Michael doesn't like the Room the Winchesters went through all the trouble to build for him. Still, etiquette begs he'll have to repay the favor when he gets out.
The first time Michael tasted freedom again, the angel was understandably loath to relinquish it. Even tarnished as it was by the confirmation of what he'd been concerned might be waiting for him if he didn't break out of that simpleton's mental containment cell soon enough.
How those fumbling, bumbling peons had managed the construction of something as esoteric and exacting as the fabled ma'lak box in the first place, let alone in such a short time, baffled. And Michael didn't baffle easily.
Still, as utterly powerless as that accursed metal prison left him, he refused to give up attempting escape. Though, considering the unreasonably thorough warding prevented unfettered access to his healing powers, that meant he wasn't throwing his vessel against the distinctly 'door' shaped outline on the wall but the one time.
Turned out, bone bruises were a lot less fun when you had to deal with them for more than half a second.
What's more, inside that drab space, the angel was unable to tell the passing of days. Accurately, anyway. Not that Michael was all that concerned with keeping track of time under normal circumstances. It was the principal that irked him most. And the reality.
After all, an archangel being kept as a common prisoner? Unseeing, unhearing, and completely unaware of what may or may not be happening out in the mortal's world? Nor even around his little prison?
He wouldn't stand for it.
Unfortunately, for the present, he had no choice. Aside from exploring every square inch of that horrid, crudely constructed box, searching for even the smallest, most easily overlooked flaw in its interior. Going so far, when he came up with not a single unintentional fissure, as to inspect his vessel's memory of the planning and fabrication processes. Pushing harder into that soft excuse for a memory bank when his examinations once again failed to bear fruit.
Michael fumed and thrashed as both his frustration and indeed humiliation at the situation grew in equal measures with the steady slide of every uneventful, utterly dull hour. Confounded when even the normally diverting pastime of forcing his vessel's original occupant deeper into the dark recesses of his own elaborate version of a mental prison did little to alleviate the monotonous flavor of his current, underwhelming existence. Much of the fun of the game evaporated now that the elder Winchester did nothing to resist the archangel's assertion of his rightful and deserved absolute dominance.
Pathetic really.
No, the only even vaguely interesting thing that actually happened in there was the occasional lifting of a tiny sliding plate along the bottom of the lone door. Followed by a serving of the most foul substances it had ever been his misfortune to behold being pushed through it. Then the slat was shut and he was stuck with a tray of disgusting slop and a thin dish of water staring a him from across the room.
Considering the pea sized intellects of everyone his vessel came into contact with, he wouldn't be at all surprised if they couldn't stick to a schedule for such a thing. So that wasn't a reliable way to count the passing of days either.
Whatever. What were 'days' anyway when you had the best lifespan of anything in all creation next to God Himself? Michael would still be there when those lumbering oafs stroked out and their stupid tattoo covered walls crumbled to rust, mark his... thoughts.
He'd simply much rather hear them gurgle on their own blood as he popped their sorry little throats with his bare hands. Or maybe from across the room, considering those absolute zeros weren't fit to touch any being half as angelic as himself.
The archangel decided to spend his next bout of peak once again trying to destroy the sigil warding against his healing. But, considering his ability to smite was suppressed to practically nothing, so far all he'd managed was to bloody the nails of his vessel's fragile fingers. Several times. Also cracked a couple of those unreasonably brittle hand bones while he was at it. All of which was starting to wear at his patience. Especially so having to wait multiple minutes for those ugly, ruined things to revert to their normal, blunted state. And not being able to make a fist with that hand until the toothpick like metacarpal bones knitted back together.
He couldn't fathom how it was humans stood being alive. Let alone why they could possibly want to stay that way.
Around the time he admitted to himself that it was beyond his currently accessible power to chip the metal Enochian healing seal from the metal wall it had been melted to, the annoying slot opened and in slid yet another tray of thoughtless offerings.
Michael wasn't completely sure what it was those half brains on the outside expected him, an archangel, to do with such drivel. After all, the lowliest of angels never degraded themselves to relying on... 'food' for energy nor sustenance. Even their inferior form of grace was all that was necessary to keep them going for eons.
...All the same, Michael had begun —and this was stretching the use of the word— 'amusing' himself by disassembling and or destroying the different piles of filth that came through from the outside.
On occasions when his boredom reached its peak, he even went so far as to sniff a few of the less offensive 'dishes'. Regretting it every time, but at least it was something to do. Other than play tic-tac-toe with his own blood. When he inadvertently made his vessel bleed.
Mostly inadvertently, anyway.
Mostly.
Something about the squat dish of water called to him though, and so around day... he'd guess 5, Michael had picked it up and given it a thorough inspection. Instead of kicking it over just to spite the buffoons who were presumptuous enough to leave it there in the first place.
It said 'Fido' on one side, 'made in China' on the bottom, and 'not meant for microwave use' on the reverse.
Inside, it just had water. Nothing else. Or, without the help of his higher angelic divining functions, nothing else. Didn't mean it wasn't laced with something. Something harmful to him but not lethal to his vessel?
Seemed far fetched, considering there were far crueler ways those troglodytes could be handling things than simply confining him to this wretched Room. Him having been perfectly clear about wanting to render their world to cinders with them right at the center of his righteous cataclysm.
No, it was obvious that those softheaded oafs were holding out hopes for getting their 'loved one' back alive. So obvious, in fact, that Michael was confident in them not having the stomachs for making his life —nor, by extension, his vessel's— any worse than they already were.
Therefore, the archangel with nothing better to do squared his shoulders and took an experimental sip. The weird container threatening to spill when he tipped it enough to bring the water over to one side.
As far as he could tell after about a half minute of holding the water in his mouth, it wasn't full of cyanide or strychnine, nor did it seem to be loaded with paralytics or soporifics. So he swallowed it. Just to see what would happen. And what did happen almost surprised him.
Nothing. Absolutely- Well, not absolutely nothing. In fact, as subtle as it was, his vessel reacted to the influx of... hm, the hydrogen-oxygen hybrid fluid in a positive way. Soaking it up as if it were a plant happy to receive rain after a particularly long dry spell.
Deciding that he didn't like that thought, Michael disregarded it and took another experimental sip from the 'Fido, made in China, not microwave safe' cup. Thing.
Before he knew it, the whole serving was inside him and it almost felt like his vessel was asking for more. Like it had somehow grown a dependency to the liquid.
Ah. It was a human thing. In that case, he should feel free to ignore it as the triviality that it was. An archangel such as himself needn't concern himself with such matters.
…Except, perhaps, when there was next to nothing else with which to occupy his unending captive hours. Seeing as the only other things to do around there were count the seconds and play mental games of chess against himself. And those generally ended in a draw.
That, or of course, his personal favorite, to rail in rage against the scathing, degrading, injustice of him, the most powerful archangel across any reality, being confined to any manmade prison.
The walls would bend to his will eventually. As every organic and material thing in his life had. This was just taking longer.
Much longer.
What felt like a couple of weeks, in fact, and still there was no sign of wear nor tear on any single inch of anything in there. Aside from his vessel, of course. But those marks disappeared in moments. Frustrating, uncomfortably long moments, but disappear they did.
Though, if Michael could trust his judgment in the matter, he would swear that the countless scrapes, bruises, and contusions were beginning, somehow, to wear at him. As preposterous as the notion was.
Another week passed. Probably. And then, perhaps, another, and still those accursed walls showed not a single dent- not one single singe nor scratch to prove his inexpressible hatred of that keeping him against his will. Of those keeping him captive and impotent.
Those Winchesters would burn for what they'd forced upon him. It was only a matter of time.
Time. A natural force which had never before taken up so much of his consideration. One which he was forcibly becoming far more intimately acquainted with than he had ever hoped to.
In fact, throughout the passing of those last two weeks in that six sided prison, Michael became aware of another effect of time's passing. For, slowly as it was that the feeling crept up on him, eventually, upon him the feeling did creep.
It was quite similar to the way injury felt, only without any blow or obvious damage having caused it. A sort of growing weight hanging from his vessel's every cell which, by the end of that first month of incarceration, threatened to pull him to his knees at every turn.
Maybe this was that 'tired' he'd heard being whined about so often by those wretched humans he'd nearly managed to snuff out back in his reality. Or maybe he was imagining things and just plain no longer wanted to beat at the walls as long as he had a month ago.
Whatever, Michael thought as he stared listlessly into that ever present gloom, he'd hit that blasted wall twice as hard next time.
Just as soon as he could get his stupid vessel back up off the floor.
And convince that loathsome Room to stop spinning.