paradisalost | (no subject)

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(no subject)

Who: Adam Monroe (

makemethe_hero) and Elle Bishop (

touchwithaspark)
What: Adam's Kensei-Loss is a go
When: Morning
Where: Elle's room
Rating: PG-13

The bed was very warm, and far more comfortable than what he was used to. In fact, as it penetrated his slowly waking consciousness, Kensei was fairly convinced it was something like sleeping on a cloud. A warm cloud. Could clouds be warm? And cozy? He'd never been quite this cozy, ever in his whole life. It was amazing. It was amazing enough that it pulled him awake, because how was it possible to be quite this comfortable? Kings didn't have beds this comfortable, and the ground he remembered falling asleep on certainly hadn't been, and whatever he was resting his head on was most certainly not his pack, and...he cracked one eye open and peeked down...right. The arm around his chest was most definitely not Carp's. Which would not be around his chest, anyway. And was too pale to be Yaeko's. Which also would not be touching him like that. Very prickly about such things she was, more's the pity. A man had needs, after all.

Opening his other eye, he peered around the room, because he was in a room. A room like he'd always imagined must be in a palace, but never really dreamed he might actually see. Very carefully, he shifted to look over his shoulder, to catch sight of his companion who was most definitely not either Carp or Yaeko, but far more like the girls he'd known back home.

Where he wasn't.

Nor was he in Japan.

Or anywhere else he recognized.

...What the bloody hell had happened?

"Er...hello?"

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It had been a comfort to have him settled beside her when she fell asleep. Everything had been so chaotic as of late that having this one thing go back to something almost normal gave her some semblance of knowing it might be better one day. Things were no where near perfect, and she knew she had a ways to go to get there, but at the very least it was a start and she was proving that she was truly there for Adam.

The shifting of his body only made her try to curl up against him further until his voice cut through the dense fog of sleep that she'd been so comfortable in. The accent alone was a bit more distinct and it made her wonder if she'd made a mistake in who she'd fallen asleep beside.

Rolling her shoulder up to stretch a bit she glanced to the man beside her through one eye and was relieved to see Adam. Taking in a deep inhalation of air she smiled up at him, "Hello."

How did one go about asking a lady where one was and who she was and what might have happened whilst one was sleeping? Kensei was at a loss. It would be rude to start demanding things of her, and, well. She didn't seem surprised to see him at all, so she must know what the devil was up, mustn't she? But she also seemed to expect that he would know what was going on. He tried an answering smile and hoped he didn't look as confused as he felt as he rapidly tried to figure out a strategy for getting through this and not offending the very pretty girl who was smiling at him so very sweetly.

After all, the bed was very comfortable, and she was very pretty and in it with him, and it would be just shameful if he got himself booted out of it for being rude, wouldn't it?

"Ah...I don't mean to be...I seem to have..." Damn. The knuckle of his thumb pressed to his lips as he contemplated how to word this. Clearly Carp's lectures on being a hero were wearing off? "Am I dead? Is this heaven?"

What? Comfortable bed, angel in it--it seemed a reasonable assumption!

Elle was still trying to get her self more aware of her surroundings as well as the time because clearly it was morning, but the exact hour was always missing. It was like a casino in Atlantic City or something without any clocks. Shifting up onto her elbows she glanced around trying to get an idea of the time when she heard his question, and turned to him with a rather confused curious look on her face.

"Are you feeling alright Adam? You're not dead, it's Paradisa still. I mean yeah things have been sort of bad lately, but not dead bad."

He looked even more confused as she looked at him with confusion, because was he supposed to know what she was talking about? Paradisa? It sounded like...something out of the book that Dante fellow had written that he'd read on the ship on the way to Japan. Worrisome, that. More worrisome that his angel was looking so confused.

And calling him by a name he didn't know.

"Adam? I'm sorry, I don't know anyone...well, I mean, I knew a fellow back in London named Adam, of course, popular name, but it's not mine." Perhaps she didn't know him after all? How embarrassing given their sleeping positions. He hadn't done something like this in, well...weeks. Which wasn't the point. There wasn't waking up, snuggled, after or confusion!!

"I'm Kensei," he told her carefully, watching to see if it rang any bells. It wasn't strictly the truth, either, of course, not the name his mother gave him, but it was good enough for now.

"Oh." Elle suddenly understood what was going on, which was sort of a blessing of sorts. She sat up straighter in the bed and ran her fingers through her hair for a moment trying to get it out of her face. Taking a deep breath she looked at Adam seeing something entirely different in his eyes now that she actually could focus on him.

"This is going to sound crazy, but... have you met a meddlesome Japanese guy named Hiro yet?"

He brightened immediately at that. She did know him, after all, even if he was still confused and the phrasing of her question...asking if he'd met him "yet" seemed to suggest she knew something of the whole time traveling business. Perhaps that's what this was? He was going to meet her in the future, or he'd ended up there, or...

Flashing her a brightly charming smile, he nodded, not at all minding her calling Hiro meddlesome. He was a bit, with the dunking of one in horse troughs and everything, but his heart was in the right place. "You know Carp? I was just with him...I mean, that's the...we went to sleep last night, by the fire, and then I woke up here?" He looked a bit puzzled by that again, then glanced at her questioningly. "Did he do one of his...." He waved his hand in the air vaguely. "Tricks to bring me here?"

Well the smile was good at least, because she figured it was fifty fifty chance of him strangling her and asking where he was and what he'd done to him. This was preferred to that by a lot.

"Well I know about him, and really I try to avoid the guy. He didn't do this though, in fact you're a good three hundred years at least over that whole mess. See a lot happened from when you last remember to when I know you from, and you lived through it all. Then you ended up here, same as me, same as a lot of people. This place, Paradisa, it's a castle, but it's sort of like Hiro. It takes you from wherever you were not even caring why and it just drops you here. You were pulled here but as Adam Monroe, which is pretty far from your days as Kensei. The thing about this castle though is because it thinks it's doing you a favor it takes something from you when you show up. When you showed up it took away your ability to use a sword. It doesn't stop there though, every once in a while it takes something away from you for just a short time. I'm going to guess that it took away all your memories from when you said you were at the fire in Japan to last night when you went to sleep. With me, Elle."

She winced, "Sorry... that was a lot. But I figured I could get it out there and then answer questions?"

Kensei just stared at her, utterly bemused by the overload of information. Three hundred years? Mess? Things he'd forgotten? Adam Monroe? Not able to use a sword? Was the pretty girl mad?

"I..." He didn't even know where to start. So he took a breath and started again.

"So...the castle is like Hiro and it has kidnapped us and I can't fight and your name is Elle?" That all seemed like the most pertinent and the least confusing. He liked getting to the core facts.

"Yes," she nodded a lot to show that she agreed with him. "We've known each other for almost all of my life. You were staying at the place where I was raised from the time I was eight, I'm twenty four now, in case you were worried."

He looked at her blankly. "What would I have to be worried about to do with your age?"

He was carefully not thinking about the fact that she'd effectively said he'd known her for sixteen years he didn't remember. That was...a little too terrifying to think of. Focus on the pretty girl. The nice bed. Not he missing...how the bloody hell could there be missing centuries anyway??

Elle shrugged, "I don't know? I mean you wake up in a strange bed in a strange place with a girl you don't know? I thought that should be the least of your worries or something."

She inched closer to him brushing her hand across his cheek lightly, "It could be worse, even with you thinking you're missing all those memories, it could be a lot worse than being here."

"Why don't we just...skip the missing memories?" he asked, looking a tiny bit panicked. "Magic castle. Can't fight. Kidnapped..."

Mustering up a bit of a smile he leaned into her hand. "You're very nice. Very pretty. The bed's the most amazingly comfortable...I didn't know beds like this existed. Ever. I don't think the King's bed could be this comfortable, Elle." He frowned a bit.

"Are you certain this isn't Carp's doing? My life has been so very strange since he showed up. I..." He lowered his voice, as if confiding a great secret. "I was shot. With arrows, and I lived. I heal from anything. Sword, serpent, fire. I tested it, cut myself again and again, and the wound healed and the things I have seen since then...and now I am here, with you..."

It was so much easier to believe this was another part of all of that strangeness than that he was somehow missing centuries there was no way he could have survived. No one could live that long. God has set man's days to 120 years, and few lived to even half that.

Elle nodded rather solemnly, "Not Hiro's fault I promise."

She took his hand in hers and smiled at him, "It's amazing that you can heal. You end up living for hundreds of years, you do great things and see so many things. Growing up I heard a lot of stories about all the crazy things you did and survived through. You were born with an ability, well that's what they call it now. I have one too."

Elle slipped her hand from his for a moment holding it out, "It's okay I won't hurt you." After reassuring him she let a small collection of energy pool in the palm of her hand, placing her other hand above it she pulled the spark up and away from her fingers before letting it dissipate.

"See? It's just part of who we are. I do this, and you heal."

His eyes widened as he watched the sparks dance at her fingers, the fly into the air. "Lightning from your hand..." He shook his head in wonder. "That's amazing, Elle. Hiro said there were others like us, but I never imagined such a thing was possible. It's beautiful."

He looked back up at her, grinning, eyes shining as he met her gaze. "Do it again? Please? Does it hurt?"

Sitting up more on the bed she brought herself up to sit with her legs tucked beside her. Shaking her head she shrugged, "It used to. When I was younger because I didn't know how to control it. I hurt people with it, and I hurt myself a lot too. I got better with it though, and I learned how to turn it off and on like a switch. It's always there though, I can feel it under my skin, hear it too. Like a hum of energy."

Her hand held out again palm up as she let it gather in her hand and crackle around her fingers. She drew her index and thumb together to let a strand of energy pull out across like a line before it snapped into nothing. Shutting her hand she looked at him, "Do you want to feel it? I won't hurt you, but you could see how it feels. It's electricity, we use it to power a lot of things, like the lights in this room."

He hadn't the slightest idea what "electricity" was, but he nodded eagerly, sitting up a bit more himself and holding out his hand, perfectly trusting when she said she wouldn't hurt him. It was fascinating, what she could do, just as it was when Hiro jackrabbited around all over the place. How such things existed, he still didn't understand.

"What a fascinating gift to receive from God," he said, shaking his head, because the rest of Hiro's explanations had pretty much been gibberish in his ears. "It's so...it must make you very powerful."

"It's not really that sort of thing I guess? It's not really easy for people like me to just use my ability out in public. It'd cause too much attention, so I don't use it all the time to get things. I mean I guess I could? I just don't."

Her hand held out to face his, letting the smallest of stray sparks dance across his palm lightly, more than static, but less than anything that he'd jerk away from she hoped.

"It's kind of annoying to be honest. I can't go swimming, or take a bath... really most water things are pretty limited for me. My ability and water don't mix, it's dangerous. That doesn't hurt does it?"

His breath caught a bit at the feel of the spark across his skin, his eyes widening. He'd felt static before, though he'd no name for the shock, nor any knowledge of what caused it, the hows and whys of it. This was more, but he didn't pull away, and shook his head at her question.

"It doesn't hurt, no." Not really. It...tingled? It was an odd sensation, like nothing he'd ever felt before. Nothing he had words to describe, though he searched for them. It was rather, he thought, like he'd always imagined magic must feel, when he allowed himself to imagine magic existed, in his wickeder moments. A bit like when his skin knit itself back together before his eyes, some sort of craving crawling under his skin he didn't understand.

"What's wrong with your ability and water? I mean, what makes it dangerous?" he asked, with an innocently inquiring gaze, even as he kept his hand up close to hers.

Elle let her hand slip away from his as her ability died out, wiping her hands on the blanket for a moment.

"It's a lot of science, but my ability, the energy it needs somewhere to go. Right now it doesn't hurt me because my skin and everything is dry and it can just pass over it. But when it's wet, it doesn't have anywhere to go because the water sort of attracts it, or something. It makes it so that I can't really control where it goes so it just stays on me, and it hurts a lot."

Sighing Elle looked at Adam, sort of worried for him, "Is there anything else you want to know? I mean this is a lot. This isn't your room either, but if you feel better staying here it's okay I don't mind. You stay here sometimes when things are complicated."

Kensei reached for her hand, taking it in his, winding his fingers through hers, then letting go, then doing it again, almost absently. Overly familiar, perhaps, but they had woken up in the same bed together.

"It all rather overwhelming, I have to say," he admitted. "I've never...if everything you say is true, then I have lost a great deal, and if it is not, then even so, I'm here in a strange place, and you are the only person I know, and, to me, we just met. Are there many people here? What do we...do? Are we some sort of slaves to this malicious castle? It must have some purpose in bringing us here..."

She didn't mind the motion of his hands into hers at all, in fact in a way it was somewhat comforting. She closed her hand around his for the moment.

"There are a lot of people here, you know more than a few of them too. Up until a few days ago you were living with Peter, but that went... well it didn't turn out very well I don't think. It's why you've been staying with me. You're room is just down the hall, but we've been through a lot together, so I'm here for you."

She wanted to tell him that she was important but not make him feel uncomfortable about that level of importance, "As for the castle having a purpose, I'm pretty convinced it's some form of torture. We all show up and we're confused, but then we figure that it's pretty good. You can ask for anything and generally get it, there are a lot of people here to meet and learn about. No one dies forever, and the rooms are really nice. But the losses and the other things end up hurting too."

He really didn't like the talk about events and people he didn't know. He liked it better when she stuck to the facts he could quantify, that didn't make him feel like some part of him was missing, deficient somehow.

Perhaps that was what this "loss" and the hurting part was, but. It was far too bizarre to accept.

"Elle...you keep saying I'm this person who has lived for all these hundreds of years. How is that even possible?" He gave her a troubled look. "No one is meant to live that long. God made sure of it, that no man could. He limited our years, to far fewer than what you say I have lived..." He and God weren't on the best of terms, but Kensei still believed quite devoutly.

Taking a deep breath Elle met his eyes, "It's your ability to heal. You do all these things, and you fight all these battles and over time you always heal, and it gets to a point where your body sort of just stays the same. It always keeps itself the same, healthy state. I know it sounds horrible, but it's not."

He held the hand not holding hers out and noted it wasn't wrinkled, wasn't changed really at all in any way he could notice, and then looked back at her, expression carefully contained.

"I do not age?"

"No? I mean maybe a little bit, but nothing like you'd expect. It's like a piece of fabric I guess, that always returns to it's original shape no matter how many times you wash it or run it through a wringer. It's always the same because it doesn't know what else to be." Her eyes fell looking to the comforter, "I'm sorry I'm telling you this, it's probably not easy to hear."

"It's...a bit alarming, I'll admit," he said quietly. "Perhaps we could go back to the part where I end up in your room when things get complicated? I like that part rather a lot I think..."

Elle laughed lightly, "It's because we've known each other for so long. When I came here you were the only one I trusted, and I had lost memories of my father. You told me I was better without it, but I still don't really know what to think."

Exhaling Elle thought about how to explain it all, "We've always cared about each other, there was more but it was difficult because of the place I was living in." Opting to avoid telling him he was locked up for thirty years seems to be a plus at the moment. "Plus I guess my father wasn't too fond of you?"

Elle smirked, "But I was here and you were here and there wasn't anything to really stop us, except that you had feelings for someone else. So I stayed by your side, and I was there for you. Things weren't always easy with the other person, but you tried, and I tried to be there for you. It's complicated I guess, but I liked being there for you and I think you liked knowing I was there for you too."

Kensei was used to fathers not being fond of him, so he just nodded solemnly. He wasn't really the sort fathers wanted around their daughters, he supposed. At least not nice girls. Not that he had a lot of experience with nice girls? And Elle seemed like a nice girl, so. He could believe her father wasn't overly fond.

That he had feelings for someone else though, and was here, with her, made him frown a bit, looking confused again. "Assuming this is all true, and I have actually been here a while and don't actually remember it, and didn't just arrive from Japan..." Which he really sort of wanted to cling to, because it made so much more sense..."It does sound complicated, yes. Doesn't the other young lady mind that I come to you?"

He probably got slapped a lot. Yaeko certainly would have slapped him for it, or worse. God, that woman hit hard and yelled. A lot.

Elle smiled trying not to laugh, "The other is a young man, and he probably does mind. Well at least he did before things got all complicated. You two used to live together, and you'd spend all your time with him and then you'd see me for day trips, or when things weren't going well. I didn't mind, and recently I think it was easier since we had a bit of a fight too. Now though, you and Peter have been fighting and I'm not sure how it got all confusing, but it really isn't a good thing what Peter did."

Exhaling she finally shifted enough to get out of bed, moving around the room to grab the journal, though making sure to filter it just to the room. "This is my journal, we all have one and it allows us all to communicate either through words or by writing. Peter was talking to another girl and you had over heard it and it wasn't anything I'm sure Peter meant for you to hear, but even after he'd said it and knew he'd upset you? He still didn't seem to want to fix it."

He listened, really he did, about journals and communicating Peter talking to girls and things he wasn't meant to hear and being upset, but really? He was very fixated on the whole part about the "other" being a young man. The rest of it got filed away in the part of his brain that was always filing things away to be dealt with later, the part that survived on the streets, that learned to stay alert for opportunity very young, but the forefront grabbed that one little fact and held on and stared at the very pretty girl like she'd possibly sprouted a second head.

"I...young...man?" He stared, and his voice squeaked, just a bit, as he stammered, his cheeks flushing bright red. "I...what? I...don't...I mean...I...no. Men...don't...feelings...no."

If she'd told him he lived with her and had been fucking some boy on the side, he might have believed her. Things happened in alleyways and ships and he'd done things to survive and not all of them had been unpleasant, but...what she was saying struck him as completely incomprehensible. People got hanged for that sort of thing.

She raised her eyebrows at him for the moment, mostly because it was somewhat adorable to watch a man that was always so sure of his words stammer for the right ones all of a sudden. Still she knew she was telling him an awful lot of information and that in a week he might not even remember her being this helpful, or who knew what this castle would do next.

"Times have changed a lot over the years, and a lot of men are in committed relationships. It's not always accepted, but it's certainly not an offense worth hanging someone over though. I mean I'm not sure the extent of your relationship with Peter, but I know there was something going on and that you cared about him a lot. You were trying to be better for him, to make sure that you didn't upset him. I mean that's something I guess."

"People try to be better for their...friends all the time," Kensei said, a touch desperately. "I'm trying very hard to be a better person for Carp. Hiro. He's given me a reason, a purpose, but we're most certainly not...he's my friend."

He shifted uncomfortably, still blushing. "I'm not...like that, Elle. I like women." There was an actual flicker of fear in his eyes, more than just embarrassment, but real cultural imprinting.

Shaking her head she returned to sit beside him on the bed, the journal laying at her knee as she settled close to him. "It's alright Kensei, you don't have to worry about what you don't know or don't understand. You can just think of this like a vacation, or a break from all the heroics. You can learn a bit about other people, and see what you think. It's alright, I know who you are, regardless of what you do or don't know."

He reached out cautiously to slide an arm around her, like she'd had around him when he'd awoken, almost like testing the waters. His fingers played idly with a strand of golden hair, hair like he hadn't seen in years, since leaving home.

"And you'll be here to help me, even if I don't remember?"

Elle didn't even mind him trying to find something familiar and known with her. She shifted to settle beside him resting her head against his shoulder, "Yep. I'll be here for you no matter what."

"Thank you," he said, very quietly, allowing himself to snuggle into her, taking some comfort in the presence of a warm body next to him. "I just...this is all so very...confusing." He'd bounce back, in a moment, ever the optimist, but for a second, he let himself sound a little lost, a little young.

"I know, or at least I can understand. It'll get better," she assured him as she continued to comfort him as best she could.

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