Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural.
Warnings: Fictional historical 'facts'.
Sam's body fell to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut. Dean's felt ready to follow his example, if only because he wasn't entirely sure which way was up or why the room spun around Sam.
Instead, he remained upright long enough to crash to his knees at Sam's side on the hard tiled floor. His fingertips hovered over Sam's carotid artery, on the pulse point Dean no longer had trouble finding due to years of practice. His own heart beat unsteadily as he searched for confirmation that Sam's still beat at all.
Mary knelt beside him, but her hands stopped halfway to Sam and she drew them back. Dean didn't know the meaning behind her actions, but he had more important things to think of.
He was so focused on Sam, searching for any sign of life, that he didn't notice Cas kept his blade at the ready until it was already on its way down.
Instinct took over and Dean reached for the blade, every cell in his body burning with the knowledge that he needed that thing away from his brother (and a few wondering why Cas was doing this).
But his lack of attention cost him. He couldn't stop Cas before another burst of light flooded the room and forced him to shield his eyes yet again. The only difference was the high-pitched ringing that stabbed into his ears like knives. Even after the light faded, Dean still heard residual ringing (and hearing loss this late in the game would be a major bitch to deal with).
Cas said something Dean couldn't understand: Enochian.
His mother's gasp was what really pulled him away from his unexpected adrenaline rush.
Sam had his arms spread to the sides, an image of angel wings scorched into the floor and a silver blade sticking up from his chest.
For a moment, Dean saw ten-year-old Sam again. Sam who so desperately wanted to play in the snow. Sam, with whom Dean made snow angels because even if the plow came through and erased the indents in the snow, they would still know they had been there.
His memories faded and the feeling he grew to know too well for his liking surfaced. The feeling that left him empty and cold because Sam would never open his eyes again. After this many times, he started believing that maybe the universe really wanted Sam dead. Every time he came back, with or without Dean's intervention, it was only a matter of time until something else tried to claim him. Dean hated to admit it, but he was just a man and couldn't save Sam from everything.
He could, however, seek out vengeance.
He wrapped his hand around the archangel blade's hilt to remove it from Sam's heart, reminding himself that he had not been the one who put it there, but he was stopped by Cas' grip on his wrist. Struggle as he might, he couldn't break free.
"Cas, let go of me, you bastard," Dean growled.
"Dean, stop and listen for a moment."
"Why should I?" he demanded. "You just killed my brother. There are some things that I can't forgive, and this is one of them."
"I don't think Sam is dead," Cas said.
Dean wondered if laughing was appropriate, but what other reaction could he have? His mom looked at him like he had lost his mind, but could anyone blame him if he had?
"Sam's not dead?" he asked. "Sam has a sword piercing his heart, and he's not dead? You've lied about a lot of things, but don't lie about this, Cas."
"I'm not lying, Dean. I truly don't believe that Sam is dead. Or permanently dead."
Cas knelt down and Bathin copied him.
Dean removed his grip from the archangel blade, unwillingly, but willing to put faith in a feathered friend once again. After all, no matter how many times Cas screwed them over (and how many times had they screwed him over?), he always did what he could to make it right in the end.
"That's not possible," Mary muttered. "My baby… Dean's right. No one can survive being stabbed in the heart."
"Sam and Dean have done the impossible before, and I think they may have done it again," Cas said.
"Let's say I believe you for a second," Dean said. "What makes you think that Sam could have survived this?"
"I can see him," Cas said.
"What?"
Dean looked around the room, but the only sign he saw of Sam was the image he would never erase from his mind. The image that he could add to his collection with the others from Cold Oak, Stull, and the church from after the third trial—when everything should have been okay, but it all collapsed along with Sam.
"You're a mortal, Dean," Cas said. "I see him outside of his physical form."
"He's a ghost?" Mary asked.
Dean didn't want his mother to be right, and parents didn't know everything, right? Ghosts were things they hunted, and Dean could never hunt Sam.
"No, he's not a ghost I don't think. He seems like he's in a sort of limbo. He can't return to his body, but he also cannot pass on. No reaper is coming for him. I think it's the effect of the spell."
"Which did what, exactly?" Dean asked.
"It forced Sam out of his own body, which left only Lucifer inside. That's why I had to kill him at that moment, before he recovered stronger than before without having to fight Sam on the inside. And in this way, Sam's soul was not destroyed by the archangel blade. Believe me when I say this was likely the best case scenario."
Dean looked at Bathin, who nodded his confirmation, then to Crowley and Rowena who both watched on with varying level of morbid interest.
"Cas and I, combined, have enough power to keep Sam's body preserved, and maybe even heal some of the damage, for awhile," Bathin said.
"And then what?" Dean demanded. "What happens when your 'awhile' is over?"
"If you haven't figured out a way to get Sam back together, then he will die at that point. I'm sorry, Dean. Mary."
"Where do we start?" Mary asked. "How do we help him?"
"We should begin by healing his physical body. Every other effort will have been meaningless if he dies upon re-inhabiting his body," Cas said.
"Last time, he was walking around like some kind of Replicant. Won't that happen again?" Dean asked. Soulless Sam was not in the highlight reel of his memories, but if it was a possibility again, Dean needed to be prepared to protect both himself and his mother.
Mary shot him her you'll-be-explaining-this-later look. He'd grown used to her expressions by now and could read her better than he could most people, with the exception of Sam.
Cas laid his hand on Sam's chest for a long moment before he said, "No, this is different. I believe some ancient cultures—those that existed before humans started recording history in ways that would be preserved—used a derivation of this spell. It would have been much weaker and short-lasting."
"Why the hell would anyone want to banish a human soul from its body?" Dean asked. "I wouldn't have asked Rowena to go through with it if I knew that's what would happen."
"If you mentioned to me at any point that you planned on using another spell from the Book of the Damned, I could have looked it over and told you what it was likely to do based on the fact that many weaker variations exist throughout ancient history," Cas said. Strange how even when his voice stayed mostly monotone, it could carry an edge to it.
"You didn't exactly tell me about your plan to find an archangel blade that you could use to stab my brother."
"That was no longer your brother, Dean. It was Lucifer, just like it was last time," Cas said.
Crowley laughed under his breath and muttered something about an old married couple while Bathin stepped in.
"We can't change what happened," Bathin said. "But Lucifer is dead now, and Sam still has a chance to live. We have work to do."
It all felt surreal. Detached, like a lucid dream. Years ago, Pamela helped him and Dean become spirits when the reapers of a town were being captured by Alistair. During the time that Sam was earning himself a once-thought one way ticket to Hell. Turned out most of those tickets were round trip.
This was different though. He felt a link to his physical body, like he was shackled to it. But at the same time, he felt blocked off. There was some sort of barrier that he couldn't cross keeping him from his body. That, and the illuminated series of symbols covering his visible (and likely not visible) sections of skin.
Given Dean's lack of attention to them, Sam knew that they couldn't be seen by human eyes.
Mary was a surprise. Her presence reinforced Sam's feeling that maybe it all was a lucid dream. When he learned that Amara resurrected someone for Dean, he never considered it would be her. He assumed John would be at the top of his list, but it made sense to him that maybe Mary was at the top instead.
Rowena wanted to stay and observe the long-term effects of the spell, but a very long and ugly argument ended with her and Crowley taking their leave.
Cas and Bathin set to work like a team. They tried. Cas refused to look at Sam, despite Sam knowing that he could at the very least sense him given what he told Dean about Sam not being dead even though his body gave off every symptom of death.
Bathin helped move him to the bed in his room, and Sam pretended that he was just astrally projecting while asleep. Because he didn't look dead. He didn't feel dead. No reapers were after him—that he encountered so far. Unless Billie was running extremely behind in her daily reaping, he didn't expect to see one.
That was how he ended up standing at the foot of his own bed, next to an anxious Dean and Mary, watching angels try to heal him.
"What's taking so long?" Dean asked. "Usually it's just a touch and we're healed, when you have your mojo."
"Dean, you have to remember that it was a very powerful, otherworldly blade that damaged Sam's body. Powerful enough that Sam's soul would have been evaporated like Lucifer had it been in his body. Besides his internal organs being scorched, they also seem to be shredded. Like a creature with claws tore them apart. I have no answer as to what may have caused such damage without an external sign. Clearly, Sam was not mauled by anything."
"Son of a bitch," Dean said. "It was Lucifer, wasn't it? When he promised that Sam wouldn't survive, this is his insurance, isn't it? I try to save him, just to have him bleed out internally without angel life-support?" His voice raised with each word until he was yelling.
He looked ready to trash the room—Sam's room—but Mary's hand on his shoulder and slight shake of her head at the very least restrained him. Sam knew from experience that nothing could calm Dean down when he reached this level of frustration and anger. It was best to either help him contain it long enough to find him something to beat, or get out of the way of the path of his inevitable destruction.
Sam wished he could have helped his mom out in dealing with Dean. He wished that he wasn't the cause of his family's current misery.
Maybe being forced to watch and unable to intervene was some sort of punishment forced upon him by the universe (or just Chuck, but Sam didn't think that Chuck would have a reason to be so vengeful towards him).
Dean took a few deep breaths. "What's the plan?" he asked.
"We heal Sam. It'll take a few days due to the extent of his injuries and the nature of their causes, but between Bathin and I we should be able to handle it. Then, the most we can do is wait."
"Wait for what?"
"Sam to live or die."
"You said you've seen other variations of this spell," Mary said. "Could you explain that a little more?"
"A few accounts of it have been recorded as myths or miracles," Bathin said. Cas concentrated on healing what he could of Sam's injuries, particularly the stab wound through his heart.
"I'm old enough to remember the times that human rulers would have their witches—though they were referred to as many different things at that time—cast the spell over them when they came of age to rule. If they were 'resurrected', they would be deemed the true ruler. That variation would only last a matter of hours and the entire event was a public spectacle with every citizen waiting with bated breath to find out whether or not their supposed ruler would wake up.
"In a similar fashion, this idea has been used by many story tellers. The story of Snow-White used the idea. In the original version, when the story was passed from generation to generation orally, the witch enchanted the apple with a spell she believed would kill Snow-White. What happened was that Snow-White's soul was banished and left her dead. Well, temporarily dead in a manner of speaking. The witch was very surprised when an alive Snow-White found her once the spell wore off and allowed her body and soul to merge again."
"Have there been cases where the spell was used, and the person affecting stayed dead?" Dean asked.
Sam saw that Dean really didn't want to know the answer to that question, probably already knew it.
"Yes."
Dean ran his hand down his face. "So Sam is basically just not dead yet."
"Technically, he is already dead," Cas said, taking a step back and facing Dean. "The question is whether or not he will remain in this state. It's entirely possible that the spell will fade and allow him to return to his body."
"But it's also possible that it won't."
"I'm afraid so," Cas said after a moment of hesitation.
Dean kicked the leg of Sam's bed muttering a string of curses and left the room at a brisk, rage-fueled pace.
After shared glances, the rest of the room's occupants followed after him. Bathin was the last to leave the room. He looked back and nodded directly at Sam—his soul, not body—then turned away.
Sam tried to follow, but he found that the tether keeping him attached to his body wouldn't let him go much farther than right outside the door to his room.
He paced across the floor, always stopping to check if anyone was in the hallway and coming back. Eventually he settled for sitting on the bed next to his body with his back against the headboard and legs stretched out in front of him. He couldn't remember the last time he felt this degree of helplessness. At least when he was trapped in his mind by Lucifer, he could still fight. He still had something to fight. Now, he had no idea what he was supposed to be doing to help with any of this. From the earlier conversation, the angels made it sound like he just needed to wait it out and then not die.
Because not dying was definitely one of his specialties.
This entire situation was bullshit, he decided.
By the time Dean came back to his room and pulled a chair beside his bed to sit on, it felt like years had passed. For all Sam knew, they might've. Dean looked much older than his age with the shadows under his eyes and pure exhaustion written across his face.
Dean leaned forward in the chair, letting his forearms rest on his legs, and sighed. "You always have to find a way to make the worst out of a bad situation, don't you, Sam?"
"I've told you before that our family is cursed, Dean," Sam said. Dean couldn't hear him, but he needed to participate in this conversation as much as Dean needed to keep vigil over his—for all purposes—dead body. This was coping: Winchester edition.
"Cas said that you're aware of what's going on around you, but I almost think he might just want me distracted." Dean laughed a bit. "He can't look me in the eyes. He thinks this is all his fault and that I'm going to hunt him down, probably. And I want this to be his fault. God, do I wish I could pin all of the blame on him. It'd make it all a hell of a lot easier. But the truth is, Cas did the right thing. Lucifer needed to die, and Cas killed him.
"But seeing that blade in your heart, I just lost it. It never occurred to me that you could survive that, why would it? The thing is that we're out of second chances now, Sam. If you don't wake up from this, that's the end. The real end. We both know that Billie can't wait to toss us into The Empty with her own hands. There's no coming back from that."
"I don't blame Cas either," Sam said. "He did what he needed to. You might not agree, but this is probably the best case scenario we could have gotten."
The way Dean paused made Sam feel like he was being heard. Maybe to some extent, Dean imagined a response. Like they had a strong enough bond that he could at least tell Sam was present and Dean wanted to give enough time for him to speak on ears that wanted to hear, but were ultimately deaf to his words.
"I don't know where along the line everything got so screwed up. Some days I find myself thinking that I should have never bothered you at Stanford. You said it yourself, that I didn't need you to look for Dad. I just didn't want to be alone, and I pulled you away from everything you worked so hard for."
"Yellow Eyes would have come with or without you showing up, Dean. No matter what you tried, I would've ended up thrown back into the hunt. It was all part of his plan. Keep me strong and sharp and all that."
Dean shook his head. "But Yellow Eyes wanted you hunting, and I'm not sure I could have done anything to stop that. No matter how much I wish otherwise."
Dean paused for a long time. "I'm not sure how aware you are of your surroundings, Cas didn't say, but Mom's here," Dean said. "In the flesh. Amara brought her back to life, and I know she wants to meet you. I know that you would want to meet her, too. Hell, you probably spent your entire life wanting to meet her. The few memories Dad and I shared weren't much. They could never sate your curiosity about this woman who made Dad start a hunting obsession to avenge her death."
Dean cleared his throat. "I, uh, I didn't tell her about Adam. She didn't need that added to the mountain of things she has to deal with, so if you can hear me, I'd appreciate if you kept quiet about that."
When he first met Adam, Sam did wonder how the revelation would make his mom feel. Betrayed? Angry? Maybe she'd be understanding. After all, she died years ago by that point and Dad was still just a man.
Sam went through all of those emotions upon meeting the ghoul masquerading as Adam. Because the memories were still Adam's memories, and why could he have normal when Sam couldn't? His mom probably sent him off to college with pride, maybe John did, too, if Adam ever mentioned it to him.
But for Sam, college meant turning into an exile from his own family.
Then, the understanding kicked in. Adam was settled and still had another parent to take care of him. He likely never would have had to face the supernatural, but Winchester blood running through his veins landed him on the supernatural radar.
Only Adam was pulled from Heaven and into the apocalypse and now spent his days in Hell simply because John Winchester was his father.
Dean rubbed the back of his neck. "I always felt a little weird talking to you or Dad when either of you weren't conscious. It feels a little one-sided, you know? But Cas said… I mean, if you can really hear me right now…"
He took a deep breath and let it out as a drawn out sigh. "God, I'm so sorry, Sammy. I took too long to find you. I'm sorry you were taken in the first place. I should've been there. I should've…"
Sam wanted to know what else Dean thought he should've done, but he left the sentence to trail off indefinitely, and Sam suspected that it would never be quite finished.
"It wasn't your fault, Dean," Sam said. "You kinda saved the world. I couldn't even save myself."
His words didn't matter though, because Dean got up and left the room then.
And Sam couldn't follow.
Mary took up residence in the chair beside his bed some time after Dean left. A few times, she shifted and leaned forward like she was going to reach out to him, but she always stopped herself.
"I'm not gonna break, Mom," Sam said. The word felt foreign on his tongue.
She looked just as exhausted as Dean. Neither of them were sleeping properly, and if Sam had to guess, they weren't eating properly either.
"Hey, Sammy," she finally whispered. "Hope you don't mind the nickname. In my head, you're still supposed to be six months old."
She smiled a bit, strained but genuine, and Sam smiled back.
"My opinion of the nickname never stopped Dean or Dad from using it," Sam said.
Her smile faded too quickly and she blew the strands of hair falling into her face away. "Dean's told me a lot about you," she said. "Sammy, I'm so sorry."
"Don't be sorry, Mom. I've never blamed you for anything."
"I should have known better than to make a deal with a demon, but I just watched everyone I loved die and I needed John with me. I needed him to help me through it," she said. "I didn't know that the demon wanted you. I didn't know what he would do."
"If you never made that deal, then I wouldn't be alive. Dean either. In a way, I should be thanking you. It hasn't been easy, and a lot of bad stuff has happened, but you know at the end of the day, it never really seemed all that bad."
He wished that his words could get through to Mary, to comfort her and lift some of the burden she felt. Maybe some days waking up in the morning seemed like a distant dream, but they made it through. They'd both been to Hell and back. They'd suffered. But they always came back and found their way into the fight against everything supernatural again and again.
"Dean seemed sure that you wouldn't blame me for anything, but how could you not?" she asked. "Please make it through this, Sammy. Give me a chance to make up for everything."
She buried her face in her hands, but the lack of trembling led Sam to believe she wasn't crying. It was strange that this woman was his mother, but at the same time a stranger. He couldn't read her.
This state left an emptiness in him, and listening to Dean and Mary only magnified it.
The Book of the Damned left him truly feeling like he was among the damned. It trapped him in a horrible prison where his body was dead, but his soul was alive and refused to leave his body. He was a ghost and not a ghost at the same time. Alive and dead at the same time. It wasn't natural.
This mess couldn't be over soon enough.
After Mary left, Dean took up his post in the bedside chair once again. "Finally convinced Mom to get some sleep," he said in lieu of greeting (though how much of a greeting was it when the thing in front of him was, in all sense of the word, a corpse?).
"If you can hear me, you're probably internally bitching about how I need some sleep, too."
He wasn't entirely wrong.
"But I'll have you know," Dean continued, "that I did get a couple of hours before. When Mom came in here to sit with you. She didn't tell me what she talked about, but she looked pretty upset. You know it's not nice to make a woman cry, Sammy."
His joke fell flat, a poor attempt to lighten a mood too dark for either of them.
"That's why I need you to come back, Sam. You know I'm no good at dealing with crying women."
The words were as light as Dean could make them, but Sam felt the weight underneath. The meaning. Dean never had to say it, he knew how much he meant to his older brother. Dean sold his soul and willingly went to Hell for him, Sam was pretty sure he understood how much he meant to Dean.
Because Dean meant just as much to him.
"When Mom went into labor with you, I really just wanted a Happy Meal," Dean said. "I was four years old and hungry, but instead I ended up with you shoved into my arms so that Dad could take a picture of a new set of siblings."
The thought of Dean wanting a Happy Meal seemed completely at odds with Dean's personality. Sam assumed that even at that age, he'd already be opting for the biggest burger on the menu and trying to set himself up for the youngest recorded heart attack brought on by cholesterol in history.
"I guess that means you owe me a Happy Meal, Sam," Dean said. He flashed a lop-sided grin for only a moment. "Better wake up so I can collect on that."
Sam rolled his eyes. Dean seemed to think that there was some sort of food debt needing to be paid, but Sam could list off all the times Dean stole food from his meal. No way all of that combined didn't add up to more than a Happy Meal worth of food. Not when it happened over the span of so many years.
The one thing that Dad appreciated about Sam's teen years more than Dean's teen years was that Sam didn't need to eat enough to feed a football team to stave off hunger. He was always fine with eating enough for one person, not several.
Dean ran his hand down his face periodically, trying to physically drive away the weariness desperately wanting to set in.
"Just go to sleep, Dean," Sam said. "It's not like I'll be going anywhere any time soon."
The next few weeks passed slower than Sam thought possible (were more like several eternities than a few weeks), but the only form of entertainment he was getting was from someone sitting in his room and talking to his unresponsive body. Cas showed up more often than Bathin to heal him, but eventually neither of them could do anything more to help.
Sam watched as Dean's anxiety grew higher by the minutes. He always had to be in motion, pacing in Sam's room. Pacing outside of Sam's room. Hell, maybe he never stopped pacing.
Mary remained hesitant when she visited, but Sam never blamed her for it. She drowned herself in guilt for things that she never meant to set in motion, and Sam could only sit and watch her. The silence wasn't uncomfortable, he understood that she only had so much to say to the son she last saw when he was six months old. They were practically strangers.
"I try to get Dean to eat and sleep properly," she said one day. "But he doesn't care about keeping himself healthy, he hasn't since the second he found out you were missing. I know I don't have the right to ask you to come back for me. I've caused you a lot of pain. But if you could come back for Dean…"
"You have to stop with all of this guilt, Mom," Sam said. "I don't blame you. For any of it."
He was one to talk about guilt.
"Dean is still looking for ways to help you. He mentioned something called 'African Dream Root'," she said. "His angel friend said that it wouldn't work. You aren't dreaming, because that would require being…"
"Alive?" Sam finished for her. "I think the strange symbols that you can't see on me are the locks keeping me out. Some have faded, but they're fading so slowly that I'm not sure Cas can preserve my body like this that long."
Mary sighed and rubbed at her eyes. "I've always heard that children drive their parents crazy, but you two…" She laughed a bit, but sobered quickly. "We'll figure something out, okay, Sammy?"
For the first time, she didn't hesitate when she reached out to squeeze his hand before she left the room.
"I hope you do, Mom. I really hope you do."
Sam always knew that life wasn't fair. That it was perhaps especially unfair to him and his family. But to die right before getting the chance to meet his mother—alive and well—wasn't that a bit extreme?
That Dean spent entire nights slumped in the chair at his bedside wasn't a surprise. Sam couldn't count how many times they went through the routine, but Dean seemed determined that he always be next to unconscious Sam. Just in case.
Sam snorted. Just in case they stumbled into a miracle that managed to wake him up while he still had a body to inhabit. The pace at which the symbols faded was really starting to worry him. The more Dean and Mary talked to him—even if they couldn't hear his responses—the more he knew that he needed to be there for them. He needed to clear them of the guilt threatening to bury them, the guilt of his mistakes, not theirs.
Dean was right. He did make the worst of a bad situation, and the fact that Dean sounded like he was so close to finding Sam made it that much worse. If only he could have resisted Lucifer's offer for a little longer…
His bedroom was becoming the room of unfinished sentences. Half-thoughts left to linger in the stifling air (not that Sam could currently tell whether or not the air was stifling).
Sam heard footsteps and expected to see his mom at the door of his room (sometimes she brought a blanket for Dean when she knew it would be useless to try waking him and forcing him to sleep in his bed). But it wasn't his mom, and Sam's surprise turned to dread when his new visitor looked directly at him and spoke.
"Sam, I think it's time we talked."
Author's Note: And another cliffhanger, but I promise it's the last cliffhanger because there's only one chapter left and no plans for a sequel. Speaking of the story ending, I've created a poll on my profile page asking what you would like to see in a Supernatural story from me next. I have ideas for each option (other than 'Other'), and while I have a couple that I'm leaning towards writing next, I'm not entirely decided on it.
No matter which one ends up being next, I do plan to write and post all of them over time. By the time I'm done, this fandom will be sick of me, ha.
Anyway, please check out the poll. You get 3 votes. And thank you to everyone who's been enjoying this story and reviewing. Thank you to those who also follow, favorite, and simply just read!