Adam Monroe

I am not: evil.
I love: a chosen few.
I hate: what's becoming of the world.
I fear: anonymity.
I hope: for a better future.
I hear: the sound of the kittens purring
I crave: understanding.
I regret: nothing.
I cry: rarely.
I care: more than people think I do.
I always: keep hoping.
I believe: in myself.
I feel alone: always.
I listen: to my instincts.
I hide: from no one and everyone.
I drive: a very fast car.
I sing: at the bar.
I dance: quite well, but not often enough.
I write: letters I never send to people who no longer care to receive them.
I play: a lot of games.
I miss: my family.
I search: for the way to fix it.
I learn: constantly. Life is about learning.
I feel: ...old.
I know: that I have things to teach, if people would choose to listen and learn.
I say: things no one else is willing to.
I succeed: when I remember who I am.
I dream: of peace on a new earth.
I wonder: what went differently in that world.
I want: to not be alone.
I have: my sword back.
I give: them something to believe in.
I fell: for the one person who can stop me.
I fight: my darker impulses.
I need: to be loved.,

[NaF!verse and Open!verse]

- Research publicly traded companies
- Get the cats their six month check up. See if blood worked.
- Get info from Columbia (Business, Neuroscience, Psychology)
- Pick up new sheet music for the piano
- Consider house at beach. And a boat.
- Get info from Mt. Sinai (Humanities and Medicine program, Graduate School of Biological Sciences)
- Get season tickets at the Met
- Locate Trina's children--make sure they are adequately provided for
- Look in to a more permanent arrangement at the bar

[Open 'verse only]
- Plan trip to Barbados. Make sure to have boat first.
- Get tickets to Vegas.

Did you ever have to make up your mind?
Pick up on one and leave the other one behind
It's not often easy, and not often kind
Did you ever have to make up your mind?

Did you ever have to finally decide?
Say yes to one and let the other one ride
There's so many changes, and tears you must hide
Did you ever have to finally decide?

She'd thrown him out. Adam supposed that he should have expected it, really. Whatever his view of the situation, and despite how they both insisted he didn't understand, he did. His view of the world, of relationships, of love itself was so different from anything they could comprehend. He had to remind himself of that. He couldn't understand why Peter didn't understand his hurt, though. He'd been hurt when Caitlin left. Was Adam supposed to be less hurt at the thought of losing Angela? Peter was no more happy about Angela than Adam had been about Caitlin. The parallels seemed so clear to him, and he had at least tried to understand, hadn't he? Had he let him down with that, with his own insecurities, his own fears?

He'd loved before. He'd lived so many lives. He's promised "'til death do us part" on ten separate occasions...and death had parted them. Of all the things he'd never done, the one thing he'd never known was what forever felt like. He wanted to know. Did that make him a bad person, above and beyond everything he'd done? Was that what tipped the scales? It was selfish, but after thirty years in that place, didn't he have the right to be a little selfish?

Except he had a son, now. And his son...possibly had little to no use for him. Because of Peter. That hurt, cutting deep, because he didn't know if it would make a difference. If he chose Angela, did as she wished and walked away from Peter, would Nathan want a relationship with him, then? Or would he hate him for hurting his brother? Would Angela ever forgive him, even if he did choose her, or would he pay until she died?

And when she died...would Peter ever forgive him for having chosen her? Would he be throwing away his entire future happiness with one choice? Eternity with someone who challenged him to be better than he was, who inspired him the way Hiro had back then, who made him believe that maybe, just maybe, he could be a hero, could be someone to make...

( Someone to make Nathan proud.  )

[OOC: Based on current RP storyline in nota_fairytale. Bob, Elle, the Haitian, and Hiro are all NPCs in this 'verse and nothing in this prompt or any RP that follows it is binding on those muses.]

The straps were tight enough around his wrists to be painful. Apparently cutting off his circulation was not an issue for them. He somewhat doubted it would have been an issue even if they hadn't known of his ability, but that they did seemed to give them free reign to be extra vicious. Staring at the ceiling, Adam idly wondered what it would be today. After his interlude with Elle the night before, he'd foolishly hoped she'd temper whatever it was, but the tightness of the restraints seemed to prove him wrong.

The room was empty except for him, and it stayed that way for a long time. Of course, anticipation of pain was sometimes worse than the pain. One time, they'd left him strapped down for nearly a full day before finally just releasing him and taking him back to his room, the sadistic bastards. He'd sobbed when he got there, curled in a sick ball on the bed. Perhaps this was that, then.

Or not.

He watched as the Haitian entered the room. Slow anger seemed to burn inside the other man, and he wondered just how many times he could escape and be recaptured before they broke him, finally. There was a flicker of hope there, then, though. Because from what he knew, and what they did not, the man's allegiance lay with Angela, not Bob. Which meant there was a chance...He saw Bob's face over the Haitian's shoulder and hope flickered and died. This was bad.

"His power doesn't work on mine," Adam protested quietly. "He can't stop the healing..." They'd tried that before.

"No, he can't. But his other power works," Bob said with a bright smile.

The memories? Adam frowned, confused. "It never takes, not for long."

"That's because he didn't go far enough back." Something twisted in Adam's stomach as Bob leaned over him. "We go far enough back, Adam, and there's not anything to anchor you, pull you back. He couldn't do it before, as a child. He didn't have the capacity then, but now?" He glanced at the Haitian and stepped back. "Take as much as you can. As far back as you can go. Try and hollow him out."

The large, dark hand descended toward him, and Adam struggled, desperate to shield his memories, of Angela, of Peter, of Nathan, to keep the Haitian from finding them, reporting them, taking them, anything. Those were his, and he fought, clinging at the same time that he tried to shield, using what he'd learned against Maury, though it wasn't the same. They struggled in his head, his mind working to heal as fast as the Haitian could take, while he clung to the three of them. But then a wrenching feeling tore through him, and he felt something ripped away, then another, then another.

The rest flowed easily, though he watched the man sweating, and he was confused. A light burned across his brain, and he screamed, and then there was nothing but blessed blackness.

* * *

Kensei came to into a world of pain. Lights as bright as the sun, but colder, burned over him, in his eyes, on his skin. Men with masks and cold eyes held weapons covered in blood--his blood, he realized--and he felt things heal, only to be cut again. There was metal and things were beeping and they cut open his chest and he wondered, then, if they were the dragons tearing him open. He struggled, but they'd bound him down, and he tried to fixate on the one thing that he had to keep fighting for. He had a mission. He had a purpose. He had a friend, and these men, these monsters could not find him.

But when the sharp knife sliced again, inside of him, he screamed for him anyway.

"Carp...."

* * *

They threw him on what must have been a cot, though it was made of strange material. The walls frightened him, and there were things all around that made no sense. The lights. The amount of metal. The ... looking glass was huge, and terrifying in its own right, over a basin that held no water and another that seemed to float out of the wall. A privy of some sort? Inside? He tried to process it, but things were too strange. The world was too strange. And he huddled up on the cot and tried to remember how he'd come to be here, who these people were.

And where the bloody hell were Hiro and Yaeko?

"Strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter." - Law #42, "The 48 Laws of Power" by Robert Greene

He had been willing to go alone, to take care of it, to be done with it, to cease and desist dancing around the issue. The night they'd taken the kittens to Peter, he'd been ready to storm out of there and slit Bob's throat in his sleep, but one thing led to another, and he hadn't gone and then there was Angela. But he'd stuck to his resolve to get it done, to stop any holding back. He'd promised not to torture, but he needed a kill, some primal violence learned young and ingrained welling up until he nearly wandered to the Park to be a target just so he could fight back.

( Instead he was here, waiting with Nathan silent at his back. )

[OOC: Written based off of and to spark RP in nota_fairytale. Nathan is vote4nathan and used with permission of his mun. Bob and Elle are NPC's in that universe and nothing in here or any RP based off of this set up is binding on or meant to implicate itsjustbob, any other Bob muse/player, or any Elle muse/player.]

All verses:

1. My father's desertion.
2. The things Stephen and I let gentlemen do to us to put food on the table.
3. Losing Stephen.
3. Hiro. And Yaeko. And Hiro.
4. Wanting to release the virus. Twice.
5. Thirty years in captivity in the Company cells and adjusting on the outside, as it were, and what they did to me in those thirty years, though I doubt there are many therapists who could stomach it.
6. Being buried alive.

( Cut for specific therapist issues by RP 'Verse )

"Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed". -G. K. Chesterton

He waits now, always. There are shadows that make him skittish, imagining a blade within them. Where before, eternity stretched out at his fingertips dragging on with limitless possibilities, he feels now that he treads lightly forward on borrowed time. He listens, always alert, breathing slow and shallow, as soft as he can make it so it won't cover the whisper of sound of time about to stop.

It's futile, though. When time stops, he'll never know it, he'll have no warning. He's clawed his way back into this world, holding tightly to renewed life, but in an instant it could be gone. It is a frightening glimmer of mortality that haunts his steps now. Once escaped, he cannot truly think he'll be imprisoned again. It won't be a captor that comes for him, hand on his shoulder, fingers cutting in with a passion born from twisted responsibility. It will be Death.

Time was not the dragon, not truly. He was, always, and now he knows himself to be hunted. An empty grave lies waiting for him, and the hero has always known how it must end, if it is to truly be over. A blade, his blade no less, swift and sure. It won't be fair, steel to steel. He won't even see it coming, he knows. A breath, a moment frozen, a flash of steel, and the dragon will fall. Today. Tomorrow. A week from now. A month. A year. A century. It doesn't matter, when time dances at the hero's will, and he can skip across it like a stone across a lake, never resting. Wherever the dragon goes, he will be found. However long the hunt takes, one day it will be over.

Even he knows enough to know that is how the story must end. It is just a matter of time.

330 words