A/N: A hurt/comfort story for Sam and Cas set in S04; can be read as pre-slash or friendship. Originally posted on AO3 on 6/14/15.

Until the End

The curtain in the motel room window had been drawn back, allowing a knife of pale morning light to slice along the edge of the double beds, upon one of which Sam sat, one hand steadying the book he kept placed on his knee, the other fisting the scratchy fabric of the ill-fitting bedsheet. The nightstand lamp was switched on, but to no real effect; Sam wasn't reading the book, and the natural daylight was enough to delineate the details of his dreary surroundings. The air was tinged with that artificial flavor that Sam had learned over the years was a permanent feature of all cheap lodgings. The heater, obviously in a long state of disrepair, uttered tortured guttural sounds as it tried to crank out a heat strong enough to allay the forty-degree temperature of a late Idaho autumn. The wallpaper was a nasty shade of green that put one in mind of someone's rejected lunch, and the distance between the two identical beds—neither one yet slept in, and both as stiff as boards—seemed as insurmountable as the widest gulf.

The motel certainly wasn't Sam's first choice. Probably hadn't been Dean's either, but there was only so much aimless driving—so much time he could spend in his own head—before his older brother had to pull off the highway with a grunt, easing the Impala down the exit lane and towards any vacancy in sight. Sam was smart enough not to ask if he had scented a hunt between then and the moment Sam had awoken in the middle of the night, shivering and disoriented, Jess's silent screams in his head more memory than dream.

It's an anniversary for you. He still remembered Uriel's voice from yesterday, colder than the chill that seeped into him now, and just as mocking. It must be difficult to bear, yet you so brazenly use the power he gave you. His profane blood pumping through your veins.

And Sam didn't have any answer to that, other than what he'd told the angel. What else could he have done against Samhain? What else could he do now, knowing that his body—his soul—was a shrine for evil, that no matter how much he cared for it, kept it healthy and turned to the service of good, it would always be tainted? If any chance remained to redeem the disease running through his veins, any chance at all, he would take it.

Maybe that was why he had been holding the Bible now for the last hour, praying not in some defined way for guidance but trying to gather the strength to call one of those very angels to him.

Specifically, Castiel. The angel who'd rescued Dean from hell ("more like groped me tight," his brother still grumbled), who appeared to Dean in visions and dreams. And the only one to apparently have no moral qualms about shaking the hand of the boy who was supposed to be an A-lister for the other team. Perhaps it wouldn't be impossible to make Castiel understand in a way that Uriel couldn't, or simply wouldn't.

Then again, it might have been better to leave well enough alone. Today, of all days. It was a done deal that angels were watching over Dean. Sam was just lucky they didn't smite him.

Still, he wouldn't be showing any more disrespect than Dean was—Dean, who had made a bitter snipe at Sam about his dark Sith powers (Sam wasn't sure that was a coincidence) before stomping out of the room at ten in the morning to find a bar with a drink strong enough to make him forget he even had a brother. The day of their mother's death had failed to hold any real significance in recent years. And if Sam had to be honest, he was a lot more broken up over Jess than he was his mother—at least, he hadn't made it a habit of crying on November 2 until after Stanford, which he knew made him selfish, a traitor to the family. Before that he'd allowed himself to get caught up in Dean's grief, even occasionally mistake it for his own.

Dean, for his part, vacillated between an exaggerated mask of cheeriness and simmering, barely restrained rage that nine times out of ten erupted into thrown punches (and which nine times out of ten landed on Sam's face). It didn't much matter to Sam whichever door Dean chose, because behind either one was a one-hundred-percent-or-your-money-back guarantee that Dean was going to be shit-faced drunk.

Most normal people honored the anniversary of a loved one's death by visiting a grave or doing something positive to remember them by; that was just something you picked up when you spent as much time in graveyards as Sam did. There wasn't any real grave where they could visit Mom—not a trace of her had been salvaged from the fire save for Dad's wedding ring and Dean's treasured pictures—but Sam remembered the years when Dean would dig out the original Star Wars trilogy on VHS, sit Sam down in front of whatever crappy motel television screen they had the pleasure of squinting into that week, and take a long, long ago journey with him into a galaxy far, far away.

I remember when I first watched this part, Dean always said when Vader revealed he was Luke's father, whacking Sam on the shoulder with eyes that were a little too bright, a grin that was a little too wide. Man, I cried and I cried. I just couldn't go on. And Mom, she put me in her lap and she held me and she said, it's okay, Dino—she used to call me Dino, how lame is that—it's okay, Dino, this isn't the end. You can't cry until you get to the end. But in the meantime, those waterworks were really something. You shoulda seen it. I was almost as bad as you.

And Sam would smile in return, taking the well-meaning joke in its stride, and wish that he'd been sitting there in Mom's lap crying, too. Because then maybe that meant he'd have a precious memory of his own to hold onto, something to anchor and stabilize him in his darkest moments. A memory of his mother's arms around him, solid and warm, and a voice cooing sweetly down at him, wrapping him up like a blanket.

Not the stone-cold knowledge that Mary Winchester had died—that Jess had died—because of him.

No crying until the end.

Sam put the Bible down. He wouldn't need it for what he was about to do.

Castiel, he thought, and whether it was a real prayer or just a meaningless word tossed blindly on the pyre of belief, he really didn't know. And maybe he didn't care. Castiel.

Nothing changed. The sputtering heater continued to sputter; the stale air remained stale; the puke-green walls still looked like puke. He tried again.

Castiel—

A sound of thousands of pairs of wings beating into infinity, and he was looking into a visage of dark hair and downturned lips and stern blue eyes. Sam bolted upright, stunned in spite of himself.

"You called," Castiel said monotonously, as if commenting on a particularly unremarkable permutation of the weather. He held his arms ramrod-straight at his sides in a stiff military bearing, regarded Sam with an expression that was as intimidating as it was utterly unreadable.

"Yeah." Sam coughed once, lamely, and dropped his eyes to the floor. He counted three breaths, struggled to push down the fluttery feelings of anxiety. This would be their second meeting, and the first time Castiel wasn't here strictly on business. "Yeah, I called you."

With a great effort he raised his head again, forced himself to maintain eye contact. He wasn't an equal, wouldn't try to look like one, but cowering certainly wouldn't help his case. Across the room, Castiel continued to stand and stare—two things he was exceptionally good at doing, other than killing things.

And maybe it was the way he was standing so far away from him, maybe it was the memory of Dean's comment or Uriel's silent laughter—or just his own tainted blood, projecting hostility onto the blank canvas of Castiel's face—but something about that observation sent Sam tumbling down into a pit of hot, inexplicable rage. He rose to his feet and crossed the room in a few short paces, forgetting his feelings of fear and foolishness, forgetting that this was supposed to be a gesture of goodwill. He looked at Castiel, and he didn't see the angel who had shaken his hand but Uriel's commanding officer, as cold and superior a force as any that had seen fit to constantly remind him of his great and terrible destiny. Castiel's face did not change by one fraction.

"What do you require, Sam?" the angel asked. "If you wish for your brother to be seen to, I can tell you that we—"

"Why don't you start by explaining yourself," Sam hissed, and now Castiel did evince a reaction: one eyebrow lifted almost imperceptibly, and his head tipped forward slightly as if he was straining to hear something. Straining to hear, maybe, the message beneath Sam's words, the things he couldn't say in the light, the secret feelings he couldn't voice.

Fuck it. He'd save him the trouble.

"I fail to understand your meaning."

"You're kidding me, right?" The long-building resentment was bubbling, boiling over; like a witch's brew that was ready to be fed to some poor unsuspecting soul, or a shot of Ruby's blood as it grew super-heated on his tongue, slid down his throat in a slow, shameful burn. He was long familiar with that anger, how reckless it had made him when he learned about Dean's deal. "How about the fact that you were willing to wipe out an entire town just—oh, I don't know, yesterday? Did it already escape your mind how close you were to killing over a thousand men, women, and children?"

There was a flash of emotion in Castiel's eyes, and if Sam thought he also saw a flicker of regret—well, that was only his imagination. "I assure you that I have not forgotten," he said carefully, in the tone of voice one reserved for placating a tantruming child, and goddamn if that didn't make Sam even angrier.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, sure! So you probably remember all the innocent people you already killed." For the first time the angel looked uncertain, and Sam went on: "I saw the bodies, Cas. Castiel. I saw what you did to Pamela, the things you do to destroy demons. I could have saved that woman, but you had to get to her first, didn't you?" And it amazed him, how his heart still squeezed in his chest like fire when he thought about the waitress, thought about the holes in her color-drained face that had once held beautiful eyes. Wondered what kind of monster was powerful enough to do that to someone without even touching them. "I'm trying to save these people, Castiel! That's why the boy with the demon blood, okay? That's why I let Ruby fuck me and drink her blood, that's why I put up with migraines and nightmares and God knows—God literally knows—what else so I can send demons back to hell. I don't do it because it's fun. And yet you dare stand there and cast judgment on me, when I bet you couldn't even be bothered to give a single damn when you were burning that woman out of her own body!"

Fuckfuckfuck— Distantly, above the red wash of fury, his mind was screaming at him. Even Dean didn't know about the sex, about the blood, and within two minutes he'd just laid it all at the angel's feet. What the fuck was wrong with him? For a moment he thought Castiel was still just staring at him, like a computer unable to process input, but then he saw it: an infinitesimal shake of his head, the stiff back-and-forth movement of the cheap carpet fibers as invisible wings swept along the floor in tight, agitated repetitions. Sam swallowed; his rage was like demon smoke, and yet there was nowhere for it to go. It was either aim it at Castiel like a gun, or swallow it down like he'd done with Dean, over and over again. Let it consume—continue to consume—him.

"I am an angel, Sam," Castiel finally said. On the surface his voice seemed a study in utter indifference, and yet Sam could sense the underlying confoundment. It reminded Sam of a teacher he'd once had, sighing and raising his eyes heavenward every time Sam failed to remember the elements of the periodical table. "I extinguish evil," he added, more purposefully, as if that would help make the definition clearer.

Of course there's nothing more dangerous than some a-hole who thinks he's on a holy mission, Dean said in his head, and Sam laughed. "Great. Awesome. Mission accomplished, then. And I guess all the innocent people who get caught in the crossfire—those people can go screw, right?"

He had barely finished the sentence when there was a light like the flash of a million cameras, and photo-negative colors popping over the putrid green decor, and suddenly he was standing flat with his back against the wall and Castiel was looming over him—looming, somehow, height difference be damned—and practically smoldering with the promise of justice, of cities blown to ash and mothers weeping in the streets holding their dead children and entire battalions of soldiers on their steeds disappearing into the gaping maw of a hungering sea. The angel's eyes held him and in them he saw Heaven and hell and everything in between, all of it spinning on the axis of some dark, unknowable design.

Sam was terrified. Still, he had to have known this was coming. Had to have expected his God-confronts-Job moment, where the living Lord bursts onto the scene of Job's complaints and asks the suffering man just who the fuck do you think you are? Only Sam lacked even a tenth of Job's virtue, and Castiel even a tenth of Yahweh's mercy.

Castiel did not disappoint. "Do not presume to know God or His angels," he said in a terrible voice. "I have been far more lenient than you deserve, boy. Remember: I can throw your brother back into hell, and I can unmake you without blinking an eye."

Sam tried to swallow and couldn't. He could not breathe. His air was being choked, stolen away by the tornado in front of him. Castiel wasn't even touching him, wasn't even moving, except for the movement of his lips; the lips that he had merely rented out from a devout man, a man much better than Sam was. Sam's eyes grew hot and he almost believed that this was it, Castiel was going to burn his eyes out like every other abomination walking this earth—he had to, now that he'd broken down and confessed to everything—but then a single tear slid down his cheek and he realized it was much worse than that.

"Why don't you just say it," he croaked around the vice in his throat. "You think I'm a monster."

He knew, once the admission fell from those marble lips, that it would be official. A fact beyond contradiction. Before, it was possible to believe that Dean was wrong. Hell, maybe even one angel could make a mistake. But for two of them—

Castiel remained so still and so silent that Sam thought that maybe he would still kill him. And yet he could already feel the iron grip on his windpipe relaxing, could feel the storm retreating by slow degrees. The angel's face never changed, but there was a movement of wind at his back, suggestive of wings suddenly tensing. He took a tentative sip of air. A full minute went by before Castiel finally said:

"No."

"No?" Sam repeated dumbly, like a child, his tongue thick in his mouth, his mind unable to wrap around that one impossible word. The pressure continued to ease off of his tortured throat, like a deep-sea diver reacclimating as they rose to the ocean surface, but it didn't make it any easier to speak. A few more tears slipped free, wet and unwelcome. "N-no?"

"No," Castiel said again, more softly. "I do not think that."

He moved one step closer to Sam, close enough that their faces nearly touched, close enough that he would have felt Castiel's breath igniting his skin if angels bothered to breathe. Once more Castiel's eyes were right there in front of him, in all their high-definition glory, and the sight of them—not showing Sam's reflection, not showing any reflection at all but swimming with bright light, and colors for which he had no name—was so intense that Sam wanted instinctively to draw away, but they kept him trapped like a fly in amber. He expected to see some ripple of loathing there—something akin to the look Uriel had leveled at him the last time they'd met—but nothing broke that smooth, alien surface. Sam exhaled the tiny breath he'd taken and nearly jumped when a curl of lashes descended, concealing the twin pools of light like a curtain. He'd made Castiel blink.

For one unbelievable moment Castiel looked as confused as Sam felt. He blinked again, almost experimentally, and Sam found something utterly fascinating about the way the long lashes fell against his white skin, an interplay of darkness and light, at once revealing and concealing the angel's inner luminosity, working in perfect concert. Then fascination vanished entirely, trampled underfoot by the electric discharge that shot through Sam's face as the angel's hand rose to make light contact with the skin beneath his eyes, deftly wiping away the tears that clung to the dark shadows.

Like a wild animal Sam froze, resisted the urge to bolt. Castiel had just touched him, again—when he now had more reason than ever to stay away from him, or reduce him to a pile of ashes just as he'd threatened. Sam stood there, throat working furiously, back pushing against the wall as if he could somehow sink through it, but he remained unmoving—unbreathing—and Castiel continued to explore his face with his hand, knuckles drifting along the curve of his lips, thumb sweeping aside a lock of hair on his forehead, fingernails dragging lightly down the slope of his cheekbones, as if by gaining some tactile understanding of Sam he might come to understand Sam. His hand was soft, redolent with a familiar meadowy scent that Sam could not place, and his expression was strangely unguarded and—and without hatred. He didn't hate Sam.

This isn't the end, Sammy, a voice whispered, a voice that was just like his mother's, even though he could barely remember his mother's voice. No crying until the end.

Not the product of daydreams or wishful thinking; a real, solid memory.

He nearly collapsed.

Instead he let out a strangled cry—"Mom"—and for just a single beat more the angel looked at him with eyes that were not filled with judgment or righteousness, not made to hate and despise a creature like him. The delicate fingers brushed away one last tear, palm closing over his cheek in a movement that was not quite a caress. Sam's eyes fell closed; and as he let himself sink into the wall of heat the thought crossed his mind that he had never before felt such fullness, such... peace.

The moment fled as quickly as it had come. There was an inaudible rubber band-like snap, and when Sam opened his eyes he found himself standing by the bed, Castiel back in his initial place across the room, his face turned away and the shadow of his wings just barely visible in the light filtering through the dusty curtains. Sam realized he was shaking with cold and warmth both but he couldn't will his muscles to still. He stared after Castiel like a blind man who could see again, taking deep, nearly convulsive breaths. Beneath his three layers of clothing he felt naked.

For a long time silence cloaked the room. Then Castiel said: "I will attempt to spare the hosts." Not a trace of anything human remained in his voice. Sam didn't need to see the expression on his face to know that it was more cold and unmoved than ever; the angel from just moments before may as well have only existed in his imagination. His wings spread to their fullest length, the faint impressions of feathertips easily disappearing into either wall of the cramped space.

"Do not call me again."

He took flight. Sam sat down hard and put his head in his hands. His heart raced as if he had just finished doing calisthenics, and he felt exhausted enough to sleep forever. And yet when he dared to open his eyes again and look around he knew he couldn't stay here; the air in the room felt warm and fresh, and even the shades of green paint looked pleasant, like sea-foam waves crashing against clean white bluffs. If he stayed here he would drown in the memory of what had happened. He thought about just going out to find Dean, if Dean would have him; to adopt his older brother's aggressive tactics, even, down two or ten drinks and forget that he'd ever dared to seek audience with an angel of the Lord.

Instead he sank into the mattress—he was unsurprised to find it soft now—and drew the sheets over himself. He thought about a time when Mary Winchester had still had her husband, and her two little boys. Dino and Sammy. For the first time the memories came to him easily; and when his thoughts inevitably drifted into the realm of dreams, his mother's hand on him felt just like Castiel's.