Centuries
Evolution--what a bitch.
(PG): Minor cursing.
Gen, although I guess you could imply something else. For Heroes15 LJ prompt #14: Beyond.
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You've begun to count in lifetimes and generations now, rather than years. Although it was difficult to comprehend at first, you adapt and it all makes sense after a few minutes (you can't help but wonder if its because of experience or some power you've gotten from one of the countless faces you somehow continue to remember despite knowing nothing about them).
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She's gone now.
Dead at the young, young age of 277 and doesn't look a year past 24. She had outlasted both of her fathers, her mothers (adopted and birth alike) as well as her half-brothers and her best friends and her boyfriends (the good and the bad alike).
But she didn't outlast you. Instead, one sunny day, she gave you that million kilowatt smile and dropped to the floor. That was a week ago and you can't help but think that smile was out of relief rather than that strange feeling called happiness.
She still looks like she's twenty-four even in repose under identity #4 (Claire Bennet, Sandra, Angela Gordon--Tracy Campion was her current try at life)--a victim of circumstances unknown that the doctors couldn't identify in a million years. Yet, even when that very special person who had given you the amazing power of long life has died? You're still here and breathing and it's all just fucked up.
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You're packing her stuff up into little boxes and bags and mementos to be tucked away to cry over after another century or so.
Some is placed away to be donated later and the rest is ready to meet the fireplace (pyrokinesis? Too painful to use and you're not speaking physically).
And then you come across it--an antique of the past that has far too many memories attached to it for its own good. Handguns this old sat in antique stores and museums these days.
You can't help but reach behind you and touch the back of your neck.
It's a sudden, spur-of-the-moment decision (you don't even squint your eyes shut) and it clicks and bang, your ears are ringing.
And you're not on the floor. You're not dead. You think it must've misfired. A cough. Hot lead's on the tongue and a bullet's in your mouth and the gun was no where near your mouth.
Claude once told you that you were the pinnacle of evolution according to Darwin.
Well guess what Claude? Darwin?
Evolution--it's a bitch.
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A/N: Written a long time ago (5-19-07), so it's ridiculously outdated.