Like Air.

The pain was distant and dull but still present, swelling in power and receding like the pull of the tide. It was ubiquitous; every muscle in her body, throbbing and screaming, pleading for mercy, to enter a refuge of numbness and experience the sweet ignorance of the sensation.

The pain was emotional, too. Sentiments of remorse and solitude ballooned inside of her, offering no escape, steadily crumbling her apart. These emotions were alien to her subconscious state, but somewhere in the physical world she cried… The tears, one by one, made their way down the curve of her face until they released themselves and dropped soundlessly onto the ground.

Mickaela couldn’t fathom which pain was worse.

Pure silence enveloped around her, deafening her more than any noise could. She was dead, or dying, she knew it. Already her life was flashing before her eyes- all four-hundred years of it- beginning with the bliss she once knew as her life. When she first opened her eyes and her lungs were expanding slowly to take in her first breath, skipping ahead to when she first began to talk. And then there she saw herself in adolescence, flying for the first time, the sun caressing the tips of her feathers… Slaying her first demon… Turning one-hundred… Kissing Castiel for the first time (and seeing him for the last time) before her grace was viciously ripped from her, sending her tumbling into the pits of Hell.

Sanguinary scenes appeared before her, uninvited. Faces of anguish and cries so heart-griping and fear-indulging; inhuman shrieks that could not withhold the demonic torture sessions so savagely delivered. The panorama was so bloody, the flesh so flushed and crimson, that all she could see for those two-hundred years in Hell were vulgar shades of red. Such was the gruesome reality of Hell, that no soul could be ever so hardened as to be grown accustomed to such an appalling environment, be it two years or two-thousand.

Mickaela couldn’t stand it. Even in her unconscious state she was well aware of her sudden violent thrashing around, trying her hardest to push away the shuddering scenes that had been firmly engraved into her mind throughout the years; she didn’t want her last moments of life to be spent reflecting upon the dark times. And so she continued writhing about in a fruitless attempt to be free of the evil.

There was a sudden noise- a short, humorless laugh- that even in its slight volume, sent Mickaela pell-mell into consciousness. Had she imagined it? She wasn’t quite sure, but it frightened her almost to a ridiculous measure, causing her to cease her stirring and remain still. Though she wasn’t sure if the sound had been a product of her imagination, she was absolutely certain that there was another presence in the room.

A voice disturbed the medium. “It amuses me how weak you’ve grown,” someone clucked. Mickaela forced her eyes open, but it seemed to make no difference; blackness was all she could see. Had she been blinded? Other sensations flooded back to her. She couldn’t move her neck- or her wings, for that matter. They seemed disjointed from the rest of her body.

“Look at you, fretting and bashing about like a wild animal trapped in a cage. But,” the voice paused, and Mickaela could picture the person shrugging, “But I guess that’s all you are now.” The voice had an odd characteristic to it; Mickaela was sure it was nothing but a little girl, yet there was something about the child that made Mickaela uneasy, a sort of malignance half-buried by her innocent voice.

“Seeing you up there, bolted to the wall by the delicate bones of your wings, it brings back memories…” the child murmured, putting a tiny, clammy hand on Mickaela’s arm and digging her nails into it slightly. That explained the numbness in her spine, though the chance of disability was an obscurity to her- that’s how woozy she felt. “Remember the gore, Mickaela?” She said nothing. “Remember,” the child pressed, “When I would plant all sorts of filthy insects inside someone, watching with building delight as they spread around the body and ate the human from the innards out?” A sort of delirious but dangerous edge became apparent in the girl’s voice. “Or- remember- when I would rip apart a man’s flesh right before his loved ones? You should see the way those humans bleed! Ohh, how they have so much blood!” her voice was growing violent with bloodlust. “It forever seeps through my fingers…” the child lavished, digging her tiny, sharp nails deeper still into Mickaela’s arm. She began to notice a rust-like carnage smell to the air around them, along with the staleness. “Have you ever torn apart a human heart still warm from pumping blood?” Mickaela hoped never to. “The way it still quivers in my hands as it separates from the rest of the body…” she tilted her head in wonder. “It amazes me how something so… flimsy… a big, bloodied clump of flesh- is the life source of those primitive beings-

The child stopped, suddenly, out of her reverie, remembering the presences of the former Archangel.

“Hell hasn’t been the same without you, Mickaela,” the child sighed, but not quite sad, clenching her nails into Mickaela’s arm for the final time.

“W-where am I…?” she forced out, hating how her voice made it more blatant how defenseless and beaten she was.

“Oh, Mickaela,” Lilith said cheerfully, almost sounding like a normal little girl (even though she was actually several hundred thousand years old), “You’re home.”

Mickaela shuddered. A fresh wave of devastation crashed over her, and she could feel whatever strength she had left drain from her. Slipping back, gratefully, into the folds of unconsciousness, she heard the night monster say in an icy cold voice no longer masked by sweetness, “Prepare yourself for a whole new kind of hell.”