Like A Record Going Round - Heroes - Adam/Monica
Title: Like A Record Going Round
Pairing: Adam/Monica
Word Count: 2769
Rating: PG-13
A/N: For Babylon_pride's birthday! It's totally, totally late - I blame the eighteenth century. It's been kicking my ass. This is set in the future of I Am Become Death, has a pre-established relationship between Adam and Monica, and totally denies any canon happens further on from that. The title is taken from Will Young's Changes (no mocking my dorky music taste, Cristy!) and I used a_to_z_prompts's "blue-eyed" prompt for this. Happy late birthday, Cristy. I wouldn't be half as crazy as I currently am if it wasn't for your awesome influence. :D
Summary: As a member of Peter and Hiro's resistance movement, Monica has a decision to make.
She wakes in a bed that smells of fresh laundry. Soap. Clean. Safe. Lying on her stomach, she groans and shifts her face away from the window and the bright sunlight that it offers. Morning already. It feels like she only got to bed a few hours ago.
A glance to the clock confirms that idea. It's eight o'clock. She didn't manage to sneak back home until six.
"Good morning," Adam says, lying in bed with her. His voice is unslurred by sleep, each syllable as bright and crisp as it had been on the day she'd met him. He presses his lips gently against the curve of her shoulder, his hand resting on her back. "Sleep well?"
"Fine," Monica says. She rubs her eyes with the back of her hand and fights a yawn. "Just fine."
"You look shattered."
"Gotta get up." Monica groans at the very idea. "Got work in an hour."
Work. It pays the bills, sure. Her half of the bills. Adam seems to have an endless amount of priceless items stashed in various corners of the world, ready to be sold off when he need some funds.
"You could quit," Adam suggests, just like he always does, with his fingers tracing tempting circles on her back. "Stay at home with me."
She smiles warmly. "I'm not gonna be your kept woman, Adam. Nice as that sounds…"
"That's not what you want. I know." And it irritates him, she can tell. It irritates him that she can't give up these vestiges of that life when he has given up so much for her. He's surrendered everything; he's turned his life around, embraced humanity, and struggles daily to get that superiority complex of his under control.
And her?
She can't even settle down. Can't be happy. Can't be normal.
"Are you alright?" he asks her, blue eyes concerned.
I broke into the president's office last night, she wants to confess. I'm sorry.
But she smiles instead, shuffling towards him and the warmth of his body, nude beneath the sheets. "I'm fine," she promises. "Just figuring out how much longer I can stay in bed."
"Ah. And how long is that?" Adam says. His fingers stroke down the length of her spine, effortlessly making her shiver, but when he reaches the hastily pieced-together bandage on her side he pauses. She tries not to wince or cringe as he sits up, pulling the sheets down and peeling the gauze back from her skin.
"It's not as bad as it looks," she says immediately. It looks bad, grazed by a bullet on her way out. If she'd been one second slower she'd be dead. She's getting sloppy.
"Mhmm?" Adam replies curtly.
He doesn't ask how it happened. Part of her wishes he would. She needs a reason to confess.
"You should be more careful," he scolds, leaning across to the bedside cabinet. He pulls out a drawer - and they made it themselves, made most the furniture from flat-pack furniture when they first moved in together, giggling their way through bizarre instruction manuals. Inside, he finds what he was looking for, a needle contained within a sterile bag. "I mean it, Monica. If something were to happen to you, what would I do?"
She doesn’t answer. She doesn't want to know, not when she thinks about what he was like when they first met. He'd been just as charming, certainly, but bright madness had shone from his eyes.
With a rehearsed weariness, he presses the needle to his arm and plunges it in. She winces and looks away, never able to watch it when he does that, the bright blood pouring into the needle. He doesn't wince, not any more.
"Give me your arm," he instructs - and she does. She trusts him. She loves him, though Hiro will never understand. He thinks she's mad. She thinks he's right.
The needle pierces her skin, sharp and sudden, and she bites her bottom lip to keep herself quiet. His fingers are cold on her skin and the injection of blood feels as unnatural and forced as it always does - but it's working. She feels the throbbing pain on her side fading and knows that if she twisted to look at it she'd find the skin unmarred, unmarked, untouched. The residual pain from her bruises, old and new, fades away and she feels as good as she would have if she'd never gone out last night.
"Be careful," Adam urges, withdrawing the needle.
Monica rubs at her arm, even though it doesn't hurt at all. She smiles and brushes her lips against the corner of his mouth, seeking a kiss and then seeking forgiveness. When they part, she rests her forehead against his. "I will," she promises. "You know me."
He lies down again after flicking the used needle into the bin. When she slips from underneath the covers, he grumbles, "That's exactly why I'm worried."
She continues to get dressed for work as if she'd never heard him.
I'm fine, she tells herself. I'll be fine.
*
Typing is easy with her ability - but with everyone having access to powers now, thanks to a quick injection, that doesn't give her much of an advantage.
At least she's out of the fast food business, she reminds herself as she answers her thirteenth angry call of the day. Working as a secretary for a fairly shoddy law firm isn't much, but it's so much better than the Burger Bonanza and she doesn't come home smelling like oil. She's thankful for that, though she misses Camille at times. Most times.
"I'm sorry; Mr Stephens isn't at work today. Wouldn't you like to leave a message and he'll get back to you as soon as possible?" she chirps when she answers the phone.
"Tonight," a voice at the other end of the line says. She recognises it instantly. Hiro. "Nine o'clock. Usual place."
The line goes dead.
Monica doesn't hang up for a moment or two, listening to the dead tone and wishing that it would come back to life again. She wants to tell Hiro that she doesn’t like doing this any more; that she hates lying to Adam too much to carry on…
But the words never come and she places the phone back down. She flexes her fingers, rolls her shoulders, tries to make herself feel in control once more.
"Now, who was that?"
The voice startles her and she looks up to find a pair of women standing in front of her desk. One is blonde, one has dyed her hair an unnatural brown. Both their eyes are a deep sea blue, but only the blonde's hold any life. They sparkle and crackle like gas fire flames. "Kinda rude, hanging up on you like that…"
Monica blinks and brushes her hair back from her face even though it's already tied back firmly. "I'm sorry; can I help you?" she asks.
There's something not right here.
It makes her fingers tingle; it makes her body tense.
"We're actually here to help you," the blonde tells her with a sunny smile. "I'm Elle - this is Claire. And, well, we already know who just called you."
"Peter Petrelli," Claire says.
It's not right, but it's close enough. Monica glances to the door, trying to estimate if she'd be able to take them out and get free. At times like this, she'd really kill for Peter or Hiro's ability instead of her own.
"Don't worry about it," Elle says, tracing her line of sight. "We're not here to start a fight."
"Yet."
Elle elbows Claire's ribs. "We just thought we'd come and introduce ourselves."
"What do you want?"
"Ooh, we want a whole lot of things." Elle reaches into the pocket of her tailored jacket and plucks a card from it, placing it on the desk. "And what we want from you is for you to think about where your loyalties lie, then get back to us. I'd really hate for anything to happen to, say, Adam because of your involvement in all this, wouldn't you?"
"You know about Adam?" Her blood chills at the very idea. How long have they been onto her?
"I know Adam." Elle smiles with a delighted wrinkle of her nose. "Intimately, I guess you'd say."
Monica's eyebrows rise - she can't hide her surprise. Running into someone from Adam's past… That really isn't something she can process on top of everything else.
"Think about it," Claire advises, her voice nearly emotionless.
"We know you'll make the right choice."
Elle waves at her, a little twitch of her small hand, then the two women turn to leave the building. A cold gust of air rushes in through the door, tugging at stray tendrils of Monica's hair. She closes her eyes to try to block the world out: she can't believe this is happening. She can't believe she's been caught.
*
She comes home to a hallway that smells like Indian takeout, hot and spicy.
"I decided not to cook tonight," Adam explains, snatching a kiss from her before the door even finishes closing. "All these days left alone are making me become lazy."
"Nothing's making you lazy," Monica says, smiling, as she peels her jacket from her shoulders and hangs it up on the back of a chair. "Or, well, I guess you're kinda making yourself lazy."
"Mm, true. If only I had someone here to inspire me during the day…" He winks and she knows that he's only teasing her so she smiles brightly at him - that's what he wants, what he's expecting.
But her heart still feels heavy even with the smile holding it up so she reaches out for him, holding on as tightly as she can. He's taller than her, so much taller, yet she always feels like she's the stronger one here and he's the one on the verge of falling apart. Usually it's him that needs someone to hold him together. Today, with the visit from Claire and Elle hanging like a dead weight on her thoughts, it's her.
"I love you," she whispers against his chest.
His hand strokes her back, so slowly. "What's wrong?" he asks, each word careful and deliberate, tense even if he's warm.
"Who says something's wrong?" Monica challenges. She doesn't let go of him yet.
"I can tell, Monica," he says, a frown staining his voice.
She pulls back from him and wipes her cheeks with the back of her hand even though there's nothing there. "Sorry - it's been a long day, that's all. A really long day."
"Come on," he says, "eat. I'll run you a nice, hot bath and you can soak it off as you tell me about it. How does that sound?"
It sounds amazing - and she's sure he knows that. He kisses her forehead and she manages to smile, real this time.
"What'd I do to deserve a guy like you?" she wonders aloud.
Adam chuckles as he leads her through to their living room. She loves that sound, so full and warm. It makes her wish that she could keep him laughing forever. "I'm not sure," he says, "but it must have been awfully good."
As he leads her through their house, her hand in his, her heart sinks when she remembers that she has to meet Hiro tonight - and it finally grabs hold of her with full force, the realisation that she has to leave.
*
Despite her jacket, her hat, her scarf, she shivers as she waits in the dark. A streetlamp offers dull orange lighting to fight back the shadows but it can't fight off the cold. She rubs at her arms to try to generate some heat: it doesn't work, and leaves her wishing more than ever that she was back at home. The thought of the warm bath that Adam had offered makes her want to quit waiting for Hiro at all.
She hears footsteps behind her and her body tenses, fuelled by dozens of action movies.
"You're late," she says as she turns around.
Hiro stays in the shadows of the building, his sword strapped to his back. "You're early. You're always early."
"I get nervous," she explains, crossing her arms in front of her to try and retain any warmth she can. She always leaves her home long before she has to, kissing Adam's cheek and telling him not to wait up for her. He never asks her why; he's so frustrating like that.
"Peter's-"
"Some women turned up at my work today, Hiro," Monica says before he can launch into the news of plans and schemes and resistance. He's paused time for them; as long as Daphne doesn't turn up, they can talk. "At my work."
"You knew that was a possibility when you got into this," Hiro says. She wonders whatever happened to the optimistic young man he'd been when they'd first met. "We can find Bennet. He'll sort out a new life for you."
"I don't want a new life," Monica says. If she was much younger, she'd stomp her foot and throw a real tantrum. "They knew about Adam. They know everything and…"
She shakes her head and looks up at the stationary clouds, blocking out the stars.
"What are you saying?" Hiro asks. "Do you want to quit?"
"I…" There was a time when it would have taken her two seconds to say no, to tell him that that was ridiculous, to reaffirm her loyalty. "Maybe. I think so."
"Monica…"
"I'm sorry." She shakes her head. If she lets him talk any more then she knows he'll talk her into staying a little while longer. She can't allow that: she needs to escape while she can. "I am so sorry, Hiro."
"So am I," Hiro answers - and she wishes he'd stay, wishes that he'd give her a chance to explain, but she blinks and he's gone. Time has started again, the chilled wind biting into her skin. Monica huddles deeper into her jacket as she begins the walk back home, walking on autopilot as she realises the magnitude of what she's just done.
She wonders, looking around the world as a woman now freed from the extremities of its politics, if she's made the biggest mistake of her life.
*
Her body is stiff and unwilling when she climbs back into bed that night. She's spent time walking the streets unhappily, unable to return home but just as reluctant to call Hiro to ask to be reaccepted into the group she's left. They need her. She knows this: they need all the help that they can get because people are turning their backs on them daily. The resistance grows smaller and smaller and all that she is doing is adding to the problem. It's not right. It's not right at all.
Adam's arm slips around her stomach and he inches over the bed towards her until he is pressed tightly against her back. His skin is so warm and his lips, when they brush against the nape of her neck, are softer and warmer still. His breath tickles over her skin, slow and steady with the draw of sleep. Monica closes her eyes and tries to make herself relax into this happy bed, this happy home, this happy life. Isn't this what Nana would want for her? Isn't this what her mother would have wanted?
Her hand finds his in the dark, holding on tightly as their fingers entwine until the grip is so tight that it hurts, just a little. She imagines what it will feel like with a ring around her finger: in a few months, maybe, she thinks she might be willing to make that kind of commitment. The ceremony builds itself in her mind, warm and bright. She likes to think imagine what her dress might look like, where they might go on their honeymoon, how their married bickering would sound...
And she knows, deep within her soul, that Hiro and Peter couldn't be there. They couldn't stand in the pews and watch her devote her life to this man. They'd draw her back and lead her towards death and-
"You made the right choice, Monica," Adam murmurs, half-asleep. "I'm proud of you."
She sinks against him, eyes open now and staring into the dark.
She can't make herself ask him how he knows that.
She can't let herself wonder if he was behind it all - if he knows exactly who Elle and Claire are and exactly why they turned up at her work place.
Still holding onto his hand, she restrains the cold pin-prick shiver that wants to wind its way down her spine: she is safe here, she tells herself, trying to put that life behind her. She is happy. She will be happy here.
Pairing: Adam/Monica
Word Count: 2769
Rating: PG-13
A/N: For Babylon_pride's birthday! It's totally, totally late - I blame the eighteenth century. It's been kicking my ass. This is set in the future of I Am Become Death, has a pre-established relationship between Adam and Monica, and totally denies any canon happens further on from that. The title is taken from Will Young's Changes (no mocking my dorky music taste, Cristy!) and I used a_to_z_prompts's "blue-eyed" prompt for this. Happy late birthday, Cristy. I wouldn't be half as crazy as I currently am if it wasn't for your awesome influence. :D
Summary: As a member of Peter and Hiro's resistance movement, Monica has a decision to make.
She wakes in a bed that smells of fresh laundry. Soap. Clean. Safe. Lying on her stomach, she groans and shifts her face away from the window and the bright sunlight that it offers. Morning already. It feels like she only got to bed a few hours ago.
A glance to the clock confirms that idea. It's eight o'clock. She didn't manage to sneak back home until six.
"Good morning," Adam says, lying in bed with her. His voice is unslurred by sleep, each syllable as bright and crisp as it had been on the day she'd met him. He presses his lips gently against the curve of her shoulder, his hand resting on her back. "Sleep well?"
"Fine," Monica says. She rubs her eyes with the back of her hand and fights a yawn. "Just fine."
"You look shattered."
"Gotta get up." Monica groans at the very idea. "Got work in an hour."
Work. It pays the bills, sure. Her half of the bills. Adam seems to have an endless amount of priceless items stashed in various corners of the world, ready to be sold off when he need some funds.
"You could quit," Adam suggests, just like he always does, with his fingers tracing tempting circles on her back. "Stay at home with me."
She smiles warmly. "I'm not gonna be your kept woman, Adam. Nice as that sounds…"
"That's not what you want. I know." And it irritates him, she can tell. It irritates him that she can't give up these vestiges of that life when he has given up so much for her. He's surrendered everything; he's turned his life around, embraced humanity, and struggles daily to get that superiority complex of his under control.
And her?
She can't even settle down. Can't be happy. Can't be normal.
"Are you alright?" he asks her, blue eyes concerned.
I broke into the president's office last night, she wants to confess. I'm sorry.
But she smiles instead, shuffling towards him and the warmth of his body, nude beneath the sheets. "I'm fine," she promises. "Just figuring out how much longer I can stay in bed."
"Ah. And how long is that?" Adam says. His fingers stroke down the length of her spine, effortlessly making her shiver, but when he reaches the hastily pieced-together bandage on her side he pauses. She tries not to wince or cringe as he sits up, pulling the sheets down and peeling the gauze back from her skin.
"It's not as bad as it looks," she says immediately. It looks bad, grazed by a bullet on her way out. If she'd been one second slower she'd be dead. She's getting sloppy.
"Mhmm?" Adam replies curtly.
He doesn't ask how it happened. Part of her wishes he would. She needs a reason to confess.
"You should be more careful," he scolds, leaning across to the bedside cabinet. He pulls out a drawer - and they made it themselves, made most the furniture from flat-pack furniture when they first moved in together, giggling their way through bizarre instruction manuals. Inside, he finds what he was looking for, a needle contained within a sterile bag. "I mean it, Monica. If something were to happen to you, what would I do?"
She doesn’t answer. She doesn't want to know, not when she thinks about what he was like when they first met. He'd been just as charming, certainly, but bright madness had shone from his eyes.
With a rehearsed weariness, he presses the needle to his arm and plunges it in. She winces and looks away, never able to watch it when he does that, the bright blood pouring into the needle. He doesn't wince, not any more.
"Give me your arm," he instructs - and she does. She trusts him. She loves him, though Hiro will never understand. He thinks she's mad. She thinks he's right.
The needle pierces her skin, sharp and sudden, and she bites her bottom lip to keep herself quiet. His fingers are cold on her skin and the injection of blood feels as unnatural and forced as it always does - but it's working. She feels the throbbing pain on her side fading and knows that if she twisted to look at it she'd find the skin unmarred, unmarked, untouched. The residual pain from her bruises, old and new, fades away and she feels as good as she would have if she'd never gone out last night.
"Be careful," Adam urges, withdrawing the needle.
Monica rubs at her arm, even though it doesn't hurt at all. She smiles and brushes her lips against the corner of his mouth, seeking a kiss and then seeking forgiveness. When they part, she rests her forehead against his. "I will," she promises. "You know me."
He lies down again after flicking the used needle into the bin. When she slips from underneath the covers, he grumbles, "That's exactly why I'm worried."
She continues to get dressed for work as if she'd never heard him.
I'm fine, she tells herself. I'll be fine.
*
Typing is easy with her ability - but with everyone having access to powers now, thanks to a quick injection, that doesn't give her much of an advantage.
At least she's out of the fast food business, she reminds herself as she answers her thirteenth angry call of the day. Working as a secretary for a fairly shoddy law firm isn't much, but it's so much better than the Burger Bonanza and she doesn't come home smelling like oil. She's thankful for that, though she misses Camille at times. Most times.
"I'm sorry; Mr Stephens isn't at work today. Wouldn't you like to leave a message and he'll get back to you as soon as possible?" she chirps when she answers the phone.
"Tonight," a voice at the other end of the line says. She recognises it instantly. Hiro. "Nine o'clock. Usual place."
The line goes dead.
Monica doesn't hang up for a moment or two, listening to the dead tone and wishing that it would come back to life again. She wants to tell Hiro that she doesn’t like doing this any more; that she hates lying to Adam too much to carry on…
But the words never come and she places the phone back down. She flexes her fingers, rolls her shoulders, tries to make herself feel in control once more.
"Now, who was that?"
The voice startles her and she looks up to find a pair of women standing in front of her desk. One is blonde, one has dyed her hair an unnatural brown. Both their eyes are a deep sea blue, but only the blonde's hold any life. They sparkle and crackle like gas fire flames. "Kinda rude, hanging up on you like that…"
Monica blinks and brushes her hair back from her face even though it's already tied back firmly. "I'm sorry; can I help you?" she asks.
There's something not right here.
It makes her fingers tingle; it makes her body tense.
"We're actually here to help you," the blonde tells her with a sunny smile. "I'm Elle - this is Claire. And, well, we already know who just called you."
"Peter Petrelli," Claire says.
It's not right, but it's close enough. Monica glances to the door, trying to estimate if she'd be able to take them out and get free. At times like this, she'd really kill for Peter or Hiro's ability instead of her own.
"Don't worry about it," Elle says, tracing her line of sight. "We're not here to start a fight."
"Yet."
Elle elbows Claire's ribs. "We just thought we'd come and introduce ourselves."
"What do you want?"
"Ooh, we want a whole lot of things." Elle reaches into the pocket of her tailored jacket and plucks a card from it, placing it on the desk. "And what we want from you is for you to think about where your loyalties lie, then get back to us. I'd really hate for anything to happen to, say, Adam because of your involvement in all this, wouldn't you?"
"You know about Adam?" Her blood chills at the very idea. How long have they been onto her?
"I know Adam." Elle smiles with a delighted wrinkle of her nose. "Intimately, I guess you'd say."
Monica's eyebrows rise - she can't hide her surprise. Running into someone from Adam's past… That really isn't something she can process on top of everything else.
"Think about it," Claire advises, her voice nearly emotionless.
"We know you'll make the right choice."
Elle waves at her, a little twitch of her small hand, then the two women turn to leave the building. A cold gust of air rushes in through the door, tugging at stray tendrils of Monica's hair. She closes her eyes to try to block the world out: she can't believe this is happening. She can't believe she's been caught.
*
She comes home to a hallway that smells like Indian takeout, hot and spicy.
"I decided not to cook tonight," Adam explains, snatching a kiss from her before the door even finishes closing. "All these days left alone are making me become lazy."
"Nothing's making you lazy," Monica says, smiling, as she peels her jacket from her shoulders and hangs it up on the back of a chair. "Or, well, I guess you're kinda making yourself lazy."
"Mm, true. If only I had someone here to inspire me during the day…" He winks and she knows that he's only teasing her so she smiles brightly at him - that's what he wants, what he's expecting.
But her heart still feels heavy even with the smile holding it up so she reaches out for him, holding on as tightly as she can. He's taller than her, so much taller, yet she always feels like she's the stronger one here and he's the one on the verge of falling apart. Usually it's him that needs someone to hold him together. Today, with the visit from Claire and Elle hanging like a dead weight on her thoughts, it's her.
"I love you," she whispers against his chest.
His hand strokes her back, so slowly. "What's wrong?" he asks, each word careful and deliberate, tense even if he's warm.
"Who says something's wrong?" Monica challenges. She doesn't let go of him yet.
"I can tell, Monica," he says, a frown staining his voice.
She pulls back from him and wipes her cheeks with the back of her hand even though there's nothing there. "Sorry - it's been a long day, that's all. A really long day."
"Come on," he says, "eat. I'll run you a nice, hot bath and you can soak it off as you tell me about it. How does that sound?"
It sounds amazing - and she's sure he knows that. He kisses her forehead and she manages to smile, real this time.
"What'd I do to deserve a guy like you?" she wonders aloud.
Adam chuckles as he leads her through to their living room. She loves that sound, so full and warm. It makes her wish that she could keep him laughing forever. "I'm not sure," he says, "but it must have been awfully good."
As he leads her through their house, her hand in his, her heart sinks when she remembers that she has to meet Hiro tonight - and it finally grabs hold of her with full force, the realisation that she has to leave.
*
Despite her jacket, her hat, her scarf, she shivers as she waits in the dark. A streetlamp offers dull orange lighting to fight back the shadows but it can't fight off the cold. She rubs at her arms to try to generate some heat: it doesn't work, and leaves her wishing more than ever that she was back at home. The thought of the warm bath that Adam had offered makes her want to quit waiting for Hiro at all.
She hears footsteps behind her and her body tenses, fuelled by dozens of action movies.
"You're late," she says as she turns around.
Hiro stays in the shadows of the building, his sword strapped to his back. "You're early. You're always early."
"I get nervous," she explains, crossing her arms in front of her to try and retain any warmth she can. She always leaves her home long before she has to, kissing Adam's cheek and telling him not to wait up for her. He never asks her why; he's so frustrating like that.
"Peter's-"
"Some women turned up at my work today, Hiro," Monica says before he can launch into the news of plans and schemes and resistance. He's paused time for them; as long as Daphne doesn't turn up, they can talk. "At my work."
"You knew that was a possibility when you got into this," Hiro says. She wonders whatever happened to the optimistic young man he'd been when they'd first met. "We can find Bennet. He'll sort out a new life for you."
"I don't want a new life," Monica says. If she was much younger, she'd stomp her foot and throw a real tantrum. "They knew about Adam. They know everything and…"
She shakes her head and looks up at the stationary clouds, blocking out the stars.
"What are you saying?" Hiro asks. "Do you want to quit?"
"I…" There was a time when it would have taken her two seconds to say no, to tell him that that was ridiculous, to reaffirm her loyalty. "Maybe. I think so."
"Monica…"
"I'm sorry." She shakes her head. If she lets him talk any more then she knows he'll talk her into staying a little while longer. She can't allow that: she needs to escape while she can. "I am so sorry, Hiro."
"So am I," Hiro answers - and she wishes he'd stay, wishes that he'd give her a chance to explain, but she blinks and he's gone. Time has started again, the chilled wind biting into her skin. Monica huddles deeper into her jacket as she begins the walk back home, walking on autopilot as she realises the magnitude of what she's just done.
She wonders, looking around the world as a woman now freed from the extremities of its politics, if she's made the biggest mistake of her life.
*
Her body is stiff and unwilling when she climbs back into bed that night. She's spent time walking the streets unhappily, unable to return home but just as reluctant to call Hiro to ask to be reaccepted into the group she's left. They need her. She knows this: they need all the help that they can get because people are turning their backs on them daily. The resistance grows smaller and smaller and all that she is doing is adding to the problem. It's not right. It's not right at all.
Adam's arm slips around her stomach and he inches over the bed towards her until he is pressed tightly against her back. His skin is so warm and his lips, when they brush against the nape of her neck, are softer and warmer still. His breath tickles over her skin, slow and steady with the draw of sleep. Monica closes her eyes and tries to make herself relax into this happy bed, this happy home, this happy life. Isn't this what Nana would want for her? Isn't this what her mother would have wanted?
Her hand finds his in the dark, holding on tightly as their fingers entwine until the grip is so tight that it hurts, just a little. She imagines what it will feel like with a ring around her finger: in a few months, maybe, she thinks she might be willing to make that kind of commitment. The ceremony builds itself in her mind, warm and bright. She likes to think imagine what her dress might look like, where they might go on their honeymoon, how their married bickering would sound...
And she knows, deep within her soul, that Hiro and Peter couldn't be there. They couldn't stand in the pews and watch her devote her life to this man. They'd draw her back and lead her towards death and-
"You made the right choice, Monica," Adam murmurs, half-asleep. "I'm proud of you."
She sinks against him, eyes open now and staring into the dark.
She can't make herself ask him how he knows that.
She can't let herself wonder if he was behind it all - if he knows exactly who Elle and Claire are and exactly why they turned up at her work place.
Still holding onto his hand, she restrains the cold pin-prick shiver that wants to wind its way down her spine: she is safe here, she tells herself, trying to put that life behind her. She is happy. She will be happy here.