This is one of my (K's) stories that I have complete over on AO3. I'm slowly bringing it over here, so it won't all be put up in one day, sorry. But I'll get it up as I can. At the very least, you'll have 1-2 updates a day. At the LEAST. Potentially more as I get it over. I hope you like it. Please, don't forget to leave a review! They're always so lovely :)

Full summary: The Cage was never meant to hold a human. It was meant for one archangel, not two, and definitely not a human soul. Little by little Sam's soul was being destroyed by the torture the Cage inflicted on it. Lucifer and Michael joined together and, with their combined grace, pieced together Sam Winchester's soul and sent him out of the Cage and into the past in the hopes that he can stop this whole thing before it even starts.

Only, when Sam lands, things don't quite go so well. He's not all that sure that this isn't another torture the Cage has provided for him. He's in the past, right after Dean got out of Hell, and he's nowhere near the same man he was before. He can barely remember how to function as a human. It's going to take his family and a little help from a surprised archangel for Sam to start to recover. He doesn't have much time, though, because the apocalypse is still coming and the angels are fighting to get Lucifer free. Can one broken man manage to change the past? Or are they doomed to repeat their same mistakes over and over again?

Warnings for mentions of torture and for PTSD as well as other trauma. If you're triggered by things like that, don't read!

"Are you sure this is going to work?"

It wasn't the first time that Lucifer had asked that question. He'd asked time and time again and gotten the same answer each and every time. "I don't know." Michael told him. He sounded a little more annoyed than he had the last time he'd answered it – just moments ago. "It's not like we have had the chance to practice this, brother."

The light of the Morningstar pulsed bright within the darkness of his Cage. Sheltered within the arms and wings of his True Form, another light pulsed, softer and less vibrant, yet bright in its own way. Both archangels froze and turned their attention to that smaller light. Michael reached out and tender fingers stroked the light, watching as it curled around him without ever breaking free of Lucifer. The two pressed in close and cradled that light between them. This tiny little light, broken and shattered and barely pieced back together with bits of their grace, the remnants of the amazing being that had brought them here to begin with.

"We're running out of time." Lucifer said.

They both knew it was true. Sam Winchester's soul wouldn't last much longer here. They'd held it together for as long as they could, using bits of their grace to keep his soul as whole as they could make it while the magic of the cage continued to try and rip apart something that was never meant to be contained here to begin with. They'd held on to hope for as long as they could, protecting him with everything they had, hoping that after Castiel had pulled Sam's body from the cage he would realize that he'd left his soul behind and come back for it. But no one came, and Sam was out of time. He'd lasted so, so long in here. Too long. But the cage was killing him.

"There's no telling when this will send him to." Michael pointed out. "It's going to take most of our energy to get him out."

Lucifer drew Sam's soul in even closer and stroked tender fingers over it. "I know. Hopefully it's enough."

'Most' was an optimistic bet. They knew the risks of what they were about to attempt. The brothers knew what it could do to them. If they were lucky, it wouldn't matter. If their plan worked, then what they did here would become nothing more than a ghost of a memory in Sam's mind.

They were out of time. The two pressed closer together and they shared one last look, one more mingling of grace that was far more intimate than any human gesture or words. Michael and Lucifer mingled their graces and shared a final smile. Then, cradling the light of Sam Winchester in their hands, they lifted him up high, pushing a thing that was never meant for the cage against the weakest portion of it, a place it had taken them over a thousand years to find. Then they poured their combined grace into him and, with more Faith than either had shown in a very long time, they pushed.

The light was seen all through Hell. On every level, every corner, the light of the two most powerful archangels surged.

When it faded, half of Hell had been burned out, and the cage was empty.

It was a blur of light and pain and too-tight, too-hot, pressing against his skin and ripping through his insides. He was moving and he didn't know where. Everything was changing. There was screaming – his, theirs? He never knew anymore – and agony slicing over his soul in a pain he hadn't known existed until the cage.

He was being ripped apart and only the grace in him kept the pieces together as he tumbled and hurtled through the light and the pain.

The world came alive in a mess of sound and sensation. Sam knew it, in a way he felt he hadn't known in so long, and it terrified him all the more for it. He knew the noise around him was noise, knew the strange sensation of something against his skin, knew the feel of air dragging in past his lips and to his lungs. Yet at the same time there was so much of it that was foreign to him. He knew the air drawing in, yet couldn't understand how there was even air to begin with. He knew the noise around him was some sort of sound – that he heard with his ears – yet what that sound was he had no idea. He knew that something touched his skin and yet - what was it? What was this sensation that was soft and strange and... not-pain. It didn't hurt. But the only not-pain, the only things that didn't hurt, were Michael and Lucifer, and this wasn't them. He knew the feel of them better than he knew anything. Better even than he knew himself.

Sam – that's who he was. That he knew. Even if he didn't know the rest about himself, he knew that. He was Sam. Samuel Winchester. Lucifer never let him forget that. He crooned it to him when the dark was long and the pain was fading. Crooned stories in that musical voice of a boy named Sam and his amazing brother who had saved the world form another pair of brothers too blinded to see the truth.

The sound around Sam grew louder and he flinched from it. What was that noise? His hands came up to slap over his ears and he was stunned to discover that he even had hands. That they were real. Not only real, they could move. He could move them and cover his ears and the noise went quieter.

Sam had felt torture, he knew pain, and he knew there was no way to hide from it. No matter how he covered ears that were no longer there or curled up a body that was really only a mental projection, as Michael said, to cover up what the mind could not perceive, none of it stopped the pain.

The world was dark and that was fine. That was familiar. He didn't want to open his eyes anyways. Because if he felt like this than it meant that he wasn't with Lucifer and Michael. The cage had gotten him again and he didn't want to see what it had conjured up for him.

The cage wasn't made for humans, Lucifer had explained to him once. It was made to house an archangel. One. Not two archangels and a human. While space inside the cage felt infinite, it wasn't. But it was large enough that sometimes Sam got lost. Sometimes it pulled him into different places and tucked him down inside of his head and – the things he went through, the tortures it inflicted, were so much worse than anything he'd known possible. It got so deep inside him Sam never knew it wasn't real until Lucifer found him again and pulled him out of it. Always him, never Michael. The only thing that allowed Lucifer to reach him was the connection of archangel to vessel. Only that allowed him to step in and save Sam over and over again.

Usually he didn't know that he was trapped inside himself until after Lucifer pulled him out. So…how did he know this time? Unless, maybe he was learning. Maybe the grace that he was being given was making him strong enough to see. Even if right now it felt weak and tired and strangely not all there.

If that was the case, he would just have to keep being strong. He'd have to hold out until they found him again and pulled him back. Whatever this torture was, whatever they hoped to do to him by making him relive this part of his life, he would just have to hold on until Lucifer and Michael found him. Then they'd take him out of here again and he'd be safe. Or, as safe as any of them were down there.

Something touched Sam and he didn't stop the scream that ripped free. He'd learned long ago there was no point in that. The scream tore past his lips and ripped through his lungs and made his ears ring with the pain he was more familiar with.

The other noise around him stopped and whatever was touching him went away. That, more than anything else, threw him. What was this? What was going on? This wasn't...none of this was right. None of this was how things happened. Pain didn't go away. It didn't stop unless the archangels found him and made it stop. So what...what was this?

Sam blinked his eyes open only to slam them back shut once more. There was light. Where was he? What nightmare had the cage thrown him into?

Something in that strange noise called out again, only this time it was softer, a little more hesitant. Not loud and painful but low and worrying like Michael's could get sometimes. Slowly, hesitantly, Sam opened his eyes again. The light was still there, so blindingly bright, and he had to blink over and over to be able to get his vision to clear. When he did, he found that he wasn't alone. Someone was crouching down in front of him and there were eyes only a foot away from his own.

Immediately he scrambled backwards and was stunned to find that his body actually moved. It moved across this strange soft not-wings thing until suddenly he was over open air and crashing down onto something hard. Pain jolted through him, up his elbows and in his head where he'd connected hard, and he heard the noise come back again. When Sam looked up he found that person moving towards him and his soul ached when he saw who it was that came rushing towards him. The one face he loved and hated to see in these moments. Somehow when he was sucked into these things, his mind, the cage, whatever it was that controlled this, it always knew how to hurt him the most, and this was a face that had been used to torture him so many damn times. Dean.

Dean was rushing around the not-wings and coming to crouch by him again and Sam tried to move away once more. If it'd worked once, it could work again, right? He could get away.

Sometimes he'd been able to run in his tortures. They always caught him, though.

Only, when he moved, Dean stopped. He stopped by the foot of the bed and didn't come lunging towards him, didn't come smashing his fists into him and shouting and screaming words that Sam had long since stopped understanding but had never lost their power to stop hurting. Instead he stayed by the foot of the soft not-wings and held his hands out. The noise – it was Dean speaking, saying something in a language Sam knew he should know an yet didn't understand – wasn't angry or threatening. "It's all right, Sammy. It's okay. Whatever's going on, dude, it's all right. I just need you to relax for me."

Sam knew he should know the sounds that Dean was making. Words, the little bit of grace inside him supplied. That wasn't just noise or sound; it was words. But they sounded like gibberish to him.

Tilting his head, Sam pressed his back against the hard thing behind him and watched the illusion of his brother frown.

"What's going on?" Dean's voice changed again, sounding stranger this time. It had that lilt that Sam knew, he remembered, meant a question. "Sam, what's wrong?"

Though he could tell the words were a question, he had no idea what that question was. English had long ago stopped making sense. Everything he said, everything he thought, everything that was spoken to him that actually mattered, was in Enochian. It was all Michael and Lucifer spoke and Sam had taken to it quickly until English was just a thing of the past for him. Why listen to it? Why pay attention? It only made the torture hurt more when he knew what was being said to him.

But he knew that questions like these always required an answer. Just as he knew that there was only one answer he could give. It was something that was deep in him, something that had never gone away. Sometimes he was still saying it when Lucifer pulled him out and cradled him close. The archangel always hated the sound of it. The music of his grace would dim and turn into something heartbreakingly sad when Sam would whisper it over and over. "No."

"What, Sam? What is it?"

"No." Sam repeated. His throat felt raw and his voice was barely a croak, but he said it. The only answer he knew, the only one he could give. "No."

"No what, dude?" Dean's voice deepened and Sam knew that sound as well. Angry. This was a sound he knew well. He'd played this scene out so many times before. Dean always got angry with him and then, then came the pain.

Closing his eyes, Sam embraced the dark once more, waiting for what he knew would come. Tears filled his eyes and slipped unchecked down his cheeks. "No." he whispered, his only word, over and over and over. "No."