Author's note: Thanks a lot to Larkafree, Maknatuna, Maddy Love Castiel, Pizzapig, No pen names left, keacdragon, midnight0211, Tendencia, Yana5, FireChildSlytherin5, musicfiend2392, The Quote Bandit and two guests for last chapter's reviews.

You guys are all amazing!

Edit: Now beta-read by the wonderful Ghastly Eternity!

13

"Sammy!" Dean's voice barely made it through the haze Sam seemed to be lost in, but before he could try to somehow find his way out of it, he was violently pulled back in.

"I really wish Dean could see you now…" Lucifer whispered.

"Come on, Sam," the older Winchester's voice seemed to be further away, but at the same time more insistent.

"What do you think big brother would think, if he could see how fast you broke?" the devil claimed all of Sam's attention for himself and traced a finger over the side of the younger Winchester's face nearly tenderly which somehow made it even worse.

"Oh please, just give the guy some rest," another voice with a British accent and it took Sam a few moments to even put the right name to it. Balthazar. Balthazar whom he hadn't even known before…

"Not so stubborn and strong-willed now, are you?" Lucifer hissed, forcing the human to look at him.

"You shut the hell up and do something!" Dean again. Sam tried to cling to his brother's voice, because he wanted to hear it. He wanted to believe that being somewhere close to his older brother was the thing that was real, even if that reality made less sense than the other one, that very moment.

"I'm not sure I'm in the mood today. Maybe if you beg prettily enough…" the devil offered and the younger Winchester just about lost it, because this game was so familiar to him that it couldn't feel anything but completely real.

"There is nothing physically wrong with your brother, Dean," Castiel's voice.

"Beg!" Lucifer demanded in a relatively quiet tone that was deafening to Sam, anyway.

"Nothing wrong? How the fuck is this not wrong?" his older brother yelled. The younger Winchester could barely hear him, though.

"I…" Sam choked out with great difficulties, even though no sound came over his lips in the real world.

"Well done, dumbass, you upset the baby!" Balthazar's words didn't really register with the unconscious human, but the cries of the infant did.

"Say it, Sam!" the devil shouted with a tinge of desperation to his tone that didn't make any sense to the younger Winchester. Lucifer was the one who had the human completely unable to move and at his mercy, after all.

"Great idea, too. Not like an entire store exploded last time that happened!" The wailing became more insistent and Sam wanted nothing more than to comfort the child the sounds came from.

"Please, I…" the younger Winchester whispered in a broken tone even as he began to open his eyes slowly, "Please, just…"

A few minutes earlier he would have known exactly what he was begging for and who he was pleading with, but the closer he got to full consciousness the surer he was that he just wanted to get someone's attention. Everything Lucifer had said and done got hazier the clearer the world around him became.

The younger Winchester was greeted by the confused looks of his brother, Bobby and the two adult angels as soon as he managed to open his eyes completely and take his surroundings in. He tried and failed to sit upright and sunk back deeper into the couch instead.

"Sam?" Dean asked in a tone that was so clearly worried that it spoke volumes about the gravity of the situation they must be in, even if the younger Winchester didn't quite get it, that very moment.

"I'm fine," he replied before he even attempted to remember how exactly he had gotten onto the couch in Bobby's living room with everyone standing around him, staring at him like they were surprised that he had woken up at all.

Sam faintly remembered taking Gabriel out to get some more clothes. He remembered wanting to buy a towel with a duck motive on it. But then there had been a demon, a lot of noise and some sort of shock wave.

"Like hell you are!" Dean argued hotly, but helped his younger brother to get into a sitting position, noticing quite relieved that he could keep himself upright.

"You were in the middle of an uncontrolled outburst of angelic energy," Castiel added in a serious tone.

Sam really wanted to tell him to stop staring at him like he might explode any second, but he couldn't quite find the energy to do it and he was distracted by Balthazar rocking Gabriel in an attempt to stop the infant from crying his little eyes out. It looked like the blonde angel didn't really know how to accomplish that, however.

"Frankly, I'm surprised your insides weren't pureed," Balthazar commented casually when he finally managed to make the baby stop crying for a moment by tickling his belly, "Or anyone else's, for that matter."

The contrast between the things the angel had just said and the way he was making faces for Gabriel's amusement just a second later was big enough to make it nearly funny. Nobody was laughing, however.

"Gabriel…" Sam mumbled, looking toward the infant. He wasn't quite sure what he had meant to say himself, though.

He was quite sure that the baby was relatively fine, but getting the confirmation for that would have been nice, anyway. It seemed like a completely safe guess that the infant had been the source of the aforementioned uncontrolled outburst of angelic energy, but – again – knowing for sure would have been nice. Last but not least, he wanted to have the archangel back with him, but the younger Winchester could barely say that out loud.

"Not one scratch on the little bugger," Balthazar stated. He thankfully chose to give in to the insistent whining coming from the infant pretty much instantly and simply handed him over to the human.

The archangel made a contented noise as he settled back into the younger Winchester's arms which made Sam smile despite the annoyed looks his brother was shooting his way. Hey, he had apparently just avoided becoming a bloody splatter on the floor of a baby store of all places by a hair; he was allowed to smile at whatever the hell he wanted!

"Excuse me for not being crazy about you cuddling the little armed atom bomb!" Dean huffed.

It became very clear that there must have been a discussion about this exact topic in the time Sam had been unconscious by the way the older Winchester looked at Bobby. The younger Winchester guessed that the humans and the angels weren't of the same opinion in the matter, because Castiel and Balthazar were giving each other looks, too.

"We were attacked by a demon," Sam finally pointed out, petting Gabriel's hair absentmindedly, "He only reacted to the threat."

Really, if the archangel hadn't done whatever he had done they would probably both be dead or worse, so the younger Winchester found it a little hard to think about the use of Gabriel's powers as an entirely bad thing. Granted, he didn't have all the information yet and was probably not seeing the bigger picture as things were.

"His reaction leveled the entire store and didn't only kill the demon but injured more than ten people, including you," Dean shot back immediately.

They were rather lucky that basically everything that might have pointed to Sam or any of them really had been destroyed when Gabriel had unleashed his powers, too. Hell, they were lucky that those people were only injured and not dead, as Balthazar had explained earlier.

"I think what your brother is trying to say is this," the blonde angel quipped completely unhelpfully, "You better switch to internet shopping."

Sam idly wondered if Gabriel and Balthazar had been friends before the archangel had left heaven. They seemed like two peas in a pod. Then again, the infant seemed to get along with the blond angel well enough, but he clearly preferred the younger Winchester's presence.

Not that Sam thought that it could have been said that he and Gabriel had a good connection until about a week ago. The way the infant was trying to crawl right into the younger Winchester's skin for all it looked like was a more than clear sign that the archangel at least felt like something had changed about that, though.

"What I'm saying is that Gabriel is far too dangerous to keep him around," Dean stated in a harsh tone. He had had to deal with Balthazar's stupid comments for a while now and they were starting to seriously annoy him. The angel was quite lucky that he hadn't been shot at, yet. The older Winchester would have contemplated banishing the bastard, but since Castiel was around too that was out of the question unfortunately.

"What's the alternative, Dean?" Sam asked with a hint of sarcasm that earned him a puzzled look from the baby archangel, "If he's too dangerous for us to handle, who do you think should give it a try instead?"

All the people the younger Winchester really trusted where currently in the same room and they all were in basically the same troubles Sam and Dean were in, so he just didn't see any other options than to keep the infant with them.

"Besides, it was fine until we ran into that demon," Sam added, tightening his grip on the baby as if his brother might actually try to take him away without further warning.

"Right, no problem then," Dean shot back sarcastically, "It's not like that happens to us every other day!"

Of course, the older Winchester had a point and it was a very good one even. That didn't mean that Sam had to like it, though. Also, his own point about there not being an alternative still stood, as well.

"You are both right," Bobby told the Winchesters before the two brothers could get into an unnecessary and fruitless argument, "Which is the reason why he should be with someone less likely to run into any demons."

Again, Sam had to admit that Bobby was right. He still didn't like it, but he also had to say that the possibility to give the archangel to the care of someone more fit to give him the treatment a baby deserved had crossed his mind before.

"We can't just dump an archangel baby on some unsuspecting civilian," the younger Winchester insisted, anyway. Sure, Gabriel might not see a reason to smite anyone, if he was in a perfectly ordinary environment, but he had made things appear out of thin air before.

"Damn right, you can't!" Balthazar commented, "He might be prone to drooling on expensive suits, but he's still one of our brothers!"

Sam snorted amusedly at that, but he was glad to have at least one person on his side in the matter. It also became even more apparent that he must have missed a couple of things while he had been passed out once more. He was distracted from the thoughts of all the things that might have happened while he had been reliving some of his memories from the cage and from thinking about the memories themselves when Gabriel bounced in his lap and made small, complaining noises. The younger Winchester readjusted his grip on the infant so the archangel had a better view of the room as a whole before he had to focus on other things again.

"You didn't exactly volunteer to take care of him, either," Dean huffed, clearly only looking at Balthazar, but Castiel felt the need to get involved into the discussion, anyway.

"Considering the state heaven is in right now, it just wouldn't be wise to bring Gabriel there," the angel stated in a very serious tone, "I cannot say what Raphael would do, if he got his hands on him, but I daresay it wouldn't be good for any of us."

It went without saying that Castiel, Balthazar and all the angels that might side with them were at least as much in danger to be attacked by someone at any moment than the Winchesters were, anyway. It really was too bad that the one angel who knew how to avoid being detected by the forces of both heaven and hell was the one that couldn't contribute to the topic currently.

"If any of you idjits would ever bother to listen for more than a second," Bobby interrupted the ongoing conversation, "I would have told you that I know the right person to do the job, already."

Sam was desperately trying not to show any trace of the dread he was starting to feel. There was no reason for him to get nervous or afraid and he knew it. If Bobby said that he knew the right person then he could trust that Gabriel would be in good hands and that was what the younger Winchester ultimately wanted for the infant.

"She's not a hunter, but knows her way around the supernatural, especially when it comes to warding all sorts of things off," the older hunter told them, "And she owes me."

The description sounded good to the younger Winchester. He looked at the baby in his arms contemplatively for a few moments. Sam liked to think that he had a say in this, after all. Chances were that he didn't really, though.

"Perfect," Dean chose that very moment to prove his younger brother's gut feeling right, "Call her!"

The younger Winchester would have fought tooth and nail, if it wasn't for one simple fact; he knew that this was the right thing to do. Gabriel deserved a caretaker who knew what they were doing. He deserved to be in the hands of someone who wasn't more of a ticking time bomb than Dean thought the baby archangel was. He deserved to have a good time while his second – or more like first – childhood lasted.

"Yeah, call her," Sam agreed with his older brother which seemed to surprise Dean and Bobby positively while it surprised Castiel and Balthazar negatively. The younger Winchester didn't have the resources to think about this too much as he was trying very hard not to question himself too much, however.