Chapter Text
Nobody seemed to understand how Michael felt about this war, not really.
Of the few angels who didn’t know the larger plan with the war, most were of the belief that he dreaded the war same as them, and would ensure it would not come to fruition. Most of the other angels that did know, did understand, including Raphael, believed that his desire for it was the same as theirs. To get Father back, to ensure that Heaven would return to what it once was. This is half right. Michael did want Father back, desperately needed him back, but it wasn’t for the sake of Heaven.
Michael wanted their Father to return to them so that his brothers and sisters, still fledglings in his eyes, could be safe. Would be protected. They were an army, and a formidable one at that, but he did not want them to have to be. It was his job to lead them, and he would do it well, but it was not anything he could do knowing it was the best thing for his siblings. The best thing for them would be for them to never leave Heaven, never fight, and never stress. Each act could deplete their Grace, and he did not want to see them sick over this war.
Lucifer never seemed to understand how precious and fragile their younger siblings were. If he disregarded Humanity as beneath them, then he saw their siblings as Archangels that were beneath him. Not quite as powerful, but strong enough to not need comfort, or care. That wasn’t true. It was one of the first points they had ever fought on, and could never see eye to eye. And then Humanity was created, and then Father left, and Lucifer ensured Michael saw his side of the argument each and every day. That as angels, they would be fine. They could grow and stretch and fight like they were meant to and come out the other side shining and no worse for wear.
All Michael saw in the day to day was the opposite. Oh sure, the older generations, those created right after the Archangels were certainly a resilient bunch. Not infallible, but tough. Few of them struggled at the caliber he feared. Some did though. Balthazar had vanished for a reason, after all. He could claim rebellion all he likes, but Michael saw it for what it was. His brother was hurting, and that was understandable. If he ever did return to Heaven there would be some punishment for leaving, and a bit harsher for the stolen weapons, but after it all, Michael would love him. He needed a break from the war they weren’t meant to fight. He never used the weapons he took. It would all work out one day.
But both of those things were the perfect example of why he needed Father back. He could not protect them on his own. He wasn’t strong enough, he was sure of it. Archangel or no, there were too many to protect, too many to lose.
He’d lost Gabriel already. Oh to be sure, he’d never felt his brother die or even fall, but he’d been lost for Millenia all the same. No matter how desperately Michael wanted him back, they’d disagreed on how to handle fledglings, and Gabriel had stormed out of Heaven, and he was gone. Gabriel had argued for what the fledglings deserved. Michael was forced to argue what needed to be done, to advocate for fighting the demons that threatened the earth. Raphael had backed him. Gabriel had been outraged. He was the youngest of the Archangels, and remembered how doting the older three had been, especially Michael. He wanted that to be true for the fledglings as well, for them to have what he had. But no. They all had to choose war, to choose to blindly let Father waste their time and love. He threw all of this right in Michaels face before he left.
Michael mourned for many different things that day.
Michael thought many times that if he just could save one, could take care of one of the little ones entrusted to him the way they deserved, Gabriel would come back and help him. If not with everything, then with that one fledgling.
In that thinking lies the solution to another problem.
There were so many siblings. He loved all of them of course, but save a select few he had trouble not thinking of them as a collective, a theoretical. He was not Father. Even more pressing, it was notably and increasingly harder to think of them as fledglings, rather than soldiers. It was what they had been for so long, much longer than any of them got to truly be fledglings. The youngest generation especially only barely got a few short centuries with Father before Humanity was established, and he vanished. They were so young then, aside from the most pertinent information, they had likely forgotten everything about their infancy. Had none of the before to rely on to get through this war. Even the siblings who did struggled. Anna would always be a regret of his.
Michael had to treat them like soldiers to ensure their survival. He knew that, and was used to that, but he worried that it was causing him to lose sight of what they truly were, what they should have been.
And now he had to choose a garrison to go down to Hell, to raise the Righteous Man. So many siblings would be put at risk, so many to choose from. And if he chose wrong, the first seal would take that much longer to break, and it would be that much longer for his siblings to experience the existence they should have all along. Not to mention the lives that would be lost.
In the end, he made his choice. He didn’t like it, but it was a part of something bigger. If Father could have plans then Michael, as the eldest, could too.
The Garrison's Captain was the one responsible for making certain both the mission was successful and the others all got out as quickly as possible. It needed to be someone reliable, formidable, and fast. Each of these traits were a given for any angel who made captain, but one stood out to Michael.
Castiel, the angel of Thursday, was ideal. He hadn’t been a captain long, not officially. Every few centuries or so Michael had to shuffle him around the army to try to find him a good fit. As easy as it was to get lost in the sheer amount of siblings, Michael still tried to put each and every one where they would flourish. Some had been easy. Others, more difficult, but they all either had a place now or had fled, a mark of his failure to them. He still hadn’t found that place for Castiel. He was a skilled warrior of course, and he did well wherever he was placed. He was a good soldier. But he never quite fit. Even now, his garrison trusted him, cared for him, and he in turn for them, but it was not where he was meant to be.
Michael doubted the younger had ever taken notice of that, but he did.
But perhaps this was why he was one of the best for the job. He had moved so much, seen so many different moving parts of how they had to operate, that he was among the most adaptable angles. This was not necessarily a good thing for an angel. Adaptability was a distinctly human trait. An impressive one, but human nonetheless. Angels shouldn’t need to adapt, the world adapted to them. But it may give him an advantage in Hell.
There was also the other side to consider. Michael’s plan. He held it close to his chest, kept it private, and he didn’t even know if it was something he wished to act on, but in case he did he should prepare for it.
Both Castiel’s inability to recognize that he’d yet to find where he fit and his human-like adaptability had likely come from the fact that he was one of the youngest angels there was. He was in the last batch created, and one of the last to hatch. It was only a few days later, a few moments in Earth’s time, that Lucifer broke away, and things began to spiral into the well oiled machine of an army they were now. So the hatchling had adapted. And the fledgling had adapted. And now Michael had an adaptable soldier, who he could rely on to succeed almost any task given, but had never truly been a hatchling.
There was every possibility that Michael would not go through with it. He had come up with dozens of plans similar to this one in the past millennia, and none had been acted on.
It wouldn’t be right, to disregard Father in such a manner, to not trust him.
Perhaps this would be different. Perhaps it wouldn’t. But that was for the future to hold. For now, he sat in his office, the door closed, waiting for the Righteous Man, his True Vessel, to spill blood in Hell. It wasn’t long now. He wondered what it would be like when Father came back. He wanted things to snap back to what they had been, but he knew it would not be that simple. Still, there was hope for things to return to as they should be.
There.
It was time.
Castiel and his Garrison had been standing at the ready for some time, and took off as fast as they could when Michael gave the signal.
He sat back with an unnecessary sigh, and closed his Grace off from the rest of the surrounding area, drawing it into himself. He ran through scenarios in his mind's eye, attempting to get a feel for what the future would hold. It was so hard to say, past the breaking of the seals. The only certainty was that he would lose many siblings in that time. But as for his battle with Lucifer, that was more of a mystery. Lucifer had always been quite strong, an even match for Michael each time they spared. But he had spent the past few millennia in a cage. He might be weaker, or out of practice. That didn’t mean Michael was quite up to snuff either. Yes he trained and spared, but it was with Raphael. He loved his brother dearly, was close with the only other remaining Archangel, but Raphael had always been the weakest of them four. Not quite a leader, not quite a fighter, not even crafty, like Gabriel had been. He was an excellent strategist, and the last remaining brother that Michael could trust, but he was not raw power. Not like Lucifer. Sparing against him was extremely different than fighting for life and death with Lucifer would be.
As Michael considered all that could happen, he pondered especially how to gain the upper hand. Truly, it was impossible to say. He had no knowledge of this in the present moment.
Fortunately, there were ways around this.
The most obvious would be to look into his future. As an Archangel, this would be easy. He wouldn’t even have to travel there to do it. But that felt too much like cheating too fast. Father was all knowing after all. If he felt Michael hadn’t played by the rules, he might not come back.
But Michael refused to go in blind. Not with so much at risk.
So he turned to a much lesser known method. Traveling to other realities was taxing business, only able to be accomplished by an Archangel. Even looking at them took more Grace than he’d like at this crucial time. But it seemed more than necessary, and he wasn’t going to look far.
Why Father had chosen to create other realities, especially those so similar, was a mystery to Michael. If he could admit something to himself, in the privacy of his own mind, then it would be that it made him nervous. It made him worried that Father had been so dissatisfied with them that he had created other versions, and wouldn’t return. That his very existence was a failure on such a monumental level that the only way Father could rectify it was to start over from scratch.
But they could hold information, valuable information, on how to defeat Lucifer.
So Michael stretched out his Grace and looked.
What he saw was devastating.
A different vessel, but it was still Michael. The Apocalypse had indeed happened. The other Him had won. It had taken too long. Far too long. Millions among Humanity had died, and more still of his brothers and sister had suffered the same fate. Had been sent to the Empty, to relive the worst parts of their existence for eternity. The very same beings Michael wished to be saved after this war never got the chance, not in this reality.
Worse still, Father had not returned. He had left them all to suffer and die and had not spared even a moment to mourn. To help. To do anything for his first children.
The other Michael's success meant nothing. He would spend the rest of his eternity wandering his earth, doing everything possible to summon his Father, and never succeeding.
Michael retreated from this reality, took a moment to gather his Grace, and looked into another.
It was much the same.
He looked elsewhere.
And again.
And he looked some more.
Each reality held the same result. No matter where he looked, what actions his other selves took, they were doomed either to failure, or devastation. Some realities had more lives lost than others. Some wars took much longer, others shorter. No reality was perfect, but he had learned something from each of them.
He knew how to defeat Lucifer. He knew which actions to take, which moves would defeat his enemy, which would doom him. He knew what would spell the end for them both, what would trample them all. He knew what to avoid. He knew what could come. He knew what to do in face of that. His war could, in theory, go the best.
But the constants rattled his Grace, his very Being, so thoroughly that he could not think straight. He always lost far too many of his brothers and sisters. He always lost Raphael, leaving him alone as the last of the first four. He always lost sight of his siblings, of what truly mattered.
And always, no matter the outcome, no matter who was lost, no matter what came after the war, Father never showed.
Michael sat back at his desk, and gripped his chair, shaken. He was exhausted, certainly. It took a tremendous amount of Grace to look into just one reality. He had just combed through dozens with hardly any break between. Even for him, the strongest of the Archangels, it was a tremendous feat. But what shook him far more was the facts. The trends. The patterns of what was to happen when the war finally commenced. It spelled the destruction of everything Michael had ever known, and everything he had hoped would come to pass.
His mind raced. He wanted to believe that he would be different from the other Michaels. That he would succeed, that Father would come back for him, that he would not lose sight of his siblings, always hold their safety as important just as he had tried to do for millenia. He was desperate to cling on to that hope. His very being was begging that he would be different. But Michael was no fool. He had observed Humanity very closely, once upon a time. Had done his best to understand his Father's beloved creatures. And he knew that the more desperately a person deigned what they were, the more likely they were exactly that thing. An angel he may be, but he had seen the very same folly in his brothers, his sisters, and in his other selves.
If he went through with this war, allowed the final seal to be broken, then he would suffer the same fate as the rest.
He slipped one tendrel of weakened Grace towards Raphael. Just a gentle nudge. A reassurance for himself, that what he'd seen had not happened to him.
Raphael responded promptly, slipping some concern through. Apparently, Michael had been at it for days. Faint distress had slipped through and affected every angel in Heaven. Castiel's mission had succeeded, his Garrison out the other side and the Seraph himself nearly finished rebuilding the righteous man.
That... was not ideal.
Michael sent a weak reassurance and even weaker calm, down to Raphael, and then withdrew.
He gathered as much Grace as he could muster within himself, knowing that one more look would be extremely taxing. But it had to be done. There was one more reality he could look at, one of the few that also contained the Winchesters, that thus far seemed very similar to his own, from a distance.
If this one was different for the others, if the ending changed, then he could go through with his Father's plan. No drastic actions would need to be taken. He could use the knowledge gained, and try to be different. He would have the ability to be different.
(Michael had know way of knowing, but it would be different. Not the kind of difference that he would want, but enough to change the desperation he felt into something he viewed as productive.
You, dear reader, must know the story he will see. But it is not one he will enjoy.)
Michael, one last time, gathered his Grace and looked.
What he saw was indeed different. But it was not the difference that Michael wanted. The war was stopped. He was trapped with a young man, Adam, with Lucifer, for centuries in the cage. And then centuries more, with just Adam. And thousands of his siblings slaughtered each other. Raphael was gone. Castiel fell. Metatron, Amara, Father. So many disregarded everything he had hoped for. All of his siblings that had to grow up far too fast stayed that way. They did not get comfort. They did not get love. They only faced the consequences of Apocalypse after Apocalypse. Father held no love for them, he grew so bored of them long ago that it did not matter if they were destroyed. And it all began, the worst of it, with the beginning of the war he had spent so long trying to create.
This reality, far more than the others, solidified what needed to be done.
Michael knew now that his father, that Chuck, was a fool. That he would not bring about the world that his angels deserved, not even one that his precious Humanity deserved.
Righteous fury boiled inside of Michael. Chuck was to be discarded. His little story would be no more.
Michael's plan would be the only one he carried out.
It would have to wait a while, spent as he was. His form curled into itself slightly. He had used much of his reserves of Grace to fuel this little quest of knowledge. The outcome was far from a regret, everything he had gained was far too valuable to wish he had not seen it, but it did leave him useless for the time being.
That would have to be fine.
It just left him that much more time to refine his plan.