Disclaimer: I don't own these characters.
Author notes: Written for sinemoras on and lj. (Her fics are awesome btw :-))
I tried Adam/Yaeko for her. :-) Um, the history may be uh...humorous. My first try at a pure, angst romance fic. Un-betaed, for a sad fact. Poems by William Blake and Ono no Komachi.
Chapter 1
At the age of seven, he was told:
"Everything you touch turns to rubbish."
Such was the declaration of the aged matron as she scrubbed the young boy's hands till his skin turned pink. Soup, heavy on the lye…harsh stuff. Adam suspected that the matron used lyre so she could make the marks on the young hands sting more when she rapped him over the knuckles.
He never liked to show pain. He never liked to cry. Thus, his frequency in the matron's presence in the first place, with his bum out in the air, bent over like an animal or a helpless babe.
Beaten. When the inevitable took place, he went on magic carpet rides in his head. He would memorize designs in the grim wooden panels. He imagined anywhere else but here, where he was, on the floor.
One day, he would be an explorer. An adventurer. He would go to a far away country and rescue a princess from a fire-breathing fiend. They would fall in love and all things going smoothly, live happily ever after.
Forever.
But the streets of his home, where his blood ran, only brought the end; they only brought death.
Livid in all its vengeful glory. People passed through Adam's life like ghosts. They coughed up black death and withered in agony. They would sneeze and hack their lungs out as they made their way through the cobbled stones, ashes, ashes, we all fall down.
Curled up in a ball on his small blanket (soiled as ever), he wished he could help. He wished he had the power to turn things to gold.
Looking back on it, Yaeko wasn't the first love that kindled in Adam's heart.
His first love, in the way only a child could love, was a small girl, dark haired and dark eyed. She was like a porcelain doll and just as fragile as one. He would swing her on the rusted swing set as high as she would like, with his little muscles pushing and her little legs kicking. They both had dreams, of sorts.
In a place like the orphanage, dreams were the only place one could go. She was a doll but a tomboy as well. They would have sword-fights up and down the stairs and back again. There were treasure hunts, where the basement was the horde or the space under the stairs was a cave. They were both scared of the dark but they liked to be scared so they could comfort one another.
With her skin grew dark and red with puss and pox marks, he held her during the night, wiping back her brow and smoothing her hair. Her smooth smile was turning chapped and her breathing labored. The matron was tired, old, and rather sick herself. Maybe more in the area of the mind than the body. Maybe in the area of the soul.
Pain no longer moved her. She had seen too much.
So it was up to Adam to try and ease the girl's suffering. Even the touch of blankets drove his only friend into a frenzy. Even the touch of clothes.
The matron walked in when he was carefully removing the horrible, scratchy fabrics, with his tongue out in concentration. He couldn't sit down for a week. He was sore for two. And he could never see her again.
The orphanage was made for echoes. He could hear her sobs. Adam would try, and he was always caught.
Centuries later…looking back on it…he figures that he could have saved her, with this magical blood of his. At the very least, he could have eased her suffering.
It never occurred to him to try, even when he never got sick. When he could hold the very devil of a fever in his arms and not get sick.
It didn't occur to him then because he was Adam. He was a grade-A fuck-up. He was not a hero. Everything did turn to rubbish when he touched it. The world would change. Trees would be cut down, wars would occur, and the air would resonate with the small of smoke, like sticky old London.
But that was a constant, right there.
His inability to…affect his surroundings, move his surroundings. The tales go that if you have the faith of a mustard seed, you could move mountains. That good people can avoid the bad things if they pray, if they aren't evil.
Adam was, and never will be, sure of the state of his own soul. If Elizabeth was evil, then surely he was too.
They buried her in a bundle of bodies where they buried all the children who were of sickly constitution. By buried, ashes to ashes.
The dreams turned to dust that he could not hold in his small hands.
At the age ten, he was told:
"Ah, this city is the pit of vipers," the drunk moaned across the street, on the stoop where God and country could see. "Nasty, wicked people. No wonder we are all dying like dogs."
Adam had watched this man for years after traveling the roads for work. He worked in the most dangerous of places. He half believed he wanted to be hurt. His craft work was never up to snuff. Shipping docks proved the death of dozens a week or so. No matter how many rusted nicks he managed to collect, there was nothing.
At least it would be interesting. It would have an air of tragedy, like the stories he used to read as a child. From tragedy, there was greatness, a romance that burned in his young heart in place of friends (all who leave, who never stay).
"Damn weak constitutions. Damn weak minds. This city has taken our dignity!"
"This city or all cities?" he questioned, one day. Curious.
The old gin drinker looked at him, blurry-eyed.
"We have a city of soot. Some—some, my lad—have a city of gold."
This caught his attention. "Ah-hah. I imagine that would have made the papers."
"These prudes you see. These whores you see. Why, in lands better off than us, there's freedom there. The women are beautiful and dignified. They have eyes of jasper and lips of roses. English rose, my arse!"
He laughed and sat down for a spell. The man looked befuddled, fiddling with his torn gloves awkwardly, and yes, the geezer smelled of vomit and piss. Adam was immune to all that; indeed, he kept waiting for the strike-down.
Vomit. Blood in urine. The whole bag.
"W'here's my manners?" the man inquired of the air and handed him a drink of gin. The matron strictly forbid such heathen behavior in the face of God. So Adam took a sip. It burnt like hell but oddly enough, he enjoyed the feeling in his head.
It was similar to those early years off imagination, only more seedy and adult. Like those sailors. Yes, yes. Like those tossers who thought they were above the world just because they've seen a few places.
Speaking of which.
"Tell me more. I think I could get a pretty pound for a jasper."
"Ah, you laugh. But you haven't seen them. I have. But they are beyond the likes of us. They are princesses. They are the only clean thing left that the world hasn't set its eye on to destroy."
"So you've met a princess, then? How does she care for men of few…virtues and teeth?"
"I lost everything to the demon of that. Once, I wouldn't have touched the stuff." The old guy grinned as if he had pulled a good trick on Adam. Adam grinned back and took another sip.
"Once I was part of the King's prized sailors. I'd charted lands, you see. Lands were magic is."
"Like that old fat man who comes down the chimney and eats bad children."
"Like people who can do things they shouldn't be able to do. I've seen people make pure metal float in midair. I've seen those carpets. I've seen people turn items to gold. I've seen them burn things, I've seen them strike people down with lightening from the sky. It's true. All of it, true. I wish I could have seen further East though. Seems I will die on the street before I do."
"What's East?"
"The last undiscovered land by us. In a way, I hope it manages that status. But I have a token."
Out of his bag, more horrible smelling than he was, he pulled out a small statue.
Adam stared in open awe, all his bluster forgotten. His expression seemed to take on a religious gleam.
The statue was of a beautiful woman with a pale face and dark hair. He had never seen anything like the manner of dress. The fabric seemed real, and the green was added by far more love than one would find in these parts. Her position was restrained majesty. Of beckoning.
"May I?"
The geezer seemed proud to have won Adam's respect but it had little to do with the flesh-and-blood man before the youth. He placed the statue reverently in Adam's hand.
"The East, you say."
"Indeed I do. The last place where the British Empire hadn't sucked the life out of the beauty, the mystery. The very, last Eden."
Adam smiled beatifically and before the old man knew what had happened, the lad had disappeared down the street, mingled in with the crowds, and the beautiful jade statue had disappeared along with him.
At age fifteen, he read:
To see a world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
There weren't any flowers here.