The Lonely City--Chapter 3 (3/5)--SPN Fic
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It’s raining when Adam wakes up.
This strikes him as fundamentally unfair, because he’d been cursing his jacket for being too hot ever since they’d left the tower that morning, and now it’s already soaked through and freezing cold. Sometimes, Adam wonders if the universe-take your pick of which one-really is out to get him.
He’s laying on his back in yet another street, which is starting to feel a little too familiar. It’s still night, or at least, still dark, and the rain is pouring down, forming icy puddles on the pavement around him.
It’s not just the rain that’s different. His little patch of street is lit by the dim warm glow of a streetlight, and he’s lying on asphalt. It’s normal, and safe, and Adam’s starting to feel something that he’s fairly sure is hope. It’s been so long, he’s almost forgotten what it was like. They made it out. Exactly where they are, Adam isn’t sure, but they made it.
“Ow.” It’s coming from Adam’s left. It sounds like something dying.
Adam rolls over. Gabriel’s lying on the sidewalk fifteen feet away, his knees drawn up, and his arms wrapped around his ribs, making high, tight noises in his throat.
Adam scrambles onto all fours and lurches forward, ignoring the stab of pain in his arms, the rough pavement skinning his knees through his jeans.
Gabriel’s eyes are screwed shut, but he blearily opens one when Adam leans over him with a soft “hey.”
“Ow,” Gabriel says again, but there isn’t as much force behind it.
“Here, let me look.” Adam pries Gabriel’s arms free of their death grip around his body. There’s blood on Gabriel’s shirt, and even with the rain staining the fabric dark, it looks like a lot. He pulls the fabric up gently, wincing when it sticks. He’s seen just about every injury that can be inflicted on a human body-many of them on his own-but that doesn’t mean he’s completely desensitized.
Then he stops short. “Seriously?” All that blood was coming from a jagged scratch across the bottom of Gabriel’s ribs. It’s long and nasty, but not very deep. Adam had gotten worse falling off his bike.
Gabriel opens both eyes and peers down at his chest. “Would it make a difference if I told you that it was a lot worse when I got it?”
“Yeah, whatever. I think you’ll live.”
“Thank you, Dr. Sexy. I kinda had that figured out.”
It takes Adam several tries to stand up, but he makes it eventually. Gabriel’s still sprawled on his back looking mournful, so Adam offers him a hand. Gabriel raises his eyebrows, but takes it, letting Adam pull him to his feet.
“Come on,” Gabriel says, “let’s get out of the rain.”
They don’t have to go far. By unspoken agreement they don’t try any of the doors in the buildings around them, but one has a deep awning that mostly keeps the rain off.
“Where are we?” Adam asks once they’re under cover. “This isn’t Heaven, is it?”
Gabriel frowns. “You were expecting it to be?”
He had kind of been assuming that’s where he’d end up. He is fairly dead, after all, or at least he had been until the angels decided to pull a miracle on him. He isn’t too worried about the being dead bit; he just wants to know where he stands.
Gabriel makes a dismissive noise. “Nah, we’re still in Purgatory. Your luck isn’t that good kiddo.”
“Right…” Adam leans back until he’s supported by the wall, then lets his head thunk against the bricks.
“Hey, buck up. We’ll be out of here in no time, and you can get back to your harp-playing.”
Adam must not look very convinced, because Gabriel adds, “Don’t be like that. I told you I’d get you out of here, didn’t I? I may be many things, but I never break a promise.”
Adam pushes himself off the wall. He rubs his hands over his face and cards his fingers through his hair, trying to shake off some of his bone-deep weariness. All he wants is to sleep, but that isn’t looking like an option. Sleeping in the rain isn’t something he particularly wants to try. They don’t know what’s out there in the dark, either, so they just stay huddled under the scanty cover of the awning, listen to the rain, and wait for morning.
The city feels a world away from the last one. Even once morning comes, the skies stay dark, with only a pale glow seeping through the cloud cover. The rain is relentless.
Adam doesn’t see any monsters, at least none like before. He does hear voices, though, sounds of life that seem only a few feet away, but when he turns to try and find their source, there’s nothing there. There are flickering shadows, too, that Adam almost thinks look like people, hurrying along the street with their heads down, never looking up but always managing to avoid him and Gabriel. They don’t seem to be dangerous, but the ghost-like shadows make Adam’s skin crawl.
They walk for what Adam guesses is most of the morning. Gabriel seems to know where they’re going and Adam’s too tired to second guess him, even when the buildings and streets start to look familiar.
There’s more variation in the landscape here, and that’s the only reason Adam can even begin to guess that they’ve been going around in circles.
“Hey,” he says, after they’ve passed the same peeling white door for the third time. “Are you sure about this?”
Gabriel freezes in his tracks and Adam almost crashes into him. “This isn’t right.”
Adam resists the urge to roll his eyes. “You think?”
“I don’t get lost. It’s a physical impossibility.”
Adam just stares at him, because, seriously?
Gabriel waves it away with an odd flapping motion that Adam can’t quite interpret.
“And we’re in Purgatory,” Adam adds. “Is really much of a leap that we’re trapped inside of a giant 3-D Escher painting?”
“I suppose you could be right,” Gabriel says, in a way that suggests he really doesn’t want to admit that he can’t be completely infallible in every situation, but kind of knows he isn’t anyway.
“Hey,” Adam says, trying for supportive, “you got us this far.”
Gabriel gives and exaggerated shrug, then looks forlorn, and it’s such an angsty drama-queen move that Adam kind of wants to punch him.
Adam resists the temptation, and tries again. “Do you want to check out the houses? We could try and find shelter, heal up.” Adam’s been trying to ignore it, but his arm’s throbbing where he cut it, and he just wants to rest. He can’t imagine Gabriel’s ribs are exactly feeling like a basket of puppies right now, either.
Gabriel looks up from where he’s been sullenly studying the pavement. “You want to go inside? Are you possessed?”
“This whole place freaks me out. It can’t be that much worse inside. Anyway, I want to sleep. Now.” Adam’s starting to feel like, as far as lack of sleep goes, the Cage was the equivalent of a hundred finals weeks. He feels like he could sleep for months.
“All right then.” Gabriel pushes himself up to his full, not very impressive, height. “Onwards.”
They try a disconnected, two-story building that Adam thinks might have been a store, or maybe a deli, in a previous life, with a glass front and a striped awning that might have been cheerful once, but has now faded to shades of dirty gray.
There’s nothing visible through the windows, so Gabriel tries the door. It opens with a creak of rusty hinges that sound like something straight out of an old horror movie, and Adam, hanging behind Gabriel and trying not to freak out, wonders if this makes him the nervous girlfriend.
It’s empty inside, however, and there’s no sound of movement from upstairs. The walls are lined with dusty shelves and faded advertisements so old and eaten by mildew that Adam can’t tell what they were originally selling. It’s creepy, but it’s just on the edge of familiar and normal.
There’s nothing overtly dangerous downstairs, so Gabriel gives it a cursory glance, then climbs the stairs, the warped wood protesting under his weight. Adam follows him slowly, wincing at each shuddering creak.
It’s empty upstairs too. It’s really just one room, low-ceilinged and dusty, with two deep-set windows overlooking the street. It looks like someone tried to make it homey, a long time ago, and there’s torn, faded curtains hanging haphazardly from the windows, as well as a stained rag rug on the floor. There’s furniture, too: two small beds-almost cots-against one wall, and a rickety round table like the one in the tower.
“Home sweet home,” Gabriel says, letting his backpack drop onto one of the beds. An ominous dust cloud rises when it hits.
“Yay,” Adam says, and tries not to sigh.
Dust or no, Adam would have no problems sleeping, but Gabriel doesn’t let him.
“Give me that,” he demands, gesturing at Adam’s arm. He glares at the ugly red line across his forearm like it’s personally wronged him. “You’re just lucky you can’t get infections here. It’s times like these when I’m so glad I’m not human.” His voice is quiet, like he’s just talking more for the sake of it than to actually tell Adam anything, but it’s too good of an opening for Adam to pass up.
“So, you’re not human?”
Gabriel scoffs. “Hardly. How else do you think I ended up here in Monster Central? Not all of us get a human-only ‘get out of Hell free’ pass like you did.” Gabriel’s carefully sponging at the cut with a damp cloth, and Adam’s not sure where it came from. For all he knows, Gabriel has superpowers. All he’s sure of right now is that he’s feeling pleasantly warm and sleepy, and Gabriel’s voice is calm and soothing.
“Then what are you?” Adam says, and if comes out a little mumbley, who’s to know?
There’s a long pause. Gabriel dabs something cold that stings onto Adam’s arm, and it’s almost enough to wake up him up. Almost. Finally, Gabriel says, “I was a god. Trickster, actually. That’s how I ended up here.” He hesitates again, and it’s the closest to uncertain that Adam’s heard him. “Before that, I was an angel.”
Huh, angel. Gabriel seems about as un-angelic as Adam can imagine, but given the angels he’s met-Wait-an angel, named Gabriel, powerful enough to be a god-crap.
Adam jerks away, sleepiness gone, a warning burst of adrenaline making the blood pound in his ears.
“You’re an archangel,” he says, and he’s not going to let his fear show, except that he totally is.
There are cold hands everywhere, pulling him apart, then piecing him back together, and Adam doesn’t know which one is more unbearable. The air is filled with the smells of death and burning flesh, and from far away he can hear his brother, first pleading, then screaming, until the sound is abruptly cut off-
Adam scrambles away from Gabriel, breathing hard, the sense memory of the angel’s fingers on his arm burning worse than the cut.
“Um, yeah I’m an archangel,” Gabriel says, frowning in confusion. “Actually, I kinda thought you’d have figured it out by now. I’m not the first angel you’ve met, am I?”
Adam shakes his head dumbly.
Gabriel just looks at him, like he’s not sure what Adam’s problem is. “Oh,” he says after a long moment, and Adam thinks maybe he’s finally got it. “That’s what wrong, isn’t it?”
Adam’s heard Michael and Lucifer talk about their little brother, and while it sounds like he might have been different from his older brothers at some point, who knows how death’s affecting him? From what Adam had heard in the Cage, Gabriel was dangerously capricious, and as likely to turn you into something horrible as help you. He’d killed Dean, for God’s sake, over and over again, just to prove a point, and Adam didn’t even have a guarantee that this wasn’t all just some elaborate construction on Gabriel’s part. He’d been so focused on Michael and Lucifer messing with his head that he hadn’t even been looking at the other possibilities.
“Adam,” Gabriel says slowly. “Whatever’s going on in that wacky head of yours, I want to help you.”
Shit. If he’s an angel, then he’s probably reading Adam’s mind. Which means that everything he’s said, everything he’s saying, could just be what he knew Adam wanted to hear.
“Adam,” Gabriel says again, and there’s a hint of warning in his voice now, like he’s this close to losing his patience. Adam knows what that means in an archangel, and he knows what happens next. He turns and runs, almost falling down the stairs.
“Adam, wait!” Gabriel calls from the top of the stairs, but Adam’s past listening. All he knows is that he has to get out of here, has to get away from the promise of pain that that comes from just being near an archangel.
Adam crashes down the stairs, across the creaky floorboards, and out the door. The rain has slowed to a misty drizzle that’s cold and sharp against Adam’s skin. It wakes him up, makes him realize exactly what he’s doing by trying to strike out on his own. It’s stupid and reckless, but Adam’s past caring. All he knows is that he can’t see Gabriel as anything but an enemy right now.
It’s still light out, so Adam walks. He doesn’t really have a plan, but adrenaline’s driven away any chance of sleep. He heads in the direction he vaguely thinks is towards the center of city, but he’s not too sure if it is. When it starts to get dark, Adam braces himself and tries the door of the nearest house. The wood sticks, but Adam shoves it hard and it opens, revealing a narrow hallway and a steep staircase.
There’s a faint odor, but the buildings here don’t have the same smell as the ones in the yellow stone city-it’s not a dead smell, just the lingering, pervasive scent of dust and mildew. Adam ignores it.
The apartment doesn’t look that different from the upstairs of the store, but there’s a tiny sink with what looks hopefully like a faucet. Adam tries the tap, but nothing happens. He sighs, acknowledging that it was too good to be true, and trudges over to the bed. The mattress is too thin, and he can feel the springs digging into his back. The blankets are threadbare, and he’s not even sure if they make much difference. Still, he falls asleep quickly, too tired to do anything but curl into a ball to conserve heat and drift into uneasy unconsciousness.
He has nightmares, but that’s not really unexpected. He wakes up covered in sweat and shivering, the echoes of screams he thinks are his own ringing in his ears.
“Sleep well?” a smooth voice that’s far too close asks, and Adam freezes, instantly awake. “You really should have locked the door,” it goes on, stepping into the yellow square of light cast by the streetlight outside the window.
It takes a second for Adam to recognize him. Then he does, and he’s scrabbling on the nightstand for the knife. Just as he finds the handle, cold fingers close around his wrist.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, sonny,” the yellow-eyed man says pleasantly, and Adam carefully lets go of the knife. “That’s better.” The man releases his arm, and steps back, settling down onto the edge of the bed. Adam rubs his wrist, a dozen increasingly dumb plans tumbling through his mind.
“Who are you?” Adam asks, trying to win time, though he has a pretty good idea.
“Friend of the family,” the yellow-eyed man says and smiles. The glint of teeth in the dark is sharp and predatory, and Adam shivers. “You can call me Azazel.”
“What do you want?”
“I want out of here,” Azazel says simply, and Adam has no doubt that he’s telling the truth. “You were kind enough to open the gateway here, and I’ve no doubt-” He pats Adam’s leg in a way that’s almost friendly, and Adam twitches away from his grip. “-that you’ll be just as helpful opening the final doorway out of this devil-forsaken place.”
“Somehow I’m not thinking that would be a good thing,” Adam says, unable to stop himself. Azazel’s hand finds his leg again, and now it’s all sharp fingernails and bruising pressure. Adam bites back a yelp.
“Do you know who I am?
Adam hesitates, weighing his options, then nods once. He’s heard stories.
“Then you know what I’m capable of.” Azazel smiles. “I killed your daddy, Adam-boy, and don’t you forget it.”
Adam swallows hard, fighting back bile. Like he could forget that. From what Sam had said, Azazel was responsible, directly or not, for the death of half his family, and almost all of his brothers’. He’d also indirectly killed both of said brothers, and Adam’s fairly sure he wouldn’t hesitate to add Adam to his count.
Adam doesn’t think he could exactly be killed here, but there are worse fates, and while Azazel isn’t quite on Michael and Lucifer’s level, he’s not some inexperienced lower-level demon. The only way out of this that Adam can see is to play along for now, then escape once he can get some distance between himself and the demon.
“You should have stuck with the angel,” Azazel says, and Adam’s been trying not to think exactly that. “We leave at daylight.”
To his surprise, Adam actually manages to go back to sleep after that. It’s uneasy, and while he can’t remember his dreams, he wakes up feeling like he’s run a marathon. Every time he wakes up during the night, Azazel is standing by the door, watching him. It’s creepy as Hell, and Adam should know.
Morning finally comes, and it’s just as gray and damp as the day before. The only difference is that there’s a heavy blanketing of thick white fog, substantial enough that Adam can barely see the pavement under his feet.
When they leave the apartment, Azazel takes the knife, but he doesn’t even bother threatening Adam with it, and Adam’s not sure if he should be comforted by how much easier it’s going to be to escape without a knife at his throat, or indignant that Azazel considers him to be so little of a threat.
Azazel seems to know where they’re going, but so did Gabriel. He keeps Adam unreasonably close, his hand clamped on Adam’s arm like a vice, and Adam wonders if he knows his plans to slip away and escape.
“I still don’t know why you need me,” Adam says after they’ve walked in silence for what feels like the better part of an hour.
Azazel sighs. “You’re something alien here; your blood is the only thing that will open the doorways through Purgatory. Why do you think we don’t have more breakouts? I’m sure that’s why the angel kept you around-it’s not like he could get free on his own, either.”
“Will you let me go once we’re out?” Adam asks. He doesn’t believe for a minute that the demon will, but maybe if he can make him think Adam’ll play along…
“What, let you go back to Heaven and your mommy? We’ll see how well-behaved you are. On the other hand, I could just throw you so far into the depths of Purgatory that, even with your powers here, you’ll never find your way out. Just a little something to bear in mind.” He smiles brightly.
Adam doesn’t talk again for a long time.
Adam’s feet are killing him by midday, but Azazel doesn’t slow down, let alone take a break, and Adam has no option but to stumble along beside him. His arms hurt, too, quick stabs of pain from the cut on his left arm, and a numb ache from Azazel’s grip on his right. He doesn’t bother complaining about either; he can’t imagine the demon really has any deep moral compunction about causing pain.
It’s the silence that finally gets to him. Adam doesn’t have any problems with quiet. It’s more that the lack of conversation lets his mind wonder, and that’s pretty much the last thing he wants right now, with centuries of the Cage threatening to overwhelm him.
“So,” he says finally, “back on the other side of the…gateway…there were monsters everywhere. Are there any here?”
Azazel just looks at him like he’s an ill-behaved dog that’s suddenly started talking.
“Oh yes,” he says eventually. “They’re here.”
Adam shivers.
Adam hadn’t thought having shelter at night was as important here, but Azazel seems to disagree. As soon as it even starts to get dark, he’s dragging Adam inside one of the buildings, this time another dusty, cleaned-out store. For a second Adam wonders if it’s the same one he and Gabriel had found, but the posters on the walls are still legible. At least he thinks they are until he actually focuses on one, and his eyes slide off the print, the letters making no more sense than a random jumble of letters. He’s fairly sure that even all his time in the Cage didn’t make him forget how to read, so the effect of something supernatural here seems the best guess.
Azazel ignores the posters. He pushes Adam up the stairs, and Adam trips on the bottom step, almost falling. There’s no furniture in this apartment, and the walls and floor are blackened and scorched. One of the windows is broken, spider-web cracks radiating out from a fist-sized hole. There’s nothing cozy or safe here. It feels like a long-abandoned crime scene.
Adam’s shoved into the room, and Azazel slams the door behind him, boots thudding back down the stairs. When the sound of the demon’s steps fades, Adam crosses to the window. All he needs is some kind of ledge, or maybe a convenient tree branch or roof. There’s nothing, though, because he’s in Purgatory, and he’s got sucky Winchester luck.
He’s considering how many bones he’d break and how far he’d be able to run if he just jumped when Azazel’s tromping back up the stairs. Adam turns, half-guilty, when he opens the door, but Azazel ignores him.
“We should be safe now,” Azazel says, not looking at Adam. There’s more than a little unintentional irony in that, but Adam’s not going to point it out.
Azazel fiddles with the doorknob until it clicks locked. Then he finally seems to remember that Adam’s there.
“Get away from the window,” he says.
Adam obeys, not really wanting to test the boundaries of the demon’s patience right now. Adam edges towards one of the side walls. He’s exhausted and just wants to lie down, but the wood looks diseased, and he ends up awkwardly sitting on the floor, trying to touch as little of the boards as he can.
There’s a long, painful silence. Adam sits still and tries to breathe quietly, and Azazel just stands there, an unmoving barrier between Adam and freedom.
Adam’s just starting to fall asleep when there’s a faint scratching noise from outside the window. He’s awake in an instant, torn between hope that it’s either Gabriel or a distraction he can use to escape, and fear that it’s something even worse than Azazel.
“Stay down,” the demon hisses. He crosses to the window, holding himself back against the wall, the knife a bright glint of metal in his hand.
“Adam?” There’s a voice now, coming from somewhere in the street below the window. “Adam, please, you’ve got to help me.”
He knows that voice. It’s hoarse and cracking, but that just makes it more familiar. He glances up at Azazel, who’s frowning out the window.
“Is that my brother?” Adam asks. When Sam had disappeared, he’d assumed he was free. He’d never thought that maybe Sam was still trapped-
“No,” Azazel says, voice sharp.
Adam knows he should drop it, but he can’t help himself. “Are you sure? ‘Cause that sounded a lot like him.”
Azazel’s eyes flash gold. “Do you think I wouldn’t recognize my own blood? It’s just a trick, a lure.”
Adam knows he’s probably right. It doesn’t help.
“Adam-they’re going to find me. Please, please help me.”
“Don’t listen,” Azazel says, still looking out at the street.
Adam tries, he really does. Then Sam’s screams start, the terrible, familiar cries of someone who’s just screaming because they have nothing else left. Adam buries his head between his arms and tries to think of anything but what’s around him. Outside, it starts to rain.
He thinks he falls asleep eventually, waking melding seamlessly into nightmares, but he doesn’t really remember. All he knows is that, when he opens his eyes, it’s morning, or what passes for it, and Azazel is still standing by the window.
“Sweet dreams?” he asks, not looking at Adam.
Adam contemplates aiming a few well-chosen expletives in the demon’s general direction, but he settles for just thinking them really hard. It’s not as satisfying as saying them, but it’s probably a lot less painful in the long run.
It’s still cloudy, but it doesn’t seem quite as gloomy as it had the day before. Still, there’s an odd, oily quality to the air, and Adam feels like he’s almost choking on each breath. Azazel doesn’t seem to notice, but Adam’s not sure if he actually breathes in the first place.
The street under the window is empty. Adam looks anyway. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for; blood or maybe even Sam, wounded or dead, an echo of a place Adam’s trying to forget. There’s nothing there, though, just grimy pavement and the remnants of puddles from the night’s rain.
Azazel walks as quickly as he had the day before. Adam had been hoping that Azazel would lose interest in him, and let his guard down, give Adam the chance he needs to escape. The demon has other plans though, and he keeps Adam as close as he had before too.
There’s a subtle difference to the city now though, and it takes Adam far longer than he’d have like to realize it-the city isn’t silent now It’s whispering, a low, constant murmur that Adam’s sure he’s heard before and isn’t sure why. It sounds like something that’s always been there, as much a part of the city as the asphalt and the rain, and it scares the Hell out of him. It’s not, objectively, that frightening, just a bunch of creepy whispers, but Adam doesn’t feel like being objective right now, and there’s an undercurrent of menace to it that makes him move a little closer to Azazel.
“What is that?” Adam whispers.
The demon meets his eyes and smiles. “That, sonny-boy, is what’ll happen to you if, I don’t know, you try something stupid like, say, running off?”
Demons lie, Adam knows this. Still, he’s beginning to think he’ll need a better escape plan.
Previous l Next
It’s raining when Adam wakes up.
This strikes him as fundamentally unfair, because he’d been cursing his jacket for being too hot ever since they’d left the tower that morning, and now it’s already soaked through and freezing cold. Sometimes, Adam wonders if the universe-take your pick of which one-really is out to get him.
He’s laying on his back in yet another street, which is starting to feel a little too familiar. It’s still night, or at least, still dark, and the rain is pouring down, forming icy puddles on the pavement around him.
It’s not just the rain that’s different. His little patch of street is lit by the dim warm glow of a streetlight, and he’s lying on asphalt. It’s normal, and safe, and Adam’s starting to feel something that he’s fairly sure is hope. It’s been so long, he’s almost forgotten what it was like. They made it out. Exactly where they are, Adam isn’t sure, but they made it.
“Ow.” It’s coming from Adam’s left. It sounds like something dying.
Adam rolls over. Gabriel’s lying on the sidewalk fifteen feet away, his knees drawn up, and his arms wrapped around his ribs, making high, tight noises in his throat.
Adam scrambles onto all fours and lurches forward, ignoring the stab of pain in his arms, the rough pavement skinning his knees through his jeans.
Gabriel’s eyes are screwed shut, but he blearily opens one when Adam leans over him with a soft “hey.”
“Ow,” Gabriel says again, but there isn’t as much force behind it.
“Here, let me look.” Adam pries Gabriel’s arms free of their death grip around his body. There’s blood on Gabriel’s shirt, and even with the rain staining the fabric dark, it looks like a lot. He pulls the fabric up gently, wincing when it sticks. He’s seen just about every injury that can be inflicted on a human body-many of them on his own-but that doesn’t mean he’s completely desensitized.
Then he stops short. “Seriously?” All that blood was coming from a jagged scratch across the bottom of Gabriel’s ribs. It’s long and nasty, but not very deep. Adam had gotten worse falling off his bike.
Gabriel opens both eyes and peers down at his chest. “Would it make a difference if I told you that it was a lot worse when I got it?”
“Yeah, whatever. I think you’ll live.”
“Thank you, Dr. Sexy. I kinda had that figured out.”
It takes Adam several tries to stand up, but he makes it eventually. Gabriel’s still sprawled on his back looking mournful, so Adam offers him a hand. Gabriel raises his eyebrows, but takes it, letting Adam pull him to his feet.
“Come on,” Gabriel says, “let’s get out of the rain.”
They don’t have to go far. By unspoken agreement they don’t try any of the doors in the buildings around them, but one has a deep awning that mostly keeps the rain off.
“Where are we?” Adam asks once they’re under cover. “This isn’t Heaven, is it?”
Gabriel frowns. “You were expecting it to be?”
He had kind of been assuming that’s where he’d end up. He is fairly dead, after all, or at least he had been until the angels decided to pull a miracle on him. He isn’t too worried about the being dead bit; he just wants to know where he stands.
Gabriel makes a dismissive noise. “Nah, we’re still in Purgatory. Your luck isn’t that good kiddo.”
“Right…” Adam leans back until he’s supported by the wall, then lets his head thunk against the bricks.
“Hey, buck up. We’ll be out of here in no time, and you can get back to your harp-playing.”
Adam must not look very convinced, because Gabriel adds, “Don’t be like that. I told you I’d get you out of here, didn’t I? I may be many things, but I never break a promise.”
Adam pushes himself off the wall. He rubs his hands over his face and cards his fingers through his hair, trying to shake off some of his bone-deep weariness. All he wants is to sleep, but that isn’t looking like an option. Sleeping in the rain isn’t something he particularly wants to try. They don’t know what’s out there in the dark, either, so they just stay huddled under the scanty cover of the awning, listen to the rain, and wait for morning.
The city feels a world away from the last one. Even once morning comes, the skies stay dark, with only a pale glow seeping through the cloud cover. The rain is relentless.
Adam doesn’t see any monsters, at least none like before. He does hear voices, though, sounds of life that seem only a few feet away, but when he turns to try and find their source, there’s nothing there. There are flickering shadows, too, that Adam almost thinks look like people, hurrying along the street with their heads down, never looking up but always managing to avoid him and Gabriel. They don’t seem to be dangerous, but the ghost-like shadows make Adam’s skin crawl.
They walk for what Adam guesses is most of the morning. Gabriel seems to know where they’re going and Adam’s too tired to second guess him, even when the buildings and streets start to look familiar.
There’s more variation in the landscape here, and that’s the only reason Adam can even begin to guess that they’ve been going around in circles.
“Hey,” he says, after they’ve passed the same peeling white door for the third time. “Are you sure about this?”
Gabriel freezes in his tracks and Adam almost crashes into him. “This isn’t right.”
Adam resists the urge to roll his eyes. “You think?”
“I don’t get lost. It’s a physical impossibility.”
Adam just stares at him, because, seriously?
Gabriel waves it away with an odd flapping motion that Adam can’t quite interpret.
“And we’re in Purgatory,” Adam adds. “Is really much of a leap that we’re trapped inside of a giant 3-D Escher painting?”
“I suppose you could be right,” Gabriel says, in a way that suggests he really doesn’t want to admit that he can’t be completely infallible in every situation, but kind of knows he isn’t anyway.
“Hey,” Adam says, trying for supportive, “you got us this far.”
Gabriel gives and exaggerated shrug, then looks forlorn, and it’s such an angsty drama-queen move that Adam kind of wants to punch him.
Adam resists the temptation, and tries again. “Do you want to check out the houses? We could try and find shelter, heal up.” Adam’s been trying to ignore it, but his arm’s throbbing where he cut it, and he just wants to rest. He can’t imagine Gabriel’s ribs are exactly feeling like a basket of puppies right now, either.
Gabriel looks up from where he’s been sullenly studying the pavement. “You want to go inside? Are you possessed?”
“This whole place freaks me out. It can’t be that much worse inside. Anyway, I want to sleep. Now.” Adam’s starting to feel like, as far as lack of sleep goes, the Cage was the equivalent of a hundred finals weeks. He feels like he could sleep for months.
“All right then.” Gabriel pushes himself up to his full, not very impressive, height. “Onwards.”
They try a disconnected, two-story building that Adam thinks might have been a store, or maybe a deli, in a previous life, with a glass front and a striped awning that might have been cheerful once, but has now faded to shades of dirty gray.
There’s nothing visible through the windows, so Gabriel tries the door. It opens with a creak of rusty hinges that sound like something straight out of an old horror movie, and Adam, hanging behind Gabriel and trying not to freak out, wonders if this makes him the nervous girlfriend.
It’s empty inside, however, and there’s no sound of movement from upstairs. The walls are lined with dusty shelves and faded advertisements so old and eaten by mildew that Adam can’t tell what they were originally selling. It’s creepy, but it’s just on the edge of familiar and normal.
There’s nothing overtly dangerous downstairs, so Gabriel gives it a cursory glance, then climbs the stairs, the warped wood protesting under his weight. Adam follows him slowly, wincing at each shuddering creak.
It’s empty upstairs too. It’s really just one room, low-ceilinged and dusty, with two deep-set windows overlooking the street. It looks like someone tried to make it homey, a long time ago, and there’s torn, faded curtains hanging haphazardly from the windows, as well as a stained rag rug on the floor. There’s furniture, too: two small beds-almost cots-against one wall, and a rickety round table like the one in the tower.
“Home sweet home,” Gabriel says, letting his backpack drop onto one of the beds. An ominous dust cloud rises when it hits.
“Yay,” Adam says, and tries not to sigh.
Dust or no, Adam would have no problems sleeping, but Gabriel doesn’t let him.
“Give me that,” he demands, gesturing at Adam’s arm. He glares at the ugly red line across his forearm like it’s personally wronged him. “You’re just lucky you can’t get infections here. It’s times like these when I’m so glad I’m not human.” His voice is quiet, like he’s just talking more for the sake of it than to actually tell Adam anything, but it’s too good of an opening for Adam to pass up.
“So, you’re not human?”
Gabriel scoffs. “Hardly. How else do you think I ended up here in Monster Central? Not all of us get a human-only ‘get out of Hell free’ pass like you did.” Gabriel’s carefully sponging at the cut with a damp cloth, and Adam’s not sure where it came from. For all he knows, Gabriel has superpowers. All he’s sure of right now is that he’s feeling pleasantly warm and sleepy, and Gabriel’s voice is calm and soothing.
“Then what are you?” Adam says, and if comes out a little mumbley, who’s to know?
There’s a long pause. Gabriel dabs something cold that stings onto Adam’s arm, and it’s almost enough to wake up him up. Almost. Finally, Gabriel says, “I was a god. Trickster, actually. That’s how I ended up here.” He hesitates again, and it’s the closest to uncertain that Adam’s heard him. “Before that, I was an angel.”
Huh, angel. Gabriel seems about as un-angelic as Adam can imagine, but given the angels he’s met-Wait-an angel, named Gabriel, powerful enough to be a god-crap.
Adam jerks away, sleepiness gone, a warning burst of adrenaline making the blood pound in his ears.
“You’re an archangel,” he says, and he’s not going to let his fear show, except that he totally is.
There are cold hands everywhere, pulling him apart, then piecing him back together, and Adam doesn’t know which one is more unbearable. The air is filled with the smells of death and burning flesh, and from far away he can hear his brother, first pleading, then screaming, until the sound is abruptly cut off-
Adam scrambles away from Gabriel, breathing hard, the sense memory of the angel’s fingers on his arm burning worse than the cut.
“Um, yeah I’m an archangel,” Gabriel says, frowning in confusion. “Actually, I kinda thought you’d have figured it out by now. I’m not the first angel you’ve met, am I?”
Adam shakes his head dumbly.
Gabriel just looks at him, like he’s not sure what Adam’s problem is. “Oh,” he says after a long moment, and Adam thinks maybe he’s finally got it. “That’s what wrong, isn’t it?”
Adam’s heard Michael and Lucifer talk about their little brother, and while it sounds like he might have been different from his older brothers at some point, who knows how death’s affecting him? From what Adam had heard in the Cage, Gabriel was dangerously capricious, and as likely to turn you into something horrible as help you. He’d killed Dean, for God’s sake, over and over again, just to prove a point, and Adam didn’t even have a guarantee that this wasn’t all just some elaborate construction on Gabriel’s part. He’d been so focused on Michael and Lucifer messing with his head that he hadn’t even been looking at the other possibilities.
“Adam,” Gabriel says slowly. “Whatever’s going on in that wacky head of yours, I want to help you.”
Shit. If he’s an angel, then he’s probably reading Adam’s mind. Which means that everything he’s said, everything he’s saying, could just be what he knew Adam wanted to hear.
“Adam,” Gabriel says again, and there’s a hint of warning in his voice now, like he’s this close to losing his patience. Adam knows what that means in an archangel, and he knows what happens next. He turns and runs, almost falling down the stairs.
“Adam, wait!” Gabriel calls from the top of the stairs, but Adam’s past listening. All he knows is that he has to get out of here, has to get away from the promise of pain that that comes from just being near an archangel.
Adam crashes down the stairs, across the creaky floorboards, and out the door. The rain has slowed to a misty drizzle that’s cold and sharp against Adam’s skin. It wakes him up, makes him realize exactly what he’s doing by trying to strike out on his own. It’s stupid and reckless, but Adam’s past caring. All he knows is that he can’t see Gabriel as anything but an enemy right now.
It’s still light out, so Adam walks. He doesn’t really have a plan, but adrenaline’s driven away any chance of sleep. He heads in the direction he vaguely thinks is towards the center of city, but he’s not too sure if it is. When it starts to get dark, Adam braces himself and tries the door of the nearest house. The wood sticks, but Adam shoves it hard and it opens, revealing a narrow hallway and a steep staircase.
There’s a faint odor, but the buildings here don’t have the same smell as the ones in the yellow stone city-it’s not a dead smell, just the lingering, pervasive scent of dust and mildew. Adam ignores it.
The apartment doesn’t look that different from the upstairs of the store, but there’s a tiny sink with what looks hopefully like a faucet. Adam tries the tap, but nothing happens. He sighs, acknowledging that it was too good to be true, and trudges over to the bed. The mattress is too thin, and he can feel the springs digging into his back. The blankets are threadbare, and he’s not even sure if they make much difference. Still, he falls asleep quickly, too tired to do anything but curl into a ball to conserve heat and drift into uneasy unconsciousness.
He has nightmares, but that’s not really unexpected. He wakes up covered in sweat and shivering, the echoes of screams he thinks are his own ringing in his ears.
“Sleep well?” a smooth voice that’s far too close asks, and Adam freezes, instantly awake. “You really should have locked the door,” it goes on, stepping into the yellow square of light cast by the streetlight outside the window.
It takes a second for Adam to recognize him. Then he does, and he’s scrabbling on the nightstand for the knife. Just as he finds the handle, cold fingers close around his wrist.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, sonny,” the yellow-eyed man says pleasantly, and Adam carefully lets go of the knife. “That’s better.” The man releases his arm, and steps back, settling down onto the edge of the bed. Adam rubs his wrist, a dozen increasingly dumb plans tumbling through his mind.
“Who are you?” Adam asks, trying to win time, though he has a pretty good idea.
“Friend of the family,” the yellow-eyed man says and smiles. The glint of teeth in the dark is sharp and predatory, and Adam shivers. “You can call me Azazel.”
“What do you want?”
“I want out of here,” Azazel says simply, and Adam has no doubt that he’s telling the truth. “You were kind enough to open the gateway here, and I’ve no doubt-” He pats Adam’s leg in a way that’s almost friendly, and Adam twitches away from his grip. “-that you’ll be just as helpful opening the final doorway out of this devil-forsaken place.”
“Somehow I’m not thinking that would be a good thing,” Adam says, unable to stop himself. Azazel’s hand finds his leg again, and now it’s all sharp fingernails and bruising pressure. Adam bites back a yelp.
“Do you know who I am?
Adam hesitates, weighing his options, then nods once. He’s heard stories.
“Then you know what I’m capable of.” Azazel smiles. “I killed your daddy, Adam-boy, and don’t you forget it.”
Adam swallows hard, fighting back bile. Like he could forget that. From what Sam had said, Azazel was responsible, directly or not, for the death of half his family, and almost all of his brothers’. He’d also indirectly killed both of said brothers, and Adam’s fairly sure he wouldn’t hesitate to add Adam to his count.
Adam doesn’t think he could exactly be killed here, but there are worse fates, and while Azazel isn’t quite on Michael and Lucifer’s level, he’s not some inexperienced lower-level demon. The only way out of this that Adam can see is to play along for now, then escape once he can get some distance between himself and the demon.
“You should have stuck with the angel,” Azazel says, and Adam’s been trying not to think exactly that. “We leave at daylight.”
To his surprise, Adam actually manages to go back to sleep after that. It’s uneasy, and while he can’t remember his dreams, he wakes up feeling like he’s run a marathon. Every time he wakes up during the night, Azazel is standing by the door, watching him. It’s creepy as Hell, and Adam should know.
Morning finally comes, and it’s just as gray and damp as the day before. The only difference is that there’s a heavy blanketing of thick white fog, substantial enough that Adam can barely see the pavement under his feet.
When they leave the apartment, Azazel takes the knife, but he doesn’t even bother threatening Adam with it, and Adam’s not sure if he should be comforted by how much easier it’s going to be to escape without a knife at his throat, or indignant that Azazel considers him to be so little of a threat.
Azazel seems to know where they’re going, but so did Gabriel. He keeps Adam unreasonably close, his hand clamped on Adam’s arm like a vice, and Adam wonders if he knows his plans to slip away and escape.
“I still don’t know why you need me,” Adam says after they’ve walked in silence for what feels like the better part of an hour.
Azazel sighs. “You’re something alien here; your blood is the only thing that will open the doorways through Purgatory. Why do you think we don’t have more breakouts? I’m sure that’s why the angel kept you around-it’s not like he could get free on his own, either.”
“Will you let me go once we’re out?” Adam asks. He doesn’t believe for a minute that the demon will, but maybe if he can make him think Adam’ll play along…
“What, let you go back to Heaven and your mommy? We’ll see how well-behaved you are. On the other hand, I could just throw you so far into the depths of Purgatory that, even with your powers here, you’ll never find your way out. Just a little something to bear in mind.” He smiles brightly.
Adam doesn’t talk again for a long time.
Adam’s feet are killing him by midday, but Azazel doesn’t slow down, let alone take a break, and Adam has no option but to stumble along beside him. His arms hurt, too, quick stabs of pain from the cut on his left arm, and a numb ache from Azazel’s grip on his right. He doesn’t bother complaining about either; he can’t imagine the demon really has any deep moral compunction about causing pain.
It’s the silence that finally gets to him. Adam doesn’t have any problems with quiet. It’s more that the lack of conversation lets his mind wonder, and that’s pretty much the last thing he wants right now, with centuries of the Cage threatening to overwhelm him.
“So,” he says finally, “back on the other side of the…gateway…there were monsters everywhere. Are there any here?”
Azazel just looks at him like he’s an ill-behaved dog that’s suddenly started talking.
“Oh yes,” he says eventually. “They’re here.”
Adam shivers.
Adam hadn’t thought having shelter at night was as important here, but Azazel seems to disagree. As soon as it even starts to get dark, he’s dragging Adam inside one of the buildings, this time another dusty, cleaned-out store. For a second Adam wonders if it’s the same one he and Gabriel had found, but the posters on the walls are still legible. At least he thinks they are until he actually focuses on one, and his eyes slide off the print, the letters making no more sense than a random jumble of letters. He’s fairly sure that even all his time in the Cage didn’t make him forget how to read, so the effect of something supernatural here seems the best guess.
Azazel ignores the posters. He pushes Adam up the stairs, and Adam trips on the bottom step, almost falling. There’s no furniture in this apartment, and the walls and floor are blackened and scorched. One of the windows is broken, spider-web cracks radiating out from a fist-sized hole. There’s nothing cozy or safe here. It feels like a long-abandoned crime scene.
Adam’s shoved into the room, and Azazel slams the door behind him, boots thudding back down the stairs. When the sound of the demon’s steps fades, Adam crosses to the window. All he needs is some kind of ledge, or maybe a convenient tree branch or roof. There’s nothing, though, because he’s in Purgatory, and he’s got sucky Winchester luck.
He’s considering how many bones he’d break and how far he’d be able to run if he just jumped when Azazel’s tromping back up the stairs. Adam turns, half-guilty, when he opens the door, but Azazel ignores him.
“We should be safe now,” Azazel says, not looking at Adam. There’s more than a little unintentional irony in that, but Adam’s not going to point it out.
Azazel fiddles with the doorknob until it clicks locked. Then he finally seems to remember that Adam’s there.
“Get away from the window,” he says.
Adam obeys, not really wanting to test the boundaries of the demon’s patience right now. Adam edges towards one of the side walls. He’s exhausted and just wants to lie down, but the wood looks diseased, and he ends up awkwardly sitting on the floor, trying to touch as little of the boards as he can.
There’s a long, painful silence. Adam sits still and tries to breathe quietly, and Azazel just stands there, an unmoving barrier between Adam and freedom.
Adam’s just starting to fall asleep when there’s a faint scratching noise from outside the window. He’s awake in an instant, torn between hope that it’s either Gabriel or a distraction he can use to escape, and fear that it’s something even worse than Azazel.
“Stay down,” the demon hisses. He crosses to the window, holding himself back against the wall, the knife a bright glint of metal in his hand.
“Adam?” There’s a voice now, coming from somewhere in the street below the window. “Adam, please, you’ve got to help me.”
He knows that voice. It’s hoarse and cracking, but that just makes it more familiar. He glances up at Azazel, who’s frowning out the window.
“Is that my brother?” Adam asks. When Sam had disappeared, he’d assumed he was free. He’d never thought that maybe Sam was still trapped-
“No,” Azazel says, voice sharp.
Adam knows he should drop it, but he can’t help himself. “Are you sure? ‘Cause that sounded a lot like him.”
Azazel’s eyes flash gold. “Do you think I wouldn’t recognize my own blood? It’s just a trick, a lure.”
Adam knows he’s probably right. It doesn’t help.
“Adam-they’re going to find me. Please, please help me.”
“Don’t listen,” Azazel says, still looking out at the street.
Adam tries, he really does. Then Sam’s screams start, the terrible, familiar cries of someone who’s just screaming because they have nothing else left. Adam buries his head between his arms and tries to think of anything but what’s around him. Outside, it starts to rain.
He thinks he falls asleep eventually, waking melding seamlessly into nightmares, but he doesn’t really remember. All he knows is that, when he opens his eyes, it’s morning, or what passes for it, and Azazel is still standing by the window.
“Sweet dreams?” he asks, not looking at Adam.
Adam contemplates aiming a few well-chosen expletives in the demon’s general direction, but he settles for just thinking them really hard. It’s not as satisfying as saying them, but it’s probably a lot less painful in the long run.
It’s still cloudy, but it doesn’t seem quite as gloomy as it had the day before. Still, there’s an odd, oily quality to the air, and Adam feels like he’s almost choking on each breath. Azazel doesn’t seem to notice, but Adam’s not sure if he actually breathes in the first place.
The street under the window is empty. Adam looks anyway. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for; blood or maybe even Sam, wounded or dead, an echo of a place Adam’s trying to forget. There’s nothing there, though, just grimy pavement and the remnants of puddles from the night’s rain.
Azazel walks as quickly as he had the day before. Adam had been hoping that Azazel would lose interest in him, and let his guard down, give Adam the chance he needs to escape. The demon has other plans though, and he keeps Adam as close as he had before too.
There’s a subtle difference to the city now though, and it takes Adam far longer than he’d have like to realize it-the city isn’t silent now It’s whispering, a low, constant murmur that Adam’s sure he’s heard before and isn’t sure why. It sounds like something that’s always been there, as much a part of the city as the asphalt and the rain, and it scares the Hell out of him. It’s not, objectively, that frightening, just a bunch of creepy whispers, but Adam doesn’t feel like being objective right now, and there’s an undercurrent of menace to it that makes him move a little closer to Azazel.
“What is that?” Adam whispers.
The demon meets his eyes and smiles. “That, sonny-boy, is what’ll happen to you if, I don’t know, you try something stupid like, say, running off?”
Demons lie, Adam knows this. Still, he’s beginning to think he’ll need a better escape plan.
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