abraxaslogs | ᴀʟʟ I ᴋɴᴏᴡ ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ ʙᴇɪɴɢ ᴀʟɪᴠᴇ ɪs ᴛʜᴀᴛ ʟɪғᴇ's ғᴏʀ ᴛʜᴇ ʟɪᴠɪɴɢ (open.)

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ᴀʟʟ I ᴋɴᴏᴡ ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ ʙᴇɪɴɢ ᴀʟɪᴠᴇ ɪs ᴛʜᴀᴛ ʟɪғᴇ's ғᴏʀ ᴛʜᴇ ʟɪᴠɪɴɢ (open.)

Who: Dean Winchester & Others.
When: Post-Event.
Where: Cadens, the Horizon, Nocwich.
What: A catch-all of open & closed starters.
Warnings: A little grief, a little alcoholism, probably canon-typical violence and suicidal ideation. Mentions of fruit turbo-hell.

I ᴀɪɴ'ᴛ sᴇᴇᴋɪɴɢ sᴀʟᴠᴀᴛɪᴏɴ
Nᴏᴛ ᴛᴏᴏ ᴡᴏʀʀɪᴇᴅ ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ ᴅᴀᴍɴᴀᴛɪᴏɴ
I ɢᴏᴛ ʟɪᴛᴛʟᴇ ᴇxᴘᴇᴄᴛᴀᴛɪᴏɴ, ᴀɴᴅ ᴀs sᴜᴄʜ I ᴀɪɴ'ᴛ ᴇᴀsɪʟʏ ʟᴇᴛ ᴅᴏᴡɴ
Aʟʟ I ʀᴇᴀʟʟʏ ᴡᴀɴɴᴀ ᴅᴏ ɪs ʙᴇ ᴄʟᴏsᴇ ᴛᴏ ʏᴏᴜ
ᴡʜɪʟᴇ ᴡᴇ'ʀᴇ sᴛɪʟʟ ʙᴏᴛʜ ᴀʀᴏᴜɴᴅ.

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That fragile truce is still firmly in place — he's very capable of being angry with someone while simultaneously wanting to keep the peace with them. Generally, it's Sam that's prone to go scorched earth levels of wrath. Annoyed-but-tolerant is one of Dean's semi-permanent states of being.

That being said, this conversation is... weird. He should feel satisfied at having left a few good, very human things behind in a guy who could stand to have somebody soften that stick up his ass. Part of him almost wants to feel fond about it, which in turn immediately agitates him again; he shouldn't feel fond about the asshole that tried to screw them over. He shouldn't feel fond at all, actually, because that week wasn't real and didn't actually happen, and Michael's a dick, a virtual stranger, an antagonist at best. Damn Dean's stupid internal tendency to try and cement his attachments so intently after even the mildest bonding.

(He's trying not to remember the feeling of it. Seeing and being seen, understood and understanding, feeling whole, feeling bolstered, finally not feeling alone on an innate, spiritual level. The rightness of it.)

He folds his own arms, and they stand as a mirror to one another on opposite sides of the long stretch of polished wood between them. His face has gone stony, flat, a careful distance deliberately erected, for all the good it will do them.

"We figured it out, no thanks to you. After Big Poppa smote you out of existence, that is. What I wanna know first is how Team God you are these days. You sold us out, and he vaporized you. You still a daddy's boy after all that?"

Just so he knows whether this is gonna be a good news or bad news situation, and get a beat on how satisfied the delivery's gonna be.

Ah, so Dean is mad about that. He can't act as though that's totally unexpected.

Michael maintains his mirrored stance, brow furrowing. Once upon a time it wouldn't have ruffled his feathers to be called a daddy's boy, but that was back when he'd had faith. Now he knows how gullible he was. Never trust family.

"So you remember that. You should also remember you weren't exactly demonstrating much trust in the first place, giving Sam that Enochian text to decipher."

You know, Enochian. His mother tongue. Were they trying to call him a lazy head of state who needed to have all his reports read to him, or were they just making sure he knew they didn't trust him? Either way it's only an excuse. The insult might have cemented it, but Michael had made up his mind to switch sides before that.

Instead of doubling down on defense or going on the offense, Michael lets out a sigh and his expression softens to neutral again. That sequoia up his backside can bend when the wind blows from the right angle. He doesn't have to justify himself to anyone—least of all Dean Winchester, who is still the Enochian word that means both asshole and maggot in his mind—but there was a span of time where the man understood him fully and completely. The thought that he'd be misunderstood now displeases him in a way he's not used to.

"I really did intend to help you, at first. Then Lucifer got involved and things got—complicated." He'd gotten mad. Anger steers him off course, every time, but he's a trained dog who can't stop himself from chasing the rabbit. "I got to thinking that if our Father could forgive Lucifer for everything he'd done, surely He would forgive me. I thought about whether I wanted to win and live in a universe devoid of life except for my nephew and the two men who have the most reason to dislike me out of anyone; or if wanted to be His right hand again, and have the power to recover some of what was lost."

Adam. He thought he might have been able to convince Chuck to pull Adam from the void and give him a second chance, if no one else. Dean already knows which decision won out even if not the full reason for it.

"I'm not asking because I need to avenge Him, if that's what you're worried about. He isn't worth it."

He can say that much honestly, even if it's impossible for him to answer exactly how he feels about his Father now. He'd been loyal to his Father at the cost of everything that had ever made him happy; he'd betrayed His greatest secret to the Winchesters. He loves his Father; His Father killed him. Dean knows full well how complicated the emotion is when one's father isn't always a good person—but at least under all of his failings, John Winchester had indeed loved his sons. Michael's not so sure about his own Father anymore.

He'd maintain that obviously not demonstrating trust was the right call in the end, wasn't it? But getting hung up on petty semantics isn't gonna get them anywhere. He's more interested in the meat of the conversation, and thankfully (or annoyingly) it seems like they're on the same page about that. Michael launches directly in with I really did intend to help you, at first.

It's more than he expected to hear. He wants to feel suspicious of that, wants to doubt it, but he can't think of any real reason Michael would have to lie at this point. They're so far beyond all of it, it's completely pointless.

And... Michael's never really been anything but brutally, rudely, viciously honest.

His expression remains largely impassive, unmoved. Faintly annoyed, but he tends to have resting bitchface in situations like this. In any case, he gives Michael the floor without interrupting, weighing the words as they come in for both their sincerity and the impact they have on his lingering anger. It's hard not to feel just a little sympathy for the guy — but easy to bury that sympathy under his salty grudge.

"We brought everyone back. Just so you know." Because that much, at least, feels safe enough to address. "Your nephew? Kind of a power sponge. By the time all was said and done, he had more juice than your dad. He put the world back the way it was supposed to be."

A beat, and then-

"Adam, too."

There's not much for Michael to focus on apart from Dean when it's just the two them here. Nonetheless, those last two words have him snapping to attention like dad caught him daydreaming in the middle of a lesson. What happened to his Father in all of this is suddenly of secondary concern at best.

Who went and told you he cares what happens to his vessels?

(It was Michael himself, wasn't it? First when he dug into the Winchesters for abandoning their brother in Hell, when he'd let Adam speak for himself from their shared body, and then to Dean alone in their recent campaign against his demigod. Or is it eight hundred years into the future? It's reverse order from Dean's side of the experience anyway.)

"You remember his name. I'm impressed."

There's no bite to the insult; Michael sounds distracted. It's the sort of disproportionately mean thing someone throws out when they can't just say good, I was worried or is he okay?

Michael stops leaning against the table. He places his weight fully onto his feet and steps closer, just an arm's reach away across the bar from Dean.

"That's something I'd care to see for myself."

It was easy to lie to Dean and his brother, once. All he had to do was think of Adam, of their thousand plus years of experience in Hell, and he was free and clear of guilt. He was justified in any action he took as long as he could tell himself it was on Adam's behalf. There's a complication now, hooks and sharp corners like trust and shared experience where a lie would get caught up. Is it likewise for Dean? There's an outside chance he's telling him this because he thinks it will placate him. If he still considers Michael an enemy, though, he doesn't think he'd bother with that.

Mostly, he just wants it to be true for Adam's sake. He wants to see that the way it was supposed to be isn't a ghoul-chewed corpse.

He puts out his hand.

It could be easy to take offense to that snipe, but he doesn't. They're passed that, he thinks, and the little barb rolls off his skin like water. He can see the bigger picture here now, he can see through the stone-faced stoicism Michael always wears. He can see something heavier moving underneath that, a writhing concern, a very real creature no matter how much the oldest angel likes to pretend otherwise.

Frankly, it's a mark in his favor. A redeeming quality, one that softens Dean's decade-long hate-on for him — as if the soul-meld he can still half-remember didn't do the job well enough already.

There's a hesitation there, before Michael's outstretched hand — not because he has anything to hide, not because he thinks Michael's going to do anything, necessarily. A lingering, traitorous impulse toward loyalty whispers that he probably wouldn't scramble Dean's brains out of the blue, and he'd like to believe that, it's just... knee-jerk uncertainty that comes from a lifetime of poor associations with things rooting around in his mind.

But in the end, he proves Winchesters are capable of taking leaps of faith.

He reaches out, their hands clasp, and his memories open themselves without restraint like a flower in spring.

There aren't many, it isn't a long and heartwarming sequence of events. When they finally found him, when they tracked him down and saw him face to face, Adam made it pretty clear he's content not being wrapped up in Winchester bullshit. After everything, after dying, after Hell, after the erasure of the world, it kind of tainted the concept of establishing any real sibling dynamic between them. He wanted to be normal, and happy, and safe, and the chaos Dean and Sam always bring to everyone in their immediate circle cannot guarantee that for him.

There isn't lingering resentment on either side, no real baggage, no hate, just... a very realistic mutual understanding, and strangely, a kind of peace found in closure.

They're good. He's good. And that's enough, and it's over. Adam is living his own life, and he seemed content.

If Dean's life were a feel good family movie, the reunion Michael witnesses would've been cut for being off key. It's awkward small talk in a diner not unlike the one they'd visited when they'd first been freed from Hell. The conversation picks up once they hear that Adam's back in college—on Sam's side, anyway. He knows the right questions to ask to make things roll along a little more smoothly. Dean is more knowledgeable about his breakfast plate with four choices of meat.

It ends, and Michael pulls back his hand. He holds it in the other for a moment, glances down at it as if it's the memory itself replaying between his fingers.

"Back to his studies, is he? At least you covered the check."

University is expensive.

It was a life plan Adam had put aside or at least on hold, last they'd spoken of it. It's not like I can go back to college, not with an archangel inside of me. But there he was, whole and alive, living the simple human life he'd always enjoyed. Without him. It's bittersweet, like watching a wounded animal he'd cared for return to the wild. There's another emotion attached to it, though, one that cuts when Michael tries to pick it up and examine it.

For a moment, he's not so stony and stoic. Something twists beneath the surface, trying to figure out where it belongs, what he does with this feeling.

(Are the lives of those he cares for always better without him?)

Michael lets his hands fall back to his sides and clears his expression. The point is that Adam is alive and doing well. The rest is unimportant; the rest he deals with on his own. He suspects he's still very much dead back home anyway.

There's another moment of silence as he lifts his head and considers Dean. If he hadn't coughed up what he wanted to know, Michael would have hopped the bar and taken it. There are still priorities within each of them when they're separate like they are now. The fact of the matter is that he did, though. Dean is no longer someone he can dismiss as an obstinate waste of his time. He's too familiar with what's inside the man's soul now: the need to protect, the capacity for caring so deeply he breaks himself over it, the facets of his mind that reflect his own image.

He's worthy of respect, however grudging.

"Thank you."

Don't go telling anyone he said it. This stay between them.

In Dean's defense...

Four choices of breakfast meat is a big deal. Sure, you got your bacon and your sausage, those are easy. Those are staple options, child's play, a rookie could fill those first two slots. But the second two? See, that's where it gets complicated. Do you go double sausage, get the patty and the link? Or do you do like a scrapple situation? You could always go double bacon, but that's just the choice of an unimaginative man-

The point is.

The conversation went as well as it could have gone, all things considered.

(The real answer is steak. You go breakfast steak.)

(It's easier to focus on something stupid and unimportant like breakfast food than to consider how much better his own brother's life is without him in the picture, and about the fact that it's not just true for Adam, considering what Sam's life looked like after Dean passed.)

The tension remains between them, but it feels... different, now. A slightly different brand of tension, less charged, less precarious. Maybe a little more awkward.

Stiffly, he returns a curt, "You're welcome."

Now what?

"...so, best of the eighties, huh?"

The correct answer is bacon, sausage, ham, and a second helping of whatever you're craving on that particular day. Between Dean's and Adam's taste in breakfast food, though, Michael's pretty sure he could come up with another four options.

He appreciates that Dean doesn't make him think any further on Adam, doesn't pry at whatever he glimpses between the cracks. Dean lets him have his semblance of private thought and suffering. Even separated, they can come to an understanding if they care to.

It's awkward, too, but it's the awkward of knowing a little bit too much about someone rather than the tension of being in the same room with someone you might have to kill at any moment. It's an improvement.

Michael crosses his arms and gives Dean a dry, flat look. It's the sort of expression reserved for having heard a particularly bad pun. Real proud of himself, isn't he?

"Among other clutter you left behind." Half-remembered cartoons that were a few years before Adam's time, a truly encyclopedic mental catalogue of motel and hotel carpet patterns, the lingering inability to truly hate Sam Winchester. Michael misses the absence of that feeling most of all. "If I name your top five, do I get to ask another question?"

Look, knowing he had the opportunity to inject a little more humanity into Michael is a victory as far as he's concerned. The more little pieces of himself he can leave behind in that stick-assed archangel, the better for everybody that ever has to interact with him. The better for humanity, potentially. If he'd have known there was a chance he might've done that a decade or so ago, he might've considered saying yes a little more seriously.

Probably not, but you know. Maybe.

And while he knows that request is like ninety-nine percent sarcasm, he's still completely, utterly serious in both expression and tone when he answers, "Yes."

Absolutely. Let's hear it. Name all five correctly, and he'll answer whatever the hell you want.

(Probably.)

Fair is fair. Whether or not it has any sway over him, Dean's left with a bit of Michael he can't easily rid himself of either.

It was definitely sarcasm. He's going to ask his question either way. They both know Michael was in his head long enough to have the answer key, so is this a test of memory, or of how willing he is to play along (or just an excuse to answer a question without a fight)? He's less resistant to indulging silly little human games when he doesn't have an audience. Michael folds his arms over his chest again and levels a confident look at him as he launches into a short list, artist and all so Dean can't make any arguments about partial credit.

"You Shook Me All Night Long, AC/DC; Hold On Loosely, Thirty-Eight Special; Here I Go Again, Whitesnake; Hurts So Good, John Mellencamp; Glory Days, Bruce Springsteen.

"I'm surprised Rock the Casbah didn't break your top ten."

A bit annoying but catchy, a lot like the man himself. He knows it's on the list somewhere though.

"I'll accept you put my nephew on the throne of Heaven. You would put a four year old in charge of all of creation." He can't help but stress what a terrible idea he thinks that is. He almost gets it. Jack had been a sweet-tempered creature, for all of the twenty minutes or so he'd known him, but he's still ultimately a child. "What became of my Father in all this? Is He dead?"

There's a tension in his voice, restrained emotion that has nothing to do with fearing for his creator's well-being and everything to do with knowing what Chuck is like when He's angry. He hopes they finished the job.

Dean seems to spend a second debating each song as it's listed. Whitesnake earns a briefly screwed-up expression as though he might be considering arguing that one, but then he seems to reluctantly accept it as fact, and he nods along with the rest of them.

Really, it's a combination of all those things Michael had been thinking — a test to see if they were worth remembering, a test to see if Michael would play along with him. A test to see how much both those songs and Dean's request matter to him. They don't have to matter much. They just have to matter at all.

He's tempted to point out that Rock the Casbah is overplayed, but opts not to waste the effort.

Besides, the follow-up question is worth a little more seriousness than that. Dean's lips press into an unhappy line, and he- debates, for a second, whether or not he should answer. It's just- even as impossible as it is, even knowing both of them are too dead to ever go back to their home world, part of him still retains this stupid, irrational fear that Michael will find a way to go home, hunt down his father, and restore him to power.

If they hadn't bonded, if he hadn't shared thoughts with the guy, he probably wouldn't have answered. Reluctant as he is to admit it, part of him trusts that won't happen now.

"He wanted me to kill him. He really did." Which could sound like an apology, or an explanation — until he follows it up with a clearer, "But I wouldn't. He's human. He gets to spend the rest of his tiny, stupid, human little life running around dealing with human bullshit, until he gets sick and dies like the rest of us."

Michael would have gotten caught up on the details enough to argue the exact placement or inclusion of a particular song. Dean can take the fact that he doesn't as proof that he is still wholly himself. At the time Michael didn't remember his decade-old promise to put him back together good as new, but as off-putting as it might have been at the time, it had come from an honest place. He has more care for his tools than Chuck ever did.

He'd have trouble quantifying it, and he'd be loathe to admit it out loud, but Dean does have some inherent value to him now. Not as something he can wear, but as an individual.

The answer isn't what he's expecting, not that Michael could have expected something like his Father losing to the Winchesters and their adopted nephilim in the first place. This one he doesn't need to see for himself. He pulls it behind his stony exterior and examines it, considering the implications. He's still alive. That's dangerous. Castiel proves that even being consigned to the Empty isn't a guarantee that someone will stay dead, but it's a higher barrier to overcome than wandering the Earth as a human. Then again, how many years are left in that vessel of His—another fifty, another sixty? Less, probably, as he doubts his Father will be a fan of exercise and eating healthy.

"Revenge over finality. Hope that doesn't come back to bite you."

Meanwhile, Michael will hope that doesn't come back in a way that affects Adam. Clearly, Dean and Sam can handle the rest.

"Fitting, however. For all the angels He's sacrificed to make the Winchester story happen, for all the worlds He's doomed, the one thing He's never experienced is being one of the pawns."

Maybe he'll find that unexpected twist He never got from the countless thousands of realities He created.

Hard to be altogether too worried about it when it can't come back to bite him. He's dead. Whatever happens from this point on is some other hunter's problem, whether Dean likes it or not. He's embracing the ultimate retirement.

—except any single person who knows him could tell him how full of shit he was. Not a word of that's true. If anybody were inclined to claw their way back from beyond the grave to continue doing work he hates, it's Dean Winchester. And there's plenty of opportunity for it to come bite him here, in his replacement afterlife. He's trying not to think about any of that too hard.

After a heavy weight of silence, he finally pushes off the edge of the bar. One slow, deliberate step erases the distance between them again, so he can settle a careful hand on Michael's shoulder.

"I'm sorry your dad disappointed you. I'm sorry he was an asshole, and I'm sorry you had to lose him the way you did. Nobody should have to live through that. Not even you. You deserved better."

For all their differences, for all the things he dislikes about Michael, for all the times they were on opposite ends of an issue... all of that, at least, he can say honestly.

He has nothing else to add on the subject of Chuck — it's better that the guy become a footnote. He thinks it's more fitting to make that douchebag as irrelevant as possible.

They're in the same boat if Chuck ever makes an appearance in Abraxas. Michael's plan is to count on that first week of powerlessness to make no exceptions and commit patricide. It's that or suffer his Father's wrath a second time.

After the holy oil trap and the handcuffs, one might expect him to be wary of a Winchester's approach. An archangel is an archangel is an archangel, though: arrogant to the end. He and Dean have established (an admittedly fragile) trust in spite of their past conflicts, however, and this is the Horizon. What could he possibly do to him here?

While he's not expecting harm, somehow he expects what Dean actually does even less. There's a blink, wings flaring behind him—unseen, but maybe not unheard. Sympathy? He didn't realize he'd made that much of an impression. Dean's not good at apologies, and he figured the end of their close collaboration would cut him off from that deep well of feeling the man has for those close to him. Apparently not.

Still, he's a bit young to be talking to him like that. Michael's pride wars with the side that's charmed by the act. Like a dog bringing its favourite toy over to cheer someone up.

The anger always wins. There's a flash of blue in his eyes. If Dean were one of his younger siblings, he'd have a broken arm. He isn't, though. They're archangel and vessel, even face to face instead of sharing a body, so he's under the same immunity as Michael himself is. Michael's rage finds no target before him.

This bar could really use a second floor for him to march up to.

"I don't need sympathy. He created the universe, and He was a monster. Of course it would be filled with loss, disappointment, the deserving rarely getting their due. What matters is that it's over, isn't it?"

Not just Chuck's reign, but Michael's part in the story. He looks at Dean, gaze hard. He thinks the man will understand him. He remembers that week they spent joined, the need to fight always shadowed by the desire for rest. And that was after only eight hundred years. How heavy would that anchor feel if he'd lived as long as Michael has?

He gets it. This whole reaction, this jump to anger because it's easier, he gets it. He's been there, he's been that guy, he is that guy more often than he likes to admit. He isn't intimidated by it, he doesn't even seem particularly affronted or ruffled. He's just... steady, that same older brother steadiness he developed for Sam, the same steadiness he employs for Steve now, or for Clarisse, or for when Cas is taking his turn having a crisis, or when John got pissed.

Weathering the brunt of someone else's emotional reaction over something unrelated to himself is old hat. He doesn't mind it.

"Yeah," he returns, a mild but not insincere agreement. "It's over."

That matters. It's not all that matters, but sure.

He doesn't know Michael well enough to push any further than this, they don't have the necessary rapport for him to try any harder now to knock down walls looking for something more honest. He'll leave it be.

But they both know Dean knows there's more here, and Michael's anger doesn't do a damn thing to discourage the notion.

He'd break the other arm if he knew Dean thought he was playing older brother here. Michael is eldest between them, was older brother to thousands before Dean's species was even put on Earth. That they are equals here is not quite the thought that runs through Michael's mind, still arrogant archangel at heart, but they are closer to it than most other humans would be with him.

"Good." It's fine if Dean sees that there's more going on beneath Michael's insistence that everything is over and neatly packed away. He likes it when people don't argue with him. "I think we both have the answer to the question I originally came here with."

They're not exactly good, but they're better than they were. They've found solid ground to build on. What they're going to build is a thought for another day.

Michael turns his head just a touch, looks down at Dean's hand on his shoulder, then back at Dean. If there's nothing else, he'll be on his way just as soon as the man decides to move his hand. He could shrug it off, sure, but once again he'll allow his former vessel to make his own decisions.

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ᴀʟʟ I ᴋɴᴏᴡ ᴀʙᴏᴜᴛ ʙᴇɪɴɢ ᴀʟɪᴠᴇ ɪs ᴛʜᴀᴛ ʟɪғᴇ's ғᴏʀ ᴛʜᴇ ʟɪᴠɪɴɢ (open.)

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