The Art of Re-Fixing Sour Lemonade Part Four

[poetartist]

“There is a cave in the Shadowlands and inside it is a tree at the center of a spiral maze. The Celts call it the World Tree, the Norse call it Yggdrasil, but it’s all the same thing. It’s the source that holds every world and parallel universe in place and keeps them alive, and it’s where all of them began.”

Adam closes his eyes for a moment. The truth is a shaky thing, burning in his throat, threatening to ignite him from the inside out.

The last time he got this close to laying everything out he was standing in Stull trying to talk directly to Michael and Lucifer in the one world he was too late to prevent Dean or Sam from saying yes.

That world went up in a white hot flash of grace clashing with grace and Adam burned alive while tied to a tree.

He can never think of Salem or witch trials with anything less than acute horror.

“I’m not the Adam from this world. Well, I suppose I am now, I’ll get to that later. In my world I was killed by two ghouls looking to get revenge on John Winchester.”

“Why would they go after you for that?” Dean sits across from Adam and watches him straight on. He’s too still, too calm.

“Because I’m his son, too.”

Adam braces himself. Moments pass. Nothing happens, no angry yelling, no denials. He glances up at his brothers. Dean is frowning, but he’s still calm. Sam already knows this and accepts it, apparently, and isn't that just a kick in the balls after everything. Adam licks his lips and continues.

“Long story short, I happened. John was in town to take care of a ghoul, got hurt, met Mom, then he left. He can back when I was fifteen, came around a couple times after that. Then the children of the ghoul he killed came after me and Mom. They ate us. Then I woke up in the Shadowlands.”

Adam gives a quick rundown of the events that happened inside the spiral. With each word he forces himself to look past his brothers, to go numb. He notes their surprise in a distant way.

“What happened when you touched the tree?” Sam asks.

Adam feels himself smile. It’s an ugly one.

“Every life I’ve ever led in every universe came rushing into my head. I got to see my failures play out over and over and over again. The running theme is that being half a Winchester is detrimental to my health and that you two keep making the same mistakes for each other and it always ends with me ending the world.” Adam pins Sam with a glower. “You go on and on about how awful your destiny is, but it’s never you that goes through with the shitty parts.”

“Okay, simmer down,” says Dean.

“And you,” Adam feels his rage bubble up before he can stop himself. “You pick the single worst thing to do whenever Sam kicks the bucket. You can’t just grieve like a normal person or-or get your head out of your ass long enough to just say what you really mean.”

“If I wanna sign up for counseling, I’ll get it from a professional, not a snot nosed kid with loose screws,” growls Dean.

“Enough,” Sam says. He puts power behind his words and they reverberate around the cabin. “Adam, what happened next?”

Adam curls back into himself.

“The woman asked me if I got what I needed. I couldn’t even talk because all that shit shoved into my head and there wasn’t enough room, but it couldn’t go anywhere else. Then the cave began to shake. The woman pushed me away, told me to hide. I bumped into one of the worlds and got sucked into it. I came out in my bedroom, only it wasn’t mine, it belonged to the Adam of that world and I had just taken over his body.”

Silence. When neither brother move to shoot him he continues.

“I thought I had a second chance there, but the ghouls came again that night. I managed to get away, but they took Mom. They kept searching for me so I ran off and hid. Lo and behold, two days later you guys came rolling into town. The ghoul-Adam had called you looking for John. I tried to intervene and you ended up shooting both of us.”

A bullet through the head had been quick, at least.

“I ended up back in the cave. It felt like the entire mountain was trying to come down. I ran into another world and woke up just as the ghouls were eating me, only in that world John came bursting in. Mom was already gone, but he dragged me out of there. I bled out in the car on the way to the hospital. When I ended up in the cave again there was light and screaming everywhere. I hopped into another world, another Adam, about two weeks before the ghouls came. I spent that time sorting through the information the tree gave me. That’s when I figured out what I needed to do.”

That world, with that Adam, would always be the hardest time out of everything. He tried to tell his Mom what was going on, he tried to be honest, just like she always taught him.

She took him to see a psychiatrist who put him away in a mental facility. The ghouls got Mom while Adam was strapped to a hospital bed fighting the sedatives pumping into his veins.

“And what was that?” Dean asks, bringing Adam to the present.

“I’m nothing but a ghost, a spirit, so I’m basically possessing the Adam I’m wearing, only I push that spirit out of the body once I’m inside. Every Adam I possess dies as soon as I take over, because there can only be one of us here at a time. It’s not natural and it’s not supposed to work that way.”

That should seal the deal on his fate in the world, but neither brother is moving for a weapon yet.

“That’s not the whole truth, though,” Sam says. “You’re trying to convince us you’re something to be hunted. Why?”

Because I am.  Because I end the world, every world.

There is not enough air in the cabin. Which is bullshit, of course there’s plenty, but Adam’s lungs don’t believe that. Adam’s breaths grow short and desperate. He eyes the door.

Adam never sees Sam move, but he’s there and puts his massive paw on the back of Adam’s neck.

Sam is trying to pry into his head. Adam snarls and turns toward him. He doesn’t think about it, doesn’t know how he does it, but he opens his head and blasts his memories at Sam. They are all there, the short lived triumphs, the long lasting defeats, every death and resurrection. Every time Adam joined the family trying to redirect their destinies from the best seat in the house only to fail and fall into nothingness and emerge as the twisted, distorted, monster made of rage and despair and ashen guilt.

Sam stumbles back, face clouded.

“You two fuck up everything you touch, me most of all. Why can’t you just let me fix this?”

He’s crying. He feels the wetness on his face, how his lip trembles. Air comes in short burst, his chest heaves, searches, seeks. His vision blurs out. He closes his eyes, his knees go weak. Adam sinks to the cabin floor and hangs his head.

“You’re unraveling yourself.” It’s Sam who says this, his voice subdued. “You’re using your soul to change our fates.”

“He’s what?” says Dean.

“The soul, it’s a powerful source of energy. He’s figured out how to take his apart. He’s been using pieces of them to change history, to influence people so they make different choices. That’s why we kept ending up in Kansas last week.”

“That was you?” Dean demands, angry.

Adam looks up at Dean.

“You told me to change my tactics. They were working.”

“Adam, you’re erasing yourself,” Sam stresses.

Adam meets Sam’s hard gaze head on.

“I know,” he says.

A cloud of emotions pass over Sam’s face until he stops on genuinely appalled and sort of sick.

“All right, we’re taking a time out now. You,” Dean points at Adam. “You’re going to stay right where you are. No more unraveling or erasing or whatever you’re doing. Sam, why don’t you go call Fred and get a feel for what’s going on?”

Sam doesn’t look like he wants to leave, but Dean pokes him until he stands up and goes out.

Adam pulls himself back up on the bed and brings his knees to his chest. Dean says nothing for the longest time. He sighs, runs his hand through his hair.

“Honestly, even if Sam wasn’t a walking talking lie detector, the amount of trouble you’ve caused would be enough to convince me you’re a Winchester.”

“Fuck you,” says Adam.

Dean snorts. “Yeah, the resemblance is definitely there.”

Dean gets up and his and Sam’s bags appear on the bed. He fishes out a water bottle and tosses it to Adam. It hits the bed, bounces. Adam regards it for a minute, but he picks it up. His throat is raw, anyway.

Dean sticks his head out the cabin door.

“Yo bitch, how about we get some pie in this joint?”

Sam doesn’t answer, but a moment later there is a faint pop and a steaming apple pie appears on the bed. The dough is shaped like a hand, middle finger extended.

“Boy is talented,” Dean says with no little pride while Adam just stares.

“What are you guys?”

“Demigods so far as we can tell.” Dean says, nonchalant.  He sticks a fork in the pie and gives it to Adam.

Adam takes a hesitant bite. Crisp apple like an orchard in fall bursts in his mouth.

Dean talks while Adam eats. He tells Adam about Coyote and Kokopelli, about the Shadowlands and lost time and about Fred and Taz and the others like them.

“So it looks like you’re not the only trying to change the fates.”

“It was working.”

“Yeah, you’ve said that. Seems to me, though, that you’ve been going about this all wrong.”

“Gee, I never would have guessed after failing in every fucking life I’ve ever lived.”

“Shut up and listen, half pint. Look, how many times did you actually explain this to me and Sam? The other me’s and Sam’s. Fuck, no wonder your head’s screwed up. But how many times?”

“No one ever believed me.”

“How many times?”

Adam pokes at the pie.

“Twice,” he admits. “Got burned alive the first time. Second time I… Second time I got put in Bobby’s panic room. Michael and Lucifer got to you both. Bobby died. No one came back for me.”

There was a bucket of water and a bed. The water lasted fifteen days.

Adam lasted nineteen.

Dean inhales sharply.

“Yeah, I guess that would make it hard to tell us again.”

“You think?”

Dean says nothing. Adam eats some more pie.

“When I was seven Dad left us with a babysitter while he went on a job,” Dean says after a couple minutes. “The lady was pretty cool. She made cookies and lemonade and let us watch cartoons. Never yelled at Sam for cryin’ like some of the other sitters did. She went out to get talk to a neighbor and Sam wanted some more lemonade, but we’d already finished the pitcher. So I tried to make some more for him. The first batch tasted like ass, Sam almost puked on me. So I threw it out and made another. By the time the sitter came back inside, Sam had given up and the kitchen was a mess. I was ready to bawl my eyes out.

“The sitter helped me clean everything up. She told me, you know, about how sometimes life gives you lemons so you make lemonade. But if you can’t get your lemonade to taste right there’s no shame in asking someone else to help, because sometimes it takes a couple tries to get it just right.”

Adam finds it hard to swallow past the rising lump in his throat.

“I’m sorry we didn’t believe you before,” Dean goes on. Adam makes a mental note to remember those rare words. “And I get that it's kind of late for apologies, but let us help you now. In a way that doesn’t kill you permanently forever.”

"I can't fail, Dean," Adam says.  His voice is small.  "I can't become that thing again.  You don't-you don't understand what that's like.  I can't get left behind in that place again."

"We're not going to let you."  Dean looks right in Adam's eyes and Adam can't look away, not when Dean turns his full attention on him.

It's moments like these that Adam understands how Sam feels, because every bit of Dean is focused on him, listening, present.  It makes Adam feel important, valued.  No matter that Adam always begins an only child, he's had many lives where Dean has taken him under his wing and given him that attention.  This time it's different, it's stronger.  And Adam is so damn weak and tired and fucking lonely.

Dean holds out his hand, a simple invitation.

Adam has shaken Dean’s hand many times, whether it be in grudging greeting, suspicion, easy acceptance, or on someone’s deathbed.

Never has it been in a promise.

Adam stares at it.  Dean doesn’t withdraw.  The moments tick by one after another.

Adam has a plan, he's got a direction that is taking him to his inevitable conclusion.  It's working and yet-

And yet.  Dean always pulls something out of his hat.  He always tries to keep his promises.

Adam breathes in. Breathes out.

Dean's hand does not waver.  He doesn't stop looking at Adam with that look, the big brother look, even though Adam threatened Sam not too long ago, even though Adam just laid out this crazy, impossible story, even though Dean should be angry with John and the world and unwilling to take on the burden of John's mistake.

"Why?" Adam asks.

"You're family," Dean says like it's the simplest, most obvious thing in the world.

Adam hesitates, but then he grasps Dean’s steady hand with his shaky one.

Dean tightens his grip. Something warm passes between them. Adam can’t put words to it, but the tight band around his chest eases.

Dean’s lips quirk up in a half smile.  He shakes Adam’s hand once and lets it go.

“Eat your pie, kiddo.”



THEN:
The day Adam cuts out his soul is a deceptively sunny Monday. He is kneeling on a plain of waving grass in Montana between bodies of cavalry soldiers, knees slick with blood, hands surprisingly steady as they hold the chupacabra blade Dean gifted Adam not two weeks before ("You're a man now," Dean said, even though Adam had already killed billions.  Dean, with hair in long braids over his cavalry uniform, looks proud when Adam takes the killing tool made to stop anything the elders know of so far).

Sam stares up at Adam, eyes clouded over, the knife that killed him laying nearby. Betrayal by a fellow soldier, because Sam dressed in buckskin with feathers in his hair and never hid the Native in his blood even though he fought with the cavalry with Dean, with Adam, with countless other scouts.

The event changes faces and players and reasons, but it always happens in the back.

Dean is on his horse, galloping away to the nearest crossroads as fast as his lathered black pony can run.  Adam doesn’t know when Dean will get there.

The cuts burn like acid as Adam carves the symbols into his chest. He pushes the blade in over and over, up and down, around, retracing them until his healing grinds to a halt and he is as red as the surrounding countryside.

Adam keeps his eyes on Sam the entire time. The book was very specific about the process: do not falter in your desire.

Flies buzz over Sam’s corpse, rising and falling, crawling into his mouth and over his eyes.

Adam hates Sam and Dean. He hates seeing them rise and fall for each other, hates how they lay down everything they are when push comes to shove and the other is in the crosshairs. He hates the blinders they have from birth and how they stand back to back or nose to nose and ignore the rest of the world screaming as it burns and the ashes and sparks land on their shoulders.

Adam hates their entire bloodline and the curse of love it carries in it, because he hates Sam and Dean as much as he loves them because they make room in their lives when Adam shows up, however reluctantly, and they love him, too, just not as much as they love each other.

His soul comes apart with a twist and a tug and the barest of sighs that bleed over the breeze.

Adam’s soul is as thin as gossamer and feels like spun sugar. He cradles it in his bloody hands and stares at it with a distant kind of awe.

It’s so small for something seemingly important, and in the light of the day it almost disappears from sight.

Adam takes the knife and nicks a corner of it. He braces himself, but there is no pain, not even the slightest pinprick.

Adam takes a thread and pulls it loose. He places it over Sam’s chest and presses his hand to it.

Sam Winchester takes a gasping breath and coughs flies out of his mouth. He blinks his eyes until they clear, chest heaving, spittle thick on his chin. He grasps Adam’s hand and tries to speak, tugging at Adam.

“It’s okay, just breathe-”

Adam doesn’t see the brave behind him with the knife. A hand buries itself in his hair and a blade slides across his throat from ear to ear.
Dean Winchester comes galloping up and shoots the brave without slowing down. Adam watches him as his sight dims. He looks at Adam for a moment and there’s pain in his eyes for a lost friend, and beneath it a darker shadow of a soul bartered away.

Dean leaves him to bleed out and goes to Sam where he struggles to get his limbs to work.

Adam closes his eyes on the scene and opens them again in the Shadowlands, his soul clenched in one hand and the blade in the other.



NOW:
Adam falls asleep sometime between bites of pie and wakes up to voices inside the cabin. Sam. Dean. Someone else.

“You’re absolutely sure?” Sam asks.

“Sure as anything, cream cake. Fred was a witch before all this went down, she still has some reference books squirreled away.”

“I’m officially not sure how I feel at this moment,” Dean says.

“Join the club. I signed up to get my humanity back, not go into an inter-dimensional pissing contest. Still, at least it’s not boring.”

“I think I’d rather be bored,” says Dean.

“Yeah, well, I’ve been known to pick pockets, start love quadrangles, and purloin squad cars when I get bored. Fred keeps me as busy as possible.”

Adam can’t see anyone, but even he can feel Dean’s interest pique.

Some things never change.

“I don’t even know where we’re going to get half of this stuff,” Sam says with a sigh.

“Leave the holy bones and blood to me, I have someone that owes me a favor. You focus on getting the phoenix ash.”

“Where are we going to find a phoenix? I only knew one and he’s dead now for over a century.”

“Then you go back to that century and pick up those ashes,” the woman says, drawing out the words.  The implication of you’re a dumbass is strong. “Seriously, it’s like I’m talking to Fred when she’s drunk and stubborn. At least when she’s sober she’s reasonable.”

“Adam’s the only person we know who can travel through time,” says Sam. “We just kind of followed him through the hole he left.  He’s not looking so hot at the moment.”

“Yeah, he’s fucked himself up quite spectacularly.  Definitely a Winchester.”

“Hey,” his brothers say in unison.

“Don’t even try to deny it,” she says, but it’s not mean. It’s almost fond. “Both of you can’t go with him, so I’m gonna recommend Sam. You can keep him stable long enough to get there, get the ashes, and then come back. Dean and I can stay here and keep the angels occupied. The travel part shouldn’t be too hard. We’re already in the exact place it happened, so you’re just going to step backwards a bit and come right back.”

“And if the angels follow us?”

“I brought holy fire molotov cocktails. I’ll share!”

Boots scrape the floorboards and the door opens. Sam and Dean’s voices fade away. Soft footsteps come towards him.

“Wakey, wakey, littlest brother,” the woman says.

Adam blinks his eyes open. An olive skinned woman is smiling down at him, her hair a crazy shade of bubblegum pink.

“I’m Taz, second cousin twice removed, kinda,” she says and sits on the edge of his bed. She puts a hand on his forehead. “You’ve been up to some interesting shenanigans.”

Adam says nothing, but he goes pale when she holds up his scrap of soul. Several blood-caked strands are woven back into place.

“I’m not gonna yell at you, honey.” She places the scrap on her knee and smooths it out with gentle reverent fingers. “What most people don’t realize about souls is just how precious they are. Everyone thinks they know, but they only see the soul in terms of what it means to their religion or what they can gain by having one. But it’s so much bigger than that, you know?”

Adam swallows. He nods. “I know.”

“Yeah, I figure you do. I used to be a reaper, once upon a time, before I started working with Fred and earned my humanity back. I’ve held millions of souls in my hands, ferrying them across borders. Every one of them felt different, no matter how young or old or what they had experienced. Once I held one so thin it was finer than a string of atoms. I was so afraid I would drop it and the soul would just evaporate.”

Taz keeps her eyes on Adam’s soul scrap, keeps running her finger across it like she can stretch it back out to it’s proper size, like she can restore it by sheer force of will.

“Souls are the fabric of the universe. All the universes,” she goes on. “Birthing and dying just shifts your fabric to another part of the cloth, but you’ve been tearing holes when you jump. And then stripping your soul away to change the time lines, it’s ended up reworking entire pieces of the pattern.”

“That was the plan,” Adam says.

“But it’s not the only way to do it. It’s just a messy short cut.”

“I didn’t have the luxury of time.”

Taz gives him a sad smile.

“None of us do, honey.”

Adam sits up. His head is woozy and he feels utterly drained. He leans against the wall and considers her.

“What’s up with the phoenix ash?”

She doesn’t even look surprised that he was listening to that.

“The angels and demons are pissed their apocalypse has been almost totally derailed. They came for you in the Shadowlands after Rabbit took your soul. They’re coming for you again now that Sam and Dean have put you under their protection.”

Adam clenches his fists.

“I know that.  I’m not consenting to Michael."  He says it every time.  It's one of those thing, Adam thinks.  Maybe if he says it enough it'll come true.

“You aren’t as strong as you once were,” Taz points out, unaware that Adam has never been that strong. “If Michael did gain consent, this last bit of your soul would fry up and he’d have an empty vessel for his use. Anyway, phoenix ash, plus a few other hard to come by goodies, are going into a spell I can do. That spell should buy us enough time for the cavalry to arrive.”

"I thought we were safe here because of Dean's tree."

"Fred failed to take into account how pissed off heaven is because I think they're sending everyone."

Sam comes in before Adam can asks her how she knows that.

“We’re ready,” he says.

Taz looks to Adam. He realizes she’s waiting for him to say okay, that he’ll do it.

“We can stop everything if we get the ash?” he asks.  Because this, this is it.  This is the last time Adam can survive a complete death.  His soul is smaller than the palm of his hand and as ragged as a puppy’s old chew toy.

“We’ll give ‘em hell,” Taz says.

That will have to do, Adam thinks.

They go out to the tree. Dean is standing with his arms crossed while the plants on the ground shift and grow around him to create what looks like a devil’s trap except for the symbols used inside. It’s intricate and nothing like Adam has ever seen.

“Stand here,” Taz directs Adam into the circle of plants.

Adam doesn’t want to step on them- most are still moving around- but Taz just tugs on his arm. He goes with her. The plants keep moving underfoot, oblivious, and Adam curls his toes at the sheer strangeness of the sensation.

“Sam is going to help you get to and from the past,” Taz says. She straightens out Adam’s hoodie and hair, like that makes a difference. Then she stops and presses the scrap of soul into Adam’s chest. Nothing happens, and then a weird pulling sensation happens and it absorbs through his clothing and into his body. “There. Now it’s safe.”

Adam rubs at his chest. Tingles run up and down his skin, kind of like ants, but it doesn’t hurt.

Sam steps forward and puts his giant hand on the back of Adam’s neck. Dean steps up to both of them and touches a finger to their throats and then to their ears. Adam shivers at the contact.

“What was that?”

“A little something to help you get by,” Dean says and steps back. “Tell the old man I said hello, he's waiting for you.  And give him a story before you come back.” The last part is directed at Sam.

A light flashes in the night sky, bright and arching overhead. Familiar high pitched screams fill the air.

“Make it a quick trip, boys,” Taz says. She hefts a holy oil filled whiskey bottle and lights a match.

Adam closes his eyes and concentrates. It’s harder than he anticipates. The push-pull sensation is weak. He grasps for it as the world lights up red through his eyelids.

“Relax, let it come,” Sam says.

Adam gets a hold of it. He fidgets until he finds a weak spot, and then he pulls it open.

PART FIVE>