Chapter Text
I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting in this cell. I keep staring at my hands, slightly red, whether from staining or irritation? I… don’t really know. The floor is a deep gray concrete. Like a prison cell, almost, but with some surreptitious notion of what a home is. The bunk beds are… oddly put together? The frames are metal. The slats are also metal. But the sheets are a disconcertingly colorful floral arrangement. All the flowers are snapdragons. Even the ones in the vase, on the end table near the door. The vase is metal, painted with the image of a cardinal half-blue jay on the right and half-male on the left. I don’t know what it means.
It feels like it’s mocking me.
Rowan and Juniper share the cell with me, and Mila’s here, too, I guess. I can’t look at Rowan and Juniper. Seeing them only makes me miss Jedidiah more… he must be so scared. I just want to hold him, to tell him everything will be alright even if I don’t believe it myself. It certainly doesn’t feel alright. Not when mine and Jeddie’s hubris has gotten us all trapped God-knows-where. It would be laughable, but I don’t feel very much like laughing. I don’t even feel like very much of a person right now.
The last thing I said to Adam was that I hated him. That I didn’t want him. I told him to get out of my life… and now thinking about it makes my stomach churn. Those were the last words he ever heard. And they weren’t true. I didn’t hate him. Maybe I did, in the moment, but I didn’t hate him. His… love… I don’t think it was love. Not in the way we’d understand it. But Adam wasn’t human, not really, was he?
I think he loved me as much as a demon could. Because he was a demon. I was measuring him by the wrong metric the whole time. I don’t think he could’ve told me no, even if he wanted. Was that because of love, because I had him wrapped around my pinky, like he said? Or was it because he was meant to be a Familiar? And I was his master. Familiars are meant to help their masters achieve what they want, after all, and I wanted to hurt. As sick as it sounds, I wanted to hurt.
But Adam is gone now. Dead. Hit by a train. Turned into a third red paisley mist. His blood, hot and sticky, so hot and sticky, splattered across my face. Coated my hands as I reached for him, desperate to pull him from the tracks in time but I was way too late. I was too late. All I could do was freeze and stare as train car after train car after train car passed by.
The parade of train cars seemed to go on forever. Adam’s blood was everywhere, diluted by the rain but in my shirt, on my hands, on my face, soaking into the soil… it’s still on my shoes. And the last thing he said was that I was the first person he hated. I deserved that title. I deserved it more than anyone else.
He said he loved me, in quite possibly the only way he ever could, and… and… I said I hated him and wanted him gone. I wanted him gone. I didn’t want him dead— there is a difference, yes, but… if you asked me in that moment… I would’ve said I didn’t care if he died. I’m so sorry, Adam. You were loyal to me for years. You gave me what I wanted. As sick as it was, you gave me what I wanted. And it wasn’t enough. I hated you for it. If you’re out there, somewhere, listening somehow… I’m sorry. But I won’t cry for you.