Adam Monroe

Making snow angels was the pastime of children, but Adam reminded himself his angel was little more than a child--and moreover one who'd had too much of her childhood taken from her--and the laughter that lit up her face at seeing him covered in the wretchedly cold stuff more than made up for the mild humiliation.

1965

His head hurt. It was a sensation he hadn't felt in a while, so Adam leaned back against the cold cement wall and closed his eyes to savor it for a moment. Just a moment, though, because it was quickly apparent that a throbbing head needed to go back under the list of "not good pains." With his eyes closed, the bench under him seemed to have transformed into a roller coaster, lifting him up and throwing him down, his stomach dropping at the sensation.

"I think," he said, eyes still closed, "That I am drunk."

"I wouldn't doubt it, I know I am," the voice next to him said dryly, and Adam opened one eye to meet Daniel's.

"How much did we drink?"

"I have no idea, though I think you went through at least two bottles."

"Oh..." He hadn't done that in a while. Hadn't felt the need to, until the announcement this morning, the realization that he had pushed too far, gotten what he wanted far too thoroughly--so well done that it wasn't what he'd wanted at all, really. Be careful what you wish for, indeed. Daniel hadn't been much more pleased, really, as he recalled. Thus, their present circumstances.

"My head hurts," he announced.

"Can't you heal it?"

"I'm trying," he huffed, "But I think it's the alcohol wearing off. It used to do this..."

"Quick drunk followed by quicker hangover? Cheater." Daniel sounded disgruntled.

Adam opened his eyes again and studied Daniel's face. "You're going to have a nasty bruise."

"Yes, well, some of us don't walk away from your bad ideas as unscathed as you do."

"It wasn't a bad idea!"

"She had a boyfriend twice your size, who had four friends just as large," Daniel pointed out.

( Adam shrugged slightly and closed his eyes again. )

"A man who knows the court is master of his gestures, of his eyes and of his face; he is profound, impenetrable; he dissimulates bad offices, smiles at his enemies, controls his irritation, disguises his passions, belies his heart, speaks and acts against his feelings." - Jean de La Bruyere (1645 - 1696)

1782

It was not an easy time, nor easy lessons to learn. For all that he was well over a century old, for all that he had learned to lie with ease about his family, his past, the source of his fortune, none of that had truly prepared him for moving among the court at Versailles. It was almost terrifying, how out of place he felt, and he had to remind himself that he had been a samurai, a leader of men, a commander of a British mercenary fleet, a member of the Queen's Guard, a pirate captain with the open sea his to roam and rule. But these perfumed butterflies, flitting around gilded walls, whispering behind fans, dancing and flirting and frittering away their days baffled him.

The life they led was one he had always imagined he wanted. A child of the streets, bettering himself through each lifetime--to be at the finest, most decadent, most elaborate court in the world, accepted as one of them, was a dream come true. He had reached a pinnacle of experience, and he meant to savor each sensation it brought, drinking it up like a fine wine. And in the meantime, they were going to eat him alive.

He was gauche, bourgeois, rough around the edges with passion and temper both that flared hot. He acted on impulse still, with all the sense of the world owing him for the hand he'd been dealt that he'd hurled at Hiro over a century before. His thoughts chased themselves across his face, always readable, always bare and naked to anyone watching. He floundered, and his darling wife was little help, mostly amused at the boy she'd brought to court with her and his little faux pas.

Then he met the marquis de Castries, and things changed. A Navy man, himself, and a friend of one of Adam's former commanders, despite the sides they fought upon, he took pity on the seemingly younger man. Their lessons were thorough and intricate, and most days he despaired of the nobles, finding himself more in sympathy with the rising tide of revolutionary sentiment, but over the months, he learned, and once he set himself to learn the ways of the court--he learned them well.

When Frederica died, he was happy enough to take his leave of France, returning to the grace and simple beauty of Japan, seeking some balm for his soul and tortured memories of a country he had come to love, before. He did not find it, and continued East, back to the new World and a new life there, but the lessons he learned at court, he carried with him, letting them shape him, change him, mold his reactions. No more did he react in impulse, lashing out without thinking. No more did his heart reflect plaining on his face, his emotions an open book, his thoughts there for all to see. He retreated inside of a pleasant mask, a calculating smile. Eighteen months were all he spent at court, and he made a note never to return to another, but the lessons left him changed forever, and he carried them with him into the future, letting them continue to refine him and mold him into an enigma he delighted in presenting, making it a game to watch them always guessing and never fully grasping the truth of him.

1747

It was a strange custom, he thought, standing behind his father-in-law-to-be in a cathedral in Milan, halfway expecting God to strike him down for giving in to Popish beliefs. He argued silently in his head with a God he usually swore did not exist, citing Maria's many excellent qualities and her father's intractability about the occasion of their nuptials sans this conversion. He'd learned his catechism, studying diligently, but this custom still stood before him.

Maria's father nodded to him as the door opened and another penitent stepped out, indicating he should move into the small space. He did so, shutting the door behind him and sitting gingerly on the hard bench.

"Perdonami, il Padre perchè ho peccato..." he murmured, lips curling sardonically, though his voice stayed very sincere. Sin was a companion he had embraced, thoroughly, and part of him wondered just what the priest through the screen would say did he truly confess those that lay upon his soul.

Lust. Greed. Wrath. Envy. Pride. The sloth and gluttony he had purged for not serving him, but the others drove him. After a century of life, he was sure they stained him far more deeply than this man with his holy words or blessed sacraments could ever wash clean. Add blasphemy, then, he thought to himself, for not having enough faith to believe that there was anything Christ could not cleanse. There was blood on his hands, murder in his heart, vengeance and bloodlust mingling in his soul and lashing him ever forward through time. He was like unto God himself, and there went the blasphemy and pride again, the little voice murmured sardonically. It ate at him, sending him down deeper into the abyss from which he could no longer remember how to extricate himself.

He doubted. He floundered. He feared. His faith faltered more with each passing year as he asked the heavens what sort of man he was to march through time unchanging and received no answer in reply.

( But these were not words he could murmur, even in this sacred place. )

1792

Less than two decades before he had sworn to find disciples, hubris throwing him high in the air as he felt his place was in the heavens with God himself. He was what God had feared, after all, a man who had eaten from the tree of life, at least metaphorically. To prevent this occurrence, Adam and Eve had been cast from the garden, lest they eat from the second tree and truly become like God. If that was what separated them from God, then what barrier was there for him, immortal as he was? Another name, another life, another country. He wandered, the seed of the idea Evan had inadvertently planted inside of him, growing, making him even more restless.

It wasn't enough to survive. It wasn't enough to ghost his way through courts and countries, to smile at kings and queens and change his name to suit his new allegiance or uniform he wore. It wasn't enough to flirt, to let his lips ghost over perfumed skin, then to stare into a face that haunted his dreams and memories--Yaeko, but not. There was a bitter victory in Yumi's love, the way her eyes followed him, adoring, the defiance she showed in marrying a gaijin without knowing that the stories she told him that her great-grandmother had passed down ripped into him and hurt more with each breath, but that victory wasn't enough.

His restlessness struck out, and he found himself in the wilderness of the country he had fought to keep from being free, fleeing further to the lands France still held, running from shadows and ghosts that gnashed their teeth at his heels with the ever present litany of not enough, never enough. Not life, not love, not him.

( And then it stopped.  )

It's not a question of if, he thinks, nor even one of "when." It's not a question at all, not anymore. It might have been, at one point, up for debate. His plans, his thoughts, his questionable tactics. They all had the epithet thrown at him, hurled into his face with horror and derision both by children who knew no better. He would have said, then, that he was the only one of them not mad, the only one with the clarity of vision needed to do what must be done. But from their oh-so-limited viewpoints, that had pushed him into an inhuman insanity that slipped out of the cracks of his psyche until he could no longer truly be like them. That much, at least, was true. Part of them, one of them, yet always set apart solely by that gap of agelessness that clung to his cells, but showed mostly in his eyes. What he had seen, they could not imagine, not truly. It was words on a page to them, distorted by time and the imposed viewpoint of those that shape the past into the vision they wanted it to bed. He was there; he knew. And he knew that most people didn't want the truth.

Trivial, now. Unimportant to the discussion at hand. Perhaps it had always been so. Perhaps the human mind was not meant to hold the things in his, except that if it was not meant, then what was he? An evolution of body that mind had yet to catch up to? But he would have sworn, then, that it was experience that spoke, words sliding from his mouth in a cold, hard sanity that challenged the delusions that fed the others. Now, caught between pain and death that would not come and everlasting boredom, an animal in a cage with a window facing out and cameras that gave him not even the barest privacy for his most intimate needs, talking to those who came and went with less and less hope of a response, he felt the flickers of doubt enter, twisting in his gut like a frozen hand that reached inside and grabbed hold. For the first time the small thought pushed itself into his consciousness, and though some would say that asking it was the first sign that perhaps he wasn't what he feared, he dismissed that direction and felt the fear of the possible grab hold, four little words echoing around and around in his head.

Perhaps they were right.

You're a wrong turn
a big fat No
you're the fifth drink before a long drive home
you're the thing to avoid
the bars to my cage
you're all I think about everyday
you've got that thing
that my wildest dreams are made of
you set my world on fire

He used to watch her when she walked past his window, all tight skirts and low cut tops, hips swaying because she knew he--and every red blooded male in range--was watching. That spark of a smile, the way her teeth caught her lower lip, the sound of her giggle that could become a pout in a heartbeat, or something darker, more dangerous. She'd lean in his doorway, and he would watch the electricity arc between her fingers, smell the singe of it in the air, like a storm on the horizon, and the small room didn't bother him so much. His body reacted, pure and visceral, and it was a game to make her yield, to twist her around until she'd defy her Daddy.

Then the game became something more, two caged animals, dangerous and deadly, becoming dependent. At least he did. Dependent on that scent in the air that said she was near. Dependent on the flash of it, the sizzle across his skin, that wasn't pure pain, but just enough pleasure to remind him he was alive. Dependent on the gleam in her eyes that echoed the ones he'd seen three decades before. Dependent on the adoration, the willingness to follow where he led. Dependent on the way she blossomed under his approval, moving with more confidence through the halls.

It wasn't smart, he knew. It was desperation, and she wasn't to be trusted, more than the rest of them. As easily as he'd turned her, it was possible they'd turn her back, and when the sound of lightning crackled across the air and hit him, it might not stop until he'd begged, writhed, promised anything just so she turned it off again. He remembered that, too, nights haunted by a child's laugh, a glee that still hid in the depths of blue eyes that never looked truly innocent.

But she was all he had, the only hope, the only comfort, the only pleasure in a world that teetered between boredom and agony, depending on the mood of his captors that day, week, month, year. It was a bad idea, he knew, every time she walked through the door, every time her lips met his, every time his hand slid under her clothes, pulled her to the bed, ignored the cameras. He could taste the danger on her lips, feel it in the fire she sent along his nerves. He shouldn't need her, shouldn't let himself depend on her, not for anything.

He did, anyway.

[ooc: Not RP or 'verse specific, not binding on any Elle muse 'less her mun wants it to be, just back story in my head of his thoughts from his "caved" comment.]

April 1963

He waited, leaning up against his brand new red Plymouth Sport Fury convertible. Boys walked by, eyeing the car with envious eyes. The girls smiled invitingly, and he let his eyes slide down over their legs, revealed in the new mini-skirts that had come into fashion. Sometimes he really did love the twentieth century. He kept his smile respectful though, never resting for too long on any one girl, watching the door of the high school as students poured out, looking for one dark head in particular.

When he saw her, Adam’s eyes lit up. He tracked her movements across the school yard. He knew the instant she saw him. Her smile broke out and she said something to the girl next to her and headed toward him at a rather unladylike pace. He caught her close as she reached him, pulling her tight against him. Then, knowing all her friends were watching, knowing what it meant to be dating the “older boy” with the car and the job and the right jacket, he kissed her, fingers curling around the back of her neck in a possessive grip she didn’t seem to mind in the least.

“Where have you been?” she asked, a little breathless when he lifted his head and pulled away to open the car door for her.

“I had to go to Odessa and check on the company,” he said, as she slid across the seat and climbed in behind the wheel.

“The paper place?” Her nose wrinkled just a bit, and Adam reached out to flick it lightly with his finger.

“The paper place, yes.” Though it was already turning in to so much more. Not his dream, not yet, but the foundation at least as he hired scientists and built labs underneath the structure. Three floors down, it was a labyrinth and only he knew the secrets it already held.

“But you’re back now, at least for a while?” He noticed the slightly cool tone, with an amused quirk of his lips, the little way she adjusted her sunglasses, the way she didn’t quite look at her friends as they pulled away, and yet made sure everyone noticed.

“I’m back for as long as you want me,” he murmured, just for her, in a tone that brought heat to her cheeks. She’d barely turned sixteen, and though she tried to give him a worldly smile, the sheer innocence behind it made him almost laugh.

* * *

December 1964

“You want me to what?” Angela sat up and stared down at Adam where he was stretched out on the rug like he’d grown a second head.

He took a moment to study her, the way her hair curled damply around her face and the flush growing on her skin, heightened by the lights he’d strung on the tree in his apartment. He reached out and traced his fingers over her, almost in wonder, then wound them through her hair and tugged her back down to him, where she belonged.

His lips brushed over hers, tongue light and teasing. “I want you to go out with him.”

Eyes fluttering closed she shifted to slide on top of him. “With Arthur?” she asked with an expert shifting of her hips that made him moan and arch up into her, cutting off what she might have said in a gasp as he filled her. After he’d gotten her past her initial reservations, the first night he’d taken it beyond kisses and clandestine touches, she had proved to be a very apt pupil, following him even into the darker corners of desire with an eagerness to please and be pleased that he had found so rarely.

“With Arthur,” he murmured against her lips, hips rocking again. “Yes.”

“Why?” she asked, pulling away a little before he grabbed her hips and pulled her back down on him, fingers pressing hard enough to leave marks. Her eyes fluttered closed again, and he smiled.

“We need him. And he asked,” he reminded her, one hand sliding up her side to cup her breast, thumb teasing over her nipple.

“What about us?” There it was, the youth the vulnerability, the girl he’d found and made his.

“Nothing needs to change. Arthur never needs to know.”

She frowned, just a bit, and he tugged her lips back to his, kissing her, moving inside her, until the questions drifted away.

* * *

( June 1965 )

OOC: Angela Petrelli used with permission of her mun as we create backstory for them. :-)

1. I was born in 1643, in London, England.

2. My father went off to sea when I was 8 and never came home, at least not to us. I heard a rumor he started a new family in Salisbury.

3. I left London after my mother died in the Great Fire, and headed to Japan.

4. I fought for James II. William III won.

5. I fought with the Jacobites in 1715. The English won.

6. I tried again in 1745. The English won again.

7. I decided to give up fighting against my own country and so fought for the English in 1776. The Colonies won.

8. Like many of my countrymen, I was a Commander for the Confederacy during the Civil War. The Union won. Is anyone seeing a pattern here?

9. I finally got it right in the World Wars, fighting for the British each time.

10. I am tired of the constant pattern of war that keeps ripping the world apart.