Adam Monroe

[ooc: AU piece based on a "what if" about what might have happened to Adam in "Five Years Gone."]

I believed that it would be better, after. The world was supposed to change, you see, but not like this. They don't know, at least, who I am. Not anymore. She saw to that, sweeping in triumphant and pulling me out of that place, out of the darkness of a cold, cheerless cell, just when everything seemed darkest. Kaito turned, trained my carp well, but she and Daniel won, and with their triumph came the shift in power that sent Kaito falling, his orders nothing but dust. Without Arthur to object, with Charles dead, with Kaito broken, with Bob nothing but their peon again, there was no one to stop her from walking through the door, face alight with triumph and a trembling glee.

"It's done..." she whispered against my lips, an instant before my hand was ready to tighten around her throat for her betrayal.

"The virus?" I didn't want to ask. I shouldn't have paused to ask, to let her kiss me that way, the traitorous bitch, but the words pulled out of me anyway.

"No," she said, voice a bit sharp. "Don't be ridiculous. We'd have been in here with you if we'd done that..."

"Then what?" It occurred to me, of course, that snapping at her wasn't the best way to get out that tantalizingly open door, but after thirty years of the torture and sadism of my friends, I thought I had a right to be a bit cranky.

"If you're going to be like that..." She tried to pull back. I didn't allow it. She was not going out that door without me while I was still breathing.

"A bomb," she said, her eyes glittering strangely. "A person, really, able to go nuclear, able to blow up, and then heal, and he did. In New York. The city is gone, destroyed."

I'd heard the murmurs, the screams, the panic in the halls a few days before, but I thought perhaps someone else had managed an escape I never had. Nothing like this. Bob had been pale, and Elle silent, but no one would tell me. Now I knew why. There was something brittle to her glee, a darker something she wasn't telling me, but the excitement washed over me in response, and I felt my breath catch.

"And now?" I asked, letting my fingers trace skin I remembered too well, finding the places age had changed her by touch, but watching her eyes, that were the same.

"Now I think it's time we get you out of here, Adam," a voice I knew said from the door, and Daniel was there, the same light glittering in his eyes. "It's time for the healing to start, and we need you for that."

( I wanted to kill them both, for turning, but they were like children presenting me with some shiny present as if that made up for every bad thing they'd ever done.  )

[OOC: Unless otherwise marked, all prompts for muses_gonewild are AU/stand alone pieces/fics, and as such completely not binding on any other muse or to be considered to be influencing any RP 'verse in which I play. If anyone, however, would ever like to play off of them, please feel free. Otherwise, just, um, watch the crack.]

They were lying close together, curled up a bit and tangled in sheets and legs and arms. Adam's eyes were closed, body still humming from pleasure given and received in spades. His fingers lightly stroked over the sweat-slicked skin of the boy pressed against him, as he felt himself drift a little, a smile on his lips.

"So, barring Elle, and really, above and beyond anything else, thirty years without this must have been..." Peter's voice was light, teasing, trying to make light of all the things Adam had told him in fits and starts in the weeks since they'd reunited.

"Hell," Adam said, succinctly, not opening his eyes.

"So this...enthusiasm?" Peter's lips brushed his neck, and Adam opened one eye to peer at him. "Is it because of so long without, or..."

"I think you'd inspire it, no matter how long it had been," Adam said, dry and amused.

Peter grinned at him. "Yeah?"

"Yes."

They lay quietly for a bit longer, breaths evening out to match and Adam drifted toward sleep again, until Peter's voice, very thoughtful, interrupted him. "How long has it been since anyone inspired you?"

"What?"

"I mean, you told me about Hiro, but that was almost 400 years ago, so...surely in 400 years, you've loved someone else?"

( Adam stilled a little, thoughts flashing to another dark head and flashing eyes with fine cheekbones and a wicked smile. )