A/N: I generally don't post WIPs, but I wanted to at least get the first chapter up so everyone knew I am still working very diligently on it! Also, this humorous series keeps trying to go into darker, more dramatic places, so I'm fighting that a little (hence the delay). I hope everyone is excited for this part 3!
"I…killed Lucifer," Sam said quietly.
"Yeah," Gabriel said, equally in shock. They stared at each other, numb to the myriad of emotions that should have been ricocheting around their minds. Instead there was just…silence.
"I killed him…with an angel blade," Sam said after a moment. He looked down at his hands, which were shaking. "How did I-?"
"I don't know," Gabriel said with a shaky voice. "I just…I don't know." It was hard to form words to even speak—Lucifer might have been a destructive and evil, but he was still his brother, and the pain was so overwhelming because he couldn't feel it. Couldn't feel anything.
The swirling clouds overhead slowed, but another crack of thunder signaled the sudden downpour that had the two men drenched in seconds. The Death of the Archangel reverberated across the world. Both on Earth and in the Pit the demons fell to their knees and cried out in anguish, feeling the loss of their God. Even the planet reacted violently to his demise.
The angels, too, felt Lucifer's death. Gabriel grabbed his head and gritted his teeth against the collective cry of pain that reverberated over Angel Radio…even if Lucifer's death was considered a good thing, the death of the archangel physically pained everyone in the Host.
"Gabriel!" Sam said kneeling down to help the moaning angel get to his feet. Sam looked for shelter against the rain—so cold and falling so fast it was becoming hail from the way it stung when hitting him.
When the hail stopped falling on his head, a confused Sam looked up and saw something—shimmer overhead. He could barely see any indication that something was shielding him and Gabriel from the elements, but something was there, almost invisible yet big enough to shield them as the hail grew to the size of ping pong balls.
"Gabe, is that…your wing?"
Gabriel glanced up, startled at Sam's awed expression. "You see my wings?"
"Barely. Looks more like a mirage on a hot day, but…I mean, what else could protect us from the hail like that?"
"My wings…" Gabriel said quietly. He pulled away from Sam, took a few steps back, looking suspiciously at the hunter. His wing stayed overhead, protecting them from the falling ice. "And how did you get back here—Castiel took you, did he?"
"He did. He grabbed me and…" Here, Sam blushed and rubbed the back of his neck. "I, uh..well, I think Cas dropped me?" he said sheepishly. He only continued when Gabriel's jaw hung open for several seconds. "It felt like we were going, but then it felt like—I was falling. Then suddenly I was back in Carthage."
"Angels don't drop people in mid-flight, Sam," Gabriel snapped. He motioned towards the sky. "Angels fly too fast—and the blade-" Gabriel suddenly collapsed to the ground, huddling in on himself. "Fuck, Sam, I didn't mean…oh, Father, I didn't mean to…"
"What's going on with me, Gabriel?" Sam demanded. He grabbed Gabriel's coat and shook him slightly, but the archangel's eyes weren't looking at Sam. They were focused on his brother's body, only steps away. Sam looked back just in time to see the vessel—Nick—disappear like sand blown away in the wind. The burnt markings of wings stayed imprinted on the ground, however.
"This land will never house life again," Gabriel said quietly. "It's cursed for eternity. No one will touch this place again—human, animal, plant. An Archangel died here, Death's trapped here. We have to go. I need to—,"Gabriel gasped and broke away from. He began pacing, murmuring to himself apologies and regrets—Sam wasn't sure if they were aimed at him or Lucifer.
"Gabe," Sam said sternly, grabbing the archangel's shoulders just hard enough to stop him from fidgeting and look him in the eyes. "What is happening?"
Gabriel's golden eyes froze at Sam's pleading tone, but he shook his head vigorously. "I—I can't, Sam. Not right now. I need some time," he said, breaking out of Sam's grip easily. Before Sam could call him back, the archangel disappeared into the night.
Sam felt numb to the bone—he didn't even realize he'd collapsed to his knees in the thick mud. A layer of ice was forming over the ground as the temperature around him dropped unnaturally fast. The last bit of adrenaline and rage from the fight with Lucifer was gone, and with it the last vestiges of strength he had. Gabriel's strange behavior had shaken him, scared him more than Lucifer even had. The Archangel, unable to even look Sam in the eyes, left so abruptly that it left Sam simply felt hollowed out, empty, even unclean. What happened?
He didn't even respond to the faint shouts of his name carried on the still air. His whole world was just turned upside down, his mind feeling like it was detached from his body and floating around in the sky.
Clouds still swirled overhead but not as angrily as before. Hail no longer fell and the wind no longer whipped with a fierce, biting edge to it. The temperature did drop to freezing around the graveyard, as though Lucifer's demise had sucked up all the warmth and life from the area. If he didn't snap out of his shocked state, he'd easily catch hypothermia. Maybe he'd die in Carthage after all….
"Sammy!" a rugged voice shouted, and from the tree line broke a trio of frantic hunters.
"Sam!" Ellen, Jo, and Dean cried out in relief as they rushed forward towards him, though he didn't move or acknowledge them.
"Sam, Sammy!" Dean snapped, grabbed a hold of Sam's shirt and shaking him, trying to wake him up. Sam turned his eyes slowly to Dean, but was having a tough time trying to get him into focus. He just wanted to curl up on the ground, close his eyes, and not wake up again. The pain in his heart blocked out everything else to the point that he felt blind and deaf.
"Sam, wake up!" Dean said, and smacked his brother across the cheek, hard. The sudden pain that bloomed from his cheek burst through the fog around his brain, and Sam gasped, finally realizing that Jo, Ellen, and Dean were crowded around him, talking and trying to coax him into standing.
"D-Dean?" Sam asked in a dazed voice.
Jo smacked him on the shoulder. "You scared us with that whole 'zombie' routine!"
"What the hell happened, Sam?" Ellen asked.
"How are you—didn't Cas…?" Sam asked, slowly getting to his feet with Dean's help.
"Cas left us at the Impala and came back for you, but never returned."
"We had to come looking for you when the ground started shaking—it was like we were on the ocean in the middle of a hurricane," Ellen said, shaking her head.
"The light show didn't help, figured something big was going down," Jo said, pointing up at the sky.
"Where's Cas?" Dean demanded, his voice had a nervous edge to it.
"I—I don't know," Sam said, looking around. His heart felt like something had punched a hole through it, leaving a gaping, ragged wound behind.
"We'll worry about the angel later," Ellen stated. "Right now we gotta get Sam to the Impala. Turn up the heat all the way and try to make sure he doesn't catch his death of cold."
They had to half drag the hunter back through the deserted town, he had seemed to forget how to walk, and pure exhaustion (of both the physical and mental variety) had left his legs weak and his mind floating several feet behind him. The few townsfolk that had been left behind when the demons had been exorcised were gone—whether they got up and ran from the town or what no one knew.
Even through the haze, Sam could feel Dean's nervous energy from where their sides touched. Big brother desperately wanted to know what had happened, where his angel was, what happened between the archangels, but he kept quiet, determined to get Sam warmed up first. The big hunter was starting to shiver, and flakes of snow began to drift down from the sky.
"Cas!" Dean yelped in surprise when they came around the last street corner to find the angel huddled on the ground near the Impala, head between his hands. Dean hesitated for a few seconds but eventually peeled himself away from Sam's side and ran to the angel. "Cas, are you okay? What the hell happened?"
Castiel looked up and let out a small sigh when he saw Sam was alive and in one piece. Ignoring Dean's hand, he managed to get back to his feet, looking shaken. "Sam, what happened?" he demanded.
"We can play catch up when Sam isn't about to freeze to death," Ellen barked, helping Sam into the front seat. Dean slid into the driver's side, Jo and Ellen in the back. Castiel hesitated for a moment, but then slide in next to Sam. Dean cranked up the heat in the car, and after a few minutes Sam stopped shivering just as everyone else started stripping their extra layers, sweat beading on their foreheads.
Castiel, nervous when Sam still seemed shell-shocked, raised his hand to place two fingers to Sam's forehead to search for any wounds.
Sam saw the movement and jerked backwards in fright, shoving Dean into the door painfully. "Fuck, Sam, what the hell—"
"Don't touch me!" Sam snapped at the angel, and Castiel's hand paused in mid-air. He pulled back, a look of slight surprise on his usually impassive face.
"Sam, I was only trying to—"
"Don't. Last time you did that you tried to make me leave Gabriel to die. How could you do that? Isn't he your brother, too?" Sam snarled, spitting the accusation at the angel.
"Yes, but he is also an Archangel. He is my commander. I have to follow his orders," Cas said with gritted teeth.
"Orders? You're a fallen angel, orders don't mean a damn thing to you!" Sam said, voice pitched high in worry and near-hysterics.
"Sam, just calm down and tell us what happened!" Dean managed to say as he shoved Sam back in the middle of the seat so he could actually breathe.
Sam simply let out a hysterical cackle that made the Harvelles glance at each other nervously. Before Sam could even say another word, Castiel blinked and the big hunter went limp, snoring gently.
"Sam needs time to process what's happened," Castiel said. He didn't need to touch Sam to see the utter chaos in the hunter's mind. It was difficult to discern what had happened; he honestly couldn't understand more without further digging, and he didn't want to hurt Sam's already fragile psyche.
"Cas, is he okay?" Dean asked, trying to keep his voice level but the worry bled through anyway.
"He's…just reeling from the events," Cas said, which was not a lie.
"What events? Where the hell are the archangels?" Dean demanded.
"Where's Gabriel?" Jo asked nervously.
"All fine questions," Castiel said. He had felt the pain that had reverberated over Angel Radio, a piercing pain as the power of Heaven shifted; he knew an Archangel had died. But he wasn't sure which one, and Sam's behavior…Castiel shook his head, stopping himself from jumping to conclusions.
"I don't know exactly what's going on. Dean, please, Bobby's place, and quickly."
The Impala left a cloud of white smoke and tread marks on the road leading out of Carthage as they burned rubber getting the hell out of there.