When Worlds Collide: RP for yearsguilt

[changehistory]

There was a distinct sense that it was very possible that he ought not be doing this. Repercussions could abound, sliding between both of their timelines. Already the questions abounded of what he was like in this Peter's world. If Kirby Plaza happened, then Hiro was not there, and Sylar had not thrown him to the wall...or had he? He should ask, he thought. Ask if they had all been there, and Hiro still...Because if it had gone wrong in just that Claire hadn't shot Peter or Nathan hadn't appeared, hadn't stepped away from Angela and to save Peter, then Hiro still could have been flung back in the past and his own life taken the same course until somehow, some other way, he escaped the Company facility.

But it hadn't happened that way here, and part of him felt his headache with the repercussions of that, because if changing it here hadn't changed this boy's future, then had Hiro stopping him in that vault not truly changed the future his Peter had seen? Had the virus been released somewhere, somehow? Was there a world where with God's grace it had all gone right? And if so, why was he stuck in this one where everything felt fragile and hard and sharp, like he could fall apart at any moment, and the choices that tore from emotions he'd never expected nor wanted to feel seemed harder. A setback, surely. Just that, a few more weeks, a month or two, some sleep, some rest, and he'd be fine. Back to his old self, back to looking about. Back to a new plan.

So damn the timelines crossing, he decided, as he entered the Yaffa Cafe, taking in the bright animal prints and Christmas lights strung around and smiled to see that some things didn't change, even if his blessed East Village had gone and gotten gentrified while he was locked away. This he knew, the music and the people, and if the clothes changed, the air did not. He'd settled on jeans, considering the venue, and a sweater over a button down shirt, with his leather jacket and scarf. Casual, but still pulled together, unable to be sloppy. If he was nervous, it didn't show as his cool eyes scanned the room, looking for a familiar face, and, failing to find it, moving to take a seat at a booth in the back where he could watch the door and wait for Peter, this new Peter who shouldn't be here, but was, to appear.


[ooc for anyone reading: For now, I think this is in the "open" verse. Coming out of RP in sixwordstories, but I think that's best, so "his Peter" would be youngerpetrelli when referred to in discussion with this one, yeah?]

Comments

[yearsguilt.livejournal.com]

“I have questions too.” For someone who lived for over four hundred years, there was a lot for Adam to share – too much for Adam to share was the more reasonable realization. Peter wasn’t prepared with a list or anything, but he was sure that pulling out questions from his mind wasn’t going to be real difficult. “But, mine can wait. I have a feeling you want to know about me, the me from my time. You might actually know pretty much everything there is to know before the explosion, before Ted’s radiation ability became too much.” Peter wasn’t sure what the relation between his past self and Adam Monroe, he wasn’t sure if he was just close friends with him or not, though, by the way Adam was looking at him there seemed to be something else – something he couldn’t put his finger on and it was starting to bug him.

Peter’s fingers lightly traced the rim of his coffee cup, idly keeping himself from staying completely still as he knew his mind would begin to wander off and think of others things and those thoughts were mostly of finding the people who were dead in his timeline – people he knew were alive and well. There was also this small tendency to visit Elle, but he wasn’t sure if he was fully prepared to take in the perky attitude the electric Barbie brought to the table.

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

"But I don't know what came after," Adam said quietly, concern in his eyes and that need to reach out, take his hand, respond to him the way he was used to responding to Peter. Touch, comfort, reassurance, affection...even now with everything else between them.

"Tell me what happened?" He asked, letting his fingers curl around his coffee cup instead of Peter's hand. "And then...I'll answer anything you want to know."

[yearsguilt.livejournal.com]

“Hell came after.” It was easy to say and Peter had no problem telling it how it was. He wasn’t going to try and lie just to make his world sound like a better place – there was no reason for keeping the truth away from Adam and Peter had become quite honest with himself about certain things and the filter to keep things from people just to make them feel safe was getting weaker and weaker as the years continued to stroll him by.

“After I wiped out half of New York, it didn’t take long for people to find out what we are – what we can do. Nathan became President out of the ashes of the city and he lied about what happened. He told the entire world that it was Sylar who blew up and killed all those people.” It would be quite clear that talking about Nathan hurt Peter emotionally, maybe even physically as his breath became quite sharp, hitching lightly before his continued. “People feared us. They were afraid so that made them go out and act on their own. It didn’t take long until we were being hunted down like animals. They couldn’t kill us, no, the law didn’t allow it, but it the law did allow for us to be locked away. We’re prisoners for being special.”

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

Nathan had moved into power, then. That part was right, he thought. He was meant to, whatever happened. But the rest...he frowned.

"What?" They were supposed to pull together. Unite. Turn to Nathan for guidance..."How can Nathan let that happen? If he's the President...can't he do something? Anything to stop them? What we are...we're supposed to help. To heal the world, to make it better. Why can't they see that?"

[yearsguilt.livejournal.com]

Recent events had made it clear why Nathan had turned everyone against them. How Nathan made everyone afraid of those who carried abilities. Peter wasn’t sure if he was ready to face, to tell Adam what he found out when his attempts to save Hiro Nakamura from the past ended up killing his Hiro Nakamura of the future.

“It was Sylar.” Peter said, letting his frown become fully visible, his features becoming cold as he closed his hands into fists, bringing them to settle together on top of the table. “Sylar killed Nathan and sometime before that he killed Candice Wilmer who had the ability to shapeshift. Sylar impersonated Nathan for years and twisted my world into a dark place. He revealed himself to me during his attempts to kill Hiro from returning to his future to stop the explosion in the timeline we're in right now. I fought him – I tried to kill Sylar, but I couldn't. He was able to heal."

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

Adam felt himself go cold, knew he'd paled even more than he normally was, fury and despair and pain all flashing through him. Nathan, gone, killed by...

"He killed Claire, too," he said numbly, voice sounding very far away. "If he could heal and I'm still alive...he killed Claire, too."

His legacy, even if he had no proof, not really, except Claire. Claire had been the proof, all that he needed to know, even if Angela wouldn't tell him.

"And now...with everyone in prisons, he has his pick of powers, doesn't he? And if he can heal as we can..." As tightly as he was gripping the coffee cup, it was good he didn't have super strength. "Nathan's gone." He felt sick.

He took it back, the flicker of envy he'd felt for his other self. He didn't know Peter. The world had gone to hell. He'd lost Nathan. He'd lost Claire. Everything they'd ever wanted was in shambles and lost. At least here...he still had a chance. Even if strangling Nathan himself sometimes was a touch appealing.

[yearsguilt.livejournal.com]

"All I have left is Niki." His girlfriend. The very same girl who he finally admitted that he was the one who killed her son - that it wasn't Sylar that had taken him away from her. It had killed him to finally admit it, having screamed it when she made her attempts to tell him that changing the future was inevitable, that he couldn’t save everyone.

“Well, all I had left. She told me never to come back after I decided to leave to go help Hiro – to go fix things. I admitted to her that I was the one who exploded and not Sylar.” He had been amazed how he only hesitated for a second when her words were uttered angrily, how he contemplated being alone forever over attempting to fix his entire reality. He rolled the dice and Peter came up short once again.

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

"Niki?" Adam blinked. "Sanders?" He only knew her by reputation, but here, he didn't even think Peter knew her, let alone was romantically interested in her. But future...in a future were they were all hunted, he supposed a lot of them had met each other who hadn't before.

"She...didn't want you to fix things?" That seemed odd, considering the world he described. But the oddity only slightly turned him from the ache in the pit of his stomach over the news about Nathan. He took a sip of the coffee, but it didn't help either.

[yearsguilt.livejournal.com]

“It happened a year after the explosion. Hiro and I decided to take it upon ourselves to do everything we could to break out those who were locked up in the metahuman facilities. I’ve said this before, so I don’t really have to go into complete detail. Anyway, I saved Niki, but not before Matt Parkman and his little wonder team tried stopping us. You see, Matt Parkman is head of homeland security – his main objective is to follow the orders of the President and those orders are to stop any terrorist from trying to let prisoners escape. Besides Sylar, he’s one of my enemies.”

Peter had a lot of enemies, but Parkman was one of the worse. His ability was hard to fight against and despite having so many chances to just off him, he didn’t exactly have the will power. Peter cursed himself for letting Matt live, knowing the world would be better off with him dead.

“Anyway, she was the only person around. We needed each other.” Peter had lost everything with Niki having mutual understanding. It wasn’t hard to see that the two would gather a connection from that.

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

Adam nodded a little. He understood connections forged that way. It bound him to Elle, along with other things, in ways he couldn't make his Peter understand, after the things she'd done. But there in the coldness of that place, both of them prisoners of her father, they had needed one another, too. And now that he was out...he had no idea what that meant.

"Parkman here...well. He's not actively hunting us down, obviously, but he does keep protecting all the wrong people against those of us trying to make a better world for our kind, where we don't have to live in fear. He is something of a thorn in my side." Bastard kept protecting Bob. From his own father, even. What sort of son did that? Besides his, obviously. Sometimes he really thought his former friends had ruined this generation completely.

[yearsguilt.livejournal.com]

“Roles often reverse. People who were originally terrible people became good people in my future. Those who used to be kind of heart have morphed into monsters, but in the end we all have but one goal. We all just want to try and make the world a place better to live in and we all have our views. Good ones and the bad ones.” Things were very different in his timeline, that was a given as he had repeated it over and over.

“Tell me how it was like for you back then. I want to know how it felt discovery that you were different from everyone else.” Peter’s voice had suddenly shifted, a familiarity of softness arising – the kind of tone the old Peter was used to using with everyone.

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

Adam shifted a little in his seat, eyes falling to his coffee with a faraway look. "I haven't thought about it in so long. I was twenty seven, at the time, almost twenty-eight. I was living in Japan there, working as a mercenary after several years of training as a samurai." He smiled a little. "One day, during a battle, my decoy was on the field and I was waiting in ambush for the rest of the enemy army when suddenly a boy appeared out of nowhere, grabbed my decoy and they both vanished. I went after them...and told the boy who I was. At the time I'd taken the name Takezo Kensei." He glanced up to see if it meant anything to Peter, watching him carefully.

"The boy was Hiro Nakamura. He knew the name, he told me, because he was from the future. He then spent days trying to convince me that I had some great destiny to save Japan and needed to embrace it, move forward. I finally caved, only to walk out, find myself surrounded by bandits and shot to death with arrows. Only, when Hiro pulled the arrows out...I healed." His smile twisted a bit. "I...thought he'd cursed me. I thought he was a demon from hell, at first, a spirit, and that he had made me some sort of monster, an abomination. But when I realized what it truly meant, the more we talked, the more explained about people with abilities in the future, the more I decided I liked it. Useful, really, when a warrior, to know you can't be killed, can heal from any wound."

[yearsguilt.livejournal.com]

Peter could only nod as he took in this information, suddenly realizing that Hiro was responsible for setting the timeline of the hero known at Takezo Kensei. It must have been something, be responsible in helping create a much told samurai tale. There was a moment where a thin smile curled over Peter’s lips, finding it amusing that Adam thought himself as an abomination – being cursed. It was almost the opposite reaction. Peter thought it was a sign for him to finally be someone, to rise up out of his brother’s shadow and finally become something special. It had first started with believing he could fly and then it just changed into so much more when he discovered he could mimic the abilities of those around him. He was a sponge, or at least that’s what Claude liked to call him.

The empath.

“I think we all have to embrace who we are at some point or another. We can’t neglect what we’re capable of because it isn’t necessarily healthy. Hating it won’t do any good either since it isn’t as if being angry will make it go away. The day I exploded – the day I took so many lives. I completely changed my view on what I was. There was nothing special or great about what I did. I wasn’t turning into this person that I could one day look back on and be proud of. I know you’ve said that what I’ve done isn’t my fault, that there was no way I could have possibly known I was going to ignite and take half the city of New York with me, but that doesn’t take away how I feel.”

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

"No, I imagine it wouldn't," Adam said softly. "I ... believe in you, though, Peter. In the Peter I know, but also in you. From what you've said, you are using your abilities to really try and help people in your world. To recover...it wasn't your fault. Everything they did to set it in motion, the Company behind it...you were just learning what you were, learning how to handle things, and to be exposed to that sort of power? You still are special. You are the most powerful of any of us, and yes. Your loss of control came at a huge price, but you're learning. You can still turn into a person you can be proud of. You have time." He hoped, somehow. The scar still worried him.

[yearsguilt.livejournal.com]

“What am I to you?” It was asked so abruptly, those brown eyes having narrowed almost in some kind of defensive manner. The way Adam talked, how he hoped that Peter would change for the better. He couldn’t help but sense something else, something that Peter Petrelli was oblivious to until he really took notice. It helped that they were standing there face to face and in person. Adam was like an open book and Peter was reading him in bold print.

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

The narrowed eyes took Adam aback, the earnestness sliding out of his own as the mask he normally hid behind slid firmly back in place.

"Which you?" he asked with a sardonic smile. "You-you? Or the you in this time line?"

[yearsguilt.livejournal.com]

"Peter Petrelli in general." It was easy to say, his tone returning in an almost warning for Adam's sudden smart alec response. Despite some logic in what Adam said, he had to know what Peter was asking and he was starting to take it rather personally. Peter didn’t enjoy beating around the bush. He wanted straight answers.

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

Adam's eyebrow went up a bit at the warning, half amused. His Peter didn't often dare to take that tone, no matter if he rather wished he would sometimes. It was intriguing.

"I'm not sure there is an 'in general' response. You, personally, intrigue me because you are him on the road not taken. You are what could have been in this time line, what is somewhere else. You are an enigma and a mystery and I am a very curious man who is far too often bored after all this time," Adam said, watching him.

"The Peter I know, here, the reason you intrigue me so? He's my friend. My student, in some ways, or perhaps my protégé, if you will. And my lover," he admitted, with a slightly sardonic smile. "One of them, anyway, as I am one of his." That part he hated more than a little, a flash of a flare of jealousy in his eyes, there and gone. "Is that what you wanted to know?"

[yearsguilt.livejournal.com]

But this wasn’t Adam’s Peter. This Peter was ruthless, parts of him rotten to the core for all the misery and pain years did to him. He wasn’t tamed and for all he knew New York was still his city – his little playground that he needed to protect. He would do anything to protect it and stick around however long he needed. His own timeline needed him as well, the back and forth trips bringing in some new sight to how things were.

Peter’s expression doubled out as the word lover escaped Adam’s lips. He actually scoffed, amused by what he thought was some kind of joke. Brown eyes stared deeply into Adam’s solid blue ones as his lips parted, the light twitch visible below his eyes as he realized that he wasn’t joking at all.

“What?” It wasn’t every day that Peter found out he had a lover who wasn’t a woman – that his past self was sleeping around with others as well instead of just one person.

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

Adam sighed, leaning back against the back of the booth. "So, it isn't just Kirby Plaza that's different. That's interesting." He hadn't been his Peter's first male lover, though perhaps the first who'd stuck around, wanted more. The one before him, he'd gladly kill for abandoning the boy, if he ever got his hands on the man. The one he shared him with, he'd probably do anything for, but not even his Peter knew that, and he intended to keep it that way.

"Does it bother you?" he asked, curious.

[yearsguilt.livejournal.com]

“Yes.” Peter was an honest man. If something heard wasn’t like he didn’t hesitate to make it known. It wasn’t like Peter was disgusted, it was just that he didn’t understand how he was shaped that way – what had happened to him to make himself decide that men were better to take to bed rather than some girl. Peter couldn’t even begin to imagine how it would be like to be with a man, but aside all else there was some part of him that could see the physical attraction.

Now, it made Peter wonder what it would have been like if he had found Adam sooner in his future. He wondered if something inside of him would have clicked to make himself decide that he didn’t have to just hold himself against one person – against Niki. That he could have easily confided himself in Adam and he would have taken him in just as easily as he had the Peter in this timeline.

“And then again, it doesn’t.” He found himself saying in amazement, the lonely side of himself slowly surfacing as he sat there quietly, his coffee still untouched.

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

Adam gave him a wry smile, taking another sip of his coffee. "I'm sorry," he murmured quietly. "I'm not sure...I suppose I didn't realize it would come as that much of a surprise. At least not my," he hesitated over the word, "Interest. I'm nearly four-hundred years old. Things like gender cease to be as important as what's inside someone, the connections you form."

Plus he'd been in the merchant navy, the British navy, and a pirate, he thought ruefully, loud enough for Peter to hear if he was trying. You learned things then about need and friendship and comfort. And love, though that thought was gone as fast as it came, pushed back, hard to the places he didn't have to examine it.

"His friendship means more to me than that," he told him, half hoping to reassure him. "We went through hell together, in the Company's cells. He gave me hope when I didn't have any left, and I like to think I kept him from going mad. He got me out of there when no one else could. I owe him my life, literally."

[yearsguilt.livejournal.com]

Peter understood perfectly now. Adam had lived for four hundred years – four hundred years worth of relationships. Peter knew that Adam probably decided long ago that gender wasn’t an issue – it wasn’t disturbing or odd anymore and Peter had to accept Adam for who he was, even if the Peter of this present was now playing this type of house game with Monroe.

Loneliness. It was the one thing any Peter Petrelli of the past, present or future wanted to do without. Peter attempted to find that in many people, but nothing ever lasted long enough. He was never really able to find that one person that could keep him stable, to keep him still and calm. He was constantly trying to protect and save everyone, but there was never someone there to save him.

“Do you love him?” He asked, those dark brown eyes finally lifting to gaze into Adam’s blue ones. He had almost hesitated with the question and almost like the word “me” slip instead of “him”, but he was able to balance himself out quickly enough to not say it.

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

It was a question Adam wasn't sure he wanted to, or even could, answer, but at the same time, it was honest and it deserved as honest of an answer as he could bring himself to give.

He glanced down for just a moment, then back up, willing himself to meet and hold Peter's eyes.

"I could," he acknowledged. "I don't love easily. I've been betrayed too many times, been the one not chosen, the one walked away from, the one cheated on. It's hard to trust. And he...loves someone else a great deal. So, I find myself keeping my guard up, trying not to let myself fall too hard, knowing if push came to shove I am not the one he would choose." A deep breath, and then a soft acknowledgment. "But I could."

[yearsguilt.livejournal.com]

“I wouldn’t do that to you – I can’t say the same about my past self, but I can’t have multiple lovers. I don’t think I can handle baggage like that. It isn’t right; it isn’t really fair to the other person if more than two hearts are involved. I’m not judging you and I’m not saying what you’re doing it wrong. I just think that you shouldn’t share – because you can’t really be all that happy in the end and I think you know that.”

Jealously was a silly thing. It probably wasn’t much of an issue with Adam, but it had to be there somewhere. If his past self was running around having sex with other people, how could a person honestly attempt something as deep and meaningful as love? Peter thought he found it once, thought it was something so perfection, but it was soon realized that love wasn’t real.