Title: Together We’ll Make Our Escape
Summary: Heroes/Young and the Restless crossover. Patty brought Elle to Genoa City once, with a phone call she’s doing it again when Adam forces her to help him escape.
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Adam Wilson/Elle Bishop, mentions Adam/Sharon
Spoilers: Through the Masquerade Ball of Y&R, S4 of Heroes
Word Count: 3102
Disclaimer: The Young and the Restless nor Heroes are owned by me, but by CBS and Tim Kring. I’m simply borrowing these characters for non-profit entertainment.
A/N: Familiar with one character and not the other? No worries. All you really need to know is that they’re two sociopaths with daddy issues who both know a thing or two about imprisonment. Oh, and VM fans would recognize this Adam as a former Neptune Sheriff ;)
~~
After she had talked to Jack, Patty continued to pace through Adam’s otherwise empty hospital room. There was one more person she knew she had to call. If she was going to help Adam without raising anyone’s suspicions she would need help. There was only one person she knew who would understand and be willing to help Adam. At least in theory for the latter.
Samuel had found Elle when she had been wandering through Genoa City’s own carnival that previous October and he had convinced her to rejoin her own kind. Her true family, as he had called them. She had hated the idea of leaving Adam, but she knew that if she had stayed with him in Genoa City she would have fried every member of his family and then some for how they treated him. She had decided she had to leave before she did something that would nearly cost her her life once again.
Since Samuel had been arrested and separated from the other specials, rendering him powerless, everyone had pretty much split up and gone their own ways. Elle had followed their lead, once again trying to establish herself in a new place on her own. Not that she often did well on her own, but so far she had been doing well.
“Pick up, pick up, come on, Elle, I know you still use this phone,” Patty went on as she paced the length of the room.
“Hello,” Elle sighed when she answered after the fifth ring.
“Elle! Finally. It’s Patty.”
Elle thought for a moment, then looked to her phone to get a look at the Caller ID. It said Emily Peterson, which didn’t help her. “Patty? As in -” She couldn’t get her hopes up, but her heart rate was increasing all the same.
“Abbott, Genoa City, yes. In fact that’s why I’m calling. I don’t know exactly why, or really when you left, but if it was Adam -”
Elle felt a pang of guilt at the man’s name. She had barely even said goodbye when she had chosen the carnival. “It wasn’t Adam. I just -”
“Well, good, because he’s why I’m calling.”
“Is he okay?”
With her hand to her forehead, Patty contemplated how to tell the younger woman since she knew Elle had once been so taken with him. “So much has happened since you left. I assume you know the things Adam did?”
“Ashley and the others?”
“He told you?” Patty was stunned, he hadn’t even told her most of those things when he had been hiding her in the potting shed.
“Why did you call, Patty? What’s wrong with Adam?”
She scoffed, she wished she knew herself. But she knew what Elle was asking. “Everyone knows what he’s done now and he’s been ordered to go back to jail because of his crimes. Only there’s a lot more to this story that I can’t tell you over the phone. The short version is that I need you to come back to Genoa City and it’s not an exaggeration when I tell you that right now wouldn’t be soon enough.”
Elle really didn’t need any more convincing then that. Adam had essentially tortured his own family, but by all accounts that mattered they had deserved it and he had been nice to her. So nice she had regretted leaving him almost since the minute she had. And okay, being a hero had definitely never been her strong suit, but then people would say that Adam was a monster just like her… Monsters like them had to stick together.
**
“I’m here,” Elle stated when Patty answered her phone an hour later. She would thank Hiro Nakamura for the transport later, right now she had a fellow villain to help.
“Are you outside of the Athletic Club?” she asked her.
“Where else?” she scoffed. Was there anywhere else really to go in Genoa City?
Peering around the corner outside of the building, she could see her and hung up her cell without another word. “Elle,” she called quietly.
The petite blonde turned and then went over to her. “What is this, Patty? Where’s Adam?”
“There’s a masquerade ball going on inside,” she sighed as she took her mask off. “Anyway, right now he’s in the basement and that’s where I’ll need to be soon. Adam will have to explain the rest, there isn’t time now. Did you bring a car?”
“I had a - someone - drop me off,” she told her, failing to meet her eyes.
“I know you know how to hotwire one, take whatever car you want and wait for Adam to come out of the basement. He knows I’ve arranged transport for him out of Genoa City, but he doesn’t know that it’s you since I didn’t want to risk him not following the plan like we talked about.”
Elle couldn’t be surprised Adam had something on Patty in order for her to be helping him after how he had used her in his previous plot, he had something on everyone he knew. Even her since he knew about her power. Now all she had to do was find a car with a full tank of gas, disable the GPS tracker and have it ready and waiting for when he came running out without anyone noticing.
“Is your friend coming through?” Adam asked when Patty walked back up to him in the middle of the main room of the Athletic Club.
“She’s waiting for you now.”
“Good girl, Patty. Pretty soon this will all be over and so long as you continue to play your part you never have to worry about Jack knowing your secret.”
From behind her mask, Patty glared. This was supposed to be over the second Adam was out of town. She needed Jack to go on believing she was Emily, she couldn’t lose him again. Not after all of this.
**
When the explosion came, Elle swore she could feel the whole ground shake beneath the car she had chosen. She knew it hadn’t been her imagination when the sound of every car alarm in the lot went off.
People were running, screaming and trying to get as far from the club as possible as quickly as they could. Patty hadn’t told her about this, but she knew it had to be Adam’s plan. He would need a big diversion if he hoped to avoid his family and the cops. And of course he would do this during the Genoa City social event of the year, she mused. She knew she had liked him for a reason.
Sure enough there was a black-clad man escaping out a back door and she drove straight to him, keeping the headlights off for the time being to not draw attention.
Adam climbed in without a second thought and slammed the door after himself. He was almost surprised when he felt the car jerk ahead without him even having to signal the driver. Had this person been a getaway driver before or did she just like to drive fast? He wouldn’t put it past Patty, really. How many institutions had she escaped from? It made sense to him.
As much as Elle wanted to have the reunion part of her had been dreaming of for the last six months, she kept quiet. Now wasn’t the time. She had to get Adam out of Genoa City. But she had to be smart. When she pulled onto the main road she turned the headlights on, slowed the car to match the speed limit and stopped at every stop sign.
“I’m not sure what Patty told you,” Adam finally stated as he lifted his mask off, “but I’ll be able to pay you for this when we get to wherever.”
“I’m not doing this for money,” she replied, almost pained at the thought he wouldn’t even recognize her voice.
“Then why?” he asked as he took his hat off and tossed it into the backseat, running his hands over his hair to muss it just enough in the hope it would cool him off sooner. He let his cape join the hat a second later.
“Because I know what it’s like.”
The yellow streetlights leading to the highway didn’t give him nearly enough light to see her, especially not with his tunnel vision, but he was beginning to wonder just who this could be. Someone who could understand, someone who didn’t claim to need the money he was willing to give her, someone who smelled like jasmine and vanilla and was willing to help him without question… Could it really be?
“How do you know what it’s like?” he asked, deciding to get his answer. Elle had told him those months ago how she had come to Genoa City and through that he knew that she knew Patty, so unless she chose now to lie to him…
“Patty once gave me a ride out of town after someone tried to kill me.”
Adam’s heart all but stopped. “Elle.”
“She called me, essentially letting me know it was time to repay the favor. When I knew it was you who needed my help I, well, here I am. So motel or do we take our chances with the potential road blocks?”
“Motel. Just one that’s as far from here as we can get tonight.”
They spent the next two hours of their drive in silence, Elle not wanting to know what had brought Adam to this point just then. The last thing she needed, she knew, was an excuse to turn the car around to torture those she wouldn’t have been surprised to hear had tortured Adam. The cuts and bruises on his face said it all - there had definitely been some kind of fight.
The last time she had seen him he had just gone back to work at Newman Enterprises and no one had been the wiser about anything he had done within those previous months. Meanwhile she was afraid he would try to get her to talk about the carnival and if there was anything she wanted to avoid talking about more than Adam’s family, it was Samuel and the carnival.
“Chicago, good call,” he smiled to her when she pulled into a motel lot almost as soon as they reached the city.
“They wouldn’t think to look here, would they?”
Adam shrugged. “If they do it won’t be until morning and I figure we’ll be out of here by then. I just need to make a few calls.”
“We?” she asked, her question causing him to stop when he went to reach for the door handle.
“How about we talk about it inside?” he asked with a nod to the motel ahead of them. He knew they needed to get inside just in case someone - anyone - had followed them and he really wasn’t sure he wanted to have this conversation in a car with her. He knew what she could do, surviving one explosion a night was his limit.
Elle only nodded before she stepped out of the car and headed towards the office with Adam right behind her.
He waited outside while she paid for their room with some of the cash Adam had taken from Patty’s wallet and silently led him to the room the night manager had given her the key to.
Adam flicked on the lights and watched as Elle crossed the room. It was small. mostly bare and only had the one bed, but it would do for the next few hours. He thought back to the night he had first seen her, she almost looked the same now. Dryer, but just as wary.
“I have some arrangements I need to make,” he told her finally, “but before I do, there are some things I need to tell you and then you can decide if you still want me to have meant ‘we’ back in the car.”
“Go ahead,” she told him as she took a seat on the side of the bed.
Adam took a deep breath, he had an idea it would be his last of the night. “Things, several things, changed after you left. I’d really started to regret the things I’d done and tried to fix the hurt I’d caused. For some, at least. Long story short, I became friends with the woman who’s baby I took.”
Elle scoffed, nearly laughing in her disbelief. Of course he had. “Close friends, I take it?”
“At Christmas we got married.”
"Married?" Elle asked, already feeling her electric energy building in her fury.
"Yes. But she wasn't you and no matter how much she looked like you at times - "
"You married a woman who looks like me?" She wasn't getting any happier and if he kept going like he was she wouldn't be able to stop herself from showing him just how angry his confession was making her.
"You left me, Elle. You left me there, alone, with barely a goodbye. You went back to your specials, to your people, as you put it to me. I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn't take being alone and I was trying to set right what I had done. I didn’t expect what happened, but she wasn't you and now even she's turned on me. I missed you every damn day no matter how hard I tried to forget. It didn't matter - I wanted you and I had no idea if you were even still in the country or even alive or would ever come back."
He had missed her? Elle knew she couldn't deny missing him even if she wanted to. Why else would she have taken Patty’s call and run the risk of calling in Hiro’s help to get her back to Genoa City?
"I never had to lie to you or hide anything from you. You already knew what I did, from the day I did it. You know the worst of it and you never turned on me. You were the one person I didn't have to watch what I said around and until you left I thought you were the one person who could truly understand just how alone I felt when I was stuck at that godforsaken ranch. I loved you then, I loved you when you left and god help me, I still love you."
"Does that matter? You're sorry for what you've put some of your family through, and I’m willing to bet you told your wife you loved her more than once, but that clearly doesn't matter to them. So does the fact you love me matter to you?" Elle couldn't let herself get sucked in if he was just going to let her walk away again. He was still married, apparently, so who knew what would come next.
Adam walked over to her then, finally taking a seat beside her before saying, "You would have been the one with me in Tahoe at Christmas, we probably would've spent Thanksgiving at the club just to spend it together if it hadn't been for that carnival. Right here and now, you would've been my wife. I've never stopped thinking about that. So, yes, to me it does matter. I guess the question now is does it matter to you?"
"I wouldn't have come back to Genoa City, certainly not to save you from your very own lynch mob if I didn’t still care about you. I thought about you every day that I was at that carnival and then Claire and Bennet just had to go and ruin it. I'd hoped one good thing could come of that. And when Patty called me I’d just hoped that I could come back here and we could pick up where we left off."
"We could, Elle. Sharon’s about to hear she’s a widow and before that she had me served with annulment papers anyway. Getting away from there, from all of them, will be the only thing that will keep me alive. Literally. This,” he indicated to his bruised and slightly cut face, “came from my own father and then my brother tried to strangle me. Unless you have your heart set on Genoa City, there are other places we could go and live the way we should have already been living. Together.”
It wasn't as though he would be throwing his marriage away for her, she knew. Clearly that was over anyway. Did she love him? Assuming love was what she believed it to be, then yes. And the way he had said that he still loved her - well, she would be lying if she said it didn't still have the same effect on her that it'd had that summer.
“So you meant it? Back in the car? You and me?”
Adam nodded. “I want you with me, Elle. I lost you once and I just can’t go through that again. Not now that you’re here, not when you helped me like this when you knew you didn’t have to.”
"Then when do we leave?" she asked him finally.
He smiled. “Let’s find out,” he told her as he reached into the breast pocket of his tuxedo jacket for the disposable cell phone Patty had gotten for him.
Within the next two hours Adam and Elle both had new passports, a ride to the airport and plane tickets to their very own island paradise waiting for them.
While Genoa City awoke to the news that the burned body in the basement of the GCAC was Adam’s, Adam and Elle awoke to the light of the morning sun pouring into their room of the island resort hotel they would be staying at until they found a home of their own on the island. It wouldn’t be long, they knew, but for now this was good enough.
Elle softly moaned her approval when she felt Adam’s lips kissing along her arm and shoulder, trailing higher to her collarbone and neck as she began to realize this was no dream. Adam, the sound of the waves crashing in the distance, the island, the very definition of perfect weather and scenery - it was all real.
No one knew them here, nor the things they had done, they wouldn’t have to hide, they were far from those they had feared and most importantly they had each other again. Just like that they both knew that this indeed truly was and would continue to be their paradise.
The End