'd built to shatter into pieces. Or for it not to. No matter what Peter had said that night, he hadn't been clear about what he was going to do, and that left him teetering on the edge, walking around on a tightrope.
One way or the other, he had to pull it together, for himself, for the rest of them. Maybe he wouldn't ever remember that feeling, but he'd lived without it for over a century and a half.
Maybe that was what he needed to remember how to do.
One of them is the memory of what it felt like to be safe.
He went to Michigan looking for it, because, truly, he isn't sure he ever felt safe before he haltingly told Angelica his secret and found only acceptance in her gaze. She gave up everything for him--a normal life, a chance at being truly part of a community, the opportunity to grow old with the man she loved. She watched while girls threw their caps at him, thinking her his mother, then his grandmother, and though she never doubted him, nor did he give her cause, he can't imagine it was easy for her. Through it all, though, she never complained, and her absolute acceptance gave him something he'd never had in his life--a place that was his, a home where he belonged, arms in which he could rest. Thoughts of vengeance and power were pushed back in the light of her love, and for those six decades he could rest.
He didn't know if he had since.
He couldn't breathe again. He'd come back too soon, Baileigh's upset and Molly's pleas and Sylar's need for Mohinder driving him toward guilt that built upon the guilt he was already feeling until he had to go back, no matter what. He tried to bury it all in holiday preparations and forced cheer, figuring that would help, but the frenetic mania just left him exhausted, and where last year he'd steamrolled over any dissension with a smile, this year it made him want to throw in the towel and say fuck it all, and that...wasn't the attitude that he wanted to bring to something he loved so much.
He had to pull it together, to find that place, that memory at least, if nothing else, and a way to recreate it. They'd taken so much from him. He hated that they'd shattered even the memory of security, of safety, that they'd taken his ability to trust, to believe in people. Instead he waited each day for the storm to come, for the other shoe to drop, for the world he'd built to shatter into pieces. Or for it not to. No matter what Peter had said that night, he hadn't been clear about what he was going to do, and that left him teetering on the edge, walking around on a tightrope.
One way or the other, he had to pull it together, for himself, for the rest of them. Maybe he wouldn't ever remember that feeling, but he'd lived without it for over a century and a half.
Maybe that was what he needed to remember how to do.
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