entrancelogs | OPEN | there's a place i have gone

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OPEN | there's a place i have gone

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.)}

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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?"

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."

"No. No, I can't fix that."

Whether or not that claim was true didn't make a difference to her. One look at him was enough to tell that whatever had happened, Hell was most certainly where he'd been. Figuratively or literally, it didn't much matter. Something had ruined him; he had the look of someone who had been pushed well past their breaking point and had nothing even resembling hope left.

She'd met enough broken souls to know one on sight.

"I'm really here, though. Promise." She'd have reached her hand out to him if she wasn't so sure it would spook him. "I'm Jo."

There wasn't anything left to say, then, was there? The only thing that mattered, the only thing that made a difference, was what he had left to suffer and how badly. Everything else was just ambient noise in the background, inconsequential.

Even her and her state of being--how real she was, or how fake she was--possessed a short-lived importance in comparison to what Adam feared he'd find if he dug too deeply into his own head.

"You know the thing about people who make the most promises," he answered, "is that they break them the most." The relaxed manner in which he tried to speak the words had to be the most false thing about their conversation. Getting the words themselves out was easy if it meant he could protect himself from her, keep a barrier between her and the raw, red welts on his soul.

He didn't think to try giving his own name. He'd forgotten the last time it'd mattered to have one.

She frowned, eyebrows knitting together as she considered the weight of that remark. Whoever he was, wherever he'd been before this place, it was more than just a little sad if he really believed that -- and given what he looked like and how his shoulders hung, she had every reason to believe that he did.

"Well, I don't," she informed him matter-of-factly, though she didn't advance on him. He already looked like he was prepared to bolt. She didn't want to startle him any further. Whatever it was that was broken in him didn't need any help. He was unsettled enough already.

"What's your name? You seemed like you were looking for someone." Or something. Whatever the case, his wandering didn't seem entirely aimless, but maybe that was just because she wanted to be able to help him so badly.

That's what they always say, he thought. In Hell, there was nothing but the endless parade of human ugliness on display, nothing but broken promises and broken hopes. What makes you so special?

And what made him so special, that he could die, be brought back, fall from Heaven into Hell, be brought back again, and end up here where angels wanted to put him on his feet and set him loose? What had he done to deserve becoming a human wind-up toy without any direction or any support to hold on to? The answer was that he hadn't done anything, because the world wasn't fair, and good people bore burdens heavier than the worst people. And if angels didn't keep their promises, nobody else had to, certainly not strange faces he'd never met before.

Adam squeezed the bannister tight, tension rippling in his forearm. A shake of his head rebuffed her question before she could ask.

"Everybody I care about is dead." A pause. "So no."

The admission was a challenge in its own way, a test to see what kind of person he was dealing with.

With that said, not even Adam was sure if he was capable of answering her other question. Admitting that his life had come crashing down didn't take thought; he'd been locked in the Cage, and the wounds from that were on public display every second, every breath. But even so innocent a question as his own name brought him up short. He didn't know what he was was anymore, let alone who.

His reticence continued until it seemed unlikely he'd acknowledge what she'd asked, but he surprised himself by adding one more word into the mix: "Adam."

Hard to believe he'd been that person once. His old life felt like a story someone had read to him in a dream.

Edited 2013-11-01 06:36 (UTC)

"Adam," she echoed with a decided frown, trying her damnedest to get a glimpse of whatever was going on behind those avoidant eyes of his. She could barely engage him in conversation, let alone hold his attention. If he needed help, and she was determined to stick by her initial appraisal and say that he did, it didn't seem like there was a whole lot she could do unless he gave her the chance.

"Come on." She jerked her head towards the hallway behind him. "Do you have a room yet? Somewhere you can relax? You really--"

She sighed, unsure of how to say this in a way that wouldn't sound like she was belittling or coddling him. Between Sam and Tom, she'd learned that there was a fine line between caring and coddling and made great efforts not to cross it.

"You just don't look like you should be on your feet right now."

At the suggestion he go back to the room, Adam's head jerked. "No," he intoned before he could help himself.

He'd been in the room awhile, if memory served. Like a carnival attraction that people kept on visiting. The more he thought on those rare and fragmented moments of consciousness, the less he liked them. He didn't need any more people putting him to bed, angel or not. Adam didn't necessarily want to be awake and struggling to stay on his feet like this, either, but... He'd dragged himself this far on his own, under his own direction. Whatever happened, he didn't want someone like Castiel swooping in to rearrange everything to his liking again, just because he could and because Adam couldn't resist.

Maybe resisting now didn't mean anything. He could still try to find his own way.

"I don't know where I was," he tried again, by way of explanation. "I don't want to go back there."

He didn't doubt her assessment, though. If Adam looked even close to how he felt, then it would be a god-given miracle he was even alive.

"What are dead people supposed to look like?"

"I'm not sure."

It was an odd question all on its own, but one that struck a chord with her. It reminded of her own arrival: bloodied and torn to shreds but patched up just enough, somehow, to stumble her way towards the mansion and reach out to the network for help. She'd been standing. Her legs had been working. It had been an improvement over the situation she remembered being in before she got here, but that didn't change the fact that she'd been dead. Was still dead. She wasn't the only member of that club here, either.

"No different from anyone else, I don't think. Not here, anyway. Everyone looks more or less the same."

But he had died... again. A person didn't end up in Lucifer's Cage and still be "alive" in the conventional sense; with that in mind, he couldn't imagine things would change all that much whether he was standing up or lying prone in bed. If the angels hadn't brought him back, if there was even a chance this was still the pit...

"Well, dead people don't need to worry about their health." That said, Adam turned back toward the stairs. His vision was playing tricks on him: the downward descent looked like a staircase leading into some dark, indecipherable tunnel, and the first step he took felt heavy and uncoordinated after being paused in one place for so long.

If he were being absolutely honest, Adam didn't feel all that safe on his feet, either, but that wasn't about to stop him. Doing nothing and waiting with bated breath for the other shoe to drop felt like the worst option he could choose.

"Look, that's not-- that's not necessarily true."

She braced both hands against her hips, pursing her lips as she watched him prepare to head off down the stairs, though it looked like he was just as unsteady as she'd guessed he might be. It wasn't her place to reach out and detain him, but she wasn't going to just let him slip away without saying something.

"Not everyone here is dead, but-- I am. Except in this place, I'm as alive as anyone else." She still wasn't sure how that worked, but that seemed to be the case. She needed to sleep and eat and look after herself the same as anyone else. Same went for Ellen, and the same went for Tom -- if he was, indeed, dead. They still weren't sure on that front. "Are you... I mean, you, too?"

"What's not?" he asked without looking at her.

What wasn't necessarily true? All those years in Hell weren't necessarily true? That everything that felt like it was crushing him from the inside out wasn't true? Quite the convincing lies, if that was the case. If only. He could wish. Except Lucifer's Cage had happened. Perhaps it was still happening, and even if it wasn't...

The claim to be dead got Adam to raise his head and glance at her, but the question (Are you, too?) earned a look of real consideration. How could people be asking him that? How? He was being held together by mere threads, but she was still asking. How did he begin to put into words that he wasn't really dead in the unfeeling sense, that he could still feel every torment Hell had to give him, but he wasn't really alive, either, his life as a normal person long voided.

Adam couldn't even begin to think of the words. Just the thought was enough to hurt, claws digging into his mind.

"Hell," was all he said, simply put. He was whatever Hell made people like him.

She wouldn't have blamed him if he had assumed that everyone here was, in some way, like him. When she'd first arrived, it had been difficult to accept anything other than the so-called fact that this must have been some kind of afterlife, strange and colorful and whimsical and, at the same time, potentially horrifying as it may have been. Dean had talked her around quickly, but she'd second-guessed for ages, wondered if maybe she'd imagined him and Castiel and Sam and everyone else who showed up here that had ever meant anything to her. Either everyone else was dead, or she had simply projected them on this place, but accepting that they were real--

Well. It had taken a few days.

"Hell," she echoed softly, half-questioning. "You were in Hell?"

Suddenly, his behavior made a lot more sense.

At her questions, Adam just looked back at her, letting the silence speak for itself.

Before he'd found out that angels existed, he would have laughed Hell off as a poor joke, but here was yet another person who hadn't laughed. He was glad for it. Adam couldn't say how he was holding himself up as it was; if he had to suffer someone passing off all those years as the joke they seemed to be, he didn't think he'd be able to stand it.

Wasn't that a crazy thought all on its own? That he would be dealing with people again, not merely creatures of light and wrath.

"You sure it's past tense?" Because truthfully, Adam wasn't.

"I'm sure."

Her voice was as quiet as it was firm, resolved. She may not have had all the answers when it came to Wonderland, but there were a few things she knew for certain. It may not have always been pleasant, but Wonderland was not Hell.

"When I got here, I wasn't convinced, either. I didn't know if it was Heaven or Hell, but-- it's been awhile now. It took time, but this isn't any kind of afterlife. Not everyone here is dead, and I don't think anyone is here expressly to be punished. It's not paradise, either, it's just-- it's like home, that way. Some good. Some bad. No absolutes."

He hadn't meant for her to answer the question (who could tell him what was wrong inside his own head?), but she sure sounded confident about it, and in turn that made Adam agitated for no good reason besides the fact that everything about Heaven and home had already gone up in smoke for him.

Was he supposed to be happy? Was he supposed to cry? Was he supposed to be afraid? What then, if not what he'd been doing for the past dismal stretch of time? What?

"Well, I'm not," he said. "Down there is a pretty big absolute."

How could she claim he was free so easily when not even the angels had--

The angels. That was right. Their presence was something he was sure about, and everything tied back to them somehow. Adam looked at her with a new wariness. "It has something to do with them, doesn't it? Angels."

"I don't think so. I did, at first. It made sense, considering how powerful they are." Not to mention their tendency to grab hold of people and do whatever they damn well pleased without permission. Except for taking someone as a vessel, of course. That, they needed permission for. And wasn't that what every awful thing in the last few months before she'd come here had boiled down to?

"But there are a few here. Castiel, Gabriel. They're stuck like everyone else. I don't think they'd cage themselves, and even if it were other angels who were responsible, I don't think they'd be powerful enough to keep their own kind held like this."

She paused, worrying at her lower lip as she tilted her head to one side, curious. "You know about angels? I mean-- beyond just believing that they exist."

She had to know what angels were--what they were really like, more to the point--to be able to say that. She had to believe in them. Right? A normal, unaffected person wouldn't be able to straight-up answer a question like that and know their names without knowing what they were. Castiel was a name that particularly resonated with Adam, as well. Castiel wasn't just a figment of his imagination.

Adam pressed his lips tight together, taking what she said and thinking it over in slow, ponderous circles. Castiel... Gabriel. Angels stuck in a place they couldn't escape from? The latter half of the thought didn't add up, at least not to him, not after waking up from the Cage.

Judging him on his knowledge of angels was ironic, given that he'd spent the greater part of his existence in the presence of two. He peeled his gaze away from the far wall to meet her eyes, unafraid of the truth. The truth had already done all it could to hurt him.

"I should. They brought me back to help end the world and then sent me to Hell," he said. "If they didn't bring me back again, then why am I here?"

He kept asking the question, expecting a different answer. The definition of insanity.

She didn't seem to be as surprised by that particular truth as one might have expected her to be. For a moment, she looked mildly taken aback, but it passed. If he had been brought back by the angels, he wouldn't have been the first person she knew that had happened to. Little did she know, it was something of a Winchester family tradition. She, too, had been brought back, or perhaps simply rerouted between her death and going to heaven, but she was pretty sure that had been without angelic intervention.

"Sounds like you have a lot in common with some friends of mine," she told him, not unsympathetically. What else could be said? She knew firsthand just how much having the natural order disturbed could screw with you, mess with your head. Knowing she was dead and that everyone had moved on without her, that she wasn't supposed to be here had done a number on her head already, and that was without the involvement of Hell.

Christ.

"I don't know why you're here. I don't know why I'm here, either, but I'm kind of okay with getting a second chance. Looks like you're getting one, too."

"Why, did they get caught up in the Apocalypse, too?" He snorted.

Had they also done hard time in the pit because they'd been lied to with empty promises? Some friends, if so. If there were other gullible souls out there like him, hard to imagine they were in any better state. Maybe she was trying to tell him that this was the part of Hell where people who'd made shitty mistakes got to relive their greatest hits with an audience. Like Heaven, only without the good parts.

Adam didn't look particularly overjoyed to have someone suggest he was looking down the barrel of a second chance. A third chance, technically.

I'm not. He couldn't say it. Too much effort to point out to a strange figure in a strange place that he was done with chances.

"More common than you might think." Apparently, anyway. She wouldn't have thought so, but here there were, and she was trying her hardest not to be reactive, not to come off as stunned or shocked or anything that might rub him the wrong way or set him off. He seemed like it wouldn't take much to do so in his current state. She would stay calm. Careful.

"I won't ask you what happened. Can't imagine it's something you want to talk about at all, least of all with a stranger, but- whatever did happen, there are people here you can talk to. They'll get it."

Adam expression didn't change at all, stuck in a kind of flat, indecipherable stare. Some strange woman talking to him about life, death, and the Apocalypse didn't mean anything, it didn't mean anything. Believing otherwise meant believing that the Cage was in the past and that what she was saying was a real, concrete possibility.

He tilted his head just a touch, a questioning gesture at the same time that her assurances tapped into a deep vein of cynicism.

"Who?" he demanded? "The angels? The ones who started all of this?"

Who else could possibly understand what he'd gone through? Who could explain to him what was happening and why his soul felt like it was trying to devour itself like a snake eating its tail? If anyone had all the answers, Adam had yet to meet them.

She shook her head. No, not the angels. Even if he were comfortable talking to them, the angels weren't always the best people to go to if you were looking for perspective. Gabriel seemed to be the most human of them, and for him she might make an exception, but she also wouldn't wish him on a stranger. Some days were better than others, with him.

"No. Just friends. Their names are Sam and Dean. They--"

She couldn't come right out and say it, couldn't just blurt out that they had both been to Hell in their own time, been through death and found themselves pulled back out the other side, almost like she had -- except they got second chances. Second, and third, and fourth. She was just caught in limbo.

"They've been through a lot, too." More than she ever thought possible. A lot had happened in her absence. "They'll understand."

Edited 2013-12-05 17:02 (UTC)

No. No fucking way. His eyes narrowed.

"Sam and Dean?" he repeated, and there was no mistaking the flash in his eyes for anything else: he knew those names, and with them came a violent, red-flood of emotion. He'd never forget those names. His voice rose with twice the heat and volume. "Sam and Dean Winchester?"

He wasn't sure what he felt. Anger? Surprise? Resignation? Adam wanted to demand how she knew those names. Castiel had been one thing, but this person, too? Why did everything keep coming back to them? It wasn't the first time he'd had to face his brothers in the Cage, who they were, what they'd done, but this was different.

This felt... worse. Sharper and more bitter.

Coming from a stranger, even a phantom born of his own imagination, his brothers' understanding was a terrible joke being thrown back in his face.

"You've heard of them." It could have easily been a playful quip, but it wasn't -- instead, she sounded uncertain, worried that she'd said the wrong thing entirely and wondering if she'd somehow just managed to set off some horrible chain reaction without even trying. The mere mention of their names seemed to spark something in him. Should she really have been all that surprised? They had a lot of enemies, sure, but--

It made her wonder exactly who he was.

"How do you know them?"

OPEN | there's a place i have gone

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Sort of back from hiatus, apologies! <3

NO WORRIES.

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