fic: it's so cold in alaska (heroes)
it's so cold in alaska
fandom: heroes
disclaimer: not mine
rating: pg-13
word count: 1357
characters/pairings: adam; adam/eden
summary: they meet in the gaps - the past, the present, the future never to come.
notes: yeah, i went there. written for
saint_renegade, as per her request. the fic is mainly AU, slight spoilers for recent episodes - nothing major.
but she’s not afraid to die
the people all call her alaska
(stephanie says; the velvet underground)
-
He runs.
It starts like this: she’s running, too.
-
It’s near biblical, really: Adam and Eden, Adam in Eden, sharp downfalls and the like.
It will become exactly what you think.
-
Little girl lost rings too sad like a cliché, and it’s one thing when you kill on accident, one thing when you get your own way through a stumble, but it is something, it is something entirely different when you place a thing like purpose behind each and every spoken word.
There is this thing called blame that can be suddenly placed, and at times, shaken. Eden knows.
Eden knows, and the key point here is simple. It’s that Adam knows, too.
-
At one point, there is a bar with the cold, dark wood paneling and the expanse of empty stools. The bartender has that sad, middle-aged scowl to him, the jutting belly hanging over the top of his jeans.
There is a girl with dark brown hair and big brown eyes. There is an ashtray filled before her and a lit cigarette between her fingers. Adam can feel a smile trying there, stretching at the corners of his mouth; she sips her martini like she’s seen too many old films, trying too hard for Bergman or Hayworth and tragically stuck here instead. There is country music playing from a jukebox.
She looks young. These things, they matter to him.
-
She skipped childhood - a man can tell, the way she holds her head, the shoulders rolled back, that precocious kind of posturing.
He presses his palm flat against the bar, the smoke, it curls, and the girl, she grins.
“You want to buy me a drink,” she says with a laugh, and then, lower still, “you’re going to buy me a drink.” There is a small amusement there.
His fingers slip against his wallet.
-
“Adam,” he offers, his hand extended.
“Eden,” she answers as she takes it.
Her hand is warm.
-
Later, it’s “you’ve really got quite a way with…” men, he almost says, feels it strangely out of line; he rejoins with “people” instead. Her eyes read something like suspcision.
Her cheeks flush, vodka in her glass.
“You been in the states long?” comes the change in subject and a middle-aged couple is struggling for square dancing as a cowboy sings about his long lost love, dead in a river somewhere. Her legs are crossed.
“Ages, love,” and he laughs, trips, in a sense.
Sometimes these things can ring familiar.
-
Once there were swords and men they call legends.
He learns things, both fast and slow, as time, it starts to accumulate.
The arrows may pierce, and they definitely will sting, hurt like bloody hell, but he’ll still live, the wounds will close. He knows this, he’s experienced it.
It just took him awhile to learn that there were others.
-
There is a motel she is calling home for the moment and the door opens with a long creak and a whine. Dust collects.
He shuts the door behind him.
The lock will click in place.
-
There were thirty years marked up and down walls, a quiet pacing, the back of the room to the front. A man can learn much in captivity, he imagined, a concept not lost on the greats, on Dumas, on grand tales of revenge and retribution.
There was no tunneling through concrete, no escape through brick.
Even then, his heart still beat.
Four hundred years - they pass in a blink.
Escape came quietly.
-
“I’m curious, Eden,” he says, her name heavy in the room, “but what’s a girl like yourself doing out here, all by your lonesome, highway bars and…dank motels?”
Her pupils are blown, lip caught beneath her teeth and she sways, slight, alcohol heady in her system. The mattress dips first beneath her as she sits, and then him.
“You want the truth?” her voice shy and quiet. “Tell me you want to hear the truth.”
He frowns. “I want to hear the truth.”
She leans back, away from him.
“I killed someone. I killed,” and she pauses, the name stillborn behind her lips, “someone.”
He could almost laugh.
“Darling,” his mouth hot against her ear and her breath catches, “I am positive I’ve got you beat there.”
When his lips slip near her jaw line her sigh sounds much more like a moan.
-
A sword always felt natural, clutched between fingers.
There are other ways to kill, vengeance found in the strangest of places.
-
Her lips are soft, beneath his own, and her fingers catch, sliding under and past the collar of his shirt. Her hands press flat against his chest, bare, her small fingers.
She tastes sharp, and he likes it, his body tensed above her.
Her knee bumps his ribs, legs spreading, and he groans; their hips meet.
He can feel her heart pound.
-
At one point, he starts collecting names.
Next came the addresses.
He’ll still read Hemingway; he’ll still pause outside motels - and wonder.
-
The room is dark and the television struggles against the static, reaching towards defeat. Conan’s face reads as scrambled and the laughter doesn’t translate.
“I’ll tell you a secret,” Eden whispers; the clock reads 2:14 in the morning. “You know, there have been a lot of motels, a lot of them. And sometimes I wake up, or maybe right before I go to sleep, and I, I think. I’m never leaving this room alive.”
The crickets chirp outside the window, shut tight against the night.
Her voice had almost wavered on the word secret. He is choosing to let that slide. The sheets scratch against his ankles.
“Dramatic much?” he drawls against her temple.
The mattress squeaks. She giggles.
The floral bedspread is crumpled along the floor.
He kisses her.
-
What is a man who shall never know peace? What is it to be restless, a near constant state, wandering from one city, one life, to the next?
Adam is not clear on much - he has watched horses give way to automobiles, trains across countries, continents, planes that rise, steel climbing, time slipping.
Despite this, he is pretty sure he is the answering end of this particular riddle.
-
Eden curls, in her sleep, pale shoulders over white sheets, knees to chest, his body fitting tight behind her. His fingers span her hip, the skin warm. A car horn blares, far away.
And there is the quiet, there is the quiet, there is the calm and sheets are cold upon his shins. There is the quiet.
He can breathe, and for once, it is almost not a disappointment.
-
“A man crafts his own prison,” he will tell them, first, and, maybe, yes, a smile will flash, “and it’s he himself who shall set him free.”
He will come to live a thousand lifetimes.
(She (they?) only gets this one).
-
Morning comes with emptiness and Eden looks small, jeans and a t-shirt. She packs a red suitcase, slips a headband in her hair.
He watches.
“You know,” she says, one hand on the doorknob, “I’m sure we’ll meet again.”
-
Time passes, as it always does.
He is an old man who has seen too many winters come and go. The leaves will give way to snow then over and out to spring, buds and green grass and open, waiting umbrellas.
A girl was found face down in a lake, floating, floating away.
-
Sometimes, a gun will fire.
-
The door locks behind him, once, and Elle talks of setting a house on fire, flames that lick, and Adam, he swallows hard.
There’s a flash of dark hair and a girl who deserved better than all of this.
He caves, once.
Someday, soon, a neck might snap.
History waits.
-
fin.