Dad told me once that before Mom died, he wanted me to be a firefighter, maybe a police officer. He was drunk at the time. I asked him if he didn't want me to be military, like him, but he said he didn't want me to have to go through that. I didn't point out the irony, wasn't really in the mood to fight.

I know that after Mom died, he wanted me to carry on the family business once he was gone. He wanted me to be just like him, just like he tried to make me. He wanted me to find the guy who killed Mom. I'm not sure if he wanted me to settle down after that, have a family and a home, or if he expected me to keep on hunting things and saving people until something got me, too. Guess I can't ask him now.

Mom wanted me to be a doctor, I think. Something safe and high-paying. Again, Dad told me this when he was drunk, and I'm not sure if he actually remembered what she wanted or if he was making stuff up.

I had a teacher who told me I could be a writer. Another one said I could be a lawyer. Researcher, politician, teacher, engineer, physicist, archaeologist, historian, mythologist. They said I had the grades, wanted me to go the distance. College, undergrad, master's, specialization or PhD. Obviously, none of that really happened...guess I'm kind of a researcher, but I think Mrs. Delcott meant pharmaceutical, not monsters.

I don't know what Bobby wanted me to be, or Ellen. Probably not what or who I am today.

I don't have a great track record of living up to other people's expectations. I'm just me, never anything else, and it might be because of what Dad said, about how I like to fight back just for the sake of it, don't care about the consequences until the heat's faded.

I wish I could feel bad about it. Maybe I should. But I really don't.

- Personal journal of Sam Winchester, c. 2006


I'm afraid for Dean. God knows I'm afraid for Sam, too, but whatever happens with him is gonna happen no matter what and I can tell he's made his peace with that. He thinks he's doing the right thing. Hell, he probably is. He pulls this off, even if he dies, the Gates of Hell are closed for good. No more black-eyed sons of bitches running around.

Except Dean, obviously. And that's what I'm worried about.

He's my boy. I know he's my boy. He never stopped being that, no matter what they did to him down in the Pit, but...I can tell they did a whole hell of a lot, pun intended, and he's got a cargo ship's worth of baggage now, and there's more of him I don't recognize than I do by a long shot.

He's trying and trying hard. Wouldn't expect anything less from him, way I raised him. I made my mistakes but I know I did plenty right.

Course, much as I'd love to take credit for what he's got with Sam, the way he treats him and feels about him, I know that's all Dean.

Not even sure Sam knows exactly what he's got there, with Dean. Not sure he'd be giving himself up like this if he did.

Because, see, Dean's staked this entire "being halfway human" thing he's got going all on Sam. Entirely. Sam's hell-bent on saving the world, Dean's hell-bent on saving Sam. He thinks that means maybe letting him die. Again, probably does.

But Dean doesn't care about the world. And I think that, if the world takes Sam from Dean, he's gonna find a way to make the whole damn thing bleed.

- Personal journal of Bobby Singer, c. 2009


Because hasn't our Father taught us through example, time and time again, that the purest form of love, the highest state of being, is sacrifice?

Hasn't the Messiah Sam Winchester, upon whom we pinned all our hopes and the fate of the very world, and who has obviously been corrupted by the demon he allowed to take his purity, behaved in the utmost opposite manner, displaying shocking and unforgivable selfishness?

We know there is no place in His world or His placeholder for both.

What else are we to do?

- Heavenly missive from the Dominion Zachariah to the rest of the Host


Sam got out of bed for good, the day after he woke up from his weeks-long coma. No one was more relieved than him.

He wasn't completely better by any means. That was why he was taking a few days to recover before they moved on with the Third Trial, after all. He was up, talking, eating, competent, but the Trials and his stupid kickstarted divinity stunt had left their mark on him.

Sam's lungs hung heavy and liquid in his chest, and he didn't bother hiding all the blood he was coughing up anymore. Being on his feet more than twenty minutes at a time sucked everything right out of him. His powers weren't strong enough to do more than make the occasional lightbulb buzz or shelf rattle faintly, and while he'd thought he'd be happy about that, it mostly just made him wonder how much of himself he'd burned off, brute-forcing his way into apotheosis. He couldn't help being pissed at the Sam from a few weeks ago. At how stupid he'd been.

Then he'd look at Dean, though. Not hard to do, living in a space barely bigger than a couple motel rooms and with Dean all but Velcroed to him. And Sam reminded himself that it'd been worth it for at least one reason.

He moved through his life with clarifying finality. He could see the light at the end of the tunnel now, and it was blasting him square in the face, and it was bright and terrifying and he didn't want to go into it, but it was there, and it was also beautiful. He didn't think Dean liked it, the acceptance. But they'd both made up their minds, and Sam was too busy to worry about being the right amount of heartbroken over what was going to happen to him.

He was determined to do it right this time. Saying goodbye. No half-assed, last-minute voicemails.

He called Ellen. Ash. Jo. Charlie. Garth. Had an individual conversation with everybody, told them everything to do with how much they meant to him, let them rage and cry at him for as long as they wanted. It hurt. But he knew he owed it to them, couldn't rob them of it this time.

Ellen was confused about the logistics. "Wait, so you aren't curing Dean, then?"

"No, he...I didn't talk to him about it before. He doesn't wanna be cured." Sam had asked for privacy and Dean had refused to give it to him, so they were both in the storage closet, sitting back to back on Sam's cot. "I'm gonna use a different demon. A Lord of Hell."

Ellen was silent. Sam could practically feel her suspicion radiating through the phone. Or he thought he could, at least, but when she spoke, she said, "When it's all over. If you're gone. We'll...I can promise we'll take care of him, Sam. Like you asked. Last time."

Sam swallowed, thick. It was a second before he could talk, and Dean was pressing hard against him, shoulderblade edge and sweeping muscle. "Thanks, Ellen."

He talked things over with Bobby, with Bela. Bobby stood up from his chair to hug him tight as he could, and when he sat back down, yanked the brim of his hat low before Sam could see his eyes. Vaughn, he spent plenty of time with, talking, answering questions, giving permissions. Sam got the feeling he was mad at him, or wanted to be, and he didn't blame him. Just tried to ease the hurt.

Of course he spent the most time with Dean, because even when he was with somebody else, Dean was there. Crowded into Sam's space like there were magnets beneath their skin, like there was no resisting the pull. Sam welcomed it. Welcomed sleeping against Dean's chest as he pretended to read, welcomed the fingers sneaking into his hair at odd times, welcomed sulfur being the only smell he could pick up. He was still working on his project of memorizing every facet of Dean, and knowing that he wouldn't finish, that an entire life wouldn't have been enough time, tore through Sam a lot harsher than knowing he was going to die.

He could've given himself time. He could've tried. But the clock was counting down, seconds ticking behind Sam's temples at all times, a world burning as Heaven and Hell devoured it from opposite ends, and him the cause.

He'd already been selfish enough.

"I think I'm ready," Sam said quietly.

It was a few days past him waking up, past the two of them deciding together to finish the Trials. Sam was fresh out of a few hours of deep sleep, circadian rhythm completely shot, still laying in bed. Dean was sitting in the folding chair that was still crammed into the closet, because much as neither of them wanted to admit it, Sam slept better without the two of them squished onto the cot together. Dean just looked at Sam.

"I wanna do it today," Sam told him, more firmly. When Dean still didn't say anything, he pushed himself up on one elbow, shaking his head and dragging a hand through hair he wished would stop falling out. "I feel good. I-I mean, as good as I'm gonna get. We've got a deadline, and it's now or never."

Dean tipped his chin back. He was doing that thing he did, where his entire face was blank, no emotion anywhere. He nodded.

"Let's get everything ready, then." He sat there for a second, then pulled Sam over to himself and just held him for a long time, both arms, face in his neck. Sam held him back.

"You got a church picked out?" Sam asked, clearing his throat after Dean finally let him go.

"Little one out in West Texas," Dean replied. He was keeping his voice flat as his face. "Where I ran my first exorcism. Know the place inside and out." After a pause, he asked, "You rather we look for one in Colorado? In the mountains. Or, hell. You're from Kansas originally, right?"

"No." Sam shook his head. "Texas is fine. It's perfect."

They showered, got dressed, packed up. Sam ate. Dean asked him if he wanted to say his goodbyes, but he'd already said them, for the most part. Sam wished, inanely, he could've seen the dogs again, but they were at Rufus's place until things blew over.

If he had anything to say about it, they'd blow over today, and everybody could go home.

Vaughn hugged Sam tightly soon as he figured out what was going on, refused to let go. Sam had to practically pry him off, and he swallowed, watching Vaughn struggle to force back tears as Bobby put a hand on his shoulder.

"Hey." Dean planted himself in front of Vaugh. "Look at me, c'mon." He waited until he did before continuing. "Sam's gonna be fighting his absolute hardest to come back to you, got it? So'm I. We don't know exactly what's gonna happen out there, but we're hoping for the best. And even if it's the worst…" He put a hand on Vaughn's other shoulder, and looked at Bobby. "You got a family now. Best dad you could ask for. It'll all be okay."

Sam couldn't read Bobby's expression. Vaughn was shuddering and hiccuping, but he nodded, jerky. He watched as they stuffed hex bags and charms into their pockets, put on necklaces and let Bela paint sigils along their arms and throats, and stayed beside Bobby as they went to get Alastair.

He was in what Bobby called the "engine room," with the generator and all the pumps. Iron-chained into the cement with a Circle of Solomon at his back and a devil's trap at his feet, Alastair glared with white eyes, one still cocked from the bullet in the back of his head, as the two of them crowded in. He was still gagged, the warding on his chest raw and ugly. Sam touched the healed scar on his own neck and felt a pinch of dark satisfaction. It shocked him, just how much he fucking hated this demon.

Dean glanced at Sam, then bumped briefly and intentionally against him as, between the two of them, they got Alastair into a more portable set of bonds. Alastair's palpable hate was changing into confusion as Dean dragged him towards the door, through the bunker, and then to the exit. As the vault door swung open, Dean shot him a smirk, eyes black.

"Congratulations...you're gonna get a second chance." They emerged from the stone overhang the door was set into, rain misting on the cold air and violently-green ferns clashing with the dark earth. After the industrial colors of the bunker, Sam's eyes ached. "Sammy here's gonna turn you back into a human. Isn't that nice?"

Alastair's eyes flew so wide that Sam was surprised the one, at least, didn't fall right out. Dean grabbed Sam and teleported all three of them before he could start pitching a full-blown tantrum.


West Texas was rolling plains of cactus and scrubland, flat-top mountains blue with distance, all of it draped with a sharp frost that crunched under Sam's boots. The sky was the dry, crisp, faded blue of desert winter, flat, no clouds in sight, no wind. Sam could see his breath and the chill bit deep and itching into his chest.

The church was old, but lovingly maintained, even if it looked as if it'd started falling into disrepair in the last few years. There was a town off behind a few hills, a dirt road away. Early morning light glittered on white rooftops.

"Nobody'll bother us," Dean told Sam. Alastair was fighting and jerking, twisting like a rabid dog, but with holy cuffs on his wrists and ankles and a familiar-looking iron collar on his neck, Dean could hold him by one arm without budging an inch. "And if they do, I'll take care of it."

A couple sagging steps led up into the church. As they walked in, Alastair gone limp deadweight and Dean dragging him, Sam asked, "Look how you remember it?"

Dean glanced around, then nodded to a stained-glass window behind the altar. "That's new."

It was some saint or another, full of arrows, bleeding, people mourning around him. Sun poured in through it, lighting up the colors in a mosaic blaze on the worn carpet, except for where cold light shafted past a few holes. Sam examined it. He couldn't seem to look away from the saint's face.

Despite wounds weeping blood, everyone surrounding him clearly heartbroken, he just looked so...peaceful.

Sam must have been looking for longer than he thought, because with a jolt, he suddenly realized that Dean had drawn a devil's trap, found a chair, and was lashing Alastair into it. Sam hurried over to him.

"Sorry." Even though Dean was almost done, he offered, "I can help."

"You're good, Sammy." Dean was tying Alastair up with extension cords, a tangled pile he must have found in a closet. Once he was finished, orange cables straining tight enough to run furrows in Alastair's flesh, he straightened up and gave the chair a kick. Alastair grunted, glaring up at him. "Okay. You can go ahead and spill your guts. I'm gonna get this place locked up tight, we need more than just the fancy jewelry."

He flicked one of the amulets hanging around his neck, an evil eye. Sam nodded and handed over his backpack; it had all their supplies in it. Taking a deep breath, stopping right before it would've made him cough, he headed for the confession booth.

It was quiet inside, dark, cold. Smelled like dust and wood rot. Sitting down, Sam hardly had to think, because his greatest sin was exactly the same as it'd been a couple weeks ago. He'd apologized, but that hadn't made the way he'd treated Dean go away, and he hadn't atoned yet because he hadn't had the chance. Now, he probably never would.

Sam closed his eyes against the hot sting of unwanted tears as, once again, he told whoever might've been listening how he'd screwed up with the man he loved, and how he'd never be able to make it right.

Sam's face felt swollen and damp when he left the booth, finding Dean laying salt lines and painting warding. It had to have been obvious, but Dean didn't say anything, just tossed him a spray can. And caught it telekinetically when Sam's reflexes proved totally shot, sending it drifting right into his shaking hands.

"You think we're gonna have any trouble?" Sam asked as the two of them tag-teamed on a hamsa, nearly finished. "Or will this be enough? I mean, the warding back at Bobby's bunker seemed to keep things pretty quiet."

"Well, yeah, but…" Dean glanced at Sam. "At Bobby's bunker, were you tying off a ritual God Himself cooked up, to shut Hell down completely? And were you unfucking a soul that Lucifer personally fucked over?" He shrugged. "All I'm saying is, might make some waves, and I'm not sure we can keep 'em all contained in here no matter what we slap on the walls."

Sam said nothing, an acidic flutter of anxiety rising in his chest. Dean tossed his can of paint aside, clearing his throat as he turned to him. Sam let him put both hands on his shoulders.

"Whatever anybody throws at us, I'll keep you safe long enough to see this thing through," Dean told him. "I promise."

"I know," Sam said softly, raising a hand to one of Dean's wrists and pressing his cheek against his knuckles. Dean let go of him far too soon.

"Think we've done about all we can to seal the place up." Dean looked around.

"Time to get this show on the road, then?"

"Yup."

In almost perfect unison, they turned to look at Alastair. His eyes, dripping with loathing, had followed them throughout the entire church, and Sam had been able to feel the weight of his abject hatred boring into his back as they worked. He was still struggling against his bonds, rhythmic jerks and tugs that produced no movement whatsoever because Dean had known what he was doing.

Dean's eyes went black, and he smirked at Alastair, cold and empty. It was by far the most inhuman expression Sam had ever seen him wear, and he could nearly see the true face behind the meat. He followed Dean as he approached the chair.

"Yeah," Dean told his Lord and master, standing just outside the devil's trap. "That's right. It's finally time for you to get yours, and it's your fucking King who's gonna do it to you."

He put a hand on Sam's shoulder, and there was a slight tremble somewhere down near the bones. Sam reached up to cover it with his own.

"And your Knight's gonna help me do it," he told Alastair softly, and pulled Dean into a kiss.

Wood and extension cords and human flesh creaked in the seconds before they let each other go.

"This is it." Dean's voice was unbelievably quiet, almost no breath against Sam's mouth. "I'm here for you. No matter what. We're gonna end this." He pulled back further. "Ready to save the world with me now?"

Sam smiled. The expression hurt, and his mouth was full of salt and metal.

"D'you even have to ask me that?"


Dean made Sam swab his arm down with rubbing alcohol before he stuck the syringe in. Sam hadn't even known he'd brought any along.

"Are you kidding me?"

In answer, Dean just pressed a little harder on the cotton ball than Sam felt like he strictly had to.

Sam drew his blood himself, insisted on it. Dean grabbed Alastair by the thinning hair of his vessel and jerked his head to the side, holding his neck bared and still for Sam. Alastair struggled, of course, as Sam shot his blood into him, right under the corner of his jaw.

Sam stepped back. Dean looked at him, and almost instantly, the pain set in, a watercolor version of what he'd felt when he closed a Trial. The light came a second later, searing past the bones and veins of his arms, shifting under his skin. Clenching his fists, Sam grunted, squeezing his eyes shut. Dean was there a second later, hand on his shoulder, holding him. It didn't last long, and Sam relaxed once it was gone, panting.

"Well," Dean said after a second of ragged silence, "guess that means it's working."

The day wore on, as Sam worked his way laboriously through the ritual. One dose of his blood forced into Alastair every hour for eight hours. It was simple. The waiting was the hardest part, watching the kitchen timer they'd brought along tick down the minutes for them. But it ate at Sam, like something hot and hungry had crawled into him through his pores and was steadily hollowing him out.

He got weaker, found it harder and harder to stand for even as long as it took to get the blood into Alastair. When he began to shiver, wire-thin pain pulsing in little heartbeat shocks along his bones, he knew he had a fever, and that it was climbing. From the way Dean looked at him, Sam knew he had to have been a horror show, but what else was new?

Dean tried to get food and water into him. Trail mix, granola bars, stuff that was easy to eat and Sam normally would've liked. Sam knew he was trying to keep him going and that he probably needed the boost with the blood he was losing, had already lost, but he was about as far from hungry as he could possibly get. His body made its opinion on the matter abundantly clear when he puked mixed nuts and congealed blood onto the dusty floorboards of the church.

"Crap," Sam rasped. Dean petted through his sweaty, limp hair.

"It's okay. I'll clean it up."

Dean left frequently. Walked out of the sanctuary, milled through the empty rooms and hallways in the back. Sam let him go, knew he needed the space, imagined he was barely handling it. He half-thought he wouldn't blame Dean if he just...didn't come back. But he always did, even though his eyes stayed a liquid, thrumming black for the whole eight hours.

When Dean wasn't outside, he was holding Sam, letting him lean against him, leach off his warmth as he dialed up his vessel's temperature again. They sat in the kaleidoscope sunlight coming through the stained glass window, talking. Sam wanted to know more about Dean. Asked him about his childhood, hunting. He knew it was selfish, knew how painful it was for Dean to remember, hated himself a little more with every word. But he was so desperate for as much of him as he could hold inside himself, for however long he had left.

Dean resisted at first, but then gave in, after Alastair's third dose.

Dean told Sam about the exorcism he'd done at the church they were in. The demon was a pretty weak one, in a teenage girl. It'd tried to escape into the mountains and he had to ride a damn horse to go get it back. It was like something out of a Western, according to him, like Tombstone meets The Exorcist, and looking back on it, it was honestly kinda awesome.

He told him about Bobby. About Rufus. About growing up in the sixties and seventies. Sam had heard plenty about that from his own dad, but Dean had had a very different experience, to say the least. He told Sam about the draft letter he got, and how he didn't find out until he was twenty-five because it came to the house and Bobby burned it. Then he told the MPs who came looking that he hadn't seen Dean in years and had no idea where he was, but would kick his ass himself if he came back.

Sam laughed softly. "You think you would've gone? If you'd known?"

"I was already fighting a war right here at home." Dean adjusted his arms around Sam, nudging him. "Okay, Shahryar, your turn. Tell me about you."

Sam squinted. "You read - "

"Djinn lore."

"Right. Okay."

Sam closed his eyes. The lids felt thin, the sockets swollen. His throat hurt, but he talked. He told Dean about Barry, and Kara. Good memories with his dad. Hunts he'd...not enjoyed, exactly, but felt proud of. Monsters he'd been able to count as friends, living at the cabin. He told him about snowstorms in the Rockies, the dead silence and how you could barely see the black slashes of trees through the slanting flurries, the encapsulating sense of isolated safety. Sam talked about wolves howling, about the dizzying spread of the Milky Way above him in winter air clear and sharp, wanting to go for a hike or a run so bad he could taste it tight at the anchoring point of his tongue, and Dean listened.

Sam's voice got thinner as the hours stretched past. Weaker, uglier. But as they took turns serving new pieces of themselves to one another, Dean never told him to stop talking.

Sam was sure they both knew exactly what was happening to him.

Alastair was changing, too, even though it took a whole lot longer to set in on him than it did Sam. It wasn't until the fifth dose they started to see it. The white of his eyes was going thin, a milky film over his irises. Like he had bad cataracts. Head listing to one side, Alastair's face twitched, dozens of different emotions chasing each other across it like he was trying to control them and failing. He rallied every time Sam injected him, glaring hatefully, but the sigils on his chest gave him away more than anything. They'd been dry, moist red flesh showing through but no real reaction from his body. Now, they were angry, inflamed, and steadily weeping blood.

As Sam was walking away on jerky, locking legs after delivering the seventh dose, he heard coughing and spitting, and turned just in time to see Alastair spewing the remains of the hex bag in his mouth into his lap, the contents apparently no longer bothering him the way they would've a full-blooded demon.

Sam hadn't considered that all the measures they'd taken might stop working on him, partway through the ritual. Good thing Dean had tied him up so tight with the cords.

"You're dying," Alastair wheezed, eyes on Sam. "I can smell it on you - you're liquefying from the inside out, it's only a matter of what gets you first. The burning, or the rot." He hacked out a sodden piece of cloth. "What a fucking waste."

"Shut up," Dean growled from where he was standing at Sam's side.

"He won't make it through this." Alastair's attention slid to Dean as he slowly shook his head. "Just look at him, Dantalion. He burnt himself out saving you. You all but killed him with your own two hands, but are you really surprised? With your...track record?" He grinned. "Like you could ever hold onto something remotely good without crushing it to a pulp. I never should've trusted him with you."

Dean started for Alastair. He kept talking.

"He's going to die, Dean. Soul and all. And then it'll only be you...and me. And let's just see how long you keep up this little fantasy you've got. Of playing at feeling anything but what I sewed into you."

Dean moved quicker, but Sam took longer strides. He got there first, retying Alastair's gag with cold, shaking hands, and he pulled the cloth so tight it sawed at the corners of Alastair's mouth. He didn't feel guilty, watching his tongue spasm.

"Maybe I'll die here, yeah" Sam told him quietly as he knotted it at the base of his skull, "but not without ruining you. And I don't care anyway. I made my choice." He glanced at Dean. "And I wouldn't have made a different one no matter what."

Alastair taken care of, Sam and Dean retreated to a pew, the sunlight long since gone from the stained glass window as evening came on fast and freezing. And they waited out the minutes, the eighth hour coming to a close, the end of everything bearing down on them like a freight train.

One second, with half an hour left, Sam was talking to Dean. He must have fallen asleep, though, because the next thing he knew, he was jerking awake to a loud flapping, the sound of something hitting the steps of the church, and a ragged, hoarse voice calling his name.

Disoriented, still caught in a tangle of fever dreams, Sam started to push himself up off Dean's chest. Dad had just gotten home from a hunt. He'd fought a dragon, it must have followed him back. God, was he ever gonna be mad about Dean.

Dean slid out from underneath Sam, heading for the doors of the church before he could get up. Head clearing, realizing the voice was way too rough for his father's, Sam called, "Is it...that was Cas, wasn't it?"

Hope bloomed in his chest, hot and almost uncomfortable.

"Stay there," Dean ordered. "I got it."

Sam struggled to his feet anyway, pushing up off the pew, following Dean. He felt like he was floating, and wasn't sure if it was the blood loss or something else.

It's only a matter of what gets you first. The burning, or the rot.

Night, for all intents and purposes, had set in while Sam was dozing. Massive thunderheads had rolled in, too, lightning drawing out the shapes of them, thunder roaring dully in the distance. Rain was just starting to fall. He had a moment of panic, wondering if he'd missed his window, then realized that the timer going off would've woken him up no matter what.

Dean pulled open one of the church doors, and Sam was close enough to see the broken shape sprawled half on and half off the steps. Castiel. Alive. A burst of euphoria made Sam even more lightheaded than he already was, but only for a second. Only until he saw the state that Castiel was in.

Castiel forced himself up onto his knees, swaying in place as he looked at the two of them. Blood ran out of his mouth as he panted raggedly, face covered in cuts and bruises, one eye swollen completely shut and exhaustion seeping from every line of his body. Blue-white Gracelight stuttered from too many wounds to count, and feathers appeared in the air around him, iridescent black with pearly gray-blue undersides. They drifted to the ground alongside the gathering raindrops, detaching from invisible wings with broken shafts and burnt-off tips.

Inanely, Sam thought he should gather them up. Angel feathers were so useful, could go into so many spells and rituals.

"How the hell'd you find us?" Dean demanded. He hadn't put his blade away. "I've got this place locked up six ways from Sunday."

Castiel's visible eye, blood in the sclera and pupil flickering dully, tracked to Sam.

'Heaven knows," he rasped. "They know you're finishing the Trials. They found you, and they're coming. An entire army." A full body shudder ran through his vessel. Feathers cascaded, and Castiel coughed glowing blood. "I managed to free myself, and I tried to hold them off as long as I could, but...it's no use. You have to hurry, Sam. You have to do it now."

Thunder rumbled, filling a beat of silence.

"If that's true, then me and you are going right back out there," Dean said as a weird, numb feeling draped itself over Sam's body. "We'll take out as many flyboys as we can."

"You're not going anywhere." Sam grabbed tightly onto Dean's arm, and not just because he needed to for balance. "I need you here. I need you, Dean. And besides - "

The timer began to ring suddenly, shrill, mechanical beeping reverberating off the walls of the church, loud even over the rain and the thunder as they both picked up. Castiel started, Grace briefly flaring.

"It's time," Sam said quietly. He squeezed Dean's arm, and looked at him. "We can do this."

Dean looked back at Sam. He nodded. Then his face shut down until he looked like a doll, or a corpse. Taking hold of Sam, he blinked them across the church, stopping right outside the now-useless devil's trap containing Alastair. He steadied Sam when he stumbled.

"What about Cas?" Sam went to glance over his shoulder. Dean stopped him by smacking the syringe telekinetically into his hand.

"I'll take care of him. Don't worry." Dean didn't bother with the alcohol this time, rolling Sam's sleeve up to expose the bruised and swollen crook of his elbow. "You need to finish this."

Sam's hands were too unsteady to find a vein, let alone draw his own blood, so Dean helped him. Once the syringe was full, he grabbed Alastair's hair again. Alastair had started to shake, shivering violently, and tears were running out of cloudy eyes. Brushing aside a brief worry about him freezing to death, Sam shoved the needle into the bruise under his jaw.

"You've had this coming for ten thousand years, you son of a bitch," Dean told Alastair as Sam slammed the plunger home.

The timer kept going off, drilling right into Sam's brain.

He went to cut his palm, the final part of the ritual. His heart was beating so hard he imagined it bruising itself on the insides of his ribs as he pulled his demon-killing knife out of the inside of his jacket.

"Here, lemme - " Dean brought his angel blade up, but Sam had already fumbled a jagged line across his hand, gasping at the pain as hot blood pulsed sluggishly into his cupped palm.

Dean sliced through Alastair's gag at the back. As it fell free, Alastair looked up at Sam, tear tracks glistening and freezing on his cheeks.

"Please," he croaked, shaking his head, "please, don't. You don't know what you're - "

Sam slapped his hand wetly over Alastair's mouth with a welter of blood, and almost simultaneously, the sigils they'd painted all over the place flared a dazzling white. A ringing that overpowered the kitchen timer made the air itself vibrate, and the storm began to scream outside. Sam was vaguely aware of Castiel dragging himself in through the door of the church, despite the angel warding, as Alastair sank his teeth into Sam's palm. It felt like he was prying a nerve out of its channel, but Sam ignored it.

He was too intent on curing him. On finishing this. On making Dean and Castiel proud...on saving the world and everybody in it.

"Exorcizamus te." Sam started in on the incantation he'd read in the priest's notes, like an exorcism but different. He couldn't even hear himself over the ringing and the storm, but hoped it counted anyway. "Omnis immundus spiritus. Hanc animam redintegra. Lustra. Lustra!"

Dean grabbed him, yanked him back against his own chest. Sam left his breath, along with a good chunk of his palm, with Alastair as the demon lit up even whiter than the sigils on the walls. Sam saw his bloody mouth open wide, as if screaming, before the light completely engulfed him, but all he could hear was the ringing as it reached a crescendo.

Sam screamed, too, squeezing his eyes shut against the overwhelming brightness all around him and clapping both hands over his ears. One palm was hanging almost completely free. He felt the windows shatter like a kick to his sternum, floor vibrating under his feet and bones in his flesh.

And then, just like that, just as Sam was sure it was reaching the right frequency to burst his eardrums and everything between them, the screeching stopped. The sudden silence was dizzying, echoes of the noise aching in Sam's ears and keeping pulsing time with his heartbeat. If Dean hadn't already been holding him, he would've fallen against him.

He pried his eyes open at a sudden, thunderous cacophony of flapping, a thousand bedsheets being shaken out all at once, and the church was dark, but when lightning flashed outside, he saw that it was full, too. Men, women, children, of all ages and races, in everything from three-piece suits to pajamas. Their faces were expressionless, and the shadows of their wings flickered huge all around them.

They gave Sam, Dean, and Alastair a wide berth, though.

Alastair. Sam looked at him.

He'd stopped glowing, and collapsed against his restraints, a look of heartstopping shock on his face. He sobbed to himself, shaking, skin blue with cold and mouth and chest bloody. For the first time, Sam realized that his vessel...that he...was an old man.

There was a fraction of a second where nothing happened. Then Castiel's voice came, slurring in a broken mouth but thick with satisfaction.

"You're too late, Zachariah."

"The fallen Messiah," ordered one of the angels. "Get him, now. Break his neck if you have to, I don't care - "

But Castiel was right. It was too late.

"Ka na om dar."

Those angels who'd started for Sam froze, juddering to halts, and Dean's threatening growl stopped short.

And then Sam was in pain, light and fire rushing through him. It felt, oddly, a lot like when Castiel helped him force an awakening. That had only hurt, though. This felt good, too. As if he were made to channel this sort of thing. It was purifying, burning away the sickness and weakness in him, everything black and ugly he'd built up in himself over time, scars he hadn't allowed to heal right.

Dean let go of him with a hiss, arms lobster-red and steaming shiny in Sam's light, and backed away shaking, teeth bared and face a rictus. Sam closed his eyes as he glowed and crackled, sinking slowly to his knees. Peace flooded him along with the agony.

He heard, or felt, or maybe just knew there was a creaking somewhere. Hinges that had never moved before, blackened by the greasy ash of Hellfire and rusted with sulfur. A pair of doors began to slowly close.

It was good. It was right, it was perfect. It was the best end he could have hoped for.

Sam just wished Dean could have held him through it.

He was jerked suddenly out of that contentment by a rough blow that sent him skidding across the floor on his side. The pain of it blitzed through him like his nerves were made of razor wire, fever sensitivity turned up to eleven. Sam gasped, but it felt like his lungs were flat inside him, no air coming in. He raised a hand, squinted to try and see past his own light.

There was a man standing over him, balding, older, more furious than Sam had thought an angel knew how to look. Sam could see flickering shades of lion and dragon around him, brought out by his light. The rest of the Heavenly Host who'd come were clustered around them, bleeding spinning patterns at their edges, and the walls of the church were papered in the overlapping shapes of wings. Feathers bristled.

Sam looked for Dean, past the angel who'd hit him. He found him only feet away, kneeling, eyes black and bugging. Veins stood out at his throat and temples, and his hands were white-knuckle fists. He had a thin aura of writhing, thrashing smoke around him, like there were a thousand fishhooks buried in the essence of him, trying as hard as they could to yank him apart.

Sam finally got in a breath, and it burned, but all the pain was nothing compared to his panic for Dean.

He'd never wanted to touch him more.

"You think causing him more pain will allow you to...take some sort of victory here, Zachariah?" That was Castiel. When Sam glanced at him through a forest of vessels' legs, he only saw suggestions of the wounds he must have been carrying on his true form, but even that made his stomach lurch in shock. "Do you think that's what our Father would want from you?"

"Oh, you think I'm about to start taking advice from some stunted fledgling four tiers below me who's never even met our Father?" The angel above Sam, Zachariah, snapped his head birdlike to look at Castiel. "I was sick of listening to you months ago, seraph. Somebody…" He waved a hand. "Shut him up. Please."

Several angels turned towards Castiel. He lifted his head high, and Sam felt a prickle of horror. Soon, he couldn't see anything but the tangle of bodies and the shimmer of blades. He heard Castiel grunt, saw Grace flash, and Sam's heart twisted sick in his chest.

He swung his attention back to Dean, unchanged, tried to drag himself towards him. Get to him, Sam thought fuzzily, help him, save him, he can get Cas outta here, they both live.

Zachariah kicked him before he could make it an inch, so hard Sam could swear the toe of his dress shoe hit his spine, and he vomited blood shot through with glittering veins of light onto the floor of the church.

"Crawling back to the filth you've been rolling around in for a year?" Zachariah mocked. "Want it to fuck you one last time as you die? Sorry." A heel came down on Sam's hand, the one Alastair had bitten, and knuckles popped like walnut shells. "You're not going anywhere, abomination. Too bad I can't say the same thing about your walking tar pit."

Sam looked up at Zachariah. He could swear he felt his soul unraveling at the edges, strands of what made him going to power the closing Gates as they picked up speed. Hell was screaming. A call, a song, blood and death and endings and twisted births, an entire realm that never should have existed sealed away to die. And all what was left of him could think was how completely over he was of hearing people and things talk about Dean.

He spat blood up at Zachariah. The angel, leaning down, caught it across the middle of his average-looking face.

"Shut up," Sam rasped, a second before he saw the lion roar.

This time, Zachariah kicked him in the face, and he felt things break, thin sensitive webs and ridges of bone. The pain seared a new galaxy into his brain but it was still nothing. It'd be gone soon, he just had to stick it out. Just had to get to Dean.

Sam's head fell numbly to the floor, and he saw Dean's smoke jerking above him like lines on a demented EKG. Dean was shaking, every muscle taut. It hurt. Sam could see it hurting.

"You're a fucking disgrace, Samuel!" Zachariah was yelling, and some of his true voice must be coming through, because Sam's ears ached. "A waste of the will and essence of the Lord. The Creator of the entire universe, ring a bell? Everything was supposed to culminate in you. Salvation, a return to the old days. Can you even understand what you threw away? Even taking up with Hell would've been better than this - at least that was a real path! A real choice! At least you would've been fulfilling a prophecy, and you know what? I could've even forgiven what you did with the Knight. Mating with it, melding with it, tainting your light. But this?" Another furious kick to Sam's stomach. He choked on what came up, thick and caustic. "This is just a mistake. Something that was never supposed to happen. Or if it did, it could've been done by some other fucking chimp, one that our Father didn't touch!" Zachariah crouched, snatched a handful of Sam's hair, jerked his head up so he could scream into his ear. "Do you get you wasted a Messiah?! None of you deserve what you have, but you, the sheer fucking level you took it to - "

Sam's crooked, stuttering vision stayed on Dean. He saw him struggling. Saw the effort it took him to turn his head towards him. Fishing-line strings of smoke kept whipping towards Zachariah, towards Sam, but they never got far. The seizing aura around his body kept getting further from him, smoke spreading thinner and thinner.

The Gates had reached their halfway point, Sam knew.

Something broke through Zachariah's tirade then. A dry, rasping laugh, bitter as last season's fruit dried on the vine. Alastair had come to. Sam saw him, even though he wasn't looking at him. Blood slicked his pants, his open shirt, and more welled in the cuts of his sigils and then ebbed in time with the beat of his newly-human heart.

"I never thought I'd agree with an angel on anything," Alastair wheezed out, "but this glorified feather duster's right. Dantalion's going to spend the rest of eternity in Hell, Sammy-boy, with every demon he fucked over doing this. Being torn apart over and over and over, forever. I'm so jealous." He paused to cough, hacking and wet. "And the Host who came home to roost? I imagine they'll be devoting all the time and energy they have left to hunting down and burning alive everyone you've ever loved. Everyone you ever met or talked to or even saw. And you yourself, very soon here, you're going to be nothing at all." Alastair smiled, beatific and bloody. "Was it worth it, Messiah?"

Sam's breaths heaved through the mess in his chest. It bubbled and crackled. He felt small and distant inside his own agonized body, and he stared at Dean as everything seemed to lock up inside him. Dean stared back, blood running from his gums as he clenched his teeth harder and harder.

"Is that all you care about?" Zachariah demanded. He dropped Sam's head. "I remember when your kind had four legs, you know. Fins. Flagella, even! And I've never seen anything anywhere near as disappointing as you." He straightened. "You could've been a stand-in for our Father. Do you get what I'm saying here? You could've been God. And you threw it all down a hole."

Zachariah's blade dropped from his arm, into his hand. Sam didn't see it, but he felt it. He felt him raise it over his head, too, point aimed down at the center of Sam's mass, the throbbing glow of him.

He didn't take his eyes off Dean. He knew what he wanted to die looking at.

Before Zachariah could slam downwards, though, he suddenly screamed and jerked, and a wad of bronzey-gold feathers appeared in the air. Where, Sam realized, something had just yanked them out of his wing.

Zachariah whirled on Dean who, painstakingly, by degrees, extended a middle finger from one of his clenched fists.

Zachariah laughed, flipped the blade in his hand around. Slicing rather than stabbing.

"Oh, boy," he said, shaking his head as he took a step towards Dean, "I'm gonna make what they do to you in Hell look like a picnic, bucko."

Sam threw an arm out, latched onto the leg of Zachariah's business suit. He dug in with broken fingers, held on with more strength than he'd known he had left. He couldn't have been holding him back, but Zachariah stopped anyway. He looked down at Sam, and shook his head in disgust.

"You two. This is getting beyond pathetic."

"I wish," Sam started. He spat, then coughed. "I almost wish I'd...taken you up on the offer, now." The Gates swung faster, he glowed brighter, light brilliant at the frame of his vision. "I wish I was God."

He didn't want Dean hurt, didn't want him in Hell, wasn't sure how to avoid either. Maybe he could buy them time to figure something out. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Their entire lives, what they had together, had been built on so many shaky maybes, and here they were.

"Because if I were...if I were God...I'd make you all fuck off."

Sam's hand hit the floor of the church, broken bones and twisted flesh jangling with some distant pain. He hadn't let go. His fingers were still clutched tight, in fact. It was just that there was nothing to hold onto anymore.

Zachariah was gone.

They were all gone.

All the angels, Alastair. His chair was empty, full of extension cords. All that was left was Sam, and Dean. And Castiel, broken on the floor, blood and Gracelight running from him in alternating streams, looking at Sam in utter shock.

Sam ignored him as he clung to himself, coming apart faster and faster, a cheap sweater snagged in a car door as the driver revved to seventy-five. He forced his body to move. The pain couldn't have mattered less as he crawled to Dean, dragged himself into the halo of his smoke, smelled sulfur. He hooked hands into Dean's clothes and left behind blood and worse as he dragged himself up his body, up, up, painstakingly, until they were both kneeling, and Sam held onto Dean for dear life.

He was hurting him, he knew. Where he touched steamed and swelled, burning. But Dean hardly seemed to notice, and Sam would not let go.

"Can't hang on." Dean growled it into Sam's ear through cracking teeth. "Not much longer. Thought I could. Couldn't. Didn't - " A long, uncoiling reptilian hiss as he shuddered. "Think it'd be. Like this."

"Y-you gotta stay." Sam would've been shaking his head if it hadn't been buried in Dean's bunching, boiling neck. "I'm gonna...make it through this. Swear. But I-I need you."

"No. You don't."

"Yes, I do."

"Pulling me back." Dean's body was making the kind of noises muscle and bone was never supposed to. "I - belong there, Sammy."

"No."

"Sorry."

"No."

"They're there already." Something in Dean's voice was weakening. "Calling. Belong to them."

He was talking about Azazel, Sam realized, and Lilith, and Alastair, even though Sam had at least taken him off the board. The fury it filled him with was blinding. The loyalty Dean had been forced to feel for things that had hurt him so many times, for a place that cut and burnt and twisted him, and Sam couldn't even feel grateful to it for sparing as much of him as it had. What'd made it out, what he loved, was a testament of Dean's strength, not Hell's mercy.

"You're not...theirs." Sam bared his own teeth, and mentally felt out the scar on his neck. The infernal blood inside him. The piece of Dean he owned and kept in his veins. He felt himself stop burning him. "You're not Hell's." Now it was like Sam was splitting down the middle. Like a chrysalis come due. "If anything. You're mine."

Sam poured out. A cracked egg, spilling yolk and blood. And he could see Dean again, his true self, but stretched out, drawn thin. A constellation of weeping pinholes filled the air around him, sucking him in piece by piece. The howling of every demon in existence poured out past his smoke as they clawed at each other in a mad, burning frenzy.

The Gates closed faster and faster. More and more were called inescapably home.

Sam plunged into the chasm of Dean. He found the marks again, down there at the bottom, branded on Dean's core. The chains that tied him to the Lords and the Prince and to the Hell that had birthed them all. Sam grabbed onto the symbols. He held tight. And he pulled, pulled, pulled up past all the rot and the pain and the scarring and the corruption, and he wished he could heal it, every oozing, malformed piece. But he couldn't.

All he could do was this.

Sam yanked upwards, in fits and starts as his strength failed him and then he found new reserves, over and over and over. The tethers that bound the horror of it all to Dean grew thinner and thinner. The Gates juddered, with all the energy Sam was pouring into this, and Dean screamed in his ear. Sam screamed back.

Then the connections that the three marks had to Dean snapped, one by one in quick succession, dominos going down, and Sam was back in his body, Dean's true form gone again. Except for the faint shape of antlers in his smoke. The rest of it drifted aimlessly, like the tendrils of an anemone, no longer stretched taut and thrashing.

Dean was staring at Sam, who'd pulled back without meaning to. Sam looked at his unbroken hand, saw it was as black as if he'd plunged it into an oil slick. He looked at Dean again. Sam's light stuttered.

And I'm yours, Sam mouthed to Dean, a thought he'd barely managed to hang onto, as the flickering got weaker and weaker. Dean grabbed him with bloody hands, holding him up, face twisting.

Then the Gates slammed shut, with a final, screaming clang that echoed across a universe suddenly much emptier and a little brighter.

Not even a second later, Sam's light went out.