Ishmael, as solid as he was, as sure Adam was that Ishmael was not the ever-present glimmer of a glitching world, was often caught up in this movement, in this shirt from solid colors to weeping borders.
But that, Adam knew, was all in his head.
Just like the faint burn that had never left his neck, the tight squeeze that reminded him what it felt to choke on air he no longer breathed. Its coil, like a controlling hand to guide him back time and time again, left cold words inside his head and made sure the ghost never stepped fully into the world of the living.
How could he when he was naught but an echo, the passing of surrender?
He was no more alive than the graveyard he had been buried in; the cracking and crumbling rocks that had once proudly declared that someone lay within the earth now showing signs of age. The old tree that stood in the corner that had once boasted life and shade now shriveled to a weak, fragile sort of thing ready to snap should the strongest wind cross its path. And one day, the graveyard itself would no doubt be buried six feet under like the poor souls that rested in its hallowed grounds.
Like Adam was supposed to be resting.
Like Adam wished to rest.
But he was still here. Somehow, throughout everything, the knife, the noose, the new force that forced him from the hallowed halls and onto the Isle, he was still here.
"Hey, ghost with the most." Ishmael pulled him from his thoughts, looking more healed, more fixed than he had been the last time he had stumbled through the front door with his mouth set in a line.
Adam reached for the black marker, as he always did, his line of communication, and wrote nothing more than a question mark on the board.
The Nightmare talked of an angel as he wiped the blood off his face, of healing as he rubbed at the scratches on his body, of how Adam really shouldn't think into it and should just call the damned angel, because...
Adam had left Ishmael a piece of chocolate he had found the other day.
The Nightmare didn't say anything about it at all, but it was gone when Adam floated through the apartment the next day and he knew that Ishmael harbored no ill feelings. That was how it was living with him, or co-existing, perhaps. Because, out of the two of them, only one was really living.
The other was currently sitting behind the apartment building, looking at the instructions Ishmael had written down, and trying to conjure his own voice. What a funny thing to lose, though it only served him right, he thought, as the burn on his neck grew steadily stronger.
If he had gone any other way, if he had chosen a different path, would anything have changed? Would his voice have come out undisturbed by the ripples of breaking pieces that fragmented through his words? Would he have even come back?
The ghost didn't even bother sighing as he put his effort into calling the angel - just say her name, right? And she'll appear. Adam closed his eyes as he waited.
He waited until the air around him moved, the winds changed for just a fraction of a second, and a calm, soft voice spoke gently to him. "Are you Adam?"
But he couldn't bring himself to look at her, the angel, the one that heals, the one that somehow offers chances...He could only look at the ground beneath his feet as he nodded, flickers rippling through him as though they wished to tear him apart.
"My name is Raphael, but you can call me Rae," the angel continued, never raising her voice, never forcing Adam to look at her. "There's no need to be afraid. I'm just a healer."
But he still couldn't look at her, so instead, he tried to speak. Broken words from a broken soul filtered out of his mouth as much as it would let him. "Can you...still...heal m-me?" Even though his death, the way it all happened, was still clear in his mind. Suicide was a mortal sin, his father had whispered on the day they put his casket in the ground.
The angel, Rae, was silent for a moment before she said, "Only if you truly want me to."
"A-And..." Adam flickered again, the weight of his words hanging heavy in his heart. "If...I w-want to...leave..." But he couldn't finish his sentence, so he just let it hang in the air, hoping that the angel of healing, after all she had seen, after all she had learned, would understand.
"If," Rae answered, "you still feel you wish to 'leave' when you are healed, I will take you to the gates myself and you will be free to enter."
Cautious blue eyes looked to his savior, fear inside them, but maybe something closer to hope as well. Silence hung around them like dead weight as the seconds moved on and thought after torturous thought flickered through Adam's mind.
Until he finally nodded. "I...w-would like...that."
The angel granted him a smile he knew he didn't deserve.
But deep inside, he knew that healing was a long journey, and he was fading from the effort to stay.
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