Chapter Text
“Does this work?” Michael says, once they’ve landed in front of a corner store. The lettering on the red overhang reads Jaci’s Red Wagon, with the long-faded wagon in question etched into the wall besides the simple little place.
They’re in a large town of some sort, Adam notes—not a city, but the sudden deluge on his senses is enough to make him suck in a quick breath regardless. He exhales, steeling himself, and the grumbling of cars and blaring of horns and the endless chatter and movement of people, people, people slowly simmers down to manageable levels.
“Yeah,” Adam replies, and nods once, willing his legs to start moving until he’s standing directly outside the door, and he’s a little too proud of the fact that he only hesitated for a moment before swinging it open and walking inside.
And that’s when he realizes he’s more than a little bit out of his depth.
He hasn’t properly lived on Earth in ten years—a thousand, really, but maybe he should get used to calling it ten?—and he’s hit with the realization that all he has is a few tattered memories of how diner etiquette worked. Was he supposed to just find a table and sit down? Was he supposed to just stand and wait until he was...called on?
Somewhere, deep in his mind, he’s sure that whoever he’d been in the past is laughing at his misfortune.
As if she’d been summoned, however, Adam finds himself blinking in surprise as a waitress materializes in front of his eyes—he hadn’t even noticed her walk up.
“Hey, hon,” she greets, and Adam feels a small smile quirk up at the corner of his lips without his permission, facial muscles tugging upwards as the realization hits him that this is the first human he’s talked to in years. “Just the one?”
“Tw—” he says, almost automatically, and his mind sends a quick shushing noise Michael’s way when he feels his grace pulse with mirth. “Uh, one. Yes.”
The waitress raises her eyebrows a little, but there’s a smile still plastered to her face. “Sounds good. Take a seat somewhere and I’ll get you a menu, alright?”
Adam nods, eyes locking onto the first empty booth he sees and making his way over, settling down into the seat and pretending like the room doesn’t seem so...tiny.
He can’t help it. After everything—the intensity of Hell, the freezing confinement of the Cage, the freedom that flying brought—it seemed so small . So wondrous. There are other people in here, too, chatting quietly and milling about, and the soft hum of life here is different than the roar of existence outside. It’s more like the forest, here; the atmosphere was friendly, pacific in a way that sets him a little more at ease. He can’t help staring around at it, craning his neck to peer at each and every little detail.
People, he thinks, content and wonderstruck all at once. These are people.
Another part of him marvels at the lack of inconsistencies, the clarity which which the most insignificant of details jump out at him—the smooth texture of the table, accentuated by its glossy sheen, the way that the light streaming through the window added to the light of the room instead of simply being there for nostalgic decoration. The little knick-knacks scattered throughout the room—the toy cars lined up along the wall to his left, the tacky picture frames hanging on the walls, the lights hanging from a line on the ceiling—were detailed and real, not a single blurry or hastily-formed part about them.
Even the tinny music, filling each and every corner of the room, was delightful to hear. He couldn't quite remember what the genre was called, but it makes him smile regardless.
Michael appears in the seat across from him, eyeing the room with a sense of half-interest that makes Adam snicker, bringing the archangel’s attention back to him. He has to fight the rising fluttering in his stomach when Michael’s eyes turn a little brighter, a little softer; he swallows it down like he always does and takes another breath of sweet, sweet air.
“Not up to your usual standards?”
Michael’s eyebrows raise along with the curve of his lips as he gives the room another sweeping look, and Adam feels something flicker in his grace that’s too fast for him to catch before his gaze is met again.
“It’ll do,” he says, mockingly haughty in a quiet, softened sort of way that contrasts with the wave of mirth that crashes into Adam, and he grins to match it.
The waitress suddenly appears at his side again, and Adam jumps a little—how can he notice everything and nothing all at once?—but she simply hands him a menu and smiles.
“When you’re ready, you just let me know, alright?”
Adam nods, and then stops as something pings in the back of his brain. “Um—ma’am?”
When she raises her eyebrows, he hesitantly keeps on. “Do you have a...uh, newspaper, or anything like that?”
If the request is odd—though Adam isn’t sure why it would be; newspapers were still a thing, right?—she doesn’t mention it. Instead, she points behind her, where he looks and spots a small tray with the aforementioned papers hiding within. “Sure do. Right over there.”
Adam finds himself absentmindedly bending the laminated corners of the menu, and nods again, plastering what he hopes is a polite smile on his face. “Great! Great, um—thanks.”
She nods, and walks away to tend to and elderly-looking man that he finds himself marvelling at—so old to everyone in this diner, and yet so young to him. The memory of the birth of the first star flashes behind his eyelids when he blinks, lingering stardust flitting about when he opens them, and he wonders if he’ll ever be able to see anything else again when he interacts with the... human world.
He knew he was a bad example.
Vertigo scratches its way up his spine, claws digging into the middle of his back and forcing his muscles to tense with jittery giddiness as he stands up, walks over, grabs a newspaper, sits down.
Fuck. This is…
A pulse around his soul grabs his attention, and his eyes flick upwards from where they’d been gazing at the paper, his gaze sliding around the spaces between the words, refusing to intake the information that he wasn’t sure if he craved or not. Concern meets him when he looks up, concern that he rushes to soothe, flowing from him to the archangel in a series of rushed emotions that he wouldn’t be able to articulate for the life of him.
It’s gonna take some getting used to, he sends over, finally. Michael does that crooked little smile of his again, and it takes everything he has to tear his eyes away from it, to force himself to stare at the menu instead.
“For you and I both,” Michael admits, and Adam watches from his peripheral as he shifts, his hands moving to rest in his lap, before actually intaking the words in front of him and falling on the entry for burgers— hamburgers, cheeseburgers, some deluxe combination of the two that’s almost enough to leave Adam’s mind reeling with the ever-present reminder that this is real.
He wonders how many times he’s going to think that before the end of the day.
Impulsiveness kicking in before he can stop himself, he raises his hand and his eyebrows in tandem to the waitress passing by, waiting until she walks over before quietly placing his order, paying upfront just to get it over with.
He hopes—he hopes —that he’s coming across as human; nothing more, nothing less. There has to be something a little odd about feeling guilt over parting with money that’s been with him for a thousand years, right? But that doesn’t mean he has to show it.
Outwardly, at least.
“Y’know,” he voices, staring down at the newspaper a little wryly, this time. “I just remembered that I don’t know anything about anything. Not sure why I picked this up.”
Michael raises his eyebrows at it, and then does a little half-shoulder shrug that has Adam’s mouth curling. “Better to have it than not, isn’t it?.”
Adam snorts, tipping his head slightly as he acquiesces. “I guess. I don’t think I’m gonna be all that interested in—” he skims over a headline, “—senators, though.”
He doesn’t even think he remembers what senators do.
Michael chuckles, but Adam’s attention has already snapped to the waitress, who’s carrying a plate that he knows to have his order on it. She sets it down in front of him before walking away to assist somebody else, and he grabs it, taking only a moment to gaze at it—real, real, real—before throwing all inhibition to the wind and biting down.
It doesn’t taste like blood. There’s no iron that rushes to fill his senses, no memories of the room that threaten to overtake him; instead, taste floods his tongue, as intense as the light had been when they’d breached the surface of Hell. The softness of the bun, the tang of the ketchup and pickles and tomato, the mouth-watering juiciness of the hamburger itself— fuck. A slight, unbidden moan escapes his throat as he chews, closing his eyes to relish the sheer potency of the flavors exploding on his tongue.
“Y’know that stuff will kill you, right?” he hears, and he sends a look Michael’s way, barely able to keep himself from grinning around the food in his mouth.
As if he wouldn’t happily be set on fire again if it meant he got to finish the rest of this.
“Worth it. Michael, I haven’t seen a burger in—” a thousand years. “Ten years.”
The archangel’s mirth sends a tingle from his soul all the way out along the line of skin, allowing goosebumps to join the full experience as he set the burger back down. He wanted to take his time with it, wanted to be able to savor each and every bite until it burned it way into his brain. At the same time, Michael reaches over, plucking a fry from his plate and inspecting it. His smile is infectious enough that Adam can feel the ghost of it on his own lips for all of a second, warmth bleeding into him from head to toe, and the distinct memory of the inspection of the deck of cards lights up in his mind before Michael is looking at him, instead.
“Go for it, kid.”
His voice is as warmhearted as it usually is, soft in all the ways that Adam’s come to expect, but it still somehow catches him off-guard—unlike all the other times, there’s a feeling that washes over his body, underwhelming compared to the burger and yet all he can focus on at the same time.
It takes him less than a split-second to realize that it’s the racing of his own heart.
Oh. So that’s what that feels like.
“Y'know—” Adam manages, trying to swallow in an attempt to carry on the conversation before Michael notices—that is, if he hasn’t already. “I know I don’t need to eat.”
He picks up a fry of his own, shaking his head for dramatic effect. “It just tastes so damn good.”
With that, he bites into the fry, letting his head droop as a new taste floods his mouth. The satisfaction of a crunch, the piquancy of the salt—there was just so much to it.
“I wouldn’t know,” Michael says, and his eyes may as well be arrows for the rush of affection that suddenly pierces his heart. “I don’t know much—about any of this.”
Then he smiles, open and wide, and Adam feels the same sense of fluttering excitement that he had when they’d flown out. “You’ll be my guide.”
Guide? What was that supposed to mean? Adam could barely guide himself around a goddamn diner.
For some reason, it hits his nose first—the aromatic smell permeating his nostrils and drawing his immediate attention back to the waitress, pushing his other plate to the side to make room for the pizza she puts down.
Immensely grateful, incandescently moved, he looks up and wills his expression to reflect his emotions. “Thank you.”
The waitress smiles, moving away. “You got it.”
He has to dip down one more time, just to catch a whiff of the delightful scent, before he turns and grabs a bottle of something on his left. He’s not even sure what it is; all he knows is that he’ll do anything for a little more flavor, a little more reality.
Speaking of reality…
The thought is unwanted, unwelcome, but arrives in his mind all the same. The words don’t come out as choked-off as he thinks they could be; he strives to keep their talk simple as he begins to dump the condiment all over his pizza, to keep things light and easy now that they were free from the endless burden of the Cage. They had already been through enough heavy conversation. “So, what about you? You gonna go back to Heaven?”
Adam doesn’t want to be separated. He doesn’t want to say goodbye—frankly, even the thought of it makes him uneasy, something deep in his gut crying out in desperate denial that he shields from Michael’s range.
But Michael, unlike himself, has a home. He has somewhere to go back to, a place that might need him. Adam doesn’t think he’d be able to keep him if he tried, and it isn’t even because he’s just some sad scrap of human that can’t measure up to something like an archangel— if Michael wanted to go, to be free, he wouldn’t blame him. Wouldn’t have the heart to try and stop him, even for a moment. After all those years of being caged...well.
Adam understood it.
“Uh...I don’t know,” the archangel replies, and he looks up, a little surprised. “My brothers are dead, my father never returned…” And Michael’s grace is wistful, subdued, radiating a slightly-mournful ache that Adam brushes up against, tries his best to calm. “In so many ways, I’m alone.”
And...Adam understands that, too.
“Yeah, same here,” he meets Michael’s eyes, his own pungent bitterness seeping out before he can stop himself. “It’s not like I have family waiting to see me.”
Michael’s gaze turns searching, penetrating in a way that makes Adam stiffen. With anything else, he doesn’t think he would mind the curiosity at all; but this? Family?
No.
“You have the Winchesters,” he says, and Adam feels as a sneer begins to build on his face, an icy coldness wrapping its way around his heart that reminded him too much of the Cage. “Your brothers.”
Fuck no.
He takes his time answering, grabbing a napkin and using it to wipe his face as he thinks. It’s not like he doesn’t understand what Michael is doing—the opposite, actually. Just because he didn’t know heads from tails on Earth anymore didn’t mean that he didn’t know an out when he was given one.
It still hurt to hear, though. He wonders if the hurt would ever go away.
“I met them once. And they let me rot in Hell.”
Michael’s grace gently pokes at him, a blanket of understanding being wrapped around him that helps wash away some of the initial anger. Empathy infuses his tone as he speaks, a soft word of three syllables that carried so, so much behind it.
This wasn’t the way he’d planned on the conversation going. Then again, when had things ever gone the way he’d planned?
“Family.”
Adam pauses, mind racing with all the spiteful, venom-laced replies lurking at the space between his teeth, clamoring to fight their way out and make known exactly which pit the idea of family could go throw itself in.
He shushes them. There’s no point.
“Family sucks,” he says, for lack of a better alternative. It’s simplistic, the weight behind it being heard even by his own ears, and he swallows the rest of his thought and says no more—instead, he leans forward and puts his mouth to better use.
The food isn’t going to eat itself, after all.
Things are a little quieter, after that. Michael’s grace winds peaceably through his chest, a comforting sensation that helps to assuage the harsher parts of his vexation, alleviating some of the stinging betrayal that still lingers in his gut.
Then, as he’s polishing off the last of his burger, something occurs to him.
“Hang on, didn’t you say that all of Hell got torn open?” At Michael’s nod, Adam cocks his head. “Should we be...concerned about that?”
The archangel shakes his head, casting another look around the diner. “No. Whatever tore it open must’ve closed it back up.”
Adam swallows down a piece of the pizza he’d picked up, taking another bite and chewing thoughtfully. “Sounds like we got out just in time.”
The thought of missing an opportunity to escape makes him more uneasy than the thought of never escaping at all, the horrified realization from the hypothetical situation almost tangible enough to elicit a shudder from his frame. Michael hums in assent, seeming more at peace than Adam is—which shouldn’t be as surprising to him as it is. All things considered, Earth should be Adam’s turf, not Michael’s, and yet...here they are.
He laughs, just a little, popping the last of his fries in his mouth and glancing at Michael when the ping of curiosity ricochets through his bones.
“It’s nothing, I just—” he grins, unable to contain it, fiddling with the crust of his pizza as he feels the last of the tension he’d held ease out of his shoulders. “We’re just…” Free. Free, free, free, free—
Michael gives no answer, but Adam feels his burst of happiness at the words flicker to life like a lightbulb, and it only serves to make his grin widen, stuffing the pizza into his more with even more vigor than before.
Eventually, the waitress brings out the last of his order—a piece of cake—and Adam’s surprised to feel the effects of the food finally kick in; he’s full. It’s such an odd feeling, to have a full belly, and it makes another knot in his chest unravel, the anxious desire to seem human from earlier slowly slipping through his fingers like sand as he leans back against the cushions of the seat, eyeing the diner with a sense of... something.
He isn’t sure what it is. The people here still seem... small, the muted hustle and bustle finding itself to be placating to his ears but knelling softly in the back of his mind. It’s an odd clash, one that he seems too detached from for his own liking, and he—acting on a whim, watching the waitress with a sense of lazy curiosity—decides to voice the half-formed idea swirling tentatively at the base of his throat.
“Maybe I should pick up some kind of...little job.”
The archangel’s voice rings out in return, an amused sense of confusion painting the inside of Adam’s ribs. “A little job?”
The more Adam thinks about it, the more feasible it seems. They can do anything now, right? And Michael wanted him to be his...guide, right?
What better way to do it than immersion?
“Yeah,” he says, the jigsaw puzzle in his mind adding more and more pieces by the second, racing faster and faster with the amount of possibilities. “Yeah, I mean—these are the same clothes we went to Hell in. We’re gonna have expenses, right? And whatever change I had, I spent on food, so it’s not like I can go back to college, not with an,” he laughs a little at the thought of it, “ archangel inside of me.”
Michael isn’t looking at him.
In the split second it takes Adam to notice this, a hand—an unfamiliar, gut-wrenching, tainted hand—lands on his shoulder, rubbing idly down at his collarbone in a way that makes him tense, feeling the smile drop from his face instantly as he turns to stare at its owner.
It’s a woman—young, blonde, wearing a...what was it called? A beret?—but that’s not the part Adam is focused on; instead, all he can feel is the darkness, the same vile atmosphere of Hell that clings to her in a thick, congealed sort of way. He doesn’t think he has the words to explain it, but he doesn’t think he needs to.
“Hello, Michael.”
And Michael is swamping him, tearing control from his grasp and pushing him down until the only perception Adam has of the outside world is a distant murmur of sound. He’s gentle about it—Adam’s swaddled in more layers of archangel grace than he thinks he’s ever been before—but it still leaves him disoriented for all of a split second before he does the metaphysical equivalent of shaking himself off like a wet dog and tunes back in to the outside world.
“—dead.”
“Was. Now...I’m back, baby! And I’ve been sent to fetch you.”
Michael’s voice rumbles inside and out, crystal clear and dim all at once. “I’m not accustomed to being fetched. Who sent you?”
Adam manages to catch one of Michael’s flitfire thoughts enough to grab a name— Lilith.
He’s pretty sure he’s heard that name before.
It hits him, then—Lucifer’s fall. The story that Michael had once told him—he’d said it so quietly, voice nearly monotone save for the edge to it that was cold and raw all at once—resurfaces, floating in his mind like a dead fish, and he looks at the blonde woman across from them with a larger sense of grimness overtaking him.
The first demon.
“You have to ask?” A pause, and then— “Your daddy?”
The iciness that sweeps through the archangel, mingled with confusion, is nearly enough to make Adam shiver without a body. The grace he’s enfolded in immediately reacts in turn, sending quick little bursts of solace that match the heartbeat of the erratic thoughts that have begun to pop like firecrackers in Michael’s mind.
“ God? Yeah, he’d like a word.”
And at the same time that Adam thinks, bullshit, he hears Michael speak. “You’re lying.”
“Really not.”
Then, Lilith steals a part of his cake. He doesn’t think he should be as affronted as he is, but come on. He was gonna eat that!
“And why would he send you? A demon, a speck of infernal bile.”
Infernal bile? That’s a new one.
“One, ouch. Two, maybe because we worked together before. Remember? Setting off the apocalypse?”
“To try and bring God back.”
A sense of calmness replaces the coldness, almost like it had never been there in the first place, and Adam reaches out; silent, but sending his own little waves of reassurance all the same.
“ Right . Didn't work then, but then he came back on his own. So, win?”
She sounds mockingly sweet, a tone that has his hackles raising, but…
What if she isn’t lying?
...He hadn’t meant to let that one pass through, but he can tell Michael heard it all the same.
He doesn’t need to feel it to know it.
Lilith’s face inches closer, and Adam is abruptly reminded of the days when Michael and Lucifer used to fight, when his body would move so quickly out of his control that it almost felt like some fever-induced, pain-filled dream.
But he’s been dreaming for so long, now. The real world is waiting.
“If that’s true—if—He can come talk to me himself.”
Her face grows annoyed, rolling her eyes before turning to something fiercer, something...different. It’s nothing compared to Lucifer, but he doesn’t like it all the same. “Yeah. Except, I'm not supposed to leave without you.”
“Get out.”
Grace is bubbling, hardening, a little detaching from Adam to make the same shield he’d made so long ago, against Lucifer; ready to attack, ready to defend, ready. And Lilith is no Lucifer—Adam isn’t anxious about Michael being able to take her as much as he is the message she’d brought.
God? Coming back? Now?
“Michael,” The demon says, and Adam finds himself flinching back the tiniest bit when she reaches out to grab him— them. It’s still just as unnerving as before. “I can’t fail him.”
And that—that is when he feels it; Michael’s... unease. The If he’s back, why didn’t he—? and the I failed— that echoes like a gong in an empty room, Adam as the only audience.
He reaches for him again, connecting just as the archangel’s grace surges outwards, the spitting image of the heavenly warrior that battled the Devil for centuries in Hell.
Adam is...captivated.
Michael is all fire and starlight and terrifyingly accurate precision, and he can sense when the archangel finds Lilith’s blackened, twisted core, snuffing it out with a simple flicker of power, a concentrated inferno that lights up the room and burns her from the inside out. It’s enough to leave him metaphorically breathless, watching in wonder as Michael moves without moving at all; he’s still hidden in a corner of gentle tides as light as blankets, wrapped in benign intent, and the disparity pierces his dazed thoughts without hesitation.
How could he have forgotten the vastness of an archangel’s consciousness? How could he have gone for even a second without marvelling at the way the universe seemed to bend and shiver at his presence? How—
He has no time to finish that thought, though, because the light is fading and there’s nothing to show for it except a pile of ash and...a room full of gawking people.
The silence is tense.
Oh. Huh, Adam hears, but he can’t tell whether it’s him or Michael who thinks it.
Distantly, as if it were a voice yelling from times long past, he wonders if that should concern him.
It doesn’t. Not really.
Well, shit, he tries, a little softly, and the thought is echoed dully back at him before Michael lifts his hand, unconcerned.
“Remember nothing.”
And they don’t.
Michael pushes away the cake, matching disgust emanating from both their souls at the thought of ingesting sulfur-stained food; Adam tentatively unwraps himself from the protective cocoon of grace and floats a little closer to the forefront, the murmur of sound increasing until the clarity of the world nearly takes him aback.
Michael is…
Michael?
Grace swirls; an acknowledgement, but not an answer. Until—
We need to leave.
Okay, Adam thinks back, before the diner vanishes in a blur of light and they’re rocketing somewhere else.
The archangel’s thoughts feel like the trickle of a faucet against fingers and the tumultuous peril of a beaten raft in a stormy ocean all at once; he wonders if Michael might be hearing the same things Adam heard, all those years ago. If voices have found a way to cling to him, too, if questions whisper in the back of his mind like a black hole that he’s not letting Adam hear, if they have a destination, if something bad’s going to happen, if, if, if…
Michael, he tries, again; softer, this time. What’s going on?
Just because he expects the answer doesn’t mean it’s any easier to hear. I don’t know.
They're bouncing.
No, really. They are. If the mood were any lighter, Adam would be laughing at the way Michael's feet landed on the ground, almost planting firmly enough to crack it under the soles of their shoes, only for them to surge back up a split second later and swoop down to the next random location. He catches blurred images as they go—snow here, sand there, forests and waterfalls and mountains coalescing until he really isn’t sure what’s what anymore.
Michael’s train of thought shoots by faster than Adam thinks it ever has before, even challenging the howling storm that the Darkness’s release had left behind.
They’re bouncing around to throw others off their tail, to keep themselves from being tracked, but…
Maybe we should stop, Adam attempts, I mean...I think we’ve flown ourselves around enough, right? We should be fine.
Not anyone alive, at least. Except God, if Lilith wasn’t lying.
Nothing like a demon to kill the mood.
The archangel says nothing, and Adam can feel the lips on his face purse together in thought. He wonders what would happen if he tried to move them. Was that a thing? Could they move in a shared body at the same time?
...Adam urges his brain to shut up. This isn’t the time for experimenting.
Finally, Michael stops. They’re...somewhere.
Where are we?
Cairo, Michael responds, and Adam’s about to ask him to elaborate before he sees the pyramids below.
They’re not on the ground, where tourists swarm in crowds and the noise levels were borderline unbearable. Instead, they’re floating—I’ve shielded us, Michael adds on—miles above the land below, and Adam pushes to the front a bit more in order to better see the gigantic landmarks.
Compared to Hell, they’re nothing.
He’s got the feeling that he’s going to be thinking that a lot as time goes on.
For now, though, what little memory of the past he still has encourages him to marvel at the structures, the way they stuck out of the earth so naturally and unnaturally all at once.
What’s the purpose of these? Michael asks, out of nowhere, and Adam is...not prepared for that question.
Uh, I don’t...remember, the answer spills out before he can even think about it, and he’s caught between laughing at himself and wincing at his utter lack of knowledge. It wasn’t like he could remember his high school history classes.
Thankfully, he receives nothing in return but a spark of amusement, and then he feels Michael’s grace reach out once more. Before he has time to ask what Michael’s doing, the archangel speaks
They were built as tombs. He must’ve been reading people’s minds, then.
Triangle graves, Adam says, after a moment, snickering at the sudden confusion that dances in the back of his throat.
Throwing random words at an archangel to get him to calm down after blowing up a demon hadn’t exactly been what he was expecting from today, but it wasn’t like he minded. They were free again, after all. What else could ruin it?
...In hindsight, he spoke too soon.
Figures.
Michael, Adam hears, without warning, and their body stiffens at the voice, but Adam can’t figure out why until Michael projects an image of an angel, of a “Hey, assbutt!” and of fire, of pain, pain, pain, and then he understands.
Michael. This is Castiel. We didn't know each other very well, and our last meeting was unpleasant— Well, that’s one way to put it, Adam supposes— but I know you have been through a terrible ordeal for many years. You've been beyond the reach of heaven. Been beyond the reach of Earth. Much has changed with both. Heaven is not what it was— Adam feels curiosity flare bright, and he knows it’s not all Michael’s; it’s his own, as well. What happened to Heaven?— and your father, your father is certainly not who you knew.
Michael’s mind grows still, silent; calm waters hiding a raging current that threatens to pull them both into the trenches of anger. Adam digs his metaphorical feet in and sends a flicker Michael’s way, a message of wait, hold on, just give it a minute that the archangel surprisingly gives in to.
Michael, there's a battle raging, and you are a warrior, but you must know the nature of this fight. I'm not your enemy anymore.
Now we all have the same enemy: God Himself.
A pregnant pause descends onto them like air pressure on a rainy day, pyramids forgotten as an image flashes through their minds without warning. It’s not somewhere that Adam knows; and, judging by Michael’s hesitation, it’s not somewhere that he knows either.
The underlying message was clear.
No, Michael instantly declares, vehemence lacing his tone. Adam makes a noise that would be roughly equivalent to a snort and finds himself wanting to agree, but…
Halo, he starts, mulling over his own words even as he says them, this is the second person who’s brought this up to us, and...I mean, they’re probably not connected, right?
I wouldn’t put it past them, the archangel mutters.
Even still, maybe we should...hear them out?
Michael’s disbelief echoes through his body like glass shattering in an empty chamber, and, truthfully, Adam knows why—after everything, after everything, he’s encouraging them both to visit the people who’d damned them, who’d lifted the Devil but didn’t even think to ask about their own brother, but that isn’t what’s important right now.
Something was up. Hell had been torn open, and now two different people had come forward with the claim that God...wasn’t acting right?
It couldn’t be a coincidence, right?
Look, I don’t want to visit them, but maybe it wouldn’t hurt to figure out what’s going on? Maybe they know why the Cage was opened, at the very least. And you could always just, uh, fly out of there if they start getting…
Michael’s voice is as dry as the sand on the ground below. Insufferable?
Adam laughs, and at the same time he feels the shift in his chest as Michael concedes, as begrudgingly as it was. Yeah, something like that.
“Michael?”
They touch the ground, and Adam can already feel himself being nudged back a little more, to hide behind the veil of Michael’s grace. He doesn’t object. It isn’t like he really wants to be here.
Castiel looks...weary. Defeated. Nothing like the angel Adam remembers in that old man’s house. More than that, his wings, they’re—
Holy shit, Adam thinks, and the parts of Michael that aren’t on guard twist in agreement.
They’re ruined.
“Thank you. Thank you for coming,” Castiel says, and his brief smile looks more like a grimace than anything else. Then, he pauses, glancing at them inquisitively. “Do you remember me?”
...Did he seriously think that we wouldn’t?
Michael crackles in agreement. “You called me assbutt and set me on fire!”
“I did.”
Injured pride—for the archangel’s former station, for his loyalty to his God, on God’s behalf —swirls in their stomach as if Adam was sticking his arm in a murky river and sloshing it around with choppy, irregular strokes. Outside, Michael nods, and bitterness begins to froth on top of the water. “And now what? You’ve come to tell me that God, my Father, Creator of all things, is my enemy?”
His grace lashes like a whip, crackling with acidic intent but hardly moving from its shielded stance. Adam can feel the wings at his back trembling with barely-restrained fury as if they were his own, waves of magma under the earth kept from erupting by sheer willpower.
“Or, maybe you just came to beg forgiveness.”
And then—”Oh, I didn’t come to beg.”
A sound, one that vaguely registers in Adam’s mind as being familiar but not familiar enough to remember from what little he had of Earth in his past life.
They look down.
Castiel was holding...
Michael—!
It’s too late.
The lighter drops.
Fire, fire, fire. Is he screaming? Is that archangel inside him—Michael, Zachariah said his name was—screaming? Are they both screaming? Oh God, it hurts. It hurts. Please make it stop. Please! Please, just—!
Mom!
The blackness comes for him. He’s never been so happy to die.
Except there’s no pain this time. The fire doesn’t even touch him; it doesn’t touch either of them, but Adam can feel Michael’s fear as much as Michael can feel his own. He doesn’t even notice the archangel’s movements over the mounting terror in his chest, hitting him like a suckerpunch to the gut.
They’re going to lock us away again, he thinks, and he doesn’t mean to broadcast it but he’s hardly in any state of mind to have his barriers up and it’s not like Michael isn’t reflecting the same horrifying idea back at him.
A rustle to the side. Michael turns their head, and—
It’s them.
They’re...not as intimidating as Adam remembers. Right now, at least. They’re just there, walking in from the curtains like a couple of fucking drama queens, and Adam has enough time for a vague sense of annoyance to bloom at the unneccessary flair before Dean pulls out a set of handcuffs and relief smothers the flames of his— their —panic.
They weren’t trying to lock them away. At least, not yet. They had time. They could get out.
When the anger starts burning bright again, he can’t tell which of them it’s coming from. He doesn’t really care.
“Castiel,” he hears Michael growl, over the pounding in his ears, “what have you done?”
The handcuffs are, apparently, supposed to suppress angelic powers. Or, at least, that’s how Dean explained it when he put them on; when Michael was on the verge of snapping with every brush of his unfamiliar fingers against their skin as he locked them up.
The car ride was...interesting.
Y’know, Adam whispers, more amusement lacing his tone than he really feels in the tense, dark atmosphere of the Impala, I don’t really remember cars being this cramped.
Had it been so limiting when he was twelve, or thirteen, or fourteen, sitting awkwardly in the back seat while John drove him to a game he didn’t even want to go to? He doesn’t remember, and he doesn’t care enough to try.
Maybe, Michael says back, staring at the back of Dean’s head like he was trying to burn a hole in it, it’s because there weren’t three vermin in the car with you, the last time.
Probably, Adam agrees, and feels himself flinch a little at the mess they’d gotten themselves into. I’m sorry. We shouldn’t have come. I didn’t know they’d…
The rumble of the car is almost enough to make him sick. He’d drifted back more, but peers forward again when he feels Michael clasp their hands together. It’s...comforting, almost. For a moment, the world falls away again, and it’s just the two of them; nothing more, nothing less.
I can still get us out if the need arises. These...handcuffs—they aren’t as effective as they think they are, the archangel says, softly, and a strand of comfort winds around Adam’s soul like a length of rope. He holds on tight. And...we still don’t know how the Cage was opened. Might as well get something out of this, right?
Adam huffs a half-hearted laugh, and Michael’s grace nudges him at the sound; warm and playful, even now. Yeah, I guess.
The car stops. They’re ushered inside—well, ushered isn’t exactly the right word, but the three of them hover anxiously around Michael like they’re expecting him to start combusting on the spot as they walk down the steps of whatever place they’ve found themselves in.
It’s kind of funny. It’s mostly annoying. Adam really wants to leave.
There’s a moment, then, where nobody says anything. The tension is like a drug, seeping through everyone’s skin until they’re immobilized; immovable.
Michael is the first to break it. “Even for you, especially for you, this is stupid.”
“Good to see you too, Mike,” the nickname is patronizing, brimming with arrogance, and Adam is the first to think— Who gave you the fucking right, Mr. High and Mighty? before Michael throws one right back at them.
“ Sam. You look well. Last time I saw you in the Cage…”
Adam tries not to wince. Again.
“Yeah, it doesn’t matter. We need your help. God…”
“I’ve heard,” Michael interrupts, grace lashing in defense once more. “Repeatedly.”
Castiel speaks up, and Adam’s getting really tired of instinctively wanting to move away every time one of them opens their mouths.
The fire…
“So then, you’re aware—”
“I’m not aware of anything,” the archangel retorts, and there’s a dark fury, then; one that threatens to knock Adam off his metaphorical feet. It’s monstrous, as all-consuming as he imagines the Biblical flood must’ve been, and he doesn’t know how Michael’s keeping it together, or even where this was coming from—this felt even uglier than the sickly-sweet poison that dripped from the space in Michael’s mind where pure love for Lucifer once resided. “You’re asking me to trust you! You, who doomed me! You, who let Lucifer walk free while your own brother sat in Hell.”
He’s never felt this from Michael before.
It’s…for him?
Sam’s voice jerks him out of his revelation. He’s not sure who he should thank for the sudden miracle. “Doing what we do, we’ve had to get used to losing people. Probably...too used to it. With Adam...we said goodbye because we thought we had to.”
Adam tries to shove down the pang of hurt that threatens to make him shrink away from the surface. He doesn’t want to be here. He doesn’t want—
“We were wrong,” he nods, like that makes up for years and years of carrying around a mind so fragile it had threatened to shatter at a moments’ notice.
Michael’s ire is gargantuan. He’s in the eye of a hurricane; the only safe home in a land of ruins. “Well, don’t tell me.”
The world shifts.
What are you—?
“Tell him.”
Michael, hang on a second—!
The world sharpens.
For a second, he doesn’t know what to do. No, scratch that—he hasn’t known what to do this entire time. But, well…
Fuck it, right? It isn’t like any of this matters, not when there might be an out-of-control God to handle.
He stows his shit. He can’t afford to break down. Not now.
Instead of edging away, instead of giving in and putting as much fucking distance as he can between himself and them— he did not survive a thousand years in Hell just to chicken out now —Adam tries for a smile, trying to taper the nervousness from the edge of it like he’s sanding down a brittle piece of wood.
“Hey, Sam,” he forces out, watching the confusion that plays out over their faces. Somehow, that makes it a little easier. “Dean.”
Sam looks like he thinks he might be speaking to a madman. Adam doesn’t blame him. He might as well be one, at this point.
Michael’s grace gives him a chiding pulse for that. Oops. He hadn’t meant to let that one out.
“Adam?”
Shit. Okay. How about…
Adam brings his hands up, trying to force himself into some state of relaxation as he grins. “ Ha!” Gotcha, motherfuckers!
He needs to calm down. They’re just people.
...They’re just people.
They can’t do anything.
Dean’s the one talking now. “Wait, Mich—Michael lets you talk? I mean, he lets you... be?”
There’s no time to ponder on the strangeness of that question, but Adam nods. Judging by the looks on their faces, he hasn’t mastered the art of schooling his own expressions all the way. “Uh... yeah. In the Cage, we—came to an agreement. We only had…each other.”
The concern that’s starting to burn inside his chest, courtesy of Michael, is enough to start concerning him. Maybe he doesn’t sound as composed as he thinks he does.
His oldest half-brother steps forward, and Adam feels like he’s practically strangling the urge to lean away as the archangel inside of him starts to bristle. “Adam, look...I know we bailed on you, okay, and there is nothing we can say to fix that.”
And that...shouldn’t have hurt him as much as it did. But as the sudden ache races through his chest, enclosing around his heart in a vice grip and refusing to let go, it solidifies him—the familiar weariness of the Cage joins it, and it’s enough to do away with any fear that remained of the ones who left him to suffer.
He sighs. “How about, uh…” he pauses, forcing himself to look up. He can’t back down; not from this. “I’m sorry?”
Nobody says anything.
Right. That’s…that’s fine. He’s been through worse, after all. Right?
And then Michael is wresting control, pushing Adam back in the same way he did earlier and surrounding him in warmth, in peace, in safety that he sinks into with only the barest amount of hesitation. Another eye, another hurricane.
“Enough,” Adam hears from the outside world; a growl, barely encompassing the vastness of Michael’s rage. “Why am I here?”
“Michael—” Castiel’s voice, this time. “—we needed to speak with you because God is back. You didn’t think the Cage just opened on its own, did you?”
God? After all this time?
“If my Father is back, he will usher in Paradise,” Michael says, and the utter belief he has—even after everything —could almost be enough to sway Adam, if he hadn’t lived through so many years of a nightmarish existence.
The statement should make him exasperated. If Sam and Dean and Castiel were telling the truth, then the world could very well be on its last legs. There was no time for belief in a Father that had never even bothered to lift him from the Cage, right?
Instead, he just watches. Waits. It’s nothing he hasn’t heard before.
“No, he won’t,” Dean says. “Because Paradise is boring. And your dad? He’s just looking to be entertained.”
The sea churns, frothing with the promise of death, of righteous anger, but Adam’s still beneath the surface—he can feel the creeping doubt, stirred up like silt from the bottom with each push of the waves.
“Which means we’re his puppets. All of us. Especially you.”
He only faintly registers Michael standing, but the world shifts again. He knows what Michael’s doing.
He lets him. It isn’t like he doesn’t know the feeling of wanting to hide away.
“I won’t hear this,” the archangel hisses. The seabed quakes before it comes to a forceful stop, doubt settling before it has the chance to rise. “You’re lying. I don’t know what your agenda is, but you’re lying.”
“Michael—”
But the world sharpens again, and Adam steps forward willingly. The anxiousness returns, but it’s dulled by the heaviness of his resolve.
If the archangel needs a moment, he’s going to goddamn well give it to him. He can handle this.
“Hey!” he tries, looking around. They don’t seem to understand the change, so he tries again, wheezing out what he hopes is a lighthearted chuckle. “It’s Adam.”
Comprehension seems to dawn on them. Barely. Maybe an explanation, then?
“I’d give it a rest. He’s not...listening,” he says, and if it comes out a little more fond than he means for it to, well...they seem like they have enough on their plates that they won’t notice.
They’re going to have to do this one way or another.
Adam bites his lip in thought, trying to push away the feeling of Michael’s quiet fuming in the back of his head.
Sam and Dean...they’d left him in Hell. They’d even scooped Lucifer up without a single thought to spare for him. He wants to condemn them. He does. He wants to leave and never look back, fate of the universe be damned.
But…
Back in the day, they’d...they’d tried to stop the apocalypse, hadn’t they? They had tried to warn him about what the angels would do to the world if they were granted a one-way path to success. They’d tried to keep him from becoming Michael’s vessel, from...being trapped in his own mind.
Adam rubs a hand across his face, brief and a little rougher than he normally would, silently cursing the awkwardness with which he does it because of the cuffs.
Christ. This was too much.
What would Mom have thought of you? his mind says to him. It isn’t cold, isn’t cruel, it’s just—blank. It almost scares him. What would she have thought about millions of people dying just so you could get her back?
He freezes, and then sighs.
Get it together.
Lucifer—he’d been talking about stopping the Darkness, right? And Sam and Dean wouldn’t have let him out if they hadn’t thought he couldn’t do it. Adam wasn’t useful in that regard. He could barely even manage a conversation with Michael, so...maybe it made sense that they hadn’t thought of him.
If there were bigger fish to fry, did empty promises and abandoned half-brothers even matter?
...No.
Besides, would they really have gone through the trouble of trapping himself and Michael and piling everything up like this if they didn’t mean what they said?
He takes a breath; lets it out. This isn’t going to be easy. This was going to be different than the arguments about God in the Cage. This was... more. If the Winchesters weren’t lying—and Adam, for all he wanted to think differently, didn’t believe that they were—then there was much, much more riding on this than words thrown around out of a lack of conversation topics.
“So, I’ve been thinking,” he says, striding towards Michael, towards the wooden chair. “Maybe, they’re... not lying.” At Michael’s noise of indignation, Adam rushes to explain.
“H—hear me out. Sam and Dean try to be on the right side of things. They actually do. They tried to talk me out of taking you on for example—out of all of this.”
Incredulity cuts a Michael-shaped hole into the inside of his ribs. “So you forgive them?”
“Oh, hell no,” Adam shoots back, offense rising before he can think to suppress it. Did Michael really think that he would throw a thousand years’ worth of misery away like that? Did he truly think so... little of him? “No! But that’s not what this is about, it’s—”
Frustration begins to form like a headache behind his eyes. He doesn’t want to be frustrated, but he can’t help it; he wants to get out of this place and he gets the nagging feeling that the trio insisting on keeping them here will just try to track them down if they fly away here and now.
He just wants peace. Was that really so much to ask?
“Look. If they tell you something’s off with God, it’s because they believe it’s true. And, if they believe it...it probably is true.”
Michael looks down, and Adam can feel the frustration coming from him, too. “You and I...have been together for years. My father and I have been together for eternity!”
Here we go.
“I exist because He willed it!”
“So he’s having a mid-eternity crisis! Or—or,” Adam interjects, before Michael can rebuke the half-assed insult, “maybe you don’t know your dad as well as you think you do.”
They’re both reaching the ends of their ropes. If Adam couldn’t feel it in the threads of the archangel’s grace, he would know it by the way Michael points a finger at him, ready to snap but turning away at the last second. He’s getting that look again, the one that reminds Adam of a cornered animal, and if this were any other situation he would’ve stopped pushing and dropped the issue at this point.
This isn't any other situation, though. They’re not in the Cage anymore.
Hello, reality.
“The point is...parents keep secrets, right? Does it hurt to ask the question?”
“Yes!”
Adam sighs, a puff of air through his mouth that complements the way his eyes glance down, only for a moment. It isn’t that the fight deflates out of him like a popped balloon, because it doesn’t. He won’t budge; not for this. But, for a moment, he forces himself to just— stop.
He listens, instead. He feels. He tries to understand.
The silt on the seabed is being stirred up again, and…
“It would! It would mean that I doubt Him. The good son, the favorite, doubts his Father!”
Adam watches him, watches the fierceness with which Michael holds himself, lets his eyes flicker across the desperation that ferocity struggles to hide.
He wonders where the sudden reserves of affection had come bursting forth from, where the sharp edges of frustration had gone. This wasn’t the time for it, and yet...he couldn’t stop it.
Hide it, though—now that, he could do.
“You still care about that? After He left you in the Cage?”
The churning of the sea stills violently, as if it were never swirling at all.
If it were any other day, any other time, the hurt that echoes through the archangel’s grace would be enough to have an apology instantly embedded in the lines of his soul, winding soothingly around him in an effort to mollify, to calm, to lull.
Now, though, Michael’s grace retracts—not enough to separate them completely, but enough that the intensity of his emotions dulls and fades, like Adam had never felt them at all. He doesn’t move, doesn’t protest, holds his tongue even as he aches with the emptiness of the space between them.
After a moment, Michael turns away. Memories of the times where he’d purposefully go silent after one of Michael’s old insults rise, unbidden, and Adam would offer a wan smile if he thought it would do any good.
Things really were so much simpler in the Cage.
Michael’s taken up the reins.
Adam had grown weary of sitting there in the bunker, staring at nothing, and had finally moved to the backseat without a thought. Michael had taken up the mantle immediately after, so their body wouldn’t be left undefended. They hadn’t spoken a word since their debate, but they’d reconnected in increments, as if drawn together by something neither of them understood.
Are you sure? another part of him whispered; aiming to draw blood. He silences it.
He’s on the verge of retreating back into the mindscape and simply idling around for a while when the door opens to their right, the slight shuffle of feet announcing a presence.
“Adam?”
Michael turns his head, and there’s a distinct coldness about him that makes Adam want to grimace. If they were anywhere else…
“Not this time. I’ll spare you the effort—I’m not gonna betray my Father and everything I’ve believed in.”
“Why not?”
Adam snorts.
“You know, he betrayed you.”
Though they weren’t as close as they normally were, Michael’s sudden thought was loud enough that Adam heard it; venom and all. Were you not the one who betrayed Heaven and all it stood for when you set me on fire?
“You know, Michael, I never really liked you,” and Adam snorts again, despite everything. “Even when I was just another angel, I thought you were too...haughty, too—” Castiel seems almost amused, for a second, and it makes Adam wonder what he’s thinking before he doesn’t have to wonder at all. “To paraphrase a friend, you had an entire oak tree shoved up your ass.”
The amount of focus Adam has to maintain to keep from laughing until the world ends is rather large, actually. But, really. Only one oak tree? Michael was a whole lot bigger than that.
...Maybe the walls were closing in on him a little too much.
“But now? I’m looking at you and I—I just pity you,” and any trace of humor that Adam had felt scatters like dandelion seeds in the wind. “Because you were never God’s favorite.”
Michael’s still. Too still.
Michael, he murmurs, distance be damned. He knows Michael can still hear him. You know what he’s trying to do.
The archangel twitches in acknowledgement, but says nothing in return. Adam sighs, for what feels like the twentieth time today, and sits back. Better to just let these things play out, he supposes.
“You were just a little part of his story, a tiny part of his story. You weren’t even a star.”
The seabed quakes.
“At least Lucifer knew that God can’t be trusted.”
Adam straightens at that, bristling on Michael’s behalf even though he knew damn well that Michael didn’t need it. He couldn’t help it—to be compared to Lucifer, of all people? That was enough to make anyone vexed.
“But I guess he was always the smart one.”
A pause. He doesn’t need to be connected to the archangel to know what he’s feeling—the intense umbrage is the same as his own, after all.
And then Michael launches Castiel over the fucking table.
Relocated to the floor, the metal link wrapped tight around the lesser angel’s neck like a noose, it’s all Adam can do to sit back and watch it happen. He knows Michael isn’t aiming to kill; he’s seen him strike too many times before, and this certainly isn’t anything lethal.
Besides, after bringing up Lucifer? He kind of had it coming.
But then Castiel’s hands are coming to frame the sides of their head and he’s croaking out a “See the truth for yourself!” and—
Pain.
“I’m a writer. Lying’s kinda what we do.”
Father?
“Of all the Sams and Deans in all the multiverses, you’re my favorite show!”
The memories force themselves in, uninvited, ripping at the corners of their minds and unraveling seams Adam didn’t even know existed.
A gun, pointed at the head of a blonde boy. “And you were right—I am a monster.”
Who—?
Nephilim, comes Michael’s distant hiss, but it’s wracked with strain. If he’s in half as much pain as Adam is—
“Oh, you’re enjoying this.”
“Shh.”
There’s a woman, tearing into the man—no, into God, and he can feel as Michael thrashes against the intrusion harder, desperately attempting to defend the Father he loves all while everything crumbles to dust around him.
When had they reconnected again? Adam hadn’t felt it. All he can feel is the weight of someone else’s mind pressing down on him like it’s about to pierce his very soul, and—
“This isn’t how the—the story’s supposed to end!”
“The story? Wait, what are you saying?”
“He’s saying he’s been playing us. This whole time. Everything. This is all you because you wrote it all, right? Because we’re your favorite show? Because we’re part of your story?!”
Horror. From him or from Michael, he couldn’t tell. From both, maybe. It’s violent, seizing him and shaking him and refusing to let him go.
It burns.
“The apocalypse, with Lucifer and Michael, you knew everything that was going on.”
A man appears, and Adam shrinks away from the sight. The weight of Castiel’s mind is insisting that it’s Michael, but...it can’t be.
It can’t be, because Michael isn’t twisted. This archangel’s true form— whoever he is—was...bright. Too bright. Dazzling in a way that blinded, sadistic intent dripping from the set of his wings, the gleam of his body, even in the way he walked. Adam cringed away, barely aware of how Michael wrapped himself around him like they always did as if to protect him from the cascade, but there was no point. They wouldn’t go away, they just kept coming and coming and coming—
“Why don’t you just snap your fingers and end it?!”
Snap. The blond boy—what had Michael called him?—fizzles out of existence, light pouring from his mouth, his eyes.
“Fine! That’s the way you want it?! Story’s over. Welcome to the end.”
Release. Sweet, sweet release, and Adam can’t tell if it’s him or the archangel that’s steering anymore but it doesn’t matter because he could cry at the lack of weight of someone else’s mind forcing itself in, bearing down on his own until he’s well and truly splintering, the foundation he’d built on top of after all his time in the Cage cracking and cracking until there is no more. He—
“—chael?” A voice. Hesitant, wary, until he feels his mouth moving and his vocal cords vibrating and the voice is replaced with a gruffer one; dark and pained and taut with rage.
“ Leave.”
“I know it’s a lot to take in, but—”
“ Leave! Get out! I want you dead!”
As Adam staggers back into awareness, he hears the sound of footsteps fading away as they grow more and more distant.
Castiel. It had been Castiel. Right. He thinks he can be forgiven for forgetting.
Everything comes slamming back down fast; too fast, but it’s nothing compared to the sheer agony that Michael’s grace is practically trembling with. They’re still on the floor, slumped over in some half-kneeling position that he’s sure would be uncomfortable if anyone but an archangel was in it.
Michael’s agony is loud, but it isn’t the swirling maelstrom of grace that had formed when the Darkness was released; no, he’s just... shaking. He makes no sound, utters no words, doesn’t even scream.
Just...nothing.
It scares him.
Michael? he thinks, trying not to pay attention to the strain, the muddled effect left by the efforts of his mind scrambling and unscrambling in an effort to make room for memories, thoughts, feelings that were not his own.
When he gets no response, a chill shivers through the core of his being that could rival the gelid atmosphere of the Cage. Acting more on instinct than anything else, he reaches out, grabbing hold of the archangel with everything he has an urging him back into their mindscape, back to a place that had some semblance of fucking safety.
Michael follows him without resistance, both of them materializing in the black space as if on instinct. And it was, at this point.
The archangel looked...if Adam didn’t know any better, if he didn’t feel the way his grace still thrummed with life inside him, he would say that Michael looked catatonic. His eyes were distant, glazed, trapped in a state of fervid distress that seemed to stare straight through him, as if he was barely aware that Adam was even there. His body was ramrod straight, shoulders squinching in, hands stiff by his side. It made him look small in a way that Michael should never look, but Adam couldn’t find it in himself to burn with fury; not now, of all times. There was no place for it.
He knows he won’t get an answer if he tries to talk. Instead, he steps forward, swallowing down his rattled mind, his worries, his fear, and wraps his arms around his only friend.
Michael doesn’t react. Adam didn’t expect him to. He stays there, anyway, closing his eyes as he rests his chin on the other’s shoulder and sighs, opening his soul up completely as if the depth of his emotion would bring Michael back somehow.
Butterflies be damned; control be damned. It wasn’t as if he would ever act on it, so it didn’t matter if Michael saw it, right?
If he was even paying attention, that is. Adam wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t.
“Hey, halo,” he says, voice as soft as he can manage without dipping fully into a whisper. He swallows again, trying to mask the tremble. “You in there?”
Nothing, except the ever-present shaking of Michael’s grace. He’s reeling in a way that Adam has no idea how to deal with; nothing has ever come close to this level of devastation before.
In the end, he does what he does best.
He talks.
He tells Michael stories that they’ve both already heard a thousand times over. He describes the wonder he felt at seeing the stars again, the initial pain of leaving Hell, points out all the little things that threw him off in the diner. He even starts talking about the Cage, strange thought it was to even bring it up.
Some things were just too familiar to let go.
It’s when he’s in the middle of explaining how odd it was to come back to Earth and find no inconsistencies like there were in the broken little palace of his mind that he feels something in Michael’s grace shift; slowly, slowly, like the rotation of stars on a slow-spinning planet. It makes him stumble over his words only for a moment, but he presses on.
Then, as slowly as the grace, arms reach up to rest softly around his back, and he lets his words die out until there’s nothing but them and the silence, the void.
But that’s how it’s always been for them, isn’t it?
It isn’t until a head dips down to rest in the crook of his neck, until Michael’s grip tightens and the heartache within them both expands to the point of pain and Adam feels one tear, and then two, paint his skin after seeping through the thin layers of clothing, that Adam lets his own grip tighten; he holds Michael with all the human strength he can muster and does not let him go, refuses to let him go, not for anyone.
There are no more tears that follow. Adam gently traces his fingers along the expanse of the space between Michael’s shoulder blades and—waits. For what, he’s not certain.
His answer comes in the form of Michael’s voice, quieter than he’s ever heard it. It’s streaked with blue in a way that Adam can’t explain; desolation chipping away at it until colors bleed through. “I am old.”
Adam hums assent, still standing with his soul bared for Michael to see, to feel. Somehow, he doesn’t mind at all.
“I've lived for eons,” Michael insists, further, and Adam answers the question brimming in his grace before the archangel can choke it out.
“Nobody knew that he didn’t care,” he murmurs, as plainly as he can. It would do no good to soften the words. “He played the same role everywhere, apparently, so...everyone got fooled. Youngest or oldest.”
“Lucifer knew,” Michael mutters, and his voice isn’t sullen so much as it is defeated. It hurts to hear, a pang in his heart that almost seems to make Michael shift against him, the slightest twitch to show he’d felt it
“That doesn’t mean he was right about everything else,” he counters. “You know that.”
The emphatic bitterness in the noise that Michael makes, something that could’ve once been a laugh, is unmistakable. “If I didn’t know that my Father viewed us— all of us—as his playthings, who’s to say that I know anything at all?”
You know lots of things, is his first rebuttal, but he pushes it to the side, knowing Michael will hear it nonetheless.
“Playthings or no, we’re still alive, right? So…” Where he was going with this, he didn’t know. He never did. “Of course you know things. We’re out of the Cage, for one thing. We’re standing here, for another. And you know about the first star, and all the things you and your brothers did at the Beginning, and…” he sighs, drawing back enough to look Michael in the eyes. Michael lets him; there’s a surprising amount of reluctance in his hold that Adam can’t dwell on. He can’t. “This—this is real. I know that much.”
The archangel’s gaze traps him, holds him steady amidst the swell of some emotion or another rising in his chest. He doesn’t know what it is; it’s not what he’s used to. It’s something deeper. More.
“He wouldn’t have made a bunch of people who didn’t know anything, either. Dean said he thought that type of stuff was boring, so…” he clamps his mouth shut before he talks too much for too long. Michael’s grief is still sharper than a knife, distraught still visible on his face. He doesn’t need Adam rambling like an idiot—like a human— on top of that.
“Look...we both have the memories now, right? We know how He is,” he studies Michael, the bleakness of his eyes, the downwards curve of his lips, the pull of his eyebrows—his slumped form. “Are you going to do anything about it?”
At this point, they’re fucked no matter how they look at it. If they walk out of here without helping, God destroys the world. If they walk out of here after helping, God could still very well destroy the world. It’s a lose-lose situation. They could leave now and Adam doesn’t think he could find it in himself to care.
There’s a tear track darkening the skin under Michael’s eye, just enough to glisten in the non-existent lighting. Before Adam knows what he’s doing, he reaches out to wipe it away, thumb gently gliding over smooth skin.
It’s funny, almost, how they keep studying each other. Adam’s only Adam—he has no answers to give, no plan to follow, no basis for how to handle a God-gone-rogue. He doesn’t even have enough money for a hamburger anymore.
His hand is still cradling Michael’s face, and he can almost see the light of his true form ablaze under his palm, light-years’ worth of an archangel compressed into a single human form. He looks ancient and young all at once, mesmerizingly so, and the intensity with which Adam is being stared at is almost enough to make him drop his hand and move back out of sheer embarrassment. It's wide-eyed, all-encompassing, pinning him to the spot and holding him there, and he feels like Michael's drinking him in just as much as he's doing the same. He watches as Michael's eyes rake from his chin to his forehead, lingering here and there as if he's afraid Adam will vanish on the spot.
His thumb caresses the skin again, out of a need to touch more than anything else, and if he didn't feel light-headed before—well, he does now.
“I—” he comes out with, before he can stop himself, and the movement of grace stops as the other waits for his words. They don’t want to come out, and Adam doesn’t even know why.
He thinks them, instead. I know you’re my friend.
Somehow, he doesn’t think that’s what he meant to say.
Michael blinks, at that, and his grace shifts once more before settling into a thought. A single thought. When he sends it over to Adam, with more hesitancy than Adam would’ve thought he had, Adam smiles. He hopes it’s encouraging. It’s probably just tired.
“Is that what we’re going to do?”
The steeling of blue eyes, the sky sharpening into twin blades, tells him all he needs to know.
When Dean and Castiel come racing into the room, seemingly prepared for a fight, Adam sighs and looks away.
Michael had scooted them back so they were leaning back against something instead of laying haphazardly on the ground.
“God lied to me,” he says, like he’s tasting the words on their tongue. Adam sends a pulse towards him, a mental shoulder-squeeze. An I’m here that isn’t lost on either of them. “I gave everything for him. I loved him. Why?”
Why. That’s what everything all came back to, right? Why? Why had God lied? Why had Sam and Dean left him in the Cage?
Why couldn’t life just be fair, for once?
But Michael steels himself once more, donning a shadow of his old composure as he stands. Adam watches it all with a sense of pride that he wonders if he’s allowed to feel.
“So, yes. I will help you. What was done to the Darkness can be done to God, if he’s as weak as you say. And I know how.”
A simple twist of magic, and paper appears in their pocket. Michael takes it out, slides it over to them, unwilling to make contact with them even for a moment.
“That’s the spell.”
“And the ingredients?” Castiel asks.
“Myrrh. Cassia. Rockrose—”
“We’ve got that,” Dean interjects, something akin to relief in his voice.
Adam feels a spike of complacent acerbity pass between them, a silent challenge; retribution. “And, to bind the spell together, the nectar from a Leviathan blossom.”
That seems to throw them off. “A Leviathan blossom? What is that, like, a flower?”
“A flower that only grows in one place,” and Adam smirks as realization plays out across their faces. He may be willing to work with them, but after the last few hours—had it truly only been a few hours—he was...a bit more open to the idea of them getting maimed. Not enough to kill, but enough to make them feel it.
His mind is still fragile from taking the brunt of the memories. If he has to deal with it, so do they.
They’re helping, after all.
“Purgatory.”
And, with that, Michael raises his hand; Adam watches with a sense of disjointed calm as a door appears, washing the room in golden light. For the entrance to a world where the endless cycle of death weaves the thread of existence, it’s rather beautiful.
“That’s the door. It’ll remain open for twelve hours. Now,” the archangel says, voice turning mockingly polite, “if you’ll please.”
The handcuffs come off, and Michael flexes their wrists, inspecting the skin around them as though he’s searching for any signs of damage.
Are you alright? Adam hears, and he nudges Michael once; a shadow of the way they normally did, the playfulness nearly gone but still festering like embers in a dying fire.
Yeah. The answer is obvious to both of them, he knows, but they’re both fraying like two pieces of worn cloth. What’s a little reassurance?
“You coming with us?” Dean asks, and Adam would frown if he had the face for it. As it is, Michael is the one who frowns.
“No.”
Finally, finally, they begin to take their leave. Adam’s on the verge of asking Michael to just fly out here before he hears—
“Before you go…” And now what? What more could they possibly ask? Hadn’t they given— “Can I talk to him?”
...Do you want to? Michael prods, the roughness banished from his tone in favor of something more equable. Adam sighs in wordless agreement. Might as well, right?
He turns around, cautious, unsure. “Yeah?”
Dean steps forward, and...he seems as unsure as Adam is. “Adam, I want you to know...we are sorry.”
It takes him off-guard, the world seeming to slow around him as the entirety of his attention falls on this; the space between them, the quiet hanging in the air.
He didn’t expect them to actually…apologize, no matter how nice it would be.
“What happened to you—you’re a good man,” he continues, and Adam has to hold back a flinch at the words, hitting him right where he’d thought he’d put up his guard. He—how could he be good? Weren’t good things supposed to be saved?
“You didn’t deserve that.”
“I don’t understand. What did I do? What did I ever do to deserve this? I don’t—”
His own words come flooding back to him, a lump growing in his throat even as Michael swathes him with...lo—care. With care.
Adam smiles, then, at the futility of it all, breaking eye contact for a moment to try and compose himself. It’s hard. It’s hard, because his own grief is beginning to mix with Michael’s, and it’s too much, too impassioned, too real.
He can’t even deal with his own emotions right. Maybe he did deserve it.
What did it matter?
He looks back up, smiling, feeling his eyes burn with the effort of holding the tears beginning to prickle at the corners of his vision. “Since when do we get what we deserve?”
Inexplicably, despite it all, his thoughts flicker to the boy in those memories, Castiel’s grief as the life was burned out of existence. He didn’t know who he was, or even what his name was, but the undercurrent of sheer love that Adam hadn’t picked up on at first is radiating from those images now; bright and fierce and intense in a way that only a parent could be.
He wonders if his mother had ever felt that for him—if he saw her again, after all this time, would she still love him the same?
Would he still be her son?
But he knows the angel’s pain, even if he was on the opposite end of it all. He knows it as well as he knows the inside of the Cage.
Adam nods. Castiel looks away.
That’s okay.
He tries for another smile, but it’s wobbling at the corners and he knows it. “Good luck.”
In some way, walking away tears him apart worse than the flight out of Hell. He barely sees the halls, the rooms, the lights; he takes the stairs two at a time, yanking open the door and tumbling out into the brightness of morning. He thinks it’s morning, anyway, but he isn’t sure—the only thing he knows now is the hot trails of water seeping from his eyes, the guttural sobs that rise from somewhere deep within him, Michael’s pain and his own mixing until he can’t tell who’s who anymore.
He cries for them both, fingers digging into his arms in a way that he differs from the way he’d done it in the Cage—this time, there’s going to be bruises.
Michael curls around him, as silent as the breeze rustling through his hair.
It’s enough.