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changehistory[AU 'verse]
The journal is a modern style, with a magnetic flap and fake leather faked to look old and distressed. Of course, now it is, and how they had kept it all this time still amazes him, but it had been something precious in a way--proof that Peter was who he said he was, from when he said he was--so Adam had kept it wrapped in oilcloth, kept from the elements and preserved. It's falling apart now, the ink nearly illegible, preserved like other old books, and almost never taken out, never touched. He's copied it, though, so as not to lose it, painstakingly writing out each entry that spanned four weeks that never happened, but carefully document the reasons why it never occurred, why a boy came back to save a man he loved from becoming a monster.
He's read it enough over the years that each entry is nearly memorized, but he pulls out a copy again. The code was a simple one, one he and his siblings had worked out as they learned to write. It had been Mary who'd thought it up and taught the boys, letting them work it into their compositions for the school mistress, saying all sorts of things they oughtn't. A child's game, but with that...it tucked into the journal entries, carefully worded in ways Peter would never have deciphered should he have picked it up. The code had been what convinced him the boy was telling the truth, because for all he now knew a code breaker could probably sort it out fairly quickly, then...no one else would have known.
Tonight is different. He hasn't visited the pages in over a year, as if reading them could bring them into being as the dates on the pages coincided with those on the calendar, evoking events he has no knowledge of outside of story and Peter's memory. He tucked the pages far away in the back of his desk at home, bound up to protect the present from becoming what it was, had been. But it is past, now, the last date, and things have remained as they have made them, and so he pulls forth the pages again wondering if tonight they will make more sense in truth, in fact, than just in words he translates in his head.
These were his words. This was his plan. This dark bitterness, softened only by Peter's presence, but even that not enough to stop him from his murderous purpose. Kaito's death. Angela's attack. The feel of the gun in his hand and how it felt to watch Victoria fall, blood pooling around her, the shock on her face, the fierce sense of accomplishment at it's doing...and the excitement that laced each line as they drew closer and closer to the goal. He was giddy with it, it seems, hungry to watch the world fall around him, to build it anew, drunk on rage and vengeance and righteousness, a sense of being so far above those around him that their lives mattered not. Worry, some, that the boy would fall away, that he might lose him, rambles on how to keep him by his side, to not lose this opportunity, but only here and there, and more of a sense that it must be done, and he would find a way to fix it with Peter after.
He wishes he could toss it away and say he doesn't believe it, to toss off the fetters of the life that now never was. It seems the journal should have disappeared, never written, because that man never existed, but it remains here, in his hands, tangible proof of who he was. Who he was. Because it was him, and he was that person, and it is useless to deny it. The guilt that weighs on him isn't rational, perhaps, but he sometimes thinks it isn't for who he was that he feels it, but because it is who he could become. Even now, even with a past filled with love and laughter, and partnership, it is hard not to think he is better than them, to not be certain that he and Peter are meant to rule, not guide. They are everlasting, and his father's words, words Peter couldn't erase the way he erased the other boy's betrayal, still echo. The arrogance in the words on the page, he recognizes. The anger, he knows, if not so bitterly. The injustice in the world, he wants to rectify. The sense that it is all spinning out of humanity's control, and that something must be done, he shares.
There is no virus; Peter saw to that. There is no deadly weapon at his hand save Peter himself, and in that, perhaps they differ, because to use Peter is to him unthinkable, where to the other, to the man he was, it was necessary and inevitable. That angers him, sometimes, knowing what Peter risked, what Peter gave up to save...this man, who wrote these words, who had these thoughts, and who didn't care what he demanded of those who followed him...and knowing, still, that he still does that, daily, weaving his webs of words around his still faithful followers. He's learned from journal what not to do, what path doesn't work, what plans have to fail, and how to succeed. He's learned from his past mistakes, from his past self, but the lesson learned might not be the one that some might hope.
Because no matter the anger at the fool he thinks he was, he knows, reading those words and hearing the soul behind them, that when you strip away the man he's learned to be, and the man he once became with their lives so differently lived...his once past and his now present are not so far apart as one might think.
The journal is a modern style, with a magnetic flap and fake leather faked to look old and distressed. Of course, now it is, and how they had kept it all this time still amazes him, but it had been something precious in a way--proof that Peter was who he said he was, from when he said he was--so Adam had kept it wrapped in oilcloth, kept from the elements and preserved. It's falling apart now, the ink nearly illegible, preserved like other old books, and almost never taken out, never touched. He's copied it, though, so as not to lose it, painstakingly writing out each entry that spanned four weeks that never happened, but carefully document the reasons why it never occurred, why a boy came back to save a man he loved from becoming a monster.
He's read it enough over the years that each entry is nearly memorized, but he pulls out a copy again. The code was a simple one, one he and his siblings had worked out as they learned to write. It had been Mary who'd thought it up and taught the boys, letting them work it into their compositions for the school mistress, saying all sorts of things they oughtn't. A child's game, but with that...it tucked into the journal entries, carefully worded in ways Peter would never have deciphered should he have picked it up. The code had been what convinced him the boy was telling the truth, because for all he now knew a code breaker could probably sort it out fairly quickly, then...no one else would have known.
Tonight is different. He hasn't visited the pages in over a year, as if reading them could bring them into being as the dates on the pages coincided with those on the calendar, evoking events he has no knowledge of outside of story and Peter's memory. He tucked the pages far away in the back of his desk at home, bound up to protect the present from becoming what it was, had been. But it is past, now, the last date, and things have remained as they have made them, and so he pulls forth the pages again wondering if tonight they will make more sense in truth, in fact, than just in words he translates in his head.
These were his words. This was his plan. This dark bitterness, softened only by Peter's presence, but even that not enough to stop him from his murderous purpose. Kaito's death. Angela's attack. The feel of the gun in his hand and how it felt to watch Victoria fall, blood pooling around her, the shock on her face, the fierce sense of accomplishment at it's doing...and the excitement that laced each line as they drew closer and closer to the goal. He was giddy with it, it seems, hungry to watch the world fall around him, to build it anew, drunk on rage and vengeance and righteousness, a sense of being so far above those around him that their lives mattered not. Worry, some, that the boy would fall away, that he might lose him, rambles on how to keep him by his side, to not lose this opportunity, but only here and there, and more of a sense that it must be done, and he would find a way to fix it with Peter after.
He wishes he could toss it away and say he doesn't believe it, to toss off the fetters of the life that now never was. It seems the journal should have disappeared, never written, because that man never existed, but it remains here, in his hands, tangible proof of who he was. Who he was. Because it was him, and he was that person, and it is useless to deny it. The guilt that weighs on him isn't rational, perhaps, but he sometimes thinks it isn't for who he was that he feels it, but because it is who he could become. Even now, even with a past filled with love and laughter, and partnership, it is hard not to think he is better than them, to not be certain that he and Peter are meant to rule, not guide. They are everlasting, and his father's words, words Peter couldn't erase the way he erased the other boy's betrayal, still echo. The arrogance in the words on the page, he recognizes. The anger, he knows, if not so bitterly. The injustice in the world, he wants to rectify. The sense that it is all spinning out of humanity's control, and that something must be done, he shares.
There is no virus; Peter saw to that. There is no deadly weapon at his hand save Peter himself, and in that, perhaps they differ, because to use Peter is to him unthinkable, where to the other, to the man he was, it was necessary and inevitable. That angers him, sometimes, knowing what Peter risked, what Peter gave up to save...this man, who wrote these words, who had these thoughts, and who didn't care what he demanded of those who followed him...and knowing, still, that he still does that, daily, weaving his webs of words around his still faithful followers. He's learned from journal what not to do, what path doesn't work, what plans have to fail, and how to succeed. He's learned from his past mistakes, from his past self, but the lesson learned might not be the one that some might hope.
Because no matter the anger at the fool he thinks he was, he knows, reading those words and hearing the soul behind them, that when you strip away the man he's learned to be, and the man he once became with their lives so differently lived...his once past and his now present are not so far apart as one might think.
