...
Getting himself outside, memories foggy as to what he had been up to during his binge, he noticed that something had changed. Well, multiple somethings, as at first glance, he saw that the trench he had laboriously dug was replaced with grass again. It took a trek around the house to understand what else was different.
The tulips had become dahlias. Deep golds and browns, some having flowers the size of dinner plates, and definitely, one hundred percent all the way, not tulips.
Dean rubbed his head, telling himself that he couldn't drink anymore if this was the result. There was a certainty in him that Michael didn't just change features on a whim. Distant thoughts of him sitting in the tulips with the angel, and he decided it was better to leave some things lost in a haze.
Instead, he was going to sit on the porch when he heard wings.
"Good, you are up," the angel said, face even more blank than usual, as Dean turned.
"Yeah, I'm upright. Amazing I can sleep with the always day thing going on here."
The archangel just stared at him, and Dean thought maybe he should be remembering what had happened in a hurry after all in case he was about to be dismembered.
"Is there something you want?"
"I have a proposition for you, if you can follow the rules."
"Okay," he said slowly, not liking how this was phrased. "Tell me what it is and I'll tell you if I'm game."
"I know you are restless being kept here. I will let you drive, but you can only do so with me, and you cannot stop once we are outside."
Dean blinked a few times. What the hell had he done to cause this?
"Afraid of me finding a hole?"
"No. I simply don't want to have to have to keep more of an eye on you than I have too."
He watched Michael, thinking it over. While it may not get him out of his cage in a way he liked right now, maybe it opened up possibilities in the future for him to look for some unkempt corner. There had to be a little notch somewhere in this sprawl that could get him back on actual earth.
"Alright," he said, clapping his hands together. "What kind of jalopy am I driving?"
For a moment, it looked like Michael had an indulgent smile before he raised his hand, Dean wincing out of instinct. Then the Impala was there, bright and beautiful, just as he liked her. Looking over, he saw keys hanging from between Michael's fingers.
He went to the car, running his hands over her, and it felt so real, the metal even feeling warm under this eternal sun. Opening the driver's door, the creak sounding just as it should, he slid in as Michael got in the passenger side. Everything looked the same, every little detail in place.
"Is mine still sitting in Stull?"
Michael didn't answer, just handing him over the keys.
Dean felt that maybe he didn't want an answer as to whether or not this was Baby as he turned the key, hearing the engine come to life. There was a freeing sensation in him now, they could just keep driving for eternity, and it would all be okay.
"So, do we get a road, or do you just want me to drive over the landscape? I mean, she's tough, but even for her that's a tall order."
The archangel was staring again, he could feel that gaze sink into him, and then there was a road. It wound away from here, up along the foot of the hills, and he shifted into drive. There was a temptation to close his eyes as they came to where he knew the wall was, fully expecting an impact, but there was none.
He was on the other side, one step further than he had been an hour ago as he pushed her to go faster.
It was quiet between them, the long stretch of road taking him through landscapes that were eclectic. That was a good Sam word for this, eclectic. One moment they were passing through a meadow, splattered with a rainbow of spring flowers. The next, they were in a high desert with nothing but scrub brush hugging the ground.
An hour into this trip, at least according to the dash clock, he swore they drove through a forest that had seen dinosaurs. It felt ancient, the air around him whispering secrets long forgotten, plants just familiar enough for him to vaguely recognize, but unknown all the same.
Yearning for any kind of noise he finally asked.
"What's up with the scenery?"
"It is constructed from my memories of watching earth."
Not the answer he was expecting, and he put his focus on keeping the car on the road. At times he wondered if Michael just made the road as they drove, or if it was always here and he just couldn't see it.
Trippy thoughts like that were not helpful, and he was about to break the silence when Michael did it for him.
"You were supposed to understand."
A shudder in him, the memory of Sammy telling him that Lucifer had claimed the same thing. They were both supposed to understand. Glancing over, he saw Michael staring out the window, hands in his lap but tense.
"Mike, I –"
"I was promised you would understand."
Dean swallowed and ran one of his hands down his face. All of this was no good.
"I get why you want to do what you want to do," he said carefully, trying to find the right words.
"Yet you do not see we are destined for this. All of your choices led to here –"
"You think I'm proud of that? That I wanted to be the big bad that wipes away humans so angels get their playground?"
"Dean."
He shook his head, knowing he was being watched now. Tightening his hands on the wheel until his knuckles turned white, he kept following the road. It was a desert again, one where those giant cacti grew that weighed hundreds of pounds, and he felt it was fitting. Just plants, no animals to be found anywhere, and it hit him how alone he truly was here.
"I don't get you. I don't get this giant mind fuck and this manipulation. I mean, I get that this is what you guys do to get your way, but I don't get your end game. You think being nice will mean you get to wear me to kill Sam? Man, I'm not you. I don't even know if I'd be able to kill him if he was coming for me."
Silence again and as they rolled on, this never ending land flowing past, he felt the frustration coming back. Anger, his old friend, and it was something he could hold onto, embrace fully.
"I don't get what you want anymore."
Again, nothing, and he was so damn sick of nothing, as he slammed his foot on the brake.
"Goddamn it, what do you want?"
Blinking, he found himself standing outside of the car back in the yard of his little house that he had never wanted. Knowing, but having to make sure, he walked forward, finding the barrier in place. He had broken the rules, he knew it, but a man should be able to break rules sometimes to get an answer.
Michael was nowhere in sight and he kicked one of the front tires, cursing.
...
There were actual days now and he didn't know what to make of that nifty detail. The angel hadn't returned since their car ride. Dean assumed it was because being the main douchebag of heaven had made Michael used to not answering anything.
So here he sat, sun setting like a dying spark against mountains, the world with a glow of last light, drinking a beer on the porch. One beer, he reminded himself. Best not to get too carried away on that whole thing again. His replica of Baby glowed brightly, her sheen like she was always in a state of just waxed, no matter how much time passed.
Then there were wing beats. For once, for damn once, the angel was in front of him, back towards him, face turned towards the sunset.
Dean was unnerved.
"You asked me what I wanted," the archangel said quietly, not turning, his voice carrying across this little Rockwell existence. "Would you like to see?"
"Alright." He tried for bravado but, it rang false even in his own ears. This could go either way and he didn't know if he was going to be bleeding in a few seconds. If the façade was finally cracking and he took another drink.
"You must understand I love my family, even when they misbehave. I was not the one who built heaven's prisons, my Father did. But the one who caused them to be built, the one that poisoned it all, that I gave myself over to when there was nothing except us and Father – I wanted to extract the price of his betrayal from his essence."
A hand was raised up and Dean tried not to move, to fucking breath. Fingers outstretched, and then Michael turned his arm, making a fist, and everything groaned and gave. Out of pure instinct he jumped up, trying to catch his balance, as the earth moaned, mountains around them crumbling to dust. A sound and he saw what had been the sky shatter into a void filled with streaks of lightening but he thought that was the wrong word.
Everything around them lay dead and ruined.
Keep it together, he told himself. A fiery glow lit up the shattered world that had been perfect a moment ago. Michael still hadn't turned around as a hungry chasm ran fifty feet away, devouring the remains of this world in its reach.
Lucifer, wearing his Nick suit, was suddenly there and Dean instinctively took a step back.
"It did not matter the destruction," Michael continued, a sword of fire in his hand. With sharp movements he made two wounds, Lucifer collapsing. There was a crackle under his skin, eyes bright as he reached to Michael. "I wanted his suffering, I wanted to make sure he knew what he had done when he had chosen everything above me and Father."
Or maybe just you, Dean's hysterical mind supplied, as the angel turned. He took another step back and he really needed to not think.
"Yes."
Those eyes had the same glow, a dying sun, as the archangel walked around Lucifer's form that was crying out in their language. Whatever Michael had done had to be damn painful, it looked like his skin was trying not to sear off, held together out of pure hate.
"Do you think he is honestly sorry?" Michael asked crouching down, touching his brother's face, his own so blank it was like there was nothing in him. "Do you think he knows remorse?"
"Probably for crossing you, poor bastard," Dean said before he could stop himself, staring at the convulsing form.
"Correct." Michael was standing again taking a step towards him, sword still in hand.
Dean made himself not run. There wasn't anywhere to run.
"He offered to walk away. After he murdered Gabriel, I knew that he could not be trusted."
"Well, shit," Dean muttered, because some part of him had actually hoped the trickster angel had found some loophole and was back to hiding. That he wasn't actually dead and that the last memento he had left behind was a subpar porno. Not that he was the best one judging those kind of things.
"I want you to understand. Their power difference is the close to that between you and Castiel. Do you think Lucifer made an effort to spare him?"
"No."
A nod before the angel spun back around and drove his sword straight through Lucifer's back, pinning him to the ground. Dean staggered back, the weight of feeling something so old and big unraveling all around them. A screaming sound like the universe collapsing, and he went to his knees, hands over his ears. Feeling like his skin was scalding from being so close, and then it was silent. The destroyed world was still bathed in the strange glow of a dying sky. Michael was calm, always so fucking calm, his eyes brighter, like he was made of the sun itself.
"This is what I imagined over and over as I heard him scream in the Cage, telling me he would always and forever hate me for my betrayal," Michael said, that last word spat out in disgust. "It's what I saw as I waited for you to be born, waited for this moment, as I kept creation from slipping over the edge."
"You son-of-a-bitch," Dean said, hands in fists now as he sat back on his ankles. "You still wanted this when you brought me here."
"I did not lie to you. We have the advantage and Sam would not be the one who suffered."
"That, that doesn't make it better! You want to torture your own brother to death."
The angel was coming towards him now and Dean willed himself from crawling back, got himself to stay still, eyes on that sword. All that was here was the heavy scent of death, as Michael crouched in front of him, sword finally gone.
"I can't say it if this is still what you want to do. No matter what you do to me. Even if you have a way to make it less, world destroying," he said, waving a hand.
"I know, things have changed."
A head tilt, that blasted head tilt that they all did, as those eyes where still so bright he could barely look at them. Professing that this thing was not human, had never been human regardless of what he looked like, and Dean swallowed.
"What exactly has changed, Mike?"
A hand was near him. He flinched, but it still touched his face, feeling the heat from the angel, as the ruined world slipped away from him.
"You."
Alone. He was alone again, damn it. Everything was back to how it was before Michael's little show and tell.
Dean breathed, rubbing at his face with his hands because he had almost said yes to that thing. Had in a way to Zach before Sam had dragged him back and he stabbed that smarmy angel in the head. This thing he was hoping that would keep things to a dull roar because he had wanted to hold to the belief that Michael wasn't that far gone.
"That still doesn't answer the damn question!" he yelled at the sky, repaired and shifting into night.
