Happy Holidays, Edna Blackadder!
Title: Manifest Destiny
Recipient: edna_blackadder
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,100
Warnings: None
Pairings: Anathema/Newt, Adam/Pepper, (implied Brian/Wensleydale)
Prompt: Weird one first. I've always really liked the scene between Anathema and Adam and would like to see some kind of expansion of their relationship post-canon. Can be shippy if you want it to be -- but if you do, please delay things happening until Adam's well of age -- or gen friendship fic, or gen with sides of Anathema/Newt and Adam/Pepper. Maybe they're weirdly able to help each other with relationship issues, because intergenerational friendship is awesome like that? Whether this leads to Anathema remembering is up to you.
The was a little grassy plot of land wedged between the lanes on High Street in Tadfield. It contained two back to back benches that were slightly rotten in the charming manner that most things in Tadfield had, perfect daffodils on either side, a plane tree and a pleasant grass-to-gravel ratio. They called it Tadfield Memorial Park, or at least its halfhearted plaque did.
Anathema sat on one of the benches, adjusted her sunglasses (well, Newt's sunglasses) and pretended to read the newspaper. Intermittent cars drove by on the rain-damp tarmac.
"The ducks are walking two by two, today," came a voice from behind her.
"I'm anaspeptic, phrasmotic, even compunctious to have caused you such pericombobulation," she replied.
A world-weary sigh from the 11-year-old on the other bench. "That's not a proper trench coat, is it? What did you have to go an' wear that for? It's certainly not what Agent 99 would've worn."
"It's tan, though. It's perfectly within the realm." Anathema was quite pleased with herself for finding an old coat of her mother's that wasn't entirely black.
She could practically hear Adam shaking his head. He sighed again. "Close enough. It'll have to do. Now," he said, more gruffly, "let's get down to business, agent. Have you discovered the target's strategy?"
"Yessir, Agent Young. It wasn't easy, but I managed to infiltrate their headquarters. Eventually they accepted me as one of their own. And I can tell you with certainty that they are planning something, sir. Something big."
"I knew it."
"The PTA is hell-bent on getting rid of the bicycle racks outside of the school, to discourage any good for nothing teenagers from corrupting the minds of Tadfield's youth."
"It's jolly well sickening," Adam spat, "to think a bunch of grown-up's think they ought to take away our bicycles, they've never done anything to them, just good clean fun, that's all it is." Though in Adam's case it was often technically mud-streaked fun.
"We'll have to double our efforts on the parent-teacher front, Agent Young."
"Quite right, too," Adam said decisively.
"So." Anathema turned around on the bench enough to catch Adam's unruly-haired profile. "What else have you been up to?"
Adam fidgeted with a dandelion he must've decapitated on his way across town. "I dunno. School's all right, I 'spose. Did you know that they dropped a bomb on some poor German elephant in World War II? The Allies shouldn't of been going around killing caged up animals every chance they got, if you ask me. What'd an elephant ever do to them, anyway?"
"You don't have to talk about school, you know."
Adam frowned. "But you're a grown-up. Aren't you suppose to tell me to do my homework and eat all the broccoli on my plate?"
"Me, a grown up?" Anathema shrugged. "Technically, yes."
"My teachers are all so stupid," Adam said with feeling. "All they care about is telling people what to do and when they can use the loo. Why don't they just teach us about actual interesting things? Seems an awful waste of taxpayers' hard earned money."
"I can certainly remember how frustrating school was, but fortunately for you there is a bit more to life than that," Anathema said. "How are your friends? Are you getting to play outside more now that it's warming up a little?"
"Yeah . . . " Adam dropped the pulverized dandelion into the grass. "Pepper's in the youth rugby team now so she can't always come with us, but . . . I'm glad it's springtime, again. Winter's all right for Christmas and everything, but I get bored of it."
Anathema nodded cautiously. "You got bored of it . . . and now the snow's melted?"
Adam's eyebrows knit. He looked directly at Anathema now across the backs of the benches. "I thought I tol' you I was done with all that. Just 'cause you carry on being witchy doesn't mean I've got to keep carrying on being like that. I didn't even like it, anyway."
"I know," Anathema soothed. "I know that, Adam, I was just . . . checking, I guess."
"I don't need checking up on."
"It's just a habit, I suppose. I had always been keeping an eye out for signs of the . . . well, of what you put a stop to. It's a bit of a lifestyle change to suddenly not be doing that."
"Don't worry," Adam said, very adamantly. "I only let you remember so you wouldn't spy on me for real. I wanted you to remember the decision I made so you'd just stop worryin' for once." Adam peered closer. "All you do is worry about things. There's no reason for it anymore, so it's like you're looking for things to worry about. Why do grown ups always do that?"
There wasn't a breeze but Anathema still pulled her coat tighter around her. "You're right," she said.
*
"Why do you still check up on him?" Newt said from the kitchen. He was absolute rubbish at cooking, but at least he always volunteered to do the cleaning up.
"It's not checking up on," Anathema insisted. "It's mentoring. It's being a friend he can talk to when kids his own age don't understand."
"So still nothing demony going on with him, then?"
"No," Anathema sighed. She leaned against the work surface and watched Newt drying mismatched floral dishes. His forearms were soapy and she liked the way muscle and tendon moved under his skin as he washed a frying pan, and his eyes and increasing easiness in her company were compelling. "Do you really have to do this now?" she asked, trailing her fingers up his bubbly arm.
Newt laughed. "Yes."
Anathema didn't relent - she pressed up behind him and kissed the nape of his neck until he stopped giggling and took her hand in his slippery one.
Later in Jasmine Cottage's crowded little bedroom Newt's arm snaked around Anathema and he asked sleepily, "How long do you think it's, you know, a good idea to keep spying on him?"
Anathema curled against him under deliciously heavy covers. "It's not that, really. It's just rather disturbing to think of giving up being a professional descendant, and now it turns out there is still a secret that needs to be guarded. "
"Right, so the whole fate of the world hanging in the balance thing doesn't make it a bit exciting?"
"Well I didn't say that."
*
Adam's twelfth birthday celebration wasn't an especially grand affair. His friends were there, of course, but they were only incidental, dressed uncomfortably in what their parents had certified as party clothes. Adam's mother bragged to the other mothers about her garishly iced cake and Adam's father chatted blandly with other tassel-shoed men.
Adam himself sat on a pink lawn chair eating cake with Dog begging passive aggressively at his heels. He was staring at Pepper and Wensleydale talking in high grass in the shade of a beech tree. The low murmur of the party and the sear of the summer sun made the air feel loud.
"What's so fascinating?" Anathema asked, sitting in the chair next to him.
Adam stroked behind Dog's ear absently. He was tan from playing outside all summer, and beginning to lose some of the fullness in his cheeks. "Nothin'," he grumbled, stabbing his cake so violently that the piece he'd been aiming for split apart.
"You want some advice on how to talk to a girl from another girl?
Adam raised an eyebrow. "You're not a girl," he explained, "you're too old."
Anathema laughed. "Okay, do you want advice from somebody who was once - though a very long time ago, mind you - a girl herself?"
"I guess," Adam said grudgingly.
"Just talk to her the same way you always have. She's not an alien."
Adam looked wistfully to the skies. "Aliens aren't real, Anathema."
Anathema had another bite of Adam's mother's painstaking cake. "Why don't you go to your sister to talk about this stuff?"
Adam snorted. "You don't have siblings, do you?"
*
Anathema had squelched through a wet mess of leaves on the Mall and trudged across the muddy park. She'd always had the notion that cities ought to be more city-ish - the insurgence of trees, while picturesque, always felt like a bit of a let down in London.
The restaurant she walked into didn't have a bell, but it was the kind of place that felt like it should have - dark and reddish inside, made cozy by rainy day light leaking in through tall windows. There was a short waiter and a couple in the corner, but her eye was drawn to the unassuming man seated by the window who smiled at her.
"So good to see you again, my dear," he said as she sat down, and she believed that he really meant it.
Anathema smiled back at him. "Well, I was in town anyway. But that is why you asked me here, isn't it, Mr. Fell?"
Mr. Fell tilted his head. "Mm? Oh, right. Yes, of course. You're in town for your . . . er . . . "
"It's a commission for an ad company that's headquartered here," Anathema supplied. "Business, I'm afraid, not pleasure."
"Right, right. Of course." Mr. Fell nodded enthusiastically. "Well, that's just it, I'd wanted to congratulate you on your . . . unprecedented, shall we say, success in your new career."
"Ready to order?" the waiter interrupted. He did a little double take at Anathema. "Sir, is your partner not joining you today?"
Mr. Fell rolled his eyes. "Oh, he had 'better things to do', evidently. No matter that he'd suggested the whole thing in the first place . . . "
The waiter made a sympathetic noise. "Well, he's the one missing out on the kunefe." He turned to Anathema. "They've been coming here for years, miss, since before I even worked here."
Anathema smiled. "Oh, I'll bet."
The waiter took their order and left. Mr. Fell's face was half syrupy shadow and half sharp daylight.
"So, how've you been getting on?" Anathema asked.
He sighed and fiddled with the silverware. "Well to be quite frank, I don't really know what to do with myself, really. I used to have a job that gave me some purpose in life. Crowley has certainly taken the Apocalypse That Wasn't as a free pass to do whatever he wants without any regard for morality, which I don't think is quite the point Adam was making." He cleared his throat. "Still, it is a bit of a relief not to have to coordinate miracles and sins and the like. It had become rather exhausting, to be honest, and we've found that humans do tend to even themselves out anyway. What about you?"
"Well I'm actually quite good at art, as it turns out," Anathema said. The Tadfield townspeople had always assumed she was something like an artist, and apparently so had Adam because Anathema had suddenly found herself being approached by various regional entities to create artwork for them. She'd been surprised by how lucrative it had turned out to be, especially considering she'd never picked up a paintbrush outside of art class in school. "I look at it this way, Mr. Fell - people have their God-given talents, don’t they? Something like this is not so different, when you get down to it."
Mr. Fell's smile tightened. "Ah," he said. "I see."
Anathema laughed, which only alarmed him more. "Oh, Mr. Fell. It's not going to happen. All the stuff They started is stopped now. You don't have to keep worrying about it."
Mr. Fell's face relaxed a little. "I suppose . . . I just. Well. I do feel very badly for not keeping up with Adam after everything that, er, didn't happen. However it is difficult to believe that he's genuinely put a stop to it, particularly after 6,000 or so years of it being the end goal. What does one do with oneself after the driving force behind all of human history has been stripped away? It's a bit disorienting, and I know Crowley feels much the same way, although he trusts in Adam even less."
Anathema drank in the uneasy shades of his aura. "But I know him," she said. "And he'll always choose the same thing, he'll always fix it."
The soft thud of the kitchen door heralded their food. As the waiter padded across the carpet toward them Mr. Fell said, "Thank you for keeping an eye on him, all the same. It is good to know he's in such capable hands."
*
Adam's next birthday had come and passed, leaving Adam lankier around the elbows and going slightly longer between haircuts. Summer was winding down around them in the only Tadfield restaurant with what qualified as outdoor seating - three somewhat flimsy little tables not quite practical enough for eating on.
You wouldn't expect that somebody could eat chips morosely, but Adam certainly was. Anathema didn't think he'd changed, not really. Maybe a few more inches high and a few less inches of babyfat but mostly he just seemed to have grown into his usual solemnity.
"Did you know anybody that was in the fire?" She hated herself for even thinking what she was thinking. Newt had reassured her in a voice too high pitched to do much reassurance at all that it Adam wasn't involved, though, was he? Well, of course not.
"Yeah. I mean, no. Well, I knew them all, didn't I? Everybody knows everybody in Tadfield." He didn't sound so sure that that was a good thing anymore. "Why didn't the vicar notice it in time? In Sunday school he notices an awful lot that's not even important, if you ask me."
What was it Mr. Fell had said, urgent and nervously on a wet London street? A ticking time-bomb in kid's clothing - it's just how they made him. "Well," Anathema began tentatively, "at least you won't have Sunday school for the next while, right?" She attempted some laughter but it felt flat even to her own ears.
Adam was incredulous: "Anathema. People died."
"I know! I know. Sorry, I was just trying to lighten the mood . . . " She thought she could read Adam well enough, but now she couldn't seem to stop second guessing. "It was an accident," she added, watching his reaction.
"It's just . . . " Adam fiddled with the paper placemat under his plate for quite awhile before glancing off to the side and continuing in a panicked manner: "I don't know why it's happening here, Anathema. How can something like that happen here?"
"The Apocalypse happened here," Anathema pointed out. "Well, almost."
"It doesn't make any sense!" Adam shouted, too absorbed in his distress to hear what she was saying. "It's so random. And I didn't like Vicar McDaniels, but now he's just . . . he's just dead. Just like that. And my parents won't talk about it. Dad says 'It's a pity' all the time and shakes his head and that's it. I mean . . . you're old." He looked at Anathema, finally. "Do you understand it?"
He was just a kid, when you got right down to it. Just Adam Young, no matter what he was, technically. And Anathema felt silly, promised herself she'd wouldn't doubt him again and put her hand on his on the table. "No. It's just a pity."
*
Anathema stormed out of the cottage in the bleak midwinter. Fat snowflakes fell noiselessly around her like a mockery of the loudness of her thoughts. It was cold, and she regretted her declaration of needing to get some air without a shawl or something, at least.
She was having a hard time remembering the details of the fight. Newt had been insufferable, that she knew, but that seemed too insignificant of a thing to have caused such a row.
"Do you wanna build a snowman?"
Anathema jumped at Adam's voice. He was with his friends, sled in toe and Dog bounding through the snow ahead of them. Brian had had a bit of a growth spurt and Wensleydale's glasses had become more stylish. Pepper's hat and scarf were not only not pink, but anti-pink. They waited by the hedge's desperately red berries while Adam lumbered a tiny path up to Anathema.
"You'll be needing some boots, at least." His voice was beginning to wobble with pubescence. His nose becoming somehow more defined and adult, but the snowflakes landing on it and the lingering childhood in his eyes contradicted that. "What's wrong?" he asked.
Anathema sighed. "Nothing. Just . . . stupid grown up things."
Adam rolled his eyes. "I'm sick of people dismissing things as 'just grown up'. I don't see why people can't tell me what's actually going on like it's some kind of secret or something."
"Well in this case it was stupid, I'm afraid." She was becoming weirdly acclimatized to the freezing air and the snow seeping through her slippers. "Cabin fever, I suppose. Spending too much time with the same person."
"Are you gonna break up with Newt?" Adam asked, sounding like it was the only possible solution.
"What? No! No, of course not. It's just a fight, surely you have fights with your friends, sometimes, don't you?"
Adam held his hands up. "Well I dunno . . . on pirate ships, people get cabin fever and go mad and make their shipmates walk the plank."
"Adam," Pepper called from the road, "your mum said you had to be home for lunch, remember?"
"I gotta go," Adam said, looking torn.
Anathema smiled. "Have fun."
*
Anathema and Newt held hands as they navigated the nighttime with acorns popping underfoot. The little town square was crammed with bundled up families and leaves frozen crispy to the ground.
Newt's woolen arm pressed against Anathema's. "I thought you said this was government sanctioned barbarism?"
"It is," Anathema said. "So I'll be quite interested to hear what Adam has to say on the subject. I haven't actually seen him since his 15th birthday . . . "
She could feel Newt looking at her. "Right. Well, thank God you're taking the initiative to be his guardian angel, at least."
"I wouldn't thank him, exactly." Anathema searched the crowd and almost missed Adam by the bonfire because apparently he had shot up at least a foot in the past few months.
Adam didn't look otherworldly. The blush of an overhead streetlight just painted him normal. "Oh," he said. "I didn't think you went in for this sort of thing, Anathema."
"He means 'hello'," taller!Pepper chimed in, elbowing Adam.
Anathema scanned a crowd of townspeople who were grinning in the shadowed light like the erstwhile rotting pumpkins on their porches. "It is a bit greusome, when you think about it," she said.
"She means 'how are you?'," Newt translated.
Anathema glanced behind Pepper and Adam. "Where are Brian and Wensleydale?"
Adam snickered. Pepper smiled and said, "Who knows where they've got to? Last I checked it was 'homework Miss Oswald only gave to the two of us', right, Adam?"
Adam nodded, watched her sipping hot chocolate. Anathema couldn't always see his aura, but right now it was very bright.
*
Anathema wasn't nearly as terrified in the passenger seat as she'd thought she would be. Adam was a generally cool and collected, even when he was ranting about something, and Adam while driving his Dad's car was no different. The car wasn't so much old as distinguished, and Adam had been driving it somewhat compulsively at exactly 3 miles below the speed limit. They drove through Tadfield's salt stained streets in a comfortable silence, the only background noise the hum of the engine and the muffled scrape of rakes through leaves outside.
"How much longer 'til you can drive without a chaperone?" Anathema asked.
"Oh, I dunno," Adam said nonchalantly. "A couple of weeks, maybe."
Anathema laughed. "You can't wait, can you?"
Adam groaned. "It has been forever, Anathema, it really has. And it's not like I'll be going around driving everywhere, anyway. It's easier to walk places in Tadfield, and I don't see why the driving instructor has to be so bloody serious about the whole thing."
"Indicator," Anathema reminded him.
"I know, I know." Adam flicked it on and turned onto a more cobblestoned street. "I'm going to the dance, you know. At school."
"Oh?" Adam was staring at the road ahead. "With anybody in particular?"
Adam couldn't quite stifle his grin. "Well, Pepper didn't so much ask as inform me I was going with her."
"That's wonderful," Anathema said, feeling rather warm and fuzzy about it. She wasn't used to the kind of relationship she had with Adam - she hadn't any siblings or close family. Agnes had been her closest family member, and her other family members had felt the same way, so a shared interest of her was the only thing that really connected them. With Adam, Anathema felt a sense of pride and protectiveness that was unfamiliar. And seeing him succeed in the tiny milestones of young life was somehow especially heartwarming. "You two are quite the pair, aren't you?"
Adam burst: "Yeah, it's just, I dunno, Pepper grounds me, like. She reminds me that not everything in life is about a cosmic battle between Heaven and Hell or whatever. She reminds me to get outraged about things that I should be outraged about and to relax about the things that aren't really that important when you get down to it. She always listens to me but she doesn't just follow me like the others. She yells at me for being an idiot, sometimes. I quite like that about her, and . . . well. You see what I mean, then." Adam cleared his throat, blushing across his nose.
*
It was the very tail end of winter, so far along that snow didn't even bother to waste the effort. Adam wasn't dressed warmly enough, in Anathema's opinion, but she wasn't about to mother him over it. He was technically an adult now, after all.
"So where do you think I should go for my gap year?" Adam asked it before Anathema was really close enough to respond without shouting.
Anathema descended through tree branches and fossilized footprints in the mud. The old chalk quarry had changed very little over the years. Adam and his friends used it less, or for different reasons than they used to, but so far no younger children had dared to stake a claim. Even Anathema felt like she was intruding as she sat on the dingy milk crate next to Adam's.
His cold-reddened face turned toward her, breathing out steamed air and feeling momentarily dragon-like. "You always know the most interesting things," Adam said. "There's just too many places to chose from. Do I go to Tibet? Or America? Or backpacking through the rainforests like Wensley? It's strange to think of leaving Tadfield, but I've already got to know everything about it so I won't be missing out too much, really." The calm, cloud dampened day made Adam's state of mind seem isolated, like the world had paused to allow him to think properly.
"I couldn't decide that for you," Anathema said. "And I might point out that you making your own decisions is what saved humanity in the first place."
Adam sighed. "Humanity is brilliant. The world's brilliant, it is. But it's also horrible. The more brilliant things I hear about, the more horrible things seem to pop up and balance them out. I'm not really . . . " Adam had never articulated it before: "human. Not a normal one, anyway."
Anathema bit her tongue. "So?"
"So what if I use my powers again? What if the world's too sick after all and it's just going to rot away anyway? What if a second Apocalypse once I've actually grown up was the real plan all along? What if - "
"Adam," she interrupted. "My 'fate', as it were, used to be the only thing that held my life together. Because of what you did, it isn't anymore, and I've been forced to discover who I really am because of it. So if you want to live your life by what you are, then you certainly can, but that doesn't mean it's who you are, and it doesn't mean there is something you're supposed to do just because you're different."
Adam's back straightened up, the gloom in his eyes beginning to clear. "All right." A brisk wind whipped through the thorny branches and set the tire swing spinning. Adam nodded to himself. "All right," he repeated more decisively, standing and shoving his hands into his pockets. He was taller, of course, but he's also given up slouching. "I suppose we should go. No sense in sitting around here when it's so cold anyway, you ask me."
So Anathema followed him up the slope on a well worn path through scraggly shrubs and twisted trollies. "See you around, Adam," she said once they'd reached the edge of town.
"Okay." And Adam walked purposefully toward home, waving to Anathema once again before disappearing down a different road.
*
Recipient: edna_blackadder
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 4,100
Warnings: None
Pairings: Anathema/Newt, Adam/Pepper, (implied Brian/Wensleydale)
Prompt: Weird one first. I've always really liked the scene between Anathema and Adam and would like to see some kind of expansion of their relationship post-canon. Can be shippy if you want it to be -- but if you do, please delay things happening until Adam's well of age -- or gen friendship fic, or gen with sides of Anathema/Newt and Adam/Pepper. Maybe they're weirdly able to help each other with relationship issues, because intergenerational friendship is awesome like that? Whether this leads to Anathema remembering is up to you.
The was a little grassy plot of land wedged between the lanes on High Street in Tadfield. It contained two back to back benches that were slightly rotten in the charming manner that most things in Tadfield had, perfect daffodils on either side, a plane tree and a pleasant grass-to-gravel ratio. They called it Tadfield Memorial Park, or at least its halfhearted plaque did.
Anathema sat on one of the benches, adjusted her sunglasses (well, Newt's sunglasses) and pretended to read the newspaper. Intermittent cars drove by on the rain-damp tarmac.
"The ducks are walking two by two, today," came a voice from behind her.
"I'm anaspeptic, phrasmotic, even compunctious to have caused you such pericombobulation," she replied.
A world-weary sigh from the 11-year-old on the other bench. "That's not a proper trench coat, is it? What did you have to go an' wear that for? It's certainly not what Agent 99 would've worn."
"It's tan, though. It's perfectly within the realm." Anathema was quite pleased with herself for finding an old coat of her mother's that wasn't entirely black.
She could practically hear Adam shaking his head. He sighed again. "Close enough. It'll have to do. Now," he said, more gruffly, "let's get down to business, agent. Have you discovered the target's strategy?"
"Yessir, Agent Young. It wasn't easy, but I managed to infiltrate their headquarters. Eventually they accepted me as one of their own. And I can tell you with certainty that they are planning something, sir. Something big."
"I knew it."
"The PTA is hell-bent on getting rid of the bicycle racks outside of the school, to discourage any good for nothing teenagers from corrupting the minds of Tadfield's youth."
"It's jolly well sickening," Adam spat, "to think a bunch of grown-up's think they ought to take away our bicycles, they've never done anything to them, just good clean fun, that's all it is." Though in Adam's case it was often technically mud-streaked fun.
"We'll have to double our efforts on the parent-teacher front, Agent Young."
"Quite right, too," Adam said decisively.
"So." Anathema turned around on the bench enough to catch Adam's unruly-haired profile. "What else have you been up to?"
Adam fidgeted with a dandelion he must've decapitated on his way across town. "I dunno. School's all right, I 'spose. Did you know that they dropped a bomb on some poor German elephant in World War II? The Allies shouldn't of been going around killing caged up animals every chance they got, if you ask me. What'd an elephant ever do to them, anyway?"
"You don't have to talk about school, you know."
Adam frowned. "But you're a grown-up. Aren't you suppose to tell me to do my homework and eat all the broccoli on my plate?"
"Me, a grown up?" Anathema shrugged. "Technically, yes."
"My teachers are all so stupid," Adam said with feeling. "All they care about is telling people what to do and when they can use the loo. Why don't they just teach us about actual interesting things? Seems an awful waste of taxpayers' hard earned money."
"I can certainly remember how frustrating school was, but fortunately for you there is a bit more to life than that," Anathema said. "How are your friends? Are you getting to play outside more now that it's warming up a little?"
"Yeah . . . " Adam dropped the pulverized dandelion into the grass. "Pepper's in the youth rugby team now so she can't always come with us, but . . . I'm glad it's springtime, again. Winter's all right for Christmas and everything, but I get bored of it."
Anathema nodded cautiously. "You got bored of it . . . and now the snow's melted?"
Adam's eyebrows knit. He looked directly at Anathema now across the backs of the benches. "I thought I tol' you I was done with all that. Just 'cause you carry on being witchy doesn't mean I've got to keep carrying on being like that. I didn't even like it, anyway."
"I know," Anathema soothed. "I know that, Adam, I was just . . . checking, I guess."
"I don't need checking up on."
"It's just a habit, I suppose. I had always been keeping an eye out for signs of the . . . well, of what you put a stop to. It's a bit of a lifestyle change to suddenly not be doing that."
"Don't worry," Adam said, very adamantly. "I only let you remember so you wouldn't spy on me for real. I wanted you to remember the decision I made so you'd just stop worryin' for once." Adam peered closer. "All you do is worry about things. There's no reason for it anymore, so it's like you're looking for things to worry about. Why do grown ups always do that?"
There wasn't a breeze but Anathema still pulled her coat tighter around her. "You're right," she said.
*
"Why do you still check up on him?" Newt said from the kitchen. He was absolute rubbish at cooking, but at least he always volunteered to do the cleaning up.
"It's not checking up on," Anathema insisted. "It's mentoring. It's being a friend he can talk to when kids his own age don't understand."
"So still nothing demony going on with him, then?"
"No," Anathema sighed. She leaned against the work surface and watched Newt drying mismatched floral dishes. His forearms were soapy and she liked the way muscle and tendon moved under his skin as he washed a frying pan, and his eyes and increasing easiness in her company were compelling. "Do you really have to do this now?" she asked, trailing her fingers up his bubbly arm.
Newt laughed. "Yes."
Anathema didn't relent - she pressed up behind him and kissed the nape of his neck until he stopped giggling and took her hand in his slippery one.
Later in Jasmine Cottage's crowded little bedroom Newt's arm snaked around Anathema and he asked sleepily, "How long do you think it's, you know, a good idea to keep spying on him?"
Anathema curled against him under deliciously heavy covers. "It's not that, really. It's just rather disturbing to think of giving up being a professional descendant, and now it turns out there is still a secret that needs to be guarded. "
"Right, so the whole fate of the world hanging in the balance thing doesn't make it a bit exciting?"
"Well I didn't say that."
*
Adam's twelfth birthday celebration wasn't an especially grand affair. His friends were there, of course, but they were only incidental, dressed uncomfortably in what their parents had certified as party clothes. Adam's mother bragged to the other mothers about her garishly iced cake and Adam's father chatted blandly with other tassel-shoed men.
Adam himself sat on a pink lawn chair eating cake with Dog begging passive aggressively at his heels. He was staring at Pepper and Wensleydale talking in high grass in the shade of a beech tree. The low murmur of the party and the sear of the summer sun made the air feel loud.
"What's so fascinating?" Anathema asked, sitting in the chair next to him.
Adam stroked behind Dog's ear absently. He was tan from playing outside all summer, and beginning to lose some of the fullness in his cheeks. "Nothin'," he grumbled, stabbing his cake so violently that the piece he'd been aiming for split apart.
"You want some advice on how to talk to a girl from another girl?
Adam raised an eyebrow. "You're not a girl," he explained, "you're too old."
Anathema laughed. "Okay, do you want advice from somebody who was once - though a very long time ago, mind you - a girl herself?"
"I guess," Adam said grudgingly.
"Just talk to her the same way you always have. She's not an alien."
Adam looked wistfully to the skies. "Aliens aren't real, Anathema."
Anathema had another bite of Adam's mother's painstaking cake. "Why don't you go to your sister to talk about this stuff?"
Adam snorted. "You don't have siblings, do you?"
*
Anathema had squelched through a wet mess of leaves on the Mall and trudged across the muddy park. She'd always had the notion that cities ought to be more city-ish - the insurgence of trees, while picturesque, always felt like a bit of a let down in London.
The restaurant she walked into didn't have a bell, but it was the kind of place that felt like it should have - dark and reddish inside, made cozy by rainy day light leaking in through tall windows. There was a short waiter and a couple in the corner, but her eye was drawn to the unassuming man seated by the window who smiled at her.
"So good to see you again, my dear," he said as she sat down, and she believed that he really meant it.
Anathema smiled back at him. "Well, I was in town anyway. But that is why you asked me here, isn't it, Mr. Fell?"
Mr. Fell tilted his head. "Mm? Oh, right. Yes, of course. You're in town for your . . . er . . . "
"It's a commission for an ad company that's headquartered here," Anathema supplied. "Business, I'm afraid, not pleasure."
"Right, right. Of course." Mr. Fell nodded enthusiastically. "Well, that's just it, I'd wanted to congratulate you on your . . . unprecedented, shall we say, success in your new career."
"Ready to order?" the waiter interrupted. He did a little double take at Anathema. "Sir, is your partner not joining you today?"
Mr. Fell rolled his eyes. "Oh, he had 'better things to do', evidently. No matter that he'd suggested the whole thing in the first place . . . "
The waiter made a sympathetic noise. "Well, he's the one missing out on the kunefe." He turned to Anathema. "They've been coming here for years, miss, since before I even worked here."
Anathema smiled. "Oh, I'll bet."
The waiter took their order and left. Mr. Fell's face was half syrupy shadow and half sharp daylight.
"So, how've you been getting on?" Anathema asked.
He sighed and fiddled with the silverware. "Well to be quite frank, I don't really know what to do with myself, really. I used to have a job that gave me some purpose in life. Crowley has certainly taken the Apocalypse That Wasn't as a free pass to do whatever he wants without any regard for morality, which I don't think is quite the point Adam was making." He cleared his throat. "Still, it is a bit of a relief not to have to coordinate miracles and sins and the like. It had become rather exhausting, to be honest, and we've found that humans do tend to even themselves out anyway. What about you?"
"Well I'm actually quite good at art, as it turns out," Anathema said. The Tadfield townspeople had always assumed she was something like an artist, and apparently so had Adam because Anathema had suddenly found herself being approached by various regional entities to create artwork for them. She'd been surprised by how lucrative it had turned out to be, especially considering she'd never picked up a paintbrush outside of art class in school. "I look at it this way, Mr. Fell - people have their God-given talents, don’t they? Something like this is not so different, when you get down to it."
Mr. Fell's smile tightened. "Ah," he said. "I see."
Anathema laughed, which only alarmed him more. "Oh, Mr. Fell. It's not going to happen. All the stuff They started is stopped now. You don't have to keep worrying about it."
Mr. Fell's face relaxed a little. "I suppose . . . I just. Well. I do feel very badly for not keeping up with Adam after everything that, er, didn't happen. However it is difficult to believe that he's genuinely put a stop to it, particularly after 6,000 or so years of it being the end goal. What does one do with oneself after the driving force behind all of human history has been stripped away? It's a bit disorienting, and I know Crowley feels much the same way, although he trusts in Adam even less."
Anathema drank in the uneasy shades of his aura. "But I know him," she said. "And he'll always choose the same thing, he'll always fix it."
The soft thud of the kitchen door heralded their food. As the waiter padded across the carpet toward them Mr. Fell said, "Thank you for keeping an eye on him, all the same. It is good to know he's in such capable hands."
*
Adam's next birthday had come and passed, leaving Adam lankier around the elbows and going slightly longer between haircuts. Summer was winding down around them in the only Tadfield restaurant with what qualified as outdoor seating - three somewhat flimsy little tables not quite practical enough for eating on.
You wouldn't expect that somebody could eat chips morosely, but Adam certainly was. Anathema didn't think he'd changed, not really. Maybe a few more inches high and a few less inches of babyfat but mostly he just seemed to have grown into his usual solemnity.
"Did you know anybody that was in the fire?" She hated herself for even thinking what she was thinking. Newt had reassured her in a voice too high pitched to do much reassurance at all that it Adam wasn't involved, though, was he? Well, of course not.
"Yeah. I mean, no. Well, I knew them all, didn't I? Everybody knows everybody in Tadfield." He didn't sound so sure that that was a good thing anymore. "Why didn't the vicar notice it in time? In Sunday school he notices an awful lot that's not even important, if you ask me."
What was it Mr. Fell had said, urgent and nervously on a wet London street? A ticking time-bomb in kid's clothing - it's just how they made him. "Well," Anathema began tentatively, "at least you won't have Sunday school for the next while, right?" She attempted some laughter but it felt flat even to her own ears.
Adam was incredulous: "Anathema. People died."
"I know! I know. Sorry, I was just trying to lighten the mood . . . " She thought she could read Adam well enough, but now she couldn't seem to stop second guessing. "It was an accident," she added, watching his reaction.
"It's just . . . " Adam fiddled with the paper placemat under his plate for quite awhile before glancing off to the side and continuing in a panicked manner: "I don't know why it's happening here, Anathema. How can something like that happen here?"
"The Apocalypse happened here," Anathema pointed out. "Well, almost."
"It doesn't make any sense!" Adam shouted, too absorbed in his distress to hear what she was saying. "It's so random. And I didn't like Vicar McDaniels, but now he's just . . . he's just dead. Just like that. And my parents won't talk about it. Dad says 'It's a pity' all the time and shakes his head and that's it. I mean . . . you're old." He looked at Anathema, finally. "Do you understand it?"
He was just a kid, when you got right down to it. Just Adam Young, no matter what he was, technically. And Anathema felt silly, promised herself she'd wouldn't doubt him again and put her hand on his on the table. "No. It's just a pity."
*
Anathema stormed out of the cottage in the bleak midwinter. Fat snowflakes fell noiselessly around her like a mockery of the loudness of her thoughts. It was cold, and she regretted her declaration of needing to get some air without a shawl or something, at least.
She was having a hard time remembering the details of the fight. Newt had been insufferable, that she knew, but that seemed too insignificant of a thing to have caused such a row.
"Do you wanna build a snowman?"
Anathema jumped at Adam's voice. He was with his friends, sled in toe and Dog bounding through the snow ahead of them. Brian had had a bit of a growth spurt and Wensleydale's glasses had become more stylish. Pepper's hat and scarf were not only not pink, but anti-pink. They waited by the hedge's desperately red berries while Adam lumbered a tiny path up to Anathema.
"You'll be needing some boots, at least." His voice was beginning to wobble with pubescence. His nose becoming somehow more defined and adult, but the snowflakes landing on it and the lingering childhood in his eyes contradicted that. "What's wrong?" he asked.
Anathema sighed. "Nothing. Just . . . stupid grown up things."
Adam rolled his eyes. "I'm sick of people dismissing things as 'just grown up'. I don't see why people can't tell me what's actually going on like it's some kind of secret or something."
"Well in this case it was stupid, I'm afraid." She was becoming weirdly acclimatized to the freezing air and the snow seeping through her slippers. "Cabin fever, I suppose. Spending too much time with the same person."
"Are you gonna break up with Newt?" Adam asked, sounding like it was the only possible solution.
"What? No! No, of course not. It's just a fight, surely you have fights with your friends, sometimes, don't you?"
Adam held his hands up. "Well I dunno . . . on pirate ships, people get cabin fever and go mad and make their shipmates walk the plank."
"Adam," Pepper called from the road, "your mum said you had to be home for lunch, remember?"
"I gotta go," Adam said, looking torn.
Anathema smiled. "Have fun."
*
Anathema and Newt held hands as they navigated the nighttime with acorns popping underfoot. The little town square was crammed with bundled up families and leaves frozen crispy to the ground.
Newt's woolen arm pressed against Anathema's. "I thought you said this was government sanctioned barbarism?"
"It is," Anathema said. "So I'll be quite interested to hear what Adam has to say on the subject. I haven't actually seen him since his 15th birthday . . . "
She could feel Newt looking at her. "Right. Well, thank God you're taking the initiative to be his guardian angel, at least."
"I wouldn't thank him, exactly." Anathema searched the crowd and almost missed Adam by the bonfire because apparently he had shot up at least a foot in the past few months.
Adam didn't look otherworldly. The blush of an overhead streetlight just painted him normal. "Oh," he said. "I didn't think you went in for this sort of thing, Anathema."
"He means 'hello'," taller!Pepper chimed in, elbowing Adam.
Anathema scanned a crowd of townspeople who were grinning in the shadowed light like the erstwhile rotting pumpkins on their porches. "It is a bit greusome, when you think about it," she said.
"She means 'how are you?'," Newt translated.
Anathema glanced behind Pepper and Adam. "Where are Brian and Wensleydale?"
Adam snickered. Pepper smiled and said, "Who knows where they've got to? Last I checked it was 'homework Miss Oswald only gave to the two of us', right, Adam?"
Adam nodded, watched her sipping hot chocolate. Anathema couldn't always see his aura, but right now it was very bright.
*
Anathema wasn't nearly as terrified in the passenger seat as she'd thought she would be. Adam was a generally cool and collected, even when he was ranting about something, and Adam while driving his Dad's car was no different. The car wasn't so much old as distinguished, and Adam had been driving it somewhat compulsively at exactly 3 miles below the speed limit. They drove through Tadfield's salt stained streets in a comfortable silence, the only background noise the hum of the engine and the muffled scrape of rakes through leaves outside.
"How much longer 'til you can drive without a chaperone?" Anathema asked.
"Oh, I dunno," Adam said nonchalantly. "A couple of weeks, maybe."
Anathema laughed. "You can't wait, can you?"
Adam groaned. "It has been forever, Anathema, it really has. And it's not like I'll be going around driving everywhere, anyway. It's easier to walk places in Tadfield, and I don't see why the driving instructor has to be so bloody serious about the whole thing."
"Indicator," Anathema reminded him.
"I know, I know." Adam flicked it on and turned onto a more cobblestoned street. "I'm going to the dance, you know. At school."
"Oh?" Adam was staring at the road ahead. "With anybody in particular?"
Adam couldn't quite stifle his grin. "Well, Pepper didn't so much ask as inform me I was going with her."
"That's wonderful," Anathema said, feeling rather warm and fuzzy about it. She wasn't used to the kind of relationship she had with Adam - she hadn't any siblings or close family. Agnes had been her closest family member, and her other family members had felt the same way, so a shared interest of her was the only thing that really connected them. With Adam, Anathema felt a sense of pride and protectiveness that was unfamiliar. And seeing him succeed in the tiny milestones of young life was somehow especially heartwarming. "You two are quite the pair, aren't you?"
Adam burst: "Yeah, it's just, I dunno, Pepper grounds me, like. She reminds me that not everything in life is about a cosmic battle between Heaven and Hell or whatever. She reminds me to get outraged about things that I should be outraged about and to relax about the things that aren't really that important when you get down to it. She always listens to me but she doesn't just follow me like the others. She yells at me for being an idiot, sometimes. I quite like that about her, and . . . well. You see what I mean, then." Adam cleared his throat, blushing across his nose.
*
It was the very tail end of winter, so far along that snow didn't even bother to waste the effort. Adam wasn't dressed warmly enough, in Anathema's opinion, but she wasn't about to mother him over it. He was technically an adult now, after all.
"So where do you think I should go for my gap year?" Adam asked it before Anathema was really close enough to respond without shouting.
Anathema descended through tree branches and fossilized footprints in the mud. The old chalk quarry had changed very little over the years. Adam and his friends used it less, or for different reasons than they used to, but so far no younger children had dared to stake a claim. Even Anathema felt like she was intruding as she sat on the dingy milk crate next to Adam's.
His cold-reddened face turned toward her, breathing out steamed air and feeling momentarily dragon-like. "You always know the most interesting things," Adam said. "There's just too many places to chose from. Do I go to Tibet? Or America? Or backpacking through the rainforests like Wensley? It's strange to think of leaving Tadfield, but I've already got to know everything about it so I won't be missing out too much, really." The calm, cloud dampened day made Adam's state of mind seem isolated, like the world had paused to allow him to think properly.
"I couldn't decide that for you," Anathema said. "And I might point out that you making your own decisions is what saved humanity in the first place."
Adam sighed. "Humanity is brilliant. The world's brilliant, it is. But it's also horrible. The more brilliant things I hear about, the more horrible things seem to pop up and balance them out. I'm not really . . . " Adam had never articulated it before: "human. Not a normal one, anyway."
Anathema bit her tongue. "So?"
"So what if I use my powers again? What if the world's too sick after all and it's just going to rot away anyway? What if a second Apocalypse once I've actually grown up was the real plan all along? What if - "
"Adam," she interrupted. "My 'fate', as it were, used to be the only thing that held my life together. Because of what you did, it isn't anymore, and I've been forced to discover who I really am because of it. So if you want to live your life by what you are, then you certainly can, but that doesn't mean it's who you are, and it doesn't mean there is something you're supposed to do just because you're different."
Adam's back straightened up, the gloom in his eyes beginning to clear. "All right." A brisk wind whipped through the thorny branches and set the tire swing spinning. Adam nodded to himself. "All right," he repeated more decisively, standing and shoving his hands into his pockets. He was taller, of course, but he's also given up slouching. "I suppose we should go. No sense in sitting around here when it's so cold anyway, you ask me."
So Anathema followed him up the slope on a well worn path through scraggly shrubs and twisted trollies. "See you around, Adam," she said once they'd reached the edge of town.
"Okay." And Adam walked purposefully toward home, waving to Anathema once again before disappearing down a different road.
*