The Art of Re-Fixing Sour Lemonade Part Five

[poetartist]

NOW:
They come out in the sunlight. The day is so bright that it blinds Adam for a moment and spots dance in front of his eyes. He sways with the wind. Sam is there to keep him upright.

The village is deserted, but not yet in ruins. The pueblo houses spill into each other and stand upright, but there is no one living there to give the village a spark. No one except an old man sitting on a blanket in the shade of the tree and the two young cowboys standing behind him.

“Welcome,” the old man says. The language sounds different on one level, but Adam understands him perfectly. “You must be Mochni’s brothers.”

“How did you know?” Adam asks.

“A vision,” the man says. “My name is Hania, I am the medicine man to my tribe.”

“It is an honor to meet you,” Sam says. “My brother speaks highly of you.”

Hania smiles. “His story will always be told among my people.”

The youngest cowboy, a man probably Sam’s age, steps forward and offers his hand.

“My name is Jimmy, Jimmy Bone. I rode with Dean for a while. This is David Elkins. We hunted together with Sam Colt before he retired.”

This seems to mean something to Sam, because he lights up in a way Adam hasn’t seen since any of the times Sam received his Stanford acceptance letters, or the few times Dean went to see him before John went missing and Sam introduced Jessica.

Adam tunes out the introductions as a wave of weariness settles over him. God, he just wants to sleep and not feel.

“We came to get any of the phoenix ash that may have survived,” Sam says. He squeezes Adam’s shoulder to bring him back to the present. “We’re fighting a battle back home.”

Hania produces a clay pot from a satchel and offers it up to Sam. “The day Mochni defeated the thunderbird and became our sacred tree, the ancestors spoke to me. They told me of the battles you three will face and what you would need to win them.”

Adam peers over Sam’s hands as he opens the clay pot. Inside are black ashes as fine as dust. Lying on top is a twisted lump of silver metal.

“Thank you for these, and for taking care of Dean while he was here,” Sam says. He puts the pot on the ground and kneels in front of the old man. “Dean asked me to give you this.”

Sam places his fingers on Hania’s face. The old man closes his eyes and draws in a sharp breath. Minutes pass and then Sam moves back. The old man smiles.

“Thank you. I will tell these stories to the children and the grandchildren. They will know of Mochni, who died for my people, and you, Chankoowashtay, who trick the unworthy and reward the deserving, and of Anat’halne, who jumps from Grandmother’s threads to weave new stories.”

A rumble starts in the clear sky. Adam jumps and stumbles. Sam collects the pot and steps back.

“We thank you,” Sam says and light erupts from the clear sky. Jimmy surges forward and grabs hold of Sam’s other arm.

“Protect him!” Jimmy shouts back to Elkins.

“Let's, Adam,” Sam says, crowding around Adam and pushing him toward the rip.

The rip is still open, a tattered thing he doesn’t know how to close. They just step right through it, and the sound of the screaming gets worse as night falls around them.

“You made it!” Taz says and then she pulls up short. She crows out a laugh. “Jimmy.”

Taz launches herself at their tag along, smothering him in a hug.

“Go join big sis, she’s frying angel ass.” Taz pushes him away towards the left where Dean, Fred, and two other guys Adam has never seen before are spread out and fighting against a group of angels in suits with long pointed swords. It’s angel swords against earth, water, air, and snarling teeth.

“You got him?” Sam asks, handing over the pot. Taz ducks under Adam’s arm and takes his weight.

“Oh yeah, I got him."

They go to the cabin.  Taz deposits him on the bed.

“You stay here. I’m gonna ward the fuck out of this cabin and then go join in the festivities.”

Then she’s gone and he’s alone.

Well, not totally.

The shadows move in the corner of the room and a barefoot man with a guitar slung over his back steps into view.

“Well, you’ve taken the initiative more than I’d ever imagined.” The man sets his guitar against the wall and takes the chair next to the bed. He extends a hand. “Name’s Coyote.”

Coyote’s grip is firm, calloused.

Coyote leans back in the chair and props his feet up on the bedside table.

“How do you play into this?” Adam asks.

“I’m the one that started it all, with a little help from you,” he says with a nod. “You see, once upon a time I was in California and I followed a time rip to an abandoned bookstore. I wasn’t the only one following the trail and, for lack of a better term, someone got the best of me. It happens on occasion. The sorcerer trapped me in a spell net that drew energy off of the time rip so he could then strip my power from me for himself. Complicated business, and it attracted the attentions of a certain gangly Winchester in the area.”

Adam can see it play out in his mind, almost as if he were there. Sam looking at newspapers, body counts rising. Researching between classes and then sneaking out past his high roommate, the glint of a silver blade in his hand.

“Funny thing about time rips. Spend enough time in the presence of one and you get to see portions of history play out around you. When Sam entered the building, the time rip fed off of him and I could see everything stretching backwards and forwards, all the way up to that fateful jump into the cage and that chupacabra stumbling around the wasteland of nothingness.”

Adam shudders.

“And then Sam, in that adorable clumsiness, weakened the spell and I got free. If there’s one thing I learned in all my time, it’s that knowledge is never to be ignored. So I took a leaf from your book and started changing the game board. Though I will say this, I am continually surprised by you Winchesters. Even when you’re given a path, you still take as many detours and back roads as possible.”

Coyote raises his hand and a tumbler of whiskey appears in it. He salutes Adam and drinks it down.

“If this was your plan all along, why the hell didn’t you help out sooner?” Adam asks. He’s angry, so angry, but it fizzles out before he can work up a sweat. His heart is doing a weird stutter in his chest.

Death is creeping up on Adam once more.

Coyote just raises his eyebrows. “I leave the marionette strings to the angels and demons, pup. They still think humans can work that way. This is your story, your choice. A story is never so powerful as when it comes naturally.”

“Well, thanks, I’m glad we were entertaining enough for you. But heaven is outside right now trying to kill us all and put it back on track. So what are you gonna do about that?”

Coyote plants his feet on the floor and leans forward. His eyes flash. The hair on the back of Adam’s neck rises.

“That’s your future being decided out there, pup. You tell me: what are you willing to do about it?”

“If I go out there, Michael will still posses me and we’ll be right back where we started because I made myself too goddamned weak trying to change my future in a million different worlds.”

“You plucked a million versions of your soul straight out of their worlds and put them in limbo where no one could get to them,” Coyote says, eyes glowing yellow. “Every body you took over forced its normal soul out so you could take its place. But those souls weren’t marked as having died, so no reaper collected them for transport.”

Adam blinks, mouth working without sound.

“Then what- where are they?”

Coyote reaches inside his vest and draws out a satchel with spiral patterns beaded into the leather. He undoes the drawstring and opens it, then tips it so Adam can see.

Inside glows with a million squirming lights like seeds. Adam feels a tug so fierce it takes his breath away and he makes a strangled noise in his throat.

“A soul from every life you’ve ever lived. This bag contains more power than every nuclear reactor combined, yet they are so fragile that a snap of the fingers could snuff them all out one by one.” Coyote hands him the bag.

Adam freezes, eyes locked on the contents. He doesn’t hardly breathe.

“Everything starts out as what you see here. Single souls, single lives. I started this way. So did Rabbit, so did Kokopelli, even Grandmother with her web of worlds stretched across the branches of the tree. The only thing that separates gods from humans is a simple choice and the action that follows it.

“Your brothers made their choice to become who they are. Now it is your turn.”

Adam looks down at the bag of souls  in his hands.  His entire focus since he found the soul spell has been to end this, to finish resetting the Winchester story.  He has lived and died in many interesting times, but he has always come back, albeit more damaged and cracked each time.

Dying isn't scary.  Being erased...Adam had convinced himself it was the best option in order to avoid the cage and the nothing.  But he likes living, loves being alive.  As painful as it is it's never so bad as the place he goes after the cage.

"Nothing is set in stone.  That's what Rabbit told me."

A wild grin cuts its way across Coyote's face.

"If it was we would not be sitting in this cabin having this conversation."

Warmth bleeds into Adam's clammy hands.  He breathes past the erratic flutter of his heart.

It looks like tonight is full of faith leaps.

"Okay," Adam says.





SHADOWLANDS:
Deep inside the tree is a dimly lit world. It rests cradled in the roots, light flickering like a dying bulb. Webs and dust surround this world, fine layers of protection, hiding it from prying eyes.

Adam finds it by accident, stumbling around between worlds like an idiot. He trips over the roots and lands right next to it.

The roots creak and move beneath him, drawing the world in close without holding it too tight, precious as a delicate egg. Something about it makes Adam pause, even with the earth shaking and groaning as dust and chunks of dirt fall from the ceiling.

Adam tentatively reaches out and touches it.

He comes out in a void of chaos. Light, dark, matter, the nothingness, it all swirls around fighting for dominance in a place of cold and hot, orbiting the burning fury of the sun. These elements collide, break apart, and form new shapes in an ever changing array of creation and destruction.

“The first world,” the old woman says. She appears next to Adam and points out new shapes emerging from the disarray. “The first of us came from this womb.”

Souls like sparks flare up in the mess, growing and changing. They collide with others, sometimes breaking away, other times merging to form something new. Even as the chaos settles and the earth and other planets emerge from the mixture the soul-sparks continue on their way.

The souls that joined together went on living. Adam sees years of history pass by, gods rising from stories and changing with the tellings, always growing, always moving. Some came together with the joining of different faiths, fusing into one god who then spawned angels, who then spawned demons.

“To stay still is to die,” the woman says. “To move forward is to flourish, no matter what name or guise you assume.”



NOW:
Adam exits the cabin and enters a battlefield. The sky is on fire. The clang of swords and screams and hurled insults fill his ears. Dean and Sam are fighting back to back against a handful of angels. Fred is off to the side moving through them with brutal grace. He cannot see Jimmy or the other two men, but he can hear them somewhere beyond the tree.

Coyote rushes past him to fight, too. No longer a man, he transforms into a twelve-foot tall version of his namesake. He walks on his hind legs and tears into angels that swarm his sides. Not far away is Rabbit doing the same, and a humpbacked man is using his flute to stab through an angel’s chest.

Adam walks into the fray and shouts at the top of his lungs.

“MICHAEL.”

The fighting does not stop, but one particular angel breaks away and appears in front of Adam.

Michael is wearing a secondary vessel’s face, but Adam will never be able to mistake him. The archangel exudes righteous fire and a burning desire unlike any other. It’s an aura bleeding out of his vessel. Adam’s chest seizes. He remembers being filled with that, so much so that it threatened to burn out his very existence.

“Adam,” Michael says. He has blood on his clothing and the end of his sword. “This course you are taking is not your intended path.”

“I’ve learned to make my own path,” Adam says. “It’s a thing that’s been going around.”

“I’m sure it had seemed like a good thing to do, considering how your brothers turned out, but Adam, look at yourself. You’ve tried to do the same thing and you’ve wasted away to something barely real.”

Michael draws in close and leans forward as if to console a friend.

“You’ve brought more pain and suffering onto yourself than I ever can. Your soul is down to bare threads. Once they unravel you’ll be less than a ghost. Please,” Michael implores. “Let me in so I may help you. I can help you heal from this. You don’t need to be in this kind of agony.”

The words play on Adam’s tired mind. So tantalizing, the warmth so radiant. Being Michael’s vessel had not always been bad. There were times Michael had cocooned Adam in protection, kept him safe.  Until he got out of the cage, at least.

Adam forces his eyes open and looks at Michael.

“This is my story to write,” Adam says.

There are strands, highways, dimly lit pathways between every world in existence, past, present, and future. Hidden, shadowed, many never even know they exist.

Adam takes hold of Michael’s arm and looks into his eyes. The power of his million souls, stitched together and attached to his current damaged one, link together in an unbreakable chain leading back to the heart of the tree’s first world. Michael tries to pull away, but Adam’s grip is fueled by soul, by chaos, and the tiniest seeds of change he’s laid in the wake of every choice committed.

“To stay still is to die,” he says and draws Michael to him.

Michael’s head rears back, face bright with confusion. Adam pulls him in and Adam's fingers seek out the rocket flare of grace twining around the insides of his current vessel. The grace is burning hot, a thousand suns caught in angelic grace, fueling the particles of a sentient star.

Adam breathes it in. Michael’s grace fills his lungs and spreads out, cementing inside the cracks of his being, fusing bone and muscle and ligament with the many souls, creating a whole.

Michael’s sword goes through Adam’s lung just below his heart. A wrenching scream fills the air as Michael’s vessel drops to his knees.

Adam lets him go and stumbles back. He pulls the sword out of himself. The wound bleeds light and then closes.

Michael fights and fidgets, but his grace settles into its new home. The spark of personality, of memories, that made Michael Michael, join with Adam’s own. He is neither Adam or Michael anymore. He is both. He is neither.

He is something completely new.

Adam lifts his head. The fighting has stopped completely and every eye has turned to him.

“What have you done?” Raphael demands, voice ragged as he stares at Adam in confused horror.

“I rewrote my ending,” Adam says. “God left us a long time ago with one story, but what we’ve failed to see is that the true nature of a story is never set. It’s always changing. It’s supposed to.”

“We cannot go against the word of God, this is blasphemy,” Zachariah yells.

“This is a story’s true course,” Adam says. He draws on the power of Michael’s grace and says to the angels, “You will leave this battlefield now. Go where you will. Decide your own paths.”

The cacophony of emotions and energy washes over the area and smothers his senses. They want to stay, to fight, but the command is given. They disappear, one by one, until only Raphael and Castiel remain.

Raphael points his sword at Adam.

“You have brought the wrath of heaven down upon your head,” he growls and then he is gone.

Castiel stays for a moment, eyebrows drawn together as he regards Adam. His eyes flicker skyward, back to Adam, and then he is gone in a flutter of wings.
The wind rustles through the branches of Dean’s tree. Part of the branches are blacked from fire, but it is alive. Dean and Sam approach him, tentative smiles on their faces. Sam reaches out to embrace him. Dean ruffles his head.

“This has gotta be a first,” Dean says, voice light. “Eating an angel to win a fight. Sounds more like a porno.”

Adam punches Dean’s shoulder. Sam rolls his eyes, shakes his head. Dean grins, unrepentant.

“I could go for a beer about right now,” Fred says, flicking a bit of gore from her shirt. “Dean, you’re buying.”



LATER:
The stretch of road is deserted and broken down.  It doesn’t see many vehicles these day if the weeds pushing through the cracks and threading through the crumbling asphalt say anything.  The sky is a too-bright blue, washed out and hard to look at.  The fabric of the universe flutters and fluctuates, just barely out of sight, like the folds of an invisibility cloak settling into place.

It’s beautiful.  It’s distracting.  It’s more than words and yet less at the same time.

Being a demigod- or a juiced up human/thief of angel grace, whatever- is weird.  Adam alternates between feeling too big for his skin and like he’s trying to burst out of it Hulk-style.  Michael still fights, but even an archangel old enough to remember the beginning of the world is outmatched against millions of Adam’s souls.  It’s like a bone fragment worming its way through his body; irritating, but not lethal.

Adam’s learning, though.

Three months have passed since the angels came down to take him.  Since then has been radio silence from heaven and hell, a breath held between sharpened teeth.  They are living on borrowed time, as Dean put it afterwards, grinning and battle high, oblivious to Sam’s and Adam’s eye rolls.

Dean was not wrong, though.  Adam feels a swell of pride beneath his ribs; he’s the one that stole those extra moments.

There is a storm coming.  Adam can feel it’s approach like a growl crawling up his spine and he’s flying blind again.  They all are, and how funny is it that Adam can so completely relate to Sarah Connor driving down that dark highway, unable to see farther than how far the reach of the headlights, after fighting the big picture for so long?

But he’s not alone.

Sam and Dean stand next to him on the road, hands in their pockets, feet planted on the road.  They've stayed with him, even when Fred and the others left and Coyote disappeared with Rabbit again.  Adam is still waiting for the other shoe to drop- he will be for a while, it's not something he can just up and trust just yet- but he's also got a measure of hope burning in his chest along with angel grace that hasn't taken him over.  Dean and Sam, they will always be wrapped up in each other, but it's...relaxed now.  Death is removed from the equation.  They don't need deals or sacrifices or blinders to keep each other close.

They've made a place for Adam again.  It's not on the fringe and it's not behind them.  Adam is beside them.

Sam bumps Adam's shoulder with his own as a truck engine grumbles up the broken road.  The truck, a monster of metal on jacked up tires with claw marks on the hood, comes around a curve.  It rolls to a stop, motor still running.  Adam can feel it vibrate through his feet.

The driver’s side door opens and boots hit dirt.  The door closes with a snap.

Adam squints at John Winchester as he approaches.

“Hey, dad,” Adam says.


THEN-NOW-LATER:
There are certain names that have power, that people call upon for protection, for guidance, for fruitful endeavors. People pray to these names, belief stitched with hope and set free on the sloping back of a night’s breeze.

I pray to thee Dean Winchester, protect my family from all harm.

I pray to thee Sam Winchester, steady my aim and shield my back as I go to war.

I pray to thee Adam, angel of grace, give me the strength and courage to find my way.



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