The Lonely City--Chapter 2 (2/5)--SPN Fic
Navigation: Chapter One--Chapter Two-- Chapter Three
Adam wakes up and he’s not in the Cage.
He’s back in the tower room, lying on the bed with a thick blanket pulled up to his chin. Someone’s taken off his shoes.
“So, he lives.”
Adam tenses. He hadn’t noticed he wasn’t alone, but now he doesn’t know how he missed him.
There’s a man sitting, or maybe lounging, on the stool, and Adam’s never seen someone lean so far back on a stool before without toppling over. The man’s legs are kicked out in front to counterbalance him, and he looks utterly bored.
Strangest of all, the man looks normal. He’s kind of short, with a face that looks far too comfortable with arrogance, and curious eyes that don’t match his nonchalant expression.
“Who are you?” Adam asks, and, wow, his voice sounds even worse than it did earlier.
The man tuts and languidly stands. Adam shrinks away, but the man ignores him, crossing to a large clay jar under one of the windows that Adam had ignored earlier. He takes the lid off, and fills a small cup with whatever is inside, and walks over to the bed. “Here,” he says. “Drink this.”
Adam wants to pull away, to resist, but he’s too weak, and he can’t help but think that if this guy, whoever he is, wanted him dead, he probably would have done it already. He lets the stranger tip the cup towards his lips, lets the cool liquid wash down his throat.
He’s been thirsty. All this time, he’s been terribly, terribly thirsty, and he didn’t even remember what it felt like. He knows now, and he can’t get enough water.
“More,” he gasps when the cup’s empty.
The man chuckles. “Easy there, tiger.” He refills the cup, though, and Adam thinks he might love him a little, just for that. He won’t even care if the guy’s a vampire. He makes Adam drink the second cup slower, pacing himself, but as long as there’s more water, Adam’s fine with that.
Finally, he sets the cup back on the table and sits back down. “So,” he says, eyes fixed to Adam’s face. “You’re Adam Winchester.”
“Milligan,” Adam corrects automatically. Then, “How the Hell do you know who I am?”
The man makes a vague, all-encompassing hand gesture. “The general aura of Winchesterness gives you away. Also, reckless stupidity seems to run in the family.”
“And who are you?” He doesn’t look like a monster, but Adam’s learned the hard way that things don’t always look the way they are.
The man frowns, pushing his lips out. “You can call me Gabriel,” he says after a long second, “and I’m your knight in shining armor.”
Adam tries to think back. “So, in the alley…”
“I saved your sorry ass. Got there a little too late, though. They’d already torn you apart.”
“I was dead,” Adam fills in. But if he’d died…
“Yeah, more or less. It’s not like you can really die here.”
If he’d died, he should have woken up back in the Cage. And Michael and Lucifer never give him allies, even ones that might stab him in the back later. Which mean that this-
“Where am I?”
“In general?” Gabriel asks, raising his eyebrows. Adam nods. “Oh, this is Purgatory.”
Nothing’s adding up.
Logically, Adam knows that there’s no way he could be out of the Cage, except that this place isn’t following any of the archangels’ rules, and Michael is very big on rules. Sam got out, he can’t help but think. Somehow Sam escaped.
Gabriel’s been watching him for his whole mini-revelation. Adam thinks maybe he was thinking aloud, because after a while Gabriel says, “You’re honestly excited that you’re in Purgatory? Knew you couldn’t have all your screws in right if you’re a Winchester.”
Adam opts to let that slide. “Do you know me?” He’s fairly sure that he’s never seen this man in his life.
Gabriel shakes his head. “Not even remotely, though I did hear of your death a while back. However, I have had the dubious honor of meeting your brothers.”
Adam ignores the sharp stab of pain at the mention of Sam and Dean. He’s still not ready to face that particular demon. “If you’re in Purgatory,” he says instead, “that means you’re some kind of monster, doesn’t it?” Adam had never really paid attention to how the whole Heaven/Hell/Purgatory thing was supposed to work, which he’s starting to regret.
Gabriel’s face goes still, and Adam has a second of panic that he’s really messed up now. “Not quite,” Gabriel says finally, his expression still a frozen mask. “I was killed, and it was a choice between this and Oblivion. I was starting to wish I’d picked Door Number Two.”
Adam doesn’t know what to say to that, and the silence stretches on for long enough that he’s starting to feel uncomfortable. Then something shifts, and Gabriel’s face relaxes.
“But now you’re here,” Gabriel says, rubbing his hands together. “You and me, Adam, we’re going to break out of here.”
Really, Adam’s not too sure about that. Hungry monsters and supercharged sun aside, Purgatory’s not that bad, and Adam’s more than aware of just how much worse it can be. Not that he really remembers the Cage. It’s still there, every touch and agony, but it feels far away and disconnected, like it’s something he watched on TV. He’s fairly sure he should be a drooling mess, but if this fuzzy half-amnesia is the alternative, he’s more than fine with it. He tells Gabriel as much, editing out the more sensitive bits.
Gabriel snorts in answer. “Trust me, you won’t feel that way after awhile.” His face darkens. “This is a prison, Adam, and it’ll break you just as surely as Hell.”
Adam’s still unconvinced, but Gabriel has been here longer. Maybe it’s a cumulative thing. “How are you going to escape?”
“Purgatory has rings of defenses, with the door out somewhere in the middle. There was a big jailbreak a while back, and the biggest nasties of the bunch got out then. I tried to follow them, but I didn’t make it in time. Still, there should be a weak spot where they passed through.”
“So I had the right idea,” Adam says slowly. “I was trying to get to the center of the city.” He absently picks at the fabric of the blanket. He’d been so close…
“Even if you’d made it through the gateway, there still would have been more layers, more gates.” Gabriel’s responding to his thoughts more than his words, and it’s disturbingly familiar. Adam glances up at Gabriel, but the other man isn’t even looking at him. He’s looking up out the window at the clear blue sky.
It’s the stillest Adam’s seen him yet, and it doesn’t seem right. There’s something ancient and terrible there that he couldn’t seen before, and it scares him a little. Adam remembers the lightning flash back in the alley, and shivers.
“What will happen,” he asks finally, “once we’re out?”
Gabriel shrugs. “What, you think I know?”
There’s a long silence where Adam tries not to think about where he might end up if they do escape. He’s fairly sure he won’t end up in the Cage again, but there’s no telling. That’s counting on if he really is in Purgatory, too. He’s still not 100% on that one.
Then something else occurs to him, and he has to fight back sudden nausea. “We’re going to have to get past all those monsters, aren’t we? We’re going to have to fight them.”
“Oh, there’s going to be a lot more monsters than that,” Gabriel says cheerfully. “And even though they can’t exactly kill you, they can make you wish they had.”
Adam frowns. “But-last night. Didn’t they kill me then?”
“More like they hit your reset button. I found you on the street where you first arrived.”
“Huh.” Wait… “You’ve been watching me?”
Gabriel looks offended. “Come on, disruption as big as you comes through, and you think I wouldn’t check it out? I would have introduced myself right off, but I didn’t want you to panic.”
“And this is where you’ve been living?”
“More or less. I’ve been moving around some, trying to find the exit door.”
Adam’s frown is becoming a permanent fixture. “But the center of the city-”
“-Is unpredictable. Luckily, being a Winchester, you’re more unpredictable. You might just be our key out.”
Adam’s not sure how he feels about that. Not that he can really do anything about it.
“When do we leave?”
It’s already too late in the morning to start out, so Adam sleeps for most of the day. He wakes up a few times, and rations himself some of the precious water. He’s not sure it’s really necessary, but he’s been without water for so long that now he’s rediscovered it, he can’t imagine giving it up again.
Gabriel’s gone the first time Adam wakes up. At some point during the day, Adam thinks he hears the trapdoor close, but he’s too far under for it to really register. When he wakes up again around twilight, Gabriel’s still gone.
He tries to go back to sleep, but it’s just not happening. He swings his legs out from underneath the blankets and stands up, wincing as every joint in his body tells him just what they think about spending a most of the day on a hard bed. Adam stretches, then crosses to the window, climbing up on the stool to look outside.
There’s someone watching the tower from the shadow of the nearest building.
For a second, Adam’s still sleep-addled brain thinks it’s Gabriel, but the man is far too tall, too broad, and too wrong. He has gray hair and a weathered face, but he still feels strong. Strong and dangerous. He must see Adam watching, because he smiles, cold and predatory, and it reminds Adam far too much of Lucifer.
He shivers.
The man turns away, melting back into the shadows. As he turns, his eyes catch the light, and, just for a second, they flare a bright, sulfuric yellow. Then it’s gone, and Adam blinks, wondering if he’d imagined it. There’s no sign the man was even there.
Behind him, the trapdoor bangs, and Adam jumps. He turns around so fast he almost falls off the stool, but it’s only Gabriel.
“You cut that close,” Adam snaps, letting his fear bleed into his voice as annoyance.
“I’m not as tasty as you,” Gabriel says lightly, ignoring both Adam’s attempts to not fall on his face and the sharpness in his voice. “I found more weapons,” he adds, letting the backpack Adam hadn’t noticed he was carrying drop onto the bed. Something inside clinks.
Gabriel tips out the backpack’s contents. There are two more knives, a slingshot, and what Adam is fairly sure is a torch. He pokes at it gingerly.
“They don’t like light,” Gabriel explains.
“That flash last night-how did you do that?”
“By being pure awesomeness.” Gabriel looks so smug that Adam can’t decide if he’s joking or not.
“Right…”
Everything trails off into awkward silence for a few minutes, while Gabriel tests the sharpness of one of the knives with his thumb and Adam acts very interested in the sigils on the walls.
“Being a Winchester,” Gabriel says eventually, “I’m guessing you won’t have a problem with fighting your way through monsters?”
“I’m not a Winchester,” Adam says, starting to feel he should just go ahead and get a t-shirt made. “The first monsters I met killed me and my mom, stuffed us in a crypt, and used me as a trap for the oh-so-perfect Winchesters.”
Gabriel shrugs. “So, you’ve got issues. Still not helping the not-actually-a-Winchester argument. Point is, though, you can fight. Right?”
Adam looks down. “Sam taught me a little. It didn’t really help.”
Gabriel’s punch comes out of nowhere. One second he’s on the other side of the bed from Adam, the next he’s right in front of him and swinging at his face. Adam throws up an arm automatically, barely blocking the blow. Gabriel laughs.
“See? You can fight. You just need incentive.”
Adam wants to say something about how he had plenty of incentive the night before, and look how well that turned out for him, but Gabriel’s already distracted.
“We’re not going to be able to go through the streets like you did,” he tells Adam, craning his neck to look out the window. “It takes too long and there’s just not enough daylight. We’re just going to have to cut through the buildings.”
“But there’s-there’s things living in there.”
“Exactly. Hence the weapons. You can have the torch.” He says it like it’s a great honor that Adam should be grateful for. All Adam can manage in response is an uncertain nod.
Gabriel sits under the window and watches the sky after that. Adam goes back to bed, but he sleeps restlessly and wakes up feeling more tired than he’d been before. Gabriel wakes him up as soon as the sky begins to lighten, turning a slightly paler shade of dark blue on the horizon.
It’s colder outside than Adam would have guessed. He would have thought that all the stone would have absorbed some of the heat from the day, but the stones are gray and cold and Adam’s breath frosts in the air.
Gabriel doesn’t seem to notice the temperature. Once they’re outside, he takes the torch he’d given Adam before they’d left the tower, and turns away from Adam. He does something Adam can’t see, and there’s a rushing crackle as the torch catches fire. He hands it back.
The fire is oddly comforting, which surprises Adam a little. He’d have expected have had his fill of fire, but when it’s not turned on him, it feels like raw power, and he remembers how the monsters ran from the light the night before.
His newfound confidence is short lived. He’d expected them to take the streets for a short distance, at least until it was light, but Gabriel has other ideas. He marches across the street and into the shadows of the awning, then pauses, glancing back at the still-frozen Adam with a well? Come on! expression written across his face.
Adam follows.
Once he’s inside, there’s a panicked moment where Adam forgets to breath. The dark presses in on him, and the air is slightly warm and smells like blood and decay. It’s desperately familiar, and just for a second, Adam feels like he’s home. He’s fallen to his knees on the cold stone, the torch guttering on the ground a foot away, before Gabriel realizes he isn’t behind him. Adam feels Gabriel pulling him up with surprising strength for his size, but it’s distant, disconnected. Gabriel’s saying something, but it’s hard to listen through the screams and soft, gentle laughter echoing in his ears.
“Come on, Adam! Work with me here.”
He’s moving, and he thinks it’s Gabriel dragging him through the darkness, but for all he knows, it could be Michael. He wants to fight, but if it is Michael, he knows it’s not worth it.
Then he’s outside, the sky’s turned from blue to gold-pink, and he can breathe. It feels like coming back to life.
Gabriel gives him a minute to re-learn how to breathe. “What was that?” he asks, once Adam’s stopped gasping like a fish.
“I can’t-don’t make me go back in there.”
Gabriel takes a step towards him, and Adam flinches back. Gabriel freezes, his face twisted into something complicated and uncomfortable. He squats down beside Adam, carefully reaching out a hand to cup Adam’s face. His hand is cold.
“Adam, what went wrong?”
“You can’t make me go back.” Adam’s half-sobbing, his words coming out in strangled bursts. Some part of him is dimly aware that he’s not making any sense, but the cushion separating him from his memories has burned away, leaving Hell close enough that Adam can almost feel its flames. “You told me I wasn’t there now, you can’t make me go back. Please, don’t make me go back.”
“Shh, it’s okay.” Gabriel pats his back, the movement awkward and stiff. Still, it grounds Adam just enough that he can remember that he’s outside in the sunlight, and the Cage is nothing more than a bad memory now. He looks up, meeting Gabriel’s oddly gold eyes that are comfortingly nothing like Michael’s.
“I’m all for dramatic breakdowns,” Gabriel tells him lightly, “but even I think that was a little intense.”
Adam doesn’t respond, just keeps heaving in gulping breaths of air.
“Where were you?” Gabriel asks, and his voice is gentler, less mocking.
“Hell,” Adam says simply.
“Ah.”
Adam’s perfectly willing to just stay right where he is, but Gabriel has other plans. He grabs Adam’s hand, hauling him to his feet with strength disproportionate to his size.
“I’m sorry,” he says, once Adam’s vertical, “but we still can’t take the streets. We’ll try and move fast.”
“Okay.” Adam hadn’t really expected another option, but he wants to get out of here now. The warm fuzzy feelings he’d still been hanging onto are gone, and all he wants is to leave this place behind. He still remembers Heaven, vaguely, and he wants its peace so badly it hurts.
He’s going to get out of here.
The second building isn’t as bad.
Adam can still hear Hell, still smell it, but he can deal. Gabriel helps, keeping close beside him, near enough that Adam can feel his presence. He’s conscious of keeping the torch up, too, and its light forms a small circle of known in the darkness.
This time, Adam’s able to focus on the actual sounds of the building instead of the imagined ones. They’re not much better. There’s all of the noises the creatures had made when they were chasing him, as well as a few new ones-a scuttling rasp of shifting claws and scales against stone, and a rattling groan that reminds Adam unsettlingly of an old zombie movie.
The passageway through the building is straight and comparatively short, and whatever is in there, it’s leaving them alone. Adam’s not sure if they have the torch to thank for that, or if it’s the aura of wary protectiveness he half-imagines is emanating from Gabriel.
They make it outside, cross a blessed twenty feet of blistering stones and sunlight, and then the ordeal starts again.
Adam loses track of how far they’ve gone and how many lightless houses they’ve passed through. It’s getting late, the sun low and red over the city, and Gabriel’s starting to walk faster. They’d been attacked last time they’d been inside, but it had been half-hearted, and they’d fought them off with without too much trouble.
“Are we getting close?” Adam asks once they’re back outside.
Gabriel glances up at the sky, then at the street, like he can see some kind of landmark that Adam can’t.
“Yeah,” he says. “Almost there.”
Adam wants to ask, are you sure? but he can’t bring himself to actually say it.
He can feel they’re getting closer, though. As it grows closer to night, the monsters are becoming restless. One had tagged Adam with a claw a few houses back, and the slice above his eyebrow is still bleeding sluggishly.
There’s movement in the streets now too, twisted things stirring in the shadows, and Adam’s not sure if it’s because of the dark or if there are just more monsters this close to the heart of the city.
Then, finally, when Adam’s just about ready to fall down from exhaustion and nerves, they stumble out into a plaza instead of yet another street and Adam knows they’ve arrived.
It’s larger than any of the others Adam’s seen, and its paving stones aren’t the same golden-red as the rest of the city-they’re scorched black in a wide ring that emanates from the tall tower in the center of the plaza and reaches almost to the buildings, the ragged edges of the scorch marks inches away from Adam’s feet. They’re so close, maybe fifty feet from the tower, but Adam can’t bring himself to step out onto the burnt stones.
“It’s okay,” Gabriel tells him, but he doesn’t sound too sure. He walks slowly towards the tower, wincing slightly when he passes into the fire-blackened section.
Adam follows him warily. There’s a crackle across his skin that feels like static electricity, and Adam shudders but presses on anyway, hurrying to catch up with Gabriel.
Gabriel stops when he gets to the door of the tower, and Adam, who’d been watching the flickers of movement around the edge of the plaza, almost bumps into him.
“What’s wrong?”
Gabriel frowns. “This door isn’t actually supposed to be used. It’s locked, and I’m not sure what kind of a key we need to actually open it.”
“Seriously? And you didn’t bring this up before, why?” It’s almost dark. They’ve only got a few minutes before they’re under attack, and Gabriel forgot the keys. Adam resists the temptation to roll his eyes. He should have guessed something like this would happen.
“Don’t be like that,” Gabriel tells him, without looking. “I’m sure it’s something simple.” He looks at the door for a long minute, then pulls his knife out of his belt. He pushes up his left sleeve, then draws the knife across his forearm, grimacing as blood wells up in a stark red line.
“What the-?” Adam starts, but Gabriel’s already sticking his knife back and running his fingers through the blood. He paints a symbol onto the door with his fingers, smooth curves that look a little familiar, and Adam thinks it might be Enochian.
Gabriel draws the last line, then steps back. The symbol glows slightly in the gloom, and Adam holds his breath. Then, absolutely nothing happens.
“That should have worked.” Gabriel’s frowning at the door like it’s personally wronged him. He absently wipes his hand on his pants, then turns the frown on Adam. “Hmm-” He reaches out, swiping his hand over the cut on Adam’s forehead.
He paints the symbol again, and this time, it glows brightly. The light bleeds out into the rest of the door, following the grain of the wood, then it flares brightly. When it fades, the door is gone.
Gabriel grins. “After you.”
Adam takes a careful step through the doorway. It’s dark inside, and there’s none of the green phosphorescence that had lit the tower he and Gabriel had stayed in. The torch is still burning, and it illuminates the stark interior-like the other tower there’s nothing but a staircase spiraling up the walls.
“Keep moving,” Gabriel hisses from behind him. “Don’t look now, but we’ve got company.”
Adam swallows hard and takes another step into the darkness. “How many?”
“Um, lots? Do you want me to paint you a picture?”
There’s an echoing thud as Adam’s foot hits the bottom stair, and he winces.
“Adam,” Gabriel says slowly. “You should probably run now.”
Something snarls in the dark behind Adam, and Gabriel shoves Adam up the stairs. Adam lurches forward, almost losing his balance as he tries to swing the torch around. Its light bounces in a panicked arc, casting nightmare shadows of claws and horns against the walls. Gabriel’s standing at the foot of the stairs, somehow looking taller than his five-foot-whatever-inches, his hand stretched out like he’s holding the creatures back with sheer willpower, and damn, maybe he is. “Up the stairs, out the window, go!” he growls, not taking his eyes off the monsters in the doorway.
“Out the-”
“Go!”
Adam runs, feeling ten kinds of coward. The steps are narrow and steep, and he nearly puts his foot through one that’s almost rusted through. There’s the sound of a fight from below, and he can hear Gabriel shouting through the din of shrieks and snarls. This tower’s taller, and Adam’s out of breath by the time he gets to the top. Just as he reaches the trapdoor there’s a flash of light, like the one in the ally the other night, and everything goes quiet.
Adam freezes halfway through the trapdoor, panting slightly. “Gabriel?” His voice comes out as a croak. He holds his breath, listening.
There’s something coming up the stairs.
Adam can’t see it around the turn of the staircase, but the can hear it, a thud of boots that’s too heavy to be Gabriel.
Adam scrambles away from the trapdoor and pulls it shut with an echoing bang.
Out the window, Gabriel had said, but there’s no window. Adam holds the torch up, desperately hoping he’s wrong, that he just missed it, but the walls are solid stone all the way up.
Adam swears. He’s the metaphorical rat in a cage now, the cowboy up the blind gulch with the outlaws closing in on him.
Wait…
There’s an arch of stones set out in relief from the wall that’s big enough to be a window-or a door. It’s solid stone inside, but was so was the door into the tower.
Adam’s hands are shaking slightly as he sets the torch down, leaning it against the wall, and pulls out his knife, drawing it across his arm in an imitation of what Gabriel had done. The pain flares bright and sudden, but it’s easy for him to ignore it.
Remembering the symbol Gabriel had drawn is the hard part. Adam has a second of panic after he finishes drawing the sigil and nothing happens, but then the blood begins to glow, the turns blinding white as the stones within the arch crumble to dust. Beyond where the wall was, there’s nothing but blank blackness, and Adam shivers.
The sound of footsteps coming from the stairs has stopped.
“Gabriel?” Adam’s breath is too loud as he listens, straining to hear any sign that he’s not alone, one way or another.
Then something bursts up from the trapdoor, a writhing mess of shadows and flickering yellow lightning that’s just wrong. It makes right for Adam-or for the open doorway behind him-and he stumbles backwards, fumbling for the torch. Something hits him hard, knocking him backwards, and before Adam can catch his balance, he’s falling out of the tower and into the darkness beyond.
Previous l Next
Adam wakes up and he’s not in the Cage.
He’s back in the tower room, lying on the bed with a thick blanket pulled up to his chin. Someone’s taken off his shoes.
“So, he lives.”
Adam tenses. He hadn’t noticed he wasn’t alone, but now he doesn’t know how he missed him.
There’s a man sitting, or maybe lounging, on the stool, and Adam’s never seen someone lean so far back on a stool before without toppling over. The man’s legs are kicked out in front to counterbalance him, and he looks utterly bored.
Strangest of all, the man looks normal. He’s kind of short, with a face that looks far too comfortable with arrogance, and curious eyes that don’t match his nonchalant expression.
“Who are you?” Adam asks, and, wow, his voice sounds even worse than it did earlier.
The man tuts and languidly stands. Adam shrinks away, but the man ignores him, crossing to a large clay jar under one of the windows that Adam had ignored earlier. He takes the lid off, and fills a small cup with whatever is inside, and walks over to the bed. “Here,” he says. “Drink this.”
Adam wants to pull away, to resist, but he’s too weak, and he can’t help but think that if this guy, whoever he is, wanted him dead, he probably would have done it already. He lets the stranger tip the cup towards his lips, lets the cool liquid wash down his throat.
He’s been thirsty. All this time, he’s been terribly, terribly thirsty, and he didn’t even remember what it felt like. He knows now, and he can’t get enough water.
“More,” he gasps when the cup’s empty.
The man chuckles. “Easy there, tiger.” He refills the cup, though, and Adam thinks he might love him a little, just for that. He won’t even care if the guy’s a vampire. He makes Adam drink the second cup slower, pacing himself, but as long as there’s more water, Adam’s fine with that.
Finally, he sets the cup back on the table and sits back down. “So,” he says, eyes fixed to Adam’s face. “You’re Adam Winchester.”
“Milligan,” Adam corrects automatically. Then, “How the Hell do you know who I am?”
The man makes a vague, all-encompassing hand gesture. “The general aura of Winchesterness gives you away. Also, reckless stupidity seems to run in the family.”
“And who are you?” He doesn’t look like a monster, but Adam’s learned the hard way that things don’t always look the way they are.
The man frowns, pushing his lips out. “You can call me Gabriel,” he says after a long second, “and I’m your knight in shining armor.”
Adam tries to think back. “So, in the alley…”
“I saved your sorry ass. Got there a little too late, though. They’d already torn you apart.”
“I was dead,” Adam fills in. But if he’d died…
“Yeah, more or less. It’s not like you can really die here.”
If he’d died, he should have woken up back in the Cage. And Michael and Lucifer never give him allies, even ones that might stab him in the back later. Which mean that this-
“Where am I?”
“In general?” Gabriel asks, raising his eyebrows. Adam nods. “Oh, this is Purgatory.”
Nothing’s adding up.
Logically, Adam knows that there’s no way he could be out of the Cage, except that this place isn’t following any of the archangels’ rules, and Michael is very big on rules. Sam got out, he can’t help but think. Somehow Sam escaped.
Gabriel’s been watching him for his whole mini-revelation. Adam thinks maybe he was thinking aloud, because after a while Gabriel says, “You’re honestly excited that you’re in Purgatory? Knew you couldn’t have all your screws in right if you’re a Winchester.”
Adam opts to let that slide. “Do you know me?” He’s fairly sure that he’s never seen this man in his life.
Gabriel shakes his head. “Not even remotely, though I did hear of your death a while back. However, I have had the dubious honor of meeting your brothers.”
Adam ignores the sharp stab of pain at the mention of Sam and Dean. He’s still not ready to face that particular demon. “If you’re in Purgatory,” he says instead, “that means you’re some kind of monster, doesn’t it?” Adam had never really paid attention to how the whole Heaven/Hell/Purgatory thing was supposed to work, which he’s starting to regret.
Gabriel’s face goes still, and Adam has a second of panic that he’s really messed up now. “Not quite,” Gabriel says finally, his expression still a frozen mask. “I was killed, and it was a choice between this and Oblivion. I was starting to wish I’d picked Door Number Two.”
Adam doesn’t know what to say to that, and the silence stretches on for long enough that he’s starting to feel uncomfortable. Then something shifts, and Gabriel’s face relaxes.
“But now you’re here,” Gabriel says, rubbing his hands together. “You and me, Adam, we’re going to break out of here.”
Really, Adam’s not too sure about that. Hungry monsters and supercharged sun aside, Purgatory’s not that bad, and Adam’s more than aware of just how much worse it can be. Not that he really remembers the Cage. It’s still there, every touch and agony, but it feels far away and disconnected, like it’s something he watched on TV. He’s fairly sure he should be a drooling mess, but if this fuzzy half-amnesia is the alternative, he’s more than fine with it. He tells Gabriel as much, editing out the more sensitive bits.
Gabriel snorts in answer. “Trust me, you won’t feel that way after awhile.” His face darkens. “This is a prison, Adam, and it’ll break you just as surely as Hell.”
Adam’s still unconvinced, but Gabriel has been here longer. Maybe it’s a cumulative thing. “How are you going to escape?”
“Purgatory has rings of defenses, with the door out somewhere in the middle. There was a big jailbreak a while back, and the biggest nasties of the bunch got out then. I tried to follow them, but I didn’t make it in time. Still, there should be a weak spot where they passed through.”
“So I had the right idea,” Adam says slowly. “I was trying to get to the center of the city.” He absently picks at the fabric of the blanket. He’d been so close…
“Even if you’d made it through the gateway, there still would have been more layers, more gates.” Gabriel’s responding to his thoughts more than his words, and it’s disturbingly familiar. Adam glances up at Gabriel, but the other man isn’t even looking at him. He’s looking up out the window at the clear blue sky.
It’s the stillest Adam’s seen him yet, and it doesn’t seem right. There’s something ancient and terrible there that he couldn’t seen before, and it scares him a little. Adam remembers the lightning flash back in the alley, and shivers.
“What will happen,” he asks finally, “once we’re out?”
Gabriel shrugs. “What, you think I know?”
There’s a long silence where Adam tries not to think about where he might end up if they do escape. He’s fairly sure he won’t end up in the Cage again, but there’s no telling. That’s counting on if he really is in Purgatory, too. He’s still not 100% on that one.
Then something else occurs to him, and he has to fight back sudden nausea. “We’re going to have to get past all those monsters, aren’t we? We’re going to have to fight them.”
“Oh, there’s going to be a lot more monsters than that,” Gabriel says cheerfully. “And even though they can’t exactly kill you, they can make you wish they had.”
Adam frowns. “But-last night. Didn’t they kill me then?”
“More like they hit your reset button. I found you on the street where you first arrived.”
“Huh.” Wait… “You’ve been watching me?”
Gabriel looks offended. “Come on, disruption as big as you comes through, and you think I wouldn’t check it out? I would have introduced myself right off, but I didn’t want you to panic.”
“And this is where you’ve been living?”
“More or less. I’ve been moving around some, trying to find the exit door.”
Adam’s frown is becoming a permanent fixture. “But the center of the city-”
“-Is unpredictable. Luckily, being a Winchester, you’re more unpredictable. You might just be our key out.”
Adam’s not sure how he feels about that. Not that he can really do anything about it.
“When do we leave?”
It’s already too late in the morning to start out, so Adam sleeps for most of the day. He wakes up a few times, and rations himself some of the precious water. He’s not sure it’s really necessary, but he’s been without water for so long that now he’s rediscovered it, he can’t imagine giving it up again.
Gabriel’s gone the first time Adam wakes up. At some point during the day, Adam thinks he hears the trapdoor close, but he’s too far under for it to really register. When he wakes up again around twilight, Gabriel’s still gone.
He tries to go back to sleep, but it’s just not happening. He swings his legs out from underneath the blankets and stands up, wincing as every joint in his body tells him just what they think about spending a most of the day on a hard bed. Adam stretches, then crosses to the window, climbing up on the stool to look outside.
There’s someone watching the tower from the shadow of the nearest building.
For a second, Adam’s still sleep-addled brain thinks it’s Gabriel, but the man is far too tall, too broad, and too wrong. He has gray hair and a weathered face, but he still feels strong. Strong and dangerous. He must see Adam watching, because he smiles, cold and predatory, and it reminds Adam far too much of Lucifer.
He shivers.
The man turns away, melting back into the shadows. As he turns, his eyes catch the light, and, just for a second, they flare a bright, sulfuric yellow. Then it’s gone, and Adam blinks, wondering if he’d imagined it. There’s no sign the man was even there.
Behind him, the trapdoor bangs, and Adam jumps. He turns around so fast he almost falls off the stool, but it’s only Gabriel.
“You cut that close,” Adam snaps, letting his fear bleed into his voice as annoyance.
“I’m not as tasty as you,” Gabriel says lightly, ignoring both Adam’s attempts to not fall on his face and the sharpness in his voice. “I found more weapons,” he adds, letting the backpack Adam hadn’t noticed he was carrying drop onto the bed. Something inside clinks.
Gabriel tips out the backpack’s contents. There are two more knives, a slingshot, and what Adam is fairly sure is a torch. He pokes at it gingerly.
“They don’t like light,” Gabriel explains.
“That flash last night-how did you do that?”
“By being pure awesomeness.” Gabriel looks so smug that Adam can’t decide if he’s joking or not.
“Right…”
Everything trails off into awkward silence for a few minutes, while Gabriel tests the sharpness of one of the knives with his thumb and Adam acts very interested in the sigils on the walls.
“Being a Winchester,” Gabriel says eventually, “I’m guessing you won’t have a problem with fighting your way through monsters?”
“I’m not a Winchester,” Adam says, starting to feel he should just go ahead and get a t-shirt made. “The first monsters I met killed me and my mom, stuffed us in a crypt, and used me as a trap for the oh-so-perfect Winchesters.”
Gabriel shrugs. “So, you’ve got issues. Still not helping the not-actually-a-Winchester argument. Point is, though, you can fight. Right?”
Adam looks down. “Sam taught me a little. It didn’t really help.”
Gabriel’s punch comes out of nowhere. One second he’s on the other side of the bed from Adam, the next he’s right in front of him and swinging at his face. Adam throws up an arm automatically, barely blocking the blow. Gabriel laughs.
“See? You can fight. You just need incentive.”
Adam wants to say something about how he had plenty of incentive the night before, and look how well that turned out for him, but Gabriel’s already distracted.
“We’re not going to be able to go through the streets like you did,” he tells Adam, craning his neck to look out the window. “It takes too long and there’s just not enough daylight. We’re just going to have to cut through the buildings.”
“But there’s-there’s things living in there.”
“Exactly. Hence the weapons. You can have the torch.” He says it like it’s a great honor that Adam should be grateful for. All Adam can manage in response is an uncertain nod.
Gabriel sits under the window and watches the sky after that. Adam goes back to bed, but he sleeps restlessly and wakes up feeling more tired than he’d been before. Gabriel wakes him up as soon as the sky begins to lighten, turning a slightly paler shade of dark blue on the horizon.
It’s colder outside than Adam would have guessed. He would have thought that all the stone would have absorbed some of the heat from the day, but the stones are gray and cold and Adam’s breath frosts in the air.
Gabriel doesn’t seem to notice the temperature. Once they’re outside, he takes the torch he’d given Adam before they’d left the tower, and turns away from Adam. He does something Adam can’t see, and there’s a rushing crackle as the torch catches fire. He hands it back.
The fire is oddly comforting, which surprises Adam a little. He’d have expected have had his fill of fire, but when it’s not turned on him, it feels like raw power, and he remembers how the monsters ran from the light the night before.
His newfound confidence is short lived. He’d expected them to take the streets for a short distance, at least until it was light, but Gabriel has other ideas. He marches across the street and into the shadows of the awning, then pauses, glancing back at the still-frozen Adam with a well? Come on! expression written across his face.
Adam follows.
Once he’s inside, there’s a panicked moment where Adam forgets to breath. The dark presses in on him, and the air is slightly warm and smells like blood and decay. It’s desperately familiar, and just for a second, Adam feels like he’s home. He’s fallen to his knees on the cold stone, the torch guttering on the ground a foot away, before Gabriel realizes he isn’t behind him. Adam feels Gabriel pulling him up with surprising strength for his size, but it’s distant, disconnected. Gabriel’s saying something, but it’s hard to listen through the screams and soft, gentle laughter echoing in his ears.
“Come on, Adam! Work with me here.”
He’s moving, and he thinks it’s Gabriel dragging him through the darkness, but for all he knows, it could be Michael. He wants to fight, but if it is Michael, he knows it’s not worth it.
Then he’s outside, the sky’s turned from blue to gold-pink, and he can breathe. It feels like coming back to life.
Gabriel gives him a minute to re-learn how to breathe. “What was that?” he asks, once Adam’s stopped gasping like a fish.
“I can’t-don’t make me go back in there.”
Gabriel takes a step towards him, and Adam flinches back. Gabriel freezes, his face twisted into something complicated and uncomfortable. He squats down beside Adam, carefully reaching out a hand to cup Adam’s face. His hand is cold.
“Adam, what went wrong?”
“You can’t make me go back.” Adam’s half-sobbing, his words coming out in strangled bursts. Some part of him is dimly aware that he’s not making any sense, but the cushion separating him from his memories has burned away, leaving Hell close enough that Adam can almost feel its flames. “You told me I wasn’t there now, you can’t make me go back. Please, don’t make me go back.”
“Shh, it’s okay.” Gabriel pats his back, the movement awkward and stiff. Still, it grounds Adam just enough that he can remember that he’s outside in the sunlight, and the Cage is nothing more than a bad memory now. He looks up, meeting Gabriel’s oddly gold eyes that are comfortingly nothing like Michael’s.
“I’m all for dramatic breakdowns,” Gabriel tells him lightly, “but even I think that was a little intense.”
Adam doesn’t respond, just keeps heaving in gulping breaths of air.
“Where were you?” Gabriel asks, and his voice is gentler, less mocking.
“Hell,” Adam says simply.
“Ah.”
Adam’s perfectly willing to just stay right where he is, but Gabriel has other plans. He grabs Adam’s hand, hauling him to his feet with strength disproportionate to his size.
“I’m sorry,” he says, once Adam’s vertical, “but we still can’t take the streets. We’ll try and move fast.”
“Okay.” Adam hadn’t really expected another option, but he wants to get out of here now. The warm fuzzy feelings he’d still been hanging onto are gone, and all he wants is to leave this place behind. He still remembers Heaven, vaguely, and he wants its peace so badly it hurts.
He’s going to get out of here.
The second building isn’t as bad.
Adam can still hear Hell, still smell it, but he can deal. Gabriel helps, keeping close beside him, near enough that Adam can feel his presence. He’s conscious of keeping the torch up, too, and its light forms a small circle of known in the darkness.
This time, Adam’s able to focus on the actual sounds of the building instead of the imagined ones. They’re not much better. There’s all of the noises the creatures had made when they were chasing him, as well as a few new ones-a scuttling rasp of shifting claws and scales against stone, and a rattling groan that reminds Adam unsettlingly of an old zombie movie.
The passageway through the building is straight and comparatively short, and whatever is in there, it’s leaving them alone. Adam’s not sure if they have the torch to thank for that, or if it’s the aura of wary protectiveness he half-imagines is emanating from Gabriel.
They make it outside, cross a blessed twenty feet of blistering stones and sunlight, and then the ordeal starts again.
Adam loses track of how far they’ve gone and how many lightless houses they’ve passed through. It’s getting late, the sun low and red over the city, and Gabriel’s starting to walk faster. They’d been attacked last time they’d been inside, but it had been half-hearted, and they’d fought them off with without too much trouble.
“Are we getting close?” Adam asks once they’re back outside.
Gabriel glances up at the sky, then at the street, like he can see some kind of landmark that Adam can’t.
“Yeah,” he says. “Almost there.”
Adam wants to ask, are you sure? but he can’t bring himself to actually say it.
He can feel they’re getting closer, though. As it grows closer to night, the monsters are becoming restless. One had tagged Adam with a claw a few houses back, and the slice above his eyebrow is still bleeding sluggishly.
There’s movement in the streets now too, twisted things stirring in the shadows, and Adam’s not sure if it’s because of the dark or if there are just more monsters this close to the heart of the city.
Then, finally, when Adam’s just about ready to fall down from exhaustion and nerves, they stumble out into a plaza instead of yet another street and Adam knows they’ve arrived.
It’s larger than any of the others Adam’s seen, and its paving stones aren’t the same golden-red as the rest of the city-they’re scorched black in a wide ring that emanates from the tall tower in the center of the plaza and reaches almost to the buildings, the ragged edges of the scorch marks inches away from Adam’s feet. They’re so close, maybe fifty feet from the tower, but Adam can’t bring himself to step out onto the burnt stones.
“It’s okay,” Gabriel tells him, but he doesn’t sound too sure. He walks slowly towards the tower, wincing slightly when he passes into the fire-blackened section.
Adam follows him warily. There’s a crackle across his skin that feels like static electricity, and Adam shudders but presses on anyway, hurrying to catch up with Gabriel.
Gabriel stops when he gets to the door of the tower, and Adam, who’d been watching the flickers of movement around the edge of the plaza, almost bumps into him.
“What’s wrong?”
Gabriel frowns. “This door isn’t actually supposed to be used. It’s locked, and I’m not sure what kind of a key we need to actually open it.”
“Seriously? And you didn’t bring this up before, why?” It’s almost dark. They’ve only got a few minutes before they’re under attack, and Gabriel forgot the keys. Adam resists the temptation to roll his eyes. He should have guessed something like this would happen.
“Don’t be like that,” Gabriel tells him, without looking. “I’m sure it’s something simple.” He looks at the door for a long minute, then pulls his knife out of his belt. He pushes up his left sleeve, then draws the knife across his forearm, grimacing as blood wells up in a stark red line.
“What the-?” Adam starts, but Gabriel’s already sticking his knife back and running his fingers through the blood. He paints a symbol onto the door with his fingers, smooth curves that look a little familiar, and Adam thinks it might be Enochian.
Gabriel draws the last line, then steps back. The symbol glows slightly in the gloom, and Adam holds his breath. Then, absolutely nothing happens.
“That should have worked.” Gabriel’s frowning at the door like it’s personally wronged him. He absently wipes his hand on his pants, then turns the frown on Adam. “Hmm-” He reaches out, swiping his hand over the cut on Adam’s forehead.
He paints the symbol again, and this time, it glows brightly. The light bleeds out into the rest of the door, following the grain of the wood, then it flares brightly. When it fades, the door is gone.
Gabriel grins. “After you.”
Adam takes a careful step through the doorway. It’s dark inside, and there’s none of the green phosphorescence that had lit the tower he and Gabriel had stayed in. The torch is still burning, and it illuminates the stark interior-like the other tower there’s nothing but a staircase spiraling up the walls.
“Keep moving,” Gabriel hisses from behind him. “Don’t look now, but we’ve got company.”
Adam swallows hard and takes another step into the darkness. “How many?”
“Um, lots? Do you want me to paint you a picture?”
There’s an echoing thud as Adam’s foot hits the bottom stair, and he winces.
“Adam,” Gabriel says slowly. “You should probably run now.”
Something snarls in the dark behind Adam, and Gabriel shoves Adam up the stairs. Adam lurches forward, almost losing his balance as he tries to swing the torch around. Its light bounces in a panicked arc, casting nightmare shadows of claws and horns against the walls. Gabriel’s standing at the foot of the stairs, somehow looking taller than his five-foot-whatever-inches, his hand stretched out like he’s holding the creatures back with sheer willpower, and damn, maybe he is. “Up the stairs, out the window, go!” he growls, not taking his eyes off the monsters in the doorway.
“Out the-”
“Go!”
Adam runs, feeling ten kinds of coward. The steps are narrow and steep, and he nearly puts his foot through one that’s almost rusted through. There’s the sound of a fight from below, and he can hear Gabriel shouting through the din of shrieks and snarls. This tower’s taller, and Adam’s out of breath by the time he gets to the top. Just as he reaches the trapdoor there’s a flash of light, like the one in the ally the other night, and everything goes quiet.
Adam freezes halfway through the trapdoor, panting slightly. “Gabriel?” His voice comes out as a croak. He holds his breath, listening.
There’s something coming up the stairs.
Adam can’t see it around the turn of the staircase, but the can hear it, a thud of boots that’s too heavy to be Gabriel.
Adam scrambles away from the trapdoor and pulls it shut with an echoing bang.
Out the window, Gabriel had said, but there’s no window. Adam holds the torch up, desperately hoping he’s wrong, that he just missed it, but the walls are solid stone all the way up.
Adam swears. He’s the metaphorical rat in a cage now, the cowboy up the blind gulch with the outlaws closing in on him.
Wait…
There’s an arch of stones set out in relief from the wall that’s big enough to be a window-or a door. It’s solid stone inside, but was so was the door into the tower.
Adam’s hands are shaking slightly as he sets the torch down, leaning it against the wall, and pulls out his knife, drawing it across his arm in an imitation of what Gabriel had done. The pain flares bright and sudden, but it’s easy for him to ignore it.
Remembering the symbol Gabriel had drawn is the hard part. Adam has a second of panic after he finishes drawing the sigil and nothing happens, but then the blood begins to glow, the turns blinding white as the stones within the arch crumble to dust. Beyond where the wall was, there’s nothing but blank blackness, and Adam shivers.
The sound of footsteps coming from the stairs has stopped.
“Gabriel?” Adam’s breath is too loud as he listens, straining to hear any sign that he’s not alone, one way or another.
Then something bursts up from the trapdoor, a writhing mess of shadows and flickering yellow lightning that’s just wrong. It makes right for Adam-or for the open doorway behind him-and he stumbles backwards, fumbling for the torch. Something hits him hard, knocking him backwards, and before Adam can catch his balance, he’s falling out of the tower and into the darkness beyond.
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