Ash Rings and Arrows
Characters: Adam Monroe/Richard Alpert (offscreen Richard/Jacob); Ellie
Rating: PG13
Words: 2446
Spoilers: All you need to know from Heroes is who Adam is; through Ab Aeterno for Lost
Summary: Adam's the captain of a US Army crew in the South Pacific in 1954.
A/N: Written for catoasapun for the Five Acts meme. It was supposed to be a drabble, but got really out of control.
Adam had been stuck in worse pickles than this before, but rarely before had he felt so annoyed. It was hot, it was humid, there was sand in his shoes, and the men were whining like little girls. To make matters worse, they were whining in American accents, which he’d always found irritating. The sounds he was being forced to make strained his throat (and his ears) and worsened his already foul mood.
It wasn’t the specific island they were looking for, but the ship’s navigation system had gotten mixed up in the storm and, given that something seemed to be wrong with the bomb, they’d needed to land somewhere as soon as possible, and this island had been the first landmass they'd seen. Adam was the commanding officer on this mission, and he figured that one deserted island was as good as another for these tests.
And as if all that weren’t enough, there was that thing no one wanted to talk about. Adam had seen a lot of during his time, but he’d never seen black smoke that could pull a man thirty feet into the air and eviscerate him. That was beyond individuals with special powers; that was just crazy.
At least after 300-odd years, the world still had the power to surprise him.
Adam knew islands like this usually had a central valley below the volcano that would be suitable for the tests he and his troops had come to perform, and that’s where they were headed. He’d been in Verdun during Hiroshima, making a fortune off of Frenchmen betraying their own country, so he hadn’t been able to see first-hand what these things could do. It seemed like the perfect tool for his longer-range plans. Not afraid of anything that would come from being so close to the explosion, Adam was eager to see a hydrogen bomb in action, so he’d maneuvered his way into his current role.
After four days of walking, Adam had a feeling they were getting close to the center of the island, and the sooner they got there, the better. His men were dropping like flies. One by one, they were succumbing first to fevers and shakes, and then excessive vomiting, which, in a place where fresh water had to be rationed, no one could afford. Adam, of course, was fine, and his subordinates took this as a sign of the toughness that had gotten such a young man promoted through the ranks.
He was about to suggest that they stop for a brief rest, but his words were interrupted by an ambush of flaming arrows. He watched, open-mouthed, as most of his men went up in flames. A couple of arrows pierced his leg, but he quickly pulled them out and stamped on the flame.
As soon as almost everyone had been shot, the archers appeared out of the trees. Instead of the Pacific Islanders he’d encountered on previous trips to the region, Adam was surprised to see, for the most part, a group of bedraggled white people who looked just as shipwrecked as himself. Adam’s eyes widened in even greater shock when he spotted their leader (Adam assumed he was the leader judging from his apparent access to showers and clothing stores that the rest of them lacked). He was the kind of handsome that doesn’t come along more than once a millennium.
The problem was that he had come along, about fifty years before. Adam remembered immediately: a train car on his way from London to Morocco that he’d had to himself until a stranger had come to share it with him. Adam had watched him with curious interest. The man had inspected everything---the cars they passed on the road, the drinks a waitress brought them, Adam’s newspaper---with the wide-eyed wonder of a four-year-old. However, when Adam had tried to actually talk to him, he’d displayed the kind of world-weariness that only someone as old as Adam himself could or should feel. It was a strange dichotomy.
“Where are you from?”
“You haven’t heard of it.”
“I’m well-traveled; try me.”
“Take my word for it, it’s nowhere you’ve ever been.”
“Fine then… where are you headed now?”
“The Canary Islands.”
“Why?”
“I used to live there, but it’s been a long time. I want to see what it’s like now.”
These were the sort of evasive, double-entendre non-answers Adam gave all the time, and they sent alarm bells ringing. He’d run into two other regenerators like himself over the centuries; he’d quickly dispatched both of them with a bullet to the head. Adam didn’t like competition. Watching Richard and listening to his odd accent---so hard to place---he almost regretted in advance what he was going to have to do… but not before he had a little fun first.
Adam was used to taking whatever he wanted, and Richard made a gorgeous trophy. Although quiet, Richard turned out to be eager for human contact. It wasn’t hard to convince him to spend a few days with Adam in Gibraltar before they parted ways---Adam for a ferry to Tangiers and Richard on a ship headed for Tenerife.
Richard seemed to experience Adam’s flirtations the same way he experienced the train---as something surprising and new and exciting. Adam had wondered where the man lived to be so unaccustomed to advances such as his own. Was it some sort of colony of blind fools? Richard’s hesitation about sharing a room with Adam had also given Adam the feeling that, although enjoying himself, Richard had someone back wherever he came from and was feeling guilty. But Adam didn’t pry; it wasn’t any of his business.
Despite his shyness and rough social skills, Richard had turned out to be a pleasant enough companion, not to mention incredibly easy on the eyes. Their liaison also proved convenient; since Adam hadn’t yet gotten around to learning Spanish, Richard took care of all of their interactions. Not that they did very much talking… but when they did, Adam did most of it. Richard was an adorably ardent listener; no one had made him feel this interesting in years.
Days passed and they’d continued on in Gibraltar, eating long breakfasts and spending most of their days in the hotel room---all ways of delaying the inevitable fact that Adam would have to kill this rival, no matter how much he'd come to like him. However, as time went by, Adam had begun to have doubts that this man had an ability, much less the same one; how could an immortal be so staggeringly ignorant of, well, everything?
One morning, after stalling for almost a week, Adam decided to run a test. His pen-knife just happened to scratch Richard on the forearm. The man had bled like a human, and the next day, a small scab still remained. That had settled it, and Adam was relieved, for multiple reasons. However, even when they’d finally parted ways, Adam still couldn’t shake feeling that there was more to Richard than met the eye.
And now, here on this godforsaken rock, Adam was finding himself proven right about something he’d long stopped thinking about. Richard was no more changed in appearance than Adam himself.
Masking his surprise with cheeky bravado, Adam winked at him. Richard stopped in his tracks.
“Adam?” he mouthed.
What followed was very confusing. Adam expected Richard to be shocked, but not unreasonably so. Therefore, when Richard’s face twisted into a (still handsome) mask of terror and he tripped backwards, Adam thought the fellow was taking it all entirely too hard. And when Richard screamed, “It’s him! Run for your lives!” just before taking off into the woods, Adam couldn’t help but feel insulted. He’d been so uncharacteristically kind to Richard, and he’d worked so hard to leave the man with nothing but good memories; why the panic?
Richard’s people lost no time in disappearing, and everyone else in Adam’s party was dead. The bomb lay leaking in the grass. Without the team, there could be no experiment; Adam didn’t know enough about the science of the thing to run them himself. He wanted to find Richard and question him, but the natives hadn’t even left any tracks. His only option now was to get back to the ship and try to sail it himself. He needed to find water and maybe some more fruit. Everything had been picked on the trail that he and his men had been taking, so Adam tried a new direction. He decided to follow a nearby stream, with the expectation that once he reached the shore, he’d circle along the beach to get back to the ship.
With no one to interrupt his thoughts, Adam was able to dissect the situation and weigh all the various facts. Richard was definitely immortal now even if he hadn’t been back in 1900. Perhaps the ability hadn’t kicked in yet? However, that theory ran counter to the suspicions Adam had had even before testing Richard. But if Richard was immortal back then, why had he bled? And how had he come to be the leader of these people? And what had be been doing on a train in Spain in 1906?
The next day, a distant rumbling in the jungle jolted him out of his thoughts and reminded him that, in this place, the normal rules didn’t apply. Adam stood still, hoping the thing would pass without realizing he was there. There was a strange electrical noise, and then silence.
If that thing could exist, then surely there could be variations on Adam’s condition.
On the second day, Adam’s stream led him to a clearing. Within moments, the natives stood before him, having jumped out of absolutely nowhere. Some trained guns on him while others started throwing ash for no apparent reason.
Adam found them all ridiculous.
“I want to see Richard,” he demanded.
They conferred amongst themselves. A plucky but humorless-looking blond girl finally stepped forward. “If we let you see him, will you agree to remain in an ash circle?” she asked in an unexpected British accent.
Adam tried not to laugh. “You have my word.”
A few minutes after they’d finished throwing more ash around him, Richard approached. Now that Adam had more time to look at him, he noticed the change. He couldn’t figure out if it was because time had passed or if it was because they were now on Richard’s home turf, but the man who stood before him was much more self-confident than the one he’d spent that week with in Spain. Confidence looked even better on Richard.
“It’s nice to see you again,” Adam said as casually as possible, sticking his hands in his pockets for dramatic effect. "What's the ash for?"
“You know this man?” the blonde with the gun piped up.
Richard ignored her, remaining focused on Adam. “It’s for our protection, as you well know."
"I promise you, I don't."
"Are you saying you're not him?"
"Him who?"
Richard thought, and then said, “Here’s a test. Try to step out of the ash.”
Adam wondered if perhaps this was a local ritual all newcomers were obliged to perform. Whatever it was, he was game. Adam stepped over the ash ring to the murmured astonishment of the group. He calmly walked toward Richard and offered him his hand. “Is that all?”
Richard stared and then tentatively shook it. The handshake turned into a hug. Realization seemed to dawn. “It’s okay, everyone, it’s all okay.”
Thankfully, everyone finally stopped shaking (not that Adam didn’t enjoy inspiring a bit of Machiavellian fear, but it was less satisfying when he didn’t know why people were afraid of him).
Sadly, though, Richard immediately jumped to a new incomprehensible assumption. “You must be with the people who were here yesterday.”
Adam took back his earlier mental compliment: Richard was just as strangely clueless as he’d ever been, only now he had ceased to make any sense at all. “No, if you remember, your people killed all of my men two days ago. I’ve been on my own since then. Now will you or won’t you tell me what the hell is going on?”
“Come with me.”
“You were right, you know," Adam remarked as they walked to a camp in the clearing. "This is a place I most definitely have never heard of."
"I know. It's a lot to take in."
The entered a dark and musty tent. Once they were were alone, Richard took off the mask of leadership he'd been wearing. Adam was glad to see a return to the man he remembered. "I can't believe I'm seeing you again," Richard smiled.
"Me neither. But honestly, now, where are we, and how are you still alive?”
Richard sat down in an old wooden chair and motioned for Adam to do the same. “Where we are… it’s too complicated to explain. And as for how I’m still alive, it’s because of Jacob, obviously.” It was far from obvious to Adam, but Richard continued, “He must have found out about us somehow. Maybe he brought you here as a favor to me. I’ve often thought about that week, you know. It was the only time I've had... something just for me.”
“Who is Jacob?” Adam asked, too mystified to respond with anything else, but at least gratified by the compliment and Richard's affectionate twinkle.
“He brought you to this island, just as he brought me and everyone else you’ve seen. But you ought to know that. If you aren’t one of yesterday’s time travelers, that means he must have done the same thing to you that he did to me.”
“No, I’m like this of my own accord,” Adam replied.
“Really? How?”
Adam’s mind was distracted as he gave Richard a brief explanation: even beyond the fact that there were multiple time travelers, there was also someone who could hand out a gift like Adam’s to whomever he wanted. This was power he’d never imagined, far beyond a bomb. When he’d finished and given Richard a minute to digest the revelation, he asked, “Is Jacob here? I’d like to meet him.”
“It doesn’t work like that.”
Adam rolled his eyes. “Of course it doesn’t.”
“You can’t demand to be taken to Jacob. He has to invite you, and I am the only person he ever invites.”
Something about the way Richard looked at the ground as he said it confirmed whom Richard had been cheating on all those years ago. Adam gloated to himself. “And how often is that?”
“It varies. I saw him last week. He said that a ship was coming. He didn’t give me the usual list of names, but he did say that I was free to handle the situation in whatever way I thought best. I think he was giving us his blessing.”
The only thing Adam liked less than that unsettling smoke thing was the idea of some all-knowing, all-powerful being giving him his blessing to do anything---even if it was something as pleasant as Richard.
Adam didn’t like this, didn’t like it at all, but then Richard smiled that beautiful smile he remembered. It was good to see the man again, and it was a relief after all these years to have someone to whom he could relate (with this Jacob in the equation, the idea of killing Richard was now out of the question).
At least he’d be diverted while he figured out a plan.
Rating: PG13
Words: 2446
Spoilers: All you need to know from Heroes is who Adam is; through Ab Aeterno for Lost
Summary: Adam's the captain of a US Army crew in the South Pacific in 1954.
A/N: Written for catoasapun for the Five Acts meme. It was supposed to be a drabble, but got really out of control.
Adam had been stuck in worse pickles than this before, but rarely before had he felt so annoyed. It was hot, it was humid, there was sand in his shoes, and the men were whining like little girls. To make matters worse, they were whining in American accents, which he’d always found irritating. The sounds he was being forced to make strained his throat (and his ears) and worsened his already foul mood.
It wasn’t the specific island they were looking for, but the ship’s navigation system had gotten mixed up in the storm and, given that something seemed to be wrong with the bomb, they’d needed to land somewhere as soon as possible, and this island had been the first landmass they'd seen. Adam was the commanding officer on this mission, and he figured that one deserted island was as good as another for these tests.
And as if all that weren’t enough, there was that thing no one wanted to talk about. Adam had seen a lot of during his time, but he’d never seen black smoke that could pull a man thirty feet into the air and eviscerate him. That was beyond individuals with special powers; that was just crazy.
At least after 300-odd years, the world still had the power to surprise him.
Adam knew islands like this usually had a central valley below the volcano that would be suitable for the tests he and his troops had come to perform, and that’s where they were headed. He’d been in Verdun during Hiroshima, making a fortune off of Frenchmen betraying their own country, so he hadn’t been able to see first-hand what these things could do. It seemed like the perfect tool for his longer-range plans. Not afraid of anything that would come from being so close to the explosion, Adam was eager to see a hydrogen bomb in action, so he’d maneuvered his way into his current role.
After four days of walking, Adam had a feeling they were getting close to the center of the island, and the sooner they got there, the better. His men were dropping like flies. One by one, they were succumbing first to fevers and shakes, and then excessive vomiting, which, in a place where fresh water had to be rationed, no one could afford. Adam, of course, was fine, and his subordinates took this as a sign of the toughness that had gotten such a young man promoted through the ranks.
He was about to suggest that they stop for a brief rest, but his words were interrupted by an ambush of flaming arrows. He watched, open-mouthed, as most of his men went up in flames. A couple of arrows pierced his leg, but he quickly pulled them out and stamped on the flame.
As soon as almost everyone had been shot, the archers appeared out of the trees. Instead of the Pacific Islanders he’d encountered on previous trips to the region, Adam was surprised to see, for the most part, a group of bedraggled white people who looked just as shipwrecked as himself. Adam’s eyes widened in even greater shock when he spotted their leader (Adam assumed he was the leader judging from his apparent access to showers and clothing stores that the rest of them lacked). He was the kind of handsome that doesn’t come along more than once a millennium.
The problem was that he had come along, about fifty years before. Adam remembered immediately: a train car on his way from London to Morocco that he’d had to himself until a stranger had come to share it with him. Adam had watched him with curious interest. The man had inspected everything---the cars they passed on the road, the drinks a waitress brought them, Adam’s newspaper---with the wide-eyed wonder of a four-year-old. However, when Adam had tried to actually talk to him, he’d displayed the kind of world-weariness that only someone as old as Adam himself could or should feel. It was a strange dichotomy.
“Where are you from?”
“You haven’t heard of it.”
“I’m well-traveled; try me.”
“Take my word for it, it’s nowhere you’ve ever been.”
“Fine then… where are you headed now?”
“The Canary Islands.”
“Why?”
“I used to live there, but it’s been a long time. I want to see what it’s like now.”
These were the sort of evasive, double-entendre non-answers Adam gave all the time, and they sent alarm bells ringing. He’d run into two other regenerators like himself over the centuries; he’d quickly dispatched both of them with a bullet to the head. Adam didn’t like competition. Watching Richard and listening to his odd accent---so hard to place---he almost regretted in advance what he was going to have to do… but not before he had a little fun first.
Adam was used to taking whatever he wanted, and Richard made a gorgeous trophy. Although quiet, Richard turned out to be eager for human contact. It wasn’t hard to convince him to spend a few days with Adam in Gibraltar before they parted ways---Adam for a ferry to Tangiers and Richard on a ship headed for Tenerife.
Richard seemed to experience Adam’s flirtations the same way he experienced the train---as something surprising and new and exciting. Adam had wondered where the man lived to be so unaccustomed to advances such as his own. Was it some sort of colony of blind fools? Richard’s hesitation about sharing a room with Adam had also given Adam the feeling that, although enjoying himself, Richard had someone back wherever he came from and was feeling guilty. But Adam didn’t pry; it wasn’t any of his business.
Despite his shyness and rough social skills, Richard had turned out to be a pleasant enough companion, not to mention incredibly easy on the eyes. Their liaison also proved convenient; since Adam hadn’t yet gotten around to learning Spanish, Richard took care of all of their interactions. Not that they did very much talking… but when they did, Adam did most of it. Richard was an adorably ardent listener; no one had made him feel this interesting in years.
Days passed and they’d continued on in Gibraltar, eating long breakfasts and spending most of their days in the hotel room---all ways of delaying the inevitable fact that Adam would have to kill this rival, no matter how much he'd come to like him. However, as time went by, Adam had begun to have doubts that this man had an ability, much less the same one; how could an immortal be so staggeringly ignorant of, well, everything?
One morning, after stalling for almost a week, Adam decided to run a test. His pen-knife just happened to scratch Richard on the forearm. The man had bled like a human, and the next day, a small scab still remained. That had settled it, and Adam was relieved, for multiple reasons. However, even when they’d finally parted ways, Adam still couldn’t shake feeling that there was more to Richard than met the eye.
And now, here on this godforsaken rock, Adam was finding himself proven right about something he’d long stopped thinking about. Richard was no more changed in appearance than Adam himself.
Masking his surprise with cheeky bravado, Adam winked at him. Richard stopped in his tracks.
“Adam?” he mouthed.
What followed was very confusing. Adam expected Richard to be shocked, but not unreasonably so. Therefore, when Richard’s face twisted into a (still handsome) mask of terror and he tripped backwards, Adam thought the fellow was taking it all entirely too hard. And when Richard screamed, “It’s him! Run for your lives!” just before taking off into the woods, Adam couldn’t help but feel insulted. He’d been so uncharacteristically kind to Richard, and he’d worked so hard to leave the man with nothing but good memories; why the panic?
Richard’s people lost no time in disappearing, and everyone else in Adam’s party was dead. The bomb lay leaking in the grass. Without the team, there could be no experiment; Adam didn’t know enough about the science of the thing to run them himself. He wanted to find Richard and question him, but the natives hadn’t even left any tracks. His only option now was to get back to the ship and try to sail it himself. He needed to find water and maybe some more fruit. Everything had been picked on the trail that he and his men had been taking, so Adam tried a new direction. He decided to follow a nearby stream, with the expectation that once he reached the shore, he’d circle along the beach to get back to the ship.
With no one to interrupt his thoughts, Adam was able to dissect the situation and weigh all the various facts. Richard was definitely immortal now even if he hadn’t been back in 1900. Perhaps the ability hadn’t kicked in yet? However, that theory ran counter to the suspicions Adam had had even before testing Richard. But if Richard was immortal back then, why had he bled? And how had he come to be the leader of these people? And what had be been doing on a train in Spain in 1906?
The next day, a distant rumbling in the jungle jolted him out of his thoughts and reminded him that, in this place, the normal rules didn’t apply. Adam stood still, hoping the thing would pass without realizing he was there. There was a strange electrical noise, and then silence.
If that thing could exist, then surely there could be variations on Adam’s condition.
On the second day, Adam’s stream led him to a clearing. Within moments, the natives stood before him, having jumped out of absolutely nowhere. Some trained guns on him while others started throwing ash for no apparent reason.
Adam found them all ridiculous.
“I want to see Richard,” he demanded.
They conferred amongst themselves. A plucky but humorless-looking blond girl finally stepped forward. “If we let you see him, will you agree to remain in an ash circle?” she asked in an unexpected British accent.
Adam tried not to laugh. “You have my word.”
A few minutes after they’d finished throwing more ash around him, Richard approached. Now that Adam had more time to look at him, he noticed the change. He couldn’t figure out if it was because time had passed or if it was because they were now on Richard’s home turf, but the man who stood before him was much more self-confident than the one he’d spent that week with in Spain. Confidence looked even better on Richard.
“It’s nice to see you again,” Adam said as casually as possible, sticking his hands in his pockets for dramatic effect. "What's the ash for?"
“You know this man?” the blonde with the gun piped up.
Richard ignored her, remaining focused on Adam. “It’s for our protection, as you well know."
"I promise you, I don't."
"Are you saying you're not him?"
"Him who?"
Richard thought, and then said, “Here’s a test. Try to step out of the ash.”
Adam wondered if perhaps this was a local ritual all newcomers were obliged to perform. Whatever it was, he was game. Adam stepped over the ash ring to the murmured astonishment of the group. He calmly walked toward Richard and offered him his hand. “Is that all?”
Richard stared and then tentatively shook it. The handshake turned into a hug. Realization seemed to dawn. “It’s okay, everyone, it’s all okay.”
Thankfully, everyone finally stopped shaking (not that Adam didn’t enjoy inspiring a bit of Machiavellian fear, but it was less satisfying when he didn’t know why people were afraid of him).
Sadly, though, Richard immediately jumped to a new incomprehensible assumption. “You must be with the people who were here yesterday.”
Adam took back his earlier mental compliment: Richard was just as strangely clueless as he’d ever been, only now he had ceased to make any sense at all. “No, if you remember, your people killed all of my men two days ago. I’ve been on my own since then. Now will you or won’t you tell me what the hell is going on?”
“Come with me.”
“You were right, you know," Adam remarked as they walked to a camp in the clearing. "This is a place I most definitely have never heard of."
"I know. It's a lot to take in."
The entered a dark and musty tent. Once they were were alone, Richard took off the mask of leadership he'd been wearing. Adam was glad to see a return to the man he remembered. "I can't believe I'm seeing you again," Richard smiled.
"Me neither. But honestly, now, where are we, and how are you still alive?”
Richard sat down in an old wooden chair and motioned for Adam to do the same. “Where we are… it’s too complicated to explain. And as for how I’m still alive, it’s because of Jacob, obviously.” It was far from obvious to Adam, but Richard continued, “He must have found out about us somehow. Maybe he brought you here as a favor to me. I’ve often thought about that week, you know. It was the only time I've had... something just for me.”
“Who is Jacob?” Adam asked, too mystified to respond with anything else, but at least gratified by the compliment and Richard's affectionate twinkle.
“He brought you to this island, just as he brought me and everyone else you’ve seen. But you ought to know that. If you aren’t one of yesterday’s time travelers, that means he must have done the same thing to you that he did to me.”
“No, I’m like this of my own accord,” Adam replied.
“Really? How?”
Adam’s mind was distracted as he gave Richard a brief explanation: even beyond the fact that there were multiple time travelers, there was also someone who could hand out a gift like Adam’s to whomever he wanted. This was power he’d never imagined, far beyond a bomb. When he’d finished and given Richard a minute to digest the revelation, he asked, “Is Jacob here? I’d like to meet him.”
“It doesn’t work like that.”
Adam rolled his eyes. “Of course it doesn’t.”
“You can’t demand to be taken to Jacob. He has to invite you, and I am the only person he ever invites.”
Something about the way Richard looked at the ground as he said it confirmed whom Richard had been cheating on all those years ago. Adam gloated to himself. “And how often is that?”
“It varies. I saw him last week. He said that a ship was coming. He didn’t give me the usual list of names, but he did say that I was free to handle the situation in whatever way I thought best. I think he was giving us his blessing.”
The only thing Adam liked less than that unsettling smoke thing was the idea of some all-knowing, all-powerful being giving him his blessing to do anything---even if it was something as pleasant as Richard.
Adam didn’t like this, didn’t like it at all, but then Richard smiled that beautiful smile he remembered. It was good to see the man again, and it was a relief after all these years to have someone to whom he could relate (with this Jacob in the equation, the idea of killing Richard was now out of the question).
At least he’d be diverted while he figured out a plan.