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changehistory[ooc: AU piece based on a "what if" about what might have happened to Adam in "Five Years Gone."]
I believed that it would be better, after. The world was supposed to change, you see, but not like this. They don't know, at least, who I am. Not anymore. She saw to that, sweeping in triumphant and pulling me out of that place, out of the darkness of a cold, cheerless cell, just when everything seemed darkest. Kaito turned, trained my carp well, but she and Daniel won, and with their triumph came the shift in power that sent Kaito falling, his orders nothing but dust. Without Arthur to object, with Charles dead, with Kaito broken, with Bob nothing but their peon again, there was no one to stop her from walking through the door, face alight with triumph and a trembling glee.
"It's done..." she whispered against my lips, an instant before my hand was ready to tighten around her throat for her betrayal.
"The virus?" I didn't want to ask. I shouldn't have paused to ask, to let her kiss me that way, the traitorous bitch, but the words pulled out of me anyway.
"No," she said, voice a bit sharp. "Don't be ridiculous. We'd have been in here with you if we'd done that..."
"Then what?" It occurred to me, of course, that snapping at her wasn't the best way to get out that tantalizingly open door, but after thirty years of the torture and sadism of my friends, I thought I had a right to be a bit cranky.
"If you're going to be like that..." She tried to pull back. I didn't allow it. She was not going out that door without me while I was still breathing.
"A bomb," she said, her eyes glittering strangely. "A person, really, able to go nuclear, able to blow up, and then heal, and he did. In New York. The city is gone, destroyed."
I'd heard the murmurs, the screams, the panic in the halls a few days before, but I thought perhaps someone else had managed an escape I never had. Nothing like this. Bob had been pale, and Elle silent, but no one would tell me. Now I knew why. There was something brittle to her glee, a darker something she wasn't telling me, but the excitement washed over me in response, and I felt my breath catch.
"And now?" I asked, letting my fingers trace skin I remembered too well, finding the places age had changed her by touch, but watching her eyes, that were the same.
"Now I think it's time we get you out of here, Adam," a voice I knew said from the door, and Daniel was there, the same light glittering in his eyes. "It's time for the healing to start, and we need you for that."
I wanted to kill them both, for turning, but they were like children presenting me with some shiny present as if that made up for every bad thing they'd ever done. They'd have to be punished, of course, still. There was no way to avoid it, not if I loved them, but at the same time, it would be rude not to accept their offering.
I walked out of that place five years ago, full of hope for the first time in three decades. I believed, you see, so strongly. We could start healing, start the changes in the world. He was poised, ready, this boy of mine I hadn't seen in too long, ready to step to greatness. The other son I heard of, but never saw, something keeping him far away from his home. Shame? Perhaps. It didn't matter, not then, though the more I heard of him, the more I wondered if we were betting on the wrong son, even if he was mine. An empathic mimic, truly? One who could take all of our powers, shape them, master them? And if he'd met the girl, the cheerleader, then he could be...what? What I was, as well? That teased more than most, but I pushed it aside to bask in our grieving glory, stepping into the shadows to watch them.
And I saw the shadows darken, stretching out across the world. Anathema. Fear, not of some other we would save them from, but of us. Not this, I tried to tell them, tried to reason at them. What use Nathan's power, if we lived hunted and feared? A world I might see become better, but this power was useless when our kind were feared more than I'd ever seen. They looked through me, not listening, not hearing. The Linderman Act. It makes me ill to hear it, even now, the things they're doing to our own. The things he's doing. There's something dark in his eyes when he watches me, when I step into that office with Daniel. His eyes are almost hungry, feral, and there is nothing in them that I recognize as mine.
The other boy...he fights them. I hear her annoyance, hear the way she snaps at anyone daring to mention his name. I see the fury in his eyes, and the exasperation in Daniel's. And my carp...thrown back so far by the blast when he tried to stop it. The catalyst of all of this, though he doesn't know, can't know. He hasn't seen me. I walk the shadows, but I've seen him. Heard his name, seen the way she spits it out in tandem with her other son's.
I believed that it would be better, for all of us. Not this hell they've created that makes me want to scream at them, ask them what they were thinking. Children, all of them, to take such a perfect opportunity and twist it into something darker where no hope glitters. What are we saving? What are we healing? What have we offered? They keep saying patience, but I know that worse will come.
There's only two who still hold the key to saving us, to changing this. I don't know where they are, have no way to find them, and if I make too much of a fuss, I know they won't hesitate to throw me back in that cell. But if I can find one, the other might follow, and the one sure way to do that will be to step from the shadows, to be seen somewhere my carp cannot fail to notice me. And then he'll come. How can he not, the way we parted? And then maybe, just maybe, we can set this right.
Maybe, for once, finally...we can change history.
I believed that it would be better, after. The world was supposed to change, you see, but not like this. They don't know, at least, who I am. Not anymore. She saw to that, sweeping in triumphant and pulling me out of that place, out of the darkness of a cold, cheerless cell, just when everything seemed darkest. Kaito turned, trained my carp well, but she and Daniel won, and with their triumph came the shift in power that sent Kaito falling, his orders nothing but dust. Without Arthur to object, with Charles dead, with Kaito broken, with Bob nothing but their peon again, there was no one to stop her from walking through the door, face alight with triumph and a trembling glee.
"It's done..." she whispered against my lips, an instant before my hand was ready to tighten around her throat for her betrayal.
"The virus?" I didn't want to ask. I shouldn't have paused to ask, to let her kiss me that way, the traitorous bitch, but the words pulled out of me anyway.
"No," she said, voice a bit sharp. "Don't be ridiculous. We'd have been in here with you if we'd done that..."
"Then what?" It occurred to me, of course, that snapping at her wasn't the best way to get out that tantalizingly open door, but after thirty years of the torture and sadism of my friends, I thought I had a right to be a bit cranky.
"If you're going to be like that..." She tried to pull back. I didn't allow it. She was not going out that door without me while I was still breathing.
"A bomb," she said, her eyes glittering strangely. "A person, really, able to go nuclear, able to blow up, and then heal, and he did. In New York. The city is gone, destroyed."
I'd heard the murmurs, the screams, the panic in the halls a few days before, but I thought perhaps someone else had managed an escape I never had. Nothing like this. Bob had been pale, and Elle silent, but no one would tell me. Now I knew why. There was something brittle to her glee, a darker something she wasn't telling me, but the excitement washed over me in response, and I felt my breath catch.
"And now?" I asked, letting my fingers trace skin I remembered too well, finding the places age had changed her by touch, but watching her eyes, that were the same.
"Now I think it's time we get you out of here, Adam," a voice I knew said from the door, and Daniel was there, the same light glittering in his eyes. "It's time for the healing to start, and we need you for that."
I wanted to kill them both, for turning, but they were like children presenting me with some shiny present as if that made up for every bad thing they'd ever done. They'd have to be punished, of course, still. There was no way to avoid it, not if I loved them, but at the same time, it would be rude not to accept their offering.
I walked out of that place five years ago, full of hope for the first time in three decades. I believed, you see, so strongly. We could start healing, start the changes in the world. He was poised, ready, this boy of mine I hadn't seen in too long, ready to step to greatness. The other son I heard of, but never saw, something keeping him far away from his home. Shame? Perhaps. It didn't matter, not then, though the more I heard of him, the more I wondered if we were betting on the wrong son, even if he was mine. An empathic mimic, truly? One who could take all of our powers, shape them, master them? And if he'd met the girl, the cheerleader, then he could be...what? What I was, as well? That teased more than most, but I pushed it aside to bask in our grieving glory, stepping into the shadows to watch them.
And I saw the shadows darken, stretching out across the world. Anathema. Fear, not of some other we would save them from, but of us. Not this, I tried to tell them, tried to reason at them. What use Nathan's power, if we lived hunted and feared? A world I might see become better, but this power was useless when our kind were feared more than I'd ever seen. They looked through me, not listening, not hearing. The Linderman Act. It makes me ill to hear it, even now, the things they're doing to our own. The things he's doing. There's something dark in his eyes when he watches me, when I step into that office with Daniel. His eyes are almost hungry, feral, and there is nothing in them that I recognize as mine.
The other boy...he fights them. I hear her annoyance, hear the way she snaps at anyone daring to mention his name. I see the fury in his eyes, and the exasperation in Daniel's. And my carp...thrown back so far by the blast when he tried to stop it. The catalyst of all of this, though he doesn't know, can't know. He hasn't seen me. I walk the shadows, but I've seen him. Heard his name, seen the way she spits it out in tandem with her other son's.
I believed that it would be better, for all of us. Not this hell they've created that makes me want to scream at them, ask them what they were thinking. Children, all of them, to take such a perfect opportunity and twist it into something darker where no hope glitters. What are we saving? What are we healing? What have we offered? They keep saying patience, but I know that worse will come.
There's only two who still hold the key to saving us, to changing this. I don't know where they are, have no way to find them, and if I make too much of a fuss, I know they won't hesitate to throw me back in that cell. But if I can find one, the other might follow, and the one sure way to do that will be to step from the shadows, to be seen somewhere my carp cannot fail to notice me. And then he'll come. How can he not, the way we parted? And then maybe, just maybe, we can set this right.
Maybe, for once, finally...we can change history.
ooc
Date: 2008-02-20 07:06 am (UTC)Oooh -- I really like this! And now I'm coming up with ideas of Adam and Peter (and Hiro) teaming up as freedom fighters...
Re: ooc
Date: 2008-02-20 07:08 am (UTC)Re: ooc
Date: 2008-02-23 02:30 am (UTC)eta: and now the Peter in my head is picturing him in all that black leather...
Re: ooc
Date: 2008-02-23 06:20 am (UTC)Heee! That's a pretty thing to picture....
Re: ooc
Date: 2008-02-23 08:31 am (UTC)Mmm... it really is. :)
Re: ooc
Date: 2008-02-23 07:00 pm (UTC)*pictures it some more*