"You're not going to actually do that, are you?" An accented voice pipes up from across the room followed by the sound of wings. Dean whips his head around to face a man with scraggly blond hair who is definitely an Angel, pointing the sword to him.
"Who the hell are you?" Dean growls, body tense and alert. Protect Castiel at all costs, his mind reminds him.
"A friend." The Angel smirks. Dean leaps forwards, sword pointing towards the intruder. The Angel flicked his wrist, and Dean finds himself pinned against the gaudy pink wall. The other Angel made his way towards Castiel, and all Dean could think about is Cas, all open and vulnerable, how anyone, like this asshole can hurt him, and that thought curdles in his stomach like something sour.
"Get away from him, you son of a bitch!" Dean shouts as the Angel made his way towards Castiel.
"Did you just call God a bitch?" The Angel grins, tilting his head and Dean just glares at him. "Nevermind." The Angel rolls his eyes and places his hand on Castiel's forhead, a bright glow emitting from his vessel's hand. At that moment, Dean can see the time around him slow down.
"No!" He yells, but his own voice sounds far off and distant. The room twists into a kaleidoscopic nightmare. He can taste the air and the free floating particle and his heart being ripped from his chest with worry. It all ended when Cas opened his eyes, and Dean could breath again.
"Cas?" He whispers, scrambling to his friend's side. "Cas?" "Dean." Castiel replies and Dean could almost kiss him. "Cas!" He says his name, again and again, to assure himself that Cas is here and alive and not bleeding out by his feet.
"Ahem." The other Angel pipes up and Dean and Castiel turns to face him.
"Hello, Cassie," He grins.
"Balthazar?" Castiel's eyes opens in surprise. "I thought you were dead." He exhales.
"Who the hell is Balthazar?" Dean exclaims.
"An old friend." Castiel explains, eyes still fixed on Balthazar like he was a miracle and Dean felt inexplicably angry and relieved.
"I'm still here, you know!" Balthazar calls out from the other side of the room. Castiel removes himself from the bed despite Dean's protests.
"How are you still alive?" Castiel whispers, "You died in the war. We mourned you. I mourned you." The Host of Heaven sang songs of sorrow everytime a brother or sister is ripped from them. Every angel he killed, every angel that was killed, Heaven mourned, and Castiel mourned, and he would never forget the pang he felt when Balthazer died.
"I had to die." Balthazar looked sad. Regretful. "I had to, Cassie." Castiel nods. Dean coughs.
"Is there, uh, something I should know about?" He jokes. It does not feel like a joke, but his face is stretched under the false grin. What if there was? Why would that be any of his business?
"We're related, ya sicko." Balthazar laughs. "Is there something I should know about?" He wriggled his eyebrows at Dean.
"Excuse me?" Dean raises an eyebrow and laughs nervously. Castiel does his head tilt thing. Yeah, Dean could definitely breath easier now.
Michael and Lucifer circled each other, graces reacting. Pain, remorse, rage flew through the cage.
"Michael." Lucifer drawls, eyes hard and cold.
"Samael." Lucifer flinches, balling his hands into fists. He also chokes a little, voice cracking up and Michael's pain shot through him. They attacked each other. It was inevitable, really. There is so much between them. An eternity of love that ran so deep, hate that cut into the very core of their being. Michael and Lucifer- no, Michael and Samael were the first, the first Archangels, the first beings. Together, they created stars, galaxies, watched the dying throes of Supernovae and the rise and fall of countless civilizations across countless years. The bond they share runs deeper than they would care to admit, and the betrayal and the hurt cut at both of them, as Michael threw Lucifer down into the pit. They were forever tangled and twisted into this broken puppet dance. Call it fate if you must. They fight, tearing into each other with abandon, screaming their voices, their true voices hoarse.
The collision is earth-shattering, but the cage does not budge. The cage is eternal, there, devoid of any layers of reality, it exists, but it does not. In the cage that does not exist, two Archangels clashed against one another, and it was terrible, and it was terribly beautiful.
The Angelsong, a voice in Adam's mind provided.
Adam screamed, too, as Lucifer cut through Michael's grace into Adam's soul. He bore it, because they need this. Because Michael defended him from the brunt of the damage when he is so damaged. The freaking Angels with billion's of years worth of issues.
They stop, eventually, when they realize that the cage would just heal them from the damages, Adam breathes a little easier.
"You should talk to him." Adam tells Michael, glancing at Lucifer, sulking from across the clearing. What he thinks is a clearing, anyways.
"No." Michael tells him, looking away from Lucifer. He wants to talk. Want to take his little brother back. Back before he knew what regret, what pain and anger felt like. Back to the days in Heaven when the Host sang in unison, a perfect melody in a perfect universe.
"Crowd mentality." Adam mutters, sounding more sad than sarcastic.
"Why?" Lucifer asks from across the clearing, and Michael looks up like he's seen a ghost.
"Why." He echos, voice cracked and raw. Lucifer shakes his head.
"Why do you follow father's orders like this? Why can't you just step off the chessboard?" Michael can hear the pain in his brother's voice, the pain of abandonment.
"You were going to destroy everything." Michael tells him, words he has spoken a thousand times before, but the conviction behind the words has all but faded away.
"So were you." And Michael does not deny it. Lucifer moves towards him.
"Why did you cast me down?" He begs, sounding just as broken and tired as Michael is feeling. Rage burns away fast in the cage.
"You want to murder father's creations. I had to." The words cut at him, making his tongue bleed.
"They are murderous. They are flawed." Lucifer grabs Michael by his shoulders.
"So are you."
"Only because father made me this way."
"Not all of them." Michael says, and believes it this time. Because of Adam and his bright soul grounding Michael when nothing else could, anchoring him in this place. He gives him faith even when his father could not.
"You've grown attached to your vessel." Lucifer snarls, jealousy flashing before his eyes.
"So have you." Lucifer did not deny.
"Do you know what happened after I cast you out?" Michael asks after a long stretch of silence. He was being honest. Too honest and it scares him to the core of his being. This powerful creature, afraid of coming clean of his burden.
"What?" Lucifer wants to know. Lucifer does not want to know.
"Father left. You know that. But I had to pick up the pieces. Heaven mourned you. The fledglings- they were so young, and our other brothers too. The first thing they knew was not the song of Heaven but the song of mourning." Lucifer opens his mouth, but Michael shakes his head.
"Gabriel left. He stopped singing one day and he just left." Lucifer was silent. To stop singing the angelsong was painful, more painful than anything he could bear, even in the cage.
"Raphael was the healers, yet he abandoned his art to take up the sword. He was lost. We were all lost. Heaven lost it's color with the Morning Star gone."
"You blame me."
"No. Yes. Sometimes."
"What is it that you want?" Lucifer says, after the entirely to uncomfortable pause.
"I want us to get out. I want to step off the chessboard. I want to pick up the pieces of my family. Our family." His voice was thick, and Lucifer was too still. Still, he nods.
"As do I." He tells Michael. The rift is still there, and even as they stand, a universe of doubt and jagged edges still remain wedged between them.
Lucifer's original name was Samael. A/N