Chapter Text
She’s pushing her son on a swingset, on one of her rare days off. Katie used to only work 5 days a week, but school supplies and clothes and so much damn food add up—it’s surprising how much an 8 year old needs. And more than that, being the kid of a single mom shouldn’t mean sticking just to needs either. A kid should deserve wants, the robotic dogs that are all the rage now, going out to eat once in a while…he deserves some normal. So if she has to take an extra shift here or there (every week), she’ll do it.
She’s tired, and her back is not cooperating the way it did even two years ago, but he’s happy and she’s happy and that’s all that matters. Here, in this suburban park, just the two of them. She would be happy for this moment to go on forever.
—
It’s cold. She’s disoriented and the hardwood floor under her feet is distinctly unfamiliar. Whosever this house Kate’s woken up in, it’s nice, but they must have skipped out on their heating bill. (She always made sure that the bill was paid every month. Adam deserved that.)
Translucent gray curtains hang around a wood-framed window, where…snow is falling outside? Kate’s going crazy. It’s Mid-July. She stands abruptly, nearly slamming into the oakwood table she’s…sitting at.
How did she get here?
Ok, no reason to lose her marbles. There’s a reasonable explanation for everything. The weatherman hadn’t said anything last night about a cold front rolling in, but with the whole recent uptick in global warming news, who knows what weather can do?
Kate looks around. A lone glass of water stands on the table surface, seemingly left behind in a hurry. A set of keys hangs on the wall. Or, at least, what she thinks is a set of keys. There’s no metal parts. Some sort of gray cylinder sits on the kitchen counter, next to a toaster and a spice rack. A portable speaker of some sort? What kind of house is this?
A tea set occupies most of a glass cabinet. It’s exactly like the one her mother gave her the day Kate moved into her house, bringing a fond smile to her face. Except this one is brand-new, it seems. There’s no sign of it ever having been used.
Footsteps come down the hall behind her, and with them, a scratchy voice tinged with exhaustion. “Ok,” says the voice, “you can probably put Mr. Ortega’s surgery to tomorrow then, and I’ll do it. No, really, I insist, if he doesn’t want it today, he’s not going to have it today. Trust me on that. He’s a stubborn old b—”
Katie comes face-to-face with a 40-something-year-old man, with traces of gray streaking through his blond hair. He’s holding a flat rectangle in his right hand (phone?) and a glass of water in his left. At least, until his eyes go as wide as saucers and he drops both.
Water and glass shards fly across the floor between them.
“Mom?”
—
A thousand years. Her sweet Adam was eaten alive and then tortured for a thousand years. It starts like this:
“Adam,” she asks across the kitchen table, “how old are you?”
Her son gives her a sheepish look. “That’s a little hard to say, to tell you the truth. What’s the last thing you remember?”
“I was pushing you on a swingset…” no, that can’t be right. The Adam on the swingset was 8 years old and light enough for Kate to hold in her arms. She remembers sending him off to college and being so proud, that her quiet little son with his love of plants and worms was going off, leaving the nest. And then she remembers him coming home one weekend and—
“The electricity company guys. They came to look at our meter, you know?”
She does know. She recalls being thrown across the room by superhuman strength, and well, the rest she would rather not dwell on.
“Hey Mom?” Adam has a hesitant, mildly afraid look on, like he broke a vase on accident while she was at work. “Try not to freak out, ok?”
He gently grabs her arm and closes his eyes. Kate suddenly feels a sensation close to being shoved into an ice-cold pool, and then she opens her eyes again.
She and Adam are standing under a steel-gray sky. Her shoes sink into soft, white sand as seagulls call to each other across the salty, sharp air. For what looks like miles around, it’s just Kate and her son. But before she can get the words out, Adam steps back, hands out in front in a gesture of nonaggression.
“We’re in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. I go here on vacation sometimes. Since it’s September, it’s usually deserted this time of year.” He takes a breath, then continues. “I died, I went to heaven, I was brought back, I was dragged to hell, literally, and then I got out. I’m a neurosurgeon now. And I’m seeing someone.”
Well. That’s a lot to take in. She still doesn’t really understand how they’re by the beach. So Kate goes for something that seems less…supernatural. “The girl you’re seeing, is she good to you?”
“He. He is. We’ve been through a lot together, but I trust him more than anyone in the universe, at this point. Hey, Mom?
“Yes Adam?”
“Try not to freak out, ok?”
—
“Ms. Milligan.” Not-Adam smiles stiffly, a hello, welcome to the board meeting kind of smile. “It truly is a pleasure to meet you.”
Kate meets the Archangel Michael. She slaps him across the face. He admits he deserves it.
—
“Your boyfriend.”
“Um. Partner? Husband? Something like that.” He's turning pink, just like when he used to get caught reading under the covers. Some things never change.
“Is the Saint Michael, Supreme Commander of Heaven,” she presses on, “and you were trapped in Hell together for a thousand years? Adam, what the...fudge?”
“It's a lot to take in,” he chuckles weakly.
Kate pauses, for a fraction of a second. There are two ways she can steer this conversation.
“A lot to take in. In more ways than one, I’m sure.”
“MOM!”
—
“I shall be blunt,” Michael has returned, with a downright unsettling flash of blue eyes, “this arrangement is necessarily temporary, milady. Heaven…I promised Adam Milligan once upon a time that he would have the chance to see you. I felt the need to deliver.”
“But this isn't where I belong anymore,” Kate interjects. She knows it in her bones. She will always feel out of place, here on this Earth. The two of them, angel and human, walk down the coastline together, the white peaks of waves lapping at their feet. Despite standing in several inches of water, Kate’s feet remain perfectly dry inside her shoes.
“Exactly, madam. Although the rules of the universe can be perturbed, those who do struggle against the current of the natural law will never quite feel at peace. But I can offer you this—once a year, on Adam's birthday, you can spend a day with him.”
Well, there’s a thought. There’s something else on her mind though, first.
“What is my son, to you? He said you saw him as a vessel at first.”
Michael pauses, and if Kate did not know the first owner of that face so well, she might have missed the slightest twitch of his left eye.
“He is the single most precious thing in this universe.” He says it with a conviction that speaks of years, no, millennia, and suddenly Kate smells the salty sea of the Precambrian ocean, hears the sulfurous maelstrom of earth and dust that formed the very beginnings of the Earth.
“I accept, Sir Michael.”
—
“So what did you and Mom talk about?”
“The NFL. She does not approve of my opinions, it appears.”
“Michael.”
“I informed her that the structure of the Green Bay Packers represents what the Platonic ideal of what sporting teams should be, an organization owned and funded by—”
“I am going to rip your wings off and deep fry them.”