Adam Monroe

"You can't just let them keep dying."

Peter's voice broke through the rolling wave of the Doors album Adam had playing on the record player he'd found and appropriated from an abandoned pawn shop two towns ago. Adam opened his eyes and glanced up at him from where he was stretched out on the bed.

"Actually, yes, I can," he said with an arch of his eyebrow before closing his eyes again to better listen to the music.

( The sound of a needle dragging across vinyl, accompanied by the abrupt cessation of music made him open them again. )

Looks like the rain's pouring down on me
It's drowning me now
And all I want is to come back home
And this old corduroy coat is not keeping me dry
But I can't think of what else to try
That's why the best thing I can give to you
Is for me to go
Leave you alone
You got growing up to do

Sometimes he wondered if he should go. Not out of a lack of feeling, not by a long shot, but...was he helping? Did anything he say, do, feel, get through? Was he banging on glass, desperate, still caged in a world where nothing made sense to the boy on the other side? Sometimes he thought he'd managed, and then the same arguments came flying back at him, the words even the same, nothing changing or showing that he had grasped Adam's point at all.

It was a sideways way of thinking. Adam knew that, understood it, but it came from age, from experience, and watching the boy rip himself to pieces with guilt and angst hurt when if he would just listen. But it was ever the province of the young to think they knew better than those who have come before, especially when they disagree with them. Adam's frustration didn't help, he knew. And he knew that it was something that time would alter. Oh, the boy might not ever become him, but eventually he would grow up or he would be destroyed.

Adam was hoping very hard for the former rather than the latter, but to get him there, Adam had to wonder -- was he standing in the way? Was his experience, his point of view, clouding the boy's judgment and ability to grow? Was he pushing too hard, saying too much, destroying their chance at having anything by his own need to save him from himself? If he went away for a year, two, a decade, two, a century...would it change? Would he change until they found themselves more in line with one another, truly partners instead of this twisted mentorship where the mentee had no desire to learn?

Adam didn't know. But the thought plagued him sometimes.

Maybe he should go. Not forever, but for a while. Come back later, when the boy had grown up. It might be best for everyone, that way. Put distance between other things as well. But every time he tried to leave, his feet wouldn't move, and Adam found himself waiting, suspended, holding his breath and hoping more than he thought he had left to hope that it would be enough.