Richard Sanders (Jr.) (figliodelpadre) wrote in prideviewapts, @ 2008-10-09 20:17:00 |
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Entry tags: | adam monroe |
Who: Adam Monroe and Richard Sanders Junior
Where: Just outside the complex
When: Tuesday Night
What: ...well, this is awkward.
Rating: Uhhh PG-13 for violence?
This place hated him. Adam had come to that conclusion a long time ago after it had sent Yaeko here. It had this desire to shove all of his ghosts right under his nose in a way that he couldn't ignore them. Diane had been more than enough to cause him a deep shame, but his son being here, placing the news that Maria had been changed and that Samuel had died in a position that he couldn't ignore it was almost more than Adam was able to bear. As much as he wanted to pretend that his past was his past, there were still some things that hurt. And as much as he couldn't stand children, he had wanted them both to live, to grow into bright and strong young men and live their own lives to the fullest that they could.
But clearly, life had had a different plan.
Adam had gone outside in order to try and clear his head. Fresh air was good for that. It helped him to collect his thoughts, to center himself, and to try and set himself to a path that would be the best one to take. However, the problem that came with being in an apartment complex was that if one didn't stray far from the buildings, you had a tendency to run into others.
"Richard," Adam said quietly as he strided up behind the young man. "I believe we need to talk."
Richard had spent years thinking about what he would say to his father when he met him face to face. Today ... well, today he had thought all of those things and few of them had actually reached his fingertips. He balled his fist at his side and clenched his teeth, trying to school his anger.
It would do no good, right? That's what Adam had said. But perhaps he was lying. His father didn't know everything about him just like he knew nothing about Adam. He closed his eyes and breathed out once before looking straight at Adam.
"I asked you to leave me alone." Didn't that mean anything nowadays?
"I will," Adam said, his expression tightening as he peered at the other man, trying not to think about just how much he looked like him, how similar that they appeared with the exception of the hints of looks that he could recall being Maria's. His hair color, his eyes, the shape of his jawline... Shaking out his head slowly, Adam ducked his eyes to the ground for a moment to recover his train of thought.
"There are merely some things which need to be cleared up before we go our separate ways." Again?
"I think you made things perfectly clear the first time we 'went our separate ways', signore." He would never call him father to his face no matter how he thought it. This man had left him alone and left his family for ... for what? That woman on that confusing journal system?
His own jaw tightened and he found his fist clenching again. "I have nothing polite left to say to you." Or do to him, for that matter. He couldn't remember being this angry, not even during the casual combat. Things had been so distant, so easy to do. Muskets kept you a distance from your victim that left no room for connection.
But this was different.
"You were just a child. I didn't explain," Adam said, trying to ignore how much of an ass that made he sound like. There was so much that he'd done that he shouldn't have, so much that he should have done differently, so much that he regretted. But trying to explain that would have been useless. There was so much anger, so much pain that had been left to fester for years. He would have been surprised if anything would get through that.
"I shouldn't have left, but it was the first time I had had a family," Adam said, a heavy frown on his face. "I wasn't sure how to handle it. It was oppressive, strangling, frightening. I'm not good with kids. It was a revelation that I hadn't been expecting, but it was one that happened nonetheless. It went about it wrong, and you have every right to hate me for it."
"You," he couldn't just stand by and let Adam continue to sound so self-righteous, "what? Think that telling me this is going to make things better? You who have forsaken my mother and married that woman from ... wherever it is that she is from, I care little ... and who let my brother die?"
Before he could stop himself he lunged for Adam's throat, half-blinded by the rage he was feeling. Too many years of pushing all of his hatred onto this man who was now standing before him instead of on the people in his life that had bothered him in the ranks ... had apparently finally taken their toll.
And he squeezed, feeling as if his palms were on fire. Perhaps Adam would feel the same underneath those hands."And how do you think she felt," he half-growled, "without you? Oppressed, hopeless, afraid." And with children to support.
"Diane came years after your mother. Decades. A century, even," Adam said, his voice hardening, but as the hand grasped his throat, Adam laughed, a deep bitter laugh of a man who had been hurt so many times that the idea of someone doing it was just amusing anymore. "You silly child. Do you really think you can hurt me?" Adam asked before an unfamiliar feeling settled over him, a deep scorching just about his throat where Richard's hand was resting.
And it hurt. God, it hurt.
"I don't know how she felt," Adam replied, gritting out the words through the pain that was surging in his body. "I don't know how she felt, and I was young and selfish back then and didn't much care."
"Yes," and there was an unfamiliar conviction in his voice that he'd lacked for too much of his life for this to be natural, "I do." It was hurting him too, the warm, slippery feeling rising up his forearms. And there was a smell of something awful -- it was enough to make him jerk his hands away from Adam's throat and take several steps back, startled.
His palms are raw.
What the hell was this? This place, it must've been ... "Stay away from me." And that was far too much like a frightened child for his liking, that tone in his voice.
Adam could feel the sting of the arm on his throat as Richard pulled his hand back, but as he waited for the cells to regenerate and repopulate themselves, to heal over the raw flesh, the feeling didn't come. Eyes wide and frightened, Adam raised his hand slowly to touch at the red hot skin, swallowing heavily before he turned, gripping one of the street signs on the side as he arched his head to look at his neck.
It was red, raw, and it hurt. And that feeling was persisting.
Adam laughed, weak, surprised, and dull as he moved his hand to touch at his throat again, "It looks like I was wrong, son," He said. "You might just be the only person in the world that can hurt me."
Good," he spit, rubbing his palms against the slacks that he was wearing and trying to keep his eyes on Adam. The man deserved it and he got no small sense of satisfaction out of seeing the fear in the other man's eyes. Some part of him really was his father's son, apparently.
"And don't call me that. I have no father." A harsh condemnation, perhaps, but one that had all the sincerity of a mantra.
Adam touched his throat lightly again, confused and worried. He could only hope that it would heal eventually. Even if it would be nice to heal the old fashioned way, there was something about possibly being vulnerable that unsettled Adam. He'd never had to worry about that before. Turning back to Richard, Adam peered at him before a long moment before reaching out to him. "Let me see your hands," He said, ignoring the venom in the other man's words. "I might be able to figure out what it is."
As if he would readily let his father help him? No matter how he feared whatever it was that had made the lesions on his palms, he feared trusting this man only to be betrayed even more. "Why should I?" He took a step back from Adam, brows furrowed. Richard had figured out things himself before, why should this be any different?
Because it was Different.
"How is it you would come to know what it is to begin with?"
"Because I know what it's like," Adam said quietly, "having something happen to you that you don't understand. Being afraid just what it means, what it makes you," He said, his eyes dropping slowly to the other man's hands as he extended his own again, taking another small step towards Richard. "I can't die, Richard. I was born in 1645. By the time I met your mother, I was already a hundred years old."
He stepped back again. There was no way that he would make this easy for Adam. None of this made any sense.
But neither did what had just happened. Neither did being in the year 2008. This man in front of him who was his father had been a hundred years old when he'd met his mother and still he tried to tell Richard that he'd been young and stupid?
More lies. These were probably more lies. "I have no reason to believe you." He turned on his heel, fully intent to head back to the hotel despite his palms throbbing.
Adam moved forward, snagging Richard's shoulder and pulling him back around. Adam let him go only to drag up his one sleeve and plunge the nails on his hand into his arm, dragging them along his arm and digging deep gouges into his arm, blood pooling from them. As he pulled his hand away, though, the gouges that had been opened up in his arm sealed themselves off without any delay, leaving only the blood that had oozed out of the wounds initially to settle on the surface of the fresh skin.
He couldn't help that he watched with rapt fascination as the blood pooled on the skin and then healed up so quickly. Richard wasn't stupid -- he knew that if Adam healed like that then he shouldn't have been able to hurt the other man. That was what Adam had meant.
"So you heal. How does that fact help me understand this?" And he shook his palms at the other man, trying to keep the fright out of his voice.
"Because there are only certain things that would be able to nullify my ability," Adam said, looking up at Richard. "When you've been around almost 400 years, you pick up a thing or two about this sort of stuff, you know," He said, lifting an eyebrow at Richard. "You don't have to trust me. And you certainly don't have to like me. Just let me help."
"And if I don't want your help?" Help would mean owing this man in front of him something even if he can't think of anything logical to do right now except concede to Adam. He could find someone else to help him, he could just ... pretend this had never happened and go back to the apartment complex.
Riight.
"I'm not going to force it on you," Adam said as he looked up at Richard. "But really, who else are you going to ask?"
The girl with the computer.
The other one, the pretty brunette. No, neither of them would know.
"...I'll find someone," he protested, albeit weakly.
"The sooner you understand this, Richard, the better. You could hurt someone," Adam said, worry and deep seriousness in his voice. "Someone who isn't like me and might actually get really hurt."
He's never wanted to hurt anyone but Adam, not really. So he slowly lets his eyes slip shut and takes a breath before he steps toward Adam, repulsed or not. "Fine."
Adam reached out slowly, taking the other man's hands in his own with an intense delicateness in his touch, turning them over so that he could see Richard's palms. He'd seen a lot of things in his life, a lot of different powers that were tactical, and they often displayed themselves in different ways. This wasn't something that he had seen before, not specifically, but it bared a lot of similarities to the powers that they had used to call death touches.
Releasing Richard's hands, Adam turned slowly to pluck a flower from the ground, one of the few left along the sidewalk and held it open the young man. "Touch it. Pour all of your hatred and anger and bitterness into the touch and touch it."
It was so easy to turn the anger on like a facet around his father. He took the flower, cradled it in his palm and ... pushed. It withered and rotted away slowly, disintegrated into nothing more than a pile of dust that once-was.
Richard was terrified. His breathing was uneven, his eyes were ... wide. No. He didn't want to be a part of that.
"It seems to me," Adam said quietly as he looked up at Richard. "Is that our first order of business is getting your emotions under check."
"I hardly think that you are the person to do that around." But if he can control his temper around his father, anything is possible.
"Quite the contrary, my boy," Adam said, a very wry smile spreading across his face as he clapped a hand down on Richard's shoulder. "If you are able to keep your feelings towards me at bay, you'll be able to keep yourself even any any circumstance."
He shrugged off the other man's hand quickly, looking vaguely uncomfortable. Richard didn't like Adam, didn't like that the other man was assuming things about him. Not one bit.
"Very well." And he frowned. "But ... now?"
"When you're ready," Adam said, his voice impassive as he slipped his hands into his pockets as he felt the cells around his throat sluggishly start to heal, small patches of fresh skin starting to form back over the burns. But compared to Adam's normal healing process, it was like it had been put into slow motion. "These things can't be forced."
"Then later." Which meant that he'd have to see his father again, and that wasn't an appealing thought -- but perhaps that was mostly because Adam was going to be helping you. It was hard to hate someone when they helped you.
He turned on his heel and walked away from this man: his father and apparently someone he was going to have to tolerate.