Chapter Text
ADAM SURVEYED his chalk kingdom for longer than usual today. It was as it had always been, except that he could see its history painted on the walls. Here, the triumph of his younger self the day he discovered this place, there was a flair of fear from the day Brian almost fell into one of the quarry's holes- they had played skydiving that day. Excitement everywhere… but at the surface, a fresh wellspring of terror and confusion- that must have been from when he turned into...
He let out a little groan; the impressions made him feel as if he were on a boat in the middle of a storm
“Are you all right, Adam?” Pepper asked, yanking him back into the present.
‘Yeah,” he said, smiling back. A real smile, for he’d made up his mind about something. “I was just thinkin'- you know how God’s supposed to have made the Earth, and the first humans ate an apple or somethin’? Maybe it was a pear.*”
*He feigned ignorance extraordinarily well. To hear him, you wouldn’t for a moment have suspected he could have recited everything done and said on the day of the Creation “Myth” without thinning.
The others tilted their heads. They were vaguely aware that they were missing something important, something to do with the way Adam stood and spoke today, something to do with whatever had happened last night, but they couldn’t quite get it.
Wensleydale polished his spectacles. “It was an apple,” he said, “definitely an apple. My mother’s crazy for that sort of thing. She says that one day all the believers are going to get called up to Heaven right before the Great War. She has four copies of “Jesus is My Buddy” from some guy on TV. I try to tell her they wouldn't waste time picking us all up, but she never listens.”
There was a pause while everyone digested this. They had heard weirder things,* but still.
*They had no idea how much weirder.
“So, your aunt’s a necromancer, and your mum listens to country music? You’ve got a weird family, Wensly.”
This was Pepper, which Wensly took full advantage of. “I don’t call that as weird as giving birth in a field with a couple of sheep.” He bit his tongue to stop himself from adding Pepper’s given name, which was good, because already she was plotting murder.
Adam let the scuffle carry on for a moment. When he became worried for Wensley’s internal organs, “Right, so it was an apple. Well, what happened after they ate it?”
Pepper, still dusting herself off and glaring at Wensley, let out a little squeal like the class know-it-all. “Everything burned up,” she said, “and there was a storm. God didn’t like it much.”
“Well, God wasn't very fair about that,” said Adam. “Maybe he’s eased up a little. I reckon we should see.” He tasted a fresh lair of excitement added to the general aura. It was chocolate and baked bread, and he wanted more.
A muffled “Wicked!” and the decimation of a potato chip emanated from Brian’s area.
“I think I’ll be God.” There was hardly any protest. Everyone knew Adam was the only one who could pull off God with any realism. Especially now.
“I wanna be the snake,” said Brian “I never get to be anything interesting-- the bad guy’s always much cooler.”
Adam sighed, and in that moment he seemed to be looking at something his friends couldn’t see. “’S’not that cool,” he said. Then he shook it off. “But alright, you can be the snake if you like.”
He turned to the other two, and everything was fine then. He smiled the smile which meant: This is going to be good and I started it.
He was right. Pepper and Wensley had adopted the positions of two rosters in a cock fight.
Wensley stamped his foot. The gesture was made only slightly less intimidating when it came down on one of the cracks in the floor which couldn’t support much weight. His arms pinwheeled as he tried to keep upright; he looked like a broken dizzy machine. But that didn’t stop him from saying what he’d meant to between breaths: “I am not- being- the girl!”
“I’ve been the girl every time! I won’t satisfy your patriarchal urges again!”
Adam wiped his eyes– it was getting hard to see through the tears of laughter in them. Once he could speak, he said, “Wensley, you be the girl.”
This betrayal was suffered with difficulty.
PEPPER’S BEARD FELL OFF for the third time. As she scrambled to pick it up, Adam started things. For inspiration, he drew, not on his memories of the real God, but on those of his father, who was a much more interesting mimic.*
*This could be said of either of Adam’s fathers, but he was thinking of his mortal one.
“Ahem, I’ve put up this apple here and no one is to touch it or there'll be a fire and you’ll be sent home without dinner.”
“Yes, lord,” Pepper said. A much more dispirited echo of “Yes, lord” came from her right. Adam glared at Wensleydale, who raised his voice and adjusted his blond wig.
“What are you not to do?”
“Touch it.”
“Doesn’t make any sense,” Wensleydale said under his breath.
“What was that?”
“Nothing, lord.”
“Right. Now, what are you very clearly supposed to do?”
“Touch it.”
“Exactly,” said Adam. He adopted an air of sudden embarrassment. “I mean- uh- you didn’t hear that. I have to go.”
His “going” consisted of kneeling behind a bush, and, still in character, slapping himself in the face.
Brain the Serpent appeared. He wore a foe-fox skin of Wensley’s, because, as Adam said, "Foxes are almost snakes. They do the same things in stories.” (For obvious reasons, he failed to mention that he could conjure an actual snakeskin from thin air). You couldn’t see the outfit, though, because Brain was pulling himself forward through the mud- another reason for Wensleydale’s protest.
Doing a rather poor job of hissing, Brian said, “Come on, you know you want to. You know He wants you to. Just do it, learn what Good and Evil are already, so I can go clean this shirt off.”
Adam stifled a fit of laughter behind his hands, but Brain heard it and took it in stride.
“You-um- you can hear Him laughing because he wants you to. He may as well be tempting you himself. Go on, do it!” Clearly, he was running out of improvisational material.
The other two each pulled an apple down from the apple tree and ate like they never had.
Adam had been deliberating whether he could get away with a little dramatic flair for several minutes now.
He snapped his fingers.
The already-dark sky grew darker. The clouds split open. Rain poured onto the field, the sort of rain that soaks and assaults, but can refresh if you choose to see it that way.
Adam rose from behind the bush. “God’s ticked off,” he sang. “You shouldn't have eaten that apple.” And then in his voice, “Go on, take them and let’s go before-” but Mr. Pickersgill could already be heard. Adam didn’t mind in the least.
“Go. No, take the apples! Why wouldn’t you take the apples?”
Giggling, the others stuffed their pockets. Adam did, too, but he couldn’t quite smile along with them. Because he could make the storm bigger no problem, only had to think. Downpour. Thunder. Lightning. Easy, easy, easy. But shrinking it, controlling it? Sharp headache, lacing pain, bigger, bigger, BIGGER!
He knew he had to fix it. But he knew the day had been worth it, too.
AZIRAPHALE AND CROWLEY were pacing in Adam’s garden. Really, Aziraphale was pacing; Crowley was looking around the garden in relaxed amusement. Although the truth was he was a little nervous, too.
“What if he doesn’t-”
“He said he would. He’s got a nice place, hasn't he? I think-”
Before Crowley could finish his sentence, Dog-- whom Mr. and Mrs. Young had insisted Adam leave home on the theory that perhaps he’d cause less trouble that way-- bowled him over, blinding him with an exuberant pink tongue. Crowley, who didn’t despise living things as much as demons are supposed to, and who, just now, didn’t mind looking a little silly, let this continue for a moment. When he grew tired of it, he waved his hand, and Dog flew back, landing in a sit, tongue hanging out. Crowley stared at him. Now that he had a second look, there was definitely something weird about that dog. When it hit him, laughter lit his eyes.
“Aziraphale, is that-”
“I think so. Well, who would’ve thought?”
“Would’ve thought what?”
They spun, and were not altogether surprised to see Adam behind them.
“There’s no easy way to put it, Adam. Your dog’s from Hell.”
It was remarkable how easy it was for Adam to digest this.
“OH, COME ON. You know you want to.”
Aziraphale gave Crowley a small but vicious glance, then smiled at Adam. “You can do this.”
Adam closed his eyes. When he opened them, the hedgerow was bright blue. Complete with a bright blue smiley-face.
Aziraphale was as close to a proud father as he would ever be. Actually, Crowley was pretty near that, too, but Aziraphale was the sort to admit it more openly.
“Adam, yes!”
Dog nearly suffocated his master, who was laughing, and the laughter spread until it was all you could process. This moment deserved a cloudless blue sky.
And the storm broke. The clouds rolled back. It was weather worthy of the world’s first week.
Aziraphale was on the verge of saying something when the door clicked open.
“What’s so funny, Adam? You’re not making trouble, are you?”
It would be quite a nuisance if Mr. Young came to know his son was also Satan’s, that he had almost caused and then averted Armageddon, that he had spent a good deal of time sharing his body with a demon, who now sat in the garden-- along with his angel “friend--” and a particular nuisance if he were to learn Adam had a dangerous power he was having trouble controlling.
It was so tempting to pluck the memory from his head. Adam knew he could. Then there wouldn’t be any of that messy business, and Saturday night could remain his problem, his secret. Crowley winked at him.
“Adam?” Mr. Young asked.
Adam reached out to his father’s mind. It would be so easy.
But the moment he touched his thoughts he knew he couldn’t do it. He felt the complexity of the mind he probed, the nuances of the personality he had only begun to understand. All the fluke and random chance it had taken for Mr. Young to be standing here, today, now, billions of years after the evolution of the solar system. And beneath the mundanity, beneath his present (and near-constant) exasperation, was love and pride for him, the steady pulsing of a beating heart.
“Alright,” Adam said. “Alright. I guess I’d better start at the beginning.”
A SURPRISINGLY EASY routine developed after that day. The truth got out to Adam’s schoolmates and much of the town –there was no keeping this a family secret– but his pleas to be allowed to stay home from school come start of term were denied. Crowley had laughed when he heard that. “I suppose subtly wouldn’t come naturally to you, but you gotta learn to be cool about what you want, so they don’t even know you want it.”
Aziraphale didn’t agree or disagree, only gave an elaborate look to Crowley’s flashy suit, bright yellow eyes, and dried-blood hair. He got an equally elaborate eye roll in return.
“Okay, so it’s not my style. Just trying to dispense wisdom here.”
Adam had said, “Not mine either,” and dropped to the ground of the garden where they were again meeting, all energy gone. It returned the next day when the other Them arrived. All things considered, it was a normal greeting. They had barely said hello before: “Did you hear-- the witch got together with that man who crashed his car.”
“Do you reckon he’s one too then?”
“Don’t be daft, it’s only women can be witches.”
“Men could be too, if they really wanted. It’s just they leave the jobs where someone could get set on fire to women.”
“That’s not so! What about bakers? When they’re making the bread, how do you know they don’t get, you know, really bad burns?”
“When’s the last time you heard of a baker getting set on fire, Brian?”
“Pretty sure my mum’s cousin–think her friend married a baker.” Adam had at last thought of something to say. “He never got set on fire.”
“Suppose not.” Brian studied him.
The conversation fizzled.
“I know what,” Adam said. “Let’s play hide-and-seek.”
Most children the Them’s age had long gotten bored with hide-and-seek. It was a game you played either with strangers because you could think of nothing else to do or with friends to settle old scores. In the first case, it got dull because no one could find the hiding places of strangers whose mannerisms they didn’t know and didn’t care quite enough to bother finding out. The second was even worse. Friends could find one another inside a minute, and their shared brain waves usually meant that they got bored around the same time, but all wanted to persist so they wouldn’t have to go inside and watch the same cartoons again. So they abandoned it.
None of them had played hide-and-seek with Adam. That was different. It didn’t matter how well the others knew him. No matter how diligently they searched, combing every inch of the quarry, the neighboring properties and the woods, they always had to admit defeat. Sometimes, in retrospect, the places Adam chose were obvious, but he knew somehow-- every time -- just where they wouldn’t look. If this was a game of settling scores, they were down 3056890-0. That was the difference between other kids and them. The impossibility of finding Adam continued to entice them, even as they were meant to be growing out of impossible things.
It was a brilliant afternoon. Adam won again, but that was the joy of it. Finding out how he’d trick them today. (He had been buried under a pile of last year’s dead leaves in the woods. There was still mud in his hair).
Naturally, the mud didn’t stay solely in his hair either. It-- at least this was the story they would tell their parents later-- migrated from his hair to all their clothes and faces without explanation. No one could take responsibility for throwing the first mud-ball, because no one really remembered who had. It was such a good idea that they began to throw themselves until all four were dirtier than they could ever remember being, which is to say unrecognizable. In a strange way, they’d never been more free together. It felt good to finally know what made Adam different, that secret so big he kept it from himself.
Yet. Yet as each of them went home to face exasperation and head-shaking, the moans of how-on-Earth-did-you-get-looking like-that-do you-know-there’s-mud-on-your-head-that-was-your-grandmother’s-favorite-dress, something tugged at them.
None of them were fully aware of it. None of them would be for some time. It was just a low-level buzzing, made of questions and uncertainties, the sort of things you grasp best on the point of falling asleep. It spoke of the unbridgeable divide between them and their friend. And much later, they would realize that they had never thought he would adjust.
TIME PASSED. Every day, under the watchful eye of his parents, who always seemed to be thinking of him now, whom, he confided, often looked worried when he came home, Adam saw his friends and entertained them until some indeterminate point. Then would come a small popping noise and Crowley and Aziraphale would appear. (Once, Crowley had, without thinking, done so in Adam’s house. He was not accustomed to certain human niceties. This led to a very awkward formal introduction between him and Adam’s parents). Once they showed up, the ordinary part of the day was over. The Them did sometimes watch the lessons they gave, but it was unsettling to watch Adam try to control a power they hadn't known he had, which they could see he was not close to subduing.
Often now, strange things happened around him. When he was happy, an impassable bed of daisies sprung up in front of him, or vines shot up from the ground and shook, mimicking his laughter. Once, in the middle of a downpour, he’d smiled at his own joke…and the rain had stopped, replaced by an aggressively hot sun. It didn’t work to ignore it. The harder he tried, the angrier he got, and the worse it got.
The things he was learning seemed mostly to be breathing and concentration exercises, and they did seem to help, because of the way his teachers so often interrupted with banter. Always, for a time, it seemed as though the power might come to heel. He wasn't who he was supposed to be. He had defied every expectation, the identity guaranteed by that of his father. He was Adam Young. Everyone relaxed their grip on him.
This Adam Young, though, was slowly growing quiet. It took more and more cajoling for Aziraphale and Crowley to rouse him from his thoughts. He took a long time to decide what he and the other Them should do each day, so that eventually, they made the proposals. He would accede with fewer conditions than he ever attached to an idea not his own.
One morning, he didn’t even appear until twenty minutes later than usual, and kept looking about, as if he expected to be caught.
He carried on as though nothing was wrong, but he was clearly far away. The Them didn’t know how to respond. Was Adam going to start talking about ending the world again? Fear rose to the surface of their paper-thin conversation, and Adam, seeing it, grew worse. He mumbled an excuse, the sort he’d been coming up with for close to a month now, and left early. When Crowley and Aziraphale came for him, his bedroom door was shut, and they couldn’t pass the landing. Something kept them back.
Every detail of the stairway was thrown into sharp relief. Crowley made a detailed study of the grooves in the banister. It was important to understand how each had been made, that they could be fixed. He swallowed, once, twice, afraid he was going to be sick.
Wait, what the hell was wrong with him? Adam was just being a kid. Then he glanced over and found Aziraphale equally unsteady. One of them had to be cool about this.
“What’s up with him lately?”
“Well, I’m sure I don’t know.”
“I’m going to call him,” Crowley said.
“Crowley! No!” Aziraphale dug his nails into Crowley’s shoulder, which didn’t hurt as much as it would have if he didn’t trim them to perfection, but still made his opinion clear. “Leave him. He wouldn’t talk.”
Crowley knew he was right, and that made things better and worse at the same time. They knew this kid well, had been brought together by the unforgettable experience of staring down immortal enemies and coming out on top. Crowley wanted, with a burning, never-satisfied sort of wanting, to know Adam as long as he possibly could. He was so very…human. And now, as they were making headway, they were locked out. Until that happened, he hadn't conceived of how much it would hurt.