Chapter Text
“...What?”
“Open, kid, it’s—” Michael cuts himself off with a frown, eyes distant. “Why didn’t I sense anything? I should’ve been able to—”
His voice fades into white noise as Adam feels the world tilt around him—reality isn’t changing shape, but he thinks his brain might be.
He must’ve heard wrong. He had to have heard wrong. The Cage doesn’t—The Cage doesn’t open. The Cage is four walls and a floor and a ceiling, darkness and metal and eternal confinement. It hadn’t even opened when Lucifer had been freed. It hadn’t—it couldn’t have—
“That can’t be right,” Adam hears himself say, like he’s listening from a great distance. He feels like he is. He’s not even sure what he sounds like. “I mean...no, there’s—there’s no way. Why would it just be—?”
He’s shaking his head, he realizes, arms coming up to cross defensively over his chest as he struggles to wrap his head around the words Cage and open and—it can’t be real. It can’t.
Would Michael lie? his mind whispers.
No, he answers, no, but—
The archangel in question is suddenly in front of him, face a handful of inches from his own. He can pick out every little detail of his eyes, every little blue fleck, and even now it leaves him more captivated than he’d care to admit.
“Adam,” Michael’s voice is low but it’s the clearest Adam’s ever heard it, piercing holes in his flimsy shield of static that strikes him straight through the heart. “Do you trust me?”
His gaze is imploring, ardent, the set of his body wired as if to spring at a moment’s notice; he shifts, though, and Adam glances down to see where he’s raised his hand, palm-up and ready and waiting, waiting just for him.
This isn’t a lie, Adam thinks, through thick fog and loss of direction. Oh, fuck, he’s not lying. It’s real, it’s real, it’s real, it’s real—
Somewhere at the base of his throat, hope that he’d thought he’d squashed rises like bile—foul, wretched bile that his body so desperately wishes to expel out of him; by now, the emotion is so foreign that it’s almost downright unnatural. And yet, it is that same hope that drives him to slowly uncross his arms, hand trembling slightly as he rests it softly in Michael’s—softly, like he hasn’t done in centuries. He feels brittle, frail, like the slightest gust of wind could send him shattering into a million little pieces and fling him, screaming, against the walls of the Cage.
The instant their hands curl together, Michael nods once at him, short and reassuring, and that’s when Adam feels the archangel pulling them both out of the comfort of the mindscape—reality falling away for real, this time, as vision from Adam’s eyes draws nearer and nearer.
This is it, his thoughts sound half-hysterical to his mind. Is it? Is this it? What if—
Grace encases him tighter in return, soothing and buzzing with anticipation all at once, and Adam clings to it more than he’d ever clung to it in the last several centuries. The hope has grown tangible within him, as thick as the ash from a volcano—Michael had treated him to a few explosions, too, much to his delight—and he doesn’t know whether to choke on it or let it consume him from the inside out.
Michael doesn’t hang around in the back with him, this time; instead, Adam feels him surge forward the slightest bit more than usual, still pressing close to him as Michael takes up the reins of his body for the first time in hundreds of years.
It’s weird.
Adam can feel the sensations from his body like he could before, but it’s clear from the disconcerted ripple that briefly rushes through Michael that he’s just as perturbed as Adam is—the awkward heaviness of a real, physical tongue, the brush of fingertips against the coarse jacket they were wearing, the creaking of bones as Michael moved to stand from the floor of the Cage. It was barely even a moment before Michael was moving with just as much precision as he’d done in their shared mind, but Adam…
It was just weird, that was all.
And then Michael turns his—their?—eyes upwards, towards the ceiling, and Adam doesn’t think he could replicate the choked-off noise he made later if he tried.
The top of the Cage, the ceiling, was…
Open, he realizes, the truth crashing down on him with more unbearable pressure than a tsunami. It’s open, it’s open, it’s actually open—
Yeah, Michael sends back, sounding a little stunned himself.
Some odd form of pseudo-lightning flashes above them, dark clouds swirling and gnashing and twisting until they seem to take on an eldritch form of their own, and that’s when Adam realizes that there’s something... off about them.
The clouds are agitated. The claps of roaring thunder would be enough to burst his eardrums if he didn’t have an archangel taking the lead, and Adam finds himself unconsciously pressing in closer to Michael, the steady thrum of his being setting him at a little more at ease—a boulder jutting out of the choppy ocean of new, new, new he’d found himself in; something to cling to, to hold on and never quite let go because the ocean was too vast, too murky, too unknown.
Those clouds, he speaks up, almost a little afraid to hear the answer. What are they?
Human souls, the archangel replies, and he doesn’t sound melancholic so much as he sounds...cautious, almost.
Is that caution meant for Adam? His reaction to the revelation?
...What he could’ve been, had he and Michael not come to their agreement?
The thought is disorienting.
The remnants of them, anyway. They’re not always turned to demons. Some of them are thrown down here. It’s another barrier for the Cage—one of its protections, like the sigils.
Once upon a time, Adam thinks that he would’ve been disgusted—horrified, even—at the thought of so many people cast aside, discarded and left to fade away until there was nothing left that even began to resemble humanity. Now, though, all he feels is a sickly sweet sense of empathy that gnaws at his rib cage, blunt and cold.
An idea strikes him, then, to ask Michael if it would be possible for him to reach out to one of the thousands that writhe around them, to reassure them that they were not alone in their suffering, but he knows that it would be cruel.
To offer the damned a taste of light, of hope, of peace, only to yank it away when they took their leave...there was nothing more evil Adam could imagine.
Instead, he lets a memory of Michael surface to the forefront of his mind and does his best to stay inside its realm, this time—unwilling to stray outside of its borders to the morbid thoughts lying in wait, the desolate void ready to snap him up at a moment’s notice.
‘Souls are powerful,’ he quotes from it, and he thinks he’d almost be attempting a grin if he had a mouth to do it with.
Almost.
He settles for a nudge instead, feeling amusement spark through him when Michael nudges him back. Is that where all that lightning is coming from? All that buildup of power?
Yes.
But he’s stalling and he knows it. He steels himself, turns his attention back to their current predicament.
Michael...what opened the Cage? Do you think it’s a trap?
I don’t know. There aren’t any broken seals. It’s just…
Adam takes in the outside world, the realization that they can just go smacking him in the back of the head like an oncoming train. He’s caught between two currents— We need to leave! We need to get the hell out of Hell! and No, we can’t leave, I can’t leave, I don’t know anywhere else, how am I supposed to—?
Against the screaming in his own mind, the murky disbelief that wars with the overwhelming comprehension, the sweet, spiky edges of hope that cling to the inside of his throat like a burr, he realizes something else—this is Michael’s way out, too.
His mind is scrambled, and he’ll forgive himself later for not thinking about it sooner, but it’s what spurs him to finally poke Michael’s grace and say Michael, this might be our only chance. What if it shuts? What if—whatever. We need to leave.
And before Adam can even say anything, before he can even cast another glance around their formerly-eternal prison, he feels something open in his chest, straining from the skin of his back, and he would’ve gasped if he’d been in possession of anything remotely human-shaped.
Power rushes through him from Michael’s side of their connection, an ethereal sensation that threatens to sweep Adam down, down, down into oblivion—but the comforting oblivion of being wholly encased by the archangel’s grace, not the everlasting darkness.
He watches with breathless awe as Michael’s wings spread, rising upwards until they reach past the confines of the Cage into Hell’s true air, and he’s suddenly hit with a sense of relief so profound that it would have been enough to bring him to tears. Michael’s grace is practically singing with freedom, the sudden reduction of pain leaving him warmer than Adam’s ever felt him, and—
Are you ready? he hears. Adam manages to tear his eyes away from the singed, darkened, beautiful wings for all of a moment to take one last searching glance around the familiar space.
It’s the same as it always is.
No, he answers, letting the cold nervousness that sparks bright within him filter over to Michael without inhibition, blatantly honest and exposed and raw in a way that hits him like it did when he’d fallen apart in his arms—perhaps even more so. Are you?
And for all of Michael’s respite, for all of the bright, toe-curling exhilaration that raced through his being quicker than the surrounding flashes of sempiternal lightning, Adam feels something pierce through; a single black dot in sea of light that makes him ache with understanding.
No, Michael responds, just as nervous, the lines and stripes of the fabric of his spirit still stained by liquid fear—just like Adam’s. He does his best to send a wave of comfort in return.
Then what are we waiting for? Let’s, uh, blow this taco stand. Or whatever.
The archangel laughs, the tensing of wings and feathers that hadn’t been used in centuries the only warning Adam receives before the floor of the Cage leaves their feet and they’re— soaring.
Let’s get you out of here, kid, Michael’s thought drifts over to him, absent-minded and focused all at once, and he doesn’t even think that Michael meant for him to hear them. They perforate his heart all the same, and he’s quick to hide his stuttering thoughts from the other’s mind.
Me?
Flying is like nothing Adam’s ever experienced before.
Granted, he’d never flown in the first place—since the last time they’d been on Earth, he’d mainly been asleep until the rude awakening of fire—but this is...something else.
He can feel every flap of Michael’s wings, every twitch and tuck and narrowing as he navigates Hell’s brutal skies. It’s like they’re just another extension of him, as natural as his arms or legs, and they sing at being put to use for the first time in a long time in tandem with the effervescent melody that’s ringing through each and every molecule in his body.
Michael is joyous. With each and every thunderous beat, taking them higher and higher, his grace radiates felicity on a level that Adam has never, ever felt before—a sensation so fervid that he feels his own body vibrating with it, white-hot flames licking enthusiastically through the lines of his capillaries that ache within him like the pang of meeting a long-lost friend. He sinks down into it without delay, rippling and flowing and basking in a pure sea of glee that chases any and all of his misgivings, his uncertainties, his fears away as if they had never been there at all.
The entirety of Hell has been ripped open, the archangel notes, with some surprise, and Adam has to stop and think and come back to himself for a moment or two before he realizes what Michael’s said.
Should we...uh, be concerned about that? he tries, unsure of what it meant for the state of the Earth if their one-way ticket out was also the reason for its demise. Is there another Apocalypse going on or something?
Not that I can tell, Michael says, turning sharply without warning in order to avoid something or other, and Adam almost wants to laugh along with the bright, keen thrill that it sends through the archangel as they race past layers and layers of Hell’s atmosphere. From the corners of his—their—eyes, Adam spots chains and hooks and racks, suspended in midair and defying the concept of gravity in every possible way, but it doesn’t matter because they’re all gone faster than he can think.
Ahead of them, a blazing, brilliant light shines, and Adam can see souls and demons alike racing towards it, through it, pouring out like their lives—or non-lives, for that matter—depend on it.
Another beat of Michael’s wings and they’re zipping forward at an even faster rate than before, rocketing closer and closer until the archangel dips, rolls, and shoots upwards into the light.
And suddenly, all Adam can discern is pain.
Vivid, deep, astronomical pain—like the agony of Lucifer’s blows. It hits his vision so hard Adam thinks he might be ripping apart at the seams, and he tears himself away from the fore of his body with a cry, propelling himself back into the darkness of his own mind without any hesitation; no facsimiles, no small comforts, just the dark void that had haunted him for so long before.
It wasn’t...preferable. Adam could feel the twinges of distress begin to nip at his heels the second he’d torn himself away from the outside world, away from Michael, and he hated the soul-sucking, deathless night that enveloped him at every turn. He finds himself shrinking into a ball reminiscent of what he'd done centuries ago, whatever he has left of his vision still pulsating with colors and patterns and the dazzling fulguration of before. The black around him is a poison and a friend all at once, slimy and reassuring in all the ways that it shouldn't be. Fear of the unknown prickles at him like the points of a cactus, scraping over his imaginary skin until he bleeds. It wasn't preferable, but...it was better. Better than whatever blinding nightmare awaited him in the outside world, no matter how much he wanted to see it.
At least in here, he knew what to expect.
It occurs to him, then, that he hasn’t been this alone in a long, long time, but he doesn’t have time to think about it before Michael’s grace is surrounding him again, concern pouring over from each and every speck of his being but not hovering near enough to touch, which is ridiculous—it wasn’t his fault that the world was so goddamn irradiant.
Adam?
Adam slowly uncurls, just the tiniest bit, from whatever little soul-ball he’s tucked himself into and he reaches out, a wordless invitation for Michael to come closer that the archangel instantly accepts, his grace immediately winding around his soul and connecting them again in a way that puts him a little more at ease; Michael’s light has always been bright but Adam’s eyes have always been accustomed to it, maybe not born for it but still shaped for it regardless. It has never been harsh.
Yeah. Sorry, I just… he projects the memory of pain Michael’s way, unable to find the words to describe it. I didn’t expect it to hurt so badly. Or at all, really.
Your mind and soul grew used to Hell instead of Earth, Michael explains, confirming the nagging suspicion that had popped up at the back of his mind. I should’ve warned you.
Don’t worry about it, Adam sighs, and then abruptly remembers that they aren’t in the Cage any more.
Right.
At least you got to stretch your wings some, anyway, he remarks, successfully diverting the topic when Michael’s grace scintillates with the reminder.
I still am, he replies. We’re flying now.
...Do me a favor and don’t crash us, alright? When Michael chuckles, a sound that makes him unravel all the way just to soak it in, Adam sends a little pulse of amusement back his way before asking. Where are we, anyway?
Do you want to come out and see? Adam pauses, not wanting a repeat of the earlier incident, and Michael continues on when he senses the hesitation. We’re not on Earth. We’re in space. It’s darker here.
He takes a moment, steadies himself, looks around at the dark swamp past the cocoon of archangel grace he’s swathed in. Sharp, red-hot needles begin to poke him from the inside out, the etchings of This is where you belong, now. Stay here, and You’ve been sitting here for so long. What makes you think you can leave? and You have no place out there anymore. You never will again, all attempting to carve their characters into the underside of his consciousness, but all he does is shush them and press a little more into the gentle, welcoming flow of Michael’s emotions; his concern, his kindliness, his placidity, all coming together to form a warm shield in the shape of an eddy.
…’Kay. Let’s give it another go, Adam concedes, and keeps himself from automatically shrinking away when Michael slowly sweeps them back towards the surface.
When the universe comes into view, starlight glittering everywhere Adam looks, he deciphers two things:
One, Michael’s got his wings—made invisible—wrapped around their body like a cover, and gratefulness grabs Adam and shakes him like a rag doll with how hard it strikes him. Michael nudges him once back, a silent no problem that Adam understands like he understands the cadence of Enochian. The view is a little muted, like he’s looking at them through lightly-translucent glass, but it’s still there all the same.
Two...there was no memory, no imitation, no false copy that would ever be able to match up to the real thing, muted or not.
Adam clings on to Michael with all he’s got, then, and Michael holds on equally as tight.
We’re...really here.
“Yes,” Michael talks aloud, this time, and Adam feels the vibrations of their vocal cords as if he were the one speaking.
This is real.
The archangel goes quiet, for all of a moment, before he speaks again. His voice is soft. Breathy.
Gentle.
“Yeah, kid. It is.”
Eventually, Adam’s vision readjusts to properly take in the darkness of space, instead of the darkness of the Cage. He thinks Michael might be helping speed along the process, his grace flowing through his system and rebooting everything that needs a little extra kick in the ass, but he doesn’t mind. He’s grown twitchy, a thousand fire ants crawling under his skin, both eager and afraid to see Earth after so long.
How long has it been? he asks, while Michael settles them on some planet that neither of them have ever seen before. It’s refreshing; new, in a daunting way.
“On Earth?”
Yeah.
“Roughly ten years. It’s 2019.”
Adam stills, thoughts going a mile a minute. And...for us?
“...Over a thousand.”
Adam would’ve nodded, if he could, something quick enough to convey how carefully blank he was trying to keep his mind. Alright. When are we gonna head back?
Michael sends a soothing flicker his way. “Are you ready to?”
Yeah. Yeah, let’s do it.
And, with that, they’re off. They’re not as far away from Earth as Adam thought—or maybe Michael just flies really fast and using another dimension like Hell for comparison isn’t something he wants to do if he’s looking for accurate data.
In seconds, they’re breaching the atmosphere, and Adam’s once again wincing at how bright it is. Already, their ears are picking up sound from everywhere, and he catches snippets of conversation from the land below them mixing and intermingling until it’s all a rush of meaningless sound—too much like his old hallucinations for his liking. He retreats a little, just enough for everything to become muffled without truly disengaging from the world like every other part of him is suggesting he do.
Michael is steady; focused and comforting all at once. Every flap of his wings sends a flurry of guileless contentment stirring about in his grace, an uninhibited feeling that never fails to start a barrel’s worth of hummingbirds fluttering in a domino effect against the edges of his soul, begging to be released. Every loop and dive the archangel makes threatens to make the barrel burst, overflowing to the brim and beyond, and half the time all Adam wants to do is stick his head in the stupid container and tell the birds to stop flapping, or else.
He gets the feeling they wouldn’t listen. They’re part of him, after all.
They land in a forest, somewhere, Michael’s wings coming up to form a cover like he did before. It gives the trees a bit of a glassy look to them that Adam chuckles at, but it keeps the bright greens and browns and yellows from straining his eyes too much. He can hear birdsong and the chirping of crickets, feels the wind brush a strand of hair across their forehead in a way that he’d never thought he’d feel again, and thick emotion swells deep in his center, so thick that he can’t quite make out what it is.
It’s not like the sludge he’s used to, though. It’s...he’s....
It’s beautiful, he thinks, a feverish hush accentuating his words. It’s beautiful.
He doesn’t even notice the archangel studying him, nor when the same archangel quietly kicks his adaptability levels into higher speeds again and lowers his wings so that Adam isn’t looking at the world around him through a pellucid screen. He does notice, however, when Michael slowly draws away from the anterior and gently pushes him towards it instead.
Michael, what—?
Kid. Go outside.
The thought is...intimidating.
I think you’ve faced worse, comes Michael’s voice again, and...he has a point.
Before he can begin to second-guess himself any longer, he surges out, vision growing clearer and clearer and sounds growing louder and louder until something clicks.
And he’s there.
His body seems to have its own priorities, his lungs drawing in a breath of air—air!—and then another, and another, uncaring of the fact that a celestial being was hanging out in the back of his body and that he technically had no need to breathe. His body was heavy, too—how had he forgotten how heavy it was? He’d grown used to feeling so light in the mindscape, and he turns his palms up to gaze at them, flexing his fingers and turning them over and over until he’s made aware of something else—smell.
Adam breathes in; on purpose, this time. He catches whiffs of things sweet and clean and earthy, and it makes a soft laugh burst past the confines of his lips as he cranes his head to try and peer in every direction at once, taking in the way that the sunlight dappled across the leaves and onto the forest floor until he forgets how to work heavier feet and the ground rises up to meet his face—
He’s stopped, though, by an arm; warm and solid and grabbing him around his middle just as he’s about to faceplant onto a particularly jagged-looking tree root. When he looks up, surprised, he’s met with amused eyes and an even more amused smile.
“Careful,” Michael says, but he doesn’t even have time to try and help Adam up like he looks like he’s about to do before Adam is all but tackling him in a hug, torn between pressing his face down into his shoulder and continuing to stare at the eye-straining wonder around him—because his eyes really are starting to twinge a bit, and he isn’t sure if the tears that are beginning to fill them are from the irritation or the sheer amount of happiness flooding his system.
He keeps gazing up around them, arms locked around Michael’s shoulders and neck from their awkward half-squatting position on the forest floor with Adam nearly on top of him, knees bent and straining from exertion—exertion!—and Michael’s arms still wrapped around his middle. The contact makes something flip-flop in his chest, adding to the already-spirited mess that runs through him like a shiver.
“We’re really here,” Adam finally manages, voice dipping soft and raspy with tears, nose burning with congestion that makes him sniffle with some amazement. He’d forgotten that noses did that.
The archangel sighs a wordless agreement into his neck, his breath and smile tickling the sensitive skin there as Adam’s knees threaten to give out under him, and he finally acquiesces to the uncomfortable position and fully kneels in the grass, dragging Michael down with him.
Michael lets him.
Adam’s still holding on to him with one arm when he shifts and reaches down, gliding his fingers over the dirt and weeds in artless wonder. The ground is firm, the blades of grass alighting against his fingers, and he takes one and twirls it between his pointer finger and thumb.
It's real.He can't stop thinking it. This is all real, the surrounding trees and the dirt and the roots and the birds and them.
They sit like that, surrounded by the sounds of Earth and nature and life until Adam speaks up, overjoyed tears flowing down his face like two faucets that just won’t stop running no matter how hard he tries to turn them off.
“Y’know,” he starts, and he has to stop to laugh at how watery his voice sounds, how cold the wind feels as it hits the back of his throat when he opens his mouth. “Probably for the best that you didn’t land us in a city.”
Michael grins, and Adam marvels at the distinct lack of weight to it. There's no pain shadowing the corners of his expression, and he feels like he's staring straight into the sun with the brightness of it. “I thought it’d be too loud there.”
That, and the fact that Adam may have been a little out of sorts with the human race but he was fairly sure that breaking down into happy tears in the middle of the road—or sidewalk, or whatever—was pretty likely to get him shouted at by pedestrians.
“Yeah,” he laughs again, unable to help himself, and instead helplessly works to try and scrub the tears away. They don’t stop falling, and he’s just reaching down to wipe his hands on his jeans—they’re coarse, rough, but easy to walk in; so that’s what they felt like—when there’s suddenly a thumb under one eye, the hand it’s attached to coming to frame his face as it delicately swipes away the tears underneath. The other hand reaches to do the same on the other side, and Michael’s eyes are warm, his movements so light that Adam can feel it past his skin, in his soul.
And, in the end, he can’t even bring himself to do anything but smile about it—his face hurts from it, it aches so much and he loves it with everything he has—and the way the archangel mirrors it echoes louder than anything else ever could.
“What do you want to do?”
Adam shrugs, eyes widening in thought as he watches a squirrel jump from tree to tree. “I don’t know.”
And then he stops, a memory playing out in his mind that’s so distant that he almost thinks that he’s gone and made it up.
Reaching into the pockets of his gray jacket, he can’t help the way that his eyebrows climb to the top of his head in astonishment when his fingers brush against the exact item he was looking for, and the curiosity that radiates off of Michael is practically tangible.
Adam knows exactly what he wants to do.
“You ever been to a diner, halo?”