[Cardiff] The solace and the silence.

[onlysayinghello]

Distracted was putting it mildly, and he knew that everyone at the Hub could see it too. Of course it wasn't as if he had much to divulge to them. There were the glances though, burning gazes at the back of his head that the moment he turned to face them snapped away as if caught doing something they knew they shouldn't be doing.

He thought for sure that Gwen would question him, all her needing to know just what made him tick, it had to be eating at her to see him so out of his element. Yet there he was seated at his desk in the Hub trying not to think about the fact that there was a four hundred year old man at his flat, that had been buried alive... and that Jack had grown a bit more than fond of him. Of course all the unanswered questions were inching up in his conscious as well. None of it made any of it any easier.

Still he'd just taken off. Flight to Japan and back again without so much as an explanation as to just what had gone on. It was routine for Jack, they should have been aware of it by now, that not every thing he did had an answer available to give, even to them. It was better for them, or at least that was what he convinced himself of. Glancing to the clock he was relieved that it had been a slow day, well relatively slow at least. Owen was off looking into something or another and the rest of the cases had been tied up for a few days now. Jack could have taken time off, he could have just rested up, stayed in bed and taken care of things for Adam.

Instead he felt torn... because he wasn't sure what to even think, and having Adam in his flat... around him all the time wasn't helping him keep a clear head on it all. So the time apart was something he needed, and he knew Adam needed it as well. A time to just be alone and not with anyone around him to ask questions that Jack knew wouldn't be easy to answer. Questions Jack knew he had more than a few of.

Standing up he grabbed his coat off the rack and said his good nights to Tosh, telling her not to stay too late. He stopped and picked up something for dinner and then headed up to his flat. Keys slid into the door and his toe pushed it open, hands still holding the food. A few steps into the room and his foot nudged the door shut behind him before the food was placed on the counter. The chill in the room surrounded him, even with his big coat, but he didn't actually mind. Temperatures didn't seem to phase him these days, and he could see the slight flush to Adam's cheeks proof that once more he had been standing in the cold. It was the moments like this, where Jack saw something he hated seeing in anyone, and it was that exact reason why Jack knew he was right going into work.

It pulled at him, tugging him in so many different directions he wasn't even sure which way was up, let alone right. All he saw was the despair and the half empty gaze from across the room. Jack let his eyes meet Adam's and in that silence Jack wished he already had all the answers, but he knew he was far from that moment... so far he couldn't even think what the horizon looked like.

"You didn't have to shut that," Jack's words cut across the cold of the room before he started to move toward Adam. "The window, I mean."

Comments

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

Adam shifted further away from the window, toward the center of the room to meet him, nervous as a cat and trying to hold himself still inside because of it, wary of betraying any weakness, even to Jack. Glancing around the brightly lit flat and managing a rueful smile dropping down as a mask.

"I think I've done enough damage to your utility bill..."

It was so ridiculously domestic, even with everything running underneath. He couldn't remember the last time he'd shared someone else's space with any sort of intimacy. Jack's eyes were so full of questions and they seemed to mirror his own, the whys and whens of it all a tangled mess in a brain that managed to lose and keep track of time obsessively at the same time.

"You brought dinner?" Which was horribly obvious, but the silence had swirled around him all day and he couldn't bear to let it continue to linger, breaking it with the first thing that came to his mind, forcing some semblance of normalcy onto a situation that lacked it in every capacity.

[onlysayinghello.livejournal.com]

Jack turned around to look at the bag on the counter, as if he'd almost forgotten about the food. Everything sort of slipped from his mind when he saw the near gloss of darkness in Adam's eyes. His hand shot to the back of his head rubbing at his hair as he nodded in agreement, "Don't worry about the bill, somehow Ianto's managed to get this as part of the Torchwood budget, no clue how but I think he wasn't all too comfortable with me living at the Hub."

Which was an answer and a question all in one... considering Ianto's actions in the Hub... and then in his office. Jack's life if not interesting, was still complicated, always complicated actually.

"I know my fridge isn't really food friendly, I actually think all I have in there is a bottle of Vodka, which isn't even in the fridge itself, more like the icebox."

It sounded like mindless chatter, just anything to fill the silence, because it seemed to be swallowing them whole, "So... take-out."

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

"That's convenient," Adam remarked, starting to mirror the gesture with his hair, before dropping his hand. "The budget part..." Gods, but he was close to babbling, just standing there in the middle of the room, unsure of which way to go next or what to do.

He broke away from the awkward stance, half of him wanting to touch, to be touched, to be reminded that things were real and he was here and not there lost in some sort of pathetic delusion, but he rather hoped his delusions wouldn't be this awkward. Veering away from possible rejection if he reached out, he headed to the food.

"Nothing wrong with just vodka. There was a time in Russia when I tried to live on the stuff." He sent Jack a sort of rueful look over his shoulder. "But take-out is better, yes."

[onlysayinghello.livejournal.com]

Jack let his arms fold across his chest, unsure of if it was merely something to do with his hands or something on the subconscious level he twisted his body to follow Adam moving toward the food. It had become incredibly awkward entirely too quickly. Shrugging his jacket off his shoulders he moved to hang it up on the rack by the door, then shoved his hands in his pockets as he moved toward Adam where the food was currently being looked through and taken out of the bag.

"One thing I can say for certain is that in the future alcohol gets a lot more creative, there are some planets out there that have devised an entire system of drinks that will allow your mind to forget whatever rules and boundaries it might have already set up. Then there are still the drinks that make you forget your name when you wake up, or make you wish you had at least."

Jack grinned trying to ease the tension in the room, which wasn't an easy task given all the stuff that was unsaid. He didn't want to rush right into twenty questions though, but at the same time questions seemed to be all he had at the moment. He knew Adam hadn't slept during the night, and it wasn't that he minded that fact, but he hadn't slept either.

Running a hand over tired features Jack leaned against the counter behind him, "It feels like it's too soon to ask, but really Adam... you have to realize the questions that have been racing through my head since the other night."

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

The idea of other planets, other life, was still so foreign, going from science fiction to reality in the space of a few weeks, and it made him uneasy about the place of humanity inside of it all. His place.

"That sounds like a rather dangerous combination of alcoholic beverages," he commented with a smile back that was real for all that it was tinged with something like uncertainty, or shyness.

He needed to be useful, all things considered, even if that just meant getting them silverware, getting out the boxes, glancing at the choices Jack had brought. Freezing at Jack's words, his fingers wrapped around a fork, he let the idea of questions, and answers, sink in.

"You have a right to the answers," he said, finally, setting the food on the counter, before turning to meet Jack's eyes. "Perhaps we could have some of the vodka?"

[onlysayinghello.livejournal.com]

As much as the smile tugged at the corners of his lips he wasn't sure if getting alcohol involved was a wise way to start the evening, and the fact that Adam seemed to think it was set off a small alarm in Jack's mind. He was approaching it wrong, coming at him as if he was interrogating him, despite his effort to make it seem out of concern he knew what he was asking of him, and it was something that so far they hadn't even wanted from each other.

Before this moment they were a commonality, a bond of two that knew how it was to look back at their past and see nothing that they could still hold onto for their own except memories. They had no motives, no truths to be sought out or lies to unearth... just each other to realize how simple life could be to share with someone else.

Now it had changed, and the shift in it all was as stark as the room was stilled by silence. Even now Jack stood as if he was looking at Owen, or anyone else that had betrayed him... and Jack wasn't comforted by the thought at all. Withdrawing his hands from his pockets he moved closer to Adam, knowing it was even more of a gesture to move closer, and even more of a temptation to remove that space between them.

His hand rested upon Adam's for a moment trying to meet his eyes with a sincerity, to ensure him that they'd be okay despite not even knowing what was to come of it all. Everything changes... his own words echoing back against him now, because everything was changing, and he had no guide to it at the moment. Time would catch up with itself eventually... repair the damage that had been put forth... but now in this room, with this man... there was nothing to fix him except time.

Time was all they had.

"Having a right to answers, and being ready to give them are two different things, and if you think that drinking is going to ease them from you? I'd rather not hear them." Swallowing his own curiosity for a moment he let his fingers curve into Adam's palm, trying to comfort him, "I do want to know though, I want the truth and I'm willing to listen."

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

Adam let his fingers curl slowly back around Jack's, trying not to cling, but just to hold them. He watched where their hands met, frowning a little at the strange sensation. Everything Hiro had said....he hadn't denied a word of it. Jack had to know that it was bad, whatever the answers were.

Adam still didn't think he had been wrong, but he wasn't so insane as to not realize that not everyone was going to see it that way. Jack would never understand it, he thought. Never condone it. His fingers tightened on Jack's, with a flash of unaccustomed fear. He'd spent 400 years alone, moving through countries and wars and cities like a ghost. Thirty years before he'd tried, for the first time, to bring people together, to have more than men under his command, but instead a group of people at least somewhat like him who understood.

They turned on him. It didn't lend itself to him wanting to trust, to put any reliance in Jack or that the sincere look he was giving him might be actually sincere. To tell him anything would be risking losing that, and Jack would have reason to, as well, at least in his mind. But if he told him, and he stayed...he struggled to push back the little whisper of hope that brushed over him against the threat of continued loneliness, looking out at the dark of eternity stretching on interminably.

"Sober, then..." Though that made a flash of fear slice through him again. "What...I want to tell you." That might have been a slight exaggeration, but he couldn't stay here, lying next to him at night, drifting through his house, with the questions between them. He had to talk, or he would have to go, and he wasn't ready to go. "I just don't know where to start. What do you ... What questions...if you ask, it will give me somewhere to start to answer."

[onlysayinghello.livejournal.com]

There was no right way to start into this, and Jack knew that now more than ever. The back of his mind flashed to the thought that he was asking something that his team asked of him all the time, the truth about just who he was... about what he was even doing in this world still. Death barely a shadow on his record, and they all knew that now... but that was where the line was drawn for them.

Adam knew though, more than his team did at least, and now he wondered how much he could get Adam to tell him now, and what right he had to any of it.

He left his hand to Adam, feeling that added grip against fingers for a moment, and he knew it wasn't going to be the simplest thing.

"Everyday my team ends up with more reasons to either doubt or trust me, and every day I have to protect them from the truth, because me being just another guy without a past keeps them safer in some backwards way. There's no answer I can give them that won't put doubt into their eyes of just what I am to them. I'm their leader, and they don't want to hear about how I started out a coward, leading people on, tricking them out of things that I had no right to. Going in and altering time, changing things because it was something handed to me on a slip of paper. That was who I was, the man I am today has seen so much more than all of that, and through it all I've found my own path. I know," Jack paused meeting his eyes trying to truly express that he was going to try and listen with as open a mind as he'd want for himself, "I've known that things are far too complicated for you to just tell me the truth, but I want you to at least trust that you have my hand, because if you can't trust that simple gesture then I know you can't trust me with the answers, and I don't want something that you just give to me to placate and stop the questions."

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

Adam wanted to say things that he didn't trust anyone, not with anything, and most certainly not with the truth of himself, all the pieces he kept locked in. Except Jack had told him things, things he apparently hadn't told his own team.

"I don't want to placate you." Well, possibly that would be nice, temporarily. "As you said before...we have time. But if you need to know, and I cannot tell you, then I cannot expect you to keep offering..." His fingers tightened again on Jack's hand. "You came. You found me, and you got me out of there. I am not completely convinced Hiro would have let me out before I had lost all reason. I owe you my life, or at least my sanity." What there was of it. "Every time I think of that..."

He broke off, a faint tremble running through him. "I have never liked confined spaces. After that...to thrust me in there, into that...And you got me out. I don't trust easily. Everyone I have ever trusted with anything of myself has turned on me, left me alone, thrown me aside. But I...you didn't leave me there. It's not something I want to talk about, but not because I am ashamed. And I think, perhaps, you will hate me a bit for that. And I find that I cannot stand the thought of that."

[onlysayinghello.livejournal.com]

Jack kept his gaze to Adam's, watching him fight his own well being in a sense to try and explain the struggle, a struggle that Jack knew almost all too well. Faced against greater odds, greater men and yet Jack knew how easily it all could falter if trust was lost. He knew he was asking too much, to ask a man who'd just been a victim of what Jack had seen for trust was no doubt a daunting thing for Adam, and Jack wanted that trust so much, but he was certain that it was something he was still in the process of earning. No bond of intimacy could stretch as far as the trust Jack was asking for, and he knew that.

The fear in Adam's words, the waver in his tone ever so slight put a grip around his heart, because if these questions had answers that made Adam think that there would be hate left when the cards were laid out, then he wasn't sure he wanted to hear the answers at all. It would be far simpler to just ignore it all, to just not give questions that had answers that could hurt. He did the same to his own team, denied them the truth to protect them from the distrust.

This felt so different to him though, and the things he knew, had come too close to things that Hiro had mentioned, that not asking, not knowing if the events from history were Adam's... it was slowly pulling him apart.

Jack let his free hand move to the nape of Adam's neck, a light touch to the short hairs that teased to fingertips if Jack would let them. It was meant for comfort, to give him solace in the silence that was growing between them.

"I'm sorry you went through that, I'm sorry that trust is hard for you to give, I can understand that I'm asking a lot of you, and know that I can understand also why you have such a fear of the truth finding it's way to me, but I would rather hear it from you, than from someone else."

Jack let his forehead press lightly to Adam's for a moment before a soft kiss brushed to Adam's lips, drawing back Jack met his eyes, "I know what was supposed to happen in Odessa, I know that two timelines were struggling with each other since the events of Kirby Plaza, because there were two archive records of the events. I can't stop them... I can't even tell people what they can do Adam, I just prepare myself for the worst... and the worst didn't happen, but you were there."

Jack sighed, "In New York, I gave you the coin, for good luck. I lied, I was worried about you, concerned that you'd end up in some sort of trouble with your hiding, and your trips to places? It's tagged, registered with the Torchwood databases to me. Wherever I was with that coin, the data base could run a scan and know where I was. When you had it... you were in Odessa, and then... then you were in Japan. I knew in that moment, that something had gone wrong... or right, but I knew that you were in Japan, and your elevation reading... wasn't right. So I came for you, because I couldn't just not know."

His thumb rolled gently against Adam's neck for a moment, "And now it's tearing at me that I don't know if you were there to start... or stop what might have happened in Odessa. Before the other day though, I didn't even realize any of it was connected, so please don't think that I knew this in New York..."

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

Adam leaned into his touch, his lips wanting to linger against Jack's, to breathe him in and pull him closer and let it be there, between them. He hadn't realized how much Jack already knew, how their live were once again...his life was once again one in the history books. It was almost funny, in a way that made the little bits of hysteria that were so close to the surface want to bubble over. That sort of funny, then.

That it had been supposed to happen twisted around in his gut, mingling with the rising hysteria. They all thought they were being so sly and clever and yet events were just there, always around and he wondered if they'd fixed them or if he was always supposed to fail so miserably.

"Four hundred years ago a time traveler appeared in feudal Japan. I was a mercenary and a drunk, with no sense of my own power. I chose a symbol, a name. Takezo Kensei--Sword Saint. And a symbol. 'Godsend.' Then this boy appeared and told me I was a legend. That I was supposed to save Japan, and marry a girl who wanted nothing to do with me at the time. I didn't believe him, so he went off and saved the girl, disguised in my armor, my mask. He pushed me toward deed after deed after that, creating the history he once read in a book. He convinced me that I loved her. I had to, of course, because it was history. So, I convinced myself that I must, as well. Then, while I was saving her father's life from a bandit...he betrayed me. I did not react...well." His voice was soft, pain lacing through it, even now. "He betrayed me and then he left me there, alone, a villain, not the hero he swore I was."

Adam's eyes closed, for a moment.

"He taught me to love and he taught me to hate and he showed me what I was, and swore I was meant to play a great part in history, then he stole the part and the girl I never wanted and there was nothing left."

He looked at Jack again, open, vulnerable and yet somehow still distant, still that wall. "I watched the world tear itself apart for the last 400 years. I walked it alone. I saw death and destruction and nothing ever improving. Humanity has fallen to a depravity of soul that no one can fix. But it was fixed, wasn't it? Your future...it sounds so much better than anything the world has now." There was a bit of a light now, a fervor of belief. "I wanted to fix it. To give the world a fresh start, like the flood. To save it from itself and start a new world of peace and equality.." He broke off, too tired for all the justifications, though his eyes plead with Jack to understand.

"You heard what Hiro said," Adam said, softly, taking a breath. "He didn't lie, this time, no matter what he said about Japan and that fucking woman. I was there to start it."

[onlysayinghello.livejournal.com]

In his lifetime he'd known of the events that changed the world, heard the legends, read the archives... even visited a few of them during training. All the agents being sent out to maintain, to protect their way of life. The human race had come so far in so many years and now that time travel was allowed, the smallest change could create a maelstrom of events. So the Time Agency was enacted and everything that fell out of line was tracked and recorded. It was why Jack knew that at the core of it all the big stuff was happening now.

The big stuff apparently was happening at the hands of the man he'd shared a bed with. All the talk of changing the world and this was it, this was the plan. To simply start again, anew, and Jack wasn't even sure what to think. His past had the events of Kirby Plaza.... the bomb... the destruction, but it also had records of it not happening. Even the Time Agency had archive upon archive of alternate timelines, ones that had transpired or had shifted off. Always keeping track of how things could have gone... just in case the timelines met up again.

When the date came for Kirby Plaza Jack was ready, but the event had changed. Jack wasn't a Time Agent anymore, and for all he knew the fifty-first century was forever changed by that. For all Jack knew his entire history had shifted off the books he'd studied at the Agency. Not that it mattered to him because he was still there, still existing apart from it all.

An impossible thing, words that echoed in his mind all too clearly, all too often. Now he was faced with a truth that he knew all too well... Adam had intended on the destruction, and even in Jack's own memory the events were still hazy. Whether they had happened with Kirby Plaza... or apart from, or even at all, and he was more confused than he wanted to be.

He also knew he was becoming too reliant on things that could have changed. The rift changed it. Kirby Plaza changed it, and now Odessa had changed it. Constantly, always, never ending things weren't happening the way they were supposed to and maybe that was the way it was supposed to be.

Jack didn't move from Adam, he didn't drop his hand from his neck, or the other from the tight grip that was still there.

"Everything changes..." it was the only constant thought he had in his mind, the only thing repeating over and over again, "I thought I knew what I was getting myself into. I'd save the world, I knew the events, the way things were supposed to happen and then... everything started to change. Little things, like... well big things actually, right now," Jack met Adam's eyes, "Right now running right under Cardiff there's a temporal rift. Time... just seeps out of it, all the timelines fighting for space in there, and it just changes everything."

He wasn't even sure he had a point, or even if his thoughts were coming around to anywhere cohesive, "I can't stop it all, I can't fix any of it until it's right there... right on that edge, and I knew about Odessa... and I wasn't there to stop it. Because everything changes. There isn't a constant in my lifetime anymore."

His hand slide from the back of Adam's neck to against his jaw, "Even you... it's changed. It's honest, and it's real- raw to the point where it hurts, because if you had the choice- if you could go back and change it, you'd do it."

Jack exhaled, a half smile of assurance there, "You'd have done it and one of a thousand things that eats away at this existence would have happened... at your hands. And I'm standing here trying to reconcile it in my mind, trying to put it into something that doesn't sound like it goes against every fiber of my being...."

The pause is ripping at his heart because he can't seem to make it right... he can't fix it.

"Because it does. It goes against it all, but everything changes. That's the one constant I have is that at some point there's going to be a change and it'll happen again, and again... until the timeline I know actually sifts itself out of the sieve, and we'll be left with the one timeline... the one future, and a thousand pasts."

Shutting his eyes he kept his hand to Adam's jawline, needing to touch, to feel something just to ground him to the moment, "Everything changed... and I don't think I was ready for it this time."

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

Adam lifted his hand to curl around Jack's at his jaw, still holding tightly to the other. The touches helped steady him. The fact that Jack hadn't lashed out, hadn't pushed him away--it helped. He wasn't sure what to say, what words there were. Jack sounded as lost as he felt, wondering, always, what came next.

To think you knew that, to think you had some idea of it, then find it ripped away and everything changed...he understood that on some level.

"I don't know what comes next," he said, softly, meaning in life, in time, with them, with Hiro, with the world. "I don't...I never thought of failure. I couldn't afford to. I didn't count on Hiro being there, ready to stand in my way, yet again."

He let his eyes slowly travel over Jack's face, resting on his lips. "I wasn't ready for that, for this, for...freedom in a world where things continue to crumble to dust at an alarmingly slow rate, and ..." He shook his head a little. "Events change. The people and places and names change. But at its core, nothing really does, Jack. The world goes on as it always has and people are as they have always been. No one learns, no one remembers, no one..." He trailed off, aware he was trembling again and hating himself for it.

Taking what he hoped was a steadying breath, he shifted just a bit closer to Jack. The heat of the shower was sliding away and being replaced by the ice of the room he'd let get cold. Chest and feet still bare, adding to the emotional insecurity, he was shivering. At least he wanted to blame it on the cold, rather than need, a desperate need to make someone, anyone, understand. Linderman had. Angela had. Arthur had. Before they twisted back on him and changed their minds and chickened out, they'd understood. It had been so long, and part of him knew Jack never would, not really, but he needed him to, so knowledge and need warred.

"It needs to change. Something has to, eventually, and it will be drastic and chaotic and out of control with no vision for what comes after, no plan to rebuild, nothing in place to clean up and move forward. The world is spinning madly toward its own destruction. It needs saving."

[onlysayinghello.livejournal.com]

Jack let the words sink in, the slight sting of them gave his heart more to think on than he wanted to, and in a way he knew what Adam was thinking, but he'd seen it... seen the survival, seen the human race through all the efforts. History repeats you can cleanse with the flood of an ocean, and it'll all build up the same as it was in time... and both of them would be there to see all of it return.

His head shook slightly in disagreement as he pulled away from Adam, seeing the chill on his skin apparent as the confusion in his own eyes. His hand gently brushing to a cheek before he allowed a soft kiss to be placed upon lips. His hands held Adam's face for a moment trying to tell him things he couldn't even find the words for.

Instead he placed a hand to his shoulder, securing him there for a moment as he moved away from him trying to take a step away, trying to take a moment to clear his mind. Jack moved to the bedroom to grab Adam a shirt, feeling a slight bit of guilt that he'd been standing there in the cold of the room for so long before either of them noticed.

Jack returned shrugging the shirt over shoulders before he moved in front of him again trying to get all his thoughts to tether into one cohesive sentence, "It's true... it's spinning faster than you can feel, and maybe toward it's demise, or it's destruction... but it's not the big things that do it. It's not those grand gestures that make the greatest impact. It's the one person that lives... instead of dies. It's the choice to believe in a Utopia, and then the choice you make when you realize that it's not there."

Jack's eyes were earnest, and his brow furrowed with such determination that he was certain he was going to sound like he was preaching the cause he'd fallen into for himself.

"I've seen the human race go from what you saw four hundred years ago, to now, all the way to the actual end of time. I've seen the hope they give each other, and I've seen the choices they make... and it's never the big things. It's never the floods, or the locusts or the bombs in Kirby Plaza that does it... it's the one person not doing what they were meant to. It's the small things that need changing, it's..."

Jack paused, trying to reign in his thoughts once more, "The end of humanity is a cold dark space... they put all their hopes into one plan, one place thinking it's their fresh start... it's their dream... and when it's not there they do the only thing they know they can do... follow someone else, and blindly."

It was a year of his life, a year that only a handful of people would even know of, but it happened.

"The world needs saving, but wiping it clean won't save anything... wiping it clean is the destruction it's spinning toward."

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

Half of Adam wanted to argue, to say that was exactly what the world needed. His eyes blazed for a moment with a fervent light, a prophet, a messiah ready to die for his cause, but then he glanced down, lashes sweeping across his skin, words dying unsaid on his lips.

How could you argue with what someone from the future knew, ever? It was too familiar, always pulling him against every natural inclination. First toward action, now toward patience, struggling for some sense of autonomy of self from the vagaries of a history he couldn't ever seem to find.

"It could be there," he said, softly. "Utopia, I mean...." But it had slid through his fingers, again. He huddled into the shirt, pulling it on with numb fingers that couldn't quite find the buttons. It was something against skin, though, even if the cold went deeper than just skin and bone and nerves.

He touched Jack's cheek, just briefly, sliding fingers down his jaw before he turned back to the food. "I can't...have this debate now, Jack. The right the wrong, the way to do it, the things to come. I told you what I did. I told you why I did it. Can we...save the rights and wrongs of the whys for after we've both slept? Facts I can give you, answers to questions, but I can't...I haven't the fight in me for the rest."

[onlysayinghello.livejournal.com]

Jack had felt the day wear on him longer than any other. He'd been dead for three days and that felt like a walk in the park compared to the agony he was going through in his mind right now. The truth of it was that it wasn't going to be something as simple as one discussion and all would be set aside. Jack knew that things like this didn't disappear over night, and the certainly didn't get any easier to sort out.

Running his hands through his hair he exhaled a breath he wasn't sure he'd been clinging onto for so long. Slight frustration and exhaustion had washed over him, and he knew that Adam was right, and they couldn't just get this all done and over with quickly. If it was going to be that cut and dry he'd be upset with himself for not giving Adam the same chance he'd have wanted for himself.

"You're right, it's a lot... it's too much in a lot of aspects, but it's a lot to try and sort through in one night. I told you in Japan that there was always time, and I meant it. So let's just eat and maybe tonight at least one of us will actually be able to sleep."

Jack met his eyes again, trying to give him that slight look of reassurance, to let him know that despite the trust not being there completely, it was worth looking for in case he needed it.

[changehistory.livejournal.com]

Adam managed a smile in return. "I'm sorry if I kept you up," he said, softly. "At least for something not so fun..."

He needed that reassurance more than he could say, more than he could pull in and process for the moment.

"I'm not going anywhere," he promised with a slight frown. "We can talk...I imagine we could talk about this over and over and again and again for a very long time and not hit the bottom of it all. I..."

He picked up one of the take out boxes blindly, not caring what it really was at the moment. "Let's...you had a full day at work. Let's eat, maybe you can tell me something of popular culture I've met and why there are quite so many channels on the television now...and we can just...be."

He wanted to be, wanted to find his center again, to get back from Kensei to Adam and shake off some of that until he knew who he was again, to have that talk, to find that certainty, somewhere back inside of him.