milliways_bar | (no subject)

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[OOM: We can't afford for me to do the right thing.]

It's been a long time since he'd last really 'powered up,' as Ruby teases him by calling it. Sam can feel the effects twisting through him. Everything seems brighter, sharper, clearer; he feels clearer, stronger, ready for anything.

He can't sit still, and he sure as hell can't go back to the motel room until it wears off a little - Dean'll notice something's wrong in a hot second, and Sam doesn't want to lie to him unless he has to.

He pushes through the door to Milliways instead. Maybe he can walk it off there, at least a little bit.

[OOC note: Sam is currently riding a paranormal high due to the effects of ingesting demon blood. If your character would be able to detect that sort of taint, feel free to have them do so! Just don't expect him necesssarily to admit it.]

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"Hi, Sam," Michael says.

"I always thought you were too smart to keep trying that bullshit with me."

Do not make her revise her opinion now, Sam.

Well, not any more than she already has. (If she has.)

"Which bullshit are you talking about?"

Although he's got a pretty damn good idea.

"You gonna yell at me again?"

Michael just arches one eyebrow.

"You've never heard me yell, Sam."

She huffs out a breath, abruptly unfolding her arms and jerking her head toward the back door.

"Let's go for a walk. I don't think you're fit company like this."

Not for most people, anyway.

"If I'm not fit company, then why do you want to go for a walk with me?"

Seems someone's a little more skeptical about angelic intentions than he used to be.

"Because I'm prepared to weather your raging idiocy, and I'd rather spare the innocents of this world."

She doesn't smile.

"And I suspect you'd rather not air your recent business for all and sundry to hear."

"I doubt you're gonna find a lot of innocents around this place," he retorts, but follows it with a shrug.

"Fine. Whatever. Let's go."

Might as well get it over with.

Sam stalks off in the direction of the lake door.

"Your bitterness is clouding your judgment."

She delivers that line coolly, green eyes clear.

Michael will meet him just outside the lake door, one boot tapping against the ground with feigned impatience.

"I wouldn't exactly call it bitterness," he tells her, after a beat of surprise when he arrives.

"I'm just doing what has to be done, and as I remember, the last time I told you that you got pissy about it."

"Oh, I wasn't speaking of your judgment of me. Flights of angels not stepping in to rescue you and your family at every pivotal moment of your life is coloring your judgment of me."

Her mouth twists in something that is manifestly not a smile.

"Your bitterness is coloring your judgment of your fellow man. No innocents here? And yet some there are who bring their children. Or has your lovely demonic friend made you doubt even the innocence of the young?"

Really, now, Sam.

He stiffens, and shoots her a hard glare.

"I never asked for any of you to help me," Sam grits. "But you're right about one thing; I forgot about the kids."

"No," Michael agrees gently, almost contemplatively.

"You never have, have you?"

"I said that already."

He can't stand still any longer. Sam starts in the direction of the water.

Michael keeps pace with him.

"You've said it, certainly, and several times over, at that."

Here she darts ahead, planting one palm solidly in the center of his chest.

"You're just not thinking about it. Not really. Not what it actually means."

He stops where he is and looks down at her.

"I know what it means. It means that no matter how much I prayed, no matter what I did, no matter how much I begged, Dean still went to Hell, and I couldn't help him," Sam snaps.

"No, Sam. You never could. And do you know why you never could?"

She's glaring up at him now, green eyes snapping fire.

"Because his life is his own, as are all his choices, the noble and the goddamned stupid alike."

Her hand never leaves his chest, though she uses it as leverage to shove at him.

Just the once.

"And he's paid for them. God grant he's also learned from them. But you."

Here she shakes her head.

"You. You're blindly determined not to learn from Dean's mistakes, either, or your own. You're not a horse, Sam, strange as that may seem. But I can't even lead you to water, let alone make you drink."

Not unless he asks. Not ever unless they ask.

He brings his arm up under hers to knock her hand away, and glares right back.

"What do you want from me?"

Sam is probably not expecting the jade green wing that buffets him from the left.

Michael is careful to do it gently, at least. This time.

"Three things, Sam. One, to stop being so careless with your soul. Two, to remember that you are loved, and not just by those who love you, or who have a use for you."

Here she folds her arms again, wings mantling over her back in a visible sign of her irritation.

"And three, learn to ask for some goddamned help once in a while. Your willful destruction is not going to make your brother any less likely to jump straight into the fire after you. You know this."

"Hey!"

He staggers a step sideways and gives her an affronted look.

"I'm not being careless with my soul. Okay, not any more - no more crossroads deals, I mean."

Not that the last one had worked.

"And yeah, I know he-- look, I'm just doing what has to be done, okay?"

"No, you're not."

She's got her feet spread apart, looking like someone braced for a fight.

Or she would if she were a couple inches taller and significantly broader across the shoulders.

"You want to think you are, certainly. I'm hardly a stranger to that."

Just look at who her brother is.

"But if you were truly certain, you'd never have tried to spin me a story about drinking too much coffee."

"I didn't say it was good," he admits. "Not all of it, anyway. I know that."

"But I have to. Someone has to."

Michael's gaze is heavy, a burning regard that does not waver.

"If you know that," says the archangel, wings still unfurled, "then tell me, Sam Winchester, why on God's green earth doesn't it matter?"

"It matters so that 'God's green earth' can still be around when it's all over!" Sam yells.

"Don't you get it? You knew about Dean quick enough -- "

"Don't I get it?"

Michael's expression of extreme irritation does not fade. If anything, it grows stronger.

"Hast thou forgotten who I am? Thy experience in thwarting devils is far and away removed from mine. Think'st thou I have naught of value to offer thee?"

Edited 2012-04-13 02:36 (UTC)

It stops him cold.

"Fine."

His temper's lashed back down tightly -- as is the sudden flicker of hope, barely present, but not quite lost. Not yet.

"So what would you suggest?"

"Be not cozened by their wiles."

She is deadly serious.

"Thy soul -- thy self -- shall always be transparent to them, as it is to my kind. Well shall they know where to strike at thee, and how best to drive thee where they will."

Michael huffs out a quiet breath, shoving her hair out of her eyes even as her wings flex, twitching in residual irritation.

"Do not let yourself be driven. Do not let yourself forget precisely who it is that you are, and precisely who and what it is that you love best. From that shall all the rest come."

Here she leans back a fraction, tucking her hands into the back pockets of her jeans.

"Or to put it in plainer words -- when you dance to their tune, Sam, you're playing their game, the house's game. And a shark like yourself surely knows this for fact -- the house always wins."