Disclaimer: I do not own Supernatural! (no matter how many times I ask for it for Christmas (and my birthday, and Halloween, and st. Patrick's day, and Easter.))
Author's Note: I have no legitimate reason for not posting sooner. None at all.
By the way, I've been planning this chapter since chapter one. I'm glad I finally got to write it.
A Swan's Wings
Chapter 12
Mikkal
Micheal's lips twisted into a sickening smile. "Hello Dean."
It was more than a sickening smile, it was a deadly smirk. A look that should have never graced his half-brothers face, it made him sick.
"Michael," he spat back. "What the hell do you want?"
He laughed loudly, the sound resonating off the stone (were they stone? May be an illusion?) walls. "More like, What in the hell do I want. 'Cause in case you can't tell buddy, we're in hell."
"Really?" Dean rolled his eyes, resisting the urge to stick his tongue out at the older angel like a little kid. "I hadn't noticed."
"Aren't you wondering how you got here?" Was it his imagination or did Michael sound like a petulant child?...all because Dean didn't ask that as soon as he got here in the depths of hell? "Have you ever read those books? Harry Potter? It works kinda like that portkey, do you know how hard it was to get it to work at a certain time? The things I do for you."
"'For me?'" Dean exclaimed. "Yeah, I doubt this is 'for me.' It's all for you, so you can get revenge or whatever."
For some reason he couldn't move, suddenly it got harder to breath as Michael stalked up to him and grabbed his chin in a firm grip, yanking it up so they were face to face.
He leaned and whispered in his ear, "Ya know, people usually call you dumb. And I can't, for the life of me, figure out why. You're such a smart boy, Dean-o."
"Oh yeah, I feel so good about myself now," Dean sneered. He spat in the man's face. "By the way, you need a breath mint."
Michael yanked him up by the hair and threw him into the wall, stomping over while humming under his breath. "You're just as stubborn and annoying as you were before. And here I thought being an angel would finally break you of that. Who knew an angels could be so full of shit?"
Dean groaned and felt his head. "And I don't know where you get your info, but I ain't an angel. I actually help people."
"What does that make your friend, Castiel?"
His head snapped up. "Don't you dare touch him!" He snarled, trying to get up but an invisible force kept him down.
Michael inspected his nails nonchalantly. "Oh, I didn't plan on harming your precious second-in-command. That privilege was more for your little brother...I heard that he's returned to you?"
"Don't touch him!" This time it wasn't a snarl, it was a screech. Wind roared around him, sending Michael back only a few inches and still on his feet.
The corrupted angel rolled his eyes. "After gaining all of my powers and more you still can't beat me. What are you going to do now? How did you plan on winning this war?" He grinned and flexed a hand, making Dean slam into the wall and then back down again on a metal slab of a table, face smashed and wings trying to reach topside.
With the snap of his fingers chains wrapped around Dean's wrists and ankles, pulling his limbs painfully taunt. The Archangel grunted at the strain, trying to keep his glare on the moving Lord of the Flies.
Michael's grin was unnatural, something that should never been seen on even an ex-angel's face. "Have you ever heard that thing were mortal parents tell their kids not to pull the wings off flies?" He tugged on one of Dean's white wings, and he tugged hard.
Where the wing met his back tore a little with angelic strength, blood welling up and running down his side. Dean bit his cheek to keep himself screaming in pain. It was more than his wing slowly being pulled from his body, his blood turned to fire, his throat burned, white flashed in his vision, and he felt as if he was losing himself.
"Oh, Castiel never told you?" Michael let out a psychotic giggle. He yanked again, pulling apart even more, leaving the wing only half attached. The air around the wound shimmered pure white, faltering, like it couldn't decide whether it wanted to go back into his body or fly off into the unknown. "If you rip a fly's wings off then they lose the ability to fly...Sure that's the same for angels. But, unfortunately, their Grace goes with it."
Adam's piercing blue eyes suddenly leveled with Dean's over-bright ones. "And losing Grace is worse than death." He whispered through his half-brother's lips. "You'll no longer exist, Dean-o. You won't even be dust in the wind. It'll be like the past 30 something years will be erased because you were never born." He smiled. "And that leaves all three sides open to complete rule."
"W-What does that a-accomplish?" Dean gasped out. "I t-thought you were h-happy with F-Father's idea."
A startled, barking laugh broke the stunned silence. "You're calling him Father now? Do you think calling Him that suddenly will get Him to save you? If I remember correctly He's too busy being lazy, drinking and writing instead of being the Almighty He's suppose to be."
Michael turned grim. "No, that's not my Father. My Father use to be worshiped, now He's almost a fairy tale. Can you believe it? God a fairytale! It's not right! He created this world, these pathetic mud-monkeys! They should look up to Him like they did back in the days of Noah. The Ark-builder never turned his back on Him, not like people do now."
"S-So you get r-rid of m-me, w-what are you g-going to do a-about H-Him?" Dean panted as more and more pain ran up his back, blood pooling under him.
"With you dead He'll be to devastated to do anything." He smiled proudly. "You're the key to everything, Dean. You hold everyone together. How do you not notice that? I guess the rumors about you actually being smart are really lies." He shrugged. "Not surprising."
"Says the guy who's holding me down!" Dean spat, a different type of fire burning in his heart.
Michael took the tip of the white, slowly turning gray, wing and pulled hard. This time Dean screamed out loud, Grace erupting out and away. He kept pulling and pulling, going slow and turning his yanks into tugs, prolonging the torture.
Suddenly, the Grace whirling in the air blanketed the room in a choking mist. It obscured everything, even muffling any screams Dean was still making.
It disappeared in a miniature tornado, bring Dean along with it.
What Michael forgot to include in his plan was that every angel's Grace was in tuned deeply with every, single whim that angel had, whether it was outside the body or inside. So if Dean wanted to escape, he was going to escape.
Even if he himself didn't realize it work that way.
Seven days since Dean disappeared from the Singer's Salvage Yard
"I don't care!" Sam shouted. "Find him!"
Gabriel glared at him, but kept him mouth shut. He turned heel and disappeared in the sound of feathers, opting for not rattling the youngest Winchester's nerves anymore than they already were.
Sam covered his eyes and plopped down on the benched on the front patio. He didn't know how much longer he could handle Dean being missing, it was killing him...it was killing everyone. Dean was their hope, without their hope they were nothing.
It didn't help that there could be the possibility that Dean could be...that Dean could already be dead.
He shook his head, not he couldn't think that. Dean was alive, he had to be.
"Sam, you need to breath," came Lucifer's voice.
"I am breathing," he snapped. "If I wasn't I'd probably be dead already, like—" he cut himself off with a choking gasp.
The Risen angel sighed and sat next to him, setting to lemonades on the side table. "That's not what I mean, and you know it. Take a moment and take a deep breath. Everything will work out. I mean, it's Dean we're talking about." He grinned. "Everything works out when it concerns your brother, even if it likes to work out in roundabout ways."
Sam closed his eyes and took a deep, cleansing breath. A smile came to his lips. "You have a point."
The other man's smile faltered. Lucifer shot his his feet, eyes wide. "Do you feel that?"
He frowned. "Feel what?"
"The air's filled with Grace." Lucifer's eyes grew even wider. "It's Dean!"
"What?"
And true to his word, the air in front of them shimmered, like a heat wave, and a mass of white and red tumbled into existence.
"Dean!" Sam shouted, running to his brother's side, horror gripping and growing in his chest.
He reached his brother's side before Lucifer and turned him over, jumping back when Dean shrieked in pain.
"His wings!" Lucifer shouted. "Get him off his wings!"
That's when it registered that Sam could actually see Dean's magnificent wings and, well, they didn't look so magnificent at that moment. One did, but the other was only attached just a little bit less that halfway. He covered his mouth, gagging at the pure horror of it.
Ripping an angel's wings off?
What the hell was wrong with Michael?
"Oh Dean," Sam whimpered.
Lucifer had his head bowed. "I'm going to contact Castiel," he murmured. "He's going to want to know and get here as soon as he can."
Sam could only nod silently.
