I HAVE THE POWER!

trust, i'll be posting replies whenever i can—i just can't promise that that'll be Often. if you're in the mood for some shorter-form, not-that-serious (aka not-my-best-writing) discord threads, hit my line. mwah

Jesus Christ. Dolores stands in the doorway of her office; shoulder pads peaked, glasses pushed up, and the bridge of her nose pinched between two manicured fingers in some desperate bid to beat back the headache that's been building up behind her eyes since around halfway into today's docket. Out of one mess, into another. At least his Royal Highness is less of a royal pain in the ass than her usual band of nuclear accelerator wielding merry men. "Who did you turn away?" She asks, finally looking up with her exhaustion stained eyes to spot the little black hairball perched on top of the filing cabinet behind her unsuspecting victim and poised to pounce. She'll let one or both of them figure out why that's a bad idea.

basura cut through the air with the mettle and precision of any self-respecting battle cat. her landing, however, needed some work.

she hit adam's shoulder, thud!, scrambled for a hold, half-slid into his lap. her claws tried to make mincemeat of him and, in some places, almost succeeded. thankfully, clothes on earth were thicker. possibly for this exact reason. cat attacks seemed far more common an occurrence here.

' hey! ' the chair abruptly stopped spinning. adam looked at dolores imploringly, which maybe wasn't fair. he was already relying on her for pretty much everything else.

earth runs a million miles a minute, but teela's learned to use them wisely. (get up. get coffee. nine-to-five. gym. read, research, and research some more. sleep. repeat the whole thing tomorrow.) adam, on the other hand, has decided to use his the way that most men do— selfishly.

long gone is the boy she'd once remembered. the boy she'd drawn, memorized, and dreamed about. in his place is a prince. in his place is a liar. he'd found earth — found teela, — and found himself an absence of truth, too. omitting key details and running headfirst into a whirlwind of exploration. what's this, where's that, is this really where you live ... the works. she'd been glad to answer. even happier to show. i'd never forgotten you, here's the proof, i've been looking / hoping / waiting, waiting, waiting—

home is the people who love you, but what happens when they're gone? eternia sits somewhere far in the sky, dangling over stars like some fast escape in the night, but her home is years away. minutes and seconds and memories collected to her nightstand, but nowhere more. her dad, lost to grief. her mother, lost to the universe. adam, lost to her recollection. long gone is the boy she'd remembered. in his place, a stranger stands.

but here on earth there was still light: fourteen hours of it, he'd learned—plus a few more to account for the moon. it pushed the shadow aside, though it couldn't push it away. it was always there, lurking at their backs, biting at adam's heels while they retraced the steps of teela's life.

but teela didn't know about the shadow. she couldn't see it. he wouldn't let her see it—not until it caught up and it was no longer a shadow at all but a flood that consumed them both: adam with shame and teela with rage.

he bowed his head to better receive the whip of her words, and only raised it again when he was sure that she was done. his eyes were dark, imploring. they glittered as though on the verge of tears. ' not gone, ' he said quietly. ' just ... different. ' i'm here. i'm right here. why can't you see me? why can't you see my intent? it was good. i was good. i meant well!

' it's been bad—without you, without your—without the sorceress. i'm sorry that i didn't tell you sooner. ' he didn't say that he should have told her. they both knew that he knew that, that he'd always known that, and that he still hadn't done it. ' i only did it to protect you. i just wanted you ' us ' to be happy. for one day. '

he had only wanted to play pretend. only a little bit and only with her. with teela he had always allowed himself a boy’s heart, even now when he thought it was lost to him. even now that he was trapped in a man’s body.

       stumbling over his own feet as well as his words which she watches with keen eye as if hungering for his humiliation.   ❛ do mind your step,   i like to reserve my healing spells for battle-related injuries only.  ❜ despite her warning she does not slow her stride in any meaningful capacity.   

       ❛ are you saying you’re a bee then? you have a similar color palette i can see the similarity…  ❜ perhaps she should have harped more the idea of being consumed but there was no meaningful intent behind his poor syntax.   from the mouth of anyone else it may have been a poor flirtation but adam wouldn’t know his way around a seduction even if it came at him in the form of an arking blade.   

       ❛ we are not in a position to not be hurting people,   that is a luxury we can’t afford given our little interlopers.   it would be best if you get over such a juvenile notion soon or you’ll put us all at risk eventually.  ❜ eventually she does cease her treading through the wood.   the canopy thinning allowing a streak of moon’s glow as a guiding respite in their traipse through the night.   

       ❛ you’re very presumptuous when it comes to nearly perfect strangers,   aren’t you?  ❜ whipping around to face him after the collision.   clumsy in all facets it would seem but he had struck a nerve with cleric in all his stumbling.   without her memory she was every bit a blank canvas but she did not take kindly to being told what colors made up that elusive portrait her personhood.   

' that's me. ' he sounded annoyed; he also sounded as if he might laugh. a passing cloud obscured the moon and cast them back into shadow. ' the unfortunate, presumptuous fool who dares dream of a world in which the solution to every problem isn’t the edge of a sword. ' the corners of his lips threatened at a pout, and there was a tightness around his eyes. but only barely: there and gone. it may as well have been a trick of the night.

when the clouds passed, his expression was again as soft as his heart. he pitied shadowheart, and perhaps that was worse than being angry with her.

' you may not be my friend, ' he began anew. ' but i am yours. '

he did not know shar, nor her sister goddess, nor the fabrics that made up this plane. there was no deity for him to blame, no religion to decry, no followers to begrudge their teachings. he did not look at shadowheart and see an acolyte of the lady of sorrows; he looked at her and saw a person. and people, he thought, could be reasoned with.

' i’ve meant every word i’ve said to you and more: we're all capable of kindness, shadowheart; it doesn't matter who you are or who you were. ' he was generalizing, not speaking of her specifically. forgiveness must be offered, loving kindness must be practiced, circles must be broken. all means all, no matter what someone might have done or might still do. at least from moonrise to sunset.

Camp Half-Blood and Annabeth are all he has. After what happened in his childhood home, after Grover couldn't save Thalia, after Luke couldn't save Thalia—

—enough.

It's been six months since Luke returned from his quest to the Garden of Hesperides. Nectar, ambrosia, and his own godly healing factor mean the scar isn't as jarring to people who see him or painful for him as it was when he stumbled back to camp.

He's still getting used to the effect on his eyesight, though—the effect on his depth perception, the constant paranoia that he's got too many blind spots to defend properly.

Luke tries to cut Adam off.

"If you know who your parents are, why are you here?"

Why don't they want him? He's functionally the same as any other reject kid in the Hermes cabin. Not literally, of course—

I'm not like you. I'm not waiting around for—

—which Adam seems to know good and well. Does he think he's betterx than Luke?

He's crazy.

When Adam lets his guard down, sword no longer poised, no longer emulating a stance Luke had taught him months and months and months ago, Luke lunges forward. This time, instead of swinging his sword-carrying arm, he shoves Adam's chest with his palm.

and that didn't make him better than luke. at night, every night, when he stared at the bottom of the bunk above his and imagined that the knot holes in the wood were stars, he actually thought that it made him worse.

even with all of his blind spots, luke seemed to know who he was. or at least who he should be—needed to be—to get the job done.

adam stumbled backward and fell, hard, onto the ground. the force of luke's palm burned his chest like a brand and sent blood rushing to his ears. katoush katoush katoush.

he scrabbled to his knees, then into a crouch. he held his hands up, but it wasn't a resignation—don't hurt me, don't hurt me—it was an overture: i don't want to hurt you.

he didn't even know whether he could. ( luke was his teacher, and he had always been an inferior student. ) he just knew that he didn't want to.

' —nothing, man. you're right. i'm sorry. i shouldn't have—i shouldn't have said that. ' he got up, slowly, slowly, his hands still raised, his sword still on the ground. it lay between them like a landmine, one of those bombs they used to rig no-man's-land with during times of war. the thing was of no use to him anymore: it wasn't what had hurt luke, and it wasn't what would protect adam now. ' that wasn't fair. i know you're not waiting around for … ' for what? ' anything. ' nothing, man.

for once, she lets adam talk more than she does. her lies are fun — she's six-foot three, she's dying of a rare disease, she's only on this date to spite her husband, et cetera — but nothing in comparison to his delusion. eternia: alien planet, born and raised, something about a sword that's apparently magic ... it just keeps getting better. mari's lips loop around the rim of her glass and sip, a truly-attentive poker face staring back at him in return.

in the dim lighting of a perfectly-fine restaurant, mari's small inch of a smile glimmers. a peak of her teeth shine for only a moment, before she exhales a soft laugh— not unkind, really, as much as understanding. or, falsely so, because: does this guy do this on every date he goes on? jesus.

adam had a way of grinning, sometimes, that was a grimace in disguise. in his lap, beneath the tabletop, he knit his fingers together and wrung his hands.

' magic is ... it's beautiful. i mean, sure: it can be a little scary sometimes—did i mention that skeletor’s got a skull for a face? yeah—but it’s really … it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before. ' he looked sad for a moment, pensive. he wished that mari had seen it, that she knew what he was talking about, that he could show her. there was very little magic in this world—although sunsets came close, and some animals could do impressions. birds, mostly. and the stringy cat that sometimes snuck in through the fire escape liked to tell him about its day—just not in a language that adam could understand.

so maybe there was magic on earth. but he struggled to see it as such because nothing here could ever compare to there: eternia. there was no present reality that could compete with his past or—he had to believe—his future.

he took a bite of his whatever-he-had-ordered: steak, maybe. he spent more time contemplatively biting down on the end of his fork than he did chewing his food.

a check list forms: cut from the back. sneak onto the ship. take controls. blow up only a little. like one or two things. at maximum.

"got it." she nods, before she bites her tongue in a smile. fist bumps adam on the shoulder. "we make such a great team goldilocks." then she taps him twice. "don'tcha worry i got this. go get 'em, tiger." harley slaps his ass once, like a football couch. "don't fuckit up." she whispers, before she breaks to the side. waiting for him to go in, this shouldn't be too hard. harley is great at stealth. practically a genius. she doesn't have anything that jingles this time around so that makes it just that little bit easier. elasticity working to her advantage as she flips and twirls her way around them to the ship.

adam was still blushing when he stepped out from the trees. it may as well have been harley's handprint on his cheek. he cleared his throat; it was meant to be as commanding as his new stature would suggest, but it only made him sound like he had a cold.

' do you boys have a permit to park—i mean—a license to fly that thing? ' nobody moved. somewhere above, a bird cried out in b-flat. slowly then all at once, hands began to move to hips, to holsters, to weapons. ' no, you're right. sorry. let's start over. '

the heroic one-liners sounded cool (they did not), but they made him feel lousy. they were escalation techniques. ' hey. i'm adam. and you guys are ... ? '

nobody answered him. even the bird had gone silent. one of the men muttered something into an earpiece; he began turning toward the ship just as harley was closing in on it.

loudly, forcing the attention back on himself: ' i'm not from around here—well, actually i am. but it's been a while—long story. maybe we can go over it sometime? like ... now! ' his voice cracked. this was harley's cue.

' i'll go first. then you, and you, and you, and you. ' he pointed at each individual goon, smiling in a way that he hoped was encouraging.