Author's note: this is a bit different than "Forgotten" it's darker or at least has the possibility to be. Depending on how well this is received we'll see if there's more to come.
-Set a certain parts during the end of season five and middle of season six, spoilers for Appointment in Samarra (which you probably should have seen by now)
Warnings: possibly dark, slight character insanity (you can't get out of hell without being a bit messed up), most likely some angst and drama.
That's about it, good luck and Godspeed to whoever is reading this.
-Line break-
Tell me not, in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream! For the soul is dead that slumbers, and things are not what they seem. Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art; to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul.
the road so far…
From the beginning it's been silent, deathly still except from the sounds of Lucifer and Michael fighting. The archangels (one former and one current) don't speak or if they do then he never hears it, the words mute to his human ears.
It's been decades and years-180 years, six days, three hours, forty-five minutes, and twelve seconds- since he's heard another voice, a sound, something that means he isn't alone.
He doesn't blame Sam, not anymore. Everyone has their own coping method, a way of escaping, and it's not like he's still trying anymore.
Please kill me, please please kill me, why aren't I dead yet? his thoughts flow unconsciously but he already knows it's useless. Deals don't matter here, prayers go unanswered and pleading only goes so far in the cage of the truly damned.
Across the cage, which goes on forever in a battlefield of white open nothingness, Sam sits, his eyes blank as they have been for the past how many years. Hate, despair, and pain can't make him go a cross what might as well be a canyon.
-line break-
The way Lucifer and Michael fight has a pattern. For years and years, they fight. A clash of all-knowing, cosmic, over-shadowing power. And then just as suddenly as the battle starts it stops. They have no blades in this place of nothing so not even then archangels can bring death.
He looks across at his own brother, silent and foreboding. Will that happen to us one day? I think if with enough time I might want to kill you.
He wonders if Sam can truly see this; the power of what might as well be ancient gods. Can he see their true forms, the terrible, beautiful, wonderful, devasting things hidden behind the vessels?
Or does he see nothing? Feel nothing, hear nothing….
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Occasionally, when the fighting is especially fierce, one of them is wounded. He's been with pure energy no less than sixteen times in the past two decades. The pain is sharp clarity, the only thing that really stays in his mind. It burns his way through his body and slices down his soul.
And he's still alive, gasping in pain, sobbing silently for death because this isn't something anyone-anything human should have to endure.
A long time ago, so far ago that he has to stretch his fading memories to find, when he still thought the world was safe, that monsters were things only kids believed in. That far back, he thought the worse thing possible was being eaten alive. Being eaten slowly, painfully, by a demon wearing the face of his own mother.
And it was painful and it was the worse thing he'd ever thought possible. then. But now, now he'd gladly trade everything he had for that meager pain. He'd let them eat him alive every single day, a Prometheus-deal if they would only stop the pain, the silence, the nothing for a minute.
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Sometimes Lucifer stares at him, this is only when he and Michael have stopped their destruction. The stares chill him to the bone, because this is the devil, Satan, the master of hell-and it doesn't matter because they're both trapped here and soon, too soon, Michael and Lucifer will start fighting again and he'll be forgotten for another decade.
In these instances, he almost likes Michael. The archangel who hadn't tricked him or manipulated him into this but only offered him what he wanted. The only other person who can possibly feel the same thing he feels.
After all, he hadn't expected to be trapped here either.
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It takes him seventy-two years before he decides that he does belong here. Sam sacrificed himself for the world, for his brother, for a good reason. And him? He just didn't want to be dead again, just wanted to have his mom alive for one more moment, one more lifetime of normality.
I can give you what you really want. Your life, your family…I can give you what you want.
He's a monster, selfish and damned like Lucifer and Michael.
He wishes Sam would tell him differently.
Hell, he just wants Sam to tell him something.
-Line break-
The worst part is that he can't sleep, can't find some way-like Sam did-to hide away from it all. So he thinks and dodges away from the fight if it gets to close. His thoughts aren't always nice and he doesn't always move away in time.
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The funny thing is that he's always wanted brothers. It was always just him and his mom, no one else fit the gap of family. And now? He's had almost two-hundred years to know one of them and his brother doesn't even give a damn about him, doesn't recognize his existence.
He'll never know anyone as long as he's known Sam and he doesn't even know anything about him.
-Line break-
The cage is almost sentient. It's conscious, aware enough, or at least he thinks it is, that it can play tricks. Occasionally he hears voices, his mom's, his dad's, his friends, Castiel, Dean, and sometimes even Sam's.
When his head snaps up though, eyes wide from shock and nearly lost hope, all he sees is that battlefield, the fighting brothers, and Sam.
Maybe he's just crazy. It's a legitimate idea. Nearly two hundred years of hell would do that to a person. And he's not strong not like Dean and Sam-Sam whose sitting in the same spot he has been for the last 180 years, six days, three hours, forty-six minutes and thirty-two seconds-eventually, if it already hasn't, the cage will break him. It'll suck out his sanity and take the last thing he owns.
-line break-
Lucifer and Michael are fighting again, this time it's different though. The fight's more vicious then it has been in at least ten years. It's as if nearing another century has made their rage grow stronger.
He hopes it hasn't, already today he's nursing a fractured shoulder, a few shattered ribs, and he can see one of the bones inside his leg again. The injuries don't matter, in an hour or at least he thinks an hour he'll be healed up again and ready to be torn to pieces in no time.
Before that hour, or whatever length of time that doesn't matter happens, something occurs that changes everything about the cage.
For the first time, in 180 years, six days, three hours, forty-seven and fifty-eight seconds-something new appears in the cage.
Michael and Lucifer are too caught up in their fight to see it, and Sam's still as motionless as he's ever been. But he? He has nothing to focus on, nothing to do but wait and dodge, and hope half-heartedly that Sam says a word.
It's a man. He's dressed in all black, a stark contrast to the whiteness of the cage. His skin is somewhat pale, and he only looks slightly familiar. But slightly familiar is better than the emptiness of his mind, of the memories that have faded away.
Shakily he stands up, and winces, surprised at the pain wracking his body. Who is it?
He opens his mouth to speak and can't, the words dry up in his thought. It's been so long since he's had any need of them.
The man stops and stares at him. "I'm afraid, I'm not here for you."
At first he doesn't understand and then slowly….
The man walks over to Sam-Sam who hasn't spoke in 180 years, six days, three hours forty-nine minutes, twelve seconds-And slowly helps him up. Sam who hasn't moved since the beginning. Sam who is practically a wild, wounded animal, hopelessly trying to protect himself the only way he can.
He's taking Sam? Sam gets to be free, he gets to leave the cage. Not once had it occurred to him how much comfort a comatose, near dead person could be. But now that Sam was leaving, things were different. When Sam left, he'd be all alone, imprisoned between two comets who didn't care whether he lived or died.
If Sam left, then he'd go insane. His sanity would snap as easily as string. Please don't, please don't take him.
The man, stopped again, his cold and impassive eyes staring at him.
This time he can speak, the words can finally come out of his mouth. What he says surprises himself, "Kill me. Please kill me." He had wanted to beg to keep Sam but even now he was selfish. Selfish for wanting to keep Sam and selfish for wanting to let him go.
His voice is rough, from disuse and the pain in speaking makes him want to cry, to curl up back against the nothing and die. again. "I know you can do it, if you can leave here, if you can take Sam then you can at least kill me, can't you? Put me out of my misery."
The man, and from somewhere deep inside he knows instinctively that this presence is death. Death-the only thing untouched by heaven and hell and the cage. "And you'll be miserable without him?"
"Yes." he has no time for lies. "If you take Sam away then I'll have nothing left. I don't even remember."
"Remember what?" Death looks amused, as if this mere mortals problem is some form of entertainment and he supposes if he couldn't feel constant pain then he'd be damn happy too.
"Anything. My parents, my friends, my life, even my name. All I have to cling to is Sam. If you take him away and leave me here alive then I'll be just like him."
Just kill me, I know you can, I know it. So why won't you do it?
"I can't do anything to you, and I can't do anything for you." Death says quietly, his voice reminds him of the feeling of his bones breaking, of blood running down his neck, of-"I was asked to get Sam and I'm not inclined to do anything else."
"Who asked you for Sam? Why's he so important?" Why not me? Haven't I suffered more than him? At least he's been near-unconscious.
"Your brother for one thing."
Memories slowly trickle back, like running water. He has a brother, an older brother, a half-brother named Dean. Dean who has chosen Sam over him, Sam who hasn't moved, hasn't died in years.
The family dynamics come back, conversations ringing in his ears. In the end Dean will always chose Sam and Sam will always chose Dean.
Sam deserves to be back up there. Sam can't handle the cage, that much was obvious a long time ago and what kind of brother is he if he makes him stay?
Disgust curls around him, overriding the phantom sensation of pain. He really is a monster. "Take him then, bring him to Dean."
Dean who probably hasn't even thought about his other brother in years or however long it's been in the outside.
Surprise reflects in the dark eyes, but only for a moment. "I thought you needed him?"
He shakes his head, "I can't keep him here. And I shouldn't have even asked."
It's silent. And even though it is always silent it is never silent. Which can only mean Michael and Lucifer have stopped fighting temporarily. "You better leave soon, usually one of them comes over here, just to check and see if we haven't died yet."
Death curls his lips up into what is either a sneer, or a smile. "They can't do anything to me."
"Maybe not but they can do a lot to me." he points out, irritated.
"I am sorry, you seem marginally more interesting than some of the others." Death offers, as he adjusts his hold on Sam whose is still lifeless.
He stares at his brother, at the only person he's had to keep him company for the last nearly two centuries and all he feels is anger, and pain, and an overwhelming sadness. The cage has taken anything good he's felt and even this is a lapse of kindness. "Bye Sam."
And just this once, at this moment, he wishes Sam could speak to him. This would make up for all the other years of silence, of abandonment. If Sam speaks then he'll try to stay sane, try to keep up hope and fight the cage even if it is useless.
Sam doesn't speak. But it's been years and somewhere inside his mind, he knows that the only person Sam would ever willing talk to his, miles and miles above the ground.
"Goodbye Adam." Death disappears, Sam following after him and in the background he hears the archangels (one former and one possibly) shriek, inhumanly as they always do.
It's been 180 years, six days, three hours and so many minutes.
During that time, he's been killed many different and equally painful ways. He's gone years without speaking. And over the course of them he's lost his name, his brother and his sanity.
It's only during the last four minutes that he's truly started to break.
…..Is filled with hell.
AN: Well that wasn't too bad. Anyway there is a point to this author's note, I wanted to clarify some things.
1st, I decided to make the cage more mental torture than physical pain (though that's still in there). Eventually you get desensitized to pain, but mental torture? it has the capability to break you. And near the end of it Adam's pretty broken.
2nd, Sam doesn't speak for many reasons, one of which being that mental pain again. He's been through so much stuff that anything involving mental pain, instead of actual pain might just kill him. hence forth why his soul is so destroyed in the series. So while Adam is fully aware of everything going on in the cage, Sam is fighting his own inner battle. the cage, or at least my version of it is a prison that preys on your weakness. Sam's is his family and Adam's is his loss of self. both are equally devastating.
3rd, That's not to say that the angels don't inflict pain because they do. it's just most of their focus is on fighting each other and not two humans who can barely move. But being trapped in a space of nothing with two celestial beings causes a lot of damage and pain. it's like how Pamela's eyes were burned out seeing Castiel. Now imagine seeing Michael and Lucifer...lots and lots of pain.
If this is well received or if I get more inspiration for it, then I'll probably continue it. Bye. -CI.