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Sam knows the cage.
There was once a time that Lucifer was unpredictable, and Michael deadly. Lucifer was the hand and the whetstone and Sam was the knife. The archangel ground Sam down, blunting and sharpening to his own liking. Now Sam sees each action as it comes and can turn himself so the strikes fall where he chooses.
Michael was terrible. Where Lucifer sought to make him his own idea of perfection, Michael had only wanted to destroy his brother's human toy. And then Michael gave him mercy -- peace and quiet and healing and someone to love. In one process, the devil's toy broke, and Sam healed.
An archangel’s wrath can lead a person to their personal hell, and an archangel’s mercy can lead a person to their own heaven.
…
Sam is sitting on fresh grass beside a glittering pond, watching two Ibis meander over a large, half-submerged branch. More cluster around him, just out of reach. His hands are a little slimy, and stink of the fish he's feeding them.
“There you go,” Sam says, flinging the last of his fish into a dark, waiting beak. The bird scoffs it down while flapping to defend its catch from its neighbours. The others hop and stare. Sometimes, corporeality comes to his senses like this. There’s no way of telling when it will happen, or how. It's like living in a physical world again.
Next to him, a waft of white, then a cloud, then something that is almost a person but mostly a gas. Huh? Sam's surprised to see Adam here in his heaven. He must be touching Sam’s real body to have achieved that, and that's not good, Adam shouldn't stray outside the heavens to the place where their bodies are the pain and the angels lurk.
I found a window to earth, Adam communicates, and tugs on Sam. They whisp away, to a thin point in the wall of the cage. There's a divot there, just small enough for two human souls to fit, and they press close and reach out for earth.
Sam becomes grass bending and bleeding beneath a dog’s paws as it races over the ground. Adam is an ant queen and her offspring. Sam rises in the air as a cloud of flies that harrass some picnickers, who wave their way through him. The light brightens, and the sunbeam that hurts his eyes is Adam. Sam leaves the flies for a tree's trunk, and Adam joins him as its leaves.
The family grumbles and covers up their food in Sam and Adam's dappled shade as the flies buzz around their base.
Can angels touch the world like this? Can Lucifer and Michael, now they're caged? Legends tell of the devil influencing the world; owning it. But this is a one-way window, and Sam can no more influence the world than he can return his body to Dean. Who knows what is within an angel's abilities.
They tumble through the earth and all its children, experiencing sensations that no one human, no plant, no algae colony could ever fathom. There is no need to remain with the creatures that think and fear; the humans can yell at each other thousands of meters above while Sam and Adam are a cluster of zombie worms and the whale carcass they live upon.
It seems the angels can't reach them here.
But they are still tied to the angels' heavens, and Sam feels a pull. Soon, Adam has fingers and they're digging into his arms, and the two of them are standing on a road in the dark. Lines of reflectors march up and down the road's shoulders.
This might be a heaven, but both angels are nearby. Sam is too tired and familiar to be afraid. This is the road that leads to Stanford. He can see Lucifer's angle, the way he intends to strike and grade Sam into the tool he wants.
Adam lets go of his shoulder, and turns to face his own angel. Sam waits.
Lucifer appears before him, playing the "Dean stops him going to Stanford" game. This one will lead to Dean dragging Sam back to Dad, and Dad punishing Sam and telling Dean (Lucifer) how he’s so much better, and wouldn’t Dean like a go too? And Dean (Lucifer) will, and they’ll cut him up until he’s a pile of meat, then Lucifer will kill Dad and Dean.
In a human, nerves and neurons would fire off like electricity in a circuit and the person would feel fear and anticipate pain. But now, Sam's been a spider, a droplet of lead and a wisp of wind, and for all he's taking the shape of a human in this heaven, he's not one.
All it takes to confuse the sensations is a little shift in processing. Lucifer is a wavelength of celestial intent, and Sam can map its waveform and counter it.
Except.
Lucifer stumbles forward with Dean’s expression in his eyes and whispers “Sammy.” No. This is wrong. Sam can’t pick up the signal, can’t reverse it, it's unknown--
Fear.
It's a body sensation, and he isn't in a body. He can't go back to his body.
Lucifer doesn't care.
His body vibrates, his brain thinks, his chest heaves, his nervous system picks up and discards a billion sensations and he screams because who put him
back in his body no
please no
who
The pain is in his skin. It lights up the paths in his body and runs him through feelings and he screams. But this is the cage: Nothing can touch him here, because nothing is physical! The only other physical thing in the cage is Adam, and Adam wouldn’t do this--
But Lucifer would.
How did he ever think he could out-think the devil?
The body needs to breathe so he tries that, but he can’t remember the rhythm. It's exhausting, thinking of every breath while pain ripples through him, God, there’s something touching him all down one side, his ears and eyes overload him with information and they just won’t stop. And his heart -- he needs to keep it beating but he can’t remember how.
He looks out into the collage of colour and shapes, trying to distinguish his brother’s body from the background noise of the cage. He shouldn’t be able to see-- but he does. Light streams into his eyes and leaves a bedroom on his retinas.
It looks so much like earth. He wants to be the bed, the floor, the air, but his soul is strapped into this body. The chest is feeling tight, and he remembers his heart needs to pump. He presses a hand to his chest, but there’s skin in the way, skin on his torso, over his hands, and the flesh is thumping and vibrating with a heartbeat -- like his body has taken control from him and beating all on its own. His diaphragm is expanding and contracting without his input and he keeps blinking--
What is it Lucifer wants? He can’t give it to him, not with his brain scrambled like this. No plan, no escape. He has to get through this. He has a body, and it’s his body if only he can get it under control.
Like when he talked to the Ibis at the pond. He imagined living, now he has to do it with a real body, a real mouth, a real screwed-up brain that can’t find the path to the right thought. He wants Adam.
He wants to be a tube worm. He hears his thoughts in his ears; thought becoming speech becoming sound becoming thought in redundant flow.
“A tube worm, Sam?” says Dean; the outside world reacts to him again. It sounds like something spoken indoors, where the sound can reflect off the walls.
“How are you feeling, Sam?” asks Castiel.
There is no Dean in Sam’s heaven. No Castiel, either. This isn’t heaven. It can’t be the cage either.
Is this Earth? How is he supposed to cope with that?
His body mimics his communication. His tongue writhes, and his ears rumble.
“You can do it. You’ve been adjusting well,” Castiel answers him.
“Yeah,” Dean says. He’s in a chair, leaned forward like he’s about to leap out, and he’s looking at him with wide, shining eyes. “We got your back. Hell, we got you back.”
Sam knows how to deal with Lucifer. He doesn’t know how to deal with Dean, or Castiel, or a world he can touch. Even wrapping his fingers against the surface lying upon is overwhelming.
His eyes move to a fourth person in the room. A woman. She’s standing up, watching them all with a moody glare pulled over uncertainty, and she has striking white patterns on her skin. Dean follows his gaze, and makes a shooing motion.
She shrugs a shoulder and looks at Castiel.
“Thank you,” says the angel. “If we require your services again, I will contact you.”
“Right,” says the woman with djinn markings. “Just bring cash next time.”
“There won’t be a next time.”
The sounds translate to understanding faster and faster. He can tell he’s in a large bare room, now. An Earth room, not a piece of heaven. And he’s sensing this all like a human, not a fly or a tree, it’s all too close.
“So ah. You alright?” Dean asks.
There’s a word that fits here, but it’s missing from Sam’s thoughts. If this is the body he had before the cage, then why doesn’t it know the routine? At least with grace, you can feel and see it coming. But this… this is chaos.
“I was in heaven?” And he feels himself begin to tear up -- a heavy pressure at his eyes. So he has hell itself as his heaven -- unsurprising for Lucifer’s vessel. But why take him away from it?
“As close as we could get,” Castiel answers. “I hoped that a dream would make the transition easier.”
The words don’t make sense. “You could have left me.”
“Sam,” Dean says warningly.
“No, you should have left me in heaven!”
“I’m not going to let you rot in hell, and I’m not going to leave you in a madhouse. I’m your brother.” This arrogance is really familiar.
Sam looks to Castiel for support.
“You’ve been dreaming. Your initial reaction to life was… not ideal. We brought in a djinn to help ease you back into having a body again.”
“Like reality with training wheels.” Dean spreads his hands. “Now c’mon. We got you a big-boy bike.”
He looks to Castiel, who rolls his eyes and pulls out a sandwich from his coat. It smells divine, and Sam’s nostrils flare -- and this flavour, he knows it from happy memories and celebrations.
This is going to be a challenge. His limbs are logs hanging off his torso, and he’s going to be clumsy. But he’s managed to speak, so maybe he’ll get through this without getting mayonnaise down his front. There's humour to the thought. He hasn't worried about dignity in... a long time.