A/N: So I got off work a few hours early and thus actually had some time to write. Just a short chapter I'm afraid, in which we move my very slow plot forward a smidgen.

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Poem extract from t s eillot

Chapter Two

At the first turning of the second stair

I turned and saw below

The same shape twisted on the banister

Under the vapor in the fetid air

Struggling with the devil of the stair who wears

The deceitful face of hope and despair.

t s eillot, Ash Wensday.

It has been two earth hours since Sam fled the burning ruin of his brother's sanctuary, no thoughts for his destination but Safety.

He's lost more of himself than he had previously believed. If he's thinking of liner time as earth's and unconsciously views this house as his salvation. The years between have lulled him into a false security, and his convictions are built on unsubstantial foundations. He should not have let himself forget his previous human certainty, for it is the truth, everlasting. Proved by the note on the door.

God is nowhere.

Ben is laid out beside him, body made as new by the force of Sam's grace. He sleeps now, curled towards the warmth of Sam's leg, familiar features relaxed. Sam runs a hand through his hair and waits.

Two and a half earth hours after Sam arrived here, the door opens. When Gabriel walks in, and the small, glowing embers of his faith rekindle slightly.

Gabriel casts tired eyes from Sam, to the slumbering Ben and he sighs.

(Lucifer's bright smile as he thrusted the sword/ Michael standing still and silent/ Castiel small and lost and human.) "The mother?" He asks.

Sam looks away. "Lisa was already gone." The scene flashes between them, over shadowed by Jessica and Mary. "Dean wasn't there. I could barely even feel his imprint. Dean hasn't been there in weeks."

Gabriel hadn't asked about his brother, but that's the part Sam is the most confused about. God is one thing, but Dean is not the type of man who abandons his child. Whether he knows Ben is his, or not.

Gabriel looks troubled, more troubled than Sam's ever seen him and there is-(That first tiny meadow where he ran to from heaven/ Dean naming Gabriel as angelic/ Lucifer standing in the meeting room of a hotel) "Where's Chuck?" Gabriel asks slowly.

Sam thrusts the note at him. He does not speak or else it may be the end of him. It is all there anyway; white and crisp and bitter.

~Gone observing the vast beauty and complexity of my own glorious creation.

Also possibly fishing~

Chuck.

Gabriel crushes the note and for a moment there is an anger in him far older and more terrible than Sam's. Then he sighs again and he just looks very worn. "Of course. Silly of me, to think…"

He trails off. Sam doesn't watch the memories, they will show nothing he wants to know. He looks back down at Ben, who's breath stutters and fingers curl around the edge of Sam's shirt.

(Ben eight years old and grinning/ Gabriel handing him a stolen beer./ The bright red hand print on his brother's pale skin.) "We need Castiel." He says at last. "If Chuck's gone again and Dean's missing-" he stops at the look on Gabriel's face, "What Is it?" Sam asks.

(Michael placing a comforting and unwelcome hand on Gabriel's shoulder/ Raphael's spiteful grimace/ Chuck's face; at once condemning and forgiving.) "I went upstairs, while you were in Indiana. Castiel…No one knows where he is. He dropped off the radar after his last assignment."

For a moment neither of them speaks. Chuck has no doubt simply decided not to get involved in his children's dramas, as is his fancy. But Dean and Castiel both disappearing? That is unlikely to be a coincidence.

"Surely he wouldn't." Sam half-asks. (Castiel's haunted face under a burnt out street lamp as he finally told Sam why he cannot see Dean.) "He would have had to break the First Law. Ignored Free Will. He fought for that. Died for it. He couldn't-"

"Couldn't he?" Gabriel asks seriously, (Castiel hovering over an occupied bed in a small motel room) "You know how he is when it comes to Dean."

And Sam sees the echo of Castiel's face again; lost and longing as he gestured towards Dean's dark window.

It is too much, the thought. Because Sam has made this fundamental in his being. All that has kept him from hope-filled nights on an empty street. From brushing Dean's sleeping mind and telling him of his salvation.

If I don't, they can't.

If no angel touches Dean, then no demon can either. If Castiel has broken this accord, betrayed this trust, Sam does not know if he will be able to forgive him. Not with Lisa dead and Ben forced into this world.

"We have to find them." Sam tells Gabriel. "Even if-" he swallows, (Uriel enraged face/ Castiel calling him an abomination/ John yelling at him as he retches for the door) "There has to be a reason. And Dean needs to know, about Ben and- and Lisa."

"Yeah?" Gabriel asks, suddenly angry, and Sam tries not to tense because he knows that Gabe is not angry with him.

"How the Hell do we do that, Sammy? Castiel's hiding his trail. We can't ask for help from one of the others because the whole of bloody heaven's already on the brink of a civil war and if there's even a hint that Cas-"

He physically restrains himself and there is a long pause. (Sam and Dean spied through fire/ Kali bent over a bleeding man/ Sam as he was only three hours ago in an English church.) "I mean, seriously Sam, where the hell do we even start?" He asks.

The answer comes like a divine thing, but it is not. Sam has become, too lost to his own grace. Has locked too much of what and who he once was away. It is time he recall the human thing inside himself.

"So we don't track Castiel." He tells Gabriel in a tangle of guns and monsters and Sam Winchester, hunter. "We track Dean. And for that, I do know someone who can help us."

-T.B.C-

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