guanin | Fic: Dust to Dust (Adam reborn)

Finally, here it is, except that it's really only the prologue and I can make no promises as to when I'll have the next part up because I just started writing it and I have a load of research to do (really bad timing). But I promised to get this out yesterday and it's been a while, so here it is. Now I must go to bed. Because it's nearly four in the morning (I just came from the pub).

Title: Dust to Dust-Prologue
Rating: PG
Pairing: shade of Adam/Hiro
Summary: It can't properly be determined exactly how much the small pile of ashes that had once been the immortal Adam Monroe experienced after being so ignominiously dispatched or even what thoughts, if any, passed through his crushed mind.
Note: Thanks to

midnightdream__ for the beta.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but my own words.

Dust, by virtue of its fine and inanimate composition, doesn't feel much, or rather, anything at all. Therefore, it can't properly be determined exactly how much the small pile of ashes that had once been the immortal Adam Monroe experienced after being so ignominiously dispatched or even what thoughts, if any, passed through his crushed mind. The whole notion of whether he was conscious or not is up for grabs. A quantum physicist would gladly jump at the prospect, philosophizing with convoluted theories and speculations, all involving detailed case studies and more than one mention of the zero point field and how given that those ashes (oh, so few of them) had once belonged to his living body, there might be some spark of his original consciousness left, though that would lead into another exhaustively protracted and muddled discussion about what is consciousness and by that point Adam's ashes would rise up and slap him.

But assuming that he was conscious on some elementary level and that he indeed developed thoughts, what might they be? A snarky complaint would no doubt arise from the fact that instead of being placed in a lovely, polished urn with neat engravings on the side proclaiming his name or at least a skillfully crafted box or something even halfway becoming of his dignity, he'd been dumped into a rubbish bag. He should be thankful at least that they didn't just chuck him in the bin, which was certainly what Mr. Petrelli would have ordered if he could be bothered with the trivial consequences of his recuperation. He did come close for a moment there. The woman who swept him up, awed and almost regretful as she did it, held the small, plastic bag over the bin, her fingers starting to loosen, but at the last second she tightened them, unwilling to let him go. Had Adam been aware, he would have found it curious, especially since they'd never met face to face, thus preventing him from working his beguiling charms on her youthful mind (and perhaps on her body, which he'd certainly appreciate), so why would she feel so conflicted about throwing some old ashes away? They could have no meaning for her. The self-confident, ego pumped part of his mind would go on about how his charisma was so potent that it defied death and lingered in his ashes to tinker with her emotions, tugging at her will like slender puppet strings.

Yet as magnificent as his undead powers appeared to be, he just couldn't get her to take him out of that damn bag. There he languished on the dirty floor, stuffed into the back of her closet with a stack of old pictures from high school where the girl still bared shiny braces and the red and yellows of her old high school track uniform, forgotten, abandoned, with no one to mourn him or speak his name in either anger or hate, for it had been so long since that other, opposing emotion had been associated with him, though he'd fooled Peter to adore him for a while, undying gratitude no doubt long since kicked the bucket. But those times of carefree world destruction were long gone and he once again was held prisoner, but the bars of his cell weren't the crinkled plastic of this bag or even the white, plastered walls of the closet, but the crushed cells of his body now extinguished to no more than unrecognizable specks of a body that had never been meant to die. No glaring, fluorescent light from 8 to 9. No cheery chime of the clock ticking away the wasted seconds. No stale, rubbery chicken every Thursday afternoon. No cold, hard metal eight inches from his face pummeled closed by six feet of unforgiving soil thrown on him by the one person he once truly cared about. All previous sufferings suddenly seemed a kindness.

Yet... Behold! His powers weren't spent. At the end of the seventh day (and didn't that just give the proper religious connotation to this whole mess?), the closet door opened and anxious hands dragged him out, spilling his ashes into a glass jar with the gluey remnants of a label sticking to its side, a sloppy presentation, in his opinion, but it was a hell of a lot better than an old supermarket bag, all wrinkled and dusty by now (and wasn't that just lamely ironic?), though the jar smelled of old marmalade and had a dry sliver of purple sticking to the bottom. He drifted inside the jar, filling it almost to the brim, clinging to the lid as she closed it firmly, shoving him to the back of her bookcase behind her hardcover copies of Harry Potter, which would hardly have been his first choice if he'd had any clue as to what they were about, for Bob hadn't been too forthcoming with the latest bestsellers even when he'd asked so politely, not bitter or resentful at all (okay, maybe a little), even going so far as to say please, though that had been only once and he refused to repeat it, though he'd been tempted, for even Dumas starts getting a little stale after the 53th read and if he was forced to succumb to Tolstoy one more time he'd rip out his own eyeballs (not that he really would have, because it's just painful and messy and Bob's disapproving 'tsk' was so very irritating). Or he just might achieve the impossible and be the first man to ever die out of utter and complete boredom and wouldn't that be a grand achievement coming from a person who couldn't die at all? Bob would have loved it, he was sure. He suspected that it was his secret intention, another of his little experiments to discover how far he could push Adam before he cracked and progressed to the little, padded room with a straitjacket 24/7 and plenty of melodramatic gibbering. Alas, this form didn't allow him the pleasure of perusing new material, though whether or not he'd enjoy this particular expression of pop culture is a tossup, but it would have surely helped while away the hours at least, though boredom wasn't exactly a problem in this reduced form. He stayed put, thoughtless, senseless, and completely alone.

That is, except for a few seconds each night when the girl would come and crack open the cupboard door and peer in, barely distinguishing the shape of the jar from its shadow projected against the back wall, and she'd twitch, shaking, pacing, sometimes reaching out, hand just making it past the door before stopping, startled. She'd pull it back, perplexed at her own action and lack of action, knowing that she couldn't simply keep him there forever. It wasn't right. She had nothing to do with him. Not like... But he couldn't divine her thoughts. As far as he knew, there was no one. Who else would care for him? Why would anyone bother? Abandoned and buried in the dark, Adam's ashes despaired, sinking into themselves as if seeking to blink out of existence, which they'd nearly had anyway. The journey back up, if such was even possible, was too muddled, his strength broken, vanished, as hollow as the quickly diminishing pockets of air bound between his atoms.

Then one day, she took him out. Just snatched him up, quick and determined, and pushed him into her messenger bag, zooming away to destinations unknown, but she had a plan which surely Adam would have guessed if he'd cared to do so. Ten minutes later, warmth spread around him. Other hands held him now, not the girl's, her essence vibrant and distinct, but this one, this touch, so uncertain, so afraid, yet achingly familiar would have stirred the driest grain of sand. A fiery spark flickered within him. Voices spoke, tangible vibrations humming into the glass, molding into syllables and phrases and though he couldn't grasp direct meaning, turmoil and confusion and so much sorrow permeated what little being he had left, and he woke up.

The girl left and Adam was alone with the only man who'd inspired him to strive to become something greater than he what was. The jar was opened. Out he spilled onto a table. No breeze came to blow him away, nothing but the gentle, mournful press of fingers so light that a breathing being might not have noticed, but Adam rose to the touch, sliding against it with a yearning plea as it chanted to him, energy rippling through formerly innate shards of memory, now swelling, expanding outward until being became thought became flesh and bone and muscle and skin reconstituted itself like it'd always done through three centuries of cuts and burns and torn limbs endured in the crystalline knowledge that this body could never die. His re-formed mouth opened, gulping in air, precious oxygen filtering down into tender new lungs and he trembled, falling against the table, his legs spilling off the hard edge, wood rattling beneath him, the shock of sound palpable on his ear drums and he opened his eyes to see the flabbergasted face of the man he'd loved and despised for over three centuries gaping at him and the fury that had once smoldered constantly beneath his skin fizzled out upon seeing his palm smeared with ash. His. Him. And he remembered. Everything.

Current Mood: happy tired

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Date: 2008-10-26 03:34 am (UTC)

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