Adam Monroe

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.

[ooc: Backdated to when Adam was in Michigan, obviously]

The last thing Adam expected to see when he stepped through the door of the cabin was Peter waiting for him. That he could be found he'd known. That having found him, there were those among his acquaintance--his boyfriend included--perfectly capable of bending time and space to get to where he was fast, even faster than he had--was a fact of which he'd been well aware. But he hadn't expected it. Truly, he wasn't sure what he'd expected. Perhaps nothing. There was nothing to expect when you felt yourself drowning in the sea of your own self-doubt and self-loathing, especially when it was a place you'd never thought to find yourself again. Why should any of them care, really, whether he stayed or left, or where he went?

That was just self-pitying talk, he knew, and not fair, and if truth be told, he didn't actually give them or what they might thing all that much thought. It wasn't thinking that made him go, but the overwhelm that came rushing in drowning him in the aftermath of too much of it, when he couldn't stand the pressing weight of everything he had bearing down on him anymore. Who he'd let himself become, who he was trying to be, what he was doing, what his need would cause...maybe he never should have come back. Maybe he should have just let all the secrets stay hidden. He wasn't sure he'd made anything better, and fairly certain he was about to make them all worse.

He needed to go, so he went. No note, no message, no word left behind, just ran as if his life depended on it, and maybe it did, at least in part.

The last thing he expected was for him to follow. Oh, he'd laid the groundwork, sure, for him to do so elsewhere, to be certain he didn't stray too far off the path Adam had laid for them all, but this was different than that, this was something more personal where Adam felt he had no path at all. After the fight--or what seemed a fight--after seeing him break down like that, after finding out just how broken he was when he tried more than anything to never let anyone see that about him. All the pieces they'd sawed him into were his personal shame, and the fact that he'd never been able to get them back quite right was his personal demon, and no one else needed to be subjected to that. He didn't beg, he didn't cling, he didn't need. Those were things lesser men fell to, not those who rose from the testing fires and walked akin to gods. To fall so low...it made him feel ill.

As disgusted with himself as he felt, he thought he had to feel it, too. How could he not? And yet, there he was, waiting, looking concerned and uncertain and he'd done whatever he needed to be there waiting, to not let him have to be alone. For a long moment, all Adam could do was stare, just as uncertain. Because more than a very significant part of him expected that if he ran, he'd just let him go, maybe even with a bit of relief.

When Sylar showed up a couple of weeks later, despite the punch that greeted him when he answered the door before the younger man offered him a hand up and stalked inside, he was equally as shocked. Perhaps he shouldn't have been. Of all of them, the killer and Sark were the two who knew him best, but he still was stunned he'd come all this way, left Mohinder behind. More than that, he was awed that he stayed. He didn't push for him to talk, to spill the last of the secrets and the way they ate him inside, to spew the bitterness he held, twisting him up inside, but he was there, sitting beside him at the fireside, letting him have his silence when he needed it.

On his birthday, Nathan showed. The visit was like a punch to his gut, pushing all of his guilt to the forefront again. His son cared enough to put aside all the anger he knew he had to be feeling, to come all the way out here, to the middle of nowhere, just to check on him, to spend part of his birthday with him, and he...he couldn't swallow his jealousy enough to let things just continue as they had been for...how much longer, even? How long in the grand scheme of things? He was a horrible father, and if Nathan knew why he was here, he would not have come. He'd hate him. But not knowing...he'd come. Wherever they'd started, he'd cared enough to come, and that was a warming thought, even as it highlighted just how much he had to lose.

He wasn't sure what to make of it, that people had followed him, that Peter and Sylar needed and loved him enough to run after him, that Nathan had come far enough to care enogh to visit, no matter how far he'd run, that people were worried, upset, back home. He wasn't used to people caring. It never went well when he did. It didn't heal the reasons he'd run, didn't stop the confusion or the ache or the feeling like parts of himself were breaking off and trying to fly away.

But it gave him hope that maybe he'd come out okay on the other side.