Hurled Headlong Flaming

[decreeddarkness]

Who: Adam Carter (or is it?) and Wes Crusher
What: A return
When: Night/late evening
Where: At Wes' door
Rating: F for the Fairest and Fallen
Status: Closed, incomplete

Comments

[shut_up_wesley]

It had been a long time since Wes saw anyone looking for him at the old--now Kirk's--house, so when he got a good look at the man right before he turned his collar up, his heart skipped.

"Adam?" His steps were slow at first, head cocked somewhat askew from his shoulders. "Adam Carter?"

'It is him! But...is it him?' That was the eternal question in Aternaville. But, if it was a different Adam, maybe...

'Maybe we really could start over, before I told that stupid, ridiculous, awful, lie!'

"Excuse me, can I help you?"

[decreeddarkness]

Adam turned; so many times he had beheld this face, spoken to this young man with an incomplete understanding, as though seeing only fragments of a puzzle that he'd struggled to piece together. Now he was complete--no, more than complete, more than whole, a man and more. All the questions he'd struggled with, all the questions anyone struggled with, in life and in death, seemed simple now. The multitudinous grey tones of shadow had become colours, and in becoming colours had turned out to describe sharp pictures all along, and with this newfound clarity he could see so much more. He could see, and know, and comprehend...and yet while all this was at his disposal, he was still Adam. He saw as Adam as he saw as more than Adam, and the things that had mattered to Adam still mattered to him, just as the things that mattered to It, to Him, mattered now to Adam

[shut_up_wesley]

"Cochrane, it is you! where have you been?" Wes beamed, thrilled that it seemed to in fact, be the very same man. He tentatively placed a hand on Adam's shoulder, guiding him away from Kirk's doorstep. "I don't live here anymore actually, Kirk does, he's a friend from my time, sorta. I actually...moved next door, with Dok..."

A slight, happy flush rose to his cheeks--there was a silver, gear-shaped band on the left ring finger of the hand that rested on Adam's shoulder.

"It's so good to see you again though, would you...like to come in?" He nodded towards Dok's caddy corner miniature mansion, set back away from the road. "What brings you out here?"

As cheerful as Wes was, there was a twinge of uncertainty in his voice. After all, they hadn't spoken since Adam got out of the hospital. "Have you adjusted to life around here again?"

[decreeddarkness]

Adam allowed himself to be led, accepting but not returning Wesley's gesture. Although the Power in him existed with absolute certainty, in regards to both Its own and Adam's opinion, Adam himself was not so sure. He was not impolite about it, but he was ambiguous, again, neutral. Much had happened since he'd last been here, or while he'd last been here--it was the same thing--and while what had happened while he'd been here last did not hurt him any more, it had done, and in a way this mattered more than if he continued to feel it as keenly. He felt strongly, though he wasn't sure if it was he who felt so strongly, that it must be acknowledged, or it would continue to bother him.

"I went away for a while," he admitted as they headed towards the other house. "I had to go away for a while. But I had to come back. It doesn't seem to have changed much."

A compromise, then, or a weakness. A bit of small talk in a statement that otherwise wasn't small at all.