The Second Garden

Chapter Two: The Anchor

The clock radio suddenly comes to life and starts blasting Katy Perry's "Waking up in Vegas" as Addy blindly reaches for the snooze button. Her head is killing her and she feels completely disoriented. Matt must have found her at the graveyard after the drinking binge and drug her back home. She is never going to live this one down.

"Wakey, wakey Sleepy Beauty."

Addie burrows further into the blankets. "Go away, Matt."

"Fraid it's not Matt."

The blankets are yanked away from her and the sunlight blinds her. There's someone walking around her room but she can't place who his is. Her eyes eventually adjust and it is not just a strange person standing at the foot of her bed that causes her alarm. She's in her childhood bedroom, complete with single bed and Little Mermaid paraphernalia from floor to ceiling.

The man is roughly her height, wiry and looking not quite amused. For all his seriousness, there is a hint of mischievousness at the corner of his mouth and in his eyes. His almost amber eyes. Addy groans and falls back onto the too small bed.

"I'm having that Twilight dream again, aren't I?"

"Not quite. And I take offense at being associated with that disaster." He kicks the bed. "Get up. We don't have much time."

"For what?"

"For me to explain to you what's going on."

Addy pushes herself up on her elbows. "I know what's going on. I'm having a hang over induced nightmare and you're just my subconscious reminding me that I shouldn't ever drink again. Duly noted. Now leave."

"Oh sister, you're not even close."

He snaps his fingers and she finds herself standing on a beach, the ocean rolling in gently on the wide, sandy expanse.

"What the-"

"Not a beach person? Me either," he snaps his fingers again and they're peering over the Southern Rim of the Grand Canyon.

"Afraid of heights?" he snaps again and they're now in a field surrounded by massive rock face mountains and pine forests. She can hear a waterfall in the distance.

"Yosemite."

He smiles crookedly. "Very good."

Things start falling into place in her mind. Her childhood room, a beach in San Diego, the Grand Canyon and now Yosemite. "These are all from my memories as a child."

"Now you're getting it."

A cold feeling descended on her. "I'm in a coma again."

"So close, but not quite. You're unconscious at the moment. Not deep enough to be in a coma but very much not awake."

Addy reaches out and touches the tops of the tall grass. She can feel them tickle her palms. The crispness of the outdoors and pine trees smell just as strongly as she remembers them back when she was ten. "This feels so real."

"They are real. These are memories of things that really happened to you. Memories hold much more weight than you realize."

She remembers their stay in Yosemite. They stayed in a cabin with bunk beds and she fell out of the top one, breaking her arm. She remembers Micah retrieving her battered panda bear out of the back of the car and tucking it in her good arm to try to stop her from crying while the rangers called for the onsite EMTs. She could still feel his shoulder resting against hers.

"Memories hurt though. I don't want to think about this." She waves her hand in his direction. "Come on, snap me somewhere else."

"No. You need to stay here, remember the good things. The love of family, the joy that comes from it. Memories only hurt if you look at them from your present state. You need to remember them in the moments when they happened. That's how good memories stay good."

"Why are you telling me this? What does it matter to you how I remember things?"

"It matters because I, and many others, need you to live."

"I'm one very unimportant person. I was gone for three years and the world kept turning and people kept living. What's the thing that makes me more special than my brother, or my mother or my father?"

He holds her gaze in a very serious look. "Because you survived. You woke up and that changed everything."

Addy starts to ask him what he means when the outdoors drops away from her and she is standing in a hospital room. She immediately recognizes herself laying comatose in the bed, machines beeping and tubes hooked up to her. There's a woman standing over with blonde hair and dressed in a suit who reaches out and places her hand on the still Addy's head.

"What's happening?"

"This is how you woke up," he answers. "That woman, her name is Jael. She's an angel."

"Angel? As in fluffy white wings and halo angel?"

He halfway shrugs. "More or less."

Addy turns back to the scene in front of her, expecting to see a beautiful occurrence. How many people could say they were healed by an angel's touch? But then the yelling starts. Addy watches as her body arches off the bed with a blinding white light. She is screaming as if being killed, her hands curled into claws and eyes wide open, filled with fear.

As soon as it starts, it ends. The light disappears and takes the angel with it. Addy's body goes back to being motionless on the bed as doctor's and nurses come rushing into the room and the scene fades into the kitchen of her childhood home. She regards her guide with a leery eye now.

"Are you an angel too?"

"Archangel, actually." He reaches for her mother's cookie jar, pulling a couple out and eating them.

"Michael?"

He laughs. "No, no. I'm Gabriel."

"Gabriel the Archangel." Addy shrugs and sits down at the kitchen table. "Well, why not? So what was the other angel doing to me exactly?"

"She was writing sigils on your bones."

Addy isn't sure if she likes where this is going but there isn't much to done about anything at this point. "What exactly are the sigils for?"

"They're to make you our anchor."

"An anchor? For angels?"

"Dead angels, yes."

"Why-"

Without warning, her eyes open and she's conscious. At first, all she can feel is the floor beneath her, cold and smooth. The scent of old motor oil and gasoline assaults her nose and causes her head to riot in a splitting headache. When she opens her eyes, she sees the empty rafters and broken out windows of the abandoned garage behind the cemetery.

There is a flickering light dancing on the walls and she turns her head to see the strangest sight: three men she doesn't recognize standing around a ring of fire where the man who had approached her in the graveyard was standing. The trio of men seemed upset, the focus of the anger seemed to be in the center of the fire.

The thought of running crosses her mind but it is quickly replaced with the memory of the strange man saying he wasn't there to hurt her, that he was willing to stay with her so she wouldn't hurt herself. She feels around in her pockets to find her gun has been confiscated or is still laying on the ground in the cemetery. She has no way of defending herself against whoever these men are so she uses the only weapon she has: confidence.

She tries to walk in a straight and steady line but stills feels very wobbly from the alcohol and the head injury. As she comes closer to the group, the man in the fire circle establishes eye contact. But for all the emotions she saw flicker across his face in the graveyard, he remains unreadable and completely expressionless now. But his acknowledgement of her presence turns the trio's attention to her. Standing up as tall as possible and trying not to wince in pain, she gives them all a solid nod.

"Gentlemen."

It was the man in the trench coat that speaks first. "Are you Addison Weaver?"

She is an angel anchor, whatever that means. She assumes it is something important which is why she has all these people looking for her. There could be more on their way and she doesn't know who to trust. So she puts her hands in coat pockets and doesn't answer. "Who are you all exactly?"

The man farthest from her points to himself, the man standing standing closest to her and then to the trench coat. "Dean, Sam and Cas. You Addison or not?"

Addy looks at the man trapped in the fire ring. "And him?"

"Bad guy, don't worry about him," Dean answers.

"No offense but I'm a little worried about everyone in the room right now."

"Alright, look," Sam steps up. "We're looking for Addison because she's..."

She can tell he's searching for the right word that won't make any of them sound insane. She hated to break it to him, it was a little too late for that. "An angel anchor?"

"You know?" Cas asks.

Addy nods slightly. "Just that. I don't know what it means."

"It means you're in danger. From people like him," Sam motions to the man in the circle.

"He said he wasn't going to hurt me."

Sam hands her a piece of paper. "We found this in his pocket."

She opens it and finds her name written on it. "Okay."

"It's a hit list from another angel, Metatron."

"What? Like the transformer?"

Cas interrupts them. "We don't have time to explain. There are other angels on their way and I don't know what they want. We need to keep you hidden for now."

"I'm going to need a little more explained to me before I run off with the likes of you three to some safe house. For all I know, you guys are the bad ones."

"Go with them." The trapped man finally speaks up. "They will keep you safe."

Addy turns to Dean and raises an eyebrow. "Some bad guy you trapped there."

Dean waves a short, metallic sword in her direction. "You don't know the history here and we don't have the time to explain it to you."

"How convenient."

"So what's it going to take for you to come with us?" Sam asks.

It is a legitimate question and Addy doesn't have a good answer. She's tired, hungover and emotionally drained. Quite frankly, she's hoping this too is just a terrible dream that she'll eventually wake up from. She really doesn't want to get involved in whatever is happening between the four men. But she reasons she's already part of it, whether she likes it or not.

"It's too late," Cas says and draws his own strange sword, exactly like Dean's. "The other angels are here."

Addy turns to see a woman stepping through the broken door of the garage. She's dressed in a gray suit, heels clicking on the concrete. She's wearing dark framed glasses, blonde hair swept up neatly on her head. And Addy knows exactly who she is.

"Jael."

She smiles sweetly but with an edge. "Aw, you remember me."

Dean and Sam look over at Cas who has placed himself between Addy and the newcomer.

"Jael was the Rit Zein that was assigned to my garrison. Why would you do this?"

She pushes the glasses up her nose. "Because our fallen brothers and sisters needed a place to go. Do you know what happens to angels who don't have a charging station? They cease to exist. All those angels who died in the fall, there's no bringing them back. Now, there's a place for the one who die here and the ones who were already in the charging station to go."

"A human though?"

"Angels can't charge angels. We needed a conduit."

"Some humans can't contain an angel."

Jael's mouth twists unpleasantly. "Tell me about it. This is my third vessel."

Cas frowns. "So what makes you think one human can be an anchor for hundreds of dead angels?"

"One human can't. That's why I need watch this anchor closely and make a new one when she's close to death." She tilts her head to the side and motions towards Addy. "Come along, dear."

Addy feels like she's going to throw up. The idea of trusting the four men behind her suddenly has some appeal. "No."

Jael frowns. "If you insist on doing this the hard way, so be it."

The bay doors open and a group of what Addy suspects are other angels enter the garage. She counts ten but there could be more. Cas, Sam and Dean form a barrier between her and the approaching angels. She retreats back to the man trapped in the fire ring.

"You said you weren't going to hurt me." She fixes him with a steady gaze. "Did you mean that?"

His eyes keep darting to the upcoming confrontation. "I did."

"If I let you out of there, will you help?"

"Fighting that many angels is going to be difficult. I am...not at full strength yet."

"Then we'll have to be smart about this." The voices are starting to rise and those odd looking swords were all drawn now. Addy finds a piece of pressed wood and carries it over to the fire ring. "If I drop this down, will you be able to get out?"

He nods. "I will."

"It doesn't sound like they want me hurt."

"They don't. Your protection is every angel's priority right now."

Addy can't believe what she is about to say next. "Good. Then you're going to take me hostage and demand everyone leave then."

His brow furrows. "I don't want-"

"To harm me, yes, I know. That's what I'm counting on. Do you have one of those metal things too?"

He holds up his own weapon, a stunned look still on his face.

Addy takes a deep breath and drops the board across the flames. He's on her immediately, one arm restraining her and the other holding the blade against her throat.

"I am sorry about this," he whispers in her ear.

Addy swallows and hopes, for the first time in weeks, that she will survive the night.