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Sam and Dean were surprised when they learned that Michael and I managed to live alongside one another. Maybe it’s because angels would normally fully take control of their vessels, or because they changed vessels often enough to not get attached to them. It’s not like I knew very much about angels or any celestial beings, I didn’t get many chances to meet or even learn about others. I knew a very finite amount about Castiel, but I wasn’t elected to become Michael’s backup vessel until it was almost showtime.
It was strange, waking up despite knowing that I had just recently died. I didn’t know that that was even possible for anyone other than Sam and Dean to be brought back from the dead, but once I remembered that we all share the same father, it started to make more sense. And yet, as someone who hardly had a relationship with John aside having some genetics in common, I didn’t see myself as one to be considered as a Winchester, but apparently sharing genetics was the only thing that it required. The brothers and their found family always held this belief of how family doesn’t end in blood and matching genetics, but rather in bonds and relationships. But if that were true, why was I the one to become the backup vessel rather than someone else close to them that they actually already knew? They didn’t know of my existence so I couldn’t necessarily consider them as my family, especially as they got my mother and I killed; And yet the angels and God did and apparently that’s what not having a soul will do to you: It will make you only look at the facts, never at the feelings. Of course, no soul means no emotion, so I guess that I can’t be too surprised about that. But they had gone through the effort of resurrecting Dean so he could become available again to become Michael’s vessel, it shouldn’t have happened to me too.
Michael’s brothers never had to go through this form of two-person torture. Gabriel found his vessel and modified it to custom-fit him perfectly prior to going into hiding with having freedom as he pleased. Lucifer would burn out all of his vessels until Nick’s body was made to be a permanent placement for him. Raphael would bounce between vessels as he liked, never staying in one body for very long. And then there’s Michael, the one who absolutely ruined me. He tried to explain to me what his vessel process was prior to possessing me, but since he had spent most of his time in Heaven without needing a vessel, none of those details mattered to me in the slightest.
I didn’t deserve to get roped into this. I wasn’t even supposed to end up in the cage. I was supposed to let Michael possess me, fight it out alongside Lucifer and win, and then continue to exist freely however I wished and Michael would leave me alone. After all, Sam and Dean were destined to be the vessels purely for the sake of the fight between the two archangel brothers, and maybe with Lucifer being banished and Michael having won, I could go back to just being Adam again. I’d be a normal young adult, one to lead a normal life, to put the angelic warfare behind me and plan my mother’s funeral. I’d learn how to live independently, figure out how to support myself, maybe settle down and have a wife and kids someday. But Dean’s refusal royally fucked me over and I don’t believe that I could ever forgive him for that. Sam had said that he’d constantly refuse to accept Lucifer, and yet he did just that towards the end, and yet they forced me to step in because Dean continued to refuse. Couldn’t they have pushed him further, manipulated and gaslighted him into accepting Michael into his vessel? It worked with Sam, and with Dean being as desperate as he’s always been for Sam, it’s not fair that I had to get involved.
And then Sam got pulled out nearly immediately while I got stuck to rot in the cage alongside my asshole of a brother who still ended up managing to get out earlier than I did as well anyways. The point of the cage was to be Lucifer’s , not mine. I wasn’t supposed to end up there, I wasn’t supposed to get dragged into any of this, and I wasn’t supposed to be involved in any of the archangel vessel bullshit. Sam’s body was drawn out of the cage by Castiel, and his soul a bit over a year later. Lucifer got out after some years as well thanks again to Castiel. And of course, who could forget about Dean being “gripped tight and raised from perdition” by Castiel? But me? I got left behind. I was left behind in a place I didn’t need to be in, with an archangel stuck inside me that shouldn’t have needed to take on, and despite it all, I wasn’t released until 10 Earth years later. Dean said that an earthly month is equivalent to a decade in Hell and he was stuck in there for 40 hellish years. Sam’s soul was trapped in the cage with us for roughly 150 years. And yet they beg and beg for pity for it. Do they not realize that I was in there for over 1,200 years? Do they not realize the agony of how slowly time progressed and what I dealt with through that vast amount of years? Those two could never fathom that much time and yet I ended up in that position, and I was never supposed to.
No human could ever imagine what it would be like to live for over a thousand years, and no human could ever imagine how much resentment could build up over that long of a time. I resent Castiel for not freeing me from the cage despite the fact that he had freed the others from their placements in Hell. I resent Sam for dragging me into the cage with him, for pushing my body into the portal to Hell. I resent Michael for forcing me to become his vessel for the fight. I resent the angels for resurrecting me to become their soldier and puppet. I resent Dean for refusing to become Michael’s vessel as he was destined to even decades prior to him being conceived. I resent John for pursuing my mother and plaguing me with his DNA. And I resent my mother for giving birth to me and nurturing me despite the hardship that being a single mother would bring, especially knowing that her child’s dad lived an awful, distant life full of secrets and would rarely ever come around. I resent everyone , including myself. I didn’t know that I’d get myself into this fucked up mess, otherwise I would’ve killed myself long before Dean even knew about his potential to become Michael’s vessel. I resent preventing the almost-accidents that I had gotten into in my past, like narrowly avoiding getting hit by a car as a kid while riding my bike, or the time that I had gone to the ER and got extensive treatment to avoid certain death from an infection that I got after getting bit by a feral cat as a child. I resent myself for being safe, and I resent my mother for not being safe enough in her sex life. I resent and loathe everyone and absolutely nothing will make me change my mind.
Yes, Michael and I decided to become fairly civil, him giving me some reign within my own body every now and again. After all, what else are you supposed to do for over a thousand years? Just sit in silence and pure agony? Archangels don’t need to sleep, so it’s not like I slept as much as possible to pass the time. I wasn’t able to be amused by watching tv or reading thousands of novels. I existed, and that’s the only thing I did. So yeah, I ended up becoming companions with Michael. We weren’t the closest of friends by any means, but it was better than being alone for what felt like an eternity. For an angelic being, he was still cruel. Albeit not as cruel as his younger brother, but horribly cruel nonetheless. The lack of having a soul made him emotionless which clashed with my plethora of feelings that I could never stop being turmoiled from. Sometimes he would take over in order to give me a break from consciousness and I became to heavily appreciate that. It wasn’t always a perfect fix, but he came to understand my cues for when I wanted to be myself and when I wanted to disappear. The times that I was conscious with him, we’d have long conversations. He learned to not always respond while I talked. After all, he wasn’t capable of empathy nor able to understand even a sliver of what I was going through. Every now and then he would give input, but it didn’t take long for him to get used to sitting down and shutting up while I vented and showed emotion. Sometimes I’d cry and sob until my body shut down, sometimes I’d eventually calm down after venting about it all, but the majority of the time I became physical and beat him or the bars of the cage. It’s not like it actually hurt him, and with him looking just like me, it felt satisfying to beat myself up in the process. I’d experience the same pain, get the same bruises that immediately healed over, feel my bones snap and my muscles contort in ways that my body was never meant to before it repaired itself. It became satisfying to beat my two abusers: Michael and Myself.
In the cage, he just existed as a carbon copy of my body, creating a physical form as-needed so I could have someone to look at whenever I felt like talking to someone. Sometimes he’d go dormant inside of my body and I’d try to come up with stories, try my best to recall movies I’ve seen before and books that I had read before I ended up in this situation. I’d close my eyes and try to draw pictures, write a novel or a script, direct a large orchestra in a music hall, anything to help me pass the time and entertain myself. But the longer I sat there, the more and more I let him take over. My creativity was becoming more and more scarce throughout the years, every idea had already been thought of and there was nothing new to think of. Sometimes I’d have him sit in front of me just so I could have a conversation to not go insane, but at one point, I’d nearly constantly have him take the wheel so I could have some peace of mind.
He didn’t abuse me, the only abuse that I had encountered was all from myself, from Adam Milligan. The physical altercations, the screaming matches, psychological torture, it was all me. As I had said before, I still felt all of this whether it was because my body reflected what his body encountered, or hearing myself vocalizing my thoughts and them echoing against the chamber walls. I would often beat myself up in as many ways possible, taking it out on him because he couldn’t feel any of it in the slightest. It helped, especially as time went on. After I lost my creativity, the only times that I was conscious was spending time taking my rage out on him until I gave up and then made him take over again. There were centuries of us spending time together just talking, but again, there was only so much to be able to communicate before I started to constantly break down.
As I began to walk the Earth again, I was thankful that these abusive habits became possible to suppress. Maybe Michael took a part of that, knowing how I felt about hurting others despite how much I might loathe them such as the Winchesters and their pet angel. I considered many, many times to lash out on them, but I managed to hold it all back nonetheless. Perhaps that’s what fresh air after 1,200 years could do to a person, or enjoying a plate of french fries even though they mostly just taste like oil and starch molecules.
Michael is still within me, but I appreciate his willingness to let me step forward in order to write this all down. I can feel him complaining about the things that I’m conveying into this message, but he knows that I’ve kept these feelings constantly stewing inside of me for hundreds of years so he permits it. Not like it could kill him anyways. The only two beings capable of killing me are God and The Darkness, and I’m his favorite son while she’s stopped her reign of constant terror. Gabriel, Lucifer, and Raphael are out of the picture so there’s no other archangels to be able to wield their blade and kill me. Aside from my father and my aunt, I cannot be harmed, and I know that neither of them would bother to lay a finger upon me.
I’m not sure if anyone would even bother to read this, or if they’d even believe me. However, I’m going to take this manuscript and publish it, and then leave a copy on the Winchesters’ beloved library table in their bunker. I won’t physically force them to read it, but I’m certain that they will anyway. I can’t wait for them to read this and become filled with remorse. Sometimes they can be emotionless, but I know that this won’t be the case. And I know that they will read my thoughts about Castiel and show it to him too after a long consideration of hiding this statement from him under the guise of “ignorance is bliss” as they’ve done for decades with one another. That biased angel has gotten soft, practically manufactured a soul because of those pesky Winchesters and began to experience emotion, so I know that this will hit him significantly harder than any other angel would. I also expect them to show this to Jack, or for the young nephilim to stumble upon this himself after they try to file it away from him where he wouldn’t find it but then one day ends up coming across it while searching for something else in the building. With the kid having both archangel grace and a human soul, knowing that he feels remorse for contributing to Lucifer’s death, and even still feeling a shred of remorse for de-powering the apocalypse version of Michael, I know that this note will shred him apart and I anticipate the day that it comes. He and Castiel consider themselves to be Winchesters rather than celestial beings capable of so much more in the world despite the boy being the son of Lucifer and the man for betraying all of Heaven and disrupting what little piece had existed across the domain. And I cannot wait for the downfall of those Winchesters. I hope that their bloodline ends with Sam and Dean, and I already vowed to never have children in order to prevent them from being cursed with their horrible, horrible blood. Dean’s daughter Emma should be thankful that she’s dead, and that kid Ben should be thankful that he’s not related to that sadistic hunter. I’m elated that neither Jack nor Castiel will have offspring, and I expect Sam to never get his happy little retired lifestyle of developing a family just like how they robbed me of ever having one.
I want the entire Winchester lineup to fall apart and crumble to pieces; After all, that’s what they did to me and they hardly even bothered to know me or even try to help me escape from the cage. I didn’t deserve what I had gone through, but they deserve even just a small portion of the torture that I inflicted upon myself throughout those years. I want them to beg for the sweet release of death, knowing that the brothers will end up in Heaven purely because of God’s bias towards them, and for the seraphs to eternally slumber in The Empty, never to see the light of day again. I want them to experience as much pain that they could all possibly bear until they fall apart, smashing like a glass being thrown into a cement wall faster than a jet plane can travel at maximum speed. I want them to be entirely obliterated from the inside out, maybe then they’ll experience a fraction of what I went through, and they’ll never need to experience how long I had to live with all of that turmoil while locked away.
Dear Winchesters, I anticipate witnessing your torture, abuse, conflict, remorse, and severe agony. I can’t wait to watch you lash out on one another and yourselves, ruining any relationship you have with one another regardless of how weak or strong it is. I know that you’ll beg Billie to slash you with her scythe to take the easy way out, and I expect her to refuse and to not take a single ounce of mercy upon you. You deserve every bit of it for all that you put me through, everything that I never deserved because Dean Winchester refused to play his role, Sam Winchester forcing me into the cage, Castiel refusing to free me despite releasing the others, and Jack for being significantly stronger than the others but still choosing to not pull me out despite knowing of my existence from what little the others told him because of their pathetic and inhumane
“ignorance is bliss”
approach to everything they encounter. You all placed this agony upon me, and now it’s your turn to experience it for yourselves.
