Work Text:
"And tidy your room before you go out!" Adam's mother called up the stairs.
Nine-year-old Adam fell back on his bed with a groan. "Yes, Mum!" He never tidied his room, and he didn't see the point of doing it now. As soon as you got something out and used it, the room became 'untidy' again, so why bother?
Ugh.
But his mum wouldn't let him go and meet his friends until she was satisfied he'd done some tidying, so Adam halfheartedly sat up and reached for the haphazard pile of books he had been reading in bed. He shoved the pile of books onto the nearest shelf. One of them, a book of folk tales, slipped off the pile and landed open on the floor.
Adam picked it up and was soon absorbed in the story of the Emperor's New Clothes. He had always liked this one. Not because he thought that anyone would ever make claims like that to him, but because he liked the idea of being a kid, pointing out how silly the grown ups were being, and being right about it.
If someone was getting new clothes (or any other major change of stuff) then the person giving them ought to be honest about it, right?
And if they weren't, if it was silly, then pointing at it and refusing to go along with the naked Emperor (even if the Emperor got angry about it) was the right thing to do.
Besides, it gave Adam a really great idea for a game the Them could play, so that was ok too!
~~
"Don't forget your books!" Adam's mother called up the stairs.
Eighteen-year-old Adam fell back on his bed with a groan. "I won't!" Around his room lay half-packed cases and boxes full of things he was taking to university. He pulled a haphazard pile of books off a shelf and turned to drop them into a box. One of them, a book of folk tales, slipped off the pile and landed open on the floor.
Adam picked it up and found himself looking at the story of the Emperor's New Clothes. He huffed an ironic laugh. He'd been on both sides of that now, the one taken in by big promises, and the one pointing out how silly somebody was being. But he had only been able to do the latter because his friends had done it to him first.
He closed the book and added it to the box. Sometimes he had to wonder - how much of what he had done had been truly him, and how much was because childhood him had liked the idea of it and made it so. Would he have been able to stand up to Heaven and Hell and Antichrist's New Clothes Powers if the seeds of the story hadn't been planted in him years before?
And what other stories that his child-self had dreamed of were still out there, just waiting for him to catch up?