Lustra: A Supernatural Season 9 AU
Episode 901
"Earth Angel"

THE ROAD SO FAR

"Do you have any idea what it's like to watch your brother, just-"

"Hold on, hold on." Dean put a hand out, to pause the moment, to stop time, give himself a chance to think, to absorb what Sam was saying here. "You seriously think that? Because none of it- none of it is true."

Sam took a shuddering breath and turned away. Turned away from Dean, toward Crowley and toward death, and his face was screwed up in agony that Dean suspected had little to do with blood loss or fatigue or whatever had cut up his face while Dean had been off playing scavenger hunt with Cas. Sam turned away, and Dean needed him back.

"Listen man, I know we've - we've had our disagreements. Hell I know I've said some junk that set you back on your heels. But Sammy. Come on." And he could hear he was begging, and he didn't care. Maybe begging was what Sam needed. Maybe desperation would bring him back. "I killed Benny to save you. I'm willing to let this bastard, and all the other black eyed sons of bitches that killed Mom walk - because of you. Don't you dare think that there is anything past or present that I would put in front of you. It has never been like that, ever."

Sam looked away again. Again.

"I need you to see that. I'm begging you."

Sam looked down at his hand; blood dripped - too much blood, and Sam had been wavering on his feet even before they'd gotten to this abandoned little church. Dean waited. And he catalogued every little bump and bruise and broken bit of his brother, and he made a promise to patch him up and to tell him every day how stupid it is to throw your life away when people need you goddammit, people love you.

"I don't-" Sam's voice came out croaking. He licked his lips. Looked at Crowley, then the floor. "Dean, I-" When he looked back up, his eyes were so dark with wetness, and sunken into his face with sickness, and hopelessness draped around his shoulders like a blanket. He shook his head. "I know. I know, it's true, Dean. You've been a - good brother to me, but - that doesn't mean I deserve it." He opened his mouth to say something else, looked lost, hollow, hopeful. Then he swallowed whatever it was and said instead: "I'm sorry."

Dean blinked. And lead was in his legs, cold and heavy with refusal, denial. And before Dean could cross the space between himself and Sam, Sam had turned, laid his hand so gently over Crowley's mouth while Crowley cried, Sam's face upturned there, with the crucifix looming over them. And the words of exorcism fell from Sam's lips like a prayer:

"Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, hanc animam redintegra, lustra... lustra."

Sam took a steadying breath and without letting Crowley go, without moving because, Dean thought, he might not be able to go on if he had, Sam whispered: "Kah. Nah. Ahm." And a big breath: "... Dar."

And then quiet; it was done.

"Sam?" Dean's voice was too loud for the silent sanctuary. But he called Sam's name again as he rushed through the space between them and he let it echo in his head as an accusation: you didn't try hard enough. What oh what have you done?

Sam dropped to his knees at Crowley's side, his head bowed into the demon's chest. His hand fell into Crowley's lap. He listed to the side dangerously, and then Dean was there, hands on Sam's shoulders to guide him to the floor, and if he mouthed or whispered or screamed Sam's name over and over and over, he didn't know it.

His little brother's eyes were closed. His mouth slightly agape as he lay there among the broken glass and the wayward leaves and Dean patted Sam's cheek to wake him, he petted Sam's sweat-damp hair to wake him, he hoisted Sam up to his chest where he rocked him and he tried so hard to wake him and yet-

"Uh, sorry to ruin the moment, but-"

Crowley's voice came through Dean's fuzzed hearing muddled, but bitchy. Dean lowered his head to Sammy's shoulder and shushed Sam's name over and over.

"I don't, uh, I don't seem to be exactly what you might call cured."

Dean stopped rocking Sam's body. Stopped with his hand on the back of Sam's cold, clammy neck. Blinked the blear from his eyes. "What?"

"Cured. You know. My course of antibiotics - doesn't seem to have cleared up my case of demon VD."

In his arms, against his chest, Sam coughed thickly, and then he stirred, and Dean pushed him back to look into his face.

"Sam?"

"Dean. What happened?"

"Nothin', that's what happened." Dean gave him a little shake, to get him to focus. "Sammy, look at me."

Sam's eyebrows drew together and he took a shaky breath. "I'm alive." He looked stunned, and more - disappointed, distraught. "Then it didn't work." He looked at Dean. "Why didn't it work? It was supposed to-"

"Shh, come on. Let's just appreciate the fact that your suicide mission failed, okay?"

Sam was shaking his head. "No, no. I can't-"

"Yes you can, Sam. We can figure out some other way okay."

"But how will I-?" He cut himself off with a hiss through his teeth, and he brought his hands out between the two of them and together they watched the golden glow recede from his arms. He looked up and answered the question in Dean's face with a one-shouldered shrug and spoke through gritted teeth. "It's still in me. You don't know how this feels."

"It's okay, I gotcha. It's gonna be okay, Sammy."

Sam frowned, but he nodded, and he allowed Dean to help him to his feet. But Dean managed to get him only a couple of steps toward a pew before Sam buckled again, crying out and clutching at his chest, his shoulder, at Dean, grasping for purchase and choking. He didn't - or couldn't - answer any of Dean's frantic questions about what was wrong, but Dean didn't stop asking. He kept asking and he kept murmuring because it kept Sammy present while Dean lugged him out of the chapel toward the car. "I gotcha, little brother. You're gonna be just fine."

Sam slid to the muddy ground beside the car, too gangly and boneless for Dean to be able to support him anymore, and Dean collapsed next to him, to shake him, to keep him conscious. "Sam? Sam!" He felt Sam's hand come up over his own, pressing it to Sam's chest like it was a lifeline, felt the shaking there, the rigid agony there, the thumping heart. "Cas? Castiel, where the hell are you!"

He looked up, although he had stopped looking for Cas to answer his prayers long before. He looked up for an answer because Cas owed him -

And the clouds in the night sky, black against a blacker night, lit up in spots, in streaks, and they were falling, they were falling-

Oh no, Cas. No.

The impact of one of them into the nearby lake jerked Sam back to wakefulness. Dean heard his breathless question: What's happening? and replied, "The angels. They're falling."

NOW

"What's happening?"

Kevin looked up from the tablet to the map lit up in red in the center of the room. "No change," he said. He looked over at Dean and shook his head. "You look like crap."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Well compared to you, I'm a friggin prom queen. You hungry? Makin' some dinner for Sam."

Kevin frowned. "How is he?"

Dean made a face and turned toward the kitchenette. "Whiny."

Kevin nodded and looked back at the tablet. Whiny. Right. "Maybe I'll go check on him," he suggested.

Dean half turned to him, to regard him askance. "He's sleeping."

"But I-"

"Just leave him alone, okay?"

"Dean-"

"Just leave my brother alone, Kevin." Dean was suddenly pissed, and Kevin had kinda got the idea this was usual, but he'd never gotten used to it, locked away in solitude on Garth's houseboat. No wonder Sam was tired all the time. But Dean settled himself quickly enough and said: "He doesn't need you poking around. He needs... sleep. And. Soup."

Dean dropped his hands and stared at the floor, like he was willing Kevin to drop it already, and Kevin frowned. Sleep and soup, huh. "Sure," Kevin said. "Then maybe I need to ask you."

Dean knelt at a cabinet door and clattered some pots around looking for the one he wanted. "Ask me what?"

Kevin took a deep breath. "What happened? I gotta know. You gotta tell me. Something went wrong, and I deserve to know-"

"It just didn't work, okay? Don't worry about it. We'll handle it, Sam and me."

Kevin shook his head. "You did something wrong, I know it. I - have worked my ass off for you. My mother is dead because of you. You have to tell me what went wrong. You owe me that."

"Kevin goddammit-!"

"It was me," Sam said from the steps that led down to his bedroom. His voice was gravel; he looked like hell. It was hard for Kevin to imagine him ever "whining" for soup, and he decided that Dean was an asshole for downplaying it. But then Dean was saying whoa whoa whoa hey and basically sprinted across the large room to give Sam a hand up the stairs and sit him down at the conference table, and he shot Kevin a murderous look that said stow it or they'll never find all of your organs and Kevin decided Dean was - okay, an asshole, but also serious about his brother's well-being.

"What do you mean, it was you?" Kevin risked, glancing at Dean, who scowled so intensely Kevin thought his face might blackhole in on itself.

Sam sighed heavily, hands together on the table, one thumb ghosting over the bandaged palm of the other hand. He shrugged after a moment - gathering his thoughts, or just the energy to shrug, Kevin didn't know. "The exorcism was... as textbook as these things get, but... It-"

"Sam," Dean warned from the kitchen.

"Dean," Sam shot back. "He deserves to know."

"Sammy, stop, it's not-"

"It didn't work," Sam said.

"Dammit, Sam-"

The clatter in the kitchen went up and Dean's voice went low and curse-filled and Kevin rolled his eyes and watched Sam as he attempted to explain.

"I swear, we did everything the way it was supposed to be done. The first two - I felt them working, so I know we didn't screw up with either of them. And after I started with Crowley, after that first, uh, dose, I got the glowy goodness, so I think we were on the right track for the third one, but-"

Kevin was nodding. "But you didn't finish it?"

"No, I did. I mean, I tried."

The clattering in the kitchen died down and Dean came out, wiping his hands on a towel.

Sam spared him a look, but went on. "But I'm - I'm not-"

"It was supposed to kill you, Sam. What were you thinkin'?" Dean stood with his hands on his hips, looking for all the world like a mother, like Kevin's mother had looked that time Kevin had attempted to be one of those teenagers who stays out after curfew.

Sam shot a look at Dean, anger flashing, lines of his face tight. "It's one life. For everyone's. This isn't exactly new ground for us, Dean."

Kevin raised his brows and looked at Dean. Dean looked white. "What?" Kevin said.

"Yeah, well why's it always gotta be your life, Sam!"

Sam twisted his mouth up and stared at the table, bitter and drawn. He mumbled his response and Kevin didn't think Dean had heard it because he didn't explode or even address it, but Kevin thought he heard Sam say, "You know why."

"It's not worth it, Sam. Hell, it wasn't worth it then."

Sam opened his mouth to retort, but he thought better, apparently, of what he'd been about to say, and instead he said, "Yes it was."

"Guys," Kevin interrupted. "Guys. Wow. Can we just deal with one apocalypse at a time?"

"This isn't the apocalypse, Kevin," Dean snapped, and he went back into the kitchen where the soup was probably boiling over.

"What crawled up his ass?" Kevin grumbled, turning back to Sam.

Sam was staring at the tabletop. "He's right," he said vacantly. "This isn't the apocalypse. It just might as well be."

Kevin stared, but in his defense, he tried not to. He didn't know what the Winchesters were talking about half the time they talked to each other over him; he might as well have been a chatty houseplant. But often enough they talked around the thing that had changed them both beyond what the bonds of brothers could reasonably bear. He hadn't been a prophet yet, and he feared how the prophet who'd seen that part of their lives had met his end. The way both Sam and Dean looked at him sometimes, like he was fragile and needed protecting, or sometimes like they shouldn't get attached because he was replaceable.

And if this wasn't the apocalypse, falling angels and everything, what was?

But then Dean was coming back out with a big bowl of soup which he set down in front of Sam with enough force that some slopped out onto the table, and Sam jumped and woke a little, and Kevin realized Sam had drifted off with his eyes half open while Kevin had been staring right at him. Dean rolled his eyes at the way Sam gasped and glared at him, and muttered sorry and squeezed Sam's shoulder awkwardly, and he said, "I need a beer. You better eat that whole bowl."

"Fine," Sam said, breathy.

Kevin frowned. "Dean-"

"Zip it. Yours is in the kitchen. Get it before it congeals."

"I swear I was only gone a minute!" Kevin sputtered.

"Save it," Dean growled. He was at Sam's side, taking his pulse, patting his cheek. "Sammy, Sam, wake up buddy."

Sam was slumped over onto the table, soup pushed aside - pushed, not knocked, not haphazardly flailed - and Sam's arm was stretched out under his head, and his other arm was bent for stability, and Dean thought he had probably just laid his head down in exhaustion.

Except he didn't wake up when Dean came in yelling about having to go on a beer run and did Sam want some ice cream or lettuce or -

And he didn't wake up when Dean patted his shoulder, and he didn't wake up when Dean shoved the chair next to him away in a clatter and grasped his shoulder to shake him.

But he was breathing and his pulse was steady, so there was that.

"What's wrong with him?" Kevin said, sitting across the table with his soup.

Dean bit back a remark on the audacity of sitting there eating soup when Sam was in terrible trouble, because it would come out mean and unhelpful and really, Sam wasn't in terrible trouble. He was just... sleeping.

So instead, Dean said, "I don't know. Nothing." He dragged the chair back to the table and sat in it, facing Sam, and he tilted Sam's face toward him by the chin. Dean glanced at Kevin to find the prophet watching carefully. No way to be smooth about it, but he tried anyway; he pulled down on Sam's bottom lip, brushed against the gumline, took stock of Sam's teeth. They were white enough, but in his cheek where a little drool was already pooling, rusty pink. Dean swore.

"But that isn't exactly new," Kevin said. "Right?"

Dean frowned at him. "No," he said, wiping his thumb on his jeans. "But I was hoping... I don't know. I was hoping it was over. Come on, help me get him to his room."

Kevin looked from Dean to Sam, slumped over and like a full foot and a half taller than the little prophet boy. "Yeah right."

"Suck it up, brain trust." Dean got to his feet and ducked under Sam's arm, hoisting him to his feet. "Get over here and get his other arm."

Together they managed to finagle Sam halfway to the little stairs before the jostling finally did wake him, a little.

"Whass?" he slurred. "Guys?"

Dean resecured his arm when Sam tried to push him away. "You're going to bed, little man. Come on, step. Step."

But Kevin did let go when Sam pushed at him, and Sam stumbled without the support, nearly taking Dean with him.

"Kevin, what the hell?" Dean grumbled.

"It's okay, Dean," Sam breathed. He dragged his head up to look at Kevin. Dean rolled his eyes at the obvious emotion in them. "Kevin, I- I'm so sorry. I didn't-"

Kevin twisted his mouth up. "Look, whatever. It's not like you knew it wouldn't work or something-"

"Knock it off, both of you," Dean said. And he gave Kevin a look over Sam's shoulder that promised a talk later, and Kevin shut his mouth. "Come on, dude," he said then to Sam and got him the rest of the way down the stairs.

Back upstairs, Dean leaned on the table into Kevin's space. But before he could get a single word out, Kevin said:

"You'd be pissed too, if your world got turned upside down and your mom and everyone you knew got killed, and it was for nothing because we had the wrong guy on the case the whole time."

Dean narrowed his eyes and he thought he saw Kevin flinch a little, and good, because Dean was feeling dangerous and violent and he really needed that beer he never got. "Sam is not the wrong guy. We don't know what happened. Maybe you screwed up, you think of that?"

"I didn't screw up."

Dean growled down every mean-spirited thing he wanted to say about the shrimp. "Whatever. But if you try to lay this at his feet one more time-"

Kevin blew out a breath and sat back in his chair. "I'm sorry. I'm tired, and-"

He massaged at his temple and Dean shook his head. "Headache?"

"Yeah."

"Tablet stuff?"

"Yeah. Look. I'll lay off Sam, okay. He said he got the glowies and I guess that means it was working, at least up til the end- I mean, the last part," he edited hastily, possibly catching the scowl Dean aimed at him at the mention of the end. "So, okay, yes. He's the right guy, but." Kevin sighed. "We still don't know what went wrong. I know I got the translation right."

Dean relented and dropped into a chair next to Kevin, scrubbed a hand over his face. "We'll figure it out. In the meantime, this trial crap is still kicking Sam's ass. I don't suppose you found anything that can put the whole thing on pause in case of emergencies, didja?"

"No. Sorry."

"Well add it to your list. I'm going to go get some supplies. Need anything?"

Kevin looked down at his soup and wrinkled his nose. "Some tofu dogs? Vegetables that aren't just romaine lettuce?"

Dean rolled his eyes. "Jesus you're both freaks."

Dean sat on the hood of the Impala at the end of the lane, staring up into a sky that looked like it was missing a few hundred stars. Probably his imagination; he couldn't get the image of streaking light out of his head. It had only been a couple of hours, but the sky was back to normal already, and it was obscene.

"Cas," he prayed. It was pointless; Cas hadn't shown up any of the dozens of times he'd prayed since Sam collapsed at the abandoned church. But he tried anyway, because Sam was getting beaten into the ground and now there was no endpoint to it, no final trial, no It's finished, we're done. No chance to survive the way Sam had said he wanted back at the Cassity ranch, a wife, kids, grandkids - nothing. "Castiel you son of a bitch."

"What did he mean, it was supposed to kill you?"

Sam looked up at Kevin from his bed. He hadn't dropped off after Dean had settled him in his bed. It was too hard to sleep in the windowless room, alone, in the dark where shadows could be anything. Failing to finish the trials, maybe, had triggered some unpleasant side effects Sam wasn't ready to share with the class. He was sitting up in bed, reading through some manuscripts on Veridta killings in the southwestern US from 1893, but he lay them aside and turned to sit with his feet on the floor.

"Um," Sam said, folding his hands into his lap. He shrugged. "The final trial was supposed to include the 'ultimate sacrifice,' so Dean says Naomi says."

"For the person doing them to die," Kevin said, nodding like he'd suspected.

"You knew?"

"No, but it makes sense in retrospect with some of the- well. Anyway," Kevin said, rambling and nervous.

Sam laughed a little at him and waved him into the room. If the kid was willing to talk to him, it was a win. If Kevin could forgive him for failing, that was a win. If only he wasn't always in need of someone's forgiveness. "It doesn't matter now," he said.

Kevin came fully into the room and pulled over the little desk chair. "You knew, didn't you."

"I suspected. But like I said, it doesn't matter. Kevin, this is what we do."

"Yeah, you mentioned," Kevin snapped.

Sam raised his brows and held out a hand to calm the kid down. But his hand shook and he dropped it to his knee again. "Look, Kevin-"

"I'm sick of being out of the loop- And don't say anything. I'm not stupid. I know whatever it was, it was big, and you obviously don't want to talk about it. I'm just saying, it seems like you've done this world-saving thing before. So I guess I'm just looking for a little guidance, trying to figure out what went wrong."

Sam shrugged again and heaved a sigh. "Maybe like you said. I'm not the guy..."

"You're the guy. I'm sorry I said that. I'm sorry you heard me say it. I was pissed. But Dean-"

"Dean's - He's-"

"It's okay. He's your brother. I get it. But that's not what I was going to say. I was going to say he's right. You got the glowy, you said you felt it working. I don't think any of it would work if it wasn't possible for you to do it at all. So whatever this is-"

"Kevin." Sam pursed his lips. The last thing he wanted to do was admit the real reason he suspected Kevin was right about him, that he had been infected in infancy by a curse that ran through his veins. That he had evil inside of him, that he only hoped the trials were cleansing from him. But the evil was too deep, because he had given in to it with Ruby and he had paid only part of the penance for that because he'd been pulled from the cage and he was supposed to have been there for eternity. He was supposed die over and over for what he'd done, and he had, but not enough not enough and a sudden sick flash of red and blinding white and a thousand thousand deaths scent of metal and brimstone a fountain of laughter so familiar and distinctive -

He sucked in a breath and he must have gone white or briefly comatose because Kevin was shaking his shoulders and saying his name and muttering about how Dean would kill him, and Sam pushed him away. "I'm okay. I'm fine." He looked at Kevin, got his bearings, his breath, patted Kevin's hand still on his shoulder and then gently lifted it away because the touch was too much just now when he felt like he was being frozen from the inside out and also like he was so feverish he could melt. He got his head back under him, found his train of thought. Telling Kevin that he was wrong about him, that he wasn't the right guy. "I don't-"

"Trust me." It was unsettling how paternal Kevin sounded. "Trust me, Sam. I'm the prophet. I am telling you, no part of it would work if the whole thing couldn't work. So something went wrong and I'm going to find out what. Okay? And this won't have been for nothing." He gestured to Sam's general body area, and Sam scratched absently at his chest, self-conscious.

"Honey!" Dean called from the base doors, down a hall and safely far from Sam's room. "I'm hoo-oome!"

Sam and Kevin frowned at each other.

"Don't tell him I was-" Kevin began, but Sam nodded.

"I've been asleep the whole time," Sam said.

Kevin frowned at him, but Sam warned him with a look and repeated "the whole time" and when Kevin left, Sam exhaled.

He was tired. Tired in his bones, and he knew tired. He was old frenemies with tired. He and tired were practically lovers. Tired meant you were still alive, meant you had worked for something, earned it. Tired was something he had taken pride in, even if it had nearly killed him, even if Dean thought he was giving up.

There was a shout up on the main floor, Dean's rough gravel although Sam couldn't make out the words, and then a shuffle in the hall as Dean found Kevin there. Not fast enough, Kev.

"I thought I told you-"

"I swear, I was just checking on him."

"You listen here you little shrimp. I don't know if I'm just not making myself crystal here or what, but you are under no circumstances to shake his tree, got it? Have you seen the guy lately? He can't even walk to his room under his own power. He's sick, and weak, and I have enough to worry about without you making it worse."

Kevin mumbled something Sam couldn't hear, but then Dean was saying: "Pain in my ass, is what," and Sam didn't want to hear any more.

So he curled back up in bed and laid his head down on the pillow and when he heard Dean's footsteps, he closed his eyes and waited for the knock on his door. The footsteps stopped. Dean didn't knock, but Sam heard him come into the room. Felt him gather the pages Sam had been studying - dammit - and shuffle them into a stack, and then he felt Dean's hand smooth the blanket over his chest and Sam thought about "waking up" then, but he didn't want to talk, and he didn't want to listen, so he shifted a little and settled back into "sleep" and heard Dean sigh heavily before he finally left the room.

When Sam opened his eyes again, the manuscript pages were gone. A beer and a granola bar were on his bedside table, along with a couple of tylenol.

Castiel stared. Above him, his sisters and brothers fell, shrieking in agony and terror at a frequency Castiel could no longer hear. The fire that surrounded them as they plummeted, Castiel knew, was a mile across, a wingspan across, but the full expanse of that fire burned with colors he had lost the ability to see.

So small and silent they were as they fell, mouths open, eyes shut, fearful and desolate and it was all his fault, again, again.

Trusted the wrong person, again, again.

And he doubled up on the earth again, heaved what he had not yet already heaved from his mortal guts, the sick squelch of them inside him, the bursting beating of that heart he had never paid attention to, the feeling of hunger and nausea which fought inside him, the well of emotion and the attempt to control it which warred for dominance.

He lay in the dirt, again. A stumble of miles at a time, and then the dirt where he belonged. A stumble again, and then the dirt. He painted himself with it, to hide himself from shame. That didn't work. He cleaned himself off in a running river to wash his sins from him, and that didn't work. He found and murdered a doe and her fawn to prove his loyalty to heaven, a blood sacrifice, because that had always ever been the skeleton key in times of doubt, blood blood blood.

That didn't work.

"Father, please," he said.

That didn't work.

"Adonai," he breathed. And then: "Iad... Enay! La chia de gonoad norom!" And he fell to his knees before a silent father he had long given up on but had never forgotten.

On his back in a field of mud, rained down upon by the water hundreds of burning falling angels had drawn from the air, Castiel despaired. He was so light now, without them. His wings, the boundless energy of them constantly pressing down upon his electromagnetic field. The grace which had supported them pulled out of him like sick from a wound, and he felt as though he could be borne up into the atmosphere without them, spiralled out into nothingness without them, without the weight they carried inside them.

But he felt somehow more sane without them. Something was missing now, without his grace, and he could think so clearly. His heart, the traitorous thing, beat away now without that disconnect that told him he was wrong to feel so strongly, to disobey, to love even though it was in their programming, wasn't it? To love these little human things? Why had it been so forbidden?

And it occurred to Castiel that if anyone would help him, it was one of these humans. "Dean," he said aloud, laying there in the dirt. Surely one of them would answer his prayers. "Dean," he said again, more insistently. But Dean perhaps did not forgive him his sins, even after he had tried to make amends, even after he had taken on Sam's madness, his pain and torment - what he had done to Sam, oh Sam. "Sam," he said then. "Sam please. Help me please. I don't know what to do."

Sam had drifted. Despite his best efforts to stay awake, he had drifted into a doze deep enough for nightmares, too light for appreciable restedness. He dreamed of some cold cold space, some long abandoned city crawling with things that wanted to kill him. He dreamt of being the thing that wanted to kill. He dreamt of his brother, speaking to him with hatred dripping from his tongue in blood. He dreamt of agony. He dreamt of weight, and then weightlessness, and then desperation and fire and terror as he fell -

And he sat up in his bed, gasping, gasping, clutching onto the sweat-damp sheet. Jesus.

And that was that for sleep. He palmed the tylenols from his nightstand and tottered to his bathroom sink for a handful of water to down them with. Cool, clean, real. And then Dean was at his doorway, looking worried, and Sam wondered whether he'd said something in his sleep. He scrubbed his damp hand over his face like he had just been washing up, but Dean eyed the nightstand where the pills had been and shook his head and said, "Think you might be up for a real meal now, princess?"

Sam nodded. "Yeah. Yeah. I'll be right up."

Dean gave him the stink eye and left, but when Sam stepped out of his door ten minutes later, having washed his face for real and brushed his teeth and changed out of his sweaty clothes, Dean was leaning against the wall at the bottom of the stairs that led up to the main floor of the compound.

He didn't say anything as he took Sam's arm, and Sam was too beat to complain and unsteady besides, and it wouldn't change anything if he made a token attempt to shrug Dean off, because there was about a 30% chance Sam would fall flat on his face before making it to the table and that was too high a chance to risk his pride on. And of course, the last thing he wanted was to pitch a fit about it and then fall ass over end anyway - and have to listen to the annoyed grumble as Dean picked him back up from the floor and had to help him after all and tell him I told you so and roll his eyes at the pain in the ass.

"Hey Dean," he said instead, as Dean hovered around him, ready to catch him if he stumbled. "You try Cas again? I'm getting a little worried."

"Son of a bitch isn't answering," Dean grumbled.

Sam lowered himself into a chair and looked up as Kevin set a bowl of reheated soup in front of him. Seriously. When were they going to get that all this crap tasted like vomit to him, rotting meat, burned flesh, dusty bloody bones, ashes of cities, decaying organs, atrophied dead limbs he couldn't get rid of but had been forced to carry, to use, to see, to feel- He sniffed the soup and tried to smile and he knew he failed because Kevin frowned and Dean rolled his eyes.

"You've been trying him?" Sam said, getting them back on task and off his back.

"Yeah. No dice. Maybe he's dead..." Dean drained his beer and went to get another.

"Way to think positive," Sam said. Then he called after Dean: "Maybe his cell is dead."

Dean poked his head out of the kitchen. "His cell."

Sam quirked a brow. "Yeah..." he said slowly, glancing at Kevin. "His cellular telephone?"

"Don't get smart."

"Dean. Did you not call him on his phone?"

Dean gaped.

"You idiot," Sam said, reaching for his own phone and hitting #2 on the speeddial. "You've been praying this whole time? Oh man- Cas! Cas, thank God." On the other end of the line, Cas sounded distant and disoriented.

"Sam, you heard my prayer. Thank you, thank you. I don't deserve-"

"Cas, where are you? Are you okay?"

Dean came into the room, leaned on the table, beer forgotten. Sam put the phone on speaker and set it on the table.

"I'm not sure, I - I'm okay. But I'm not sure where I am. Help me, I don't know what to do. They're all - they're all - it's my fault-"

"Calm down, Cas. It's gonna be okay. Can you get here?"

"I - No."

"Okay. We're gonna come get you, but we need to know where you are."

Dean leaned in. "Cas, you sure you're okay? We saw-"

"Dean?"

Dean shrugged at Sam. Sam nudged the phone toward Dean and sat back. Cas was still alive and finding that out had given him some energy, but Cas had asked for Dean and that was permission to stand down. He blew out a breath in relief.

But Cas didn't go on. Dean rolled his eyes.

"Uh, yeah?"

There was a muffled sound on the other end of the line. Cas didn't respond for long enough that Sam was worried he'd dropped the phone or passed out or-

"Sam."

The word was drawn out in agony or despair and it hurt Sam's heart to hear it, and that it was directed at him was worse. He and Cas were friends, but they didn't have what Dean and Cas had. Sam would always be the abomination to Cas, and when Cas accepted him as a friend, tried to help him, it was always in spite of that, and always for Dean's sake. And Sam was okay with that. He had earned no better than that. He had earned much worse. Sam looked up at Dean to find his brother similarly surprised. (And that hurt too, let's be honest. No one expected Sam to be the one someone would turn to for help. He couldn't even help himself.)

Sam swallowed and blinked and realized several seconds had passed. He licked his lips and leaned forward. "I'm here, Cas. I need you to follow some instructions. Are you in a safe area right now?"

"I believe I am."

"Okay, then I need you to turn on your GPS." He talked Cas through turning on his phone's GPS while Kevin retrieved his laptop from where he'd left it at the little study table in the other room. "All right, Cas. I want you to get to a road and stay put. We've got your signal and we're going to get to you. It looks like you're a couple hours from here. And don't worry if you need to move to stay safe. We're tracking you."

There was a sound on the other end of the line, something Sam was reluctant to label a sob, because that would mean Cas was crying, and that wasn't a good sign at all.

"Okay. Okay. Thank you, Sam. I'm so glad you're alive."

The call disconnected. Sam stared at the phone. His eyes watered.

I'm so glad you're alive.