Chapter Text
It starts like this:
Michael and Lucifer fight. A lot. Especially now that Sam’s out of the Cage—which Adam is still plenty bitter about—and Lucifer’s not distracted by ceaselessly torturing him. They circle each other constantly, supercharging their power and meeting each other in the middle with explosive strength that would easily be enough to level continents if they were still on Earth. It was terrifyingly bright and insanely loud and enough to make him feel tiny; insignificant, in a way that he’d never felt before.
And Adam found himself awake for all of it. He wasn’t sure if this was Michael’s way of torturing him, just as Lucifer once did with Sam, or if Michael just didn’t know that he was awake. But he was, and every single time Lucifer inflicted an injury on Michael, Adam felt it too. It’s just as painful as if he were actually the one experiencing it—which, to put it lightly, sucks. And they were always screaming at each other. Adam genuinely didn’t know what was worse, getting struck by the Devil or having to hear the endless roaring of all-powerful bickering brothers.
It was never in English, either—his ears were constantly getting assaulted by their special angel language, or whatever the hell it was. He wasn’t sure if it had a name, and he wasn’t even going to try to poke at Michael’s side of their shared body to see if it did. He didn’t exactly want to accidentally annoy the big, scary archangel into treating him like Lucifer did Sam. Adam had only seen flashes, back when Sam was still in the Cage, and it...wasn’t pretty.
Nevertheless, he’d gotten used to it all by now. He remembered when he’d first woken up, when he’d been coherent enough to look around and feel the grand realm of Hell ravage his senses in the same way that he thought getting crushed like a steamroller might be like. It was brutal, and harsh, and he hadn’t had a choice on whether or not he wanted to experience it because he was always awake. His mind had practically turned itself inside out with how much it had burned, freezing cold and intense, and he’d known nothing but complete and utter pain for so long. But, eventually—well, it didn’t subside so much as it became bearable. Like he’d developed a callus, almost.
Adam wasn’t sure how long it had been topside, but it felt like it had been an eternity down here.
Or, maybe, he was just bored and tired of all the fighting.
He really did wonder if Michael even knew that he was here with him, sometimes. If he did, he hadn’t shown any indication of it. He certainly didn’t when they were at the graveyard, right before they fell into Hell. Adam had originally found himself in an odd, forced state of sleep until he was rudely awoken by the feeling of burning alive, only to die (again!) and suddenly be revived (again!), shoved back into his body as it was being quickly rebuilt, atom by atom. Only, this time, he hadn’t been in a state of unconsciousness—he’d been awake.
Of course, all this brings him to the present. Well, as present as he can get in a place that doesn’t have a concept of linear time; at least, not to his knowledge.
It’s one day—month? Year?—out of the endless, steady grind of time, while Michael and Lucifer are fighting, that Adam finally begins to recognize...patterns, within the sounds the brothers are making at each other. There’s one pattern that’s been repeated hundreds, if not thousands, of times, and Adam’s not a hundred percent certain but he thinks it’s their word for father.
Every time it’s screamed, Lucifer’s essence takes on a rage-filled, hurt tinge. The tinge is mirrored in Michael, but it’s not angry; instead, it’s prideful, righteous, offended, but not on his own behalf. Adam’s not quite sure how he knows these things, but his senses in here are much different than they were on Earth, and he’s always prided himself on being observational, anyway. Maybe it's because he's strapped to one of them, but he just knows that Lucifer feels something akin to betrayal whenever this particular pattern of sounds came up—it was like he'd picked up on archangel body language, or something.
Who knows, at this point?
He’d only figured out that they had daddy issues because of the few times they’d yelled at each other in English, when they all first landed here, before they’d made a permanent switch over to their other language.
But Adam’s bored, and he’s so tired of only being able to focus on the pain of Lucifer’s blows, so he starts actually listening to their voices instead of filtering them out as background noise.
What he finds is...surprising.
It’s not that he can actually understand their language, because he can’t. But he pays attention to their tinges—their auras, if you will, Adam really doesn’t know how to describe it—and the way they react to the words that come from them. Lucifer will sometimes utter one or two particular phrases that make Michael almost soften, somewhat, before he reluctantly throws himself back against him. Michael spits out words and his entire essence will contort and warp into a defensive shield of frustration while Lucifer barks out grating laughter.
Adam, to his astonishment, finds that he can easily distinguish between anger and nostalgia, between hatred and pain and reluctance and finality. He’s almost certain of the word father now, but he’s got nothing to help him translate anything else—it’s lost on his mind the way that angelic body language apparently isn’t.
He stays silent and listens, anyway. It’s not like he’s got anything else to do.
They’re going to exhaust themselves soon. Adam can feel it emanating from Michael. He can see it in the droop of Lucifer’s wings, the fluttering of his aura as he desperately tries to stay up in preparation for Michael’s next attack. He’s never seen this before, from either of them, but he supposes that non-stop fighting would wear down even the toughest of the lot after a while. He’s pretty sure that the only thing keeping Michael standing was his unyielding stubbornness.
Then, he hears Lucifer say something. Adam frowns and listens in; it’s not any string of patterns he’s heard before. It sounds disgruntled and tired and almost a little desperate, and Adam feels surprise jolt through him when Michael appears to begrudgingly agree with him. That hasn’t happened once, not in the entire time that the two of them have been in the Cage. He watches with fascination as the two of them back away, neither daring to turn their backs on the other as they retreat to opposite corners of the prison.
A temporary truce, maybe?
With a sudden jolt, Adam suddenly registers that if Michael’s attention isn’t fully focused on fighting Lucifer, the odds of him laying eyes on Adam have skyrocketed, and not in his favor, either.
Fuck.
Adam’s still not quite sure how to manage this whole mental acrobatics thing, but he envisions himself pulling back, away from Michael, making himself as small as possible so he isn’t seen or heard or felt. He feels an odd sense of detachment, and suddenly his view of Lucifer is much dimmer and the storm-fire-heaven that makes up Michael feels just a bit further away from him than before.
Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me. Could he have done that the whole time?
...Then again, being repeatedly hit by Lucifer did tend to distract someone from clear lines of coherent thought. Sue him, it fucking hurt. Just because he’d gotten used to it didn’t mean that it was any easier to bear.
From what he could tell, Michael had sat down, pointedly looking away from Lucifer, but he was still aware of his every moment—in case the younger archangel in question decided to strike while Michael was taking a breather, no doubt.
That’s when the whirlwind started.
Adam supposed that, from all the fighting he’d been doing for God knows how long, Michael had never really gotten a chance to think without being interrupted. It had just been go-go-go for so long. Now, though, he was actually thinking.
And, apparently, an archangel’s thought process was fucking chaotic.
It was like he was hearing every word in every language ever created, ever. It was fast and nearly impossible to keep up with and loud, it was so fucking loud, even though he’d retreated as much as he could. He wished there was a way to cover his ears, but how was he supposed to cover his ears in his own mind?
—still have not come for me—
—brother, what has become of you?—
—He must have His reasons—
—focused—
—Raphael?—
—constricting—
The cycle continued, on and on and on and on, until Adam was almost entirely sure that his head would explode. He found himself wishing that they’d get up and fight again, or even that they’d start arguing—anything except having to be subjected to the torrent of thoughts that were currently assaulting him. It was like being strapped to several million suns at once, and all he could do was attempt to make himself smaller and smaller in an effort to block out the energy battering his mind.
This was it. This was it, he was going to lose it, he was going to become like Sam had been and turn into a wrecked mess of screaming pleas, everything was blending together and it was all too much, he needs it to stop he needs it to stop everything needs to—
Stop!
The chaos immediately halted, so abruptly that Adam wondered if it had ever actually been there at all. He was still reeling from the sensory overload when he felt Michael’s presence materialize next to him, wherever the fuck they were now in Adam’s body, and he instinctively shrank away from the essence of him because he did not want to experience anything like the inside of his mind again, thank you very much.
You still remain here? Michael’s voice reverberated throughout his brain like a mallet on a gong, but it didn’t overwhelm him, and Adam couldn’t be more fucking relieved if he tried. Instead, he tried to make sense of Michael’s words. His tone was flat, detached, but also... confused, maybe? So he apparently really hadn’t known that Adam was still here with him. Good to know.
I had assumed that your soul departed to Heaven when Castiel set me on fire. It seems I was incorrect. Oh. Was Michael reading his thoughts? Was Adam unintentionally broadcasting them? How did this even work? His university hadn’t exactly had a class called Sharing A Mind With Archangels 101 that he could’ve taken in preparation for a career path where he had to share a mind with a fucking archangel.
Thank you, college, for absolutely nothing.
Adam knew he should stay quiet. He really, really did. But he was frustrated and dazed and still bitter about being left behind and he was intentionally directing the words Wow, for someone who was supposed to beat the Devil’s ass, you’ve got some pretty shit observational skills before his brain could catch up to...well, his brain.
This shit was too confusing.
Michael’s presence makes no movement, no indication to show that he’d even heard what Adam had said.
You are small, Adam hears, at last. Your soul being overlooked was only to be expected. It's why you still remain here, isn't it?
Adam didn’t think he’d ever be able to understand how someone’s tone could be so flat and so condescending at the same time. It makes a hot burst of irritation sweep through him like a cleaver.
So—what, I don’t matter, then? he would’ve laughed, if he could. Of course he didn't. Of course none of this mattered. Fuck this. Fuck you!
Adam senses a rush of annoyance surge through the archangel’s grace, and then Michael disappears.
Adam...waited. He didn’t know how long he waited or what he was waiting for, but he waited. He couldn’t even see out of his own eyes anymore, and he wondered whether that was Michael’s doing or his own, in his effort to escape Michael’s inner turmoil.
It was too dark.
It was too quiet.
Adam waited.
He’d started trying to find his way out.
He hadn’t had much luck, but it gave him something to do. It was better than just sitting there, in all this nothingness. Adam thought that he’d actually rather deal with Lucifer’s constant barrage of blows and pain than have to spend one more second in the dark, by himself. It was like solitary confinement on the worst level imaginable. No movie he’d ever seen could compare to this—the real thing.
Sometimes, he caught glimpses of the outside world (“outside” meaning the Cage—he doubted he’d ever see the real outside world ever again), and it was how he figured out that Michael was definitely the one keeping him in here—most likely with a barrier, of some sort; trapped within his own mind like a mouse in a maze. He sometimes heard snippets of arguments between Michael and Lucifer, which were oddly understandable now—sort of?—and Adam wondered if they just decided to switch to English for the hell of it.
That theory didn’t make much sense, but, then again, neither did the rest of this.
From what he could gather, Lucifer had called for a temporary truce between the duo so that they could recover, and then took a swipe at Michael when his attention had been focused elsewhere.
Elsewhere, meaning Adam.
To Adam’s surprise, however, Michael hadn’t shifted the blame onto him. Instead, he’d simply shrugged off Lucifer’s taunts and snapped at him to either fight or shut up—granted, he’d said it in much more eloquent terms than Adam felt like thinking in right now, but...whatever.
So, other than the brief flashes of sound, Adam found himself entirely alone.
It was a fucking nightmare.
Without the ability to watch the archangels to distract himself, his thoughts had quickly taken a turn for the darker. He didn’t want to think. He didn’t even want to be anymore. He, above all else, would rather be dead than try to suffer through this isolation any longer. And he’d been dead before. If he had hands, or a body, or anything, he probably would’ve torn himself apart by now, just as those monsters did to him before he’d died; would have ripped out his hair or scratched at his skin with his nails until he found bone. Anything to feel like he actually existed in this stupid fucking cage.
He even missed the screaming, at this point.
...He missed his mom.
Fuck. He hated this. He hated John and Sam and Dean and Lucifer and Michael and Zachariah, all the stupid fucking angels that had gotten him to this point. And he hated himself, too, for not being able to hate them all as much as he felt he should.
Well...he certainly hated Zachariah above and beyond anyone he’d ever hated before, but as for the rest of them...
Hate was just another way to pass the time.
Time. What he wouldn’t give to know how much time had passed, whether it had been a hundred years or five minutes or three hours or two seconds. Or, on second thought, maybe time was just another thing that would drive him insane, to know that people were out there living their normal lives by a clock and he was in here rotting from the inside out.
Adam isn’t sure when he started the singing.
One minute, he was in the middle of remembering the day that he’d gotten his college acceptance letter—one of the best days of his life, he and his mom had spent the entire day on a celebratory high—and the next minute, he was humming along to a song from The Polar Express; not long after that, he was belting out song lyrics as loudly as he could.
It filled the silence in a way that his thoughts never had before, and he made his way through as many songs as he could remember, from all the songs that made his mom turn up the local radio with a grin on her face to the eighties music that his college roommate played on an obsessive loop. What lyrics he didn’t know, he made up, and he even managed to laugh at some of the funnier things his brain came up with. The laughter was harsh and biting, even to his own ears, but you know what? He’d take it.
It almost reminded him of when he was little, of when he would put himself to bed in a dark, empty house and would wake up crying three hours after falling asleep, desperately wishing for his mother as paranoia from his latest nightmare made him shake under the covers of his bed. But his mother had always been at work, and so he’d sing to himself—lullabies, tunes from TV shows, the funny instrumentals from cartoons. It was a habit he’d grown out of as he’d gotten older, when the nightmares became less oh God, there’s evil monsters trying to eat me (He probably shouldn't laugh at that. He does, anyway) and more oh God, I’ve failed my math exam.
Seems like the habit had resurfaced.
Adam wasn’t the best singer in the world, by any means, but with the limited options of either listening to the sound of his own voice or allowing the silence to overtake him until he really did go insane, he figured he’d made the better choice.
Well, until Michael decides to pop back in for an impromptu visit.
What are you doing?
Adam, who had long grown used to nothing but himself at this point, and who hadn’t noticed when Michael drew near, cuts himself off in the middle of an AC/DC song and turns to face the direction that Michael’s voice was coming from. If he had a face, it would be split apart in the wryest grin he had to offer.
Oh, I’m having a blast down here. Why, you wanna join in?
As it turns out, he hadn’t lost his sixth sense for archangel body language, because he could easily pick out the slight bewilderment that quickly emanates from Michael’s grace before being smothered by indifference.
Huh. Grace? Where’d that word come from? He was pretty sure he hadn’t ever referred to Michael’s silvery-blue essence as “grace,” before.
What? No. No, I’m here to tell you to stop.
Adam should be cautious. He knows that. But he’s also so, so fucking tired of being alone. And if mouthing off means that he’d have to spend eternity getting tortured by an archangel for pissing him off, then so be it.
‘Tell me to stop?’ Why should I? What’s in it for me? ‘Cause, let me tell you, dude, it’s either I sing or I start fucking screaming. Take your goddamn pick.
Michael’s grace twists with irritation. I cannot properly battle my brother with your insufferable screeching! Do you, human, have any idea of the tremendous concentration it takes to hold steady against my brother’s attacks?
Adam would’ve snorted, if he could. In case you forgot, jackass, I was awake at the beginning—for however long that was! Trust me, I know! If you’re so tired of concentrating, why don’t you just quit fighting?! It’s not exactly like there’s a fucking point to it!
Michael goes entirely still. Adam...isn’t entirely sure how to interpret that. Of course there’s a point.
Really? Adam snarks. What is it?
Instead of answering, Michael’s presence was silent, for a moment, and then he disappeared.
When Adam begins cursing, he hopes Michael hears every word.
Michael starts popping in more often, after that.
Mostly, it’s to try and get Adam to shut up for two seconds. Other times, he’ll just sit there and watch him, not saying a word no matter how many times Adam verbally poked him with a stick, which makes Adam wonder if the fighting between him and Lucifer was beginning to slow down. Or maybe he’d actually realized that there wasn’t a point to it; to any of it. Either way, he was getting more and more used to being stared at by the archangel he was housing.
As many snide comments as Adam constantly makes at him, however, a part of him is still grateful for his presence. Even his weird staring was so, so much better than being alone.
But, Adam is curious; too curious for his own good. He always has been, probably always will be.
Michael, why do you keep coming back here?
Michael’s form shifts, like it always did when he was expressing emotion. Adam couldn’t see it—he didn’t exactly have eyes to see it with, after all— but he could feel it, all the nuances in Michael’s grace and how it moved and warped and twisted to match his reactions.
He remembers seeing his true form, back in that room, and feels something akin to a shudder race through him. It had been…b—
No. Forget about it. Adam doesn’t want to think about it.
Michael doesn’t answer, so Adam presses a bit more. I mean, you’ve probably still got Lucifer to deal with, unless you two have up and stopped for whatever reason. All I do is sit in here and sing and get on your nerves. You could shut me up for good if you wanted, I know you can.
He thinks of hemorrhaging under Zachariah’s hand, he thinks of Sam screaming under Lucifer’s sadistic precision, and he would’ve sighed, if he could.
So, what gives?
As time ticked onward, it didn’t seem that Michael would answer. For the first time in a long while, however long it had been since Adam had started barking out melodies, things were silent between them; the suffocating sense of deafness returned, and Adam feels icy-cold despair begin to creep in on him once more. He aches to say something, anything, to scream or sing or even just babble like a damn maniac until Michael snapped at him again or left him alone, but he wants a fucking answer.
Then, the world seems to shift—instead of being nothing, having no form or being or sense of conceptual reality, Adam suddenly finds that he...has a body. His body. Except it’s not his body, but it is.
Fuck. What he’s trying to say is that this is his body, his clothes and everything (though, where did this green jacket come from? He’s never owned this in his life), but it doesn't...move quite right. It's too light, too dream-like. He could move his hands, but there was a sense of disconnectedness about it, like he wasn't the one actually moving them.
He looks up and he sees a mirror. Only, it’s not a mirror. Because mirrors reflected the user, and Adam didn’t have his arms crossed, and he was pretty damn sure he didn’t have his face pulled into such a cold smirk, either.
“Isn’t it obvious?” remarks the copy of his mouth, eyes glittering with a blank, glassy glint that makes Adam supremely uneasy. “I come to watch you make a fool of yourself. After all, I get two free shows out of this disgusting mess—watching you humiliate yourself with your... humanity in an attempt to hold yourself together, and watching my brother continue to throw himself at me like he thinks he’ll ever be able to win.”
Adam doesn’t need to have any sort of sixth sense to be able to call someone out on their shit. The only question is: is he willing to be a smartass to someone who’s probably one of the most powerful beings in the history of ever?
The answer, as it turns out: yes.
"You’re full of crap," Adam scoffs. The archangel's eyes snap to meet his immediately, fierce exasperation flickering across the face that's a replica of his own—God, it’s so weird.
"Oh? Is that so?" Michael sneers, narrowing his eyes. He's mocking, now, cruelly so, and Adam's just—tired. The Cage is a cold, heavy weight bearing down upon his soul, and, by now, he’s nothing short of well and truly exhausted. Exhausted and lonely and just a little to the left of hysterical at every given moment.
"Yeah. Yeah, it is."
"And...what makes you think that?" Michael’s voice has gone soft. Dangerous, he realizes. If Adam were in his actual body, he’s fairly sure that his hair would be standing on end.
"Well…" Adam pauses for a moment, his last, tiny shreds of self-preservation screaming for him to shut his mouth, but he takes a metaphorical breath and keeps going. “For one thing—I don’t know if you remember, but I’ve been inside your head, asshole. You don’t think that way. You’re talking a lot of shit for someone who was going—” and words slip past his metaphysical tongue, then, words that shouldn’t have had any meaning to him because they were in a language unfamiliar to him, but they did; and he spits them like poison from his mouth. “‘Brother, what has become of you?’ just a few—”
As soon as the words leave his nonexistent vocal cords, Adam finds himself being pressed against something—what it is, he’s not sure. There shouldn’t be any physical walls in his mind, but whatever he's being held against begs to differ.
Before he can puzzle it out, he’s made doubly aware of the fact that he's nose-to-nose with one extremely livid archangel who’s got a hand on his windpipe, squeezing barely hard enough to hurt but more than enough for Adam to feel the pressure. It’s almost like a message: Don’t forget who I am. Don’t forget what I can do to you.
Adam wants to pretend like he doesn’t care; that he can’t feel the sharp press of fear that urges him to flinch away, to apologize. He almost convinces himself, too. After all, it’s been—how long has it been? Years and years, he thinks, of darkness, of nothing except his own voice to keep him hanging onto the thread of sanity he has left. He’d never been like this before—so impulsive, so desperate for attention that he’d goad an archangel into complete and utter rage.
He’s terrified. He holds steady anyway.
“You pathetic little worm,” Michael snarls, and Adam hopes he looks defiant, jaw tightly clenched as he stares back at the being who was the entire reason he was in this mess. “You presume to know me? Me? You don’t. You’re nothing.”
And the archangel is smug, for all of a moment, before Adam leans forward—as much as he can—and tries to keep his voice from trembling as he spits out his retort.
“Yeah? Well, down here, so are you.”
Michael stares at him for a moment, eyes widening in outrage, and Adam doesn’t have time to read his emotional state before cold detachment flashes over his face once more and then he vanishes. To the outside world, like all the other times.
There’s a distinct feeling of being pressed down on, suddenly, like he’s being shoved far, far away—and then, there’s...nothing. No flashes of sound, no bursts of light, just—nothing.
Adam wants to scream, but he doesn't. Instead, he takes a step back, glances around at the sudden emptiness he's left with, and tries really, really hard not to cry.
God. He's so screwed.