OPEN | there's a place i have gone

[halfwinchester]

Who: Adam Milligan (halfwinchester) and anyone who cares to cross his path!
Where: Around the mansion.
When: Oct. 17th.
Rating: PG-13?
Summary: Having been unconscious for most of his stay in Wonderland, when Adam has a lucid moment he takes himself on a tour of the mansion.
The Story:



For someone who'd been in Wonderland for over a week, Adam had seen remarkably little of it since Castiel had brought him indoors. The forest, he remembered in flashes and vague splinters of memory, and that was only in those rare moments of consciousness.

Being awake meant remembering everything. Each time he breathed, he smelled burning skin in Hell's fires. Each time he moved, he felt phantom pain from Hell's ministrations. Each time he closed his eyes, Hell. No matter what the angels had done to him, Hell was still everywhere, and he was still a part of it. Unconsciousness was a blessing in disguise when Hell was all you had to wake up to, and if he’d had a choice, he would have picked oblivion every single time.

But on the ninth day, something changed.

Adam woke up to a sense of clarity he hadn't felt between his pelting through the trees on his first day and the angels playing with his soul like Silly Putty. Not since… no, he couldn't remember. Not since before. Not since he’d had a body and a place in the real, physical world without Michael. As he stared at the ceiling, the fact that the room stayed just a room and didn’t bleed into a place he’d been in his memories, or somewhere in the pit, almost confused him more than the alternative.

For once, lying in a bed (in Wonderland of all places, according to an angel, whatever that counted for) seemed like a possibility and not just a fever dream cobbled together by a sick mind.

Real.

What that possible? Really? He hadn’t believed Castiel about being free, not enough to dare let that hope sink in. Now, the longer he laid there, the more doubt crept in.

Free…?

If he was alive, being alive felt an awful like being on the verge of passing out. Sliding out of bed and convincing his legs to hold him up was a touch-and-go affair, made worse by a floor that didn’t seem to want to stay steady underneath him. Getting across the room was a sheer miracle in and of itself; his need to know just what the fuck was happening to him just barely outweighed his body's desire to pitch him over. He held onto the door frame to rest for a second. Good for him that he didn't have any dignity left to lose.

"Warmed-over shit" was a good way to describe the young man who eventually staggered into the sixth floor hallway that morning, unshaven and unwashed. A kind assessment, given that Hell was still written all over the lines of his face; it was in the glassy cast to his eyes and the purpled skin underneath, in the way he had to steady himself on the occasional section of wall. Absorbed in the push and pull of his own muscles, Adam almost forgot his surroundings entirely. Stairs, more hallways, rooms… Places he didn’t recognize, falling forgotten behind him.

The first time he glimpsed himself in a mirror brought him to a halt, however. Startled, he froze in place before turning back to the mirror, bringing his hands to rest on either side of it.

He saw his face. At the same time, he saw the face of a stranger. The person in it didn't look… right.

Maybe he was alive, after all. Only reality could be this gaunt, and cold, and uncomfortable.



_{(OOC: It's prose to start, but I'm down with action tags! Feel free to find him anywhere in the mansion you'd like, too.)}

Comments

[onsilksheets]

Falling into a routine had been easier than Bela thought it would be. Waking up, getting something to eat and then pottering around the mansion, exploring what she could. But routines could soon become boring and there was that part of her that wanted to get into a bit of mischief. Just because.

Mischief couldn't be achieved without fuel so she went to get breakfast- porridge this time around - before exiting the kitchen to find a bit of excitement for herself; preferably the kind that didn't involve her getting maimed or killed in a horrific manner. Upon leaving the room she was greeted by an unexpected sight.

She stared at him for a few moments, green eyes flickering over his appearance. Eventually, Bela spoke.

"Rough night?"

[halfwinchester]

Bela's presence surprised Adam more than his surprised her.

He hadn’t been looking for people. He hadn't been looking for anything. He was walking, and that was gradually getting easier. He had somewhere to walk to. Alone, those things were more than enough to keep his mind occupied, and if he wasn't seeing the Cage at every step and around every corner, than that was more than he could ever ask for. Certainly more than enough to rattle him without other people entering the mix.

He stared back at her, stuck between incomprehension and an animalistic alarm, waiting for something to change. For the boiling blood, for the heat. For the illusion to break.

Nothing did. The hallway was just a hallway. The woman, just a woman. Normal. Scarily so, like a pregnant pause before the storm.

And Adam, in the eye of it, didn’t know what action to take to best protect himself. Could he answer? Should he? Everything seemed so natural, fluid... Everything except him. He cleared his throat, but his throat was so dry from lack of liquids that nothing came out even if he’d wanted it to.

[onsilksheets]

One of her skills was being able to render someone speechless; but in this instance, Bela wasn't even trying to. She was expecting him to retort back with a witty comment or even just telling her to bugger off (that was a polite way of putting it) and yet, she got nothing.

Part of her was disappointed. Another part of her was intrigued.

Bela didn't recognise him so her assumption was he was new or the kind of person who kept to themselves a lot. Hardly venturing out into the mansion, except to get supplies. She practiced the latter after Dean had murdered her, worried that he might attempt it again, event or not.

"I'm not going to bite, honey." Because that was reassuring. "Go on. Take a moment."

[halfwinchester]

He had too many moments. Twenty lifetimes of moments he didn’t want, and now a soul on the mend, too. What mattered to Adam was that a soul meant feeling everything he’d tried to bury, and being here, in this place, with strange faces...

Adam swallowed again on a shaky inhale, gaze still fixed on her face with the assurance that she could easily do more to him than merely bite. A glance over her shoulder alerted him to the kitchen door, but nothing struck him as familiar or safe. He made an uncertain noise.

Trusting what his eyes told him was out of the question, but even so...

He tried to open his mouth and find something that made sense to cling to. "The angels did this," he uttered, the words weak and raspy. They hurt leaving him, like he were pulling them up over spiked sandpaper. "Didn't they?"

Either the one in the trench coat, or... the other two. Michael and the Devil.

[lightgunhustler]

It was on her way up to the eight floor that Jo spotted the unfamiliar face in the stairwell -- had it been anyone she recognized, she might have just waved a brief hello and kept on going, intent on making her way up to the diner to lend Tohru a hand for a few hours, but given the state Adam was in, walking past didn't seem like an option. Not when he looked like he'd been freaking steamrolled.

"Hey..."

She slowed to a stop, hand resting lightly on the banister. He looked lost. If he was a new arrival, which she could only assume he was given she'd never seen him in either the bar or the diner, that probably wasn't far from the truth. She frowned, her gaze darkening as her eyebrows knitted together for a moment, that patented mother bear gene that all Harvelle women seemed to harbor kicking in immediately.

"You okay? Do you need help getting down to the clinic?"

[halfwinchester]

The fact that the mansion's stairs didn't transform themselves into something more accessible like a ramp was a sign that Adam could walk on his own, if not walk well. When another woman spoke up to him, he had a death grip on the opposite railing, one that was clearly keeping him on his feet, unlike hers.

He squeezed his eyes shut at the sight of her, the light on her blonde hair reminding him too much of angel brilliance. The thought alone made his heart throb painfully under his skin.

No, he was not okay, and the only place he wanted to go was away.

He hazarded a look back the way he'd come, as if making a run to safety and security was a possibility and not a withered hope, long dead and buried. He'd made it down exactly four steps. He might as well have been looking up at a mountain ascent for all the good it did him. He leaned away from her instead, putting weight on the railing to steady himself in case...

In case the woman turned into something less benign, as all faces and voices did where he'd been. Where he had to be.

[lightgunhustler]

She bit at her lower lip as he recoiled. So that was a resounding no, then. She could have turned her back right then and left him to his own devices, leave him in peace like he clearly wanted, but that's not who she was. It never had been and never would be -- she was a pusher. A worrier. Even when it came to complete strangers. It never seemed to make much of a difference exactly who it was, in fact. Those instincts always kicked in just the same.

"It's okay. I don't bite, I promise."

She put both hands up slowly, fingers spread, waving them a little to show him she was unarmed before she lowered them again, hooking her thumbs into her back pockets. "You're new. I can help you, if you like?"

[halfwinchester]

Good-looking women seemed to enjoy saying that to him, for whatever reason. Not all that reassuring when he’d had his fair share of encounters with creatures that bit first and asked questions later.

He ran his fingers over the wood of the rail, examining her with a bald, unblinking intensity.

New? The people he'd encountered around the mansion kept implying the same thing over and over--that he was in a new place, not Hell, not Heaven, but somewhere else that sat between the real world and a fantasy land. Every cell in Adam's body wanted to argue. He'd acclimated to something darker and more savage, and giving the crumb of hope in him room to grow felt like a trick, like a way of letting Hell get deeper inside him.

Indecision gave way to a sense of defeat at her offer to help. Too little, too late. Even an angel--one of the bastards who didn't give a single fuck about helping some insignificant kid from Minnesota--had apologized to him for not helping.

He must been a pathetic fucking sight for people to start worrying about him now.

The line of Adam's shoulders sagged. "I went to Hell. You think you can fix that?" he said, voice deep and rough. Of course not. "You can't. No one can. I don't even know if you‘re really here."

baby no it'll be all right

[livinlavitaeloca]

Daniel, by contrast, was doing surprisingly well. Consider this: Wonderland was said to be so inescapable, and the Mansion was so much more palatable than the creepy mines it had briefly been, that he felt he really ought to make the best of it. And so he was managing to settle in! Sort of! Somewhat. On enough levels to convince himself, at least.

He was, by now, pretty proud of how well he was handling all this stuff.

(Ignoring the fact that he looked like he hadn't slept for a month. Bags-under-eyes brofist, dude.)

This chap, though? This chap seemed to be handling things less well. Daniel was strolling up one of the mansion corridors when he spotted Adam at the mirror, and then he dawdled to a halt because dang. This guy looked like Daniel's nightmares felt.

"My God," he said, half out of sympathy and half curiosity. "Are you all right?"

It didn't occur to Daniel, in his 1830s superfly threads of corset and cravat and silly trousers, that he might make a bit of a strange sight. Uh, clearly Adam's clothes were the weird ones.

V___V!

[halfwinchester]

The longer he stayed poised in front of the mirror, the more painful looking at himself became, like someone were twisting a knife in the back of his mind. He winced, watching his reflection do the same.

No... no. Nothing about this was right. Nothing had been right for a long, long time, but seeing himself in the flesh? He hadn't thought Hell could unnerve him more than it already had, yet seeing the darkness in his own eyes, really seeing it, cut open a whole new wound somewhere inside. He tried to breathe, to remember how his lungs worked. Breathe in and--

Lost as he was in his own head, Adam didn't realize he wasn’t alone until someone spoke, and he jerked like Daniel’s exclamation had been an electrical shock.

God doesn’t give a crap if this is supposed to be his mercy.

He turned toward Daniel, one hand still against the wall, and took a sliding step away from him. The angels had been bad enough.

[freewill]

Castiel had been checking on Adam periodically over the course of the week, but each time that he'd dropped into the room where he'd left the boy after Gabriel had done his work, he'd found him unconscious.

It wasn't a good sign, but it also wasn't particularly surprising. After the beating that his soul had gone through, Adam needed all the rest he could get.

While Castiel wished that he could do more, he was certain that Gabriel had given it his best, and he wasn't going to go to Michael or Lucifer without Adam's permission. They were just as likely to make it worse, which meant that at this point it was up to Adam to try and get back on his feet.

It was while wandering the mansion on his usual patrols that Castiel caught sight of Adam staggering down the hall. So he had gotten back on his feet, but just barely. Castiel took a few careful steps toward him, not wanting to take him by surprise.

"... You're awake." Which was stating the obvious, but after a week of deep sleep, this was out of the ordinary.

[halfwinchester]

The angel again.

Adam stopped, coming to a dead halt in the middle of the hallway. This time, he didn't try to flee. In the forest, he’d been moving on pure instinct; now that his body and mind were both feeling the strain, he had no more impetuous plays up his sleeve.

A few second's pause gave him some time, but eventually he had to turn and face Castiel. He could pretend otherwise, but he’d heard Castiel's voice, and he knew what Castiel was, what he’d done, what he could do. There were some things even Hell hadn't been able to make him forget, and whatever the angels had done to him the first time Castiel had tried to speak to him had broken open the floodgates to his memories at the same time as it had warded against the tides of devastation.

In the Cage, he'd been terrified and hurt in more ways than he could describe even with all the languages of Earth at his hands, but he hadn't been this lost in a while. In the Cage, he'd had a place. He hadn't been confused as to what awaited him day after day. He hadn't been… human, not in so many words. The simplicity of torment had grown murkier with sunlight through windows, and the feel of his own hair on his cheek, and silent rooms with no screaming voices. Now where was he? What was he?

The angels had done this, and Castiel was one of them.

He breathed in through his nose, blinking hard. Castiel might have recognized the look: the steadying act of someone who doubted what their senses were telling them. Even so, Castiel was a familiar anchor. He looked exactly the same as he had before, and that was something of a comfort.

Adam didn't think he could or would say anything in response, but the gravely words were out of his mouth before he could process he’d even spoke up:

"What the hell is happening to me?"

Why did they keep doing this to him?

[freewill]

Now he could determine whether or not Adam wanted his help.

While the boy looked almost just as lost and confused as he'd been in the forest, at least there was some recognition on his face. At least he was taking in Castiel's words and processing them. At least his mind wasn't completely claimed by Hell damage.

Adam could have done plenty of things. He could have run away, he could have screamed at Castiel to leave him alone. Had he, Castiel would have taken the hint, because Adam wasn't his charge in the same way that Sam and Dean were, though maybe he should have been.

He'd felt guilt over how it had all played out. Castiel was sure that Sam and Dean had, too, but they all tried to refrain from mentioning it. Like that one glaring mistake that they all pretended had never actually happened, but here it was, staring him in the face.

His jaw tightened. "What happened to you in the Cage is still affecting you." It probably always would, considering how much longer he'd been trapped compared to Sam. "How much do you remember?" Castiel had stopped in place, a few feet away but not too close that Adam could feel cornered by his presence.

[halfwinchester]

Even just hearing the name of Lucifer's Cage had Adam clenching his teeth together, the light in his eyes banking. He hadn't known a thing about it before he'd gone in, but he'd had plenty of time to learn about the Cage since then. All the intimate, soul-rending details that no one had mentioned in the books. He'd been in Hell. He knew that. He felt that.

Adam squeezed his eyes shut, but there was no relief in the darkness; he could see the splashes of screaming crimson behind his eye lids, ready to consume him whole. When he opened them again, his eyes were wet.

Easy for an angel to say. Goddamn it, what didn't he remember?

"I was down there," he answered, and the admission was an anguished one. Easier still to use the past tense like there was a ghost of a chance things had changed. The people crowding in on him in this unfamiliar place could try and explain Wonderland a thousand different ways, and he could even hope for change himself, but the truth was that Adam still had as much of a grip on the Cage as it had on him. "This is still Hell, isn't it?"

[righteously]

After a much-appreciated text from Jo, Dean gets his ass in gear. There's a regretful half-sandwich in the kitchen that some lucky bastard will be able to swipe, left behind by Dean's haste. She's done a good job directing Adam back to his bedroom, away from the general (angelic) populace, and he only hesitates a second after knocking before inviting himself in.

Because he's impatient, but he also doesn't want to, you know, see anything.

Eyes glance furtively around the room as though checking for some visible signs of hell-crazy painted there, before settling on the youngest not!Winchester in an appraising gaze.

"...Well. You don't look like a Disney Princess, but at least you're awake." Which is pretty high praise for someone who spent such a fucking long time in the pit, believe it or not. The fact that he's even concious is impressive, and... admittedly, maybe a little disturbing.

People break in the amount of time Adam's been under. More than that, people turn. He's been there for centuries, and it doesn't take half that long for a soul to become smoke.

If Adam even has a soul at all. He's not sure what Wonderland's capable of, and he's not doing much to hide his wariness. It's not that he's not happy to see the kid out, he's just...

Look, he's just doing his job. An ounce of caution. He strides in a little closer, arms crossing over his chest. "How you feelin'?"

[halfwinchester]

Dean doesn't have to worry, because there's nothing amiss in the room itself aside from the figure sitting on the floor at the foot of the bed. If one fails to count Adam's ragged breathing, the room is perfectly, blissfully quiet.

Then comes the knock.

The sudden noise at the door rains down like cannon fire on Adam's frayed nerves, and he jumps. No more. He can't take any more, and if he's sure of one thing, it's that. Between Jo's departure and Dean’s arrival, he'd had the foresight to pull himself into the bathroom before throwing up the pathetic contents of his stomach, and that's his little secret. Without the weight of watchful eyes, he doesn't have to pretend to be better than he really is.

And what he is is psychotic, deeply psychotic to be experiencing all of this in its entirety. More than he'd thought.

Adam digs his knuckles into his eyes to protect himself from the next event on this parade of crazy. Dean's right, in his own way. He's not just broken, he's already in pieces, and it feels like when Gabriel had picked them up off the floor, he'd reassembled them all wrong, the rough, jagged edges drawing blood no matter what he does or where he looks.

Hearing Dean is the worst, because it reminds him of Hell and destroys his hope.

He lowers his hand, and when he looks, Dean's still there. There's no mistake: he recognizes Dean, but he can't speak, he can't even begin to find a place to start.

[righteously]

Dean's met with silence, and for a long moment there's a nice, awkward pause. His eyebrows creep up slowly but surely, and after a beat he finally speaks.

"O...kay then. I'm gonna take that as a not bad." Which he neither believes, nor expects any kind of correction to. Mostly it's just chatter to fill the silence, and he strides across the room a little further to get a closer look. Adam's eyes are sunken, bruised, exhausted looking. He's pail, he's... damn, he's just shitty looking all around, even worse than Dean was expecting.

Hands grip the back of a chair neatly tucked into the desk, and he drags it right up in front of Adam. Lowers himself onto it so that he's sitting in it backwards, arms folded across the top.

"Alright, champ, look at me for a second. Don't get lost in your head, because you're gonna start questioning what's real and what's not. Do me a favor, if you can- grab whatever mental bootstraps you got left and just answer a few yes or no questions for me. That's all I'm asking right now."

A beat.

"Alright?"

[halfwinchester]

Dean. Again, Dean. Maybe. Another somebody who looked like him and spoke him.

Adam's eyes follow him around, watching him collect the chair, but he has to pause and try to shake himself free from the dizzying sense of familiarity that comes with the territory. He's been here before, or in a moment close to it. Before everything went to crap and himself along with it. The memories squeeze themselves up from a long, dark tunnel, and in response Adam drops his hands to his knees and digs his fingertips, hard and violent.

As a consequence, what Dean says burns through him like a lightning strike, leaving him conflicted between laughing or crying hysterically.

Don't get lost in his head because he'd stop being able to tell what was real? Jesus. Couldn't he guess that everything stopped being real the moment people had started to tell him he wasn't in Hell?

"Too late," Adam says. His lips quirk, amused, but it's a sweaty, unsettled look. "Unless you don't count the fact you're the second you I've met. That's just here."

[BACKDATED TO BEFORE ADAM MEETS DEAN] BC I DID NOT TAG FAST ENOUGH

[tom_hanniger]

For as quiet as Wonderland could be, it wasn't unusual to see someone staggering around looking like shit. The place was hard, and it's shiny and often ridiculous exterior tended to harbor darkness, releasing it out into the world with slow but constant breaths. It would burble and swell, rising up and over taking, twisting, breaking, destroying, and then just as quickly ebb back into nothing- leaving it's captives scrambling to right themselves and carry on.

Carry on to where was a good question, but you had to. Letting Wonderland swallow you whole you was too easy. There are a million ways a man can die, and you had five chances to explore them here. Maybe more. But no one had gone and come back.

In any case seeing someone staggering along wasn't unfamiliar. What was unfamiliar was the face. Tom didn't consider himself terribly social, but between having spent a fair bit of time in Wonderland, their populace being very small, and his girlfriend knowing practically everyone, it seemed surprising he couldn't place Adam as he went along, passing from the opposite direction.

Tom slowed down slightly, wondering for a moment whether or not to stop. Wondering whether or not he knew the person and whether or not it was his responsibility to engage them. He didn't and it wasn't, but maybe being with Jo was rubbing off on him. Maybe this guy was a newcomer? Maybe he needed help?

The residents had been kind to Tom when he'd first shown up, terrified and covered in blood, in shock from the danger of his own world and the sudden shift to (relative) safety. They'd dragged his sorry ass out of the caves (multiple times, not that he remembered), patched him up, and sent him in the right direction. That's what being part of a community was all about right? People helping each other. A foreign experience considering he'd been ostracized from his, but that was another long story for another day. And one he'd rather not tell or think about or have anything to do with, at all ever.

And so while Tom came to a slow stop, he kept his distance lest he startle the guy. He could appreciate the need for personal space, especially when you felt less than stellar. Adam looked worn. Exhausted. Tom could relate.

"Hey-" Not too abrasive, just announcing his presence. He'd ask if the guy was alright but he obviously wasn't. How to follow up, though, was a good question. Quickly, ask about something else.

"You haven't seen a blond girl around here, have you? Her name is Claire? About nineteen. Really nice?"

[halfwinchester]

Adam had passed so many similar hallways and doors already that they'd begun to blur in his mind, always feeling like the same corridor he'd started in... maybe because they were the one he'd started out in. He was starting to lose track. Had he even gone anywhere at all?

The place left him scrambling for a foothold not just because he shouldn't have been there, and not just because every once in a while he would see something from the corner of his eye he couldn’t catch or hear a whisper he couldn't identity, but because he wasn't alone. He wasn't alone, and he didn't know what to make of that. Angels didn't count as people, exactly, but there were others. People like Tom, who didn’t immediately jump at him, or burst into flame, or a myriad of other horrors.

They were just... there.

As the man approached from the opposite end of the hallway, Adam slowed down as well, hyper aware of the other's footfalls. He couldn’t quite figure out why his heart suddenly seized in his chest until they'd already passed each other; he shivered from the subtle displacement of air caused by their bodies and came to a stop. The split second impression of Tom's face hung like a murky portrait in his mind's eye, and he had to struggle to try and explain the wash of cold sensation that had gone through him.

His breath came quicker. He'd missed something. He didn't think he was ready for what.

Tom didn't give him a choice when he spoke, his voice striking Adam deep inside, a rung bell. He'd heard that voice in Hell. He knew it in his sleep. He knew from every opportunity he'd taken to replay his memories over and over again, looking for the moment when he'd gone wrong.

He stopped himself from bringing his hands to his head, but not every muscle in his body from tensing. He shivered again, harder this time.

Don't look.

[tom_hanniger]

It wasn't exactly the reaction he was expecting. Funny, a handful of weeks ago had him in a similar situation. Of course not to the extent Adam had endured and he had no idea, how could he, but finding yourself in this place- waking up to the illusion of safety- worn and tired and not quite right. It was familiar. Not just because Tom has lived it, but he'd seen it in the eyes of the patients in the state run facility he'd endured for seven years. He could see damage. He could see the way a man's eyes glazed over, how fast Adam's heart was beating.

He looked like a terrified rabbit tucked and frozen as he was along the side of the hall. Tom worried for a moment that if he spoke again it might make the guy's heart explode.

But he'd made the effort to engage him. Shrugging and leaving wouldn't sit right.

"Hey.." Softer this time, brows drawing with a quiet worry. And although it was a stupid question he found himself asking anyway. He could hear Jo in his head, scolding him for leaving the guy in the hall. She's picked him up, he should do the same.

"Can you hear me?"

Yes, Tom, he obviously could. Still, he hated the constant Are you ok? Are you ok? Are you, really, are you ok?? No. Obviously no why would you ask. But it was human nature. Ask a question you already know in order to gateway yourself into a conversation.

[halfwinchester]

He turned a fraction and glanced at the figure from the corner of his eye, though he didn't want to.

Dean.

He had barely met his brother, but suffering the way he’d been suffering had a funny way of drawing out the past until those last few days seemed to stretch an eternity in his mind, put on display for show in the Cage. Some things he could remember clearly, some he couldn't, but he remembered Dean‘s face. Nevertheless, seeing it looking the exact same after so long… The clock might as well have stopped ticking, the world stopping to a grinding halt. He'd seen things in the Cage, but not quite like this. Not this… pure and untainted.

"This isn’t happening." He murmured the words under his breath, too soft to be made out.

If only Tom could have seen inside Adam's head, he would have understood just how snarled his thoughts were, impossibly tangled with memories and hallucinations alike. A month in Wonderland had nothing on a month in Hell. And a year? Two years? A hundred years? A place of infinite chances to relive his greatest failures, including Sam and Dean?

Yes, he could hear Tom, and he'd heard him a million and one times before.

Bringing his hand to his eyes, he said, "You can't be real," louder than before, a mantra to himself.

[wingedavenger]

He was the night. Except when he wasn't.

In Wonderland, a full-time Batman wasn't exactly required. The number of exceptional people far outnumbered the average people, and there wasn't a person that could be filed under unremarkable. For John Blake, it worked in his favor. He didn't need to be out every night, even if that kind of made him more of a part-time superhero than even his predecessor.

On the bright side, it afforded Blake a chance to heal. After the last several events, the last thing he wanted to do was run around in a cowl and pretend he wasn't... exactly as moody as he really was. But time marched on, and eventually he required himself to get back into the practice of things.

It was late to be dressed in all black. By the time he turned the corner to see Adam, he was tired and stiff and not entirely expecting to run into anyone.

Dammit.

He stopped, immediately putting on the "presence" expected of the Batman, dipped onto his haunches with his cape pooled around him. It was a shame he wasn't Spider-Man, otherwise he would have made a quip about taking a wrong turn in Albuquerque.

"Good morning, citizen." He tried not to roll his eyes at himself. Honestly, what else could someone expect him to say in a situation like this? But it felt campy, and of course, if anyone ever found out, he'd never live it down.

[halfwinchester]

Forever ago, the young man Blake found in the corridor had been as sheltered and skeptical as any average person. "That can't exist" had been a regular thought in his mind before the monsters and the angels. The epitome of blissful ignorance.

Even after, he hadn't thought soulless angels were things that existed. Or Hell. Or fate. Or cage matches between two furious archangels. Or unimaginably unfair endings, the kind of Greek myths.

Considering that all of those things did exist and had happened, Adam could believe in an awful lot.

Except what he found when he turned his head saw the black figure poised there. Staring down Batman was a level of strange he still wasn't prepared for. And he stare he did, as blank as a wooden post.

[wingedavenger]

It wasn't often that he got such an... unimpressed reaction. Granted, Blake wasn't the type of person to want and extreme reaction — he'd much rather good people consider the Batman an ally — but to get nothing at all, he has to wonder a couple of things: first of all, who was this kid, and second, why did he look like this was the most rote and mundane moment he'd had all his life?

"Look like Hell," Yikes. Word choice, Blake, word choice. "You need an assist?" It's ground out in a low voice — something more gravely than Blake used from day-to-day — much of the emphasis even and unwavering. There was nothing to worry about here, aside from this guy's health, and that was probably the most obvious reason behind Blake not moving on.

He didn't remember the face, but there was something familiar there, wasn't there? Something about this kid just felt like it had some analog in John's life here in Wonderland, but he couldn't quite place it.