A/N: So I maybe was writing when I should have been studing…Still you get a 3000 word chapter for it, right?
Details from Tall Tales and Hammer from Gods sourced from Supernatural Wiki.
Disclaimer: I own Nothing. Poem extract from Ts Eliot.
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Chapter Three -
Dedicated to Nephtys Rayesh, thank you for all your wonderful support. XD.
And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth.
TS Eliot, Ash Wednesday
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"So" Sam stalled, shifting the still unconscious Ben to a more comfortable position "You want to go in first?"
Gabriel turns slightly panicked eyes on him. (A muddy truck pulling to a stop./ Sam's face drawn and pleading/ A wooden stake hurtling towards his chest) "NO! Are you mad? I'm a trickster and he's Bobby Singer!"
Sam's mouth thins, Stull and the harsh snap of Bobby's spine falls between them.
"He knows you're an archangel Gabriel." Sam tells him patiently "He's not going to stake you. In fact, any reaction you get will probably be a hell of a lot better than mine. The last time we saw each other, I was possessed by Lucifer and I killed him."
Emotional blackmail does not work with Gabriel however, and Ben is getting heavy, never mind Sam's inhuman strength. "Technically he can't really hurt either of us." He compromises. "So just together, yeah?"
Gabriel laughs, (Dean dressed in a white lab coat/ Castiel perched on the lip of the Great Sphinx/ Sam irritably sipping a warm beer.) "Oh Sammy." He tells him "Not even if your life depended on it."
Grumbling Sam goes forward first. Gabriel really is a selfish asshole, no matter how amusing his apparent fear of Bobby Singer is.
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Bobby is sitting in his kitchen, a whisky dulling the raw aches left from his latest hunt, when he first hears the soft drift of voices up his driveway.
"So tell me, if this place is so covered in Enochian that you can't even sense it with grace, how exactly do you expect to get in?"
The first voice is unknown; a light, sarcastic tenor that raises the hair on Bobby's neck in suspicion. The words it is speaking don't help matters. Knowledge of his Enochain? Sensing with grace? Bobby doesn't like angels at all and he likes them even less when they know where he lives.
"Well actually." Another voice replies, so familiar it's like a soccer punch to the gut, "You walk in. Don't forget these wards were set up to accommodate Cas. So you can't find it and you certainly can't just zap in, but if you already know where it is…"
Bobby doesn't hear anymore because he's already grabbed his shotgun (for what little good it will do him) and is slamming open the screen door.
If he's going out, he's going out fighting.
They are halfway to the house and when he sees him, Bobby recognizes Gabriel immediately from the unsuccessful hunt at Springfield University a decade ago. He's of course heard about the incident at the Elysian Fields Hotel, and Gabriel's ultimate sacrifice, but whether the angel had been on their side Bobby has never entirely decided. He is back in any case, which indicates some deal has been made. Resurrection never comes for free.
And then there is the thing next to Gabriel, which looks like the boy Bobby used to know, the same wide-eyed stare. The slightly down-turned mouth that Bobby remembers from those final two years spent lingering on the edge of a dark place.
But this creature, like every other that has falsely worn this face, is not quite right in the skin. Has failed to catch some slight details, which should linger in the expressions.
Bobby raises his shotgun. It's not the first time he's shot Sam Winchester after all.
The affect is immediate, though it is not what Bobby expects, the creature does not attack but rather recoils, hands rising protectively around it's previously unnoticed burden. Bobby lows the gun with a curse as he sees the mop of dirty brown hair and the lithe limbs and realizes that the creature is holding a human boy.
Bobby cannot fire without risking hitting the kid by mistake. His only, merge means of defense gone, Bobby is once again at the mercy of angels.
Gabriel has moved slightly in front of the other two, almost protective, but in the subsequent impasse in which Bobby does not raise he gun again, or otherwise move from his position, the other creature uncurls once more. It moves slowly, almost hesitantly towards Bobby, until it's less than two meters away, at the bottom of the stairs and Bobby's knuckles are white on the rifle.
Then the creature puts the kid down at Bobby's feet and hurries back and the hunter doesn't quite know how proceed.
He eventually leans down, not taking his eyes off the two motionless beings, and gropes two fingers around the boy's neck for a pulse. He is rewarded with a steady rhythm and his eyes turn questioning.
"Kid's fine Singer." Gabriel tells him dismissively, "Just a little out of it for a while. Almost being barbecued then getting packed with grace takes it out of you fragile little guys."
"It's Ben, Bobby." The Sam look-alike tells him with the kid's old earnest expression, "I don't- know if you've ever meet him, but Dean's gone and I didn't know who else to come to."
"Sam" Gabriel hisses "Ixnay on the Dean-stray!"
Bobby cocks his gun again, finger itchy on the trigger. "Alright." He growled "Who or what are you and what the hell have done with Dean?"
"Now look what you've done." Gabriel once more mutters but the other ignores him "It's really me." It whispers, eyes entreating him and Bobby wishes it hadn't got that expression right, but it has. "Please Bobby, I'm really Sam."
"Sam Winchester is in Hell." Bobby all but yells "He sacrificed his soul to stop you lot, so you got some nerve-"
"You shot me twice." It interrupts him with a soft voice. "At Stull, right before I- before Lucifer," it corrects itself forcefully. "snapped your neck. I've still got the scars, got the chest carvings too." He finishes pulling up his shirt.
The twin circular patches off pale pink skin wink at him from shoulder and chest. That rules out a shapeshifter, which had no chance to steal the form after those wounds were inflicted. And while it could be a demon, Bobby's at a loss as to how it could have gotten Sam's body from hell or known about the events of Stull Cemetery. Of course that leaves…"
"He is not Lucifer." Gabriel calls out suddenly, grace infusing into his voice and making it thunder. Bobby curses again because he had honestly forgotten the mind-reading habit of angels.
"I don't hang out with Big Bro." Gabriel continues, tone playful once more. "He doesn't play nice with others. I got this nice, big, fatal stab wound to prove it."
"Your not looking very dead to me bucko." Bobby replies not backing down an inch, "But if your so sure about it, then tell me how Sam could have gotten out of the cage when Luci couldn't?"
"The cage was not designed to hold anything but it's original prisoner." Sam tells him, "Once you understand that, there's actually nothing keeping you there."
"Where's Mickey then? Back upstairs?" Bobby demands.
Sam's eyes flash, "Michael is trapped by things that have nothing to do with god-steel." He all but spits, "His glorious war has not been won yet after all."
"Yeah?" Bobby asks, "And what about Adam?"
And Sam's eyes squeeze shut and he turns away, never mind that Bobby still has a gun on him and Gabriel reaches out a hand to his shoulder. "Kid got caught in the crossfire." Gabriel tells the old hunter firmly "Didn't make it out of the pit."
Sam turns back around again, but he doesn't say anything else, just looks at Bobby like something not human but none the less, undeniably Sam.
And God save him, Bobby puts the shotgun down.
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Bobby is still watching him with distrustful eyes, which Sam tries to ignore as he enters the house. Gabriel, as the most neutral party between them, has diplomatically plucked up Ben. While he is easily able to carry the weight, Ben is just as tall as he is (possibly taller) and it is somewhat comical to see him trying to maneuver the limp form.
This is a good thing, when dealing with a trigger happy Bobby, to appear non-threatening.
They emerge into the living room and Gabriel flops Ben down with a grateful sigh. Sam sits awkwardly, in the green, swade chair next to the bookshelf, which has always been his favorite. Bobby fixes him with a measuring gaze. Gabriel notices and saunters over- possible as a distraction but more likely he is just trying to stir Bobby up- and perches on the arm of Sam's chair.
Bobby grunts at this, "Start talking." He orders.
Sam looks down at his hands trying to figure out where to begin. "What do you know, about Dante's inferno?" he asks.
Bobby purses his lips slightly. "Enough."
Sam nods slowly. "He got a lot of stuff wrong of course." He tells him "About who goes where and what happens to them. But in essence it's a decent outline. There are nine circles; each for a different class of Sin and they spiral downwards to the bottom- The ninth circle. The frozen lake at the center of which lies Lucifer's burning, god-forged cage."
(Sometimes, he can see beyond the raging angels and his own agony. Sometimes, when his face is pressed right up against the white-hot, metal bars he can see the frozen surface just beyond their prison. A mirage almost, of everything he screams for in the unbearable heat. Not water, he recalls from some far off memory of dust and yellowy pages, but the trapped souls of Traitors. Then he will be shoved back, to the centre of the fray once more. Back to burning on the ceiling in never ending cycles of death.)
Sam swallows and licks suddenly dry lips. He's never had to explain this before; the other angels, for good or ill, already understood where he'd been and what that meant.
"There's no limbo. Or purgatory." He continues, "those are just Christian errors. Many things the bible says will send you to Hell, won't. The first layer is the rack, where Dean was, the place of lesser-sinners and deal makers. It runs at the speed of ten years for every human month. The further down you go, the fast time runs in comparison. I was…" he swallows again, "I was down there a long time."
(After Adam is gone time becomes almost completely fathomless. Before he could peer into the other human and remember linnierness; that there was a future and a past, rather than simply an everlasting horror of Now. Angels do not work like this; inside they are as existential as heaven, weaving between the once and the maybe. So Sam becomes too, as his grace grows and there is no single directional current left to ground him. It is only later, during the years he walks the cold surface of the lake which never seems to end, that he manages to calculate continuous time again.)
Bobby's eyes narrow. "How long?" he asks.
"Earth time, just over a month. Hell time…a thousand years." Sam replies quietly. "And then another century or so getting out."
He looks down, unwilling to see whatever is in Bobby's eyes right now, whether it be unwanted pity or worse- complete indifference.
"But that's not important." He continues quickly. "What you need to understand, is that space is ruled differently in Hell. Things which are not physical, have their own substance and weight and size. The cage was built to the exact dimensions of an archangel's existence. Of Lucifer's existence. But…after we Fell, there were two Archangels in that space. Two humans which were bright and vast enough to carry them. You cannot imagine how tightly we were bound together there. It is…unfathomable. We integrated, bleed into one another."
Bobby opens his mouth sharply, back straightening and Sam hurriedly clarifies, "Not our souls. It is impossible to blend the true essence of individual entities, but things did seep, unexpectedly. It is… the best explanation for what I became, though God has hinted that he had a hand in my creation."
(For a few hundred years, when the memories first come, Sam loses himself. Condemns Lucifer and all else in Creation by turns. He still adores God, who is ALL, who has cast him down for no more than loving Him too greedily and too much. He grieves his brother, who was simply to blinded to see that even what feels Right is sometimes not when faced with the Glory of the Single Truth. The knowledge- so much knowledge that Sam never wanted- fills him until he overflows. Until, even after he has recovered himself; as a thing not Michael or Lucifer but Sam, he knows there are pieces of him which have been irrevocably lost.)
Bobby surveys him with the clinical gaze of thirty years spent chasing things in the dark, "You're an angel." He states flatly.
Sam nods even though it wasn't really question. "Yes" he says "I am."
(There are those which will never accept him, who claim his grace is the taint of Lucifer, the great seducer. Who view him as a stain upon Heaven, responsible for all their current woes. The hard thing is that they are not wrong entirely; Some of his grace is Lucifer's and were it not for Sam, Dean would have said yes and the angels would have their paradise. All of Heaven is balanced on the edge of a knife. Caught between those who follow Castiel; who claims to see god, and those who still believe their Father dead and their Savoir locked away in the darkest region of Hell. Sooner or later there will be war, Sam knows, though who will triumph he does not.)
Bobby of course, sees none of this with his blind human senses, though Sam has felt Gabriel grow tenser through the steady flow of images. Sam has never spoken so much of these things, Neither Gabriel or Castiel, have ever experienced so much of the Pit through Sam's eyes.
Bobby's mouth twists into a frown and when he speaks there is thinly veiled anger in his voice. "Okay, so your Sam, I believe you." He growls. "Now would you like to tell me why, if you got out the Cage in a month our time, you haven't dam well told your brother your alive and aren't bloody burning for the last six years!"
"I wanted to Bobby." Sam tells him, because this, this is the most important thing. This is what he has denied himself and been denied. "I -God- I knew how Dean would…But I couldn't Bobby. Not because I was afraid or some other stupid reason!" He adds seeing the furious wrench of Bobby's jaw.
"The universe has laws it must abide to- Fundamental laws of God. Nothing could touch Dean, Bobby. Not angels, not demons- not anything. Not unless he hunted it first. If I had broken that law, if I had gone after him, then everything else; everything waiting in the darkness, every demon out for revenge- Everything else could too."
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Bobby is quiet for a long time, and Sam lets him turn it all over in his mind. He owes Bobby this and not just because of Stull. The elder hunter may not have said it, but Sam's death and believed imprisonment has affected him too. Sam could have told Bobby, chose not to because of the risk to Dean, if Bobby should not be able to stay silent and pass news of Sam onto him.
After twenty minutes Gabriel stands with a purposeful air. "Enough." He says, "We need to figure out our position. The kid will wake up soon and we should know what it is we intend to do before then."
It is one of the rare times Sam sees shadow of Gabriel origins over his playful nature; his place amongst the First Four and why so many angels were ready to follow him immediately, even after all the centuries of absence.
"Dean is missing, Castiel is also gone. It's unlikely that's unrelated, but there must be some dire reason for Cas to have approached Dean." Sam says slowly, "I wouldn't even believe it, if not for the attack on Ben and Lisa. Ben should have been protected by baring Dean's blood and Lisa too, because she's Ben's mother. They should have been safe, unless the First Law was violated by an angel."
"This First Law being the reason you couldn't see Dean." Bobby clarifies.
"That humans have the right to chose." Gabriel sneers at him. "That not even the Divine Rulings of Heaven and therefore Hell are allowed to surpass Free Will. Dean chose to forsake his destiny, chose freedom from Heaven and Hell, and so neither of them were allowed near him." He screws up his nose. "It's a pretty extreme case. I honestly don't know what would have happened if he'd died."
Sam shudders at the image of Dean flickering out of creation the way Adam did.
"Wait a second." Bobby says, wide eyes flying back to Sam. "You said Ben should have been protected because he has Dean's blood. Are you telling me that Dean is Ben's actual father? Biologically?"
"Yeees," said Gabriel slowly, not understanding his surprise.
"I don't know if Lisa lied to him in '07 and then just couldn't tell him later, or if she actually didn't know." Sam explains, "But he's Dean's. There's so much history in the bloodline any angel could sense it, but since it's still sort of mine too, I'm extra aware of it. He's my nephew."
Now it is Gabriel who turns surprised eyes on him, as if he has not truly considered Ben's relationship to Sam before.
Bobby looks to once more have something on his mind. "I been assuming." The hunter says, "Cause you don't have her with you and your telling me about an attack. Lisa…"
"She's gone Bobby." Sam tells him sadly "she was gone before I even got there. Ben nearly was too. Their house had been burned with Hell Fire. It had to have been Demons."
Bobby swears quietly and twists his cap in his hands as he looks over at Ben. "I used to think your brother was just being silly when he went on about that Winchester curse, but maybe he was right. Nothing ain't ever over for you boys."
He sighed sounding very old. "Come on, lets figure out what to do before the kid wakes up and we have to tell him."
-T.B.C-
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