“What the sh*t is this, Sera?” Adam stared at the ball of light and feathers being held out to him. It was barely big enough to fit in both his palms. The High Seraph settled the ball in his hands with a cool look on her usually impassive face.
“Your new ward,” Sera said, linking her arms behind her back. “An exorcist.”
“I thought that Michael dick did all of that?” He didn’t like the fuzzy warmth coming off the ball in his hands. It swirled in tones of gray.
“Lord Michael is busy with more important things at the moment.” The Seraph turned away from him and started to walk away. “You will care for this new angel and if you prove capable, you’ll be granted a higher position among the exorcists.”
Adam opened his mouth to argue but when he looked up he was completely alone in the meeting room. Irritation simmered low in his blood. This was so not f*cking fair. He had done his time while he was alive being a parent, he wasn’t doing this sh*t here. Not when most of his kids either hated him or ended up in Hell. Those in Heaven blamed him for their siblings being sentenced to eternal damnation and wanted nothing to do with him. Why the f*ck would anyone give him another being to raise?
In his hands the ball of light and feathers lifted in a slow spin. He winced at the sudden increase of brightness and squinted to see what was happening. Before he knew it there was a baby resting in his hands. A little girl with gray…everything. Adam wrinkled his nose at the new angel and held her away from him. This was going to be his own personal Hell.
Vagatha was a nightmare. Screaming and crying the moment he left her alone, never sleeping as angels didn’t need to like mortal souls. Adam didn’t know how many times he stepped outside the glass front doors onto the porch to shout at the ocean at his doorstep. None of his children had been this bad. There wasn’t a moment of peace. The only time the baby exorcist would shut up was when she was either eating or tucked in his arms. f*ck, he could only get sleep when she was coddled in his wings. If he could die a second time, this was going to do it.
Before this punishment was set upon him, he used to go out with Lute and the other exorcists every other night or jam out on his guitar all day. He never had a moment to himself anymore. The golden guitar was gathering dust in the living room and his best friend laughed in his face about his fate when he complained to her. Everything revolved around the little hellion he was forced to take care of.
“What’re you looking at?” Adam asked the baby. Vaggie was on the counter in a seat while he made them dinner. Wide gray and silver eyes stared at him. “It only cooks so fast.” The baby stuck her thumb in her mouth with a gurgle of pure gibberish. “Yeah, yeah, f*ck you too.”
Little wings beat excitedly against her highchair the moment he put her in it. These things were certainly more convenient than when he had kids but that didn’t mean he was enjoying this any. He fixed the tray to the chair and set out the cooked fish and fresh cut fruit. Then he dropped onto the barstool slightly pulled away from the island to eat his own dinner. Vaggie giggled and squished the fruit under her fists. Adam rolled his eyes while snapping his fingers to bring her water cup over from the counter. He loathed how used to the routine he was.
Even worse was bathtime. He wrinkled his nose at the baby girl trying to drink the bathwater but ignored it to finish cleaning her wings. Feathers littered the water that she was soon reaching for and shoving them back towards his face. This was also a routine he had become horribly familiar with. Once Vaggie was clean and dry, it was usually about the time Adam tended to laze around in the bedroom while she played on the bed next to him.
Gentle music was playing from the radio in the open windowsill. Golden sunlight filled the room with the setting sun over the soothing ocean outside. Adam had his arms crossed under his head as he lay on one side of his bed and his legs spread. One wing was left to drape over the floor while the second covered the other side of the bed. Vaggie was entertaining herself next to him. Giggling and babbling at him as she pulled at his feathers or played with the toys she had. In a couple hours he would be going to sleep and she would bury herself into his side under his wing. She had learned to sleep when he did but he hadn’t been able to get her to do so in her crib. It had to be with him.
As the light in the room started to dim, the baby exorcist crawled over to him. She looked at him with those wide gray eyes and smiled with her four little teeth. Adam only uncrossed his arms and sat up. Without a sound he swept her up in one arm to pull back the covers before falling back on the bed. The quiet ‘ada’ had him squeezing his eyes shut with a heavy sigh. He lifted a hand to smooth down the girl’s hair and wings, telling himself that it was only so they didn’t get in his mouth during the night. Not because she enjoyed it, most certainly f*cking not.
The little angel spawn was soon mobile, crawling and learning to fly. Adam had very quickly learned to put up netting around his ocean home to avoid Vaggie going where she shouldn’t and did his best to block off places he didn’t need her going. She was fascinated with his guitar and he soon found himself playing it with her in his lap. Slowly teaching her as she learned all these other important things. Near constantly she was babbling and forming words to talk. Before he knew it she was walking, trailing him everywhere. It was when he started taking her out into the Silver City.
It frightened her at first. All the newness. The beach house was far quieter than the city and the only other person Vaggie knew was Lute. Adam took her out on meet-ups with his best friend now. She always clung to his side and most often hid under his tucked wings. It was irritating at first but at some point he simply grew used to her, holding her up with his arm beneath whatever wing she had chosen.
“Daddy!” Vaggie’s shriek had Adam looking up from his guitar. The little exorcist was running across the sand towards him with something in her hands. “Look what I found!”
“A crab?” He asked, raising an eyebrow at the struggling creature. Claws snapped at them.
“Can I keep him?” Pleading gray and silver eyes stared at him. She had her wings tucked under her arms like he kept his. “Please? I’ll take care of him, I promise!”
“Do you even know what it needs?”
“Er…” Vaggie glanced down at the struggling crab. “Seaweed?”
The reply had him snorting. “No, baby,” he replied, reaching out to take the crab from her. “We don’t have the means to care for it.” She tugged the poor crab close to her chest with a trembling bottom lip, tears filling her eyes. “Vags, you can still play with it out here.”
“But-but I want him,” she cried.
“We can get a pet,” Adam said, almost immediately regretting it, “but it can’t be an animal you found.”
“Can it be a turtle?”
Adam glared at the alligator snapping turtle his daughter dragged out of a mucky pond in the pet store on the complete opposite side of Heaven. The thing was only the size of her hand but that didn’t mean it wouldn’t get bigger. Vaggie was covered in filth but held up the turtle with a large grin. He prayed for patience as he listened to the angel explain how to set up a tank for the turtle and how to care for it. Obviously as it got bigger it would need a pond but that was way down the line. He already hated this.
Vaggie loved that stupid f*cking turtle. The tank had been placed in the living room and she spent hours watching Randy swim around. She tended to feed it by hand no matter how many times he warned her against it. It didn’t take long before she was begging him to redecorate her room with a turtle theme and to create every book imaginable so she could read about the creatures. And, yeah, it was nice that she was this interested in learning about something but, f*ck, come on! He was going to start losing feathers from sheer annoyance at the constant talk about turtles.
When the girl started school - or whatever counted since he had never been - Adam was given back most of his days. It immediately had him back in exorcist training to make up for lost time or in meetings with Sera. And for whatever reason, he wasn’t quite falling back into it like he thought he would. f*ck, he was actually struggling. Not only the physical activity after who knows how many years without but the grating meetings that he had no use sitting in on. Don’t get him started on when he was allowed to join in the first Extermination after his time off. It was f*cking torture. The best part of the day was going home after picking up Vaggie and being able to forget about work for the night.
The moment Vaggie learned that he was an exorcist she was jumping at the opportunity to start her own training. Especially when Lute let it slip that he was up for a promotion from head exorcist of a team to commanding the entire legion. (He was struggling with the training Michael was putting him through.) It had him sighing but doing nothing to discourage her. This was her divine purpose or whatever. Adam simply told Lute to go easy on her when his best friend agreed to start teaching her years too early.
“I’m surprised at how efficient you have been, Adam,” Sera said, standing before him in the same meeting room that he had been given this task. “I’ve spoken with Michael about your place as Head Exorcist and he agrees that you’re ready. You no longer have to care for the exorcist.”
“Uh, yeah, cool.” Adam refused to fidget and held the Seraph’s gaze through his mask. “So, no more f*ckin’ training? I’m free?”
“Yes, Adam.”
That’s all he needed to know. With a wave to Sera, he turned to leave the meeting room. Outside in the hall Vaggie had been waiting for him so they could get lunch before heading home but there was no one when he stepped out. Adam searched the halls of the High Council building for his daughter without any luck. Their usual places in the city were empty of any sign and soon he was heading home in the hopes she had simply gotten bored.
What he found was Vaggie dragging a bag off the porch with Randy on a leash. The turtle had a bored look on his face as he basked in the warm sun waiting for the girl to finish. Adam stared at her for a long moment, unsure on what she was doing. If she wanted to take the turtle on a trip then why not just f*cking ask like she usually did?
“What, uh, what’re you doing, Vags?” He finally asked, startling the teenager into dropping the bag.
“Leaving,” she muttered.
“Uh-huh, sure, what’re you really doing?”
“Since I’ve only been some sort of stupid task for you,” Vaggie grabbed the straps of the bag with more aggression than necessary, “I’m taking myself out of your life. Since you’re done with me and all. You got your f*ckin’ promotion. Congratulations, padre.”
Adam blinked at her. “You heard that?” He thought for sure those meeting rooms were soundproof. “Vags, you’re taking that out of context.”
“Yeah?” The girl whirled around with a fierce glare on her face. “I’ve always been a burden to you! This just proves that you never cared. That it was all for your own gain.” She hooked the bag over her shoulders between her wings and stooped down to pick up Randy. “Just leave me alone, Adam.”
“Hey, wait a goddamn minute!” He took a step towards her but was met with her taking to the air. “I swear to God, Vagatha, you get back down here! Let me f*cking explain.”
“f*ck off.”
The in-training exorcist took off in the direction of the city. Adam kicked the stairs of the porch with a frustrated shout but made no move to go after her. If she truly wanted to leave then she was old enough to do so. He would give her a few days to calm down - probably at one of her friends’ places - before trying to talk about this again. No way in f*cking Hell was he leaving things like this.
It took a week and a half to speak to Vaggie again. She refused to hear him out and ended the conversation before it could start by slamming the door in his face. Adam didn’t know what to do and he sure as f*ck couldn’t ask Lute or Sera for help. The empty house he now had was hard to stomach. He…he missed his daughter.
Things might have gotten away from him in the next couple years but nothing compared to those months after watching Lute mutilate his daughter for abandoning her post. He refused to speak to her. Locked himself away in a too empty house and f*cking prayed that Vaggie wasn’t dead. Their relationship wasn’t quite the same after that. Not when she showed no remorse for her actions and even got on his case about how much he let it bother him. They were soldiers, she told him, not children. Told him to f*cking act like it instead of being a bitch about the loss of one exorcist.
At some point in the first couple weeks of Vaggie being gone Adam dragged himself off to her empty apartment. There wasn't a doubt in his mind that that stupid f*cking turtle was around there somewhere and no matter how sh*tty he felt, he couldn't let the thing be on his own. That didn't mean he was any happier when Randy nearly took off a finger as he dragged him out of the bathtub and back home.
It wasn’t until Adam saw Lilith on the beach that he knew the bitch was in Heaven. He was two steps away from confronting her when he thought better of it and went to Sera instead. Apparently a deal had been made in his name. His ex-wife got to stay in Heaven to keep her demons from uprising. She got luxury and paradise while her people were none the wiser, blind to her letting them be slaughtered in exchange. He didn’t give a single sh*t about Hell or their residents. What he didn’t like was that c*nt being on his beach, f*cking mocking him.
The shortened timeline for Exterminations gave him a twisted sort of enjoyment. Not only because those f*ckers down in Hell deserved everything coming to them but because they were the reason his daughter f*cking abandoned Heaven. He had no sympathy for filth that already f*cked up their chances of eternal peace. They had made their choices. Some of which that royally f*cked over the good people that made it to Heaven.
Seeing Vaggie in the Silver City had Adam swinging rather violently between relief and rage. His daughter was alive and safe but she was also fallen and a sinner. It was Lute that kept him from making a scene. Held him back by his robe collar and spoke to him like he was a child about not revealing one of the best kept secrets of Heaven. It finally tipped him fully into rage. Simmering in his blood as he confronted Vaggie and burned through the guilt at how he treated her. Part of it still thrived during the trial of Charlie Morningstar. He had little regret about giving up the game to the entire High Council but could have drowned in it when he outed Vaggie to her girlfriend.
In that month leading up to the Extermination, he couldn’t decide what he felt about it all. Adam still hadn’t come to a conclusion as he ordered his exorcists to not kill Vaggie before sending them through the portal. It was impossible to have a coherent f*cking thought in the chaos that this fight turned out to be. A prideful bastard tried to take him on and was sent running with his tail between his legs like a coward then he would have been shot from the sky if he hadn’t destroyed the zeppelin coming towards him. That led to him facing down little miss Princess of Hell while he worried about Lute actually killing Vaggie this time. And to finish off this horrid f*cking day, he was mocked and beat by Lucifer f*cking Morningstar.
He was beyond the point of angry. It made his thoughts incoherent as he shouted, not even knowing what was coming out of his mouth at the moment. Not that it mattered when a sharp pain cut through him. Adam could hardly breathe as he fell forward, body giving up at the rapid failing of everything. There was a horrified cry from Lute and he found himself being turned onto his back. She had tears in her eyes. But with darkening vision he looked over her shoulder to find Vaggie covering her mouth. Maybe she didn’t hate him as much as she claimed. It was thought that made it easier to accept his second death.
Inky darkness swamped Adam’s senses as some sort of consciousness came back to him. Disconnected thoughts swam through his head, flashes of memory. He couldn’t quite force his eyes open but he tried to move his fingers to find that they responded. His toes did the same and soon his hands and feet. Until at last his eyes sprung open. Immediately the blazing red sky above had him groaning and squeezing them shut again. Oh, f*ck, he was still in Hell.
Adam struggled to rise. Even sitting up was a battle. His wings were like lead weights trying to keep him plastered to the ground. At first he didn’t give them any thought, far more focused on the unsettling lack of color to his skin and icky black talons he now sported. The lack of clothes didn’t bother him but the darkness painting his feet up to his mid-thighs almost made him miss the taloned bird-like feet that did bother him. He reached out to touch the toe-talon thing coming off his heel and immediately hated the way it felt on his skin. Dry and almost scaly. A heavy shift of his wings finally had him giving them the attention they probably demanded.
The moment he turned his head he was hit with a face full of pure white feathers. It had him spluttering and jerking his face in a different direction. He forcefully adjusted his wings to try and bring them back under his arms like he was used to doing. Razorsharp edges pricked at his bare skin. Dark blood beaded on the thin cuts as he spread his wings back from himself. f*ck, why were they so f*cking heavy? Adam did his best to avoid getting another face full of feathers as he tried to get a better look at one of his wings.
Not only were the feathers a near blinding white in this hellish red landscape - minus the few with red staining their edges - the entire structure was…larger than he remembered. Sure, his wings had been pretty impressive but nothing like the Seraphim or Archangels. These bastards were at the very least double the length of his golden wings and no f*cking wonder he had struggled to sit up. They were massive and going to be a pain in his ass. This was torture.
He clawed his way to his feet and stumbled back a few steps at the new balance he had to learn. The barren land he found himself in made it easy to spread the wings to their full length, swirls of red dust rising as the feathers stretched out. Adam had to take a long moment to simply take them in as best he could. This was insane. It would be near impossible to go anywhere safely. His spatial awareness had been attuned to his gold wings for millennia, it would take forever and a damn day to figure this out with a new pair.
When he got a vague hold of himself, he took to the air to find Heaven’s Embassy in Hell. The difference in flying was immediately clear. Larger wings covered more distance with each flap but he felt so much heavier. It was ridiculous and he was already over it. Adam grumbled to himself as he dived towards the single glittering building in this dumpster fire of a city. His feet touched the stone steps outside the front doors and went to open them when a spark of power shot up his arm in a trail of fire. He cursed and jerked his hand away, watching a spread of red flare through an invisible barrier. The protection against the damned getting inside.
Adam stared at the doors a long time. His lip curled in rage as he reached out for the doors again. Only to have the same fire shoot up his arms and a brighter red spread up and outwards from the barrier. He cursed and snarled at the truth staring him in the face. Not a fallen angel but one of the eternally damned.
Curling fury had him up in the air again above the city, eyes searching for the rubble of baby Morningstar’s hotel. What he found was a gleaming new building in the same place. Adam headed straight for it without a thought for the attention he might have been garnering. Not about how f*cking bright his wings were in the red cloudy sky. Which he should have been because only halfway across the distance something pierced one of his wings. It burned and splintered through the muscle and bones. Enough to have both wings faltering and dropping him out of the sky.
The crash through a building had him groaning in pain. Dust and rubble covered him. He coughed and pushed his way out of the broken stone and snapped metal. Glass cut through his bare skin as he climbed out of what was left of the building - maybe some empty offices or something. Red blood stained his white feathers and thick dust stuck to his skin because of it. It was enough to have him cursing and threatening whoever had the balls to shoot him.
Adam stepped out onto the street with a hiss, injured wing continuing to burn like poison had been pumped into his veins. f*ck, this was Hell, maybe there they had been. The co*cking of several guns had him lifting his gaze from the red dripping off the tips of his feathers. A group of horrendous looking sinners had weapons pointed at him. He didn’t give a single f*ck about whatever this was and made a motion with his hands to summon his guitar. But all he got was a fizzle of power between his fingers and nothing more. More proof of how far he had fallen had him snarling.
One very foolish demon stepped forward. Weapon or not, he had been trained the Archangel f*cking Michael. He closed the gap between them in a flash with a hand closing around the sinner’s throat. Without effort he slammed the stupid c*nt into the ground hard enough to crack the concrete beneath them. There was an order from someone else and the triggers of those f*cking guns being pulled. Adam pulled his wings up around him like a shield. The unfamiliar sensation of things bouncing off the feathers and none of the pain had him narrowing his eyes in the darkness. Only once the gunfire stopped did he spring the wings wide open again. He had already faced the bladed edges of the feathers on his own skin and took a guess that they were durable enough to cause some serious f*cking damage. f*ck, they withstood bullets somehow.
Blood splattered the ground, his wings, and whatever parts of him that were exposed. It was a disgusting sensation that had him taking the frustration out on the poor sap beneath his hand. Only once the f*cker’s face was a mess of gore did he get to his feet. He was beyond conscious control of his roiling fury. The sting in his left wing had him pulling it in close to try and find what was causing the issue. Through some of the feathers was a straight through bullet hole. It had confusion cutting through the red haze of anger but only long enough to tilt his wings to see the other side of the feathers. A single graze of his fingers over them let him know there was a metallic coating over each and every one.
Bulletproof on one side, bladed on the edges, but vulnerable on the underside. f*cking figured. Adam sneered at the mess of blood, entrails, and body parts of the demons that tried to kill him before turning away. The wet squelch of liquid through his toes was sickening but he carried on walking. Past the other sinners on the streets that stared at him and towards that tacky hotel in the distance.
No one else tried to get in his way. Maybe he made a scary enough figure to not be bothered ever again. It didn’t matter to him. Not when he pushed open the stupid metal gate marking off the border of the hotel’s front yard from everything else. His wings trailed behind him as he went up to pound on the front doors. The sound echoed through the lobby on the other side. It only took a minute before someone was pulling open both doors. Charlie Morningstar had a bright welcoming grin on her face that very quickly fell.
“Oh! That’s, er, a lot of blood,” she said, cringing back from him.
“I know,” Adam snarled, towering over the young woman, “and I’m going to get a f*cking shower from this f*cking place.”
“I don’t…do you want to be a guest?” Charlie asked hesitantly, eyes looking him up and down. Very quickly shooting back up to his face with a mortified expression and embarrassed rose-gold coming to her cheeks. “You are very naked, sir.”
“Do you think I’m stupid? I f*cking know!”
“Okay, you really don’t have to take that tone-”
“Girlie, you’re going to get more than a f*cking tone if you don’t let me in.”
There was movement in the lobby behind Charlie and a moment later there was an angelic spear pointed at his chest. Vaggie glowered at him with her lips pulled back in a warning growl. “Back off, sh*t-stain,” she snarled, weapon nearly pressed to his skin. “We’re not taking in rampaging assholes.”
“Vagatha, I don’t have the time or f*cking patience right now.” Adam wrapped his hand around the staff of the spear and shoved it away from himself.
“What-Dad?” The ex-exorcist stumbled back a step, spear dropping to the floor next to her. “How’re you…que? I-I don’t.” Not even the use of ‘dad’ after so many f*cking years cooled his cresting anger.
“You’re letting me into this f*cking hotel,” he took a step closer to the door, “and getting me back to Heaven! I’m not staying another damn minute down here.”
“You died!” Vaggie stared up at him with a wide gray and red eye. “I-we watched…how’re you back?”
Adam sucked in a sharp breath. “I don’t f*cking know,” he said, low and hissing in a way his voice never had been before. “But someone is going to f*cking fix this mess and get me home.” A frustrated flare out of his wings cast a nasty shadow over the young women in the doorway. “I can’t stay down here in this cesspool.”
“Er, Vaggie,” Charlie whispered to her girlfriend, “who is this?”
“Who the f*ck do you think, princess?” Adam asked, voice still hissing. “I’m f*cking Adam! The first goddamn man.”
“But you…Niffty killed you,” the princess said.
“Oh, I hadn’t f*cking noticed!”
“You’re a sinner,” Vaggie said softly. Adam narrowed his eyes at her. “You came back as a sinner in Hell.” He was about to snap at her for pointing out the obvious when her face took on a complicated twisted expression. “Eternal damnation because it’s deserved.” The saying he used to tell when she asked about sinners in Hell was thrown back in his face. At least she didn’t seem to be taking any pleasure out of this. “Not a fall from grace or disavow of Heaven, a literal sentence of punishment for the wicked and dark.”
The endless ocean of anger in him took a rapid nosedive. His wings unconsciously folded in around him and he hardly noticed the blades edges taking their blood payment. Eternal damnation and punishment. Because the wicked and dark deserved it, because he was now among them. Everything he tried so long not to be only to find that he was proving Eve and his kids correct. And just looking at Vaggie proved that he had long since earned his place. Probably long before he accepted Sera putting him in charge of raising and training - not parenting or taking care of - a baby exorcist. Could he even truly say that he earned his place in Heaven when he didn’t know what got him in in the first place?
“Go.” Vaggie pointed to the city over his shoulder. “We’re not helping you, Adam.”
“Wait, Vaggie, maybe-”
“I don’t want to see you around,” the ex-exorcist carried on talking over her girlfriend, “or hear anything about you. You leave here and forget that this hotel even exists.” She had a blank look on her face that he had seen before. “We washed our hands of you already, keep it that way.”
“I…Vaggie.”
“Go.”
Dismissed for the third time by his daughter. Adam didn’t know what hurt more, the physical bleeding wound in his wing or the metaphysical one that had only just started to scar being ripped open again. f*ck. He wasn’t going to fight her. Without a sound he turned around and walked back towards the carnage he had left behind in the city. Pride aside, he had earned his place down here like everyone else.
Vaggie immediately hated the burn of tears in her eyes. The sight of Adam’s back moving away from her was an exact mirror of what she had watched through the peephole of the last door she had hidden behind. There was blood and horror and pain this time but it was devastatingly familiar. It hurt just as much as last time. Watching that fight quite literally bleed out of him the moment she expressed wanting nothing to do with him ever again.
She had tried for so long to convince herself that she didn’t care about the man that raised her. Spent years turning every feeling she had towards him into something negative. Refused to let herself think back on or dwell over the memories of her childhood. It had broken her to learn that she had only ever been a means to an end for Adam and no matter how many times he tried to convince her otherwise, she could never believe any differently. He never tried again after she told him to f*ck off and to this day she still couldn’t decide if she had meant it. Or if she had wanted him to try harder.
It twisted her heart to watch the trail of blood and white feathers grow longer. Adam looked so different from the angel that she remembered but not enough to make him unrecognizable. His facial structure and body remained the same but everything else was…wrong. Vaggie hadn’t been able to pick out that it was him at first under the blood and dust but his voice was impossible to forget. And seeing him look so defeated was never going to leave her.
“Vaggie?” Charlie’s soft call of her name had her looking up at her girlfriend. A warm, comforting hand was on her shoulder. “Are you alright?”
“I…yeah,” she sighed, stepping back from the doorway to close both doors on the mess, “I just didn’t think he would give up that easily.” The partial lie was ash on her tongue.
“You know you can be completely honest with me, right?” Her darling girlfriend was giving her a comforting and welcoming smile. “I won’t push you but I know there’s something more to this. My ear is always open.”
“Thanks, babe, but I’m alright.”
It took her three weeks of uncomfortable guilt and distress before she caved. In the dark of their shared bedroom on the top floor of the hotel, Vaggie hugged one of her wings close to her chest. She couldn’t get the image of Adam walking away out of her head. Nor the twisting nightmares of finding him in various, worse, positions in the city as Hell took its pound of flesh out of the newest sinner. Objectively, she knew he wasn’t innocent if he ended up down here but it didn’t settle well with her.
“He raised me,” she whispered into the darkness, unsure if Charlie was even still awake.
“Hm? Who?” Charlie’s sleepy voice had her squeezing her eye shut.
“Adam.”
“Oh.” There was a small pause. “Oh, Vaggie, I…” A warm hand touched her shoulder. “I’m sorry about what happened between you.”
Vaggie sniffed back traitorous tears and tucked her wings closer. “I was just a means to an end to him,” she said, voice cracking. “Sera stuck me with him to prove he was worthy of leading the exorcists. He was…he was everything to me and I was nothing to him.” A decade later and it still hurt the same it had when she first learned the truth.
“Did you talk about it?” Charlie asked quietly, fingers brushing soothingly through her hair.
“A couple times,” she pulled in her shoulders, “and I could never…could never believe that he was telling me that truth. When he said-when he said that he did care. That it stopped being a job well before I was a year old.” She dug her fingers into her wing like she used to do so long ago when she was upset. “He just sounded so relieved when Sera told him he no longer had to deal with me.”
“Maybe he did mean it,” her girlfriend said. “That he did care in his own way.”
“I just don’t know…” Vaggie shifted in the bed to roll over and bury her face in Charlie’s shoulder. “He could be telling the truth and I still don’t think I’d be able to trust him.”
“That’s okay,” warm hands rubbed her shoulders and back, “you don’t have to. What happened hurt you,” Charlie said, “and it’s okay to be upset.”
“Babe, you should think about becoming a therapist or something.”
“I did some reading.”
Finally telling someone the truth had a weight lifting from Vaggie’s shoulders. It felt good to not be the only one holding onto that secret. But with that also came the crushing regret and guilt at turning Adam away when he was clearly at his lowest. He had no idea how Hell worked nor did he have anyone to teach him like she’d had Charlie. It was just him and the horror of Pentagram City.
It took three months of managing the hotel with its guests before Vaggie found herself out on the streets of the city. Angel and Cherri wanted them all to go out for the night in celebration of Heaven agreeing to re-open the case for sinner redemption. Obviously Alastor had declined to come along and Niffty had been too preoccupied with stabbing roaches to bother. The newest guests at the hotel made the decision to remain behind to avoid temptation which left the main crew. Well, and Lucifer.
The streets had always been alive with screams and horrors and fire. She had never actually spent much time in this part of the city with the bars and clubs but she passed through once or twice. It had been more than enough for her. Charlie was chattering excitedly at her side about building an even better case for the hotel but Vaggie found her attention wandering. Away from her girlfriend to the sound of a vicious fight down an alley. She barely had to turn her head to look before a body was being thrown out onto the sidewalk in front of them. Blood splattered from the missing limbs and had her instinctively shielding Charlie with her own body, spear in her hands.
“f*ckin’ prick,” someone muttered down the alley. Angel, Cherri, and Husk had carried on walking without a glance at the corpse, already far too used to this. Even Lucifer was raising an eyebrow at the mess but didn’t seem interested.
Vaggie peered through the gloom to find a large figure walking towards them. Her spear was lifted and held in shock at who stepped out. Completely stained red with blood was Adam. Massive wings so dark one wouldn’t be able to tell that they had started out white. Infinitely black eyes were pinned on her. The black stripes running from the inner corners of his eyes down his nose were almost impossible to distinguish from the dried blood covering his face. Even his colorless hair was very obviously crusted and matted with the same substance.
“Uh, who is this?” Lucifer asked, a little carelessly as he waved his cane. A bit of something sparked on Adam’s face as those eyes moved off her but it didn’t last long.
“Adam…” Vaggie could hardly find her voice and nothing more than a whisper of his name escaped. Almost immediately his eyes were back on her. Some amount of unidentifiable horror bubbled up in her chest. He looked so…empty.
“Ha, seriously?” The devil’s bark of laughter had her shoulders tensing. “Oh, this made my night. How far you’ve fallen, first man.” There was another peak of laughter. “Alright, let’s just leave this sinner to his business. He clearly fits in so well down here. Char, Vaggie?” A small prompt to get them moving only had Charlie quietly shushing her father.
“Are…are you alright?” Vaggie asked hesitantly, lowering her spear.
“Thought you wanted nothing to do with me.” It wasn’t a question nor much of a statement with how Adam spoke.
“I know I-”
A crack of gunfire down the alley behind Adam had Vaggie back on the defensive again with her spear raised. Behind her she could hear Lucifer pull Charlie away. There was a sigh from Adam then a flare of wings that completely filled the small space with feathers still pushing to spread outwards. The gurgling of someone choking on their own blood had something sick crawling up her throat. She tightened her grip on her spear as the dark wings folded in on themselves again, some feathers much brighter red than they had been a moment ago.
“You, uh, you got something there,” Lucifer said, probably pointing his cane at the blood.
“Yeah, f*ckers don’t know when to stay down.” Adam stepped completely out of the alley and Vaggie had to swallow back bile at the carnage she could partially see through the darkness. “Or when to leave me the f*ck alone.”
“So, making a name for yourself, buddy?” The devil inched up to her side. “Shooting for overlord or something?”
“Do I look like some pansy f*cker that needs others for power?”
“This isn’t Heav-”
“You should come to the hotel,” Charlie blurted out, cutting off Lucifer. Vaggie looked over her shoulder at her girlfriend to find her covering her mouth. “Sorry, I don’t know where that came from.”
She did but the goodness of Charlie’s heart wouldn’t be enough. Not when Adam’s dark gaze strayed back to her, waiting for her to do something. A very hurt and unresolved part of Vaggie wanted to tell him to f*ck off again and remain out of her life. And she knew he had to see it by the preemptive shift of his foot to step back.
It didn’t seem to matter what state Adam was in, whether he was in perfect health on top of the world, an injured newly turned sinner hurtling for rock bottom, or a man sitting at the bottom and not working to crawl up, he was going to do exactly what she told him. If she said to disappear from her life, he would do it. If she said to never make himself known in Hell, he would do it. If she said to stop existing, he would do it. If she said to come to the hotel and finally get help, he would do it. Her…dad would do anything for her.
“Uh, yeah, Charlie,” Lucifer said, “we’re not doing that. He gave up his place in Heaven already.”
“The whole idea is about second chances,” Charlie argued, clearly gearing up to start another tangent.
“I’ll take him to the hotel,” Vaggie found herself saying. Eye still trained on Adam’s unnervingly inexpressive face. She only ever had memories of him being animated and far too lively. Hell really does change a person. “Don’t, uh, don’t wait up, hon.”
“You gonna be okay?” Her girlfriend asked, hand giving her shoulder a comforting squeeze.
She turned her head to give Charlie a small smile. “I’ll be fine, babe.” She leaned up to kiss her. “Go celebrate. You earned this.”
There wasn’t a single ounce of fight as Vaggie led Adam through the city back to the hotel. He simply trailed behind her like a silent shadow. It set her skin prickling in an uncomfortable way. Where was the conversation? The crass quips about the p*rn in every window or rude comments on the lack of hygiene? Where had that bright light she took comfort in as a child gone?
No one was in the lobby when they stepped into the hotel. She made a beeline for the concierge desk to grab a room key for the second to top floor. It didn’t feel right to stick him somewhere at random. The elevator would have been impossible to use with Adam’s wings so it was a long walk up nine flights of stairs. Once they reached the right door she unlocked it and swept inside. It was a little larger than some of the others on the lower floors and she took a moment to judge if there was enough space for his wings. There might be a little bending of feathers if he tried to stretch them out fully but it would work for now.
“Go shower while I find you some clothes,” Vaggie said while pocketing the room key. “I’ll be back to help with your wings.”
“...yeah, alright.”
The response was lacking but she really needed to at least find Adam a pair of pants. It had her wondering if he had gone three straight months without clothes before she cut through the thoughts with cold logic. Of course he had. Hell was not a kind place and Adam was not in the right frame of mind to care about pants. A bubble of guilt had her searching faster for something and dug out a pair of someone’s shorts from the lost and found bin. They might actually be Cherri’s but that woman was known to wear a wild array of things.
Once back in the room she found the shower to still be running. She paced for another five minutes before she decided to check on him. The door was pushed open to reveal Adam sitting in the bathtub with his wings filling the entire bathroom space, shower curtain pushed aside to give him room. Vaggie cautiously stepped inside, taking care to avoid stepping on his feathers as she made her way to the tub. Where he was sitting with his head bowed, doing nothing but letting the hot water run over him. It was still running dark red down the drain. She loathed the thought that it was because there was three months worth of blood built up.
“Adam?” She didn’t reach out to touch him but she didn’t get a response. “You alright?” Her fingers trembled as she tapped on his shoulder. At best she got a shrug to get her to stop touching him. “Um, let me help, okay?”
It would be awkward but she still had fuzzy memories of him cracking jokes while he cleaned seaweed out of her hair or took bath bubbles into his hands to blow them at her. She sat on the edge of the wet porcelain tub and hesitantly reached out to grab the soap from next to him. A bit was squeezed onto her hand that she rubbed together before taking the dive into his hair. It was crunchy and matted like she thought. An ache in her chest started as she gently worked the soap into his blood clotted locks.
What had to have been half of the shampoo bottle was used to break loose the clumped mats and finally bring out the white hair beneath. Not once had Adam moved or made a noise. Vaggie hated how lifeless he seemed to be when he was supposed to be brimming, overflowing, with it. It made it damn near impossible to get through to him that she couldn’t help him with anything else but his wings. That he had to clean the rest of the blood off his skin on his own. But a couple moments after she said it, he was moving to pick up the body wash. She turned away to give him a semblance of privacy and got started on finding the best place to begin on his wings.
They were clearly stained in blood like his hair but they were far too large to clean in the bathtub, even individually. She looked around the bathroom for some inspiration but there was nothing to be found. It had her frowning and racking her brain for a solution. Adam was shutting off the water by the time she came up with it, even if it had the possibility of getting her into serious trouble with Lucifer and Angel.
There was a pool on the first floor of the hotel. In the greenhouse-like back patio that Angel had begged the devil into creating. It was the only place that was large enough to submerge Adam’s wings. Vaggie let Adam dry off and put on the bright blue shorts while she took off towards hers and Charlie’s room on the floor above. The stuff for cleaning and maintaining her wings was stashed in the bathroom but she would need more than her own supply. Which led her to raiding Lucifer’s room. This was going to get her into so much trouble.
“C’mon,” she said while motioning towards the door with her head, “there’s a pool downstairs we can use.”
“Sure that’s enough?” Adam asked, the briefest glimpse of humor at her arms being full of stuff had her fighting off a smile.
“It’s all we have.”
Adam opened the door for her and followed on her heel out into the hall then down the several flights of stairs again. The pool lights were flicked on with one of her wings before she packed them away. She dropped everything at the edge of the clear water then ordered Adam to get in. There was very little complaint as the first man slid into the cold water, wings taking up almost every inch of space in the twenty foot pool. The immediate discoloration of the water had her wincing.
Vaggie sat on the edge with her bare feet in the water as she carefully cleaned the blood off one of Adam’s wings while he did the other. It only took a single prick of finger to know why all those sinners in the alleyway had been eviscerated. The feathers were razorsharp and had a protective metallic coating. She couldn’t even imagine how heavy they must be, that weight constantly pulling downwards on Adam’s shoulders and back. It was no wonder they were so large either. They had to hold up under not only his body weight but that of their feathers. That had to be exhausting to deal with.
By the time they were close to done the pool water was almost black and it was impossible to find the floor under the feathers. But the wings were glowing white again and Adam had made a few comments during the process. Which was good progress in comparison to the shower. They were both working on his left wing to finish preening and oiling the feathers at the edge of the pool when someone opened the glass doors. Vaggie looked over to find Charlie staring open-mouthed and wide-eyed.
“Oh, there you are,” Charlie said while taking a hesitant step through the doors. “Do, uh, do you guys need any help? I know how from my dad and well…”
“We got it,” Adam muttered, sharply looking back at the edges of his feathers. Vaggie offered her girlfriend a small smile in thanks for offering to help. It wasn’t a surprise that he didn’t want anyone else touching him.
“We’re almost done anyway.” She removed another loose feather and added it to the pile.
“Angel’s not gonna be happy about the pool,” Charlie said as she came closer. The pool was disgusting but it could be cleaned like everything else. “But you look much better! And your wings are very pretty like this.” She crouched next to them but didn’t reach out to touch.
“They’re f*cking horrendous.” The bite in Adam’s voice was finally coming back even if it had Vaggie giving him a cool look that he couldn’t see.
“Oh…”
“She’s being nice,” Vaggie snapped, “would it kill you to be polite and courteous once in your life?”
The immediate dousing of guilt over her head tempered her annoyance at Adam’s attitude towards Charlie. She didn’t know if she would be in any better of a mood if her wings had been completely altered from what she had been born with. They were part of them even if he hadn’t been born with his, he’d had them longer than they’d been alive.
“And we’re done here.” Adam moved his wings away from her hands and despite the razor edges, tucked them around himself. Vaggie had a horrible thought that at least some of the blood on them had been his own.
“It’s late,” she said while getting to her feet, “here’s your room key.” It was dug out of her skirt pocket and held out to Adam as he turned around.
“Thanks,” he muttered, arm stretching out from beneath masses of feathers to grab it.
The beginning stain of red on the edges of white had her frowning. Adam didn’t seem to notice the rivulets of blood running down his arm to drip off his fingers as he took the key. Vaggie wanted to say something as a drop smeared on her skin but when she saw Charlie opening her mouth, she reached out to grab her girlfriend’s hand to stop her. Now wasn’t the time to get into something like that. He looked exhausted despite the general lack of expression to him. It would be safer to just let him go.
She and Charlie led him out of the pool room into the lobby and he passed them to head up the stairs without a word. Without a thought her own wings sprang into existence to tuck under her arms in an act of comfort. It didn’t sit well with her to see him walking away. She knew he wasn’t leaving and instead heading farther into the hotel, but it might always seem like that when she saw his back retreating from her.
“Who’s that?” Angel asked from the bar. “We get a new guest while we were out? That why vagin* didn’t join us?”
“Oh, yeah, I guess we did,” Charlie answered, separating from her side. “It’s actually Adam.”
“The c*nt that killed Pentious?” Cherri growled.
“Well, yes, but…”
Vaggie left the lobby as Charlie tried to calm the hatred brewing in the sinners. She didn’t have it in her to join the explanation. There was a long, warm bath waiting for her and a long rest of her night coming to terms with Adam staying at the hotel.
The next morning there was no sign of Adam. Nor was there any the next day. f*ck, Vaggie didn’t get a glimpse of him even existing until over a week and she found a pure white feather in the kitchen. It wasn’t like him to simply hide away, not the Adam that raised her. He had always been loud and bright and present. Ridiculously present and very alive despite being dead in a way she hadn’t found many to be. She wanted to go find him but knew deep down that it was better if she didn’t.
Two weeks after Adam was brought to the hotel she found him standing in the center of the lobby staring at the front doors. Most of the edges of his white feathers were stained a deep red and she knew if she saw his front there would be several smears of blood on his skin. At first she simply watched him from the stairs. He stood frozen like a statue for five minutes before his wings folded in around him as he took a step back.
“You’re allowed to leave,” Vaggie said as he started to turn around. “We don’t keep anyone trapped here.”
“And go where?” Adam snorted and walked towards her.
“Anywhere. This particular place isn’t a prison.”
For a moment Vaggie thought he would walk past her up the stairs but he sat on them instead. She hesitated before taking a seat next to him. “Hell is pit of horror and ruination,” Adam said, “there’s f*ck all where I want to be in this dumpster fire of a city.” Feathers shifted as he let the cocoon of them start to fall. Like she suspected, there was dried and fresh blood on his white skin.
And she didn’t have a response to that. She didn’t like much of anything about Pentagram City either. The only reason she never complained was because she loved Charlie to the point of forsaking any and all longing for Heaven. It was bliss enough to be with her. Losing the safety and comfort of Heaven wasn’t something anyone but another that had lived there would understand, so she didn’t often bring it up. Charlie might have glimpsed the Silver City but it was nothing in comparison to living there. Maybe there were things in Hell that a hellborn would love but Vaggie had yet to find any beyond her girlfriend and her friends.
They sat together in silence for a long while. Adam was still staring despairingly at the front doors and she was trying to find the courage to talk to him. To properly talk, that is. It needed to happen eventually if he was to stay at the hotel and now was as good a time as any. Only, every time she opened her mouth to start the words failed her. This was so much harder than she thought it would be.
“Why…” Vaggie cleared her throat to make her voice come out strong. “Why didn’t you want to raise me? Why were you so against the idea?”
“Huh?” Adam’s head lifted from his palm to look at her, face twisted in bewilderment.
“Sera forced you to raise me,” she explained, forcing the words out despite how much it hurt, “you clearly didn’t want to. So, why not?”
“Oh, that.” He looked away with a deep frown. “You’re right. At first I wanted nothing to do with you.” Even knowing that didn’t make it any easier to hear. “f*ck, I had already done my time being a parent while I was alive. Raised several children and lost just as many.” Vaggie curled her hands around the edge of her skirt as he talked. “For f*ck’s sake, half of my children ended up down here and the other half despised me because of it. Why the f*ck would I want to go through raising another one just to have them turning out the same?”
“Uh-huh…” She hunched her shoulders at the confession. Both of those categories applied to herself, or at least they sort of did.
“But…Vags, I always cared about you,” Adam confessed, not looking at her. “Even when you were a squirming ball of feathers and way too much gray. f*ck, you were just a baby. You didn’t ask Sera to use you like a f*cking pawn.” His wings tucked in close to himself again and she wanted to tell him to stop hurting himself, but she held her tongue. “I guess you’re proof that my parenting skills are still sh*t even after ten thousand years.”
Vaggie sniffed and rubbed at her eye with the back of her wrist. “They’re not,” she said sincerely. “It’s my fault for not letting you fully explain and not listening even if you did.” All of this misunderstanding could have been avoided if she had been less stubborn and less stupid.
“Yeah, that might have helped,” Adam laughed, “but I didn’t try to explain again so I’m at fault there.”
“Wow, you’re actually admitting to having done something wrong.” She gave him a small grin despite the warmth of tears on her cheeks. “Is there snow outside?”
“Very funny.”
The dry sarcasm had her wiping off her face and taking a leap of faith to dive into him for a hug. Almost immediately there was a flare of wings to move them out of the way and several curses as Adam caught her. Blood smeared on her as she wrapped her arms around his bare chest, pressing her cheek to his shoulder. His arms hesitantly looped around her but only for a second before he was squeezing her close. Her wings sprang into existence to join the hug and she felt his own cautiously join. It was like coming home to be hugged like this again by her dad.
“I, uh, just have one more question,” Vaggie said while pulling away from him. White eyebrows were raised at her, a prompt to continue. “What, er, what happened to Randy? After I was…after I…”
“Oh, the f*cker bit me when I dragged him back to the house.” Adam scowled off to the side at the memory. “He refused to leave that bathtub you had him in.”
“Do you think he’s okay?”
“Probably.” Her dad met her gaze and sighed. “I don’t know. It’s Heaven so he’s more than likely doing just fine.”
“I…I wonder if it’s possible to bring him here,” she murmured thoughtfully. It had felt so lonely without the turtle at first. Charlie had Keekee along with Razzle and Dazzle - well only Dazzle now - and Angel had Fat Nuggets, it sometimes felt a little empty with Randy.
“Hate to break it to you,” Adam said, “but I’m tapped for angelic power. Got zilch to f*cking offer.”
That was alright. Vaggie had a different thought on how to answer that question. It was something she would ponder later, though, as right now she was going to play catch up with her dad. They had spent more than enough time being on the outs. She was going to get to know Adam again as her dad instead of as the commander of the exorcists. No matter how long it took or what might try to get in the way.
