Sam's jaw was set and his eyes were hard. Raethaniel had no idea why the paper cup of bad hospital coffee wasn't being crushed in his hand.

"I'm not sorry," he said. Angry color still washed his cheeks.

"No one has asked you to be," she informed him.

"I'd do it again."

"I know you would."

His breathing was still deep and deliberate, nostrils still flared, eyes narrowed.

"Dean is going to be all right," she said, "Castiel made sure of that."

"He's still in the hospital," Sam said, unfazed.

"A sudden miraculous recovery from the kind of injuries Dean sustained attracts too much attention," she said.

"A close inspection of our health insurance is going to attract attention too," he said.

"I'll take care of that."

Sam looked at her sharply but she held his gaze without flinching. His eyes were particularly odd – dark green fading to brown struck through gold streaks like lightning in a shadowed wood.

"Like you took care of the little boy with the cancer that's suddenly in remission?" He smirked a little when she looked away, "The whole hospital is talking about it. I saw you go the Oncology floor. It was you, wasn't it?"

"I'm given a certain amount of leeway when it comes to miracles, as long as if doesn't interfere with free will. I haven't been to Earth in so long…. I have a few miracles I can invoke it I want."

They were seated at a very small table in the hospital cafeteria. Sam had coffee and an empty banana peel in front of him. He'd gotten her a cheese danish and water and paid with a badly crumbled ten dollar bill that he'd pulled from his front jeans pocket. His jacket was hanging on the back of his slender metal and plastic chair – a piece of furniture that didn't seem at all capable of holding someone his size. He'd rolled up the sleeves of his green plaid flannel shirt, almost to his elbow.

He looked haunted. He became completely still when she reached over to stroke his forearm, supple and alive, pulse beating strong over his heavy wrist, the skin silken smooth even over the fine lines of scar tissue. She ran her fingers up to his elbow and then reversed to trail back over firm muscles under a rough sprinkle of fine dark hair. She closed her hand over his wrist, noting how small she looked in contrast.

A mist of madness surrounded Raethaniel for a moment, hot and lovely. Sam was powerful, Sam was unique. He was beautiful, looking so strangely innocent and pure, smooth bone and muscle and tendon carved into a perfection worthy of heaven.

Sam was dangerous in ways she had not calculated when they had first met.

But at the moment Sam was just angry and tired.

"Castiel won't let anything like that happen to Dean ever again," she said.

"How can you be so sure?"

Raeth looked away, chewed on her lower lip for a moment and then said miserably. "Because now we know there's a civil war in heaven. There are angels who joined Uriel and we don't know who they are. Castiel was trying not to kill him. He never drew his angel blade. He was trying to take him alive so he could be questioned. Anna apparently didn't care. We'll be more careful who we trust now. We'll have to be."

Something in Sam's expression changed, as if he was just realizing the selfish jerk he was being.

"I'm sorry, Raeth," he said, sincerely, turning his arm and drawing it back so that he could take her hand. "This can't be easy for you. These are your brothers and sisters." His sudden concern caught her off guard. She tried to pull her hand back but he held it tighter. "And I'm sorry for thinking that Dean was deliberately left in Hell. Castiel explained it to me. I wish someone had realized what Lilith was doing sooner and gotten him out sooner. But I'm forgetting to be grateful to all of you for getting him out at all. I know he was there of his own free will. But it was because of me that he made the choice in the first place."

Let go of your guilt, Sam. She longed to say it out loud but didn't. He had somehow managed to turn a corner from being angry and she didn't want to put him on the defense again.

She stood up, pulling him along with her. He almost spilled what was left of his coffee.

"Hey!" He said.

"Let me take you somewhere nice, away from here. Castiel is with Dean. I can promise you he'd burn down the world at the moment to protect him."

Sam pulled another one of those sad smiles. "Isn't that what we're supposed to be preventing? The world burning down?"

"We can't prevent it if anything happens to Dean. He'll have a host of angels guarding him now. But you are my responsibility and you need to rest."

"Okay so where are going?" Sam hadn't let go of her hand, but he was picking up her Danish from the table and grabbing his coat with his other hand.

"Do you trust me?"

The way his eyes flickered for a moment, looking away, considering and then returning to her said that he had actually had to think about it for a moment. Please, Sam. Please. Don't trust a demon more than you trust your guardian angel…..

He exhaled and nodded once, curtly but resolutely. He tossed the coffee in the can by the door as she dragged him out of the cafeteria and ultimately out of the hospital all together. They walked into the parking lot and then out of that too, heading for the park across the street. Once there she led him to the shadow of a giant oak.

"I will bring you back the moment you ask me to, sooner if I think you need it," she swore.

"Okay," he said, uncertainly. "Where are we going?"

"You'll see."

A moment later Sam was standing in one of the most luxurious hotel rooms he'd ever seen.

"Oh my god," he said, looking around. "Where are we?"

"We're at a hotel about 5 miles for the hospital. You could take a cab to your brother if you wanted."

Sam nodded, satisfied. The room wasn't particularly large, but there was a king sized bed taking up most of it. The view of the surroundings from the sliding glass door was spectacular – the softly setting sun and the lights of the city just starting to come on.

"It's paid for," she assured him, "and we're registered. No one will bother us. Why don't you go take a shower, as long and hot as you want, and I'll order something to eat?"

Sam scratched his fingers through his scalp and thought about being thoroughly clean and it was suddenly heavenly to imagine.

"Yeah, sure," he said, trying to regain his balance in a world where he was murdering a powerful demon one moment and then going to take a long, hot shower in a luxury hotel the next.

Not to mention that his guardian angel was going to order him room service.

"Sam," the angel said, "I can feel you thinking. Just go relax now. Nothing else is going to happen tonight."

Believing her and, at last, trusting her, Sam went to do as she suggested.

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