Adam Monroe

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Make a soundtrack of how you see yourself and your life at this very moment. Choose at least ten songs and explain why you chose each of them.

Disclaimer: Some of these conflict, I realize. A soundtrack of the length of my life might have been more thorough, in its way, but, that was not the prompt. I stand at a crossroads, of sorts, with multiple paths stretching out before me. Memories of things I cannot forget haunt me, still, and there are days when the path I have seemed to choose chafes more than I will let on. So, if one songs seems to say one thing, and another something else...well. Consider it a symptom of my rapidly changing decisions and moods.

( 1. Something to Believe In - Bon Jovi )

( 2. Complicated - Bon Jovi )

( 3. Rise From the Ashes - Quietdrive )

( 4. What I've Done - Linkin Park )

( 5. My Way - Frank Sinatra )

( 6. Imagine - John Lennon )

( 7. Almost Sorry For You - Sergei Lazarev )

( 8. Hurt - Johnny Cash )

Peter

( 9. Broken - Lifehouse )

( 10. Save the World - Bon Jovi )

Hiro

( 11. Just Like You - Three Day Grace )

( 12. Until the End of the World - U2 )

Elle

( 13. A Question of Time - Depeche Mode )

( 14. Weapon )

Jack

( 15. Away from the Sun - 3 Doors Down )

( 16. Walk the Line - Johnny Cash )

1977

Is it getting better?
Or do you feel the same?
Will it make it easier on you now?
You got someone to blame
You say
One love
One life
When it's one need
In the night
One love
We get to share it
Leaves you baby if you
Don't care for it

He pressed his hand against the glass, watching it reflected back off of the blinds that were open. The blonde man sitting on the bed reading looked up, startling blue eyes seeming to pierce through the window and layers of flesh, stripping away the few defenses Charles carried with him and looking to his soul underneath. It was always unnerving, but now he could see the depths of those eyes, could glimpse the flickers of a sort of madness that he had always taken for intense passion, before. It burned almost too hot, the fervor there, before the mask dropped again, and there was nothing but ice gazing back out at him. He nodded at the guard, then moved into the room, the cell, the place where they had locked up their leader, each of them playing Judas in turn, horror in their eyes at what he had almost done, though Charles knew most of them would have backed him if they weren't afraid of the same fate. Their eyes, too, held the fever glimpsed in Adam's.

It was a fervor he had believed in, until it turned dark, and standing in the cold, sterile room, watching as Adam leaned back against the wall of his prison, head tilting, one eyebrow arching in cool curiosity, Charles felt the loss of it with a keen edge that cut through him.

"I thought we were going to save the world."

"That was the plan," Adam said dryly, "Until Kaito interfered."

"You went too far."

"There is no such thing. Just because you cannot see it..." Adam shook his head. "This isn't about that, even. He wanted my position, and now he has it, just like his son before him."

Charles frowned, confused by the latter statement, but let it pass. "You can't blame him, Adam. You have to accept responsibility for your own actions."

Adam's mouth tightened, the only sign of his displeasure, and then his eyes slid back to his book, effectively dismissing Charles, who still stood there for quite a while longer, before he finally turned to go.

1987

( Did I disappoint you? )

Two topics, each with basically the same answers. I'm feeling productive, but, nonetheless, I'm horribly afraid they're rather cliché

1. Alcohol. It's not the best way, of course, and it never lasts nearly long enough, but it helps ease the pain, the sting of it, letting me find a comfortable numbness for at least a while.

2. Fighting. It was what I did a great deal of as a child, and there is a rhythm that you get into that lets the grief ease out of your mind. Plus, a bit of pain never hurts--pardon the pun--for helping you refocus.

3. Katas. Much the same as the fighting. My training for all those years in the Orient and later in French Arms Schools was cathartic in more ways than one. It helps your skills improve, while exhausting you physically, letting you push yourself through a great deal of emotional blockage.

4. Sex. It is distracting, it is pleasurable, it reminds you that you are alive, and it connects you to another person so that for a few moments at least you do not feel quite so alone.

5. New relationships. My third wife died and within a few months I was married to my fourth. I fled her, faking my own death, barely a few months later, and in a year or two was married to my fifth wife. I do not always rebound so...noticeably, but it has been known to happen.

6. Travel. Part of what I am often means moving on before I am discovered. When loss occurs, or something unpleasant happens, I find my feet itching to see something new, to find a new place, or explore a familiar landscape to see how it has changed.

7. Physical pain. There are ways to find it, to make sure it is inflicted...Masochism at it's finest. Deal with the emotional by forcing the physical pain. It ties in to number two, yes, but there are ways beyond fighting, ways beyond sex, ways that incorporate them all...and it helps find that release.

8. Reading. It isn't quite as effective as some of the others, but I find that if I can escape into a good book, into another world that someone has created that is not the one in which I am hurting, the time away helps me refocus my energy. It is pure escapism, but sometimes those few hours help ease the pain one is trying to deal with.

9. Meditation. I have appreciated the practice for assistance in reaching your inner self, in finding the ways to hold together, for centuries, but over the last three decades, I have truly discovered how very helpful it can be. When everything feels like it is falling apart, just taking that time to visit my own center of being helps immensely.

10. Did I mention alcohol?

Never let the fear of striking out get in your way. - Babe Ruth

He'd failed. The virus was destroyed, as was most of the trust he'd worked so hard to establish with Peter. That, of course, was unfortunate. He could have been a stalwart ally, and better to have that power on his side than against him. Adam frowned slightly, studying the glass of whiskey in front of him as if it held some of the answers. The failure stung, but he'd grabbed at the plan almost on a whim at discovering they had not destroyed the virus. He'd thrown it together hastily, when he should have taken his time. Of course, working against the date Peter had learned in the future made that more difficult, though he was forced to wonder just what had gone differently in that timeline. No Hiro? Why? He'd killed Kaito already when Peter went to the future, and so, somehow, something had shifted against him, and the what of it nagged. If he could figure out what went wrong...well. It wasn't as if he could fix it, now. Neither of them would take him back to the moment to put right what had gone wrong.

So, he needed a new plan.

Objective #1 - Gain back Peter's trust, or at least soften the enmity.
Objective #2 - Destroy what was left of the Company and seize that power for himself again. It was his, after all. His idea, his project, his people.
Objective #3 - Devise a new plan, with a plan B and a plan C, none of which would appear abhorrent to his allies, so there would be no outcry against him this time.

He'd been too bold, taken far too drastic of measures in his desperation. Slower, steadier, using the time that was on his side...that was the key. His own eagerness had usurped his reason, his protocol for moving forward, leading to miscalculations on his part. Not again.

If plan A did not work, there would be another, and another after that. Eventually, he would achieve his goals. It didn't have to be this year, this decade, or even this century. His greatest ally in this fight would be time, and that was something that was very firmly on his side.

I don't.

I daresay that upsets most people. There seems to be a culture of regret that clings to the human conscience. The idea of moving forward, of living for today, and not looking back evidences coldness to most people. How can you do "bad" things and, once you realize the error of your ways, not regret them? I would ask, in reply, what good does regret do? Who does it serve? What does it accomplish for the future, and how does it hinder the present, if I steep myself in regret for mistakes past?

Have I made them? Oh, yes. I've never claimed to be infallible, only indestructible. I've made quite a few, in truth. There are things that, if I had them to do over, I likely would do differently. There are things I would change. Things I would say, or would not say.

But regretting those mistakes is a useless venture and a waste of time. You make a mistake, you learn from it, and you move on. Regret serves nothing but the idea of a beleaguered conscience that drags you back constantly into the past. How can you move forward if you stay in the past? And how could I ever move forward...If I regretted even all of my major mistakes, let them weigh on me and my conscience, have you any idea how frozen that would make me? I would have centuries of regrets constantly chasing me, nipping at my heels. Words I didn't say when I had a chance. Lives I failed to save. Lives I saved that weren't worth saving, in the end. Questions I never asked. Ideals I acted on. Ideals I failed to put into action. Loves lost. Loves I never claimed. Loves I ran from because they seeped too deeply beneath the guards I keep up. Wars I fought. Wars I avoided. Children I... Secrets I kept. Secrets I revealed.

I could drown in regret if I allowed myself to. If I let even one slide into my consciousness, it would open the floodgates and paralyze me. Centuries of regret, centuries of mistakes...it is a terrifying thing to contemplate.

Best to not, then. I learned that lesson long ago. No regrets, no matter what. Everything is something to learn from, good and bad, and everything shapes you and moves your forward into what comes next. When life has no foreseeable ending, regret can pile up until there is nothing left to life but that feeling, that mountain that buries you alive under its weight.

So, I don't. If people think that makes me cold, so be it. I survive. I move forward, as best I can, in a world and a way no one I've known can do more than imagine. There is no room left for regret.

[Xposted to takezo_kensei on LJ.]

We killed the King.

The year I was born was the second year of the First English Civil War. Royalists battled Parlimentarians and Puritans, and while much of it likely had to do with a grasping for power and more secular concerns, like so many wars it was couched in terms of religion. I remember hearing of the battles in the uneasy truce that settled over my formative years between the first and second wars. And then the Royalists rose again when I was four. I remember my father--a staunch Puritan--going off to fight. I remember him coming home, scarred but grinning because they had won. The King was secure again, but he was also defiant, refusing to cease to acknowledge his Divine Right to rule. It was but a few months after my fifth birthday that my country killed its King, not for injustice or because the people were poverty stricken and desperate, and not for any democratic ideal but for religion. My father cheered; my mother cried.

( Cut for religious history rambling and doctrinal questioning and snarky commentary on the practice of confession as The Best Thing Ever... )

My take on religion?

It is Royally fucked up, but it binds around our lives and none, truly, can escape it, because the questions will come, and we will always look for answers, and when we think we have them, we will twist them, and someone else will disagree, and it will all start again, and someone else will fall.

Perhaps I'll add that to my prayers tonight, and light a candle for Charles' soul.

Forget...

...The way her eyes were bright with unshed tears when you told her what you had done. The words you tried not to say, love him, always, forever, trying to phrase it so carefully, but knowing the truth was sliding out of you unbidden with each shard of her heart you saw break.

...The way he looked at you, like you were some sort of monster he could not understand, when you hungered for the blood of your tormentor, and vengeance roared through you in barely leashed fury. The promises pulled out of you, when the two of them combined. Can't lose them, can you, chained by need you don't want to hold you back, but you let it anyway.

...The shattered look in his eyes when he told you the truth that ripped his world apart, calling into question all he thought he knew about who he was, what his life had been. You want to tell him that blood doesn't change things, not truly, and a parent is more than blood and seed. You think of your granddaughter, of the man she calls father who isn't the one before you, and wonder if the two of you will ever share that common bond, understanding, pain, but you don't say anything like that, not now. Maybe not ever.

...The feel of wood and stone surrounding you, the weight of the Earth pressing down, suffocating you as the air thins and visions dance before your eyes. The blood that ran down your skin where you slammed your hands into the wood, ripping skin that healed, pushing splinters back out. Nothing impure allowed to remain, except everything that's in your soul. The taste of bile and tears and the stink of fear and loss as darkness comes.

Let it go.

( Forget... )

[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?

It was cold at the cemetery, but then, it was cold most everywhere in the City at the present moment, so Adam didn't figure that there was much to be remarked upon, except a passing comment only he was alive to remember.

Hell will freeze over before you touch her, or see the boy, again, Monroe.

Adam cast an amused glance at the frozen earth and wondered if New York City counted as hell. Doubtful, though he had his moments of thinking it had to be. For all its verve, it lacked the grace he preferred, and the hole in the skyline reminded him too much of how lost the world had become and how hamstrung he was to do anything about it. Everything was so inelegant now, rushing and dark, polluted, dirty, the snow not even able to fall pristine, and here it mixed with mud disturbing the sanctity of the dead.

He stood by the grave, looking down at it. Snow covered the stone, but he could still make out the name, the dates, the inscription. Kneeling a bit, he brushed the snow off, rendering the name visible of the man he'd thought to make a friend, but whom he'd spent forty years hating. Rivals, from the moment they met. For Angela. For Daniel. For power. For the boy. Fury laced through him, and he could almost see his face through glass that was no longer there.

Angie and I just got back from Rome. Nathan loved it there, and didn't want to come home.

Can I tell you, Monroe, I used to hate you, but this morning, I think I have to thank you. That little thing you taught Angie with her tongue...God. I am a lucky man.

A smirk, a chill in brown eyes staring mockingly at him while they strapped him down.

He's graduating today, Adam. Valedictorian. You should have seen him up there on the stage. My son. I'm so proud of the man I've raised...

Glancing around and seeing no one, Adam snarled and kicked the headstone hard, feeling the impact reverberate up his leg, welcoming the pain, because it meant one sure and solid thing.

He was alive.

His lips curved as he squatted back down, low voice murmuring to the stone before him. He told him, in the same exquisite detail he'd been told, exactly how Angela had looked, stretched out with nothing on but the necklace he'd given her for Christmas. The way his name caught in her throat like something holy; how she remembered, even now, exactly how he liked to be touched. He whispered the secrets only a few knew about how she tasted, and the way she screamed and begged him for more. Dinners spent lingering over wine and whiskey, and laughter and plans, and how she'd betray them all now, again, this time, to be by his side. Always his, no matter what she felt for the cowardly corpse rotting beneath him.

Settling more, he told Arthur about pool games and whiskey, and blood tests. About fragile trust, and a relationship starting. How Nathan asked him not to leave, wanted him here in New York. He talked about kittens and a boy longing for approval that the man beneath him never gave, and how he could give it, could love enough to overcome whatever stubborn pride had kept Arthur's lips sealed. He chuckled at the memory, of the two of them trying to carry seven cats onto a subway and the looks they'd gotten, and the coffee they'd shared and how Peter had grinned in absolute delight.

And then he told him about Peter. About forever. About love that forgave even mistakes such as his. About how the furniture all ended up on the beach, and they'd had nothing but melon balls and figs and that was perfection, because they had each other. His son, the boy he'd never mentioned, had hidden from Adam, but Adam had found him. Had loved him. Had made him love in return. Movies and popcorn and a life free of the rest of the mistakes they'd all made. Free of Arthur's corrupt legacy. Free of his violence. Free of Daniel's taint. The world at their feet and all the time in the world to play with it, to see it, finally, remade and whole.

By the end he was flushed, eyes bright and fevered, almost laughing with a near unholy glee. Leaning in he pressed his lips to cold stone.

"Rot in hell, you fucking bastard," he murmured, almost lovingly. "I win."

"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.]

Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names. -- John F. Kennedy

He couldn't write it on the walls. He tried, once, in the tenth year, no eleventh, maybe twelfth. Without a calendar it blurred and only Bob in a ridiculous Santa hat let him count where they were, sometimes. Twelve times the hat, so the which meant the beginning of the twelfth year, and in the spring he wrote it out in blood smeared across the walls. Twelve names. One for each year. It had an odd sense of symmetry and it made him smile.

Bob was not amused. They hauled him out and after a particularly brutal "testing" session they returned him to freshly painted walls that weren't quite white, because nothing could be that pure in here.

He tried to carve them once with a scalpel he palmed, sure that once he scratched them into the walls, not even paint would take them off, but somehow he found himself trying to carve the names into Bob's skin, and they took the scalpel and a syringe both and made the names go away with them, healed and cleansed by the blood, which only got him ranting about washing away sins with blood until Bob ordered him gagged and fed intravenously.

So, he was forced to form a litany of Proper Nouns, always capitalized, a list, lovers, friends, disciples, betrayers, each and every one. He tried to scratch them into his skin, but they only healed, and so it was back to names in his head.

Angela. Arthur. Daniel. Maury. Bob. Victoria. Carlos. Paula. Harry. Charles. Suzanne. Kaito. Always Kaito, which led him all the way back to Hiro, and a swirling morass of names remembered and if he could lay curses it would be on those houses, he thought. "A plague on both your houses," he muttered anyway, eyes closing. Petrelli. Nakamura. A plague. The vengeance of the Lord on Egypt, for betraying His people, enslaving them in darkness and refusing to let them go.

It came and went the moments of madness and moments of lucidity, and as he held to the list, the names, the purpose, the lucid moments ran longer and they smiled in relief that perhaps he would be of use again. But when he stepped into the free air, and looked at the list in his mind, only five remained. One quickly aligned with him, the sniveling coward, but he had his use for now. Two died, hard and brutal, may peace rest with their souls. Another returned, and was forgiven, and only one remained unshriven. But he knew that even when the final battle finished the list would remain, and he would never forget.

1974

"So am I next?" The voice, which struggled to sound coolly amused, brought Adam's eyes up from where he was studying his wine to meet the other pair of blue ones across the table.

"Pardon?" Wine the color of blood, deep and ruby, caught the candle light in the crystal.

"They're gone," Daniel pointed out with a small curve of his lips. "Off with the boy, and who knows for sure when they'll be back, and here we are with our wine and our fire and your inviting me alone is a heretofore unprecedented event..."

"God, you've been spending far too much time with Arthur if you're actually using 'heretofore unprecedented' in everyday conversation," Adam said, giving him a disbelieving look.

"Which doesn't answer the question."

Adam tilted his head and studied Daniel for a moment, then glanced back at his wine for a long moment before taking a slow sip. "I haven't decided yet."

Absolute silence reigned in the room between them, broken only by the crackle of the fire in the fireplace. When Adam glanced up again, he found Daniel just staring at him. One eyebrow lifted in inquiry and he held the other man's eyes until Daniel was forced to look away.

"My god, she was right. You are a bastard."

Adam smiled without a trace of humor. "You want to be next."

"I'm not so sure of that..." Daniel set his wine glass down and stood.

"Yes, you are," Adam said, sprawling back more in contrast, tilting his head back to study Daniel. "You wouldn't be here if you weren't. You've been watching me from the start, from the day Arthur brought you to meet me."

"Arthur..." Daniel started.

"Married Angela. Angela married Arthur. They have a beautiful bouncing boy. And here we are, you and I, and you've never stopped watching me, in all these years."

"All you want is to upset Arthur," Daniel said, with a flash of temper.

"That's not all I want," Adam said, voice almost a purr now.

Daniel swallowed. "I should go."

"That's not what you want."

"How would you know?" Daniel finally snapped, and Adam stood, moving around the table to lean against it, not quite in Daniel's space, but near enough.

"I've been watching, too."

Daniel rocked--a step back, and then he moved forward, forcing Adam to shift his legs to make room for him. Hands braced on the table on either side of Adam, Daniel pressed close until the only thing separating them was their clothing.

"What do you want?" he growled, something fierce in his eyes. "To take what's Arthur's, because he took Angela? To hurt her for leaving? To bend each of us until we break, so you can reshape us as you will?"

Adam lifted one hand, slowly, long fingers slowly tracing down Daniel's cheek, and his lips curved slowly, eyes lighting up with something bright that might have been triumph. "Yes." Daniel's eyes widened in something like shock, and Adam kept up his slow caress along bone and flesh, his thumb tracing the curve of Daniel's lips as he met his eyes again. "Yes," he repeated, his voice little more than a breath over the other man's lips as he leaned in until they were a whisper apart. "I want."

Daniel gave.

1. The day Stephen got a real job at the stables.
2. The moment I got back to camp with that damn fire scroll and saw him smile in approval.
3. Getting command of my own ship.
4. The birth of the twins.
5. Escaping Japan and Yaeko's great-granddaughter.
6. The moment Angelica kissed me after I told her my secret.
7. Receiving the Victoria Cross.
8. The day we officially started working to pull the Company together.
9. Nathan's birth.
10. Walking out of the Company's cells and breathing fresh, free air for the first time in 30 years.

The broken clock is a comfort
It helps me sleep tonight
Maybe it can stop tomorrow
From stealing all my time
And I am here still waiting
Though I still have my doubts
I am damaged at best
Like you've already figured out

( He shifted through the warehouse aimlessly, fingers sliding over the face of the clock that always looked sad in a twisted reminder of fate. )

The broken locks were a warning
You got inside my head
I tried my best to be guarded
I'm an open book instead
And I still see your reflection
Inside of my eyes
That are looking for purpose
They're still looking for life

( He'd say later it was his plan all along, his ambition, carefully guiding them to what he always intended, had worked toward for fifty years or more. )

I'm hanging on another day
Just to see what you'll throw my way,
And I'm hanging on to the words you say
You said that I will, will be okay
The broken lights on the freeway
Left me here alone
I may have lost my way now
Haven't forgotten my way home

( The aftermath was brutal. )

I'm falling apart
I'm barely breathing
With a broken heart
That's still beating
In the pain
There is healing
In your name
I find meaning
So I'm holding on
I'm still holding
I'm barely holding on to you

1. The first night in our new "home"
2. The first time I knew I had to say yes to one of the "gentlemen."
3. Watching the fire burn the house, knowing they were inside.
4. Holding his head in my lap, begging him to keep breathing.
5. Leaving England, alone.
6. Realizing I was not aging.
7. The birth of the twins.
8. The night after the first "experiment" when I realized no one was coming to get me out of there, and that they were just starting with their...fun.
9. Having time unfreeze to realize he'd left me buried alive.
10. The moment I had to ask "what now?" and realized I didn't have an answer.

- Challenge a Musketeer to a duel
- Drink more than one bottle of rum on a beach in one sitting
- Piss off a sumo wrestler
- Mix tequila and red wine
- Rob a coach and four with nothing but a sword
- Bury treasure without a reliable map
- Fight 90 angry cannibalistic ronin
- Climb a frozen waterfall to retrieve a single crimson peony
- Fight a black bear
- Fight Snake Women
- Cut my heart out for a dragon
- Tell one of my lovers to go out with someone else
- Use Peter for anything he wouldn't appreciate being used for
- Let anyone separate me from a child that is mine
- Try to release a deadly virus

"Hallelujah" -- Cohen or Buckley either one
"Whiskey Lullaby" -- Braid Paisley
"Every you Every Me" -- Placebo
"Rise from the Ashes" -- Quietdrive
"Until the End of the World" -- U2
"Love on the Rocks" -- Neil Diamond
"Weekend in New England" -- John Barrowman
"Are You Lonesome Tonight?" -- Elvis
"Suspicious Minds" -- Elvis
"Burning Love" -- Elvis
"Even Angels Fall" -- Jessica Riddle
"Cruel to be Kind" -- Letters to Cleo

1977

"Snow Falls on Miami"

An experiment, really, with weather control, though he watched the way a few of them watched him, after. Snow had not been his suggestion, after all, as he considered their new find and how best to test the power. Something bigger, splashier, more devastating. Something they could help with, after. Daniel had been all for it, eyes lighting up at the prospect. Even Arthur had managed a smile, but Charles and Kaito had vetoed them, and Adam's imagined headline faded.

He gazed at the paper, reading it over with a slight sigh. No one understood how it had been possible. Meteorologists were baffled, talking about conditions in the air, the way moisture could crystallize, the pressure it would take, the temperature drop...Except temperatures hadn't dropped until right before they let loose with the snow. It had happened fast, frighteningly so with the thermometer's dropping nearly 70 degrees in the space of a few minutes as clouds covered the sky and white flakes fell, hard and fast. They'd melted almost immediately, at first, but he'd ordered the temperatures to hold, letting it keep falling until they'd managed a bit of accumulation, just to make a point, before he'd finally allowed the demonstration to cease.

Drivers had slid off roads they no longer knew how to drive on. There were sure to be a few colds among those out and about enjoying the previously hot day, with such a sudden chill. He told them to keep it cold for the rest of the day, then release. By the next morning, it was clear and hot again, all traces of snow gone. The world was baffled, not understanding how it could happen. Most laughed it off, but he knew they'd truly confused the scientists and that made him smile, humming as he tossed the paper aside and went to grab a cup of coffee.

It was a start. It was something new. And now--now he knew where his people stood, who would be easy to convince and who he'd need to work on. After all, if they'd had problems with the first suggested experiment, they likely would have problems with other things to come. He'd have to work on them more, keep things innocuous until it was time.

"Snow Falls on Miami" had an amusing ring to it, but really, couldn't anyone besides Daniel, Arthur, Maury and Angela understand how very much more impressive "Tsunami Wipes out Eastern Seaboard" would have been? Amateurs, lacking in vision, the lot of the rest of them.

He'd have to work on that before he took his next steps, and if they couldn't be brought around? Well, there were others like them out there, and none of them were irreplaceable.