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changehistoryIt helps me sleep tonight
Maybe it can stop tomorrow
From stealing all my time
And I am here still waiting
Though I still have my doubts
I am damaged at best
Like you've already figured out
He shifted through the warehouse aimlessly, fingers sliding over the face of the clock that always looked sad in a twisted reminder of fate. Banners hung on the walls. His. White Beard's. Life in paint and cloth, symbols wrapping around a story. Things scattered before him in a maze he wandered through, one foot gingerly in front of the other, quiet whispers of sound that refused to echo in the clutter of what once was. Nothing now, and everything. Memories. Past. A man, a name, a fragment of a life here, a photo of another there, a mink stole that smelled of mothballs and, if you knew where to sniff, iron and copper and gunsmoke and screams. A fan, paint on silk that he could hold and conjure the lead and the patch, and air redolent with perfume. Wandering the room was wandering miles of memories, stepping back one piece at a time through centuries that stretched in both directions. His past, always there, informing everything he was, thought, worked toward, and wrapping itself around not just him now, but also the boy who slumbered in the flat upstairs, fingers curling tight in tangled sweat-soaked sheets and looking more vulnerable than Adam could wish.
You got inside my head
I tried my best to be guarded
I'm an open book instead
And I still see your reflection
Inside of my eyes
That are looking for purpose
They're still looking for life
He'd say later it was his plan all along, his ambition, carefully guiding them to what he always intended, had worked toward for fifty years or more. That he never faltered, never doubted. Easier to be the master manipulator behind the cold smile, eyes like ice, the mastermind they all thought him. It was a position of power to negotiate from, he'd learned, and it was a mask he knew well. He was comfortable there, sardonic smile on lips littering sarcastic commentary back on the highways of others' lives he touched. Walk through, do your damage, live your love, walk away, always touching, never touched, separate and apart truly like a god who walked among them. Except he found passion filling each word, breath catching at the story. A new world, a new chance, something larger than pure vengeance and a childish tantrum. An opportunity to be a hero. His hero. And that thought was more disturbing than the others, but he rolled with it anyway, letting it infuse soft words until he could believe it as well as sell it. Belief is the hardest thing in the world to argue against, to shake, and it was a lesson he learned well. Whatever you set out to do, believe it in it, utterly, wholly. And so he believed, in them, in him, in that smile, in those eyes, that they could truly save the world, and he felt it infuse him with new life.
Just to see what you'll throw my way,
And I'm hanging on to the words you say
You said that I will, will be okay
The broken lights on the freeway
Left me here alone
I may have lost my way now
Haven't forgotten my way home
The aftermath was brutal. You always hate most what you loved most, and he had forgotten the golden rule that you always had more to lose. Especially when you found something you never thought to find. Perfect vengeance, perfect...and he'd thought the father cold. Knowledge is the sharpest weapon, though, and he knew, always knew, he brought this on himself. Freedom meant something new, something else, something darker, laced with pain and that intimate realization of what he had, what he lost, and who was to blame. That there was a chance on the other side for redemption, salvation, just to be all right again, seemed like one of those impossible dreams that arced across his brain when it crackled with excessive electricity. It burned him from the inside out, just like that, as well. Everything was gone, the world froze under his dead fingers, like his ability was something more than to survive, something opposite, a different destiny altogether. Those shadows still loomed in a warehouse in Montreal, with a broken clock face that always looked sad, stretching across continents and centuries demanding some sort of answer that he couldn't find a way to give. Things twisted inside of him that he didn't have a name for, broken shards that cut deep and made him bleed that healed only to bleed again. But he believed, had to believe, had to push himself into it utterly, wholly. Had to listen to that soft voice in the dark that washed over his skin like a balm. Had to. Because you couldn't argue against belief, and he needed something he could hold on to.
I'm barely breathing
With a broken heart
That's still beating
In the pain
There is healing
In your name
I find meaning
So I'm holding on
I'm still holding
I'm barely holding on to you
