Work Text:
Her voice, in hushed luxury, blurred his senses. Her face was theatre, an involuntary show of the raw emotion that penetrated through to the deepest core. She was his.
Just once, just in one moment in time.
She was his.
Adam blinked awake, into the dark room he had so grown accustomed to. It had, after all, been his prison for the past 33 or so years.
He ran a hand down his face, tracing the chasms that split the flesh in half, leaving an unsightly reminder of what he had spent all those years trying to achieve. And today, he was finally going to do it. He was going to stop the loop, once and for all. He would kill the origin, for if he destroyed the end, there would be no beginning.
All the pieces were in place. He was here, now, breathing the same air that carried the dust of the debris from the fateful day that changed everything, that triggered the apocalypse.
But that was the past.
He was now. And it was going to be the last now he would ever be in.
"Jonas!"
Her voice echoed out in the grim belly of the nuclear plant, the womb of death.
Adam was on the other side of the glass, not that that could lessen the destruction that her voice carried all the way to his heart. Where he found, surprisingly enough, a warmth. His nerves had grown into the comfortable mould of certainty. There was nothing left to feel. He was free.
Or, rather, he was going to be. After he killed her. And their love that had dared to create life, along with. The origin, that thrived in her womb, knowing it was going to wreck their lives. It would all be gone after he did this.
"Jonas! Please! You don't have to do this"
Adam stood perfectly still.
"Jonas!"
His eyes rested on her writhing figure, bound to that chair.
"JONAS!"
Adam watched as the warping dark energy that loomed above her engulfed her whole. It crackled and hissed, bellowed and growled. Her voice, her screams, his name, swirled into the massive amalgamation of wasted time and stricken space.
It was over now.
Adam closed his eyes, his nerves tightened in new electric pulses that rattled his body.
Yet somehow, after all these years, he had forgotten one thing.
The curse of expectation.
How could it be? He had killed her. He was sure of it. Her voice died in that moment. Jonas died in that moment.
The origin, erased.
Then what was he doing here, still existing?
Adam's vision was constricted by his eyelids that didn't dare lift open. He thought he could hear, somewhere at the back of his head, time laughing at him.
Reality was a mockery of expectations.
In that moment, Adam's body surrendered before his mind did. Tears pooled and slid down his cheeks effortlessly. His hands shook from nerves that were now on fire. His skin must have been torn and ripped to shreds, or so it felt. He felt as though he was a completed puzzle that was given a hearty shake that brought him back to his senses, at the expense of having him fall apart.
His mind declared war on time, on the Other Her. It couldn't be like this. This couldn't be it.
What had she known that he did not? What did he fail to take into account?
Failure, the thing he had forbidden in his years of perfecting this loop, had returned. And it was, despite his greater efforts, the triumphant one.
Adam's mind had been invaded by emotions he had buried under six feet of plans. They came back, mightier, with vengeance biting at the sides of his temples.
《 》
She stood in front of the charred painting, or whatever remained of it anyway. Today was the day that both him and her were born, and today was the day that they would both meet their demise.
The grey locks of hair that bunched at her shoulders had become a sign of what she had spent all those years trying to achieve. And today, she was going to do it.
Eva found, as she gazed into The Younger Her's worried eyes, a sense of relief. She found pity that she had long left behind with her past that now only existed in frames on the walls of her mind. It was the only way to do things, and Eva imagined, that for the last time, she should be allowed to revisit those memories.
...
Eva was alone this time, still in front of the painting. But not for long.
His footsteps arrived duly, carrying a threatening assuredness.
"EVA," his voice boomed, as he closed the gap between them. His breath hitched, unpredictable, commanding the hairs at the back of her neck to stand up.
"It was you, wasn't it?"
Eva turned around, her eyes following the tilt of her head downwards, meeting his eyes. Adam's face, already a sorrow sight, was now erupting - the flesh rigid and his eyes bulging. Red strained at the corners of his eyes, in the cracks of his lips, and straight in the center of his pupils, which adjusted, expanding like hungry black holes taking all of her into them.
"And here we are, again. And here we will be, again. I assure you."
"What did you do? Tell me, exactly, what it is that you did? You shouldn't be here - I shouldn't be here- how-"
"Shh," Eva reached out her hand, her thumb brushing his soft, hot skin. It bubbled and revolted beneath her fingertips, but he didn't shift.
Adam's eyes, sickeningly red and overflowing in salt tears, glared, but not with much conviction, into Eva's grey, resolute eyes. His, lost and frightened, searched hers, finding only the raging build-up of irritation in her unfaltering, unaffected hues.
"In the end, we get exactly what we deserve."
Eva let her hand glide down the side of his body, finding his fist. And in it, the gun he had become so familiar with.
Adam lifted his arm, outstretched and steadied, pointing the gun right at her chest. Her hand gripped his, the handle of the gun enclosed in his fingers.
"You had to have known this would happen," she said, somewhere between a whisper and a command.
"Nobody-" Adam spoke through his teeth, spit forming at his tongue, "none of them- I should've never, never believed any one of you."
She loosened her hold on his hand, withdrawing it.
"You know what you have to do. You know what must be done."
"It's over- it'll all happen again- it will all-"
He brought the gun up to himself and cucked it sharply, repositioning it to face her. Sweat embalmed the gun as it merged into the flesh of his palms.
"The end is the beginning, and the beginning is the end," Eva whispered, finality bestowed upon each syllable, "Let's meet again, Jonas."
Adam's finger, acidified by his decision, pulled the trigger.
Her chest heaved, the bullet pierced into her chest, thundering as it left the barrel of the gun and cut through the air.
Blood, red, unmotivated and unbiased, spread across her breast, the wet visible through her black dress. She shuddered, and fell backwards.
Her body hit the floor with a singular thud, but for Adam, he heard it no less than a hundred times at once.
《 》
Adam stood in the chapel, his abode. He had left the gun on his desk at the center. The cool air in the hall petrified his skin - breathing became an arduous task. The air, an enemy of his lungs. It was much too quiet in here, and much too cold. If he opened his eyes, he feared, maybe he'd realize he was no longer at the end - that instead, he was in the beginning. Another loop. And the cycle would continue yet again. For all of eternity.
Opening his eyes, Adam approached his desk. The gun's handle, smeared with sweat - and for Adam, he could see traces of blood there, too - looked too promising. The sheer black coat of the gun glistened, rather out of place in this dim room.
Adam picked up the gun, which somehow felt like it had gained a few pounds, the unexpected weight of it causing him to hold it with both hands. He remembered - there was one bullet left. And that bullet was now hugged by the muscles in Eva's chest that no longer contracted. Residing in there, like it had found paradise.
He cucked it, either way. Pointed it to the right side of his head. And pulled the trigger. The gun clicked and the spring inside recoiled.
Adam sighed. This had happened before, when he was younger. A gun to his head. The trigger pulled. Him still breathing.
Because for whatever sick reason, the universe seemed to greatly enjoy his misery.
A noose around his neck. The chair kicked aside. The air escaping his lungs and yet, him still breathing.
It was impossible.
He recalled - he had never quite gotten anything right. Those who he stupidly trusted turned out to be the masterminds, the leading hands in a chess game that transcended space and time. He had thought back then - and now he realizes how foolish it had been - that he was finally one of them. That he could move his own pieces. That he could change the course of things, somehow. How wrong he had been.
It was that reality that crushed him now, that caused his hands to ball into fists, fingers digging into the flesh, that caused him to scratch the skin on his face like it was foreign. The reality that Martha - and it didn't matter whether she was his or not - would meet her demise, ultimately thanks to himself. The reality that the one person who gave him reason - the one person who could set his mind in stone as to what he wanted - was the very person who would stop him in his tracks, trapped in this loop once again. Everything was too much.
It was meaningless to think that this Adam, this version of Jonas, of himself, could ever end the loop, could be the one who did things differently. It was obvious. He wouldn't be here had it ever been possible to stop the loop. He wouldn't be here had it ever been possible that he succeeded.
So it was that. He had foolishly spent years doing exactly what the Him before him did. He told himself, even after he had already assumed his role as Adam, that he would somehow be different. That he, he alone, could be the one who did it right.
Adam was wrong. The Adam before him. The Adam who was him. And the Adam who is yet to come.
Staring at the gun, still in his hands, Adam wondered, if it was too much to ask for - to finally find peace in death.
At least, the universe seemed to think so.
That night, he saw her again. Her sighs of allure, the breaths of passion shared between them, something too good so it now only existed in this way. In his dreams. She was his.
Just once. Just in one moment in time.
She was his.
His eyes flickered open.
He was greeted by three faces, each with a cleft lip that was characteristic of them. One was a child, one was in his middle-ages, and one an elder.
Adam knew who they were.
They had their mother's face structure and their father's eyes.
The middle-aged one's eyes landed on his.
"The promise of salvation can only be kept when there is pain which one wishes to be saved from," he spoke.
Adam, against his better judgement, shivered, though not because of the cold air setting on his skin, but rather because something in the eyes of the man before him captivated even his bones, his whole body suddenly in alert.
"Eva must've told you to come here. She knew what would happen." Adam pronounced his words carefully, watching the man in front of him closely, to see which words would illicit a reaction.
The middle-aged man gave nothing away, to Adam's dismay.
"God has a plan for each and every one of us. It is He who decides where we belong. It is at death's door that we realize," the man moved closer to Adam, who was still laying on his back on the makeshift bed, "whether our actions in life.."
The child shifted to Adam's left, and the elderly man moved to his right. The middle-aged man stood in the center. Adam recognized this formation at once. The triquetra.
"...shall account for salvation," the middle-aged man's hand dug into his jacket, pulling out a wire with two wooden handles attached at each end, "...or damnation."
He approached Adam, and in that moment there was an invisible force - something that strapped Adam to his bed. He watched, as the man held out the wire, stretching it by the two handles, then encircling Adam's throat with it.
Adam croaked, air suddenly scarce. The two figures who stood still until now closed in on him, holding him down with their arms. Adam's own reached for his throat, the wire, tightening around it - the man, now behind him, somehow, pulling the wire tighter and tighter, which at first scratched Adam's throat, but now, it broke skin, exacting into his flesh. His fingers clawed at the wire, skin tearing in their futile attempts. Adam choked, tears trickled down his face. Spots of blood splattered around his neck as he gasped and struggled with the device.
First, his hands gave in. They dropped to his sides, heavy with shame. Then, his eyes blurred.
The still image of the cleft-lipped figures burned into his vision. Fog formed at the corners of his eyes, tears that smudged any sense of his surroundings. Before his breath left him too, Adam willed a singular thought.
I'm sorry.
...
The machine zapped, burning his skin.
Jonas's hand reached to his face instantaneously, as he yelped in pain. The contraption had stung him countless times now, yet not once was he prepared for the next attack.
It was how Jonas was.
The machine, this passageway between time, was finally reaching completion. After having spent over two decades here, in the 1800s, he had reconstructed the first ever time machine known to man.
Jonas hadn't spent all this time for nothing, he assured himself. After this thing would start working again, he would change things. Time be damned.
Martha, Mikkel - his dad. He would save them all.
He believed this strongly enough.
It was written in the lines on his face, in the crevices of his skin.
This time, Adam would be different.