Important: This is the sequel to 'We foresee the Mercy (that's been shown my young limbs.)' also a one-shot. I suggest you read it cause this fic won't really make sense otherwise.
I'm not entirely happy with this, but it fufils it's purpose. Another longer story is coming to follow these last two called 'Won't give up the search (for the ghost in the Hall)' which will deal with many issues currently left open including Dean's side of things.
The titile for this story comes from the song Re:stacks by Bon Iver and the poem is Robert Frost. Also post 5.22 so Spoilers for that.
Disclaimer: Still, I own nothing.
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This is my excavation (and today is Kumran)
We stood a moment so in a strange world,
Myself as one his own pretense deceives;
And then I said the truth (and we moved on).
Robert Frost, A Boudless Moment.
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It isn't entirely what he expected, his new existence. He's not sure exactly what he did expect, but it wasn't this.
Heaven moves differently from Earth, from Hell. They are linier, even if Hell burns so much faster along its course.
Heaven exists existential to this, angled only along it's parameter. Sam has not been here long. On Earth he has been here such a great time.
On Earth, he is simultaneously in the Alps and deep in the Sahara. He is touching the poor villager of Kalb 200 years ago and he watches the first star travelers in their fledgling ships.
It isn't entirely what he expected, Sam's new existence. Sometimes it feels as though he has been everywhere, as though he is everywhere.
Sometimes he is on a single street, beneath a streetlight which has not worked since June.
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Gabriel, now there was something Sam really hadn't been expecting.
Mostly because Gabriel was dead, also because Gabriel was, well, Gabriel.
As a former host to Lucifer, Sam probably couldn't throw stones and yeah, Gabriel had helped save the world. But he'd also killed hundreds of people for thousands of years without any better reason than that he'd felt like it and Sam wasn't sure you should get to stay in the Archangel club after that.
He was though, the shimmer of light through his vessel, the echo of blood and sacrifice in the line of his body. He smirked at Sam in a way, which was touched with (a hundred Tuesdays and too many Wednesdays to count). "Sammy boy, you I did not expect to see in the gang of the good and the holy."
Sam tightens his hands around the scroll he is carrying (his Dad's voice refracting off of Gabriel's own; a cold 'try again' tangling up with a sneered 'you will say yes'). He knows Gabriel can see it, but he's going to pretend he can't "Yeah, well, I am."
Gabriel sighs (Sam's own face spied through fire/ a half-decayed NickLucifer grinning) "And we're working together. Joy."
Sam almost feels guilty, because yeah, Gabriel had kind of died for them, for him. But Sam would never have done so many of the things he'd done, if not for those six months, if Gabriel had not driven him half crazy with grief before Dean even died.
No matter how he atones, Sam can never truly forgive Gabriel anymore than Sam can ever truly be forgiven for being what he is.
Gabriel stands up "Fuck it" He tells Sam "Wanna get a beer first?"
On the other hand, Sam has missed human pleasures.
"Yeah Okay."
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Sam both enjoys and avoids working with Castiel.
It isn't easy, the way it is with Gabriel, though perhaps it should be. He doesn't entirely trust Gabriel after all, not always and not with humans whom he still sees as small. Gabriel has a fondness for man but Sam does not fool himself; in all his guises Gabe has never been anything even close to human.
Castiel has. Castiel allowed his power to drift away in tiny devastating pieces, gave up everything he knew and was for man. He did it because that was what was right and Castiel is Right; is truth and light and everything wondrous of God infused into single entity. Sam trusts him more than anyone, more than himself most of the time.
But there is so much between Castiel and Sam. Years and blood and a thousand tiny sacrifices. Sometimes, in their quiet revelations, their grief is an almost tangible thing- Dean and Paradise, Paradise and Dean tangled inextricably together.
And he sometimes does not like looking at Castiel; remembering the things he blindly stole and the things that were stolen in return.
And where Sam see god's glory, Castiel, looking back at Sam see's God's defilement; sees the twisted smile of his brother when he tore Castiel apart and the abhorrence of Sam's unnatural, tainted Grace.
Sam never forgets what he is. He does not need Castiel to stand as its witness.
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Chuck is God.
Sam almost wishes he could be surprised, But it made sense in a way. Alcoholic, bad-novelist and prophet Chuck. The last person even Castiel would have expected. Hiding from them even as he guided them.
God, his Father as much as John Winchester had been. Probably more so now days.
Sam is terrified.
Well he isn't really because he can't actually feel terror anymore, or anger or shame. Love. Grace burns everything up and Sam is left with only a handful of true emotions.
The memory of the others lingers though, shadows of what he thinks they were wash him in turns, like a phantom limb.
This more than anything else shows how he is wrong, why angels should be from birth. He has seen what becomes of those beings which posses both. He has seen Lucifer's pride and Michael's desperation. He has seen them screaming in the cage in the bottom of the pit.
He says as much, to Chuck, asks him why he allows him to exist at all.
Chuck surveys him with a calm benevolence that Sam can't ever quite remember from his face before. He doesn't know, if Chuck is a vessel, or if God allowed himself to be born to human form once more, or if possibly he just sparked the notion of Chuck into existence one day and then wrote him backwards into time.
"Sam." Chuck tells him "How can it be that you are anything but glorious, when I called you into being?"
Sam doesn't quite know how to answer that.
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"So what's my job? Do I have one?"(The helpless feeling of never finding the answer/ The impala pulling away from him while he's stuck at Pastor Jim's again/ the ridged steel of the Cage all around him) Sam asked.
Gabriel glanced his way (the flash of a trumpet, bright in the sun/ blood dripping down the arm of a young girl/ cowering men in a field.) " 'Course you do." He drops back amused.
Sam leaned to the side (finding an old book under Dad's pillow/ A letter with the Stanford mark) "what is it?" he asked.
"It's kinda a big one kid." And Sam getting better with the image-language of angels. It's like body language with humans in a way, something to be noted and cheeked but often not clear enough for an actual answer- "You, are the Angel of Mercy."
Sam chokes for a moment (fire everywhere/ the crumble of ceiling plaster/ the agony of Lucifer defiling his body) and almost cries out a denial. Because Sam is wrong, Sam's an abomination, a slap in the face to God (whatever God himself thinks) and he shouldn't be an angel at all, let alone the Angel of Mercy, which is about compassion and understanding and beni- He remembers suddenly Adam, the mindless rage. The feel of twisting and the way his soul spluttered out.
Gabriel looks at him consolatory, seeing everything. Sam shuts his mouth and says nothing. Mercy, he has learned, can be terrible too.
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The year Sam is born he is standing outside a burning Synagogue in Palestine, the rage and terrified crowd churning around him. Screams for water and for blood blurring into one another and Sam knows this is a war that will not end for a long time.
A child attempts to hurtle past him, his dark eyes wide as he makes for the burning place of worship. He screams when Sam captures him, lifting him up into unyielding arms, a raw gabble of Hebrew.
Mother, the child screams; Mother, Mother, Father!
Sam tightens his grip around the boy, the picture of another burning woman and boy not much younger than this one. Even a millena; later he does not always understand non-interference.
"Little one." He says softly, grace lilting as he replies in the child's native tong "They are gone. They are with the Great Father, but you must not follow them yet."
Nearly five decades from now, this child will be an old man and it will be he, among others who will end this war. Now, eyes wild with grief and anger, he screams obscenities, calls for the death of all Islam, demons from hell and shame of the Lord.
Sam looks at him and sees everything he desires, all the blood, every sin he will commit until the earth once more takes him.
"I want them to burn." The child yells at him and Sam nods. "I know," he tells him "And I forgive you for it."
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Sam stands under a streetlight that hasn't worked in a year, the blob having blown out mysteriously one night in June, while a small family settled for their evening meal across the street.
Sam has stood here many nights, sometimes when it snowed and once in the aching heat of summer. He has watched the passage of time, when he can, seen the family fight and play and share grief.
He is glad, so glad. That Dean has managed to do what he could not. That Dean has chosen life, even in his absence.
He hears the beat of wings, too vast and tiny for the human ear, and when Castiel settles beside him, Sam can see the loss, the ache, echoed in the other's expressionless face.
Dean and Paradise, Paradise and Dean. Linked inextricably together.
"Sam." Castiel says," You were granted one night. Yet it has been many. You must stop this. You must not come here." The moonlight spills across (the crush of Dean's features in a hospital room/ Unlocking the door of the panic room.)
Sam bites his lip (a blank collage application form/the tilt if Ruby's jaw/ cheap beer Gabriel stole warm on his tong.) "I never enter the dwelling. He has never seen me, never even suspected." He pauses (a small toy solder tucked in an ashtray/ Falling) "He's my brother Cas. He's still…He'll always be my brother."
Castiel shifts and Sam almost smiles when he sees the reflection of Dean ranting about something, his past self not listening. Stull graveyard flashes suddenly and he turns away. "Do you think," Cas asks him slowly "That it is I who imposes these laws on you Samuel?"
Sam is silent, because yeah, he kind of had. But it seems really dumb now he sees Castiel's face as he watches the dark windows of Dean's house. Sees the echo of everything Dean meant ripple around Castiel.
Paradise has never been so far away.
"It is.." Castiel begins then stops as if trying to find his words. "This is what Dean choose. You choose to Fall and in doing so you were granted divinity. Dean chose freedom, freedom..not peace."
He stretches his hand, palm out towards the house "You- We, cannot enter his dwelling, we may not approach him, nor tread apron his slumbering dreams. For us, Dean Winchester is untouchable, just as to those of Hell he is untouchable. No herald of God, or disciple of Lucifer may entreat him. His choice was to be free of us. And you are of us now Samuel, whatever humanity you cling to."
Sam blinks (Lucifer and Michael grasping and thrashing and dragging each other further down.) "He doesn't even know I'm alive." He whispers.
"There are things I too, would tell Dean Winchester." Castiel answers "Things the would equally easy his human struggles and grant him respite. But he did not choose peace, he choose freedom and in this, in these things, Human Will stands even above the powers of God."
And Sam understands at last, the loss between them; not as individual competing hurts but as a singular shared suffrage. He wonders if Castiel has always known and seen it this way. If, like Sam himself, it is only on occasion that he just can't bare to look at Sam and remember. If he even questions Sam place in heaven the way Sam has always believed.
Castiel sees something of this in his silence. The half-memories striking him suddenly for he reaches out a hand to Sam, sorrow tucked ever slightly to the corner of his mouth. "If I have ever made you believe I think you to be in anyway undeserving of salvation, I apologies. Yours is a glory unmatched by any of our father's children. You are the bridge between our brothers and humanity that has been long needed and your existence is a miracle not an abomination." He pauses then asks even softer, "Dean you say, is still your brother, but am I not now also?"
"Yes." Sam agrees, unhesitatingly. "Yes, of course you are, Castiel."
Dean is barred from him and it hurts more than Sam can truly express, but the future is bright still and Sam too has unexpectably found himself a family and a place.
Sam too, can choose life even in Dean's absence.
And he thinks, his brother would be glad.
-Fin-
review? Please? Pretty please?