It is His doctrine that, in emergent situations, a single angel may be dispatched for the guidance and protection of a rising Messiah. Though the next Messiah has not yet been identified without a doubt, the candidates have been narrowed to less than half a dozen, all of whom are being monitored closely. In addition, the situation is already undeniably emergent, as Hell encroaches upon Earth in their search for what rightfully belongs to Heaven.
A seraph with experience on Earth and a history of loyalty and obedience has been selected based upon the recommendation of its captain. As soon as the Messiah has made himself known, it will be deployed, in order to ensure the Messiah fulfills the purpose we have ascertained to be his intended one. His will shall come to pass.
Although it goes against His orders, given many millennia ago and held sacred by our kind, consideration should be given to assigning more than one of the Host to the rising Messiah. Keeping him from the clutches of Hell is our holy imperative, and preventing the improper use or premature ascendance of his powers are close seconds. The death or corruption he may bring upon himself in fits of human anger or caprice must above all be prevented, for such a thing may be nearly as bad as Hell taking possession of him after he has become aware of what he is. The situation will be monitored and our approach modified as we see fit to guarantee His will is done.
We shall not repeat the mistakes made with past Messiahs, especially the most recent. Never before have two Messiahs been born so closely together; truly, it is proof that we have divined His will, that He in his infinite patience and mercy has given us a second chance, and that He will return to us when His stipulations are met.
Rejoice, for we will soon again bask in His light.
Heavenly missive concerning the next Messiah, c. 2005 (translated from Enochian)
The church Castiel brought Sam to was barely a church anymore, the roof fallen in and only the adobe walls still standing. Sam was decently sure they were somewhere in the tail end of the Rockies. The air had that high, thin, dry taste to it he remembered, the mountain whose foothills they were on rising proud behind the church, and as he walked in through the empty doorway, it gave him a sense of peace. Finality. If he was gonna die anywhere, this was a good place.
Standing in the tiny church, Sam looked up at the sky, the stars coming out and the last traces of winter light fading. Behind him, Castiel asked, "Is it suitable?" After a second, he added, "I can find another if you need me to."
"So long as it's still consecrated ground, it'll work just fine," Sam replied, turning around.
"Consecration doesn't simply fade," Castiel replied. "It takes an atrocity to erase it...much like what happened at the place I retrieved you from."
Sam's curiosity sparked, weakly. He ignored it. Tired as he was and bad as he felt, it was easy to do.
Notebook in hand, Sam shrugged his backpack off as he walked through the sage and rabbit brush that'd grown up through the dirt floor of the church. He fished a flashlight out of the front pocket. He could see his own breath. It was freezing in here, probably low thirties or high twenties, and it burned at the inside of his mouth and nose, sucked his lips dry and chapped. There were icy teeth in the cramping muscles of his left calf. His neck stung in the cold air, even with the collar of his coat up around it, and his face and hands were starting to ache. His chest hurt and bubbled with every razored breath.
"I'm gonna need a syringe," he told Castiel, after clicking the flashlight on and scanning the ritual again. "And Dean. I'll purify myself while you're gone."
They'd already talked about Sam going with Castiel to get Dean. It hadn't been a long argument. Every instinct he had screamed at him to be there, but with the condition he was in, he'd just be a liability. Castiel couldn't protect both of them from a hundred demons, and Sam was just gonna have to trust him. After he'd stuck up for Dean back at the motel, that was a lot easier to do.
Castiel didn't move. Head cocked to the side, staring at Sam with eyes that were either glowing faintly or catching the light, he uncertainly stated, "A...syringe."
Sam drew in a deep, painful breath. Of course they sent the angel with absolute zero knowledge of mundane, everyday objects to protect the supernatural equivalent of a nuclear warhead. After all, why the hell not?
He kept that to himself, but Castiel eyed him, feeling it anyway. Sam forced a tight smile, then bent shakily over to grab a pencil out of his backpack. A few seconds later, Sam showed him a very sloppy sketch of a syringe.
"One of these," he said. "You can find them in hospitals." After a short pause, he clarified, "A hospital's a place where - "
"I know what a hospital is," Castiel interrupted. Sam raised his eyebrows and looked away.
"Oo-kay."
After a beat of silence, Castiel spoke again. "I don't know how long it will be before I return. Dean is where you and I left him still, so he won't be difficult to find, but I'm not sure what kind of measures they might have taken to secure him...will you be all right here while I'm gone?"
"Yeah. I'm fine."
Castiel's face didn't change, but Sam somehow got the feeling he was skeptical anyway. Still, he didn't argue.
"Be sure you're ready by the time I return," he told Sam. "After all, the Ritual of the Purified Blood takes place over the course of eight hours. We can't afford to waste any time."
He was right about that. Which was why, after Castiel vanished in an explosion of cold air and bating wings, Sam didn't bother worrying about how long Heaven had known about curing demons. Given Castiel had his own special little name for the ritual and all.
Looking down at his notebook, Sam briefly wondered if purifying his blood was even really necessary, seeing as he was a Messiah. As if on cue, the sigil cut into the meat of his neck twinged spitefully. Better safe than sorry.
The priest who crafted the ritual suggested confession of one's greatest sin on consecrated ground, according to Sam's notes. His boots dragged trails through the light scurf of snow on the ground as he headed for the nearby confession booths. The curtains that'd probably once fallen over their doorways were long gone, and Sam stepped into the one he was pretty sure was meant for the penitent, notebook still in hand and backpack dropped at the entrance.
Something had made a nest on the bench inside, a soft, fragile thing woven out of twigs and fluff, and Sam could barely see it in the gloom. He brushed it out of the way, then realized he probably should've made an effort to keep it intact no matter how abandoned it looked. He huffed out a soft laugh as he sat down, joints creaking silent inside him.
"Well, that might be it."
He sat there quietly, the inside of the booth in full shadow, and the dregs of dusk passed him by. With the temperature in free fall, he realized he should've dug more layers out of his backpack before he came in here, but he was already sitting down. Might as well get started on the whole confession thing.
Sam bowed his head. His neck didn't like that. He sucked in a hissing breath that lit his teeth with cold.
Castiel thought a Messiah was meant to complete the Trials. Really thinking about it, Sam wasn't sure how much Messiah was left in him right now. Closing the Gates would burn off an ordinary soul, so no Heaven. That was okay, Sam didn't think he'd want to be there without Dean, anyway. After all, what were the odds of a damned soul making it all the way up, even once its humanity had been restored?
He didn't know what nothing at all felt like. He guessed that was the point.
There was still the possibility Sam would survive, but he could feel his own mortality, coming awake somewhere deeper than his bones. And he was fine with it. That was when he fully realized it, that he was fine with dying. Committed to it, all the way down to the core of himself.
Even if meant Dean had to be alone. That was something he should probably confess.
"I don't know who I'm talking to," Sam started, quietly. He cleared his throat. "Whoever's there, I guess. Whoever's listening, or cares...my name's Sam Winchester. I'm twenty-five, and I'm a Messiah. Apparently." A short laugh slipped out of him. "I'm not very good at it. Then again, I'm trying to do the Trials of God and close the Gates of Hell here, so maybe that counts as Messiah-level work."
He paused, awkward. "I need to confess. I need to purify myself. And I...have done a lot wrong in my life."
But he didn't know where to start. He sat there in the booth for what felt like ages, just thinking, turning all of his failures over and over in his mind. They came up one after the other. Which one was his greatest sin? Him letting his dad die, then failing to kill the wendigo that'd done it himself? Cutting everybody who cared about him out of his life because it would've been too much work to keep them in the loop? Vaughn? (That might be it.) Gordon? (It'd been in self-defense, but murder was a mortal sin.)
Then, though, he thought about Dean. About the entirety of the past nine or ten months.
"He just wanted to travel," Sam said to the vast emptiness of the freezing desert night. "He wanted some damn peace for once and I couldn't give that to him. I still can't, I can't stop now...I know I'm doing the right thing. I just know it's gonna hurt him. And the worst part's that a piece of me thinks he might deserve that." He swallowed stickily. "Because I'm just not strong enough to forgive him."
Sam was shaking violently with cold, face and hands numb, throat hurting even though he hadn't talked that much. He badly wanted a drink. It was dark but his eyes had adjusted, somewhat. He felt exhausted, painfully aware of how not-great of a person he was after all that self-reflection, but he was somehow lighter, too. At peace. Resolved.
"At the end of the day, that's my main sin, isn't it?" Sam said softly, after a while. "Weakness. I've never been strong enough, until now, to protect anybody, to do what I have to do. To face down what's too hard to deal with." A second passed, and then he cursed softly and shook his head. "And I'm still doing it right now, aren't I?"
His phone was still in his pocket, and he fumbled it out and flipped it open. The light scalded his eyes. Sam wiped at them, grimacing as they watered; even his tears were cold. Vaughn's message was still up on the screen and he took a second, eyes closed, just to ache. He was never going to see him again. But he got him out of Purgatory, and Bobby and Bela were gonna take great care of him.
Sam smiled to himself, just a little. Bobby, Bela, and Dean.
When he checked, he didn't have any service. He swore again, then lifted the phone, arm shaking, squinting up at it. One bar barely flickered for half a second. He wasn't even sure he saw it. He wasn't gonna be able to call anybody.
How long had Castiel been gone? How long until he got back, and how long until Sam should be worried about him? What the hell was he gonna do if the demons killed him? Could they even kill angels? No way Sam could hike down a mountain in the condition he was in. For the first time, he felt panic plucking away at the edges of him, thread by thread.
He forced himself to get a grip. He'd worry about it when it happened. For now, Castiel was coming back with Dean soon, so Sam had to hurry. Everybody deserved, at the very least, a goodbye from him, and he wasn't sure he'd be in any condition to do it once he started transferring his own blood into Dean.
He set up a voice message, selected recipients. Ellen, Jo (a brief flare of anger, at Dean for just letting him suspect she was dicking them over), Ash, Garth, Charlie, Bobby, Bela...Vaughn. Sam made a contact for him, the first and only time he'd ever use it.
He had to start the message, then erase seconds of dead air, over and over because he just didn't know what to say. His tongue felt numb and clumsy, lips the same way. But he knew he had to get it done, because he'd have to hit the ground running as soon as Castiel and Dean landed.
"Hey," Sam started, finally. "So...this is so much less than any of you deserve. I know I'm not gonna do a good job of it, and you're gonna be pissed. And I'm not even gonna be around for you to yell at me, which makes it even worse." He breathed out something that he almost managed to make into a laugh. "But I don't have a lot of time here. I-I'm about to finish, I'm about to close the Gates. And I need to let you all know how much you mean to me. How much I owe you. I need to say goodbye, and I just wanna...Ellen…"
He choked up, throat closing, and had to pause the recording and put his head in his free hand for a second. It took him longer than he wanted to recover.
"Like I said," Sam continued roughly after a little while. "So much less than you deserve. I...I love all of you, so much, and I'm so sorry." He swallowed. "And I gotta ask you for a favor." He had to pause it again, wiped at his nose and rubbed at his face. "Take care of Dean for me. Please. He...he's not gonna be in a good way, after this is all over. He's gonna need you, but he's probably not gonna want most of you. Or any of you. You've got plenty of experience with that, though. After me." He didn't even try for a laugh this time. "It's a lot to ask, it's probably too much, but you all...you're the only people I trust with him." He took a deep breath, and it hitched twice on the way in. "And he's the only one I trust with you."
He wanted to say more. He felt like he needed to. But he didn't even know what it'd be, and according to his phone, he'd reached recording capacity. He set it to send as soon as he was back in service, then closed the phone, and sat there in the dark.
He heard a flap of wings, and snow gusted past the mouth of the booth. It hit Sam like a thunderclap then: he should've drawn a sigil to keep Dean in for the ritual. Just in case. But he didn't know of any off the top of his head that could contain a very possibly pissed-off Knight of Hell for eight hours, and it was a little too late to do research now.
Sam forced himself up, joints cold-stiff, and almost dropped his phone. He did drop his notebook, sitting forgotten on his lap. Cursing, he picked it back up, then headed out, limping like a wind-up soldier, jittery, aching for Dean and dreading seeing him both.
He stopped dead in the snow as soon as he saw Castiel was standing there alone, coat settling around him, looking disgruntled.
"Here," Castiel said, holding something out to Sam. When Sam took it, he realized it was a syringe, still in the plastic packaging.
"Where - where's Dean?" Sam demanded, shoving the syringe, his notebook, and his phone into his backpack but not taking his eyes off Castiel.
Castiel shook his head. "Still in the desecrated convent, I'd assume. The demons warded it against angels. I spent a decent amount of time trying to get in...and evading Heaven, because they have questions...but unfortunately, they both knew what they were doing. I wasn't able to enter the building, and I've temporarily blocked my connection to divine communications."
As Sam stood there, processing that, Castiel reached for his forehead with two fingers. Instantly, he was flooded with warmth, the deep-seated, gnawing ache in his bones lessening. It was so good his eyes fell half-closed in bliss. Castiel shook his head.
"You really need to start taking better care of yourself, Sam."
Sam wrested himself forcefully back into focus. "So, there's no way for you to get in? What're we gonna do?"
"We'll just have to use another demon," Castiel replied. "It won't be difficult for me to find one, but we had better hurry. They seem to be drawing into protected areas."
"No." Sam shook his head. "No. We're using Dean."
"Sam, I just told you it's impossible to reach him."
"No, you told me it's impossible for you to reach him." Sam smiled tight, lips splitting dry. "Not me."
Castiel looked away, shaking his head, sighing in exasperation, and it was so human it legitimately unnerved Sam. In a very deliberate tone of voice, Castiel told him, "You are in no shape whatsoever to walk into that particular viper's nest. The minions of Hell will be on you in an instant, and then they'll have both you and Dean. He's an acceptable casualty, but with the way they'd be able to use you…"
"Can you heal me?" Sam brushed off the "acceptable casualty" thing. For now. "I know it'd undo the Trials, but that's fine, we can just do 'em all over again."
"You don't understand," Castiel stated. "Healing you would not only mean forcing the gears of the universe, which you set in motion with the completion of the First Trial, to grind to a halt, but to spin backwards."
"You said the angels could heal me. You said that was what they were planning on."
"The entire Host certainly could heal you. A lone seraph can't. I'm built for battle...and even if I were one of the Rit Zien, it would be futile."
Sam was quiet, fever-wracked mind scrambling off the walls of his skull as he tried desperately to figure something out. Snow rose in shaking, jerky little patterns around him and a muscle twitched under one eye, each thing just as voluntary as the other.
"We'll have to use another demon," Castiel repeated. "It's the only way. We can reevaluate rescuing Dean once the Gates are closed, if we still can. If you still want to."
Sam shook his head again. "Absolutely not," he told Castiel. "Not an option."
Castiel was silent. Sam looked at him again after about a minute.
"What about me?" he asked. "I heard what Bobby said, what you said. About me being nearly as powerful as God under the right circumstances. Teach me to use my powers, and I'll heal myself and get Dean back."
Castiel was shaking his head before Sam even finished talking. "There's no time. I've told you before, it takes years to fully master Messianic powers."
"But it's inside me already, right?" Sam asked sharply. "Most of it's dormant and some of it's haywire, but there's gotta be a way to unlock it."
He stared down Castiel in the darkness. The angel was stone-faced, but maybe Sam was turning into a little bit of an empath himself. Either that or he'd just spent enough time around Castiel to be able to read him like he would a person. Because there was something there, just below the surface, he could see.
"There's a way." Sam pointed at Castiel. "I can tell. You know a way to do this."
"No, I don't." Frustration and anger seared through Sam, but before he could say a word, Castiel hurried to add, "There's technically a method, but every time it's been used, it had disastrous consequences. The last was in Siberia at the turn of the last century." Castiel shook his head. "It was barely contained by a massive effort, angels from a dozen castes working in sync…"
"I don't care." Sam said it first, realized he meant it a second later. "That won't happen, I can control it."
"It would awaken your powers, but you wouldn't have any idea how to use them," Castiel warned. "The best possible outcome would be you burning out in a matter of hours, like an unstable star. You'd have barely enough time to rescue Dean and finish the Trials, and only if you hurried. And the most likely case is that you'd simply combust upon ascendancy." Castiel looked around. "Not to mention take a decent portion of this mountain range with you. Very possibly more."
Sam opened his mouth to reply, but Castiel wasn't done.
"Corruption is also a possibility," he continued grimly, "as is alienation. You may simply no longer care about Dean or closing the Gates of Hell once you change. You won't be you anymore." Castiel looked at Sam. "It's an irreversible, excruciating, and undoubtedly fatal process." He paused. "And then there's also the fact you have demon blood currently in your system to consider."
"I don't care," Sam repeated. "Nothing is going to change how bad I want to do this. Save Dean, save the world. And this is the only way I can. I can handle it."
"You can't ascend without my help," Castiel answered, "and I refuse to give it."
"Then I'll go get Dean on my own, like I am right now." Sam set his jaw. "And you'll have to kill me to stop me."
Castiel said nothing. They both knew it was a bluff, Sam was sure. Castiel could probably tap him on the shoulder right now and drop him, and he wouldn't even have to use his Grace. But it was the only option Sam had.
And, miraculously, after about a minute of the cold seeping steadily back into Sam, Castiel closed his eyes and grimaced like he was in physical pain. Then, very reluctantly, he said, "If anyone can do it and succeed, it would be you." Opening his eyes, he added, "I've never met anyone, human or otherwise, with your sheer willpower before. And you have been purified, so perhaps that will make a difference...along with the fact you're driven by love."
Sam had nothing to add to that.
"Are there any preparations you'd like to make?" Castiel asked.
"I already did." Sam thought about his phone, and how it'd go with him before the message could send if he blew up. Then he shut that line of thinking down as fast as he could because it wasn't gonna happen. This would work. It had to. "I'm ready now."
Sam blew out a breath, waiting. Castiel just stood there. So, after a second, Sam asked, "What do I have to do?"
"I'll allow some of my Grace to enter you," Castiel replied.
Sam waited for the rest of the steps, but Castiel didn't continue. "...that's it?"
"That's it," Castiel confirmed, sounding a little irritated. "It's not an elegant ritual, Sam. It's brute force, a way of breaking barriers that were put in place for a reason. Something that, in all reality, goes against the will of God…" Sam almost literally saw him realign his worldview. "But maybe not. Maybe this is what He had in mind all along." Rolling his shoulders, Castiel's blade fell into his hand, and he warned, "Should this work, Heaven will be able to detect you. They'll know what happened the moment you complete your apotheosis, and you won't be capable of hiding the light coming off you; you won't know how. There's no time to teach you how to travel on your own, so I'll take you directly to the convent, and then I'll have to go. I'll hopefully be able to draw off Heaven long enough for you to find Dean and complete the ritual." He paused, then told Sam, earnestly, "Make this worth it. See it through."
"I will," Sam promised quietly, and a frisson snapped through him, static electricity with teeth. He wondered if they'd just made a deal, like with a crossroads demon.
"Give me your hand," Castiel ordered, and took it when Sam held it out. He dragged the point of his blade across Sam's palm. Sam had never been cut by one attached to a living angel before, and it felt uncomfortably like being bitten, more in the life and will behind it than the actual mechanics. Sam felt his face twitch as blood welled slowly out of the cut, but didn't make a sound.
Castiel cut his own hand next. Blue-white light shafted out of the wound, and his eyes were glowing faintly too when he looked at Sam. With an air of finality, he asked him, "Are you sure?"
"Yes," Sam said firmly, and he couldn't even be annoyed with Castiel for checking again.
Castiel's blade vanished, and he grasped Sam's hand firmly in his own. The edges lined up perfectly, the cuts pressing against each other like kissing mouths, sealing the two of them together. Sam could hear and feel his heart pumping inside him.
One beat. Nothing.
Another. He started thinking about asking Castiel how long it usually took.
A third, and it hit, like fire being sucked into a room full of oxygen.
It was an explosion of hot and freezing agony, light in places inside him it was never meant to touch, the moist pockets and corners of his body lit up in blinding pain. Sam screamed, and barely felt it when he dropped to his knees, hand locked around Castiel's like a vise in a motion that wasn't a choice, just every muscle in his body cramping at once. There was a flap of wings as Castiel left him empty and his fingers clutching at nothing, nails curling under the lip of the cut on his palm when his hand clenched tight.
He saw Castiel standing against the far wall of the church, just a dark shape, and then Sam hunched over, trembling. Black spots pattered into the snow below him and he thought it was a nosebleed, but when he wiped clumsily at his face with his uninjured hand, he realized it was coming out of everywhere, seeping from his pores. He was sweating blood.
Heat built in him. The snow started melting around him in a steadily-growing radius, and then the wet ground began to steam. Sam panted, not sure what was happening. He imagined his bones drying out inside him, and wondered if he hadn't made a mistake as it got hotter and hurt worse. It was different than the pain that came with a vision, like comparing a cut and a burn.
He realized, suddenly, he could see better...something was glowing. It took him a little longer to figure out that it was him. The light grew brighter. He could see the ground cracking around him, Castiel's face, full of awe and fear. Brighter. Ice crystals drifted in the air, sublimated with minuscule wisps of steam. Brighter. His vision bubbled, like the water in his eyes was boiling.
Brighter.
Brighter.
And then, in a single instant, the glow blasted out from between every molecule that made Sam up, and there was only light, terrible, burning, and too hot even for fire.
Sam couldn't hold himself together in it. Everything he was, name, age, memories, connections, purpose, started smoking away at the edges. What made him up was shadows in comparison to this brilliance, and shadows couldn't last long in dazzling sunlight. He couldn't hold it all together. He couldn't keep it cool enough not to burn.
He couldn't remember who, but he knew someone had told him there was a chance of losing himself if he let this light out from where it was sleeping inside his soul, and he realized that this was what he'd meant. Nothing could survive this.
Frantic, he sifted through his shadows, immaterial as paper burn to fragile ash. There seemed to be so few, and he wasn't sure if it had always been like that or if he'd already lost most of him. He didn't even know what he was looking for. Maybe his name? He didn't know if he still had it, and was afraid to check, just in case he didn't.
Down at the very bottom of the pile, he uncovered something different. A sliver of darkness that didn't quite fit in, something undeniably wrong and vile about it, and wasn't burning away as fast as the rest. An infection-shaped fissure in shades of ink and sable. It might've been a mistake, but it was material where nothing else was, and he saw no other option. He anchored himself to it, along with everything he still had of who he was, clinging tight, and something about it screamed Dean to him.
That was why he was doing this. And this thing didn't come from Dean, but enough of Dean touched it that Sam could feel him. He concentrated on that, wished and longed and hurt, and remembered that the light was just as much his as the shadows were as he drew power from it. That dewdrop scrap of Dean grew and grew until the entire shard of shadow was his, fully. A piece of Sam's (that was his name, he hadn't lost it) other half carried inside him at his core, and that was what let him stay who he was.
Around him, the light tamed and settled. The shadows no longer smoked. Sam was in control, and even though it felt like having a leash on a supernova, the fact remained he was holding the end of that leash.
Identity firmly in place and power under his command, more or less, Sam slowly became aware of his own body again, and opened his eyes. He was doubled over on the dirt floor of the church. Or what'd used to be dirt, at least. He was kneeling on glass now. Far below it, too deep for his heat to have reached, tiny things burrowed through their tiny lives, candle-flame souls flickering inside them, star-points of bacteria.
When Sam pushed himself up, he saw the church was filled with stunning light, a golden-white glow streaming from inside him, every bone and artery a shadow in flesh the color of the sun seen through honey. He could see the veins and nerves inside his own eyeballs, which was wildly uncomfortable, but he forced himself to block it out as he slowly got to his feet. He heard his muscles and tendons moving together inside and around his joints, a song, but the pitch was wrong, full of sour notes. He started to get an inkling of just how much damage the Trials had done to his body.
"Sam?" Castiel asked, cautiously. His voice sounded different. Sam could hear echoes of bells and thunder in it, cacophonous sounds built for another language woven reluctantly into English. "Are you all right?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm good." Even as he said it, Sam realized he wasn't. It was like carrying plates on his head without any practice, and he had to self-correct a thousand times a second to keep them from falling. Or, in reality, to keep magma from streaming out of his pores and the fury and rage of a star either dying or being born from igniting in his heart.
More than anything, it reminded him of what he'd been able to feel of Dean's power, when they were in the same body. In comparison to this, though, Dean's was like a Christmas tree bulb next to a spotlight, and he'd had way better control of it. More practice. Sam had no idea how long he could maintain it, but didn't say that to Castiel.
Speaking of Castiel, when he looked at him, Sam realized he could see him. The real him, inside a vessel he could see the organs and cells and tangled-thread DNA of, a comet slotted in next to a slumbering human soul wrapped in its faith and dreaming of a Second Coming. It was overwhelming, and Sam was gonna go crazy if he couldn't figure out how to get some blinders on, so Sam focused on Castiel. And even that was still too much, angels were the four-dimensional love children of fractals and mandalas, so he focused on one part of him.
Sam looked past the armor and weapon woven into Castiel's being, the prototypes of jaguar and falcon sketched out in him, the lightning eyes and starfire face. He found his wings. They were shattered like a plate dropped on the floor, held together only by the shape of what they used to be, agony and guilt webbed between them. Before thinking about it, Sam was walking towards him, stonecrop and saltbush sprouting in his bootprints where the ground wasn't glass. He could feel life dripping off him, igniting in the soil.
"Here, let me…" Sam put a hand on Castiel's wing, and only had to think about it to heal him, stitch the discordant pieces back together with his own light. He'd read a book once, with a line about a broken teacup flying back together. He couldn't remember what it was but that was what it made him think of.
Castiel's wings were so soft, powder and ash with steel beneath. They healed instantaneously, then flared as Castiel reacted, moving away from Sam. The light coming off him was much dimmer than Sam's own, and bursting with a rainbow of colors. Sam could tell he was alarmed.
"As much as I appreciate being healed, Sam, you shouldn't have done that," Castiel told him sternly. "You need to get your power under control. At this rate, you're going to burn out in an hour or two."
Sam focused on trying to rein it in. It felt like putting his hands over the mouth of a firehose, and he didn't think it made any difference. Castiel seemed satisfied, though.
"That's better. I suppose."
Castiel reached for Sam, then hesitated, looking at his neck. Sam looked, too. The angle should've been impossible for him, but he saw the symbol that'd been cut into him, looking exactly how it'd felt, Castiel's interrupting slice running through the junction of the X. The light spilling out of the wounds was different, toxic emerald and corrupted black. The absence of light, really, but it looked like its own glow.
"I'm not sure tying yourself to that was wise," Castiel said, "but transmuting the blood into Dean's was a clever move." Sam looked at him, not sure what he was talking about, and Castiel grabbed his arm. "Let's go get your Knight."
Sam saw Castiel flap his wings, and then there was a blur of motion and color and life, so many different forms of soul. The eddies off Castiel's wings rolled right through him, tiny spaces and pocket realms blinking into existence and then gone, a billion years unfolding inside a second. It made him nauseous. He remembered, again, Dean's warning about angel flight.
Sam rocked on his feet when something solid hit them, and it took a second for the spinning to stop and him to realize that he was back in front of the convent. He looked around for Castiel, but he was already gone.
The building was covered in Enochian, sigils glowing faintly on every flat surface, the same ones Dean had torn out in chalk every time they stopped for a breather so the two of them could have some damn privacy. No wonder Castiel couldn't make it in.
They didn't mean anything to Sam. He could hardly even feel the power of them. He took a step towards the convent.
The building exploded.
Smoke burst out of windows, vents, cracks in the stone, flooding away across the sky. Vapor made up of ragged particles of corrupted souls, and there were nightmares inside it. Sam saw snatches of black eyes, withered limbs, faces tortured out of shape. The demons must have felt him, the same way that he could feel them as they fled, a dripping wrongness, something that never should have existed, every single one an abomination, a cruel mockery of God's intentional creations.
He could kill them, Sam realized. Every single one. He probably only had to think about it, the same way he'd healed Castiel. But he had to save his power, and besides, they'd be dealt with pretty soon, one way or another. He was gonna close the Gates of Hell in a matter of hours.
The doors swung open without Sam touching them as he headed up the steps.
He could see a lot better this time. It probably helped to be your own flashlight...he almost smiled, but it died as he looked around.
Crumpled vessels lined the halls, most long-dead, some with weary, torn souls climbing out of them or standing lost beside them. They pulsed black around the edges, corruption by association, but they were still so incredibly, dazzlingly beautiful, even moreso than Castiel had been. Sam could heal their bodies, put them back inside. He closed his eyes briefly (which didn't do much, he could still see), and focused. He had to find Dean, finish the Trials, close the Gates. So nothing like this could ever happen again.
As he moved past the entrance, Sam touched the mark on his neck, and the blood in him called out to the rest of its kind. Dean was in the sanctuary. And the closer he got, the more Sam could feel of him. Agony a human never would've been able to withstand, not even a human soul separated from its body. Dean's pain hit him in the fillings like the taste of metal, made tears gather in the corners of his eyes. He walked faster.
There were at least a couple demons who'd stayed behind. They came at him out of the shadows as he burned them away, faces carved down to the bone with horns of smoke and bared teeth, huge black eyes, withered bodies curled in the chest cavities of their vessels. One was holding a knife and the metal melted to the floor in cherry quicksilver before it could ever reach Sam's skin.
He caught that demon by the forehead, and then the other, almost on instinct. Terrified expressions blinked over what was left of their faces a second before his light poured into them, the black smoke vanishing, every impurity gone. Of course there was nothing left when the light faded, the bodies falling away from Sam's hands with smoking eye sockets. Sam stared down at them, and felt the tiniest flicker of fear.
He hadn't even thought about doing that to them. Was that what would happen as soon as he touched Dean?
No, because he wouldn't let it. He got moving again.
There was no one in the sanctuary but Dean when Sam reached it. Light filled the room as the doors swung open, reflecting off the glass that remained in the windows. And the blood.
Alastair took torture, something Sam had always considered a grisly last-resort necessity, and elevated it to something he could almost have called an art form. If it didn't horrify and repulse him so much. If he hadn't been able to feel the very air in the room weeping with pain, the way he was right now.
Dean was on the dais, behind the altar. Sam started towards him. Blood was pooled half an inch deep on the stones of the floor, and more ran out of his ruined flesh. Sam saw sigils carved into him, and only recognized one, but saw what it and the rest were doing: harnessing Dean's own power to force him to keep healing himself. Keep bleeding. Keep hurting. And above all, stay in his vessel.
Intricate as Alastair's spellwork was, Sam's focus was all on Dean's true form. He couldn't tear his eyes away from him.
He was a corpse, abused out of human shape. Scarred and desiccated and starved and arrested in a state of rot, shattered and improperly-healed bones sticking out of putrid skin as spikes and claws, black smoke streaming out of the wounds to make hands and tentacles and twisted wings, all held out and aloft in a cloud around him, shivering with the pain. The smoke coming out of all the open sores higher than his jaw formed a pair of massive, branching antlers.
Dean's head rose as Sam entered, and he saw his face. Black eyes enormous, no lips to hide teeth that looked more like fangs. Castiel had been too much to look at all at once, and a demon was exactly the same way. A pattern that couldn't exist in a human world, a wound that cut through a dozen dimensions to stab at God Himself. An overlay of unnatural strength that drew itself from every act of anger and hate that'd ever been committed, whether the person who'd done it knew about Hell or not. Every ugly thought Dean had had while he was alive was written there in his facets, every casual sin that had happened after he'd died, and it all opened up for Sam like a flower.
Sam saw shock in there, at seeing him. Pain, of course, at what Alastair had done and at Sam's light, too. Panic when Dean realized he could see him. And a toxic, vindictive smugness as he waited for him to grimace, drop his eyes, gag.
Sam kept looking, and kept walking. That last emotion shivered and twisted into something he didn't even try to read.
"What'd you do to yourself?" Dean asked. It was the smoke talking, his voice split into a chorus all made up of him. His body didn't have much of a mouth anymore, and god, did that piss Sam off. If anything had been art, it'd been Dean's lips.
"Where's Alastair?"
"Gone. What'd you do, Sam?"
"It's okay," Sam answered.
"No…" A snarl, and Sam wasn't sure if it was of pain or anger. "It's not."
"This is the only way, Dean, I didn't have any other choice. I came back to get you outta here."
He mounted the stairs, and found his demon-killing knife on the altar. It'd been driven through Dean's heart, still beating, threaded back into his body by arteries Alastair had somehow Frankensteined together. Sam yanked the knife out, shoved it in his jacket, and reached forward to heal Dean as he came around the altar. Dean's smoke ripped itself away from Sam's hands.
"You can't fix me like this," Dean warned. "You can't even touch me. I don't got any idea how you're this close, even, you should be burning me off."
Even his true voice was ragged, his accent coming through stronger than normal. Sam told him, "Just trust me. It'll be okay, honest. I know what I'm doing." Very, very gently, he cupped what was left of Dean's face, the flesh and the smoke both, and looked at him head-on. And yeah, it hurt, but that was fine, because he was hurting Dean by doing this, too, by just being close to him.
Something in Dean stilled, at Sam still looking at him. At Sam touching him. Sam looked, and looked, feeling like he was practically falling into the chasm that was Dean, and he thought he saw something down at the bottom. At the heart of him. Three symbols bound together, one a lot larger than the other two, and all of Dean seemed to spin off those, toxins leaching out of them. A lot like what'd been happening with the mark on Sam's neck before he figured out how to fix it.
He wanted to fix this for Dean. He went to reach for it, to heal it, but he heard Dean laugh quietly.
"You're not gonna be able to do anything for that."
Sam pulled back, reluctantly.
"I'll just have to take care of the rest of you, then."
He kissed Dean, the exposed teeth of his true face and the dripping gristle of his vessel, and he tasted sulfur like every nerve in his body was suddenly wired to his tongue. And he started to pull Dean back together from where Alastair had flayed him wide, spread him out, crucified him on his own bones. The dark thread of demon blood ran through every ounce of power Sam used.
Dean screamed, because of course the healing hurt. Sam had no idea how to make it not. He apologized quietly, over and over, and Dean grabbed onto him with every smoke limb he had. Sam wasn't sure that was a good idea, but somehow, his light still wasn't burning him. Dean's mismatched wings folded in around him, hands, tentacles, claws, and he clung to Sam, shaking violently through the whole process. It wasn't like healing Castiel had been. Maybe because of what Dean was, maybe because of what'd been done to him.
Eventually, though, Dean was whole again, and his vessel sagged in Sam's arms, breathing raggedly. Sam held him tightly up, and Dean clutched at him with flesh and smoke both, and everything about it felt right.
Sam wasn't sure how long they stood like that, behind the altar. Thunder crackled weakly outside. Eventually, Dean seemed to recover some of his strength, pulling back and looking at Sam with black eyes that reflected golden light. Sam had just realized that Dean's amulet and ring were both gone when Dean stated, "You're burning."
"Yeah," Sam agreed, "that's a side effect. We gotta hurry."
"Castiel's feather-prints are all over this."
"He helped, if that's what you mean."
Dean snorted. "I called him in to save you and just fucking look what he did."
Sam's light burned brighter, and Dean squinted.
"He's out keeping Heaven off our asses right now, and besides. Why'd I need saving in the first place?"
Sam saw how heavy that landed on Dean, but told himself he didn't care.
He looked around the sanctuary. This was technically a church, but Castiel had said himself it wasn't consecrated ground anymore, and besides, Sam had left the syringe back at the adobe ruins. Not to mention how wildly unsafe this place was. He stepped back, out of the reach of Dean's physical arms.
"Look, I'm sorry - " Dean started. Sam cut him off.
"There's someplace I need you to take me," he told him. "A church. I think it's out in the Southw - "
"New Mexico?" Dean interrupted. Sam blinked.
"Yeah, I mean, probably, but - ?"
Dean almost laughed. "I can feel it all the way from here. It's like a bomb went off there. Glowing like an angel spewed Grace all over it…" He eyed Sam. "So I'm guessing that's where this happened."
Sam spread his hands, a little helplessly.
"I'm not taking you there," Dean said flatly. "I can't. It's just about the worst place in the world for you right now. You got any idea what kinda things are gonna be drawn by that sorta power?"
"Fine." Sam wasn't arguing. "Then just take me through so I can grab my stuff, and bring me to another church."
"What, Jesus Overdrive Mode doesn't let you teleport?" Dean asked, mocking. There was an ugly edge to his voice. "What a rip." Before Sam could say anything, he shook his head. "Whatever. Better anywhere than here. Don't have time for this."
He grabbed Sam's arm, after a fraction of a second's hesitation, and then they were gone. If Castiel's travel was flight, Dean's was tunneling. It was so much darker, no light, no life, and it felt...wrong. Carving holes through things that weren't meant to be punctured and were slow to heal. But at least it didn't make Sam sick.
As soon as they landed, though, Dean staggered, gasping. Sam caught him.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing," Dean replied through gritted teeth, "just peachy."
Sam looked at him, eyes running over his smoke, wished he knew what a healthy Knight of Hell was supposed to look like to him in "Jesus Overdrive Mode." "Are you still hurt?"
"Reserve's tapped out," Dean replied. "It'll come back, but jumping around's taking a lot outta me right now. Not to mention consecrated ground's still something I notice on the best of days, even if it doesn't trip me up, but right now, it'd sting even if it weren't fucking…" He looked around, squinting, eyes still black. "I don't know, Gethsemane in here right now."
"What can I do to help you?" Sam asked, but Dean didn't answer, just shrugged his hands off. Sam took a step back, then hurried to scoop up his backpack. Once it was on his shoulder, he came back. "You don't have to take us to another church. I can figure it out."
"Oh hell no." Dean shook his head. "You got no idea what you're doing. You'll clip us sixty years into the past without even trying, and awesome as the twenties probably were, I'm not in the mood."
Sam didn't correct his math. "You think I can do that right now?"
Dean didn't answer, just stepped forward and practically smacked a heavy hand onto Sam's shoulder. There was more tunneling.
They came out in a dark, dusty space the light pouring off Sam immediately filled. Scattered pews were still gathered in two haphazard groups, with a large wooden cross behind an altar and a worn runner down the aisle. Sam took it all in with a flashing glance before Dean collapsed.
He brought him up, arm around his waist and one of Dean's slung over his shoulders, and helped him stagger to the nearest pew. Dean slumped into it, dead weight, and his chest heaved as he stared up at Sam.
It was cold in here, Sam realized. He didn't feel it, though. Just knew it in the way he knew what color things were when he saw them, analytical information.
"I'm fine," Dean growled. "Just...just need a second here."
Sam didn't believe him, whether or not he could see anything wrong with him beyond smoke-deep weariness. But he looked away from him, out one of the glassless windows the wind was sieving in through, and saw a snowy prairie. The lights of a small town off in the distance, electric and soulfire both. It was beautiful, a faraway galaxy. He hadn't known how many layers there were to life.
"Sam."
Dean's voice brought him back. Sam turned to him.
"How you doing?" Sam asked.
"Better already," Dean replied, but there was still a faint wheeze to his voice, and he didn't get up.
Sam dropped his backpack next to him, took a knee in front of him. He grabbed one of Dean's hands and gripped it hard, relieved when he didn't pull away.
"I didn't heal you enough," he stated. Dean shook his head.
"I'm fine. I got what I needed."
"Lemme try again."
"No, seriously. I don't want you fucking with me anymore than you have to." One corner of Dean's mouth turned faintly up, and the smoke there curled. "You pump any more juice into me and you're gonna wind up making me human again."
Sam was silent, jaw working a little. He swallowed, and just looked up at Dean.
That thing that'd almost been a smile died. "You wanna use me."
"It's the only way."
"Oh, the fuck it is, Sam. There are a billion demons in the world, you could have your pick. You could fucking - you could index 'em by time period and deal type if you wanted!" Dean threw his free hand up. "You'd probably get off on that."
"It's the only way to make sure you stay here when I close the Gates," Sam replied firmly. "Like I said."
"Oh, yeah? And what happened to finding a way to make sure you survived the last Trial? 'Cause you said that, too." Dean pulled himself up straight and leaned forward, voice rising, smoke roiling. "And right now, you're dying, even faster than you were before. I can literally see you going up in smoke as we're sitting here, piece by piece."
Sam couldn't answer. Dean looked away, shaking his head again, and he squeezed Sam's hand so hard he would've pulped every bone in it if he'd been...if he were still…
Human. Because he wasn't, not anymore.
Would the ritual even work with whatever was in his veins now?
Dean looked at him again, smoke pulsing painfully inside his vessel, tearing at the edges of the wounds it seeped out of.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "For Alastair, for lying, for everything."
"You don't need to apologize, Dean." Sam shook his head. "We don't need to talk about that right now."
"Yeah, 'cause if you get to live out your martyr fetish, we're never gonna talk about it." Dean paused. "Sorry for that, too. And I do need to apologize right now, because I need to ask you to shut this down."
"What?"
"All of this." Dean gestured to him. "The glowing, the burning, the power, all the...holy-roller, Sam Almighty stuff. Turn it off."
Sam was shocked into silence. A quiet, incredulous laugh bubbled out of him before he could stop it.
"I don't...think I can, Dean," he said slowly. "I mean, Cas didn't say anything about it to me. It just ends when I…"
"Die?" Dean finished the sentence for him. His smoke had razor edges now. "And when's that gonna be? Couple hours? A day, at best? And how in the hell're you talking about it so casually? You're gonna die, Sam. Every single part of you. No body left, no soul, nothing, 'cause it's all burning out right now, I can see it."
"Hey," Sam tried. "Dean? It's gonna be okay."
"Fuck you," Dean responded immediately. "Don't you tell me there's no way to stop this. You're God right now, literally, and there's gotta be an off switch." His smoke, all the swirls inside his vessel and the malformed limbs outside, trembled. "And you gotta find it. Please." He grimaced, squeezed Sam's hand even tighter. "If you do this for me...you can use me. For the Third Trial. I won't put up a fight, I'll go gentle, but you gotta give yourself a chance, too. You gotta."
Sam was quiet for a long second.
"I'm strong like this," he told Dean eventually. "I can do what I'm supposed to. If anybody or anything comes for us here, I can deal with them. I can keep us both safe and finish the Trials." If it'd work. "I can save you. You won't have to make a deal with Alastair to try and keep me alive ever again."
There was an edge in his voice at the last part even though he wanted to keep it out. He guessed unleashing all his powers couldn't make him good at controlling his feelings.
For a long time, Dean just stared at Sam. His smoke boiled inside and around him. Eventually, by inches, he slid out of the pew and onto his knees in front of Sam, and brought up his other hand, so he was holding Sam's with both of his own.
"You were plenty strong before," he started quietly, "and you could take care of yourself just fine. You did for years before I showed up. And that's why…I should've told you about Alastair right away. That's why I didn't have to try and get his help to protect you. And the only thing I regret more than how I treated you when we first met is lying to you, for months, about all of that. I thought I was doing the right thing. But I was wrong."
Sam held Dean's gaze, agonizingly aware of every moment that passed. He could see past the wet black to the green of his iris. It was exactly eight seconds after Dean finished talking that Sam had to break eye contact and bow his head, grimacing, eyes squeezed shut and forehead pressed to their hands. He could see coppery tears gathering under his own lashes, and his shoulders shook as he fought not to cry. He felt like he'd already let himself do that too much tonight.
"Shut it down," Dean told him again, softly. "Then save me, and save the world. And if we make it through that, we can both focus on saving you. Whatever shape you're in by then."
Sam tore in a deep breath he didn't need, realized he hadn't been breathing since he tamped the light down and came back into his body. That, of all things, was the one that scared him.
He lifted his head, then kissed Dean, vessel and true face. "I'll try."
"Attaboy," Dean praised. "Thank you. All I wanted."
Sam nodded, silent, and they sat there staring at each other as Sam fumbled up and down the inside of himself, not even sure what he was looking for. A switch? A button? A cord to unplug, a puzzle to jumble back up, a box to re-pack? He didn't think there was anything like that. You couldn't put it back once you let it out, and he wasn't even sure he wanted to, no matter what he'd said.
But the longer that Sam sat on the floor of the wooden church, looking at Dean's real face, at the teeth, the wounds, the antlers, the pain and the panic, the fear and guilt and anger and hate and love, everything so grotesque and so beautiful at the same time and all wrapped up inside a single demon, the more he wanted to go back. To be the way he was before, no matter how bad of shape he'd be in after his light had burnt through so much of him. Until, eventually, he wasn't even looking anymore. Just sitting there wanting.
He realized it was cold again. But this time, it was because he could feel it, a bitter chill creeping steadily in. Dean was fading, smoke and horns and real face, leaving only his vessel behind. The light that'd flooded the church was slowly dimming.
His left leg had begun to hurt.
"There you go," Dean whispered, and brought a hand up to cup the side of Sam's face. He stroked a thumb across his cheekbone. "You're doing it."
All of a sudden, Sam was terrified, panicked. He didn't want to do this. He didn't want to let go of it. The breathing he had to do now picked up, whipping in sharp and fast. But it was like lowering a weight after his muscles had given out, slow and inevitable, shot through with pain and exhaustion.
The light extinguished like a pinched candle, fast as it'd burst out of him back at the other church. All Sam could see anymore was blackness, and he grabbed for Dean, but couldn't find him. Every inch of him hurt so bad he couldn't even begin to identify what was wrong.
The last thing he felt was cold, fear, and an overwhelming, bone-deep exhaustion that swallowed him up.