RoTM 1.85.2 -- Future Deeds, Future Words
Dec. 6th, 2007 09:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
changehistoryWrite a prompt fic of your muse interacting with another muse in their life, years from now, where your muse is telling someone something that they don’t want to hear.
It always seemed to go in cycles—not quite clockwork, but approaching it. For a century, two, three at most Adam would be content. He’d find some cause he believed in and go off to war taking all the dangerous missions he could find and reveling in the decorations that followed, the press conferences, the public glory when he saved this or that platoon or village. Jack would receive frequent messages, never too long or too effusive, but enough to keep in touch, coming “home” whenever it suited them both. More than once, he donated his blood to various scientists to attempt to manufacture cures for some disease plaguing the populace. Sometimes it even worked, though nothing was ever quite as effective as his blood alone.
But then something would happen. War would pile on top of war and children would be starving. Famine would strike and roll across the world. Forests would burn from nothing natural, or be razed to the ground to try and make farms or feed livestock to get food to a planet that couldn’t continue to support so many people. When it did, Adam would get a look in his eyes, something twitching under his skin. He’d disappear, and Jack would know. Usually he could find him, talk him down, try and assure him it got better in some future he would never quite reveal. Sometimes Adam believed him, trusted him.
Sometimes he didn’t.
Sometimes Jack could stop him.
Sometimes he couldn’t.
Things happened, scattered across the world, and then across the universe as humanity spread itself out, shifting the shape of it, and it was always then a question of why, or how. Adam never said, always swooping in with a grand gesture to save the day or rebuild from the destruction, whether he’d caused it or not, but Jack could usually tell. Something about the flush of triumph, the glitter in his eyes that wasn’t quite…sane. Not manic, never that, but something else, something darker, something that was a bit too reminiscent of a ship hovering over a desiccated planet with a paradox at its core. Sometimes he asked.
Sometimes he didn’t.
Sometimes Adam told the truth, his justifications sliding rampant through the room, and when someone believed so hard, it was difficult to formulate arguments he would listen to. Sometimes Jack left, afterward.
Sometime he didn’t.
This time, though, Jack wasn’t sure. Adam was quiet when the explosion took out most of New Tokyo, watching the flickering flames crawling through streets and flashing further out, unstoppable as they ran across the planet with an impassive expression. New Tokyo was the center of the human financial network of a whole system of planets. The servers, the backups, all of it was gone in a series of well timed bombs.
“Did you see it coming? Did you know?” Adam asked, not glancing at him. His voice was cool, just as impassive and unreadable as his eyes, with none of the bitterness that sometimes laced such questions. He wanted to know what Jack’s world had been, and how it got there, and Jack withheld the how with a frequency that elicited more than a few furious outbursts. “Was this in your history books? Your Time Agent records?”
“No,” Jack said, quietly, eyes flickering between Adam and the screen.
“I didn’t think so,” Adam said, and his lips curved, just a bit, into the smallest of smiles. “You said, once, how New Tokyo was the center of it all. How it grew stronger with each century, reaching heights now and keeping the market strong with trade with alien worlds, pushing humanity further and further into the outer reaches of space, until there was nothing we didn’t touch. Didn’t taint.” Taint, of course, had not been a word in Jack’s description, but the light was back in Adam’s eyes as he finally met Jack’s. They glittered, dark and deep with secrets he never fully let out, parts of himself that in all these centuries, he’d kept tight inside with just the fewest words brushing over to hint at what lay there.
“What did you do?”
Adam could tell Jack didn’t really want to know, from the way he was standing, braced, something in his eyes not comprehending how anything could unfold he didn’t already know about with what Adam saw as infernal smugness—the only irritant in what could be perfect if Jack would just let him in all the way. Now he would have to.
Adam tilted his head, and the bitter smile became almost beatific. “I changed history.”
(ooc: Jack borrowed with permission of his mun, though clearly this is a "what if?" situation and not binding on RP in any way.)
It always seemed to go in cycles—not quite clockwork, but approaching it. For a century, two, three at most Adam would be content. He’d find some cause he believed in and go off to war taking all the dangerous missions he could find and reveling in the decorations that followed, the press conferences, the public glory when he saved this or that platoon or village. Jack would receive frequent messages, never too long or too effusive, but enough to keep in touch, coming “home” whenever it suited them both. More than once, he donated his blood to various scientists to attempt to manufacture cures for some disease plaguing the populace. Sometimes it even worked, though nothing was ever quite as effective as his blood alone.
But then something would happen. War would pile on top of war and children would be starving. Famine would strike and roll across the world. Forests would burn from nothing natural, or be razed to the ground to try and make farms or feed livestock to get food to a planet that couldn’t continue to support so many people. When it did, Adam would get a look in his eyes, something twitching under his skin. He’d disappear, and Jack would know. Usually he could find him, talk him down, try and assure him it got better in some future he would never quite reveal. Sometimes Adam believed him, trusted him.
Sometimes he didn’t.
Sometimes Jack could stop him.
Sometimes he couldn’t.
Things happened, scattered across the world, and then across the universe as humanity spread itself out, shifting the shape of it, and it was always then a question of why, or how. Adam never said, always swooping in with a grand gesture to save the day or rebuild from the destruction, whether he’d caused it or not, but Jack could usually tell. Something about the flush of triumph, the glitter in his eyes that wasn’t quite…sane. Not manic, never that, but something else, something darker, something that was a bit too reminiscent of a ship hovering over a desiccated planet with a paradox at its core. Sometimes he asked.
Sometimes he didn’t.
Sometimes Adam told the truth, his justifications sliding rampant through the room, and when someone believed so hard, it was difficult to formulate arguments he would listen to. Sometimes Jack left, afterward.
Sometime he didn’t.
This time, though, Jack wasn’t sure. Adam was quiet when the explosion took out most of New Tokyo, watching the flickering flames crawling through streets and flashing further out, unstoppable as they ran across the planet with an impassive expression. New Tokyo was the center of the human financial network of a whole system of planets. The servers, the backups, all of it was gone in a series of well timed bombs.
“Did you see it coming? Did you know?” Adam asked, not glancing at him. His voice was cool, just as impassive and unreadable as his eyes, with none of the bitterness that sometimes laced such questions. He wanted to know what Jack’s world had been, and how it got there, and Jack withheld the how with a frequency that elicited more than a few furious outbursts. “Was this in your history books? Your Time Agent records?”
“No,” Jack said, quietly, eyes flickering between Adam and the screen.
“I didn’t think so,” Adam said, and his lips curved, just a bit, into the smallest of smiles. “You said, once, how New Tokyo was the center of it all. How it grew stronger with each century, reaching heights now and keeping the market strong with trade with alien worlds, pushing humanity further and further into the outer reaches of space, until there was nothing we didn’t touch. Didn’t taint.” Taint, of course, had not been a word in Jack’s description, but the light was back in Adam’s eyes as he finally met Jack’s. They glittered, dark and deep with secrets he never fully let out, parts of himself that in all these centuries, he’d kept tight inside with just the fewest words brushing over to hint at what lay there.
“What did you do?”
Adam could tell Jack didn’t really want to know, from the way he was standing, braced, something in his eyes not comprehending how anything could unfold he didn’t already know about with what Adam saw as infernal smugness—the only irritant in what could be perfect if Jack would just let him in all the way. Now he would have to.
Adam tilted his head, and the bitter smile became almost beatific. “I changed history.”
(ooc: Jack borrowed with permission of his mun, though clearly this is a "what if?" situation and not binding on RP in any way.)
