topher & adelle: super hero au?
"Promise me," he says once, on a rare lucid day. "Promise me you won't use your powers on me."
Something twists in her gut. She's thought of it a thousand times: how easy it would be to slip into his mind, to rearrange scattered pieces and sew his thoughts into something new. All she'd have to do was make him forget the things he's done (and really, aren't those mostly her fault anyway?).
She reaches out, cupping his cheek, and he looks up at her with eyes soft and trusting. He knows what she could do now, but he isn't afraid. "Darling, I-" She can feel him, can feel the edge of his thoughts against her fingertips, and it would be the easiest thing in the world to follow that trail.
"You can't. Can't. Can't." He's slipping. She can feel it, can see it, and if she isn't careful, he'll bring her with him. "I have to fix this. I know there's a way, I just have to find it. And if you fix me, I can't. Adelle, please." He swallows. "It's me or the world."
You, she thinks. You a thousand times over.
But he is better than her; perhaps he always has been. And she hasn't been able to deny him anything for a very long time. So with one last brush of her thumb against his cheek, against his conscious, against the thoughts she'd give anything to replace, she releases him. "I promise, sweetheart."
She will not make him forget. His power has always been his mind: thinking, processing even faster than a computer. And now, still, those thoughts spin, clouded by the regret of a problem he never should have solved, muddied by the blood on his hands.
If only there was a way to fix him without making him forget. But minds are delicate things, and if she tries to take away the madness without the memory of what caused it, well...
It is, perhaps, a sign of sanity that he has shattered so thoroughly at bringing about the end of the world. To change that might turn him stone cold, and perhaps he would not care enough to make things right.
She will not fix him, but she will keep close by his side, and when he needs her, she will hold him close and whispers promises against his hair. Perhaps, just perhaps, this will be enough.