Fic: The Road to Thebes [Heroes, Adam/Various, pg-13]
It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Peter Pet jumping off another damn roof! Or - oh, wait, it's just vanitashaze messing around with linebreaks and halfway through saying, screw dat. I'm doing this with spacers.
So. Right. The first of the Adam!fics. [Insert something very witty here.]
Due credit owed to Jeanette Winterson, as I think I might have a line of hers in there somewhere simmyschtuff's absolutely fantastic House/Wilson fic 12, 6, 15, 3 for some formatting ideas. (And yes, the unfinished sentences are intentional.)
the road to thebes
adam (kensei) / hiro, adam (kensei) / yaeko
heroes; pg-13. spoilers up to 2.11 Powerless
Once upon our time, there is a man named Adam Monroe who can regrow all his vital organs except the heart. Adam has been born more or less the same number of times as there are stars and can speak thirty-eight languages. His face is round like everyone he has ever loved, and his eyes are blue (because after all, the world needs clichés). Men and women have tried to drown themselves in them and he has killed by water when he was feeling especially desperate or poetic, Adam has died by every ocean and major lake in the world. If his legend were jewelry it would be a pearl necklace: seed-pearls interspersed with ones big enough only for kings to buy, for sorcerers to use as golem eyes. His story is a string of small deaths between the larger and more exciting ones. In many ways the smaller ones are worse. Adam is just like everyone else in that aspect.
Christ, that’s bad. Let’s try again.
*
Adam Monroe lives his life by the Book. Not the parts about loving thy neighbor or anyone else, just the pages aflame with war and vengeance. Passion. Destruction and fifty year spin-offs of his story that grow in someone’s womb and drop off whenever fate feels like it. After all, God did tell them to reproduce, to breed and bleed until all the corners of the globe are ashes, dust to dust… And Adam Monroe is nothing if not as obedient as his namesake. He has spread himself over vast continents; he has spread himself in war-tents and has driven, gasping, into others spread amongst velvet or against a wall. Adam has had children, grandchildren too-too many to name or keep track of for their short, wasteful lives. He probably even screwed a few of these unknowns. Not like this bothers him or it should; he’s the first and so it’s inevitable, really.
No-no. That’s truth but not true.
Strike two.
*
Adam Monroe does not exist. There is a man who has his name and this man can read the Tarot, has nailed himself on a cross to see what it felt like and did not die. If he were catalogued like parts in a warehouse, it would go like this: yellow hair, blue eyes, red blood, grey morality and dreams the color of time.
Better, better.
This man has been in love with heroes and has a way of walking that’s left over from wearing samurai armor in his formulative years. Arms out, feet at angle, the two triangles his body makes rocking back and forth like someone’s caricature of a Christmas tree-power-walking. Power walking. The man who calls himself Adam Monroe is careful to always have one solid leg to stand on.
Anyway, this man is
the man called Adam Monroe is
Kensei Takezo is
Adam Monroe. (does not exist)
Adam Monroe is not four hundred years old. He says he is because somewhere between the year all the cherry blossom trees died off at once and the first time he was thrown out a window, he lost track and has never found it again. This does not bother him and in fact he rather likes it. Four hundred is a nice number: easy to remember, imposing. Adam cannot age and so he will get his maturity from where he can.
Roughly, his name means man from the river, it means beginnings. The first from the source. Seniority is a powerful thing in a world built in the shape of a timepiece; even a man exiled from time could appreciate the majesty of winning a (non)existential race. At first this gave him a sort of pride and he wore it arrogantly, polished it often, but now this particular pride is shoved in the back of a drawer with the dead batteries, insect husks, a watch that just stopped one day like his heart never will. Pride dull-edged, even. Forgotten.
No, that’s stupid, that’s wrong. Made to forget. Absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder, doesn’t forgive or heal or
*
Adam Monroe might have been someone’s beginning, once.
*
Sakura blossoms in his hair, pink salt-laquered with sweat; the open sky an echoing cave and he, lost in depths. Adam stands as an excavation, he is an exhumation. Exclaimation. Exhalation. In out in out. Adam stands, and the wind blows ashes in his face-cakes his mouth, dusts his skin-while his skeleton reassembles grain by grain. First ashes; then embers: the petals are burning, burning, burning his blonde head with them, and he runs his tongue over his teeth and tastes something holy.
*
Adam Monroe is an artist. Adam Monroe is in love with someone who was the inspiration for The Persistence of Memory. Adam Monroe takes people and kneads them between the flat of his palms, stains his clothes with their color, twists perceptions into Michaelangean curves and lines his kiln with them-three deep: a Slavic village compacted to forest grave stinking of lime, dolls lying vacant and feed me mama love me in a box. The problem with sculpting is that art often explodes in the oven, but Adam doesn’t worry-practice makes perfect, Adam tries again.
*
It’s been four hundred years, give or take a few, and Adam Monroe isn’t ready to
*
Once during a slow period in the world, Adam Monroe spent thirty years looking for Eden. He was bored; it sounded like a nice place for a vacation. On the way there he died two more times and killed a man for his mule. Later in 1939, the world watched in awe and he in amusement as singing munchkins and winged monkeys tromp across the bright screen, the witches screaming their last boiling regrets in full color. Adam never did find the Garden, but sometimes, in the darkness of the night, he imagines that as he lies awake, somewhere a brick road made of gold unfolds into the horizon, and the most important part of this dream is that it will still be there when he wakes up.
*
Adam Monroe is an inequality. Adam Monroe is in love with a hero > in love with his lady, like the rhyme the schoolchildren learn: things aren't equal in this world, see, the dragon's mouth opens towards the bigger, the better, the dragon always wants more and what the dragon wants the dragon will always get. Adam Monroe < Kensei Takezo but who's to say who's the lesser?
*
Somewhere in the world there is a mountain, and inside this mountain is a cave in the shape of a Celtic tomb-direct dimensions, the space a heart leaves as it is lifted ever so deftly by rubber-gloved hands. And in this cave there is enough radioactive material to lay the earth to barren waste, fertile to a dusty womb. It is the elephant graveyard. It is the mistakes of scientists, the waste of progress. Under dark-under earth it waits. Silent. And it does not scream.
*
Adam Monroe is a crossword puzzle, is an encryption key, an anagram: light is to water as love is to
*
Rats ate Adam Monroe the first time he crossed the ocean. Rats ate Adam Monroe and they started with the belly first, buckteeth ripping at skin until it gave way, then burrowing inside intestines-gorging themselves, digging at vein junctures and delighting in blood and all the damn nibbling, nibbling, nibbling, ripping and the whole time Adam Monroe thought that it was sort of disappointing, really, because he had been devoured alive before and it had been much more exciting than this.
*
The thing is, Adam is complicated. Adam is the visionary. Adam is dry, dry, dry, wonderbread and the best thing since it was sliced.
*
It’s a law of the universe that at any given time, somewhere, a mother sings a lullaby. Adam Monroe has no mother, he is dust (to dust), but the man with his name did, the man with his name had one. Had one. Like a toy gotten on the ‘Eve, a sweater outgrown and the wrong shade for his complexion anyway. And she was beautiful. Her name was Mary, and she may have founded a world religion. The man called Adam can’t recall. It’s getting harder and harder to remember who’s who, these days.
*
In Cairo the women wash clothes on the riverbank, with arms as slick and glossy as sealskin. They are selkies in the desert; moving breathing sandstone and Adam Monroe walks among them, thinking of Mary-no, Maria, the first of two? A silver ring, slung round his neck. Diedenshausen is cold in the winter, and twenty years earlier Adam burnt down whole forests to sleep warm in the ashes. In Cairo the women are washing, laughing-selkies who followed warm veins of water to this desert place-and Adam thinks of Mary, Maria one Maria two. Of the wedding-circle thumping his heart with every step and how complete it seems, endless smoothsilver band, only half of two.
*
What remains? Peter Peter, pumpkineater, rock of ages. Eden, killed by an angel. And Adam.
What remains? Adam, Adam, Adam Monroe.
*
Adam Monroe carries a cage inside him and has broken the bars more times than he can count. Encased in flesh with scars sunk into essential tissue; he has been incarcerated for his own protection, feels it every time he breathes, but Adam still counts his ribs every morning just to make sure one isn’t missing.
*
So anyway. Anyway. That cancerous heart is still underground, still and waiting, because scientists know, they understand. If you want to forget something-if you want to hide something, want to push away all evidence that you made a mistake-bury it, and bury it deep.
*
One like ashes, the other the future. Or maybe it was the other way around. He doesn't remember, and in the end it doesn't matter. The first times they kissed, both tasted exactly the same.
But really, though, why should firsts matter to him? Adam's been around the block a few times-existed long enough to know that the beginnings are the ends, and that circles have neither.
So. Right. The first of the Adam!fics. [Insert something very witty here.]
Due credit owed to Jeanette Winterson, as I think I might have a line of hers in there somewhere simmyschtuff's absolutely fantastic House/Wilson fic 12, 6, 15, 3 for some formatting ideas. (And yes, the unfinished sentences are intentional.)
the road to thebes
adam (kensei) / hiro, adam (kensei) / yaeko
heroes; pg-13. spoilers up to 2.11 Powerless
Once upon our time, there is a man named Adam Monroe who can regrow all his vital organs except the heart. Adam has been born more or less the same number of times as there are stars and can speak thirty-eight languages. His face is round like everyone he has ever loved, and his eyes are blue (because after all, the world needs clichés). Men and women have tried to drown themselves in them and he has killed by water when he was feeling especially desperate or poetic, Adam has died by every ocean and major lake in the world. If his legend were jewelry it would be a pearl necklace: seed-pearls interspersed with ones big enough only for kings to buy, for sorcerers to use as golem eyes. His story is a string of small deaths between the larger and more exciting ones. In many ways the smaller ones are worse. Adam is just like everyone else in that aspect.
Christ, that’s bad. Let’s try again.
*
Adam Monroe lives his life by the Book. Not the parts about loving thy neighbor or anyone else, just the pages aflame with war and vengeance. Passion. Destruction and fifty year spin-offs of his story that grow in someone’s womb and drop off whenever fate feels like it. After all, God did tell them to reproduce, to breed and bleed until all the corners of the globe are ashes, dust to dust… And Adam Monroe is nothing if not as obedient as his namesake. He has spread himself over vast continents; he has spread himself in war-tents and has driven, gasping, into others spread amongst velvet or against a wall. Adam has had children, grandchildren too-too many to name or keep track of for their short, wasteful lives. He probably even screwed a few of these unknowns. Not like this bothers him or it should; he’s the first and so it’s inevitable, really.
No-no. That’s truth but not true.
Strike two.
*
Adam Monroe does not exist. There is a man who has his name and this man can read the Tarot, has nailed himself on a cross to see what it felt like and did not die. If he were catalogued like parts in a warehouse, it would go like this: yellow hair, blue eyes, red blood, grey morality and dreams the color of time.
Better, better.
This man has been in love with heroes and has a way of walking that’s left over from wearing samurai armor in his formulative years. Arms out, feet at angle, the two triangles his body makes rocking back and forth like someone’s caricature of a Christmas tree-power-walking. Power walking. The man who calls himself Adam Monroe is careful to always have one solid leg to stand on.
Anyway, this man is
the man called Adam Monroe is
Kensei Takezo is
Adam Monroe. (does not exist)
Adam Monroe is not four hundred years old. He says he is because somewhere between the year all the cherry blossom trees died off at once and the first time he was thrown out a window, he lost track and has never found it again. This does not bother him and in fact he rather likes it. Four hundred is a nice number: easy to remember, imposing. Adam cannot age and so he will get his maturity from where he can.
Roughly, his name means man from the river, it means beginnings. The first from the source. Seniority is a powerful thing in a world built in the shape of a timepiece; even a man exiled from time could appreciate the majesty of winning a (non)existential race. At first this gave him a sort of pride and he wore it arrogantly, polished it often, but now this particular pride is shoved in the back of a drawer with the dead batteries, insect husks, a watch that just stopped one day like his heart never will. Pride dull-edged, even. Forgotten.
No, that’s stupid, that’s wrong. Made to forget. Absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder, doesn’t forgive or heal or
*
Adam Monroe might have been someone’s beginning, once.
*
Sakura blossoms in his hair, pink salt-laquered with sweat; the open sky an echoing cave and he, lost in depths. Adam stands as an excavation, he is an exhumation. Exclaimation. Exhalation. In out in out. Adam stands, and the wind blows ashes in his face-cakes his mouth, dusts his skin-while his skeleton reassembles grain by grain. First ashes; then embers: the petals are burning, burning, burning his blonde head with them, and he runs his tongue over his teeth and tastes something holy.
*
Adam Monroe is an artist. Adam Monroe is in love with someone who was the inspiration for The Persistence of Memory. Adam Monroe takes people and kneads them between the flat of his palms, stains his clothes with their color, twists perceptions into Michaelangean curves and lines his kiln with them-three deep: a Slavic village compacted to forest grave stinking of lime, dolls lying vacant and feed me mama love me in a box. The problem with sculpting is that art often explodes in the oven, but Adam doesn’t worry-practice makes perfect, Adam tries again.
*
It’s been four hundred years, give or take a few, and Adam Monroe isn’t ready to
*
Once during a slow period in the world, Adam Monroe spent thirty years looking for Eden. He was bored; it sounded like a nice place for a vacation. On the way there he died two more times and killed a man for his mule. Later in 1939, the world watched in awe and he in amusement as singing munchkins and winged monkeys tromp across the bright screen, the witches screaming their last boiling regrets in full color. Adam never did find the Garden, but sometimes, in the darkness of the night, he imagines that as he lies awake, somewhere a brick road made of gold unfolds into the horizon, and the most important part of this dream is that it will still be there when he wakes up.
*
Adam Monroe is an inequality. Adam Monroe is in love with a hero > in love with his lady, like the rhyme the schoolchildren learn: things aren't equal in this world, see, the dragon's mouth opens towards the bigger, the better, the dragon always wants more and what the dragon wants the dragon will always get. Adam Monroe < Kensei Takezo but who's to say who's the lesser?
*
Somewhere in the world there is a mountain, and inside this mountain is a cave in the shape of a Celtic tomb-direct dimensions, the space a heart leaves as it is lifted ever so deftly by rubber-gloved hands. And in this cave there is enough radioactive material to lay the earth to barren waste, fertile to a dusty womb. It is the elephant graveyard. It is the mistakes of scientists, the waste of progress. Under dark-under earth it waits. Silent. And it does not scream.
*
Adam Monroe is a crossword puzzle, is an encryption key, an anagram: light is to water as love is to
*
Rats ate Adam Monroe the first time he crossed the ocean. Rats ate Adam Monroe and they started with the belly first, buckteeth ripping at skin until it gave way, then burrowing inside intestines-gorging themselves, digging at vein junctures and delighting in blood and all the damn nibbling, nibbling, nibbling, ripping and the whole time Adam Monroe thought that it was sort of disappointing, really, because he had been devoured alive before and it had been much more exciting than this.
*
The thing is, Adam is complicated. Adam is the visionary. Adam is dry, dry, dry, wonderbread and the best thing since it was sliced.
*
It’s a law of the universe that at any given time, somewhere, a mother sings a lullaby. Adam Monroe has no mother, he is dust (to dust), but the man with his name did, the man with his name had one. Had one. Like a toy gotten on the ‘Eve, a sweater outgrown and the wrong shade for his complexion anyway. And she was beautiful. Her name was Mary, and she may have founded a world religion. The man called Adam can’t recall. It’s getting harder and harder to remember who’s who, these days.
*
In Cairo the women wash clothes on the riverbank, with arms as slick and glossy as sealskin. They are selkies in the desert; moving breathing sandstone and Adam Monroe walks among them, thinking of Mary-no, Maria, the first of two? A silver ring, slung round his neck. Diedenshausen is cold in the winter, and twenty years earlier Adam burnt down whole forests to sleep warm in the ashes. In Cairo the women are washing, laughing-selkies who followed warm veins of water to this desert place-and Adam thinks of Mary, Maria one Maria two. Of the wedding-circle thumping his heart with every step and how complete it seems, endless smoothsilver band, only half of two.
*
What remains? Peter Peter, pumpkineater, rock of ages. Eden, killed by an angel. And Adam.
What remains? Adam, Adam, Adam Monroe.
*
Adam Monroe carries a cage inside him and has broken the bars more times than he can count. Encased in flesh with scars sunk into essential tissue; he has been incarcerated for his own protection, feels it every time he breathes, but Adam still counts his ribs every morning just to make sure one isn’t missing.
*
So anyway. Anyway. That cancerous heart is still underground, still and waiting, because scientists know, they understand. If you want to forget something-if you want to hide something, want to push away all evidence that you made a mistake-bury it, and bury it deep.
*
One like ashes, the other the future. Or maybe it was the other way around. He doesn't remember, and in the end it doesn't matter. The first times they kissed, both tasted exactly the same.
But really, though, why should firsts matter to him? Adam's been around the block a few times-existed long enough to know that the beginnings are the ends, and that circles have neither.