Relativity
Apr. 26th, 2012 10:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
black_hatAdam/Claire
Continuation of previous AU
Luck was not her thing.
Not at all. Claire was in public when she was almost killed again. In a more permanent way. They were talking about whether young kids should be trained or have their powers acknowledged. And registered.
Claire wasn’t so much for registration but she didn’t get that far when someone landed on the stage in front of her with a freakishly long scythe. She saw the shadow coming down so she started moving just in time.
The blade took a little off the top.
She fell backwards and there was a frenzy of motion. She hated just sitting there, hated that it was over as she was getting to her feet. A politician, one of many, rushed towards her and took her hand, ready to lead her off the stage.
Oh but really.
“I sat through your speech,” she said, with a smile. “You’ll still have to sit through mine.”
Some people in the crowd clapped for her, but Claire didn’t see the big deal behind it. She hadn’t been hurt.
But as she spoke, outwardly calm, she was raging inside.
***
Claire didn’t expect to see him in the car.
She had thought he’d be by himself again but he had stuck around. Claire tried to hide any feelings about this.
“Hi,” she said, trying to smile.
He did not. “I’m perfectly calm,” he said. “Not to worry.”
Claire tilted her head. “That’s usually when I should.” She paused , wondered if she should say it but hey you only live once. Or something. “So. Angry sex in the limo?”
He slid over to her, so she guessed she was right. Then he put his arm around her.
“It was a good instinct. To stay up there.”
Claire relaxed by a degree, trying now not to be proud. It hadn’t been calculated. She told him so.
“As I said, instinct,” was the dry reply. “If you had run, you would have given them an invitation,” he said, and his voice was more energetic again, focused.
“What next?” she asked. “I have to question him myself, right? That was the deal.”
He looked cagey in his smugness.
“What?” she asked.
“Oh. I think he escaped in the scuffle.”
“…And that’s good news why? Because we can catch him ourselves?”
“Already done that,” Adam said. It wasn’t good news.
“They’ll think we are harboring a fugitive even if he was trying to kill me.”
“They—I assume you mean your government—may have sent him.”
Claire’s body turned to ice. It almost felt literal. She wanted to laugh. “No,” she said. “That’s too far.”
Adam didn’t answer because it wasn’t too far. It felt almost just right. If this started to happen…a lot of death would happen.
“It’s a possibility,” he said after a while. “I don’t know much myself yet. Looking forward to changing that.”
Claire had a bad feeling (obvious) yet she shook it off, pacing herself. She allowed herself to move in closer, for his presence.
After that theory, she felt more alone than ever.
***
Abandoned warehouse.
Very subtle and not dramatic at all. Claire followed him, wondering if her first instinct had been right. There could have been a second attack.
He opened the door and waved her inside, and she saw that warehouse had been furnished before for this kind of thing. And by that kind of thing, she meant kidnapping.
Imprisonment. That kind of thing.
Her assailant was tied to a chair, gagged, behind a glass wall. It seemed to be glass but it had a strange glimmer to it. At the very least it was bullet proof. She saw a shadow to her left and recognized one of theirs.
Mind-reader.
Claire frowned.
“It seems like you had this place prepared,” she said.
“Long before you became a public figure, don’t fret.”
That made her fret more but she played it off.
“What do we know now?” Adam asked cheerfully.
“That he has been trained,” Sylvia said. “I can’t breach his mind.”
“Yet,” he said. “And the bomb threat?”
Claire stared in shock.
“Still insist that it’s true. That they will go off with or without him tomorrow.”
“Seems like a group, doesn’t it?” Adam asked her.
“Wait, wait,” Claire said. “What bomb?”
“He has a bomb,” Adam explained. “Or they do. Somewhere in the city.”
“Why is—why are you calm, we have to--.”
“I’m on top of that,” Adam said. “I wonder how he’ll fancy the threat of forgetting his entire existence before he made such poor life choices.”
“We aren’t erasing his memory.”
Adam gave her a look of instant death. She did not die, hah. Claire crossed her arms.
“I’m not going to do that to someone,” she said.
“You didn’t have to say that in front of him.”
“Behind the glass?”
“He can read your lips,” Adam said. “Now read mine. We are going to discuss this elsewhere. You can leave for the night,” he told the mind-reader.
Adam smiled jauntily back into the room, the promise of his return to the point.
So, this was where they were at.
***
“So. Torture,” Claire began.
“It’s not a hard decision,” Adam started. They were off to a good start now.
“Extortion is off the list?” she asked, dryly.
“It wouldn’t be an issue if we were more organized,” he said, lightly. “We could have simply followed him.”
Yeah, lack of organization as a people. Certainly not in Company format.
“What’s really going on?” Claire sighed, crossing her arms again.
“Besides the obvious. The bomb threat which isn’t a threat at all but a promise.”
“I’ve been thinking he could have killed me well—better than he did,” Claire said. “He could have landed closer. I just think this is a set-up.”
Adam looked at her with approval. “It is.”
“Would torturing him be the set-up?” Claire tried. “Like we are…”
Okay, the look was long and suffering.
“It makes sense,” Claire protested. “It could be!”
“You’re paranoid, love. Anyone tell you that?”
If he thought she was paranoid, then she must be half crazy by now. Or more.
“Look,” Claire said, walking up to him sharply. “This is happening too quickly. There are so many angles here, so many conspiracies that could be true.”
“I’m willing to wager that I have thought of most of them by now. I even thought I could get him to talk by threatening you.”
“….”
“He deliberately missed you,” he said. “There has to be a reason.”
“And so you’re going to torture him.”
“Just so he opens his mind. Just enough. It’s a delicate procedure and I’m not unfamiliar with it.”
“I don’t know if I can let you do that,” Claire said.
“If you can let me,” he said, standing up.
“Yeah, if I can let you,” she said.
“Like you refused to take more bodyguards along with you?” Adam asked. “Is that what you mean, that kind of refusal?”
It was angry sex, and mostly from her side of it. He had flipped her on top of him this time, and she took full advantage.
However, no one compromised. Claire was only tired and resting under his jacket, feeling her heart beat out of her. She was alive. Still.
“I’m very angry,” she said, seeing that blade come close to her. Scaring her. Scaring her for one second too long.
“So am I.”
“That’s not a surprise.”
“I hate these people,” Claire said. “Someone who would do something like that so casually. I’m half glad we have him here, instead of having to work around talking to him.”
He was quiet beside her.
“Do you think the government is behind this? Some branch of it? Why are you being
so quiet?” she asked last, surprising even herself. “I know you’ve healed by now.”
“I wondered why you do not hate me,” Adam said. “Or perhaps you do hate me and that is why you are here with me. That, I understand.”
“You want to actually talk about it?” Claire asked softly. In dread. With dread.
“I’ve always wanted to hear your opinion. You never gave it. Never brought it up. On purpose.”
Claire opened one eye.
“I don’t have…an opinion on something…and I don’t hate you. Well, I don’t think I do. I mean--don't my actions...kinda...speak for themselves?”
...Didn't it? She had taken his actions as more about him than his words. You kind of had to.
“Your actions? True."
"And...well, the same. Vice versa." She needed to stop fidgeting. Fidgeting was an action, speaking a little too loud.
"But I value dialogue. Truly. I want you to speak your mind. You can’t avoid having an opinion on this subject matter,” Adam said, ignoring that last bit.
"I don't know what to--I can't say anything," she said.
"Then tell me your first impression of it," he said, instead.
“It sounded on the profile like a really angry Myspace person,” Claire said, hesistantly.
“What did you just say?” he asked. “I must have misheard you.”
She smiled. Didn’t know what his expression was but—honestly.
“Angry kids on Myspace who want everyone to die,” she said. “A lot of people wish it because it's..." she trailed off. "For me, too, I guess--well, you know what I mean.
Someone wished me dead once on one of my messages, and then I did die the next day, so maybe you should have typed up the wish there, it comes true," she joked.
He was quiet, staring straight ahead.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” she said. “I can’t say I’m ‘afraid’ of doing the same thing, even though I might, because I’m not there yet. It’s not even a fair thing to say because I haven't been through what you have. I'm not the sum of ...anything yet. How can I say anything about it, what the thoughts were, whether they were from the right place or not? If it was to help? I haven't been through your life."
“It’s not about being fair,” Adam said. “It’s about the truth. Are you afraid of becoming me?”
She half smiled.
“I’m too afraid of becoming myself,” she said. “Besides you’re not the most terrible thing to happen to the world, you know.”
She was joking but she meant it too, in a way.
He went quiet again. So she decided to talk. Half out of nerves but..she thought she should if one of them was quiet.
“I’m trying to take this one day at a time, because: my dad worked for a secret Company for years, mind-wiped my mom for just as many years, I was related to a serial killer who did touch my brain and then I wasn’t and then I was, and before that, my biological family wanted to blow up New York. In some future, Peter told me I wear leather and--.”
She’d omit. “Well I killed a child. The government attacked us. And oh, the world blew up in that timeline. Literally.” He winced at that. “And like you know, I’m going to live forever. I could go on. It’s bizarre. Don’t you think it’s bizarre and fucked up? You have to have an opinion," she mimicked.
“I suppose…that’s a good reason to avoid talking about it, actually,” he said. “You don’t know how you’ll turn out?” he returned to it.
“Why is that a question?” she asked. “I don’t know. Did you know?”
“I had an idea.”
She blinked at him. “Lucky you.”
“Not really,” he said. She tilted her head, suddenly still inside.
“I don’t think you had an idea,” she said. “We can’t tell the future, and it’s not predestined.”
“I always have an idea,” he said. “And some things are forever unchanging.”
Claire looked at her hands on the small blanket.
“No one should have to do something that they don’t want to do,” she said. She paused. “I’ve thought about walking away, you know.”
He looked surprised.
“Running, more like,” she said. She had finally understood her mother in some ways. “I don’t really think I have a place here, during all of this. I thought I did—finally. That it all meant something. And now, not so much. Now I don’t think I fit.”
“What stopped you?”
She looked at him.
“Not me,” he said.
“I…didn’t mean that, I just…well, it was always one more thing. I think you made me feel positive about it but—it was always one more disaster.”
He nodded. “Like what’s in the next room. I understand you there. But would you want to lose all that you’ve gained?”
Would she? Everything? She didn’t want to go that deep into it.
“What have I gained?” she asked. “Really?”
“There are some that love you,” he said, and then looked away. “And most truly revere you. They may fear you but they do revere you.”
“They don’t know me,” she said. “If they did, I don’t know what they’d think.”
She was in an abandoned factory about to torture someone for information. Which reminded her—
He pushed her hair back behind her ear.
“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” he said. “You might be surprised what they’d think of you if they had the pleasure of knowing you.”
Claire couldn’t when he said things like that. She fidgeted slightly.
“To be honest,” he said, “I am curious how it’ll turn out.”
“You mean, how I’ll turn out?”
“No—the matter of immortality. They accept your invincibility—surprising among the normal crowd but so be it. They accept the gift in your blood. They accept you defeating death now. But I don’t think they’d accept that you will live forever.”
She stared silently at him. Claire didn’t think being called a monster in some arenas was acceptance but she wanted to hear the end of it.
“That’s when they doubt you. Whether it’s warranted or not. That’s when they truly look at you.”
“You think it’ll blow up in my face,” Claire said lightly.
“In this uncontrolled, un-malleable setting? I expect it to.”
“We’ll see.”
“We will,” he said, getting that last word. He touched her back and she didn’t mind that at all. “But if you wanted to leave, you could. You do have your choices.”
She nodded. “I know that.”
She wished it would have been the gift she had been searching for.
“I might go with you,” he said. “If I’m too bored here.”
She made a face at him. It occurred to her: could she leave him unwatched? This seemed to be something she'd have to consider forever.
“But that’s the future. Now, there’s a bomb threat. I have to care about that and their lives. That has to matter, those people…I can’t let them die so randomly like that. Life and death...you know, it gets weird. Heavy.”
That, she understood. The importance of it. She had to keep running towards life. Had to.
He looked as if he understood that too. She had talked enough. She had done—well, a lot enough.
“I’d better take care of it,” Claire said, and straightened, sitting up. He was suddenly looking at her, wide-eyed.
“What are you on about?”
She looked at him. “I’ll take care of it. You listed our options.”
“You are not going to torture him,” Adam said dryly.
She was coldly angry. It was different than her usual anger. I’m not going to have someone else do it for me. You said certain things are inevitable, don't change. I don’t think I necessarily have to." She still didn't. She thought there must be a power, or just a technique that she's missing. Touch-detecting could lead them to the places he's been last, if they hadn't prepared for it. "But I need to figure it out now. You see, I can't figure out which right to take, even now, just over this.” She took a deep breath. "And I have to try. I have to help them. You understand that, right?"
She could take torturing the man if it meant people could live. She could not get that injured by it, and she could not care.
“Claire-.”
“Do you think I can’t do it if I have to?”
“I do. He did almost take your head off,” he said, without hesitation. She didn’t know what to think of that…well, other than it was what it was. He touched her shoulder. “But it can wait until morning,"
“When there’s a bomb threat,” Claire said dryly. “When there’s a definite deadline to the second.”
“It’s not that sort of bomb,” Adam said. There was a twitch of his lip. Glad he was so flippant about it. Only he couldn’t be. At least not about the helplessness of it all. She had to make him talk. She’d try to talk it out first. But…if she could demonstrate pain before him, would that work? Kind of highlighting it for him? If she could find an empath translator, now, that could work. In the face of other people's pain, would he not cave?
Adam studied her, casual.
“I’m tired,” he said. “Let’s wait until the morning.”
Not the answer she had expected. But he pulled her to him, this look in his eyes again, and she didn’t imagine that she’d have gentle sex with him. Somehow that happened, his hand intertwined with hers. She hadn’t wanted…she hadn’t run. She didn’t think he would hurt her in any way she didn’t want him to.
It was more out of her not thinking about it, just letting it happen to her. And, as she breathed heavily underneath his arm—catching herself, she thought she hadn’t disliked it. She hadn't been as alone, had she?
Thinking this, she drifted off.
***
Claire woke up with a bad feeling.
A really bad feeling. She put on her clothes and rushed outside into the large room and saw the truth of it. He had tortured him.
He had crept away while she was sleeping and did this without her: a knife and something in a container. Water most likely. He looked up, wiping his hands.
“He didn’t last very long at all. You should call Peter. The problem is bigger than I thought.”
“I didn’t even know if this was necessary, and you weren’t the one attacked! It was my decision,” Claire said, pointing to the man angrily. “You—While I was sleeping!”
“I know I didn’t wake you up,” he said dryly, and this was all he was going to say to her. Claire stepped back, biting her lip. She should leave. This was entirely out of control.
“How bad is it?” she asked. “The bomb?”
“Out of a scale of one to ten? Twenty,” Adam said.
She was going to be sick. Really, this time.
“The government?”
“Slightly involved.”
Which was too much involvement. Claire nodded slowly and then met his eyes again.
“We’ll talk about this later.”
“Something else to look forward to.”
She gritted her teeth and stepped outside to call Peter.
Continuation of previous AU
Luck was not her thing.
Not at all. Claire was in public when she was almost killed again. In a more permanent way. They were talking about whether young kids should be trained or have their powers acknowledged. And registered.
Claire wasn’t so much for registration but she didn’t get that far when someone landed on the stage in front of her with a freakishly long scythe. She saw the shadow coming down so she started moving just in time.
The blade took a little off the top.
She fell backwards and there was a frenzy of motion. She hated just sitting there, hated that it was over as she was getting to her feet. A politician, one of many, rushed towards her and took her hand, ready to lead her off the stage.
Oh but really.
“I sat through your speech,” she said, with a smile. “You’ll still have to sit through mine.”
Some people in the crowd clapped for her, but Claire didn’t see the big deal behind it. She hadn’t been hurt.
But as she spoke, outwardly calm, she was raging inside.
***
Claire didn’t expect to see him in the car.
She had thought he’d be by himself again but he had stuck around. Claire tried to hide any feelings about this.
“Hi,” she said, trying to smile.
He did not. “I’m perfectly calm,” he said. “Not to worry.”
Claire tilted her head. “That’s usually when I should.” She paused , wondered if she should say it but hey you only live once. Or something. “So. Angry sex in the limo?”
He slid over to her, so she guessed she was right. Then he put his arm around her.
“It was a good instinct. To stay up there.”
Claire relaxed by a degree, trying now not to be proud. It hadn’t been calculated. She told him so.
“As I said, instinct,” was the dry reply. “If you had run, you would have given them an invitation,” he said, and his voice was more energetic again, focused.
“What next?” she asked. “I have to question him myself, right? That was the deal.”
He looked cagey in his smugness.
“What?” she asked.
“Oh. I think he escaped in the scuffle.”
“…And that’s good news why? Because we can catch him ourselves?”
“Already done that,” Adam said. It wasn’t good news.
“They’ll think we are harboring a fugitive even if he was trying to kill me.”
“They—I assume you mean your government—may have sent him.”
Claire’s body turned to ice. It almost felt literal. She wanted to laugh. “No,” she said. “That’s too far.”
Adam didn’t answer because it wasn’t too far. It felt almost just right. If this started to happen…a lot of death would happen.
“It’s a possibility,” he said after a while. “I don’t know much myself yet. Looking forward to changing that.”
Claire had a bad feeling (obvious) yet she shook it off, pacing herself. She allowed herself to move in closer, for his presence.
After that theory, she felt more alone than ever.
***
Abandoned warehouse.
Very subtle and not dramatic at all. Claire followed him, wondering if her first instinct had been right. There could have been a second attack.
He opened the door and waved her inside, and she saw that warehouse had been furnished before for this kind of thing. And by that kind of thing, she meant kidnapping.
Imprisonment. That kind of thing.
Her assailant was tied to a chair, gagged, behind a glass wall. It seemed to be glass but it had a strange glimmer to it. At the very least it was bullet proof. She saw a shadow to her left and recognized one of theirs.
Mind-reader.
Claire frowned.
“It seems like you had this place prepared,” she said.
“Long before you became a public figure, don’t fret.”
That made her fret more but she played it off.
“What do we know now?” Adam asked cheerfully.
“That he has been trained,” Sylvia said. “I can’t breach his mind.”
“Yet,” he said. “And the bomb threat?”
Claire stared in shock.
“Still insist that it’s true. That they will go off with or without him tomorrow.”
“Seems like a group, doesn’t it?” Adam asked her.
“Wait, wait,” Claire said. “What bomb?”
“He has a bomb,” Adam explained. “Or they do. Somewhere in the city.”
“Why is—why are you calm, we have to--.”
“I’m on top of that,” Adam said. “I wonder how he’ll fancy the threat of forgetting his entire existence before he made such poor life choices.”
“We aren’t erasing his memory.”
Adam gave her a look of instant death. She did not die, hah. Claire crossed her arms.
“I’m not going to do that to someone,” she said.
“You didn’t have to say that in front of him.”
“Behind the glass?”
“He can read your lips,” Adam said. “Now read mine. We are going to discuss this elsewhere. You can leave for the night,” he told the mind-reader.
Adam smiled jauntily back into the room, the promise of his return to the point.
So, this was where they were at.
***
“So. Torture,” Claire began.
“It’s not a hard decision,” Adam started. They were off to a good start now.
“Extortion is off the list?” she asked, dryly.
“It wouldn’t be an issue if we were more organized,” he said, lightly. “We could have simply followed him.”
Yeah, lack of organization as a people. Certainly not in Company format.
“What’s really going on?” Claire sighed, crossing her arms again.
“Besides the obvious. The bomb threat which isn’t a threat at all but a promise.”
“I’ve been thinking he could have killed me well—better than he did,” Claire said. “He could have landed closer. I just think this is a set-up.”
Adam looked at her with approval. “It is.”
“Would torturing him be the set-up?” Claire tried. “Like we are…”
Okay, the look was long and suffering.
“It makes sense,” Claire protested. “It could be!”
“You’re paranoid, love. Anyone tell you that?”
If he thought she was paranoid, then she must be half crazy by now. Or more.
“Look,” Claire said, walking up to him sharply. “This is happening too quickly. There are so many angles here, so many conspiracies that could be true.”
“I’m willing to wager that I have thought of most of them by now. I even thought I could get him to talk by threatening you.”
“….”
“He deliberately missed you,” he said. “There has to be a reason.”
“And so you’re going to torture him.”
“Just so he opens his mind. Just enough. It’s a delicate procedure and I’m not unfamiliar with it.”
“I don’t know if I can let you do that,” Claire said.
“If you can let me,” he said, standing up.
“Yeah, if I can let you,” she said.
“Like you refused to take more bodyguards along with you?” Adam asked. “Is that what you mean, that kind of refusal?”
It was angry sex, and mostly from her side of it. He had flipped her on top of him this time, and she took full advantage.
However, no one compromised. Claire was only tired and resting under his jacket, feeling her heart beat out of her. She was alive. Still.
“I’m very angry,” she said, seeing that blade come close to her. Scaring her. Scaring her for one second too long.
“So am I.”
“That’s not a surprise.”
“I hate these people,” Claire said. “Someone who would do something like that so casually. I’m half glad we have him here, instead of having to work around talking to him.”
He was quiet beside her.
“Do you think the government is behind this? Some branch of it? Why are you being
so quiet?” she asked last, surprising even herself. “I know you’ve healed by now.”
“I wondered why you do not hate me,” Adam said. “Or perhaps you do hate me and that is why you are here with me. That, I understand.”
“You want to actually talk about it?” Claire asked softly. In dread. With dread.
“I’ve always wanted to hear your opinion. You never gave it. Never brought it up. On purpose.”
Claire opened one eye.
“I don’t have…an opinion on something…and I don’t hate you. Well, I don’t think I do. I mean--don't my actions...kinda...speak for themselves?”
...Didn't it? She had taken his actions as more about him than his words. You kind of had to.
“Your actions? True."
"And...well, the same. Vice versa." She needed to stop fidgeting. Fidgeting was an action, speaking a little too loud.
"But I value dialogue. Truly. I want you to speak your mind. You can’t avoid having an opinion on this subject matter,” Adam said, ignoring that last bit.
"I don't know what to--I can't say anything," she said.
"Then tell me your first impression of it," he said, instead.
“It sounded on the profile like a really angry Myspace person,” Claire said, hesistantly.
“What did you just say?” he asked. “I must have misheard you.”
She smiled. Didn’t know what his expression was but—honestly.
“Angry kids on Myspace who want everyone to die,” she said. “A lot of people wish it because it's..." she trailed off. "For me, too, I guess--well, you know what I mean.
Someone wished me dead once on one of my messages, and then I did die the next day, so maybe you should have typed up the wish there, it comes true," she joked.
He was quiet, staring straight ahead.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” she said. “I can’t say I’m ‘afraid’ of doing the same thing, even though I might, because I’m not there yet. It’s not even a fair thing to say because I haven't been through what you have. I'm not the sum of ...anything yet. How can I say anything about it, what the thoughts were, whether they were from the right place or not? If it was to help? I haven't been through your life."
“It’s not about being fair,” Adam said. “It’s about the truth. Are you afraid of becoming me?”
She half smiled.
“I’m too afraid of becoming myself,” she said. “Besides you’re not the most terrible thing to happen to the world, you know.”
She was joking but she meant it too, in a way.
He went quiet again. So she decided to talk. Half out of nerves but..she thought she should if one of them was quiet.
“I’m trying to take this one day at a time, because: my dad worked for a secret Company for years, mind-wiped my mom for just as many years, I was related to a serial killer who did touch my brain and then I wasn’t and then I was, and before that, my biological family wanted to blow up New York. In some future, Peter told me I wear leather and--.”
She’d omit. “Well I killed a child. The government attacked us. And oh, the world blew up in that timeline. Literally.” He winced at that. “And like you know, I’m going to live forever. I could go on. It’s bizarre. Don’t you think it’s bizarre and fucked up? You have to have an opinion," she mimicked.
“I suppose…that’s a good reason to avoid talking about it, actually,” he said. “You don’t know how you’ll turn out?” he returned to it.
“Why is that a question?” she asked. “I don’t know. Did you know?”
“I had an idea.”
She blinked at him. “Lucky you.”
“Not really,” he said. She tilted her head, suddenly still inside.
“I don’t think you had an idea,” she said. “We can’t tell the future, and it’s not predestined.”
“I always have an idea,” he said. “And some things are forever unchanging.”
Claire looked at her hands on the small blanket.
“No one should have to do something that they don’t want to do,” she said. She paused. “I’ve thought about walking away, you know.”
He looked surprised.
“Running, more like,” she said. She had finally understood her mother in some ways. “I don’t really think I have a place here, during all of this. I thought I did—finally. That it all meant something. And now, not so much. Now I don’t think I fit.”
“What stopped you?”
She looked at him.
“Not me,” he said.
“I…didn’t mean that, I just…well, it was always one more thing. I think you made me feel positive about it but—it was always one more disaster.”
He nodded. “Like what’s in the next room. I understand you there. But would you want to lose all that you’ve gained?”
Would she? Everything? She didn’t want to go that deep into it.
“What have I gained?” she asked. “Really?”
“There are some that love you,” he said, and then looked away. “And most truly revere you. They may fear you but they do revere you.”
“They don’t know me,” she said. “If they did, I don’t know what they’d think.”
She was in an abandoned factory about to torture someone for information. Which reminded her—
He pushed her hair back behind her ear.
“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” he said. “You might be surprised what they’d think of you if they had the pleasure of knowing you.”
Claire couldn’t when he said things like that. She fidgeted slightly.
“To be honest,” he said, “I am curious how it’ll turn out.”
“You mean, how I’ll turn out?”
“No—the matter of immortality. They accept your invincibility—surprising among the normal crowd but so be it. They accept the gift in your blood. They accept you defeating death now. But I don’t think they’d accept that you will live forever.”
She stared silently at him. Claire didn’t think being called a monster in some arenas was acceptance but she wanted to hear the end of it.
“That’s when they doubt you. Whether it’s warranted or not. That’s when they truly look at you.”
“You think it’ll blow up in my face,” Claire said lightly.
“In this uncontrolled, un-malleable setting? I expect it to.”
“We’ll see.”
“We will,” he said, getting that last word. He touched her back and she didn’t mind that at all. “But if you wanted to leave, you could. You do have your choices.”
She nodded. “I know that.”
She wished it would have been the gift she had been searching for.
“I might go with you,” he said. “If I’m too bored here.”
She made a face at him. It occurred to her: could she leave him unwatched? This seemed to be something she'd have to consider forever.
“But that’s the future. Now, there’s a bomb threat. I have to care about that and their lives. That has to matter, those people…I can’t let them die so randomly like that. Life and death...you know, it gets weird. Heavy.”
That, she understood. The importance of it. She had to keep running towards life. Had to.
He looked as if he understood that too. She had talked enough. She had done—well, a lot enough.
“I’d better take care of it,” Claire said, and straightened, sitting up. He was suddenly looking at her, wide-eyed.
“What are you on about?”
She looked at him. “I’ll take care of it. You listed our options.”
“You are not going to torture him,” Adam said dryly.
She was coldly angry. It was different than her usual anger. I’m not going to have someone else do it for me. You said certain things are inevitable, don't change. I don’t think I necessarily have to." She still didn't. She thought there must be a power, or just a technique that she's missing. Touch-detecting could lead them to the places he's been last, if they hadn't prepared for it. "But I need to figure it out now. You see, I can't figure out which right to take, even now, just over this.” She took a deep breath. "And I have to try. I have to help them. You understand that, right?"
She could take torturing the man if it meant people could live. She could not get that injured by it, and she could not care.
“Claire-.”
“Do you think I can’t do it if I have to?”
“I do. He did almost take your head off,” he said, without hesitation. She didn’t know what to think of that…well, other than it was what it was. He touched her shoulder. “But it can wait until morning,"
“When there’s a bomb threat,” Claire said dryly. “When there’s a definite deadline to the second.”
“It’s not that sort of bomb,” Adam said. There was a twitch of his lip. Glad he was so flippant about it. Only he couldn’t be. At least not about the helplessness of it all. She had to make him talk. She’d try to talk it out first. But…if she could demonstrate pain before him, would that work? Kind of highlighting it for him? If she could find an empath translator, now, that could work. In the face of other people's pain, would he not cave?
Adam studied her, casual.
“I’m tired,” he said. “Let’s wait until the morning.”
Not the answer she had expected. But he pulled her to him, this look in his eyes again, and she didn’t imagine that she’d have gentle sex with him. Somehow that happened, his hand intertwined with hers. She hadn’t wanted…she hadn’t run. She didn’t think he would hurt her in any way she didn’t want him to.
It was more out of her not thinking about it, just letting it happen to her. And, as she breathed heavily underneath his arm—catching herself, she thought she hadn’t disliked it. She hadn't been as alone, had she?
Thinking this, she drifted off.
***
Claire woke up with a bad feeling.
A really bad feeling. She put on her clothes and rushed outside into the large room and saw the truth of it. He had tortured him.
He had crept away while she was sleeping and did this without her: a knife and something in a container. Water most likely. He looked up, wiping his hands.
“He didn’t last very long at all. You should call Peter. The problem is bigger than I thought.”
“I didn’t even know if this was necessary, and you weren’t the one attacked! It was my decision,” Claire said, pointing to the man angrily. “You—While I was sleeping!”
“I know I didn’t wake you up,” he said dryly, and this was all he was going to say to her. Claire stepped back, biting her lip. She should leave. This was entirely out of control.
“How bad is it?” she asked. “The bomb?”
“Out of a scale of one to ten? Twenty,” Adam said.
She was going to be sick. Really, this time.
“The government?”
“Slightly involved.”
Which was too much involvement. Claire nodded slowly and then met his eyes again.
“We’ll talk about this later.”
“Something else to look forward to.”
She gritted her teeth and stepped outside to call Peter.
