Chapter Text
His name was Adam Murray, someone who grew up in Bythorne county and spent his life trying to leave it. Someone who was a perfect replica of a child that talked too little and saw too much. Someone who stared into a television that held only malice for him, when he was still human.
He was real.
He was not a person, but everything around him made him one.
Yesterday, he had his first encounter with another alternate.
Sure, it tried to kill him right afterwards, but after all these years, it was something, some kind of acknowledgement.
Even if it called him a 'traitor.' It wasn’t technically wrong: he protected Jonah from another alternate.
But a traitor to whom? Alternates as a whole? What, like he owed them anything? Sure, they created him (he thought), but it’s not like he wanted to be a ‘part of them,’ whatever that meant. He grew out of that idea when he was young and disillusioned with his emotions, asking why he couldn’t feel things in the same way his human peers could, why his hands looked like they weren’t his.
A bad fall on pavement tore through his skin, only for Adam to find it blistered over, the skin smooth, in less than an hour. He didn’t even bleed.
Stepping outside, in the dead of winter, only for snowfall to feel like fire against his already-numb skin while his classmates shivered.
Walking late at night, waiting for the fear to come. Any semblance of humanity in him was snuffed out by the fact that he didn’t startle at any strange noise, spoke with silence more than words, and stared with apathetic eyes which never betrayed the vulnerability they should have. If eyes were windows to the soul, then Adam Murray’s was blank and barren and cold.
Until he met Jonah Marshall.
He wasn’t anything special at first—in fact, he was quite annoying—and Adam waited for him to skirt around his life like so many others in Bythorne county had. They didn’t do it out of malice, or fear, or even pity. Adam couldn’t relate to them in a way that mattered, no matter how he tried, and people just sensed that and left. Adam didn’t miss them. No matter how much a part of him desperately wanted to.
Except Jonah didn’t leave. He never cared that Adam sometimes seemed so detached he might as well have been a sign on an empty highway. Jonah stayed, year after year, and Adam slowly learned what it meant to be human.
If he’s a traitor for protecting a human, so be it. Jonah’s the only friend he’s ever wanted to keep.
An angel clasped their metaphysical hands together, in a mockery of human body language.
Strangely, no matter how much they tried, they could not reach the alternate named Adam Murray. Their holy mind was a beautiful maze of threads, connecting the consciousnesses of vast numbers of their subjects’ with their own.
At any time, Gabriel could see through any pawn’s eyes, guide its limbs, and command its thoughts as they saw fit. A necessary quality of theirs, given they could never walk the earth with their own corporeal form. They killed that part of themself a long time ago.
But they had no tether to Adam, no foothold to exert their influence upon him. Interesting. They grinned.
They tugged on the threads of two of their subjects near the house, urging them to answer the call. The one who had followed their car, the same one who delivered news of Adam’s actions in the motel, responded with uncharacteristic meekness. The other responded with ecstasy, befitting since it was a…much more aggressive alternate, to put it bluntly. They considered calling for Intruder as well, but the screen hopper always seemed to know what was happening anyway, so Gabriel trusted they would understand their own objective.
“Find out what Adam fears. I trust you can figure out how to do that,” they said, shifting their focus to the stronger one. Its many hands gave various attempts at a thumbs-up.
“And you,” they said, addressing the meek one, “Adam knows your presence now. Use that.” The living shadow nodded.
Time to see if their intuition was correct.
Gabriel always loved a challenge.