It's Been Too Long (Adam)

[Sam Winchester]

[sam]It had taken him a while to find any decent leads when he’d started. Once he’d gotten a lead, it had taken him longer to find one of several possible end points. He’d run into several monster-infested towns along the way, but eventually he’d reached Florida. Once he had crossed the border, he’d started scouring every city, every town he passed through on his way south. He was set on reaching the ocean before he would turn back. All the information, what little there was, that he had gathered had pointed to the state, but not any particular area.

He had skirted around Orlando and its bustling tourism business with the desperate hope that Adam had not stopped there. Personally, he was not excited when he thought of having to search the Magic Kingdom for his brother. He’d spent a week in Tampa with nothing to show for it and had trooped further south as a result. When he hit Miami, he started the search right away.

It took him the better part of three days before he caught a glimpse of Adam. It was a stroke of luck and Sam wasn’t going to question it. When Adam disappeared around a corner a block away from Sam’s position, he had a moment where he’d freaked, worrying that he’d already lost him. It had taken him the whole night to track him down again.

How Adam had afforded a motel room, Sam had no idea. And he didn’t particularly care at this point. He slept for a few hours in his car outside of the room, so that he didn’t look like shit when he did knock on the door. Mid-morning, he got out of his car and found himself knocking on the pitiful door. “Adam?”[/sam]

[Adam Milligan]

[adam]Adam was having a bad day. A bad week, really. He'd fled Key West after Letty had finished repairing his nose but had only gotten as far as Miami before his piece of shit car had broken down. So now he was staying in a craphole motel and making fake IDs for three hundred bucks a pop while he tried to put together enough cash for a decent car. He could steal one, but the one thing that Adam absolutely could not afford was to get picked up by the cops, even for 24 hours. Quite apart from the high likelihood that he would freak the fuck out and end up in a psych ward somewhere, if they ran his prints they'd find out that he was dead and that would lead to a world of troubles that Adam wasn't prepared to deal with.

So he stuck to low-risk crimes like the baggage storage at airports (which he couldn't do here in Miami, the security on the Miami airport was way better than the ones out in the sticks) and selling mediocre fake drivers licenses to teenagers and illegal immigrants. He was getting close to the eight grand that he'd mentally set as his goal--enough for a reasonable used car off of Craigslist plus taking it to a mechanic to get a good once-over, plus enough pills and other equipment to travel on for a while. It was hard to get ahead, though, the black market price of antipsychotics was brutal.

When he heard somebody call his name, his real name and not 'Allen', which was what his curent ID said, Adam picked up a gun and crept to the door, peeking out not through the peephole but around the edge of the closed curtains. When he saw his brother there all the breath rushed out of him and he fumbled the gun trying to get the door unlocked and pulled open fast enough.

"Sam." Adam was shirtless, his body now splotched with Enochian tattoos that protected him from the sight of angels and demons, skinny in a way that was unhealthy even for his narrow build. He looked older, his face prematurely careworn, marked with lines that shouldn't be there. And even as he reached out and caught his brother's wrist, pulld him forward into the room he was asking, "Is everything okay? Are you in trouble?"[/adam]

[Sam Winchester]

[sam]There was movement at the window and then the door was opening. Adam was there, alive and far too skinny for Sam's liking. The alive part was key. It lifted a weight off his shoulders, a constant nagging worry. Once inside, with the door firmly shut behind him, he stepped back to take a good look at his brother. Without thinking about it, his fingers traced one of the symbols inked into his pale skin. Resolve hardened within him.

"I'm fine. No trouble. I'm here because I'm worried about you. Are you okay, Adam? I wasn't there when you came back and I'm sorry for that. But I am here now. I mean, if you want me to stay." Uncertainty flared for a moment. He didn't want to force his presence on his brother. But he had no intention of leaving now that he'd seen the condition he was in.[/sam]

[Adam Milligan]

[adam]Once Sam was in the room, Adam locked the door swiftly behind him, throwing not just the chain lock but also the extra bar-bolt that he'd installed himself. As soon as that was done, though, he backed off quick and clumsy, looking confused. "No. Fuck, no. Dammit. Got to hoping."

He turned his back on Sam and headed over to the bed. Pulled on a dirty thermal and sat down, rattled open the nightstand drawer and pulled open a zippered pouch. "Not there," he muttered. "No hoping. No hoping." He pulled out his pipe and a baggie of pot, started packing a bowl and doing his damnedest to ignore the hallucination of his brother.[/adam]

[Sam Winchester]

[sam]Confusion flitted through him and he didn't pursue Adam at first, trying to work through what was happening. Recognition and understanding follow in quick succession and he was across the room in two steps. He caught his brother's hands, forcing him to stop what he was doing. "No, Adam. I'm real. Shit. That's what they say, too, isn't it?"

He knew what the hallucinations could be like, but it had taken an outside force for him to really break his. It had taken Dean. And his injured hand. There was no way in hell Sam was about to start slicing up his brother and Adam didn't have any injuries on him to begin with. "Fuck. Adam, how can I prove it to you?" Desperation rose in him. "Cas. I was sent by Castiel. I didn't even know you'd been brought back. How long were you without me?" [/sam]

[Adam Milligan]

[adam]His hands fumbled on the pipe, dropping it to the floor with a quiet thunk. His breath started coming fast and shallow, he refused to look directly at Sam, though he could see his hands in his peripheral vision. "Castiel. That bastard." A quiet moment. "March. The ides of March. Like the anti-Caesar. 'This dreadful night...thunders, lightens, opens graves and roars as doth the lion in the Capitol.'" A long shudder, his head stayed down. "Fucking Michael. Always loved the war stuff."[/adam]

[Sam Winchester]

[sam]"Adam. Look at me." His voice was calm and low, even as he fought down his concern. "I can promise that Castiel isn't with me, as far as I know." He didn't know how to respond to the stuff about Michael, but he knew he had to get Adam to calm down. "You're back now. Michael can't touch you. Lucifer can't touch you. And I'm not going to let anyone else touch you without your express permission." At least, he hoped the first parts were true. Cas's unintentional slip up rang in the back of his mind like a warning.[/sam]

[Adam Milligan]

[adam]Flinching, his face screwed up like he was waiting for it to hurt, Adam raised his head. He looked at Sam like he was daring him to attack. "You aren't real." A beat. "You're real." Another. "I didn't know where to find you. Or how. I wasn't sure I could, or should. I just..."

It trailed off, Adam looked away again and started repacking his pot bag with shaking hands, then lit a cigarette with a lighter that he'd bought (and paid actual money for) because it was just a little too appropriate to his current mindset. "They left me there. They pulled you out and left me behind. Alone with them, and they were angry. So fuckin' angry." He was practically whispering, back to sounding like maybe he was talking to himself and not Sam. "I was alone with them for...so long. Centuries. And then I was here. Real. It's been too long, Sam. I don't remember how to be real. My Real is broken."[/adam]

[Sam Winchester]

[sam]His heart broke just listening to Adam. "Then I will be real for both of us until you can either remember or learn it. Okay?" That was all he had, and even his version of 'real' was a little shaky. No. Sam willed that thought away. He couldn't let himself be shaky, not if he was going to ask his brother to depend on him so thoroughly. He would figure it out and he would keep them both as sane as he could. "They should have pulled you out first. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." For leaving him, for being pulled out without him. A part of him resented Castiel now that he'd seen the product of the world's negligence. And that wasn't fair either.[/sam]

[Adam Milligan]

[adam]He looked up sharply. "Why? Why would you stick around? I'm just the spare, it's all I've ever been. S'why they left me down there, wasn't like there was any point bringing me out. Don't know why they did it now. I'm just, what, an extra. Last choice." He didn't even realize that this was a mantra that Lucifer and Michael had hammered into him. He didn't know that it was their words and sentiments he was repeating, to him it felt like nothing but simple logic. If there'd been anything about him that mattered, they wouldn't have left him in the Cage for so long after they got Sam out. Therefore, how important could he be? He was the supernatural equivalent of keeping a rubber donut in the trunk.[/adam]

[Sam Winchester]

[sam]Taken aback at first, Sam frowned. "Wrong. You aren't just a spare. I know that during the whole apocalypse thing you were treated as-as something to be used. But you aren't. You aren't just a replacement for Dean or me or anyone. You are you. And I want to stay with you, because I give a damn about you. I'm pissed as all hell that I didn't know. I just...I assumed, but I didn't know. If anything, you should be mad at me, for failing to find you sooner." Sam caught his shoulders. "You were brought back for a reason, I'm sure of it. But if I can prevent it, if I can get you out of whatever they want from you, I will. I swear it, Adam."[/sam]

[Adam Milligan]

[adam]Gently, like he was trying not to hurt Sam's feelings, "That's a nice thought, but it doesn't really hold up. If I was really important, to you or anybody else, I wouldn't have been left alone down there for so long. They got you out and then I wasn't worth the effort." He took a hard drag of his cigarette. "I don't blame you. It's just how it is. Anyway, you don't have to do anything if you don't want. It's not your job to make up for shit."[/adam]

[Sam Winchester]

[sam]Shame flooded him, and he wanted to protest Adam's words, but the protest died in his throat. He felt that Adam was right. If he truly cared, why hadn't he done more when he'd gotten out? The excuse that he hadn't remembered Hell for months didn't fly, because he remembered falling with Adam-Michael. He should have known. "I want to, though. You shouldn't feel like you are unimportant. At the very least, I don't want you to think I don't care. I do. And I want to stick around and help however I can."[/sam]

[Adam Milligan]

[adam]Adam rubbed the heel of his hand across his eyes, the thought occurred to him that if later it turned out this was an incredibly vivid hallucination he was going to be incredibly disappointed.

And even so he asked, "How have you been doing? Are you hunting again?" Sam had always sworn he wouldn't go back to it if he ever had the choice again, but Adam thought that probably hadn't held.[/adam]

[Sam Winchester]

[sam]Shame-faced, Sam dropped his gaze. "Yeah, I'm back to hunting." He didn't make any excuses for it, because there were none to make. "I've been holding up fairly well, all things considered. Dean and I aren't talking currently, which is why he isn't here." At least he could make sure Adam didn't have to worry about the eldest Winchester suddenly showing up. "Things just seem to be pretty crazy worldwide. Ran into a shifter a couple weeks back who was convinced I'll rolled into town to kill him. Honestly, I didn't know he was there until he attacked me." He'd been in Nashville to do a simple salt and burn and hadn't expected anyone to recognize him, much less attack him.[/sam]