AN: This takes place right at the end of Season 8, when Sam is dying in the mud and the angels have just fallen. I haven't actually watched much of season 9, so I'm pretending it doesn't exist in this universe. For the sake of the story, Castiel was also nearby to Sam and Dean when the angels fell. Please let me me know what you think, and if I should continue this!
EDIT 02/2016: I'm cleaning up these first two chapters, and will be continuing this story once I finish that.
Dean Winchester was nearing the end of his rope. Cas had lost his grace to that feathery bastard Metatron and couldn't help Sam, who was dying (he couldn't die now, not after everything they'd been through). Cas did help Dean drag Sam off the muddy ground and into the Impala's backseat, but that was hardly better. Sam was just dying in Dean's baby instead of in the fucking dirt. As Dean was alternating between yelling at Cas to help and yelling at Sam not to die, Gabriel, the dead archangel, showed up out of fucking nowhere.
It quickly became apparent to Dean that the universe had it out for him, as Gabriel proceeded to be monumentally unhelpful. He just kept rattling on about how Sam always had been a sacrificial idiot, and had they really expected a task from his Father to end in anything other than a death sentence?
"Yeah," Dean interrupted in his best growl, "so how do we fucking help him?"
"I'm getting to that part," Gabriel said, not seeming the least bit perturbed by Dean's near frothing rage and fear.
"Get there faster," Dean growled, hands fluttering nervously around his brother's prone body.
Gabriel's next words chilled Dean right to his bones, freezing him in place. "There's no known cure for this sort of thing," Gabriel said, as calmly as though he were discussing the weather, "and finding, or making, one will take longer than your brother has left."
Dean stared at Sam. His little brother wasn't supposed to go out this way. Ever since that night when his mother burned on the ceiling and his father shoved a too calm six-month old into his arms, it had been Dean's job to watch out for Sammy. He had failed so many times since then, he didn't even know how many second chances he had been given by now, but Sammy always came back to him and gave him one more shot. Now, all the angels, except the one asshole archangel who was supposed to be dead but inexplicably wasn't, were powerless, and even said asshole archangel couldn't help. Given that it was an act of god killing Sammy, there would be no miracles from that corner, either, Dean guessed.
The tears were already dripping to the ground before Dean realized he was crying. "Damn it, Sammy," he said, voice soft and choked with grief. "You're not supposed to die." He swept his arm roughly across his face, hating the wetness that smeared across his cheeks. "You should've let me protect you."
Gabriel huffed behind him, and when he turned his head, the archangel was glaring. "You haven't been listening to me at all, have you?" he asked. The fucking bastard had no right to sound so put out with him when Sammy was dying right there and they couldn't stop it, so Dean did what he did best.
He punched the fucker in the face.
"Ow goddamn it!" Of course Gabriel was still an angel; punching him was about as effective as punching a cinderblock wall. Possibly less effective.
"Are you feeling better now?" Gabriel didn't give Dean a chance to reply to the snarky question. "We can't cure Sam with anything known right now, but there is a way to stop him from dying long enough for us to find something new."
That caught Dean's attention. "All right," he said, teeth clenched so hard he could almost hear them grinding. "I'm listening."
"We can send his soul to some other universe over which my Father does not reign," Gabriel said. "I can keep his body alive while the other universe will keep his soul safe from Dad's little sacrificial spell, and we can take as much time as we need to find a cure. Then, once we've got a cure, we just have to pull him back in and bam! Sammy's safe." Gabriel grinned and snapped his fingers. Thankfully, nothing exploded.
"Another universe?" he asked, skepticism dripping from his words. "You mean like that crazy-ass tv land from a few years ago?"
"Nah, that was just a bunch of my own constructs keeping you trapped, not an actual other universe," Gabriel said.
Before Dean could correct him, Castiel stepped in, finally speaking. "I believe Dean is referring to a universe that I sent him and Sam to when I was… unwell." He shifted in discomfort at the memory.
The manic smile on the Trickster-archangel's face was wholly inappropriate to the trauma of the memory, in Dean's opinion. "So, you guys already know the drill? Great!"
"I did not separate their souls with the spell that I used," Cas said, giving his brother what Dean thought looked suspiciously like a warning glare.
"Well, it's not that much different," Gabriel said, wearing his Trickster grin. Dean didn't trust that grin as far as - fuck it, he didn't trust that grin anywhere, but especially not near Sam. Still, it wasn't like he had a whole lot of options.
"You sure this is safe?" he asked, hoping he was not about to make the worst mistake of his life (and given his life, that was saying something).
"It's safer than leaving him here," Gabriel replied. His eyes still sparkled, but there was power in them, too. Standing in front of Dean in the muddy entrance to an old, decrepit church and backlit by his falling sisters, Gabriel struck Dean as something wild, something capricious, powerful, and dangerous.
Dean looked to Sammy, laid out sweating and writhing on the Impala's back seats. He'd always been willing to do anything for Sam. He hoped Sam could forgive him for one more thing. "Do it," he said.