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Michael had never understood the art of healing. Had never understood the appeal, nor the desire. Had never needed to, during the times of before. After all, he’d been a soldier. The soldier. His Father’s weapon, to seek and strike and destroy on His command. He’d led the Host into battle against Lucifer and his demons, intent only on winning by any means. He'd never, truly, stopped to think about casualties or those in need of healing, not unless it had to do with his need for numbers in war.
In a way, Michael believed it was only another manner in which he had failed Raphael, to make him cast aside his gift—for that's what it had been; a gift, not a simplistic means of reviving soldiers, as he'd once believed—in favor of urging him into becoming a warrior like himself, to help keep an iron grip on the ranks of Heaven after their Father had disappeared.
Perhaps that is why he encouraged Adam's gift for it, now—he may have failed his brother, but he cannot change the past without altering the future, and he has decided he will do what he can to support Adam's love of healing, of helping others, though he may not understand it.
It was a step forward, as Adam would put it.
Adam was a kind being, seemingly made kinder by his time in the Cage. And Michael remembered each and every moment with perfect clarity—the moments where the human’s heart had been open, gentle, curious; eager to learn and understand the world from Michael’s point of view. Keen to share his own, as small and simplistic as it may have been. He remembered Adam’s emotions when they were captured by the Winchesters—hurt, distress, bitterness, sadness—but he’d still carried with him his empathy, his humor; his heart still so open, so willing to help.
Still a healer, though he was burdened, though melancholy stained deep into his soul.
Michael could never even begin to truly understand it, the fervent wish to reach out and assist even those who had brought them nothing but grief, nothing but pain. Especially not now—not after what his Father—God—had done.
And, yet, this human did so. Continued to do so.
Adam’s soul was the small, bright, powerful source of light that had wrapped around Michael’s anguished grace as he mourned his Father’s betrayal, that had sent an influx of warmth and peace and gentle, unreserved love flowing over the threads of their bond, just as he had when Michael had despaired in their later years of the Cage. It was steady, strong, persevering and calm; something that the soldier in Michael recognized as admirable qualities. It was more than he’d previously ever expected from a species so small, so weak and vulnerable—it seemed that he had underestimated them.
Michael would admit to no one—well, perhaps he would to Adam, if he were to question him on the subject arbitrarily—that his views on humanity had changed.
He believed that his change was for the better, in the ways that mattered. Adam thought it was, anyway.
Adam was a healer, in every sense of the word—he found something and he repaired it, as best as he could, with what materials he had. He healed a hole in his shirt with a needle and thread and steady hands, denying Michael’s offer to mend it with a snap of his fingers with a little smile and a simple reply: “My mom used to do this with her clothes.” He healed Michael when he was grief-ridden; soothed his anger and his heartbreak with his amiability and lightheartedness. And he would go on to heal people when he finished his schooling, finally enabling himself to treat physical wounds and alleviate the many aches of humanity.
But now—right here, right now, in this moment—Michael could sense the dejection emanating from him as he stared out of the window from the bed of their current residence, a simple apartment. Could feel the creeping despair that swamped his mind, his heart, even as the sun shined brightly on the grass outside. Michael did not wish to pry, so he did not peek into his mind—they respected each other far, far too much for such a deed—but he knew of the nightmares Adam suffered some nights, knew of the memories that they brought back; the ones that he preferred to bury. He knew how to rouse him, to remain steadfast in the face of Adam’s brief panic, to make himself a pillar that Adam was more than welcome to grab onto as he got his bearings, breathing evening out from his previously adrenaline-filled terror.
But this time, this time, he reached.
Michael was not a healer. He never would be. His knowledge was centered around war, around war tactics and strategics and the clash of weapon-on-weapon in the midst of battle.
Outwards towards his human he reached, and it was a testament to Adam’s misery that he did not joke or laugh or protest against Michael drawing his head to rest against his collarbone, laying them back against the firmness of the headboard, arm coming to wrap around his shoulders. His wings instinctively rose from their place outside of reality to blanket around them in the imitation of a cocoon; invisible to the average human eye but more than detectable to them both. Adam was still, eyes faraway and distant and blank in a way that made Michael's emotions swirl with disquiet, but he still sank into the embrace all the same.
Michael rested the chin of his apparition on the top of Adam’s head, and he let his thoughts and feelings and emotions to open up wholly and entirely, allowing his own happiness and his own warmth and his own love to encase the human soul resting next to his grace. It was clumsy, he was sure, clumsy and unskillful, but Adam inhaled a sharp breath all the same, and it was when the first tear began to make its way down the smoothness of his face that Michael leaned down to press a kiss against his forehead.
Michael was not a healer, but when Adam Milligan finally and truly broke, for the first time in a millennium, he could not find it in him to do anything except cradle him, his body, his soul, and help to mend the desolation that had found its way into his haunted mind.
He was not a healer, but he could do this much.
He’d learned from the best, after all.