abraxaslogs

"Evidently."

Would he try to distract her from her woes without offering a warm drink? Perish the thought.

If she wants to call him Brother, Michael won't be the one to stop her. It's an old and familiar title to him, even older than the hundreds of years they collectively imagined. At most it might merit a warning: calling him brother is something some of his siblings had come to regret. But that's a conversation they'll get to soon enough.

He gives her a moment to take his arm and then leads the way to the front door, taking it slow as they pick their way around fallen branches and other debris that still litter the ground.

"Not your fault, either," he says, referring to the roof. "Whose domain was the wind?"

Maybe they can blame one of their fellow former-gods for the weather.

"I'm sure Josie will make room for you, if you need somewhere to stay temporarily."

"I'm not sure if I'd take Josie up on that, though I'll keep her in mind. I've lived in worse conditions than a house with a sky view. Now that I can remember, anyway."

When they're in the doorway, Claire pauses with her hand on the doorknob, staring at the wood before directing her gaze at Michael. Searching for words, she finally lets out a huff of breath and looks away, shoving the door open and leading him inside.

"I enjoyed that life. If it hadn't ended when we woke up, if we'd had to march out of there the way we'd been rounded up to the Singularity, I'm not sure I'd have gone willingly." It's a full admission of guilt, that not only would she have forsaken this life in Abraxas, but the one before it. She has no idea how to feel other than confused, angry, and ashamed of herself.

Inside, the kitchen is relatively fine, but where the hole in the roof is, over the living room, plants are overturned, books are strewn about and ripped apart from the wind wreaking havoc. To have something to do while Michael works in the kitchen, she begins making a pile of things to throw out, keeping her hands busy.

"You could always camp in the yard."

If the conditions inside prove too unpleasant (though a stint outside might make even a half-covered home seem that much more appealing). That's what Aloy would do, he thinks. He has no idea how her homestead out in the woods has fared against the recent weather, but he's sure she'll be fine either way.

He pauses a half-second in the living room, his first instinct to help her with the tidying—but these are Claire's things, and it's not for him to decide what's worth salvaging and what isn't. Michael would likely put anything in less than top shape in the pile to be thrown away. He promised tea, anyway.

Michael makes his way into the kitchen and sets about putting water to boil. Her home's not so large that he needs to do much more than raise his voice a little to be heard from the next room over.

"Few people would give up a known happiness for an uncertain future. I doubt I would have been willing to leave, either, if I hadn't regained my memories. But we are not those imagined versions of ourselves, and we didn't choose to stay.

"What's your mood?"

What tea would she like? The contents of her tea shelf are miraculously intact, as if someone knew she'd have need of this when she returned and kept it safe for her.

The question isn't funny and yet she laughs, feeling on the edge of something hysterical before pulling herself together.

"What is my mood? Christ if I know. Something dark, I suppose. I've never made a 'deeply upset because of a magic mind game' blend, but I'm beginning to think it's the first one I should've ever come up with. Try the black tea with elderberries." Claire will most certainly go through her own possessions with a more discerning eye; plants that are too damaged to re-pot can still be broken down for use, just not the way that she'd intended.

"I was actively trying not to remember even while it was happening. And I know that it's because I'm tired of being alone, I'm tired of waiting for the moment I'll finally have my idea of happiness. I don't know if it's because I broke some rule of time, but it consistently seems to be against Jamie and I. Snatches of it are all we get together, just enough to feel heartwrenching when we're forced apart again."

Her back is to Michael as she moves around the living room. "'If Jamie arrives tomorrow' is the reasoning I've used for plenty of things. Now I have to apply it to not continuing a three-hundred-year relationship that wasn't even real."

And yet, that love still feels as real as any she's ever felt for Jamie, which makes her feel as though she should wear a scarlet A.

From the sounds of it, maybe he shouldn't have jumped into the we are not them talk so quickly. Michael takes down the black tea. He leaves it on the countertop not far from the boiling water and moves back to watch Claire going through her things with perhaps too much focus. This is a conversation that should happen in the same room, he thinks, without raising his voice for her to hear.

"Have you spoken to Jon yet?"

Back to his full self, Michael is also back to being unable to forget anything. They remained close friends throughout the centuries; he remembers the longest and most recent of her relationships. It might not have been precisely real but they had all lived that shared hallucination day by day as if it were. Apart from the loss of their godly forms and abilities, there's nothing that says they can't pick up where they left off.

Depending on her pseudo-husband's disposition, of course, hence the question. He could be another man entirely now.

Claire had no trouble hearing him and looks up, caught up in her own thoughts while holding onto a few large fern leaves from indoor potted plants. She stares at them for a moment, then looks back at Michael before sitting in the chair by the unlit hearth.

"I have. And I'm married out there somewhere, he pointed out. First thing, before I remembered fully, before we woke. And he mentioned it multiple times which means it's a sticking point, understandably. So, while I was speaking about our centuries together and attempting to explain my feelings, I assume he was thinking me immoral or a time-traveling philanderer." Or, she's projecting, but she can't help feeling she's correct in this instance.

"And it's valid. I could be with anyone, what would I say to Jamie if he arrived? 'Sorry we went through hell together and ached for one another across time and space for two decades, but I've moved on?'" She doesn't exactly feel as though she's moving on, her love hasn't gone anywhere, but she does want to live.

"I spent twenty years feeling as though I couldn't live a full life with Jamie. Now, I don't know if it's because I was stuck in a situation I didn't want back then, or if I'm older and wiser now with more people than I've ever had to care for, who care for me, but I don't feel that here." She cried for a week and only made it out of bed for chores, but it got better, faster.

After a momentary pause, she rubs her free hand over her face. "I'm rambling in an attempt to justify myself. Is it working?"

"Are emotions something that need justification?"

Though he could justify all of his own, that's not the standard he holds Claire to. Michael is light and grace; she is flesh and blood. Feeling her way through the world is natural to her. Humans cannot help but experience emotion, bodies awash in chemical and biological signals.

While the water in the kitchen considers boiling, Michael takes a seat in the most level of the remaining chairs in her living room. He leans over and picks up a stem broken from a potted plant and sets it on the low table nearby. He wouldn't consider it worth keeping, but she looks to be trying to salvage everything she can.

"He might only want to make it clear he's not the kind of man that aims to steal another's wife. I wouldn't assume anything more than what he's said.

"It's a small sample size, but from what I've seen of those who've gone missing and are then returned here, or those who've gained new memories of home—they don't remember this life, when they're back there. There may be a version of you, back home, continuing to live her life as she always has. You may not be her."

No one really understands the intricate details of the Summoning: why it takes who it does, why some disappear, what really happens while they're gone. So why hold themselves to maybes?

"If Jamie were to arrive and find you in the arms of another man, you'd tell him you were lonely. I admit, if I had a romantic partner, I'd expect them to remain loyal to me even after death—but I'm neither a man nor someone who will ever die unless he's killed. Would Jamie want you to be alone for the rest of your days? Your husband is missing; he may already be dead. You may never see him again. Would you expect a widow to live her remaining days in solitude? What if she were to live forever?"

If their recent experience has any truth to it, even the normally mortal among them may have a long, long road ahead of them.

"I think you deserve joy in your life, Claire, even if it's not with Jamie or Jon."

Even if Jon is as disgusted by her as she guesses, there are other men in Abraxas. Other men in Solvunn, who could share her home and take down beehives for her so she needn't dwell on the failure of her efforts.

Claire nods along, leaning heavily on that theory right now, that life is going on for Jamie, unaware that a version of his wife is on another planet living a completely separate life. It's partially what she pitched to Jon, that there's a certain unawareness involved.

"Lord John arrived with his face in such a beaten state that his eye likely would've needed to be removed had magic healing not been an option. At the very least he might've lost his sight." Remembering the absolute wreck that had been John's face causes a little simmer of anger in her voice. "Jamie did that to him when he found out John and I married and...shared a bed."

She hasn't lived it yet, and so she doesn't go into all of the details John has given her, but the point is:

"Jamie has the same expectations you do. And it isn't unreasonable, but his jealousy can be over the top. I want someone to love and be loved by, after a while. I've spent more of my life alone—or rather, living in a way that didn't make me happy—than I've felt at home anywhere. If Jamie was here, we could build our lives together, finally have our home, even in a place we didn't intend. But he isn't. He might never be. And now I realize I could fall in love again thanks to the Singularity. I did fall in love, and I don't want to be alone. Which I suppose answers your question."

Claire feels distinctly as though she's rambling, having multiple threads of conversation at once, attempting to understand herself.

"It isn't as if I want anyone now who'll have me. I had hundreds of years to know Jon, or so my mind still believes."

Though she doesn't sound approving, it surprises him a shade that her husband is capable of such violence. She's never mentioned it before; maybe she's embarrassed. Then again she'd formed some kind of connection with Sandor before he'd gone missing and he wasn't exactly docile either. Perhaps jealousy and aggression are incidental traits of the men that tend to attract her, like domestic dogs and floppy ears. It's not their primary virtue.

"That's quite a beating. I suppose it wouldn't help if I offered to step in the middle of it if Jamie were to arrive?"

That would really only be displacing the damage from Claire's new husband to Jamie's fists. Michael knows what it is to have a vicious temper, so he guesses the fact that his face won't yield wouldn't stop him from punching.

Michael considers that if intervening in a fight won't help, perhaps he needs to intervene even earlier. For all that she loves him, Jamie sounds like he'd take away from Claire's overall happiness if she were to find a new, lasting love here. In that case, maybe it would be for the best if he were to find his way into the deepest parts of the woods and disappear before she ever knew he was here. Michael realizes that he doesn't know what Jamie looks like. That's a problem. He'll have to persuade Claire to share a memory in the most literal sense, sometime.

She doesn't yet have that new husband (or doesn't anymore) so he sets his plotting aside for when it's needed.

"Or a version of Jon. If who he is now thinks you're not worthy of him, know that he was never deserving of you in the first place. I am sorry for you, Claire. All too rarely do good people get what they deserve."

He can hear the water boiling from the kitchen, so he rises and heads back to prepare a mug for each of them.

She could tell him stories; Jamie's violence was aimed at her once and she waited until he was literally inside of her to hold a knife to his throat.

If you ever lay a hand on me again James Fraser, I will cut out your heart and eat it for breakfast.

He never has, the poor man couldn't even administer a shot of penicillin twenty years later. But she's seen his violence toward others when his family is threatened, and especially when she is threatened. He's jealous, possessive, has already had to share her with one man, and now would (theoretically) be asked to share with a third.

"I was so angry at Jamie when Lord John told me," she begins, using his title only to differentiate between John and Jon. "I stayed that way and thought if Jamie ever arrived I'd throttle him before explaining why. I've cooled off since then, though he'll still get a sound piece of my mind. All that to say, I don't need anyone stepping in on my behalf. He won't hurt me or anyone else if I threaten to cut his balls off. He knows I'd do it in a heartbeat."

But that doesn't mean she can't feel the guilt, because she would understand it, if to him only a moment had passed since she was his wife, when who knows how long might pass for her as she lives her life in Solvunn? The difference is how they'd each react to it.

"As for Jon, I don't believe he thinks I'm unworthy," she tries to make clear as she follows Michael to the kitchen and sits at the table. "I think because of his own experiences, it bothers him." It isn't her place to tell Jon's story to anyone else, so she leaves it at that. "And that too, I can understand." She sighs softly, almost as if she's purged as much as she needs to get out, at least for the moment. She doesn't know about what she deserves, so she doesn't say anything to that. Instead, she changes the topic.

"Unless you have final sage words of wisdom, please feel free to change the topic to literally anything else."

Between his possessive nature and capacity for violence, he might have something in common with Jamie. Michael thinks only in shades of red and black when he's truly in a rage. Though under the same circumstances, a knife at his throat might've intrigued him more than frightened him. The differences between archangels and men, perhaps.

Michael shakes his head and then turns his back to her for a moment, opening the small container of black tea he'd pulled down earlier. Emotions are a tricky topic and romance only more so. He doesn't have any wisdom beyond what he's already offered.

"Only to say that if you find living with the memories unbearable, I can relieve you of them. Reflect on it. All you need do is ask."

Whether that's the memories of Jon, or of Jamie. It seems like needless suffering to him either way, living with the guilt of betraying a husband she still loves but cannot be with or carrying the burden of several hundred years loving someone who won't have her now. It'd be such an easy thing to do—a snap of his fingers, and she'd be free of it.

(But would she still be entirely Claire?)

He sets a mug of black tea with elderberries in front of her, as previously requested, and the traditional mug of hot water for himself. Michael takes a seat across from her. He never lets his face show too much, but threaded through his usual impassive facade is both fatigue and a muted melancholy.

"I'm afraid I don't have anything more positive to discuss. I've realized my family was worse off than I thought, and that the world I come from was not destroyed as I expected, yet there's still nothing for me to return to."

Maybe they can discuss the weather? At least that's been looking up since they got back.

"No, for all the fuck ups I've made in my life, they are mine. I may hate some of them, but I won't deny them, either." That doesn't mean she won't remember what Michael's offered. There could be other needs for his ability in the future.

With the tea in front of her, Claire wraps her hands around the comforting warmth even though it's far from cold outside. Studying her friend, she frowns just a little in concern.

"You're allowed to feel something about all of that, Michael. That's a lot to find out, but not be able to do anything with." She has nothing to compare it to, but still, to know a handful of things and want to do something with them, only to know it's not possible...he's handling it better than he's handled some things in the past, she'll give him that.

"I'm not saying you need to be destroying a diner or anything," she says, raising her eyebrows before taking a cursory sip of her tea, then covering the mug with a napkin to let it steep a few more moments.

Michael nods. He's not going to argue her decision; he understands the sentiment. As painful as some of the memories he lives with may be, there are still valuable lessons within them. Erasing them doesn't actually undo the damage, anyway.

"I'm allowed to do whatever I care to—but as you're well aware, I have a temper. Feeling over something I can't change isn't helpful."

Had to bring up the diner, didn't you? Michael pulls a face, brows furrowed. Claire's earned the right to comment on his behaviour without triggering an all new fit of temper, but he's still not happy about it. That was an embarrassing lack of control on his part.

His expression levels out, and he looks into his mug.

"I tore my brother's arm off, you know. After he told me he chooses the humans of Thorne over me, over his real family. He grabbed me and all I could see was red." Blue, actually, the colour of grace, but he translates to the human equivalent so she'll better understand. "Do you remember much of what I've said about Lucifer? How he so loathed humanity he started a fight with our Father that tore our whole family apart? I assumed he'd found a few he considered exceptions to the rule, but apparently not. He still thinks them abominations. He prefers their company regardless. He spent eight hundred years building a new family, only visiting me every hundred years or so to show me what monsters he could still make of humans."

This is maybe not exactly what the intention had been, but this is how the memory has gotten twisted in the aftermath of it all.

"As for my home. My Father never succeeded in destroying it. I remain dead, but everything else was restored. Adam is back in college, studying medicine. Did I ever mention he wanted to be a doctor? He seemed happy."

Which is good. But Adam is happy without him, and Michael is not happy without Adam. What is he supposed to do with that—with this knowledge that all those he cares for are better off without him, that they are happier for it?

Claire's secure enough in their friendship to know Michael will understand she never means ill intent in their conversations. He's been her shoulder the last few times she's needed someone, and so she's here for him now. She always will be, with no judgement regarding him or his feelings.

"I remember Lucifer," she says after taking a sip of tea. "He's quite the study in contradictions, it seems." One thumb moves around the rim of her mug. She's trying to think of what to say when Michael continues, and she makes a soft sound of protest in the back of her throat at his last statement. "You know that as a fact or you feel it to be true?"

Sometimes, or perhaps more accurately, often, Claire feels she's missing something and there's no true advice she can give. What does she know of God and the disputes with his children or the quarrels of siblings? One thing Michael has always been with her though, is patient, and she knows if she hasn't picked up on what was said, he has no hesitation correcting her or giving more context.

At this point, Claire could kill a man in his presence and get no more of a reaction than a raised eyebrow and an offer to help dig a hole to hide the evidence. Those closest to Michael are afforded special protections.

"The word you're looking for is 'hypocrite'."

Of all the mean things he could say about Lucifer, that's one of the mildest. He appreciates that she doesn't give him reason to linger on that topic of conversation. Claire's better at leading these discussions than she thinks she is. There is no joy to be found in speaking of his brother, but he is still trying his best to accept that letting go of Adam is the right thing to do—like returning a wounded wild animal one has cared for to nature.

Maybe if he says it's a good thing often enough, he'll come to believe it too. Michael is a master of starting from a conclusion and working backwards to build the evidence around it.

"Claire, he and I shared a body for ten years." He's sure he knows what happy looks like on his vessel, even from the outside. "He had given up on college while he hosted me. And while he never asked me to leave, he never wanted to be anything other than human, either. I think we existed in that state of affairs for so long that separating never occurred to us.

"He has the opportunity now to live the life he never would have otherwise. It's for the best."

"Your mouth is saying it's for the best, but your face is saying something else." It's a face she's gotten to know for all of its minute changes over the last year, and she feels she knows him well.

She raises an eyebrow and her cup of tea, taking a long, calming sip and happy to have the focus off of her new relationship(?).

"A decade is a long time to share something so intimate as a body with someone, and now that he's thriving, are you jealous and missing what you had?" She doesn't ask with anything other than gentle genuineness, attempting to put the pieces together of feelings she suspects he doesn't want to admit exist.

"If that's the case, or if you wish it could go back to what you knew, I think that's fairly normal, Michael. You can want the best for someone, knowing they're better where they are, and still miss what was."

"My face always looks like this," he argues, though without any particular force. She's right. She knows him well enough to read the truth of his general mood. Although he's less expressive than Adam would have been with this face, he still uses it. He's not literally made of stone.

Michael hasn't made a move to drink from his cup yet. Drinking is the opposite of calming for him, so he'll finish it later. Claire is probably right, too, that he has feelings he doesn't care to admit to. That bias makes them all the harder for him to identify. There's a moment of silence as she sips and he considers her words.

"It's not jealousy. I'm not envious of what he has, or that he's happy. I wonder if things were ever as I thought they were. My Father was not the man I thought he was; neither is my brother. Was our arrangement as mutually beneficial as I believed it to be, or was he always under my influence? There are parts of human existence suppressed when an archangel inhabits a vessel—thirst, hunger, the need for rest. He was not fully human while I was present, so he was not fully himself."

It frustrates him to be nostalgic for things that never were. That they were never real puts them even further outside his reach.

"You know what I mean," she says with the sort of eye-roll that only a friend could give. She continues to listen though, humming softly at his denial of jealousy, nodding when he explains more. When her brow is furrowed together it means she's thinking, and though she's quiet, that expression means she's mulling things over. When she takes a sip of her tea, she finally blinks a little and looks at Michael again.

"I know this is going to seem like a random question, possibly. But, if Adam were here, sitting right here, and you could say something to him, anything, what would you say? Would it even help to be able to say those things to him?"

She isn't sure it's just Adam, there are likely two or three others Michael would like to have his share of words with. "Or anyone, the one you have the most to get off your chest to."

He does know what she means, but issuing corrections is familiar territory. It makes him feel better.

There's no hurry here, nothing for them to get back to except cleaning up after the storm and dwelling on their miserable circumstances, so he doesn't rush her to an answer. Michael takes a silent minute of his own to consider his reply. Given there nature of the summoning ritual there are many clarifications he could ask for, like what time this theoretical Adam is pulled from—the before when he was terrified of Michael, or while they were still trying to work out their body-sharing arrangement—but he figures she means the future one, the one back to living his life without him.

"Apart from the usual warnings about this place? I suppose I'd ask him how he's been." If he's truly happy back where he is, if returning to the life of a mere human was a relief or a hardship. The simple conversational questions one would ask meeting an old friend they haven't seen in a long time.

"The people I have the most to say to wouldn't listen." His Father, Lucifer. Listening is not a strong skill among gods or archangels but those two in particular are unlikely to hear him. Michael considers the rest. Gabriel's always been a wildcard. He thinks even Gabriel himself wouldn't be able to answer if he'd be inclined to listen at any theoretical future point. He made his decisions in the moment. "I would owe Raphael certain apologies. For not finding a way to prevent him from being drawn here, for one, but also that he never got the reward he was due."

"You would be doing it for you, not for them. If they don't listen, that isn't your problem, but they could never say you didn't tell them how you feel or that they didn't know." Maybe that doesn't matter the way it might to a human, maybe it wouldn't help at all, but it's all she knows to suggest.

"Do you think anyone would actually look to you and blame you for being brought here?" She raises an eyebrow tilting her head. "Stop apologizing for things you have no control over."

Perhaps easier said than done, but no one needs to be apologizing for anything the Singularity does.

"Do I seem like the type of man that has trouble with apologizing too often?"

Michael's not exactly a man, but he's found he has that much in common with most of them so he'll wear the title today. He'd meant it as an expression of sympathy more than anything else.

(But there is part of him that believes that being an archangel makes him a protector, and inherently responsible for any ill that befalls his current vessel even if it wasn't his direct doing. Good luck curing him of that.)

"I don't believe speaking without being heard would improve my mood. My family are the type to use any weakness to their advantage, for that matter. Vulnerability is costly."

Like Claire, he finds himself in the miserable position of waiting for people and circumstances to change around him. There is nothing he can do to force that change. He recognizes that he presents a problem with no solution, though, and he doesn't expect her to have a miraculous answer. He points the conversation in another direction.

"Do you remember that plant we made? The one that moved as if it were an animal?"

"Not once in your existence."

She can recognize a subject change when she hears one, so she saves any lingering thoughts for another time—a real-time example of how much Claire's grown as a person, because she could've kept going. Instead, she gives a small snort of amusement.

"Are spiders animals? But yes, I do remember. We were out of control, Michael." She deadpans a joke, taking a sip of her tea. She's getting better at not cracking a smirk or a smile, learning from the best.

"Depends on the classification scheme you're following. They're within the taxonomic kingdom Animalia." Technically, yes. Technically correct is his favourite kind of right answer and though she might roll her eyes, he thinks Claire will appreciate it anyway.

He deadpans right back at her.

"Truly. At least we didn't create any rituals that involved human sacrifice.

"Drink your tea before it gets cold."

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mild nsfw (lol)

spicy!

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