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Chapter Text

“—but He left, ” Adam insists, one day. This isn’t the first time that they’ve talked about family—of course not—but it’s the first time that Adam’s ever felt some sort of strange obligation to speak up about a glaring issue that Michael seems to want to wholly accept with nothing short of absolute willful ignorance. Adam doesn’t understand it, not a damn bit. But, then again, he’s never been good with fathers.

Michael’s body gets a little harder, a little more rigid. “That does not mean that He isn’t right. Above all else, I am His son—His firstborn, His favorite. He may have left, but He must have had His reasons. He was meant to return upon the completion of my battle with Lucifer and bring Paradise to Earth, but…” he scoffs, glancing around, but Adam doesn’t think he’s looking at the house. His eyes are too distant. “We are here, instead of following our destinies.”

Adam gets the distinct feeling that he's fighting a battle he's going to lose. It was too obvious—this was so uphill that it was practically vertical. It was like Michael was completely indoctrinated into the mindset of God is all there is and all there ever will be, and Adam had been to church a few times in his life but this was on a whole other level.

Then again, it did make sense, because of the whole angel thing, but...he was pretty sure that the one angel that had been wearing the trench coat—Cassiel? Castiel? Something like that—hadn’t been like this.

How did angels work?

Adam sighs and tries a different route. “Have you ever considered that maybe God...changed his mind?”

Michael frowns. “What?”

“Well, think about it. Your battle with Lucifer—it was gonna get pretty bad, right? It would’ve killed a lot of people. And God...loves humanity, doesn’t he? So maybe He decided...I don’t know, that all those people dying weren’t worth the cost of some Paradise? And now you’re down here, where it’s just—me. So no one else could be hurt up there, or something.”

“My Father would not have turned his back on His own Plan, Adam,” Michael chides, but his face is detached—confused, almost, like the words aren’t properly registering. “He would not abandon something as righteous as Paradise just to spare a few human lives. It was my destiny to fight Lucifer. He told me so. And if my Father commands something, it must be so.”

Adam doesn’t believe in fate, or destiny, or anything of the sort, especially not after all his time down here. All he knows is what he’s given. What’s presented to him, clear as day.

But Michael...apparently does, even now.

Adam doesn’t want to sugarcoat it for him, doesn’t want to make him feel better about the thick blindfold he seems to be wearing, but...he gets the feeling that the archangel’s going to hit a dead-end street when it comes to his logic—or lack thereof—sooner or later, and that he was probably going to go crashing hard into a wall when he did.

Adam may not... like him, but he doesn’t want to watch him fall, either.

“Listen, Michael,” he starts, speaking slowly, carefully, “I’m not trying to lay into your dad’s whole Plan thing, okay? That’s not what I’m trying to do. Just...if it was actually your destiny, then why are you here?”

Michael’s getting antsy, Adam notes, and he’s started walking slowly from wall to wall; a steady, ceaseless pacing. A look that’s a mixture of exasperated and agitated begins to form on his face, and he doesn’t say anything, but he seems enough like a caged animal that Adam sighs, quietly, and Michael’s gaze flashes towards him with a look that borders on challenging.

Adam wants to tell him that there’s no more destiny. He wants to tell him that Sam dragging them all down here was just a matter of him overcoming Lucifer and just launching them all down here like bottle rockets—and that’s it, nothing more to it. There’s no capital-P Plan happening down here. Nothing really matters when they’re trapped for the rest of time.

Instead, he takes one more look at Michael’s clear distress and rubs a hand over his eyes before finally conceding, letting his hand drop down into his lap with a thump.

“Okay. What was living in a big family like?”

Michael stops, glancing quizzically at him like he can’t believe what he’s hearing. “What are you—”

“I’m not trying to upset you on purpose, man. I just don’t think you should rule out other possibilities because you’re coming up short—” The archangel bristles, but Adam presses on. “—and it’s getting you nowhere. So, we’ll just sort of...agree to disagree, yeah? We can just drop it. Whatever. But you lived with a lot of angels up in Heaven, right? It was only ever me and my mom, so I don’t know what living with a bunch of people you’re related to is like.”

Michael turns to face him, narrowing his eyes skeptically. “Is this another one of your instances of caring? ” The word is laced with ice, but it’s not as venomous as it was before.

“It might be,” Adam spreads his hands out in a what-can-you-do gesture. Michael shakes his head, a motion that means unbelievable if Adam’s ever seen one.

“Hm,” The archangel grunts, finally. “You’re still wrong, you know.”

“Maybe I am,” Adam shoots back. “We’re in Hell. Does it matter?”

“Yes,” Michael insists, but he doesn’t sound convinced. Not to Adam, at least.

There’s a few minutes of silence, where Adam sits and waits patiently for Michael’s next move. Michael stares back at him, his face impassive but his eyes hard; inspecting. And then, at long last, he begins to grudgingly talk; offering Adam his first story after so long of them both only hearing Adam’s.

It’s not much, really, but Adam’ll take what he can get.

Michael had been getting this look, lately—like he was uncomfortable. Pained, maybe. Adam, for the life of him, couldn't figure out why.

He only ever did it when he seemed to think that Adam wasn't paying attention, like he was constantly holding himself back, and Adam didn't want to pry but he did want to know what was happening—even though Michael would probably never tell him.

Adam doesn’t voice his internal dialogue, though. Instead, he just starts to hum.

He isn't sure how long he does it before Michael speaks, but that's just how it always is, isn't it? He never knows. He never knows anything.

“You’re interesting,” the archangel voices, when Adam’s in the middle of a vaguely familiar tune that his brain can’t quite put a name to.

“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

“An observation.”

“Oh, great. Love that. Wanna elaborate?” Adam hopes Michael picks up on the sarcasm. He normally does, but sometimes it slips by him.

“You weren’t meant to be born,” Michael says, watching him with cool eyes.

“Uh...yeah? I was an accident. Those happen, y’know. With humans.”

“No,” he emphasizes, “you weren’t meant to be born. The Winchester bloodline was meant to end after Sam was born. There was never supposed to be a third son. Just Sam and Dean.”

A short bark of derisive laughter slips its way past Adam’s throat, dull and biting. “As far as I’m concerned, it did end after Sam. But, that’s beside the point. Whether or not I was meant to be born, I was, and...that's it. Whoop-de-doo, or whatever,” he shakes his head, biting the inside of his cheek before continuing on. “Anyway, as far as the world’s concerned, I barely even existed in the first place, so I don’t think it matters. I’m just the backup to your true vessel, remember?”

He’s gotten...well, he doesn’t want to say nihilistic, because he’d like to think that he’s moved on at least a little bit from the days where he sat as still and cold as a rock in the darkness of his own mind, but he certainly wouldn’t describe himself as bright-eyed or bushy-tailed by any means. He’s not even being self-deprecating—it’s just a fact. The sky is blue, he’s trapped in a cage with two archangels, and he was the backup vessel for an archangel to use to bring on the Apocalypse. That's all he was. It's all he'll ever be.

He wonders, again, what his mom would think of him now. He pushes the thought away a second later.

When Michael goes a little quiet, Adam takes the chance to ask a question. It'd been brewing in the back of his mind for a while, now, and it didn't seem like Michael was going anywhere. What did he have to lose?

“Hey,” he queries, “if I was just the bait to get to Dean, why didn’t you go after him? I mean,” he chuckles, a little darkly, “all you probably would’ve had to do was make Sam puke up some more blood and he would’ve handed you that yes on a silver platter. What happened?”

He waits for an answer, something along the lines of you were more simple, you would say yes easier, Dean was too stubborn and I didn’t have the patience, but instead Michael’s gaze drops to the floor, and it turns into a swirling mixture of blank and some other hidden emotion, something Adam can’t quite read.

“I don’t know,” he rumbles, at last, and now it’s so quiet that Adam almost has to strain to hear it.

“Oh,” Adam replies. It’s lame, but he doesn’t know how else to respond. “Huh.”

Michael isn’t that talkative, which isn’t surprising, but he shares more and more when Adam prods at him, nowadays. Adam wonders if the silence had finally gotten to him, too—true, Adam never shuts up, but there was a difference between listening and speaking. A big one. You could listen to someone else all you wanted, but the longer you went unheard, the more that loneliness would wrap around you like a vice. Or maybe that was just him, and the Cage was making him some sort of wannabe poet that didn’t know right from left.

He tells Adam about his lance, quietly describing the amount of detail that he’d put into the craftsmanship, and Adam listens with more rapt attention than he’d thought he’d ever have for someone who was talking about weaponry, his hands in his pockets and his eyes wide with honest curiosity.

“Wait, so why didn’t you bring it to the cemetery?”

Michael glowers at nothing in particular. “There was a band of rebellious angels, millennia ago. They ransacked the armory and attempted to flee to Hell in order to free my brother from the Cage. The majority of them were killed, and the weapons retrieved, but a garrison was foolish enough to let a few of them escape out of sentiment. They managed to get away with three weapons. My lance was one of them. I have not seen it since.”

Adam ahhs in understanding, and then knits his brows together as he finds a contradiction in Michael’s statement. “Wait, didn’t you tell me once that angels don’t have free will?”

The archangel quirks an eyebrow. “No one does. Especially not angels. We are God’s soldiers, first and foremost—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that part, but...if angels don’t have free will, then how can there be rebellious angels?”

Michael throws his hands up, suddenly out-out. “Why must you always ask the strangest questions?”

He doesn’t sound that annoyed, so Adam allows himself to snicker. “Man, I was a biology major. It’s science. Asking strange questions is kind of what science is. ”

“I thought you were going to be a doctor. ” The human term sounds odd in his mouth. By the look on his face, he seems to think so, too.

“I was. But I was still a nerdy kid. I think I loved science fairs.”

Michael seems to let go of his annoyance for all of two seconds to peer at him. “You think?”

“I’ve told you before, Michael. My memory’s gone straight down the drain.”

Michael pulls a face like he’s considering what Adam’s said, and then he starts to walk across the room towards him, his hand beginning to raise and curl into the two fingers that he’d had before—when he’d erased whatever living nightmare his brain had conjured up—as he gets within a few feet of him. When Adam leans away, a little wary, Michael stops, tilting his head inquiringly.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Adam holds his hands out in front of him. “Wait a second. What’re you doing?”

“I may be able to repair some of your memories, if they are not entirely lost,” Michael says, like Adam should already know this.

“Um?” he responds, slowly lowering his hands. He’s still a bit wary. “Okay, I guess. Just—a little warning would be nice?” He’s not sure if Michael would actually listen to his request for permission, but he’d like for it to go down that he said it, regardless.

Then again, who’s keeping count?

Michael regards him, for a moment, and then stretches out his hand once more. Adam tries not to tense up when it connects with his forehead, and then—

He’s five, and he’s shrieking with laughter as Mom tickles him, breaking loose from her and running to jump on top of his bed. She stands where he left her, laughing right along with him with her hands on her hips, blonde hair messy. He's breathless, exhilarated, and he's grinning so widely it hurts as the bed groans under him.

He’s seven, and he doesn’t know how late it is but the night’s pitch black outside and his mind is screaming that there’s a monster in his closet, so he pulls his covers over his head and shakes there until morning, desperately wishing for Mom even though she isn’t there. He’s all alone in a big, empty house until eight o’clock—and, as the house settles, it sounds like the creaking of footsteps getting closer and closer to his door.

He’s ten and he’s running up to the door of the diner, Mom calling out from behind for him to slow down. Mr. Abbinanti and his wife are in there, too, and they smile and wave at him as he opens the door, to which he grins back and tells them hi, proudly showing off his missing front tooth for the world to see.

He’s twelve and John Winchester is pulling out of their driveway, and he watches him go as the first seeds of resentment begin to plant themselves in his heart. He thinks of Mom and her slowly-graying hair and her tired eyes, and he regrets ever pestering her about meeting him. When he walks back inside, her smile is a little soft, a little sad.

He’s thirteen, and Mom’s favorite vase—the one that she’d gotten for her twentieth birthday from her grandma—is laying in pieces on the ground. He hadn’t meant to slam so hard into the table it had been sitting on, but it had been two in the morning and he’d been tired and nervous because he’d felt like something was watching him and when he went to get a glass of water he hadn’t watched where he was going and—he starts crying. He cleans it up with shaky hands so Mom won’t accidentally step on it and sits on the living room couch for six hours until she gets home, promptly bursting into tears again and blubbering out what happened, apologizing over and over again. Mom looks over to where it had lay, sighing, and kisses the top of his head, telling him it’s alright.

He’s fifteen and it’s his birthday, and Mom bakes him a cake and John buys him a beer. The beer’s alright, but the cake’s better, sweeter, and he jokingly tells his mother to send his compliments to the chef. She laughs and kisses his cheek, and he laughs with her. The house is warm.

He’s seventeen, with a part-time job, and he uses a bit of the money from it to buy a t-shirt he liked for himself. He tries to give the rest of it to his mom and sighs when she refuses, saying that it’s his. They’re not as bad off as they were back when he was younger and she hadn’t been entirely prepared to look after a child, but things have always been a little tight. He wants to help.

He’s eighteen, turning nineteen soon, and he’s being eaten ali—

Adam’s hand shoots up to wrap around Michael’s wrist, trying to pull away. Michael is an immovable object, of course, but the action gives him enough balance to jerk his head back without slamming it into the wall behind him, away from the archangel and his overwhelming memory magic.

He’s reeling, his mind overloading, still in some wild state of disorientation from the hundreds of memories that had just been taken out, patched up, and thrust back into his head. Some things that he’d been grasping at straws for were finally clear after all this time, and other things remained as equally forgotten as before.

It’s...odd.

Adam finally remembers that he’s still latching onto Michael like a lifeline when he realizes that he’s swaying in his seat, that the only reason he’s still somewhat balanced being the vice grip of his fingers locked around a jacket sleeve.

His first thought is—oh, he’s warm.

His second thought is—oh, shit.

He looks up, wide-eyed, to see Michael staring inscrutably down at where their bodies are linked before quickly pulling his hand away, tucking it awkwardly in his lap and covering it with his other one. Michael follows the action with his gaze before meeting Adam’s, scrutinizing him in the same manner as he usually does.

“The more salvageable memories were mostly of your mother,” he says, and Adam jolts slightly at the sudden noise. “The rest were faded beyond repair. There would be no point in attempting to rebuild them.”

Adam makes a sound that seems like it could’ve been a laugh, at one point, but it comes across as more of a wheeze. “Well, she’s more important, so...um,” he pauses, feeling more than a little awkward. “Thanks. For, uh, that.”

“I wasn’t aware you were killed by ghouls.”

Adam stills, taking a breath. Ghouls? That's what they were called? What a stupid name. “Uh, yeah. It doesn’t exactly...make the best conversation?”

Michael studies him. He does that a lot, these days, because Adam is apparently interesting. Then, he nods, and it leaves Adam—once again—with a whole lot of questions and no answers.

Michael, as Adam had realized at some point during one of their many talks, wasn’t actually all that bad. When he wasn’t actively trying to act like a douche, that is. Mostly, he seemed like he was just rooted in old behaviors. It almost reminded him of Mr. McDavid, the old man who’d lived down the street from him and his mom—and fuck, it was so nice to be able to remember things, Adam never should’ve taken that for granted when he was alive.

Once all that bark was peeled away, though, Michael just seemed like someone who was too used to following plans and formulas and executing them with a disturbing amount of perfection—and who seemed a little lost, now that there was no specific plan to follow.

It wasn’t obvious, at first, but now that he’d roped Michael into the habit of sharing stories about his own past, Adam could hear something behind it all. He could hear the I don’t know why He left when Michael talked about Creation, the What did I do wrong? when he described how he’d led the angels in battle, eons ago, the Why am I being punished? when he spoke about the fall of Adam and Eve at Lucifer's hand.

He doesn’t think that Michael intends for him to hear these things, but he does, regardless. And Adam still has that silly little desire to comfort him, as ridiculous as it sounds. He may not understand the feeling, but he treasures it—secretly. It’s another sign that he’s real, that he isn’t...numb, anymore. Not completely.

Even still, there’s got to be something a little crazy about wanting to reassure the winged dude you’re sitting in Hell with; the guy who tried to arrange an apocalypse that would’ve killed millions, who would’ve done it with no remorse whatsoever in his pursuit of Paradise and who would probably do it again if he ever were to be freed. Emphasis on probably, though—he’s not exactly as gung-ho about it as he was before, seeing as God hadn’t returned.

Yet, Michael sometimes finds it in himself to insist, My Father hasn’t returned yet.

Adam doesn’t believe it, but every conversation with Michael involving God ends on the brink of disaster, so he decides to just let it be. And, besides—just because he was bled dry of hope a long time ago didn’t mean he had to rip that same hope away from his only companion, who was hopelessly devoted to a dad who would never come back.

He still didn’t understand it—but, then again, it wasn’t like he had much experience in the dad department. Maybe this was a normal thing for families?

...Somehow, he doubted it.

Today—or whatever period of time they’re in right now—isn’t the best, if the voices murmuring in his ears are anything to go by. They’re unintelligible whispers that wisp about at the back of his mind like annoying little shadows, and it almost feels like there’s a fly buzzing around in his brain—extremely uncomfortable and impossible to get rid of. It almost makes him miss the way the hallucinations used to be; the blank-looking corpses that parroted mindless threats and words at him. At least he could tune those out. This...this was just irritating.

Currently, Adam was sitting on the bed with his feet kicked up, watching Michael as his face hardened over, as his eyes sharpened when he looked around, gazing upon an area that Adam wasn’t privy to. Mainly because, unlike Michael, he couldn’t flit in and out of this... mind-space thing at will. At least, not in a way he knew how to. He remembered the last time he’d really seen the Cage, when he managed to pull away, back from Michael and the forefront of his body. He wasn’t quite sure how to replicate it, from in here—wasn’t even sure if he wanted to.

But, anyway, Adam watches. He notices. He sees, observing the way that Michael’s body almost seems to shut down as he retreats further outwards, eyes closing and form beginning to flicker as his attention gets diverted—he’s less in here and more out there, more distant.

When he finally comes back, his form solidifying, Adam takes in the way that his shoulders slump—just a bit, but enough for it to be noticeable. He takes in the way that the lines around Michael’s face soften, enough to look briefly weary—pained, again, and Adam doesn't know why—before it smooths out into something more insipid. His hands slip from their defensive, arms-crossed position in front of his chest to come down and land in the pockets of the jacket that’s a copy of Adam’s own, and...huh.

Maybe Michael listened more than he thought.

“You were a little longer this time,” Adam says, sitting up. “Is everything okay?”

“Lucifer was abnormally close,” Michael replies, walking up to the edge of the bed to take a seat on it, his feet still on the floor. “I waited until he retreated before returning.”

“Oh, okay.”

The archangel glances down, then, taking one of his hands out of his pocket to run it over the top of the bed. It’s like he’s looking for something, almost. Adam isn’t sure what.

“What, is the color not up to your standards?” he tries, leaning down a little to try and catch Michael’s eyes, to figure out what’s got him so interested , all of a sudden, but Michael doesn’t take the bait. He doesn’t meet Adam’s eyes, either.

“You sang to me, here,” he murmurs, instead.

Adam’s entire thought process is brought to a halt, save for the voices that just won’t shut up. He frowns, raising his head back up, watching Michael cautiously. This isn’t an area he knows how to navigate.

“Yeah? I sing all the time, Michael. You know this, or do you not remember all the times you told me to shut up?”

Michael’s face almost seems amused, still staring at the bedspread. “I know. But you sang to me, here.”

Adam’s first response is don’t flatter yourself, which is promptly shoved down because, well—saying that would make him a liar, and there’s no point in lying to the celestial powerhouse that lives in his body. Not when he’s all Adam has.

Especially when he'd once called him out for lying, too. That would just make him seem like a hypocrite.

His second response is, “What’s your point?” because it’s neither outright acceptance nor outright denial. He may have somehow been able to tell Michael fuck you, I’m gonna care about you for my own sake once, but that didn’t mean he was equipped to deal with every emotional situation known to mankind.

And angelkind, apparently.

“I didn’t—uh, I didn’t think you could hear me, back then.”

“I could. I heard it. All of it.”

Adam doesn’t remember the specifics of what he’d said, but he’s fairly sure he called Michael a S.O.B. and he wonders if that’s what this is about. That doesn’t explain Michael’s fixation on the singing, though, or the placid expression he’d suddenly started wearing.

Right as he’s about to ask Michael to stop beating around the bush, Michael speaks. “I hadn’t meant to—I thought you would be better off, in your own mind. That, by giving you a replica of your body and keeping you away from the fighting, you would suffer less.”

The voices tickle Adam at the back of his mind. He thinks he hears one laugh. “Humans...we’re not meant to be alone, Michael,” he swallows, finally, clasping his hands together. “I don’t think anyone is.”

That makes Michael still, and Adam studies him, the way his shoulders tense in the fluorescent yellow light of the room, how his eyes seem to flicker with emotion for a moment before returning to that weary sort of calm once more.

“You were young, when I took you,” he sighs, and Adam's thoughts come to a dead stop, because they haven't talked about this before and he doesn't particularly want to, even now. “You only did as you were asked. You shouldn’t have been punished for that. But...you were. By my hand, no less, and for that—no.”

Finally, finally, Michael raises his head to look at him, and his gaze is intense, sincere, enough to drown in.

“For it all, I'm sorry.”

Oh, Jesus. When did Michael learn to apologize? Where did he even pick it up from? Because this certainly didn’t match up with the Michael who got annoyed at him for fucking breathing, no matter how much he’d calmed down as more and more time passed.

Why did he even feel the need to apologize? He was big, he’d made that explicitly clear during their time down here. Too big for human things. Too big for Adam, no matter how much he humored him. It didn’t make sense.

It didn’t make sense.

For it all, he’d said. For being the cause of his removal from Heaven. For the torture by Zachariah's hands. For taking his body, the entirety of his autonomy. For letting them be dragged into Hell. For leaving him alone, in the dark, for years and years and years.

Michael’s eyes are searching his, like he’s waiting for an answer, but Adam’s brain is fried, melted, thrown so violently out of the loop of things that he can’t think of anything but static. The whispers jeer at him, harsh tones and muffled words ringing in his ears like a cold substitute for the rushing of blood.

He doesn’t understand.

Adam swallows, again, and nods, mind racing to come up with anything, anything to say in return.

He finds something.

It’s not what he thinks he wants to say, but, in the end, it’s all that he has.

“Okay.”

“Do you wanna try to shuffle these cards?”

“Me. Shuffle cards.”

“Well, there’s no need for the caveman talk.”

Michael stares at him, unimpressed. Adam just smiles and maneuvers the stack of cards between his fingers, making a little show of it, before slapping them all into the palm of one hand and holding them out in Michael’s direction. It’s an offer, almost. An invitation.

Michael is a celestial being of epic proportions. He's powerful and temperamental and stubborn and volatile, and someone that Adam was only just beginning to actually understand; and, sometimes, he wondered if he ever actually would. He could snap his fingers and accomplish almost any task in the universe, just short of getting them the hell out of Hell. Here and now, all he needed to do was reach out his hand and the deck of cards would come floating over to him like their false impression of gravity didn’t exist.

Talk about an oxymoron.

But Michael doesn’t do that. Instead, something amused passes over his features—and it isn’t condescending, isn’t falsely sympathetic, isn’t detached. It’s just...amused. And then, he walks over and takes the cards from Adam’s hand, examining them under a contemplative eye and turning them over to see them from different angles before raising his eyebrows at him and perfectly mimicking Adam's usual shuffling technique, the cards making a flapping noise as they rapidly struck each other.

It makes Adam grin up at him. "Show-off."

Michael studies him for a moment, and—he doesn't smile, exactly, but his face...softens. Just enough to let Adam see it. It makes him look different. A little older, maybe, but a little kinder, too.

It doesn't look as out-of-place on him as Adam would've originally thought.