Chapter Text
Time trudges on, and Michael shows no signs of coming out of his own personal oblivion.
Adam shifted him over into a more comfortable position...eventually. Once it became clear that Michael wasn’t going to do it on his own. He wasn’t even sure if it would make a difference, but he couldn’t just—let him sit there.
It’s nothing short of strange, to see him like this. Adam’s so used to Michael being bigger-than-life, superior and cold and immortal. He’s used to seeing him act like a self-righteous dick, even when he’d only been listening to Adam ramble on in silence for all those years. It was visible in his eyes, in the way he held his body all haughtily and the way he cocked his head in that arrogant way of his—Michael was a being of epic proportions, and Adam? All Adam was to him was a distraction, a way to ignore his devil of a brother and a way to abate whatever celestial version of loneliness he must’ve felt.
Ugh.
But now he’s still and quiet and—Adam would almost have to call it vulnerable. He still doesn’t have any answers to what the actual fuck happened when Lucifer attacked, but, seeing as Lucifer apparently hasn’t figured out a way to break into... this, he’s decided to save all the questions that are forming in his mind for when Michael comes out from his period of inactivity.
Because he will. He has to. If Adam did it, as weak as he must be in comparison to an archangel, then Michael can too.
For now, though, he’s stuck here, in a house that doesn’t exist. He’s already nearly looked over the whole place from top to bottom, and there’s really nothing of value. No food in the cupboards, the TV doesn’t work, the faucets are dry and the inconsistencies get worse and worse as he goes further from his room.
The one room he hasn’t gone in is his mother’s, and he isn’t ashamed to admit to himself that it’s because he’s scared—scared of walking in and finding nothing more than a wall of unnatural white. If there’s anyone who doesn’t deserve to be forgotten about, it’s his mother, and now he can’t even remember her favorite color or if she liked coffee or tea better when she woke up.
His hallucinations keep him from forgetting her face, though, which is just about the only good thing to come out of them. His mind still conjures them up; blank, ghostly figures whose sole purposes are to make him feel like a certified crazy person. Well, he is, at this point, but the constant reminder isn’t very nice.
Occasionally, he makes his way back into his room to check up on Michael. It never does any good, and Michael never opens his eyes. When Adam had tried to feel for his grace, closing his eyes and focusing as hard as he could, he’d found it—but it was so distant that he could barely make out the thrum of its power. Which was odd, because they share a body, but...metaphysics. Gotta love ‘em, right?
Double ugh.
If he thought about it too much, it made Adam think of an armadillo or a porcupine, curling into a ball to shield itself from its enemies. Only sometimes, though—the rest of the time, he just remained well out of reach.
Maybe that was what had happened—Michael had gone too far on the defensive and shielded himself from everything. It was as good a guess as any. Didn’t explain the house, but hey—nothing’s perfect.
Nonetheless, Adam sits in the same room as him and watches him—like a creepy stalker—and reminds himself that, even if his only companion is a supercilious ass of an archangel who’s currently in some weird coma that’s not actually a coma, he’s not... alone. Michael’s there, even if he’s not actually there.
Somewhere along the way, Adam starts singing again.
A lot of the time, lyrics completely and utterly fail him. All he has are remnants of melodies that mix and match together in his head until he can’t tell one song from the other, and, when he can’t find words to string together into song, he hums or he whistles.
Christ. He’s singing to an audience of one who’s not even listening, and how pathetic is that? Very, probably. Adam knows what he’s doing—comforting himself—but some part of him wants to believe that it’s comforting Michael, too. At least a little bit.
It’s a stupid thought. Michael doesn’t care, never has, never will. They don’t even like each other. But there’s no one else down here aside from Satan and nothing else to care about, and it’s the first thing Adam’s felt in so, so many years that makes him feel... human. And Michael’s “asleep,” so it isn’t like he’d mind, right?
And even if he woke up—it’d be better to have care thrown back in his face than sit in numbness again.
Right?
Adam sighs, running a hand through his hair.
He’s not sure how long Michael stays down. It could be days, weeks, decades, and all Adam does is sit at his side like a nurse tending to a patient and sing. He never tries to shift him or move him around, no matter how much he desperately craves the feeling of physical contact. Even in a place where physical doesn’t actually exist.
Until one day.
One day, Adam decides fuck it and reaches forward, stopping only for a moment before gingerly grabbing the arm that’s a copy of his own.
“I don’t know if you can hear me, you son of a bitch, but listen up anyway,” he starts, swallowing slightly before pressing on. “You winged assholes promised me something. My mom, remember? You promised me my mom. And instead, I ended up in Hell. Here. With you. And I can’t even go up to Heaven again to dream up my memories of her because this stupid fucking place won’t let me die. You don’t care. I know you don’t care. I honestly don’t get why you didn’t just start torturing me like Lucifer did to—to Sam.” The mention of his half-brother makes him look away, jaw clenching, before turning back to Michael’s still face.
“But you didn’t. You locked me away, instead. That was worse, honestly—the darkness. The emptiness. Knowing that I was alone. Then again, it’s nothing new, right?” Adam laughs, sharp and bitter. “You don’t care, Sam and Dean don’t care. The only person who ever cared about me was my mom, and—and I’m never gonna get to see her again.”
He sighs, feeling the hot anger seep out of him like sluggish blood from a deep wound. “You were right. I’m nothing. But you’re all I got down here, man. And I…” he pauses, swallowing. “Just...wake the fuck up, okay? Wake up. Please.”
There’s no response. Adam lets go of his arm, gets up, and leaves the room for the first time in a long time.
He doesn’t look back.
There’s a broom in the little closet. There’s no dust, but Adam sweeps anyway, carrying himself through the motions and wondering what he would’ve been thinking about if he were doing it on Earth. College, maybe? Or what he had planned for the day? Or maybe he’d internally complained about it, like he imagined normal teenagers probably did. He was too far outside of the realm of “normal teenager” by now. Actually, he was too far outside of the realms of “normal” and “teenager.” God only knew how old he was by now, and—
“What are you doing?”
The sudden voice makes him jump, startling him so badly that he drops the broom with a loud clatter. Adam whips around, taking a step back like he’s about to run (but, really, where would he even run to?) and finds—Michael. Michael, who’s leaning against the wall with his arms crossed like he’d never fell out of commission in the first place, looking at him with a sense of confused condescension that makes Adam sort of want to start bristling in retaliation, but he’s too busy being fucking shocked at the fact that Michael’s awake.
“Michael, you—are you okay?”
He’s not sure why that was the first thing that came out of his mouth—what he’d wanted to ask was hey, what the actual fuck is going on?
Michael tilts his head at him, brows furrowing in something that looks like even more confusion before nodding slightly in confirmation.
“Yes,” he says, and he makes a movement where he draws himself up, almost. It’s very slight, but it’s there, and it makes Adam stare at him suspiciously, suddenly noticing the way that Michael looks a whole lot less condescending and a whole lot more uncomfortable than he did three seconds ago.
Porcupine, his brain reminds him.
He chooses not to comment on it, instead nodding in return and blowing out a breath. “Right—yeah, okay. So, uh,” Adam gestures around at the room with both hands. “What the fuck, man?”
Michael glances around, eyebrows raising upwards as he takes it all in. “We’re still in your mind,” he states, finally, and he says it so matter-of-factly that Adam gets the annoying feeling that Michael isn’t actually talking to him—he’s talking over him.
Stuck-up prick.
“Great. Okay, so, what’s up with the house? What happened with Lucifer? Why were you all knocked out?” Reaching down, he picks up the handle of the broom and leans it against the wall next to him as he waits for answers.
“Lucifer…” Michael falters, for a moment, and this is the second time he’s acted weird in the past two minutes and Adam’s genuinely worried that the fake coma might’ve knocked a screw or two loose. “When I’m in here, it leaves your body...empty, in a way. Lucifer took advantage of my inattention and began ripping apart your body in an attempt to reach me. When that didn’t work, he probed...deeper. Deep enough to reach us, as it turned out.”
Adam frowns. “And...what, you beat him back and brought us back here? And then just—passed out?”
“No,” Michael says, pulling a face at Adam that, once again, makes Adam want to snap at him. He suppresses the urge. “I—managed to throw him back, yes, but this—” he sweeps his hand around the room, “—was not my doing. It was yours.”
“...’Scuse me?”
“Souls are powerful, Adam,” Michael sighs. It’s the first time Michael’s ever said his name, and it makes him startle. It’s almost like he’s actually acknowledging him.
Then, a resentful shadow passes across his face, and it darkens it enough for Adam to be reminded that he’s standing in a fake room with an archangel who, for all intents and purposes, has all the power here. “It was your brother’s soul that managed to overcome my brother’s grace long enough to pull us all down here. In the same way, when Lucifer struck, your soul must have reacted. Judging by this—” he casts an uncaring eye around the room they’re in, and muted offense rises up in Adam on behalf of the house he barely remembers. “—I’d say it reacted to a desire for safety. Does this place hold meaning to you?”
Some part of Adam’s mind realizes, distantly, that this is probably the most amount of words that Michael’s ever spoken to him—at him?—since they came down here. He has to remember to hastily nod, floored by what he’s hearing.
“Uh, yeah. This was where I lived—me and my mom.”
“Then, there you go. After I bested my brother, it formed a stronger mental shield in the form of a place that once held meaning to you. Around the both of us,” Michael looks him in the eye, then, and it makes Adam feel like he’s being looked through—like Adam’s a puzzle that Michael can’t quite figure out, and he’s being disassembled and assembled over and over again with the impatience of someone who can’t get a definite answer.
Adam doesn’t like it, so he speaks up again. “Okay. Sure. But...why were you, y’know, out? I mean, I was, too, when we first ended up here, but why did I wake up before you?”
The look vanishes from Michael’s eyes, and instead he cocks an eyebrow at him. “I said that your soul created a mental shield, didn’t I? While it...formed around me, I assume it also registered me as a potential threat. Therefore, it knocked me down in a manner similar to what your brother did to Lucifer. I wasn't out, I was too distant to interact here—thanks to you.”
The annoyed scowl that’s beginning to form on his face does not look promising, but...it wasn’t like Adam had meant to do it. Still, an apology begins to form on his lips, if only because he feels a little bad that he’d accidentally managed to subdue Michael for no good reason.
“Oh. Well, uh, sorry about that. I didn’t mean to.” He sort of wants to tack on, can you really blame me for seeing you as a threat, dude? But he supposes that they both already know that.
When Michael seems like he’s about to start scrutinizing him again, Adam quickly moves on. “Anyways...are you going to be staying or leaving?”
The archangel stares at him for a moment, the silence between them so tangible that Adam could probably cut clean through it with a knife, and then—poof. Gone.
“Yeah, I figured as much.”
Funnily enough, when he’s not drowning in absolute darkness, the loneliness doesn’t kill him as badly as it did last time. Or, maybe, he’s just grown more used to it. Either way, he’s more grounded, more solid than he was the last go-around. He isn’t as desperate. Isn’t as numb.
It means that he’s changing, he realizes. And Adam doesn’t know whether to be relieved or terrified. At least going insane in solitude was something human about him. Now—he’s probably still insane, given the fact that he’s started talking to his goddamn hallucinations, but it doesn’t hit him like it did before.
He just...accepts it. And he moves on. And the long, steady grind of years becomes just that—time. It becomes nothing more than plain, simple fact, instead of something that drives him crazy. Even the concept of living for eternity down here is becoming more and more elementary by the day—it’s less daunting and scary and enough to break him and more straightforward, easy to accept and live with.
Adam’s shuffling through his closet, right now, his mind conjuring up clothes that he probably never had in his actual life on Earth. None that he remembers, anyway.
“Really, I just don’t think orange is my color,” he chatters, absentmindedly flipping a neon orange coat back and forth on a hanger as he looks at it. It’s the ugliest thing he’s ever seen in his life. Honestly, it’s probably torture of his own making just to force himself to look at it.
“It’s your fault,” another vision of his mother croaks, somewhere behind him, no doubt as torn to shreds as she’s been the past few times. “If you’d never been born, I would still be alive.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Blue would be better,” he says, breezily, giving the coat a little shake and watching as it transforms into a dark blue t-shirt.
“Who are you talking to?”
He forces himself not to jump, and, sure enough, when Adam turns around—there’s Michael. He seems to like popping up behind people, for whatever reason. To be dramatic, no doubt.
“Hm?” Adam says, sparing him only a glance before turning back to the closet. “Oh, you’re back. You haven’t been gone that long, actually. Any news?”
In that moment, the amount of confusion he can feel radiating through the air is enough to make him smile. Michael probably knows he’s doing it—as much as this is Adam’s mind, he is an archangel, and he’s most likely got nothing better to do than monitor Adam’s every little action while he’s in here—but Adam doesn’t care. He’ll take what he can get.
To put it shortly? He’s over it. This. Everything. He’s over everything. So what if he’s insignificant? He’s still got a fake magic house.
...Even his attempts at optimism are pathetic.
“Lucifer believes me to be insane,” Michael remarks, finally, and he sounds so put-out by the mere notion that Adam can’t help how he snorts. It makes him turn around, the t-shirt disappearing entirely from his hands.
“Insane? You?”
The archangel squints at him, like he can’t tell whether Adam’s mocking him or not. He hadn’t been, but Michael can think what he likes. After a moment, he settles for a glare and a petulant crossing of his arms, his most preferred position aside from the patented empty-eyed-soldier look.
“Yes,” he says, slowly, like he’s explaining something to a child. “Me. And it would most likely be to my benefit that he continues to think so. He hasn’t tried anything else, after the incident.”
Adam considers that, for a moment. “So—what, are you two just sitting in opposite corners of the Cage and ignoring each other?”
“What else is there to do?” Michael mutters, but Adam can tell he’s talking over him again. There’s a distant pang of exasperation, but he can’t really find it in himself to care about Michael being his usual self-important self all that much anymore. It doesn’t matter.
“Well,” he shrugs, after a moment, “you could always stay here. Like you were before, but now it’s—” Adam makes a jazz-hands motion, but there’s so much sarcasm in it that even he can taste it. “—in color. ”
Something flickers across Michael’s expression, something that Adam can’t pinpoint, before his face hardens. “No. I can’t. Not permanently.”
“Why? You said it yourself, it’s not like there’s anything better to do. It’s not much,” he gestures to the little inconsistencies scattered around the room, “but I think that in here is better than, y’know, up there.”
But Michael shakes his head. “No. You wouldn’t understand. I failed my Father, I…” Something akin to a laugh tears its way out of the copy of his throat, but it’s not a laugh—it’s acidic, biting, too similar to Adam’s own insane cackling back in the times where he’d fallen completely into despair. “The Cage is my punishment. I must endure it.”
Adam contemplates the archangel in front of him for a moment, crossing his own arms as he stares at him. And then, he speaks. “Then why did you keep coming back here? Before, I mean.”
He's treading on dangerous territory with that question, he thinks; but, it doesn't really matter, does it? What's the worst that could happen? Nothing that Adam isn't already used to.
Michael, interestingly enough, doesn’t meet his eyes—won’t meet his eyes?—and he doesn’t immediately try to insult him and leave like he did the first time that question was asked, either.
Adam isn’t sure what to do with that information, so he doesn’t do anything at all.
“Look, Michael…” he sighs, unsure of his words but speaking them all the same, “Whether you’re in here or out there, you’re still... trapped, right? We both are. If you’re that dead-set on punishment, then—fine, I don’t know, just try and focus on that. Take it from me,” and his laugh mirrors Michael’s, the shake of his head even more so, “if you stay up there and actually go insane from how isolated you get—because Lucifer’s shitty company, and we both know it—you’re not gonna be able to focus on a damn thing, least of all your ‘punishment.’ ”
He catches Michael’s eye, finally, and holds his gaze with a bravery he didn’t think he still had. “Failed or not, a distraction wouldn’t kill you. And I think you know that, with how many times you’ve stayed.”
Then, Adam smiles again, but this time it's a flat, wretched little thing that he’s sure must make his eyes look as dull and blank as his hallucinations'. “But, then again, what do I know? I’m just a monkey, right?”
He even feels blank as he says it. If Michael were to start up the insults again, Adam doesn’t even think he’d go silent any more. Maybe he’d just try to talk over him.
Hm. That’d be interesting. Try to talk over the being that could very easily make his life more of a nightmare than it was already.
God, he’d become so detached that it wasn’t even funny anymore, hadn’t he? He wonders what his mother would think of it.
Adam’s careful not to bump into him on his way out, leaving Michael standing there as motionless as he came.
Surprisingly, Michael sticks around. He even talks some more, with some prodding from Adam. No more “Why?”s and endless staring—now, they’re actually getting somewhere in both directions. Michael’s still lofty and clinical but it’s easier to deal with, now, because Adam’s more or less accepted that he’s an archangel and he’s apparently always going to act like this. It’s like the whole eternally trapped concept: simple fact.
Sometimes, Adam will ask for updates on the state of the Cage, once he’s run out of things to talk about. Nothing ever changes, but they do have a roommate to keep an eye on.
“He’s started throwing himself against the walls of the Cage,” Michael informs him, expression reminiscent of a tired parent in a crowded restaurant with a screaming child, and it makes Adam chuckle.
“You know,” he comments, fiddling with the hem of his jacket sleeve for lack of anything better to do, “you’d think he’d be better at sitting in here than us. Since he was in here before, right?” Adam glances up to Michael for confirmation, and looks back down when he receives a nod. “So, shouldn’t he—I don’t know, be more used to it, or something?”
“Presumably. But, Lucifer has always been…” The archangel trails off, and Adam raises his eyebrows, waiting for him to continue. When he doesn’t, Adam sighs.
“Are you okay?”
Michael’s eyes shoot upwards, and he glares at him. “What?”
“Listen, I’m no expert in all that family crap, but he’s your brother, right? And you clearly love him—” Michael shifts, at that, sitting up straighter like he doesn’t know whether to be prideful of or offended at what Adam’s just said, “—even though he’s the Devil. It can’t be easy to look at him like this. If you want me to stop bringing him up, I can.”
Michael is quiet, and Adam is already mentally preparing to begin another period of total silence. For a second, he doesn’t even know if Michael’s still paying attention to him, but then he’s hit with that look of analysis again and he has to resist the urge to stand up and walk away. It wouldn’t do any good.
“And you?”
Adam frowns. “What do you mean?”
“Do you still love your brothers? Even when they left you here?”
He stares, wide-eyed, at the archangel in front of him. “You—you think I love them? That I ever did? I knew them for hours! They threw the word ‘family’ in my face and then fucking ditched me the first chance they got!” Ugly, raw anger stirs within him, buried deep in a murky lake in his gut where he shoves a good majority of his rage. He normally tries to leave it alone, cover it up, but it still claws at the walls of his stomach and bays to be released with every false breath he takes.
Adam exhales slowly, vividly aware of Michael’s eyes tracking his every move. “No. I don’t love them. I never did. I never will. ”
Michael blinks. “They’re still your brothers. They share your blood, the same as your father.”
“If you think that I’m going to consider them my family just because we’re related, you got another thing coming.” Adam fleers. “I told them, and I’ll tell you—we may be blood, but we sure as Hell aren’t family. As far as I’m concerned, John Winchester was nothing but a sperm donor.”
The archangel studies him, but it’s not as intense as before—it’s more careful, more considering. “But you still care about them. Even if you don’t consider them family.”
Adam deflates like a balloon, and his glower can’t be held up in the face of his sudden weariness. “Sure, I guess. Because they’re people, and people deserve to be cared about. Maybe not by archangels like you, but...” He waves a hand about in an aimless gesture.
Michael looks down, face twisting like he’s deep in thought, and Adam rubs a hand over his eyes, briefly pinching the bridge of his nose before letting it fall back down into his lap.
“I wanted to kill him,” Michael says, just as Adam’s starting to lose himself in his thoughts, jerking him back into reality. “Lucifer...I was supposed to kill him as part of the Plan to bring my Father back. It was my destiny. And I...still love him. But I wanted to kill him. I still do.”
His face is shadowed, old, and it’s probably the first real insight into Michael that Adam’s ever gotten in the years that they’ve been stuck down here.
“So you love him,” Adam replies, softly, like he’s trying not to shatter whatever shred of understanding that they’ve come to, “but you don’t care about him.”
More silence, and then—
“No,” Michael utters, as if the idea had never occurred to him before. “No, I suppose I don’t. Not anymore.”
They sit there for some time, then, because really, what is Adam supposed to say to that? They’ve never done this, this— openly talking shit, and he has no doubt that Michael will collect himself soon enough and go back to lording himself over Adam’s head, but it’s grounding, somehow, to see him like this.
“I have an idea,” Adam speaks up, and Michael sends him a questioning glance. “We’re gonna be stuck down here forever, right? I doubt Sam and Dean are coming for me and you—” he remembers the brief exposure he had to Michael’s head, all that time ago, remembers the trail end of a sentence that he’d caught: still have not come for me. “Well, you don’t act like you’re planning on being rescued by your family, either.”
Michael’s expression darkens into a deep-set scowl, at that. “What’s your point?”
“My point is, we’re basically alone down here, right? It’s just us and, y’know, Lucifer.” he chuckles, a quiet, sad little thing. “So—why don’t we stick together? And just...not act like assholes to each other, anymore? I know I’m not... important, or anything, but it wouldn’t hurt, right? I mean, that way, neither of us have to worry about losing our minds, and...I don’t know, you don’t have to stare at Lucifer any longer than you have to?”
Michael contemplates him, for a minute. “You’re saying that we only have each other.”
Adam shrugs. “Sure, I guess.”
It doesn’t take as long as Adam would’ve expected for an answer.
“Very well.”