#michael angst

“So are ya going to tell me or will I have to start inventing stories?” His tone was brisk, almost bored it made you wonder why he even cares to ask.

You finally relented. You knew you couldn’t win against him. “Set up through friends. He never showed.”

“Fucking loser.”

“Hey, maybe his car broke down.”

He rose an eyebrow. “You’re defending him now, almost five drinks in?”

You pressed your lips together. “Alright, fucking loser.”

The curls on his head bounced as he threw his head back with a hearty laugh. “Knew it.”

The night had crawled on. More drinks had been had, it wasn’t long before you longed to feel him, touch him. You knew he noticed and you welcomed, anything that came from him. You could practically feel yourself grow hungry for it.

At one point, he had grabbed you to stop from being a little wobbly. His large hands certainly knew how hold you in place. They did even a better job when he held you to him to kiss if it could even be considered that. More like devouring between two very hungry people.

“We only kissed. I like when my girls actually respond to me and my touch.”

His voice interrupted, your imagination. You were keen in wanting more to have happened the night before.

He finished towel drying his hair and drew close. You could smell the crisp scent of his soap, it made you tremble and the hunger you felt from last night returned.

“I have to head into work soon sweetheart. You are gonna have to run along.”

“But..but.”

A smirk curled his lips once again.

“Look darling, maybe some other time.”

You reached out and managed to tug on the white tank top he was already wearing. “Please?”

He looked you up down and grabbed your chin, tilting your face so your eyes met his.

“Now if we do, sweetheart. Don’t be catching feelings since I saved you from weaving and wobbling home by your lonesome last night, alright?”

“Yes.” You agreed in a soft voice, defeat in your heart.

“Yes, what?”

Your stomach immediately knotted furiously. You could taste your desire for him.

“Yes, sir.”

x

Jack, Dean, Sam, and Castiel step through the portal to enter the Apocalypse World. The new threat to humanity is the big bad archangel, Michael. The one in their world is still rotting in the cage with Lucifer, and to prevent this Michael from obliterating their world, they need to kill him and kill him fast.

Wherever he might be.

“They’re here,” Michael says as prepares for the fight.

“Now? You’re not ready,” you say.

“I’m gonna have to be. They’re early but my plan can still work.”

“What shall I do?”

“Stay here.”

“No, I want to go with you.”

“Y/N, darling, you’re only human. I can’t let you put your life in danger for me. I can take care of myself,” he sighs and finishes gathering the things he needs.

“That doesn’t matter. You’re my husband. If what we hear is true, two of the invaders are human.”

“Hunters, my love. They’re hunters. You’re not. Please just stay here. I’ll be back before you know it.”

Michael kisses you sensually and before you know it, he’s gone. Your house is in the middle of the warfare you call this planet. There is a refugee camp for humans somewhere that Michael can’t locate. Whatever they’re doing is keeping him from finding them. You have no choice but to wait here and pray for Michael’s safe return, if praying will do anything for him.

An hour goes by and the sounds of battle grow closer to your house. The ground shakes with angelic power and you look out the window to see a white light in the sky that’s getting closer. You run to the back of the room just as someone comes crashing into your house. You gasp and shield yourself from the debris. 

A man wearing a trench coat stands up and wipes the dust from his coat. He looks around the place and spots you through the dust.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Michael’s wife. Who are you?” The strange man doesn’t answer you. The hairs on the back of your neck raise in alarm. “You need to leave now.”

The strange man approaches you with bright blue eyes, and the last thing you see is a bright white light.

Sam and Dean have joined the local’s side to fight Michael, and Castiel returns after splitting from the group. Sam sees the angel emerge from the smoke with something on his shoulder, and upon closer inspection, he sees it’s a person.

“Cas? Who the hell is this?”

“Michael’s wife. We should go.”

“Wait, what? You kidnapped someone?” Dean gasps.

“Look, we can discuss this later. Do you want to wait for Michael to realize she’s gone or do you want to head back to our world?”

He’s right. Michale will obliterate them when he finds out you’re gone. Castiel, Jack, Sam, and Dean head back to the portal they’ve created to get back to their world. As soon as the last person breaches the portal, it closes.

“Cas, I can’t believe you took her.”

“We can gather intel about Michael through her. I don’t see the problem. It’s not like you two haven’t done this before.”

Castiel brings you to the dungeon where he chains you to the chair in the middle of the room.

“Cas, she’s a kid.”

Anyone under the age of thirty is a kid to Dean. You’re in your mid-twenties and have your whole life ahead of you. Why the hell are you wasting it on Michael?

“Well, we can’t give her back now. Michael must know she’s gone. Even if we return her with no harm done, he’ll still kill us all. We need to come up with a plan.”

You gasp awake and jerk away from Castiel who jumps back in surprise. Tears immediately roll down your cheeks from how scared you are. You don’t know who these people are, where you are, or where Michael is so your panic is coming out in tears.

“Who are you? Where am I?”

“Look, we’ll explain everything but you need to calm down.”

“Where’s Michael?” Castiel walks closer to you but you try to back up as much as you can. “No, don’t come near me!”

“Cas, let’s give her some time,” Sam says.

Both brothers leave with the angel, allowing you to cry by yourself in the dimly lit dungeon. It takes a couple of hours for you to calm down, and when they return, you’re sitting there silently with a stoic look on your face.

“My name is Sam Winchester. This is my brother Dean and our friend, Castiel who is an angel.”

“I know who Castiel is. Michael killed him,” you say.

“Right. Well, I’m sorry with the way we handled things but you can imagine why we can’t allow Michael into our world. He’s a big threat and we need as much information on him as we can get. We thought… well, we thought that--”

“That you’d kidnap me and I’d spill everything about him?” you finish for him. “Do you really expect me to be compliant in your demands when you kidnap me, tie me up in your dungeon, and leave me here to cry alone? No, this isn’t how this works.” You’re not sure where this boost of confidence is coming from. You’re usually very shy and always let Michael handle the tough talk. “I might be more willing to give you information if I had a bed and some food and a proper room. I am no threat to you. I’m only human.”

Sam, Dean, and Castiel step off to the side to discuss the pros and cons of letting you free. There are two angels inside the Bunker that can subdue you if you decide to go rogue, and there are two hunters that will keep an eye on you the whole time.

Castiel allows you out of your chains while Sam escorts you to the bathroom to freshen up. Your world is dirty, dusty, and filled with soot and smoke so taking a shower to clean yourself from that filth is amazing. Your world has really been set back from the wars Michael has started. Things like showers don’t come easy since there isn’t a lot of running water.

After showering, you are escorted to the kitchen where a hot meal is waiting for you. That’s another thing you don’t have--hot meals. When you’re constantly fighting angels in a world where power is limited, you don’t have access to things like microwaves or ovens. You only have fireplaces where you can heat canned food or small meals.

You immediately dig into the food gratefully. All three men are watching you with careful eyes and you start to get annoyed with the way they’re treating you.

“I’m not a circus animal. You don’t have to stare at me while I eat.”

“What is Michael planning?” Dean asks.

“You want to kill him, don’t you?” All three men are silent. “Why would I give you information on how to kill my husband?”

“He’s killing an entire world. He’s slaughtering millions. He wants to come here and do the same,” Dean gasps.

“The people he’s killed deserved it. He’s not taking innocents despite what those refugees say. Michael isn’t a bad guy, you just perceive him to be bad because his actions don’t fit your criteria of being a good guy.”

That silences all three of them. You continue to eat and they leave to talk about what the next steps are going to be.

“She’s not gonna want to give any information on him, but she can be bait. He’ll come for her.”

“As much as I hate it, he’s right. If she’s not going to be any help to us, then she can be bait. We can trap him here. He might stop killing and leave us alone if he sees his love is in danger.”

“We’re not going to actually hurt her, right?”

“Yes, Sam. We won’t harm a hair on her head.”

“Alright, let’s get started.”

Just like they predicted, it didn’t take Michael long to figure out you are gone. If he is ruthless when you’re by his side, then it’s a whole different ball game without you there. All of his followers are scared to be around him for fear he’ll kill them for them looking at him wrong.

“WHERE THE HELL IS SHE?!” Michael yells angrily and slams his fist into the wooden table so hard that it cracks in half.

“The invaders must have taken her,” one of the angels says.

Michael looks at him with a deadly glare and the angel shuts up. Another angel walks through the front door with a note in his hands.

“Someone opened another portal to drop this note off.”

Michael takes the note from him. It reads “If you want her, come get her”. Michael crumples the paper in his hand angrily and turns to his angels with fire in his eyes.

“If they want a fight, we’re going to give it to them.”

“Sir, this could be a trap.”

“Of course it is. It’s time for Phase 2. Get it ready because Y/N is coming home.”

Just as much as Michael is preparing in his home, Sam and Dean prepare in theirs. You should have known the nice treatment wasn’t going to last. You went from being in the dungeon to eating in the kitchen to being tied up in the library. Michael taught you everything you know about breaking out of rope ties and Sam isn’t that good at tying knots.

There is an angel’s trap right outside of the portal they’ve opened so that when Michael steps through it, he’ll be trapped. He’s been trapped before but it takes some time and a lot of energy to break through but then Sam and Dean will have what they want.

Right on cue, Michael steps through the portal and you break free from your binds. You leap forward to be in his arms but Dean holds you back.

“Get your fucking hands off her!” Micheal yells.

“I’m okay, baby. I’m not hurt,” you reassure him.

“You better let her go.”

“That’s not gonna happen. What is gonna happen is you not going back home. Your reign of terror is done.”

Micheal locks eyes with you and sags his shoulders in defeat. You know this is just a ploy to get them to trust him. Violence and confrontation is and never have been your forte. Whatever Micheal gets himself into, you tend to stay out of. However, this is your business. You hate humans for what they’ve done to him. They all deserve to burn for what they’ve done, and Sam and Dean aren’t any different.

“Let her go home. She has nothing to do with this. She’s innocent,” Micheal negotiates. “I’ll stay here with you if you let her go home.”

“Micheal, no, I don’t want to go home without you,” you say, keeping up the facade.

“It’s going to be okay, love. I want to stay.”

Of course, he does. Phase 2 is starting, otherwise they all would be dead.

“Let her go, Dean,” Sam says.

Sam takes you from his brother and escorts you to the other side of the portal so that Micheal can’t get to you.

“Don’t worry, my love, I’ll see you soon.”

You step through the portal into your own world and watch as it closes behind you. If he wants to initiate Phase 2, then so be it. You have a lot of work to do.

x

    Except Michael was… well, he didn’t have the best immune system because he had been sick for so long. It was good practice for two powerful and important figures to keep their son safe and away from others anyway, given the political power they held or once held and their connections, and how easily others would be willing to leverage their son against them if given the chance. He stared out the window a lot, sure, but his legs were a little too shaky to go play in the snow even if they’d have bundled him up. And he was cold, consistently, but the change to a warmer climate would have taken too long and been too treacherous, and Ranboo was wealthy enough to afford it so they just… cranked up the heat in the little house.

    It had seemed they were finally out of the woods and could celebrate a healthy child after nearly a year of hard work when Tubbo noticed that Michael was having trouble grabbing things and holding onto them. Kneeling down, Tubbo had taken his son’s hands softly in his own. “Hey buddy, you okay buddy?” He had asked, and Michael had nodded, seeming to not notice the way his fingers trembled and shook. So. It wasn’t from fever. “I’m gonna look at your fingers real quick, okay?” He had said, booping Michael on the nose, who had giggled-- Tubbo hiding the tremble in his voice and the fear for his son with the gesture. He examined the little piglin’s fingers. The normal keratin that made up hooved fingertips was there, fine and seemingly normal, but the dark splotches travelled past the actual nail as far as the knuckle. “Can you… feel this?” Tubbo had asked. He knew the answer.

    Later, he and Ranboo had sat in an unfinished child’s bedroom in a mansion they hadn’t yet moved into, desperate, trying to figure out what to do, discussing things the way adults were meant to but god it was so hard. Michael was their son. He wasn’t a lost cause. He wasn’t. Ranboo was crying enough for the both of them, which was fine by Tubbo. Tubbo didn’t cry. He thought. He did. He took action. And the action he was taking was that of keeping their son alive. Neither of them wanted to acknowledge the reason the mansion hadn’t been moved into yet. Too big to keep warm enough for their sickly son. And the fear of finishing a bedroom for a child that… was going to be perfectly fine, of course, he was just going to outgrow the decorations by the time they got around to moving in! Of course! It was going to be okay. It had to be. Tubbo felt as numb inside as Michael’s fingers had been.

    It was just that… Michael was a child. He was a child, with no one, and Tubbo couldn’t bear to see that child rot away in a heated wasteland with nobody to have ever loved him. So it had to be them, didn’t it? He and Ranboo. The perfect couple for such a sickly child. Somebody had to love him. And, Tubbo guessed, in their own way, he and Ranboo had needed someone to love like that in turn. Someone to take care of aside from themselves, to distract themselves from the fact that they weren’t entirely sure they were ready to be so vulnerable.

    So Tubbo had devised… basically an IV machine, after Michael had started having trouble with foods, and then liquids, and Ranboo had built the world’s softest bed, and Tubbo thought mourning was stupid and something he hated because Michael wasn’t dead yet and people who were dead just came back anyway. He wasn’t bitter. He was grateful Tommy was alive and even Wilbur. Just the idea of being haunted by a living being was stupid when there was a living child right there and very much not dead thank you very much.

    And Tubbo had stayed up late nights, falling asleep at his desk and spilling all sorts of potions that he didn’t want to talk about, thinking and thinking until he was finally able to devise something that more or less slowed what was happening to Michael until it was basically a nonexistent problem, as long as Michael was kept on it consistently. And that was it. He was going to be okay. Ranboo cried so much upon hearing that, and it was such a silly thing really-- but Tubbo found himself tearing up a little too. Just a little. Not that he’d ever admit such a thing. Michael slept so soundly on it, too, instead of tossing and turning. After months of it all, Tubbo finally felt comfortable sitting downstairs and not fretting at his bedside every hour anymore.

Sleeping so soundly.

    So quiet.

        Like he wasn’t even there.

The feeling that spiked through his heart when he looked at the empty bed was nothing compared to what he was going to do to whoever took his child.

-----

    “I’m taking my armor off,” Tubbo said, “Don’t want to scare the child.” Don’t want that to be the last thing he sees of me. Just in case. Just in case, was closer to the truth. They had yanked the planks off the wall to get inside, Tubbo too desperate to try and figure out if there was a door. Thankfully Technoblade and Eret were keeping an eye on that bastard Sam, because Tubbo was too preoccupied. There he was!!! There was his son, finally, finally. He was in that dark little shed with Michael wrapped in his arms before he could think, the body frail and so small compared to him, compared even to Tubbo, the smallest of his peers, and Tubbo wanted nothing more than to hug him like that forever, than for Michael to feel safe and seen and loved and like everything was going to be okay even if he couldn’t move his arms anymore because Sam hadn’t known about the medication, even if he couldn’t walk anymore because he couldn’t feel his legs that well-- they were rowing home anyway, it was fine, it was going to be fine.

    “I’m here, Michael,” Tubbo had said, and his son buried his face in Tubbo’s chest. This was a day that Tubbo was grateful for his former enemies’ strength. Previously, even thinking of them made him feel weak, made him feel helpless, but he felt protected in this moment. Like they could do to Sam at least half of what he himself had been dreaming of doing since he learned about this happening. He would not be vocalizing any of those things to any of them, however, especially not around his son. So they had dropped him off by the Snowchester docks and Tubbo had carried Michael back inside, and when he was certain they were gone and he was certain they were safe and Michael was back on the bed Tubbo finally broke down.

    He cursed himself for being numb. He cursed his grief, that even his grief had grief, even his mourning was stunted and wrong and rushed because there were always bigger and better things to mourn. But he could allow himself this moment, couldn’t he? This moment at his son’s bedside, holding Michael’s hand. Michael. Safe and sound at home, finally in his own bed-- and dying. Yeah, he was dying. Michael looked up at Tubbo with a big, wide eye. Mostly confused, Tubbo realized, though a little bit in pain. Maybe mostly used to the pain, by now, that came with having a body that was rotting from the inside out. He’d never known anything else. “I’m sorry Michael,” Tubbo tried to say, but all that came out was a crackle and some air. His voice was rough from the strain of fighting itself on whether or not to cry. He tried again.

    “I’m sorry, Michael,” He said, managing to get it out this time, and it burned his throat to speak but he didn’t care. It didn’t matter. Nothing was more important than this, right now, this moment. “I don’t really know what to do. But I love you, okay? I love you so much.” Because he’d had to make the decision, the stupid hard decisions that always fell to him and it wasn’t fair but he was the only one left to make it. Always the only one left. The medicine only prolonged the inevitable, it didn’t undo what had been done, so it was… Yeah. What he had to do. After he spoke, Tubbo realized with a pang that Michael’s hands and arms were too numb to sign now, but he nodded with a look of sincerity that gave Tubbo the smallest bit of relief that at least Michael knew he was loved.

    Michael looked at the door questioningly and the relief instantly vanished. Tubbo didn’t have it in him to lie to Michael. “He’s on his way, I promise. I’ll make sure he reads you a bedtime story even if you’re already asleep,” Tubbo assured with a small laugh. Because he didn’t have it in him to do a lot of things, but he had to do them anyway. Michael smiled at him, bright eye full of wonder and joy and love, and Tubbo wondered if he knew he wasn’t going to wake up again once he fell asleep. Maybe a part of him did. But Tubbo hoped not. He hoped that he was going to kiss Michael on the forehead after tucking him into bed, and Michael was just going to get the best night’s rest a piglin had ever had. And neither of them were going to pay attention to the fact that his fingers and toes were black, his limbs were shaking, and his breath was shallow. 

    So Tubbo kissed Michael on the forehead after tucking him into bed, and Michael was too sleepy-- too tired, too exhausted, too sick-- too sleepy to keep his eyes open, so Tubbo pretended Ranboo had walked in the room just in time. He made the chair creak a little as if Ranboo had sat down, and saw Michael smile contentedly despite his closed eyes. And he read Michael a bedtime story while holding his hand and upper arm (so that he knew Michael could feel his presence despite his numb digits), and he read a bedtime story, again and again until his voice was cracked, and then gone, and he was speaking through tears and Michael’s hand and arm had gone limp and cold and his shallow breaths were replaced with sleep forever.

    Tubbo cried for all the unfairness in the world, then. Survivor’s guilt, sure, whatever you wanted to fucking call it, he was sick of it all. Sick of losing everyone. Struggling and struggling to create something out of nothing, create hope from scraps and shreds and pieces of a shattered self only for it to be snuffed out anyway. Sick of losing. Somebody had to love Michael. Tommy. Wilbur. Ranboo. Somebody had loved him, too, once upon a time. He didn’t know what to do with the body. Out of instinct, he travelled to Ranboo’s house, and was met instead by a ghost. Carefree, like nothing mattered, like all the love and pain didn’t amount to anything at all in the end. All of the love inside him burned up that day, replaced by rage and grief and pain of a depth that nobody could even hope to fathom. No more Tubbo the yes-man. No more Tubbo the sweet neighbor. They would have to fucking kill him to get what they wanted. They would have to push him off the goddamn bridge themselves. Fight for their hope the way he had fought for his, see where it got them. “Little Angel of Death, are you?” Tubbo jeered.

    He kept the daisy. Kept it safe. Someplace next to a pink tulip, and a grave nobody would ever find of a small little piglin the world barely knew existed. But he had existed, and he had been loved. Just like this stupid little daisy.