changehistory | Entries tagged with comm: ij fandom muses

[ooc: "Tracks" 1-8 are pretty much "verse: all" with the exception of don't take any of them as a confession in Eden. ;-) The others are verse/muse specific. Why, yes, I did need a break from work today...]

Make a soundtrack of how you see yourself and your life at this very moment. Choose at least ten songs and explain why you chose each of them.

Disclaimer: Some of these conflict, I realize. A soundtrack of the length of my life might have been more thorough, in its way, but, that was not the prompt. I stand at a crossroads, of sorts, with multiple paths stretching out before me. Memories of things I cannot forget haunt me, still, and there are days when the path I have seemed to choose chafes more than I will let on. So, if one songs seems to say one thing, and another something else...well. Consider it a symptom of my rapidly changing decisions and moods.

( 1. Something to Believe In - Bon Jovi )

( 2. Complicated - Bon Jovi )

( 3. Rise From the Ashes - Quietdrive )

( 4. What I've Done - Linkin Park )

( 5. My Way - Frank Sinatra )

( 6. Imagine - John Lennon )

( 7. Almost Sorry For You - Sergei Lazarev )

( 8. Hurt - Johnny Cash )

Peter

( 9. Broken - Lifehouse )

( 10. Save the World - Bon Jovi )

Hiro

( 11. Just Like You - Three Day Grace )

( 12. Until the End of the World - U2 )

Elle

( 13. A Question of Time - Depeche Mode )

( 14. Weapon )

Jack

( 15. Away from the Sun - 3 Doors Down )

( 16. Walk the Line - Johnny Cash )

1977

Is it getting better?
Or do you feel the same?
Will it make it easier on you now?
You got someone to blame
You say
One love
One life
When it's one need
In the night
One love
We get to share it
Leaves you baby if you
Don't care for it

He pressed his hand against the glass, watching it reflected back off of the blinds that were open. The blonde man sitting on the bed reading looked up, startling blue eyes seeming to pierce through the window and layers of flesh, stripping away the few defenses Charles carried with him and looking to his soul underneath. It was always unnerving, but now he could see the depths of those eyes, could glimpse the flickers of a sort of madness that he had always taken for intense passion, before. It burned almost too hot, the fervor there, before the mask dropped again, and there was nothing but ice gazing back out at him. He nodded at the guard, then moved into the room, the cell, the place where they had locked up their leader, each of them playing Judas in turn, horror in their eyes at what he had almost done, though Charles knew most of them would have backed him if they weren't afraid of the same fate. Their eyes, too, held the fever glimpsed in Adam's.

It was a fervor he had believed in, until it turned dark, and standing in the cold, sterile room, watching as Adam leaned back against the wall of his prison, head tilting, one eyebrow arching in cool curiosity, Charles felt the loss of it with a keen edge that cut through him.

"I thought we were going to save the world."

"That was the plan," Adam said dryly, "Until Kaito interfered."

"You went too far."

"There is no such thing. Just because you cannot see it..." Adam shook his head. "This isn't about that, even. He wanted my position, and now he has it, just like his son before him."

Charles frowned, confused by the latter statement, but let it pass. "You can't blame him, Adam. You have to accept responsibility for your own actions."

Adam's mouth tightened, the only sign of his displeasure, and then his eyes slid back to his book, effectively dismissing Charles, who still stood there for quite a while longer, before he finally turned to go.

1987

( Did I disappoint you? )

Two topics, each with basically the same answers. I'm feeling productive, but, nonetheless, I'm horribly afraid they're rather cliché

1. Alcohol. It's not the best way, of course, and it never lasts nearly long enough, but it helps ease the pain, the sting of it, letting me find a comfortable numbness for at least a while.

2. Fighting. It was what I did a great deal of as a child, and there is a rhythm that you get into that lets the grief ease out of your mind. Plus, a bit of pain never hurts--pardon the pun--for helping you refocus.

3. Katas. Much the same as the fighting. My training for all those years in the Orient and later in French Arms Schools was cathartic in more ways than one. It helps your skills improve, while exhausting you physically, letting you push yourself through a great deal of emotional blockage.

4. Sex. It is distracting, it is pleasurable, it reminds you that you are alive, and it connects you to another person so that for a few moments at least you do not feel quite so alone.

5. New relationships. My third wife died and within a few months I was married to my fourth. I fled her, faking my own death, barely a few months later, and in a year or two was married to my fifth wife. I do not always rebound so...noticeably, but it has been known to happen.

6. Travel. Part of what I am often means moving on before I am discovered. When loss occurs, or something unpleasant happens, I find my feet itching to see something new, to find a new place, or explore a familiar landscape to see how it has changed.

7. Physical pain. There are ways to find it, to make sure it is inflicted...Masochism at it's finest. Deal with the emotional by forcing the physical pain. It ties in to number two, yes, but there are ways beyond fighting, ways beyond sex, ways that incorporate them all...and it helps find that release.

8. Reading. It isn't quite as effective as some of the others, but I find that if I can escape into a good book, into another world that someone has created that is not the one in which I am hurting, the time away helps me refocus my energy. It is pure escapism, but sometimes those few hours help ease the pain one is trying to deal with.

9. Meditation. I have appreciated the practice for assistance in reaching your inner self, in finding the ways to hold together, for centuries, but over the last three decades, I have truly discovered how very helpful it can be. When everything feels like it is falling apart, just taking that time to visit my own center of being helps immensely.

10. Did I mention alcohol?

Never let the fear of striking out get in your way. - Babe Ruth

He'd failed. The virus was destroyed, as was most of the trust he'd worked so hard to establish with Peter. That, of course, was unfortunate. He could have been a stalwart ally, and better to have that power on his side than against him. Adam frowned slightly, studying the glass of whiskey in front of him as if it held some of the answers. The failure stung, but he'd grabbed at the plan almost on a whim at discovering they had not destroyed the virus. He'd thrown it together hastily, when he should have taken his time. Of course, working against the date Peter had learned in the future made that more difficult, though he was forced to wonder just what had gone differently in that timeline. No Hiro? Why? He'd killed Kaito already when Peter went to the future, and so, somehow, something had shifted against him, and the what of it nagged. If he could figure out what went wrong...well. It wasn't as if he could fix it, now. Neither of them would take him back to the moment to put right what had gone wrong.

So, he needed a new plan.

Objective #1 - Gain back Peter's trust, or at least soften the enmity.
Objective #2 - Destroy what was left of the Company and seize that power for himself again. It was his, after all. His idea, his project, his people.
Objective #3 - Devise a new plan, with a plan B and a plan C, none of which would appear abhorrent to his allies, so there would be no outcry against him this time.

He'd been too bold, taken far too drastic of measures in his desperation. Slower, steadier, using the time that was on his side...that was the key. His own eagerness had usurped his reason, his protocol for moving forward, leading to miscalculations on his part. Not again.

If plan A did not work, there would be another, and another after that. Eventually, he would achieve his goals. It didn't have to be this year, this decade, or even this century. His greatest ally in this fight would be time, and that was something that was very firmly on his side.

I don't.

I daresay that upsets most people. There seems to be a culture of regret that clings to the human conscience. The idea of moving forward, of living for today, and not looking back evidences coldness to most people. How can you do "bad" things and, once you realize the error of your ways, not regret them? I would ask, in reply, what good does regret do? Who does it serve? What does it accomplish for the future, and how does it hinder the present, if I steep myself in regret for mistakes past?

Have I made them? Oh, yes. I've never claimed to be infallible, only indestructible. I've made quite a few, in truth. There are things that, if I had them to do over, I likely would do differently. There are things I would change. Things I would say, or would not say.

But regretting those mistakes is a useless venture and a waste of time. You make a mistake, you learn from it, and you move on. Regret serves nothing but the idea of a beleaguered conscience that drags you back constantly into the past. How can you move forward if you stay in the past? And how could I ever move forward...If I regretted even all of my major mistakes, let them weigh on me and my conscience, have you any idea how frozen that would make me? I would have centuries of regrets constantly chasing me, nipping at my heels. Words I didn't say when I had a chance. Lives I failed to save. Lives I saved that weren't worth saving, in the end. Questions I never asked. Ideals I acted on. Ideals I failed to put into action. Loves lost. Loves I never claimed. Loves I ran from because they seeped too deeply beneath the guards I keep up. Wars I fought. Wars I avoided. Children I... Secrets I kept. Secrets I revealed.

I could drown in regret if I allowed myself to. If I let even one slide into my consciousness, it would open the floodgates and paralyze me. Centuries of regret, centuries of mistakes...it is a terrifying thing to contemplate.

Best to not, then. I learned that lesson long ago. No regrets, no matter what. Everything is something to learn from, good and bad, and everything shapes you and moves your forward into what comes next. When life has no foreseeable ending, regret can pile up until there is nothing left to life but that feeling, that mountain that buries you alive under its weight.

So, I don't. If people think that makes me cold, so be it. I survive. I move forward, as best I can, in a world and a way no one I've known can do more than imagine. There is no room left for regret.

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