Adam Monroe

The third folder contains 52 more copies of "Hallelujah" and can be downloaded here.

The versions of "Hallelujah" contained in folder #3 are under the cut.

( Folder #3 )

Rather than keep updating one post, I'm breaking it out to what we've got in each folder, because that post is getting unwieldy. Right now, there are 4 .zipped folders, containing a total of 217 versions of "Hallelujah." When we get enough to justify a fifth, a new post will be added. :-)

The first folder contains 87 folders and can be downloaded here.

The versions of "Hallelujah" contained in folder #1 are under the cut.

( Folder #1 )

1. Your favorite.
2. Your least favorite.
3. One that makes you automatically think of me.
4. One that you think I should TOTALLY use more often.
5. One that you don't get/needs more explanation/you have no idea why the hell I have it.

You felt the coldness in my eyes,
It's something I'm not revealing.
Though you got used to my disguise,
You can't shake this awful feeling.

It's the me that I let you know,
Cause' I'll never show,
I have my reasons.
I hate to say that I told you so,
But I told you so.

There's blood on my hands like the blood in you.
Some things can't be treated so,
Don't make me, Don't make me be myself around you.

For long stretches of time, it's easy to hide, to slip into the mask he's crafted for the younger man. Peter makes it easy to smile, after all, to let the lighter side of his personality slip out. His faith, his belief in humanity, even after so many times of seeing darkness, is light a beacon shining in the shadows of Adam's world, and for a time it's easy to cling to that, to use it as a guiding light to steer his way. He laughs, he jokes, he lets the cynicism slide and the centuries slip away as if they aren't dragging him down into some darker abyss of his own creating.

Sometimes he even wants so badly to be that mask, to slip it on permanently, and he wonders if he wears it long enough if it will be truth. Then something happens, some word rubs over his temper or some news article reminds him of too many memories dragging at his consciousness, or he wakes shaking from one of the constant nightmares that lives in his mind, and the shadows rise up again. Dreams of blood, dreams of destruction, dreams of glory, dreams of what should be, dreams of vengeance. He remembers what could and should be, and he wonders why this naive boy cannot see it, cannot see him, and temper flares again, ice cold and cutting in its boundless fury. Sometimes just a moment, sometimes longer, but it has to run its course before he can wrap himself back into the guise of the warm, congenial lover again.

Most times he tries to hide it from Peter, but others...others there's a reckless desire to see just what he'll let him get away with, how much of him he can handle.

He fears the answer is not enough.

Straight from your eyes it's barely me.
Beautifully so disfigured.
This other side that you can't see,
Just praying you won't remember.

Feel the pain that I never show,
And I hope you know,
It's never healing.
I hate to say that I told you so, but I told you so.

There's blood on my hands like the blood in you.
Some things can't be treated so,
Don't make me, Don't make me be myself around you.

How Peter has forgiven him, he already cannot understand. What he did was not something Peter can forgive, he thinks, not really. He seems to have accepted it, though, and Adam wonders if Peter thinks he believes it was wrong, that Adam has seen the errors of his ways, repented, been redeemed. Is it repentance that earns forgiveness, and would that acceptance even be stripped away if the boy knew how he ached for what was loss and the chances that slipped away.

He isn't broken, he protests, but he knows that's not true, and there are pieces of him lost in time that can't ever be put back together. Too much loss, too many betrayals, too many broken dreams, too much anger, too much hate. Not even Peter's light can heal it all, even if it is a soothing balm. If the boy ever realized...ever knew...ever really saw...

Adam is sure he'd lose him, lose all they have, lose the one sanctuary where he thinks, perhaps, he can rest, and at least pretend to be like them. Understanding doesn't come easy, and he doubts it's sincerity in the face of the full truth, so he keeps the carefully crafted mask. He says the right things, expresses the right emotions, tries to be the person Peter believes him to be, needs him to be. Maybe if he keeps it up, one day he'll believe it, as well.

But Peter pokes, pries, tries to make him open up, be more authentic, let him in, let him see the man behind the mask, and Adam is forced to wonder if his memory is just that short-term or if he really doesn't understand just how tragic that would be for the both of them. Because the day Peter really realizes the man he's let into his life and heart is the day Adam's sure will be their last.

So, my show opens tomorrow and my parents are flying in to town for the weekend tomorrow morning. The likelihood that I'll be online much at all until they're gone is low, the likelihood that I'll get any tags done, even lower. Maybe one or two before bed, or something, but expect me to be fairly absent until Monday or Tuesday.

<3
Bria

"Your worst enemy could be your best friend, and your best friend your worst enemy." - Bob Marley

Three hundred and fortyish years was a very long time to carry something--a grudge, a hurt, a remorse, a hope. It didn't matter what, really, except that it lay there inside of him, fine for a decade or so, and then flaring up with a flash of pain so searing that it was clear time was not taking the edge off of anything. Everything had gone so wrong. For the first time in his life, he'd known what it meant to be someone to someone else, to be admired, to be a friend, to have a mission--a purpose. He'd belonged, even as an outsider in a country that was never going to be his, when he could no longer bring himself to return to his own. Had he overreacted? Undoubtedly, if it were about the girl, but gods. It was never about the girl, not truly.

"We did make a good team, you and I. You showed me how to be to a hero, how to love... and then you took it all away."

He would never have looked at Yaeko, much, save for Hiro's insistence it was his destiny. If he were truly, desperately, honest--he hadn't been looking much at Yaeko, anyway. The strange young man from the future drew him, with his stories of Kensei and the man he was supposed to be. He didn't have words for what he wanted, not really, not then, or for what he was feeling, but he'd have done--had done--just about anything for him, to get him to smile.

And then he'd taken it all away, ripped off the mask and proven the lie beneath and God, but after so long that shouldn't still sting. Adam wasn't sure he was even angry anymore (though each time he tried to convince himself he wasn't, he felt the words tumbling around like all the other lies in his head). But he wasn't angry about Yaeko. He was angry about...he didn't have the words for it, not really, not until the moment he watched Hiro marry Claire, and felt that snapping line in his head that slipped around and hit with a sting that hurt more than it should have after so long, after so many loves in between, after finding someone he wanted to spend the rest of his life--what an amazing concept, that--with.

He hadn't been good enough, he thought. And for nearly three and a half centuries, the lack of it, the hurt of it, the rejection of it had festered, echoing in each repetition, each betrayal, each loss until it was magnified beyond all measure, and he didn't know how to extricate it anymore. It wasn't all Hiro's fault, not by a long shot. Adam had made his choices, and others' had made theirs, never even knowing of the strange young man yet to be born in some distant future Adam only dreamed about. But somehow, every time he looked at him, it all came crashing back, like some overwhelming sense of failure, of not enough, of all he had to fight back against to be someone, to make something of himself, to prove them all wrong.

The friend had become an enemy, and the enemy had become a symbol, and try as he might Adam didn't know how to turn the symbol back into a friend.