Legacy - 1
Aoyama Cemetery, Tokyo, Japan; March 30, 2008
Silence. All around me, silence. Silence and darkness, total and utter desolation. There are times that I wonder if this is what life in space would be like if the stars were to suddenly disappear. It’s not total sensory deprivation; there’s a thousand and one interesting smells and textures I’ve never been aware of before - before this brutal punishment - and when the silence gets too overwhelming, I can always hum or sing or scream until my vocal cords tear, but the darkness is unnerving, overwhelming in its omnipresence.
The silence and the peace that accompanies it are unlike anything I’ve ever known. I was born in the middle of a bloody civil war, and my entire life has been spent in the service of the sword, the gun, and the deaths of my enemies. The conflicts in Japan, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, civil wars all over the globe, the World Wars, I’ve seen and participated in them all. This utter stillness is a complete anathema to me.
At times, I close my eyes and play back scenes from my life, and the darkness fades as familiar faces dance before me, and my burden lightens for a brief time. The happiness doesn’t last as the good memories fade, leaving me with nothing but bad memories and a bitter taste in my mouth. Helene’s beauty fades into remembrances of her horrified screams. Milan and Maria only remind me of my failures. Milan reminds me of Versailles, and my sweet Frederica. No matter how I try, they all die and leave me alone, alone with nothing but memories of how I’d either abandoned or been abandoned by everyone I’d ever loved. Abandoned or betrayed, and that thought always leads me back to Yaeko and Hiro, and what I’ve done that’s led me to this place, this grave, this never-ending nightmare.
Sometimes, when I’m at my absolute lowest points, usually right before I’m about to die of oxygen deprivation again, my thoughts turn to my childhood. Lady Blensham’s there, whispering soft words of comfort in my ear as I start to panic, the walls of my coffin pressing further against me as my head spins and I take deep grasping breaths, trying to suck in every last bit of oxygen present. After I awake again, always when I awake, I think of the Lady and I wonder what my life would be like if I’d had a real mother.
That’s not to say that Lady Blensham didn’t treat me well. She treated me more than well, gave me more than I deserved, doted on me and gave me every advantage that an orphaned servant child should ever expect, but she wasn’t my mother. My mother died giving birth to me, and my supposed father died just five years later. Lady Blensham had told me the truth when I turned fifteen, how my mother had appeared at the house already two months gone with child and looking for work, how she’d married the lonely groomsman George Monroe when the pregnancy became apparent.
I always wonder what my real parents were like. My mother, only known as Clarice to the Blensham household, was small and blonde and beautiful and loving, or so I was told, and that she’d told the midwife that I if I was a boy, I was to be given a biblical name, carrying on a family tradition. She died before she ever learned that she had, in fact, borne a son. Of my real father, I know nothing other than the fact that my mother wanted nothing to do with him. I don’t know if he was good or evil, blonde or brunette, tall or short, soldier or servant or noble, or if he ever knew about me. I think of them both often. I wonder if either of them were like me, with something about them that made them special, or if I’m the first in the family to be cursed like this. I tell myself that I must have inherited my invulnerability from my father; my mother died in childbirth, so she couldn’t possibly be like me. I don’t know anything about either of them, and years of research never helped me. Without as much as a name, I have no hopes of ever tracking down my father. Mother, Clarice, a complete mystery - I can only track her back to arriving in London a month before showing up on the Blenshams’ doorstep; it’s as if she hadn’t existed before then.
In a way, I’m glad I know nothing of them. I can never imagine their disappointment at my crimes, my sins, my failures. I’ll never see or imagine the look of horror on my mother’s face, similar to that seen on several of my brides, as I heal from a fatal wound. My father will never be ashamed by the dishonor I’ve brought on the family name, for I’ll never carry his name, just that of the man who stood up for mother when he had absolutely no need to.
Imagining all the nevers, all the could-have-beens, all the what-ifs makes time in my coffin seem to go faster, makes the never-ending darkness somewhat more bearable before the anoxia and claustrophobia attack me again. This time, as my body jerks through the death spasms, I imagine for just a minute a petite blonde woman instead of Lady Blensham, and I die with a faint whimper of “Mother” on my tongue for once.
I come to later, not sure if it’s been minutes, hours, days, or even centuries, and I’m still buried alive. This time, however, there’s a faint difference. The darkness is still there, yes; the strange odors of the earth and the satin casket lining and my body still linger in my nose. The difference is that I can hear something other than my own cries and sighs and screams. There’s a scraping sound, almost as if…
No, I can’t hope. Hope is the path upon which madness lies. Hope is never allowed for someone like me. Still… the noise continues and appears to be getting closer. Maybe there’s another burial, this time with an actually dead corpse, near me, and that’s the sound. I hold my breath as the sounds get closer and closer yet until there’s a metal ping against the top of my casket. I scream, and the sound reverberates. “Help me!”
The casket lid is flung open, and sunlight rushes over me, blinding me. A man’s voice curses, and a pair of dark glasses are slammed onto my face, covering my eyes. I blink, and the intense light fades slightly, revealing the dark outline of a man above me, outlined with an aura of sunlight. It’s almost like looking at some sort of dark angel. The man offers me a hand, and I take it without hesitation.
He floats - floats! - us up to ground level, and I shake his hand, clinging to him for just a second.
“Thank you, oh thank you for getting me out of there. I’m Adam, in case you didn’t know it.”
“Oh, I knew it Adam.” He smirks at me. “I’m Sylar. Pleasure to make your acquaintance finally. I’ve been looking for you for awhile."
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