Emily (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
iluvroadrunner6) wrote2008-10-02 11:26 am
iluvroadrunner6) wrote2008-10-02 11:26 am
Adam/Claire - Before the Fall of Rome (1/3)
Fandom: Heroes/Torchwood
Title: Before the Fall of Rome (1/3)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
iluvroadrunner6
Rating: FRT
Characters: Adam Monroe/Claire Bennet
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
fic_variations Prompt: lost/numb (#1)
Content Warning: Spoilers through 303: One of Us, One of Them
Summary: Claire runs into someone she didn’t quite anticipate in Paris.
Author's Note: Despite the lack of Torchwood characters actually physically appearing in this fic, this is part of the Lovers in a Dangerous Time series. Because apparently they wouldn’t have it any other way.
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of Heroes or Torchwood. They're owned by NBC and the BBC. However, any and all original characters are mine, so please do not use them without my permission.
And people kept dying.
Claire understood it was just a fact of life, but it wasn’t a fact for her life, and that was what made things complicated. She didn’t ask to be the girl who lived forever, hell, most of the time she didn’t even want it. Yet, the years kept passing by and people kept dying, and there was nothing she could do about it. She’d tried using her blood to fix things, keeping the people in her life with her a little while longer, but there wasn’t much good it did. People still died anyway. If it wasn’t then, it was later on. You couldn’t change the future. Peter had taught her that much already.
She didn’t even have Peter anymore.
As far as she knew, there were only four people who could even begin to comprehend what was going on with her. Only four people who had watched the centuries pass without gaining a day in age, and those four seemed to be the only four people she couldn’t reach. She and Peter had gone their separate ways years ago, once he became obsessed with trying to ‘fix’ things that were wrong with the past. She could no more live in the past than she could save the people she cared about, so she couldn’t stay with him, as much as she may have wanted to. She wouldn’t dare approach Sylar, the person who had made her the mess she was to begin with. He was still seeking to quench that hunger for something more, still trying to be special. With Jack—she and Jack weren’t ready to take the same risks. She was just trying to get by—Captain Jack Harkness wanted to save the world.
And the last was Adam Monroe, the person from whom she could probably learn the most, and the one person that was starting to be the hardest to find. Most likely a benefit of all those years of experience, but being unable to contact him had left her floundering in emotions that she couldn’t even begin to explain. In some ways she was grateful that she could still feel the losses—it was the only pain that her numb body could feel anymore—but in other ways, she just wanted it all to stop.
She was in Paris at the time. It was a long way from where she had started in Odessa, Texas, but when people start noticing that you can’t die, they start reacting a little to strongly to you when they see you. There had been various faked car accidents and pretend medical procedures to help her elusively escape from various places, and more pretend names than she felt she even could count. After various attempts to change her appearance, she realized that her ability wouldn’t let her get tattoos or plastic surgery, so she had to stick with changing her hair and eye color with dye and colored contacts. This was probably the first time she had been blond and blue eyed in two centuries, and it felt—strange. Natural, but strange nonetheless.
She was sitting in a café somewhere near what was left of the Louvre, having coffee and trying to circle these thoughts in her head, trying to figure out where to go next, when she felt the chair across from her get pulled out from under the table, and the brush of a pant leg against her foot as someone sat down. Her eyes flickered up from the newspaper in front of her, annoyed that someone would just sit without even asking, and was prepared to tell whoever it was off—she wasn’t looking to be disturbed.
“Excuse me, someone’s sitting—” Her thick accent caught in her throat and she froze in shock, not expecting to see the person—ever. “—there.”
“I’m sorry,” Adam began dryly, raising her eyebrows innocently in her direction. “I was told that you were looking for me.”
Claire, at first, was too surprised to speak. She wasn’t sure who or how had told him, and she wasn’t sure if she should be grateful or annoyed at the sudden change. She didn’t know where to even begin regarding what she wanted to say to him, so she settled with the first thing that her lips would be willing to form, and that probably wasn’t the most intelligent place in the world to begin.
“How?”
Adam just smirked, the easy confidence of a man who had probably manipulated more people than she could even begin to count, and leaned forward to pick up the menu, acting more nonchalant than she was quite comfortable with. “A certain captain in Wales happened to relay to me that despite his extreme disapproval, you insisted on speaking with me.”
Jack. She straightened slightly, placing the newspaper down on the table in front of her, while she tried to read him, his motives, like she had been doing the paper moments before. Granted, he had four hundred years on her, so trying to read his face was like reading a foreign language, but at least she was trying. “And you agreed. Why?”
“I’ve been wanting to meet you for a long time, Claire,” he said coolly, watching her, almost amused as he moved through the motions of the conversation. “It’s very—rare—to meet someone who can do what you can do. To have the exact same trick of genetics as someone else. And I always do enjoy meeting people like me.” He paused for a moment, tilting his head to the side slightly as he spoke. “I think the real question is—why you wanted to meet with me.”
Claire was starting to see what had brought Peter so close to Adam in the first place. There was just something about him that held some kind of gravity—he drew people in by virtue of being who he was, and having all that time on his side. It wasn’t a matter of skill—it was just a matter of fact. And she knew it was going to be very, very hard to hide what she wanted to hide from him.
“I can’t have wanted to meet you for the same reasons?” she asked, deflecting until she could think of a better answer—a weak strategy was better than no strategy at all. “Wanting to meet someone who has the same fate that I do?”
“I think it’s more complicated than that, Claire,” he said, almost—amused, if that was the right word. “Surely, Peter and Jack have told you everything they could to try and deter you from this decision—they both consider me a very dangerous man.”
Jack had, yes. Peter, not so much, but Peter didn’t know that she had been looking in the first place, and she was planning on keeping it that way. But Jack just simply didn’t understand. He could still feel the pain of every death, every injury. He still healed at a normal rate—he just couldn’t die. Thanks to Sylar (although who knows at this point, maybe she would have be numb anyway), she couldn’t feel a thing. And she still wasn’t sure on how to cope with that feeling.
“I’m a pretty lucky girl,” she said thinly, shifting to look in him the eye more. There wasn’t anything that he could do to her that she couldn’t recover from. “I don’t exactly go down easy.”
There was a flicker of a smirk on his lips again, and he leaned in closer. “They don’t understand, do they, Claire? They don’t understand that you don’t heal in the same way that they do. They may have the same ability, but it’s not the same.”
She wasn’t sure what to say to that, eyes flickering as she tried to maintain the calm façade. She didn’t want him to know that he was getting to her, prying away the layers and bringing the person she didn’t want him to see to the surface. His hand moved across the table and covered hers.
“You shouldn’t have to go through this alone—not when there’s someone just like you out there. I went through four hundred years without having someone to share the time with—it’s a very lonely feeling, isn’t it?”
She paused for a minute, not moving her hand from his, warm contact from someone who actually understood, and she closed her eyes, trying not to feel the walls she had put into place for her own protection breaking down. “You can’t hold on to anything. Nothing ever stays.”
“I can help you, Claire. We can help each other.”
And there it was. The offer for help, her heart leaping into her stomach at the fact that there was finally someone who understood sitting next to her, and offering to help fix her. And that she wanted to grab onto more than she could possibly say.
“Please.” Her voice cracked with longing and desperation, and Adam just smiled, giving her hand a soft squeeze, before placing a card down in front of her.
“I’ll be in touch.”
“But—” She wasn’t ready for him to leave yet. There were still so many more things that she didn’t understand yet, and she wasn’t prepared for him to leave until he did.
“Now’s not the time,” he said with a nod. “I will contact you.” The underlying thought of I need to be careful lined his words and she nodded, letting him go and staring down at the card in her hands. As she turned it over, she couldn’t help but feel a flare of hope in the pit of her stomach. For the first time in a long time, she didn’t feel quite as numb.
And she didn’t necessarily mind that feeling.
Title: Before the Fall of Rome (1/3)
Author:
iluvroadrunner6Rating: FRT
Characters: Adam Monroe/Claire Bennet
fic_variations Prompt: lost/numb (#1)Content Warning: Spoilers through 303: One of Us, One of Them
Summary: Claire runs into someone she didn’t quite anticipate in Paris.
Author's Note: Despite the lack of Torchwood characters actually physically appearing in this fic, this is part of the Lovers in a Dangerous Time series. Because apparently they wouldn’t have it any other way.
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of Heroes or Torchwood. They're owned by NBC and the BBC. However, any and all original characters are mine, so please do not use them without my permission.
And people kept dying.
Claire understood it was just a fact of life, but it wasn’t a fact for her life, and that was what made things complicated. She didn’t ask to be the girl who lived forever, hell, most of the time she didn’t even want it. Yet, the years kept passing by and people kept dying, and there was nothing she could do about it. She’d tried using her blood to fix things, keeping the people in her life with her a little while longer, but there wasn’t much good it did. People still died anyway. If it wasn’t then, it was later on. You couldn’t change the future. Peter had taught her that much already.
She didn’t even have Peter anymore.
As far as she knew, there were only four people who could even begin to comprehend what was going on with her. Only four people who had watched the centuries pass without gaining a day in age, and those four seemed to be the only four people she couldn’t reach. She and Peter had gone their separate ways years ago, once he became obsessed with trying to ‘fix’ things that were wrong with the past. She could no more live in the past than she could save the people she cared about, so she couldn’t stay with him, as much as she may have wanted to. She wouldn’t dare approach Sylar, the person who had made her the mess she was to begin with. He was still seeking to quench that hunger for something more, still trying to be special. With Jack—she and Jack weren’t ready to take the same risks. She was just trying to get by—Captain Jack Harkness wanted to save the world.
And the last was Adam Monroe, the person from whom she could probably learn the most, and the one person that was starting to be the hardest to find. Most likely a benefit of all those years of experience, but being unable to contact him had left her floundering in emotions that she couldn’t even begin to explain. In some ways she was grateful that she could still feel the losses—it was the only pain that her numb body could feel anymore—but in other ways, she just wanted it all to stop.
She was in Paris at the time. It was a long way from where she had started in Odessa, Texas, but when people start noticing that you can’t die, they start reacting a little to strongly to you when they see you. There had been various faked car accidents and pretend medical procedures to help her elusively escape from various places, and more pretend names than she felt she even could count. After various attempts to change her appearance, she realized that her ability wouldn’t let her get tattoos or plastic surgery, so she had to stick with changing her hair and eye color with dye and colored contacts. This was probably the first time she had been blond and blue eyed in two centuries, and it felt—strange. Natural, but strange nonetheless.
She was sitting in a café somewhere near what was left of the Louvre, having coffee and trying to circle these thoughts in her head, trying to figure out where to go next, when she felt the chair across from her get pulled out from under the table, and the brush of a pant leg against her foot as someone sat down. Her eyes flickered up from the newspaper in front of her, annoyed that someone would just sit without even asking, and was prepared to tell whoever it was off—she wasn’t looking to be disturbed.
“Excuse me, someone’s sitting—” Her thick accent caught in her throat and she froze in shock, not expecting to see the person—ever. “—there.”
“I’m sorry,” Adam began dryly, raising her eyebrows innocently in her direction. “I was told that you were looking for me.”
Claire, at first, was too surprised to speak. She wasn’t sure who or how had told him, and she wasn’t sure if she should be grateful or annoyed at the sudden change. She didn’t know where to even begin regarding what she wanted to say to him, so she settled with the first thing that her lips would be willing to form, and that probably wasn’t the most intelligent place in the world to begin.
“How?”
Adam just smirked, the easy confidence of a man who had probably manipulated more people than she could even begin to count, and leaned forward to pick up the menu, acting more nonchalant than she was quite comfortable with. “A certain captain in Wales happened to relay to me that despite his extreme disapproval, you insisted on speaking with me.”
Jack. She straightened slightly, placing the newspaper down on the table in front of her, while she tried to read him, his motives, like she had been doing the paper moments before. Granted, he had four hundred years on her, so trying to read his face was like reading a foreign language, but at least she was trying. “And you agreed. Why?”
“I’ve been wanting to meet you for a long time, Claire,” he said coolly, watching her, almost amused as he moved through the motions of the conversation. “It’s very—rare—to meet someone who can do what you can do. To have the exact same trick of genetics as someone else. And I always do enjoy meeting people like me.” He paused for a moment, tilting his head to the side slightly as he spoke. “I think the real question is—why you wanted to meet with me.”
Claire was starting to see what had brought Peter so close to Adam in the first place. There was just something about him that held some kind of gravity—he drew people in by virtue of being who he was, and having all that time on his side. It wasn’t a matter of skill—it was just a matter of fact. And she knew it was going to be very, very hard to hide what she wanted to hide from him.
“I can’t have wanted to meet you for the same reasons?” she asked, deflecting until she could think of a better answer—a weak strategy was better than no strategy at all. “Wanting to meet someone who has the same fate that I do?”
“I think it’s more complicated than that, Claire,” he said, almost—amused, if that was the right word. “Surely, Peter and Jack have told you everything they could to try and deter you from this decision—they both consider me a very dangerous man.”
Jack had, yes. Peter, not so much, but Peter didn’t know that she had been looking in the first place, and she was planning on keeping it that way. But Jack just simply didn’t understand. He could still feel the pain of every death, every injury. He still healed at a normal rate—he just couldn’t die. Thanks to Sylar (although who knows at this point, maybe she would have be numb anyway), she couldn’t feel a thing. And she still wasn’t sure on how to cope with that feeling.
“I’m a pretty lucky girl,” she said thinly, shifting to look in him the eye more. There wasn’t anything that he could do to her that she couldn’t recover from. “I don’t exactly go down easy.”
There was a flicker of a smirk on his lips again, and he leaned in closer. “They don’t understand, do they, Claire? They don’t understand that you don’t heal in the same way that they do. They may have the same ability, but it’s not the same.”
She wasn’t sure what to say to that, eyes flickering as she tried to maintain the calm façade. She didn’t want him to know that he was getting to her, prying away the layers and bringing the person she didn’t want him to see to the surface. His hand moved across the table and covered hers.
“You shouldn’t have to go through this alone—not when there’s someone just like you out there. I went through four hundred years without having someone to share the time with—it’s a very lonely feeling, isn’t it?”
She paused for a minute, not moving her hand from his, warm contact from someone who actually understood, and she closed her eyes, trying not to feel the walls she had put into place for her own protection breaking down. “You can’t hold on to anything. Nothing ever stays.”
“I can help you, Claire. We can help each other.”
And there it was. The offer for help, her heart leaping into her stomach at the fact that there was finally someone who understood sitting next to her, and offering to help fix her. And that she wanted to grab onto more than she could possibly say.
“Please.” Her voice cracked with longing and desperation, and Adam just smiled, giving her hand a soft squeeze, before placing a card down in front of her.
“I’ll be in touch.”
“But—” She wasn’t ready for him to leave yet. There were still so many more things that she didn’t understand yet, and she wasn’t prepared for him to leave until he did.
“Now’s not the time,” he said with a nod. “I will contact you.” The underlying thought of I need to be careful lined his words and she nodded, letting him go and staring down at the card in her hands. As she turned it over, she couldn’t help but feel a flare of hope in the pit of her stomach. For the first time in a long time, she didn’t feel quite as numb.
And she didn’t necessarily mind that feeling.
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I'm glad you liked it!
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(Anonymous) 2008-11-12 08:27 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
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I just hope it's not him telling her they're related.I'm glad you liked it.
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I loved this, Peter in the background and holy crap, Jack isn't even in here physically and yet you have him perfectly, and now I want to write future!Claire and Jack, you don't even know. And I love how you've laid out the subtle differences between the different types of immortality because, oh, yes - and, yes, I think Adam may be the only one who really understands.
*happy sigh*
I'll be waiting for the next update, *g*
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Heee -- thank you. I've been wanting to do something with these two for some time. I'm glad you liked it.
And dude, I love your icon.
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I'm glad you liked it!
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-Ellie
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-Ellie
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I'm glad you liked it.
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Thanks for letting me know. And good luck with your muse.
-Ellie