The dream was strange. It was too definitely unreal. Unlike most dreams that created a whole new universe and made you believe it was real, this one Sam was sure was just a part of his mind. A deep, murky corner of his mind that he rarely ventured. Though apparently, his subconscious wanted him there tonight.

What exactly he was looking at he couldn't be sure. The vision was distant and fuzzy like he was watching it through the wrong end of a cloudy telescope. One thing he could say for definite was that a red haze filled most of what he was seeing. Blood, he realised, there was a lot of blood.

A pang of recognition flared somewhere in Sam's mind but it was more of a sense of faint déjà vu than proper remembrance. Still, he felt himself drawn closer by a sense of apprehensive curiosity. The kind that was almost certainly found on many a cat's death certificate. But to his frustration he found himself unable to get any closer to the image, every time he moved towards it, it ghosted away from him, dragged reluctantly away by some invisible power. So, after a few more futile efforts, Sam stopped trying to reach it. Instead he focused. Concentration was hard in a dream but still he tried. He chose a point in the dull image that was not coloured the same red as the majority of the haze and fought to define it further.

An unknown amount of time passed and slowly the haze began to thin. He could make out the outline of a single, empty room. The white tiled walls were broken and cracked and still glistening with fresh red. Urged by his success, Sam continued and soon he could make out two forms, one significantly taller than the other. Seizing the progress, he shifted his mind's eye to the smaller of the two and fought harder against the subconscious haze.

It took what seemed like a while, but eventually his vision cleared further, revealing more about the chosen figure. He was male, young and well built. His hair was long, brown and hung dishevelled and dirty over his face. Scraps of torn and ruined clothing hung uselessly from his bloodied form. He was on his knees, which explained the height difference, slumped against the wall, using it to keep his body from collapsing to the dirty floor. It was hard to tell, but the man was breathing, just. Air entered and left his lungs in shallow disjointed breaths that seemed to pain him with every passing. Though it seemed like his capacity for pain had been reached long ago, leaving him the energy to do nothing but twitch at anything that added to it.

The niggling feeling of recognition become a tolling alarm bell as his subconscious suddenly began to scramble backwards, away from the forgotten memory. But it he had already gotten to close. He was sucked through the looking-glass as the memory engulfed him, throwing the full might of all the pain it brought with it against him. The Sam in the memory was broken and dying, he had no strength to register the agony he was going through. But the Sam experiencing it now was fully aware and at the mercy of every sensation the memory gave him. It was unbearable.

In his sleep, Sam screamed as days' worth of torture descended upon in one go. It exploded from his head and shot down his body like a tidal wave that seemed to tear great phantom wounds as he writhed on the sofa. Vaguely, he knew Bobby was close by offering calming words and promises of safety but his subconscious couldn't hear them. They weren't real to it. To his mind, Sam was slumped torn and dying in a dark dusty room. All he knew was excruciation. The pain of kneeling on shattered legs. The rasp of air as it fought through pools of blood to escape his lungs, leaving a gleaming spray on his lips. The rhythmic stabbing that came with every inhale as his snapped rib punctured his organs. The wet feeling of clutching his only working arm across the gash in his stomach that threatened to spill his insides onto the floor.

Rambled pleas for escape in any form joined his screams.

Hey Jude, don't make it bad

The pain faltered a moment as whispered words of a familiar lullaby echoed through his head. Where it was coming from, Sam didn't know and neither did he care. The respite it brought was enough for him not to care if they were just his life flashing before his eyes before he died. But he didn't get a chance to savour it. A brief pause for breath on the part of the singer left a gap for the torture to descend once more and Sam's screams started anew.

Take a sad song and make it better.

Remember to let her into your heart.

The song came back stronger, recognising Sam's pleas. It enveloped him, pulling him from the cold empty room and driving back the waves of torture. This time, Sam reached out and clung to the voice, his shield against the waves of phantom pain that he could still feel just beyond his fragile bubble. There was another brief pause and the memory whispered through, brushing against Sam's subconscious. But the shield stayed strong and the pain was nothing but a ghost of what it was before.

Then you can start to make things better.

The voice was male, Sam realised. And it was glorious. It carried the soft notes with a strength and power that seemed to make the song glow in his mind. It was nothing like he had ever felt before. As the song continued, Sam felt as though he was being bathed in calm, warming light. His own small cocoon of safety that soothed his pained and kept him protected from the fractured psyche beyond. The voice swept over him and carried him through the threatening shadows that gathered at its edges, brushing through them like they were just shadows as it brought him away from the dark recesses of his mind. Occasionally, something about the particular emphasis on a certain word or the tone inflected on the odd word would connect with a part of Sam's mind. It felt almost familiar.

The song continued and his curiosity quickly waned. These interested places were outside of the soothing voice and soft cocoon. They didn't matter. Eventually, nothing else mattered as the song drifted him away from the dark nightmares that had stirred his sleep and away into a slumber too deep for anything to hurt him.

Bobby watched, dumbstruck as Sam's screams quieted to soft whimpers and his violent thrashes calmed until he lay perfectly still and silent on the sofa. The only evidence that anything had happened was the film of sweat on the man's forehead and the bloodied marks on the palms of his hands where Sam had accidently dug his own nails into his skin. Bobby had insisted on the boy sleeping downstairs so that he would be in easy reach in case anything like this was to happen. The only problem was, when it did, nothing that Bobby could do had helped. What was more antagonizing was that he had no idea what it was that had eventually calmed Sam down.

"You never sung a lullaby to a crying baby?"

Bobby wheeled round ready to defend Sam despite his limitations. At the sight of Gabriel leaning in the archway to the kitchen he relaxed a little. The Archangel looked up from studying Sam to meet Bobby's wary gaze with a satisfied half-smile, pleased that he'd made the old hunter jump.

"I'm only a Singer by name," Bobby retorted gruffly and despite himself, Gabriel's half smile became a full one.

"It's a good thing one of us was here to put Sammy to bed then."

Bobby glanced at Sam then back to Gabriel with a sceptical raised eyebrow, "You can sing?"

Gabriel held up his hands, "Guilty. Don't spread it around though, everyone will be wanting a jaunty tune," he grinned and produced a chocolate bar from nowhere. The whole clicking thing had been adopted as part of his Trickster persona and now that there was no need for it anymore Gabriel was slowly dropping the old habit. Most people had thought it was out of laziness, but Gabriel had always liked to see it as a symbol of change, a new start to an old life and the end of one he'd much prefer to forget. The candy thing though, that had always more of an addiction than a habit. Humans made some damn good food.

A pause strung out between them as the Archangel was distracted by the opening of his candy.

"You gonna tell me what the hell just happened?" Bobby asked, "Or are we gonna play 20 questions?"

Once again, Gabriel smirked. Say what you will about Bobby Singer but he had earned the respect of an Archangel through his rough humour and wit that had only sharpened with age. Gabriel chewed purposefully slowly on his mouthful of chocolate so as to give himself time to properly explain. A moment passed and he swallowed, "He found one of the memories. And it was doozy at that."

"I thought you'd wiped his hard drive?"

There was an accusatory tone on Bobby's words that Gabriel chose not to respond to. After all, it wasn't like Gabriel wasn't to blame. A twinge of guilt fluttered in his mind but he suppressed it and catalogued it among the hundreds of others that were beginning to swamp his head. He took another bite of chocolate, chewed and swallowed before explaining further, "You can't just take memories and destroy 'em. Memories are what define a guy. If I completely deleted them, it wouldn't be the same Sam anymore. Or worse, I'd mess up and the kid would end up brain dead. No, you gotta just lock them away so that he can't find them anymore. But it seems our Sammy himself a gap in the fence."

As he finished the explanation, Gabriel found his gaze drawn back to the figure laid out on the sofa, breathing softly in his dreamless sleep. A deep buried ache yet again tried to drive its way to the surface but Gabriel mustered his will and beat it back, telling himself that it was for the best, no matter how easily he could squeeze himself into that space in crook of Sam's arm. No matter how easily it would be to undo everything. No matter how much he wanted Sam to awake to a small Archangel preparing pancakes in the kitchen that would end up ignored as the hunter distracted said Archangel in one way or another.

A soft reminiscent smile touched the corners of his lips and he almost gave in. Almost. A flash of the moment he'd found Sam brought him back to reality. And with it came the knowledge that it could all happen all over again if Gabriel allowed himself another selfish indulgence.

Bobby's voice broke his reverie with a sharp call of his name and Gabriel suddenly realised that he been saying it for a while.

The Archangel turned his gaze on Bobby, eyebrows raised expectantly as he uttered a soft, questioning hum.

The old hunter eyed him for a moment and Gabriel could see that he bit back his initial question and instead chose another, "So what? Sam's found the chink in your wall and now it's all going to just spew out?"

With a casual waft of his hand, Gabriel dismissed the notion, finishing his chocolate and screwing the wrapper into his fist before replying, "The chinks are supposed to be there, else he would have woken up a different Sam. Don't worry your little titanium wheels he can't see them while he's awake. His subconscious just wanted to take a look," he allowed himself one last sweeping gaze of Sam, drinking in as much of it as possible. He wanted to paste over the most recent memory of Sam he had with something good. A memory of him safe and sound with those who loved him more than anything else. It was far better than the one that continued to force itself into his mind's eye. It was similar to the one Sam had found himself in fact. At least with this new memory, Gabriel could cling to the fact that he had saved his Sammy just one more time than he'd endangered him.

Satisfied he had imprinted it on his brain, he raised his hand to leave. It was the only thing he continuously clicked for anymore. His own form of a goodbye wave as it were, "Well I'll see ya round Mustang."

Seeing it, Bobby lifted his arm to halt him, "Hang on, what if it happens again? I don't exactly enjoy seeing Sam scream bloody murder while I'm sat here, useless as a dead horse."

Gabriel shrugged, "As stubborn as he is about flinging himself at danger wherever he goes, Sam's subconscious isn't as stupid. It won't be going that way for a while."

Bobby seemed unconvinced, "Maybe you could record a CD for me to play while he's sleeping," he said, though it took a keen ear to notice the hint of sarcasm in his voice.

A chuckle escaped Gabriel's lips, "No can do, Hot Wheels, they don't make CD's angel proof," he shrugged apologetically, "Don't lose sleep over it, our little Bigfoot will be just fine."

And with a quick snap, Bobby was alone with Sam.

So this wasn't supposed to be a chapter all on its own, it was supposed to be like half of one but it got a little carried away with itself...still hope you like it! Please, please, please let me know what you think, it just makes me so happy to get the little review emails xD

Reviews are the pie to my dean

xxx