"Sam." Green seemed surprised, pleased to see him, but cautious, too. "We missed you at Lauds this morning." He took him in, probably including the fact that he was absolutely not in clerical dress. "Are you all right? How are you doing?"

"Fine. I'm fine." Sam blew out a breath. "Just. Had a rough night."

"I can imagine." Green's eyes turned sympathetic. "Were you coming to talk to me? You were just a bit early. I have time now, but the confessional might be better." He turned halfway in the direction of the church.

"No." Blood and bitterly thin air on Sam's tongue, bubbles in every breath. "I mean, I want to. Definitely. Like you said last night. But I was just thinking, and. Tonight would be better for me. Lots better."

Green studied him for a while, during which Sam was completely and utterly convinced he was about to call him on his bullshit. Instead, he slowly nodded.

"I understand," he said. "You'd prefer to throw yourself into your work today." He drew himself up with a deep breath. "I'm sorry you had to go through what happened last night, Sam, but you and I are very much the same in a lot of ways. I see so much of myself in you. I understand your struggle; this, doing the work of the Lord and guiding souls out of the grip of the darkness, is what gives me my strength, too."

"I'm glad you understand." It took a lot not to spit the words out.

"Of course I do." Green put a hand on his shoulder, squeezed. It was probably meant to be comforting, but Sam couldn't read it as anything but possessive. "Go get dressed. I believe you should still be able to get coffee and toast, at the very least, from the kitchen. Sister Julia is strict, but if you tell her I said it was all right, she should feed you. Then...if you're up to it, I believe I'd like your help with something. Meet me where we house the patients in, oh. An hour?"

"Yeah," Sam agreed, because if he was supposed to be throwing himself into his work it wasn't like he had a choice. "Of course."

It felt wrong to be pulling back on the black clothes and white collar, a clean set of them. To be slicking his hair back, the image of professionalism. Every touch was sandpaper on his skin and he felt at this point like he was on fire with needing Dean, and not knowing for sure why he couldn't leave his room was lighter fluid.

It was probably just because he didn't want his guard to notice he was gone and sound the alarm. That made the most sense. So why couldn't Sam shake the feeling it was something else?

He was starting to regret the food that Sister Julia had very grudgingly given up by the time he reached the patient building, its reappearance becoming steadily more likely and more unpleasant. The coffee had seared on the way down, ugly from sitting in the pot for so long, and pooled to burn a hole in his stomach. Much like the hole Dean's amulet was burning in the pocket of his slacks. Sam didn't even know why he had it with him; when he looked automatically down the hallway, there was still someone on guard outside Dean's door.

Green was waiting for Sam at the foot of the stairs. He had his bible with him, and smiled as soon as he saw him.

"I don't think I appreciated until now just how well you clean up," he observed. Sam squinted. "Come with me. No time to waste."

"Uh, actually," Sam started, knowing even as he did it was a bad idea, "you think I could maybe check on Dean first?"

Green's smile thinned out.

"I think it would be best if you stayed away from him, Sam," he said in a tone that didn't suggest he was in the mood for a discussion. "At least until we have a more effective method of dealing with his demon. It wouldn't be healthy for either of you."

Sam nodded silently. Green's demeanor softened.

"We'll take care of him," he promised, and after what Sam had seen in those files this morning, it wasn't just the coffee making him sick.

Green led the way to the second floor. Sam glanced at him. "So...you need my help for an exorcism again?"

"Of a sort," Green began carefully, then heaved a weary sigh. "I'm afraid Wyatt isn't doing very well."

It took Sam's brain, blitzed out with stress and anger and lack of sleep, a second to dig that name up. "Th-the kid? From yesterday."

Green nodded. "His parents waited longer than they should have to bring him to us, this time. Which is completely understandable, there were some issues with funds, Wyatt's doctor...a social worker also gummed up the works, if I recall correctly." He rolled his eyes. "I'm not blaming them, but the delay certainly contributed. The senior staff and myself evaluated his condition last night, and when you take into account how little effect his previous stays seem to have had on him, it starts to paint a rather bleak picture of what we're actually able to do for him. Especially seeing how he's deteriorated even since he was admitted.."

Dread and gut-deep horror was pounding up from Sam's stomach, a spreading lightning shape of numbness on his tongue, in his face. He looked at Green.

"Does he need a hospital?" he asked, already knowing what kind of answer he'd get.

Sure enough, Green smiled sadly at him. "Sam. I believe we both know it isn't that sort of affliction."

Green stopped at a door, "W. Petersen" next to it, and pulled it open. Sam entered first, then stopped. There were three nuns in the room. He saw Bernard and Agatha, and right in front of him was Sister Mary Ruth, calmly holding a neatly-folded set of vestments. On top was a bible, a bottle of oil, and what looked like a little prepackaged set of communion wine and wafers.

"I assume," Green commented, closing the door behind him, "you've administered Last Rites to someone before."

Sam immediately shouldered around Mary Ruth and went to Wyatt. Dressed in a pair of scrubs that were too big for him, the kid was strapped down at the wrists and ankles, and looked like he was unconscious. Sam checked the pulse in his throat, just to be sure. It was thready, but present, like a baby bird moving in the shell under his fingers. Last Rites were for the dying, not the dead, but...he somehow didn't think the staff of the St. Anastasia Center would have all that much trouble bending Catholic law.

Nobody seemed interested in stopping Sam. He'd barely confirmed Wyatt was still alive when the kid suddenly stiffened, then began to judder on the bed. One arm snapped painfully straight, the other hand tried to curl in towards his neck, and his legs followed the same pattern. His eyes were half-open, staring up at nothing.

"Evil's at work on him," Green said tensely, coming around to the other side of the bed. Benedict nudged Sam out of the way and put both hands on Wyatt to hold him down. "We need to move quickly."

"He's having a seizure!" Sam exclaimed. "He doesn't need Last Rites! Or maybe he won't, if we call an ambulance. Fuck, how many of these has he had? Does he have any - any medication, or - ?"

All three nuns flinched in unison at the profanity. He didn't feel the need to apologize.

"Father Unterweger, foul language has been known to strengthen demons," Green told him sharply. "Don the vestments, now."

"No! Hey, get off him, you're not supposed to hold…" Sam pulled Benedict off Wyatt, earning him a glare as the kid continued to shake, letting out a low moan. He turned, and there was Mary Ruth, shoving the vestments and supplies insistently at him.

"Please, Father Unterweger, this is the best way to help him right now," she said urgently.

"No, it's not!"

"I've performed thousands of exorcisms, I think I know the difference between epilepsy and advanced demonic possession," Green told Sam crisply, raising his voice to be heard. He came around the bed, took the vestments from Mary Ruth. "Sam, we need to do this. Your role here is so important. We can't do anything for him anymore, but we can at least try and ensure his soul is saved. There's no way that happens without Last Rites, which you have to perform now."

Green tried to offload everything into Sam's arms. Sam stepped back, and it all fell, cloth crumpling and bible bouncing and glass shattering in a piercing note, oil and wine running together in swirling globs and rivulets. Red soaked almost immediately into the white of the alb.

"Why?" Sam demanded. "So you can murder him?"

Wyatt's seizure chose that moment to release him. He relaxed onto the mattress in stiff, joint-locked degrees, pale and sweaty. The rest of the room was silent.

"Murder is a mortal sin," Green said calmly. "The Lord is quite clear on that, for all His ambiguity on other matters. 'Thou shalt not kill.' I've never committed murder, and never will."

"Wanna bet?" Sam spat. Hand in his pocket, he squeezed Dean's amulet, horns carving divots in his palm. "I know what you've been doing here, when somebody checks in and the exorcisms don't do shit because they need a doctor, not a priest."

"Sam, please - " Green began, looking perturbed again by his language. Sam talked right over him.

"You couldn't just take the loss. No, you have to make sure they never walk out of here again, don't you? Because then you can tell the family, and the press, and yourselves probably that they 'lost their fight' with the Devil, but the truth's they lost their fight with you. Isn't it?"

"Listen to yourself," Green stated. "Murdering patients? When we're so unfortunate as to have a body, we release it to the family for burial. We've even been cleared of any wrongdoing by several autopsies! Wouldn't murder show up on those?"

"Not an insulin overdose," Sam replied. "Not if the coroner wasn't looking for it. And why would the coroner in town do that, when the entire police force loves this place so goddamn much?"

He was really starting to enjoy the flinching, in a savage, broken-windows kind of way. Green let out a shocked laugh.

"Sam, I'm diabetic," he stated. "Do you really think I'd waste insulin on - ?"

"You take a lot of sugar in your coffee," Sam interrupted quietly, "for a diabetic."

There was silence, he and Green staring at each other. Sam kept one eye on Wyatt, to make sure his chest kept rising and falling.

He had brown hair, tan skin, no freckles. But he still sort of looked like Vaughn, when he was younger.

"I imagine you need an excuse, for the amount of insulin you're bringing in," Sam continued after a while. "So you shill the diabetes excuse to any new staff members who aren't in on it yet, maybe the pharmacy in town, but you serve wine with dinner every single day, and everybody drinks it…"

"Sam," Green began.

"Only thing I can't figure out is why you were gonna clue me in today." Sam shook his head. After last night, there was no way they could trust him. And even before...he hadn't even been here a full week. "Did you just want me under your thumb as quick as possible? Force me to be complicit in this?"

"All right, all right." Green lifted both hands for quiet. "Obviously, there's been a misunderstanding."

"Yeah." Sam laughed. "Right."

"Look, Sam…" Green stepped forward, made as if to grab Sam's shoulders. Sam jerked out from under his touch. "I need you to think about this logically, all right? We're not murdering people here. I promise. But something like you're describing, I imagine it would only happen in the most extreme cases. When nothing else could be done."

"You mean besides turning it over to somebody who actually knows what they're doing?" Sam bit out.

"We deal with possessions," Green snapped back. "Crises of the soul, not the body. Death comes at the hands of the demon or demons involved. Wouldn't it be better for a soul to ascend to Heaven, under the supervision and guidance of men and women who were trained for that exact thing, than to be dragged down to Hell when the demon claims the body?"

"You think that's what you're doing?" Sam asked Green. "Sending souls to Heaven. I mean, they probably deserve it, after what you put them through. But what d'you think is gonna happen to you when you die? All of you." He looked around the room. "Said it yourself: murder is a mortal sin. One of the big ten, even."

Except that none of them would be going to Hell, because for all intents and purposes, there was no Hell anymore. Just a stopped-up pocket dimension nothing would ever leave or enter ever again, a seething ouroboros of hate and rage and agony that had no target anymore but itself.

Sam wasn't sure he'd ever fully, really questioned closing the Gates until right now.

"Sam, look at him." Green gestured to Wyatt. "He needs help - "

"Yeah. An ambulance."

" - and every second you stand here spouting paranoid lunacy and refusing to listen to reason is a delay neither he nor we can afford. His soul is in jeopardy." Green stared hard at Sam. "I'm going to ask you one more time: will you administer Last Rites?"

"Go fuck yourself," Sam said deliberately, putting a hard emphasis on the curse. Green nodded to himself as he sighed through his nose, then looked at Sam.

"Okay. These past few days have been extremely hard on you, which is at least partly my fault, and for which I take full responsibility. I thought the opportunity to assist in a more concrete and traditional way would help you; clearly, that was a mistake. I can tell you're upset and confused and you obviously need to rest. I'll administer the Rites. Go back to your room, and I'll speak with you later, once you've calmed down."

"I'm not going anywhere." Stepping to the bed, Sam put his back to Wyatt and faced everyone else, both hands on the rail, gripping tight and protective. "I know what you're gonna do to him soon as I'm out of the room."

He wanted to scream for Dean, but even though he knew he'd hear him, he didn't know he'd be able to come...or that even if he was, that coming wouldn't put them all in danger. He could call Castiel, but they still didn't know for sure what was going on here, and bringing in an angel felt like pouring battery acid into an unknown solution and hoping it didn't blow up in everybody's face.

Sam was all there was, and it had been so long since that was the case he had no idea how he'd ever even lived alone.

"I really don't know where you got these ideas." Green grabbed Sam, actually getting a hold of him this time. Sam was bigger, younger, stronger, but Green must have had the advantage of being well-rested or something, because he somehow managed to muscle Sam away from the bed with both hands on his biceps.

Green dodged Sam's attempted headbutt as he began to move him out into the hall, and caught the knee he tried to throw into his stomach with his own leg. A pained grunt slipped out of him, and Sam gasped himself at the ringing pain the impact sent jangling along every nerve in his shin.

"Sister Mary Ruth," Green said tensely, "call Father Rosen."

"Don't do this," Sam warned. "You throw me out of this room, I'll call his parents. The sheriff, the police department. I'll bring however many cops it takes down on your ass to find one who'll actually do their job."

"And you think that will help you?" Green asked incredulously. "Sam - " He stopped, shook his head, looked over his shoulder. "He's fighting again."

Sam looked. Another seizure was rapidly coming on, Wyatt stiffening, then every muscle in his body spasming.

"Sister Bernard," Green ordered, "get ready."

"No!"

It came out of Sam loud enough to hurt him, felt like it tore tissue on its way. He could taste blood. And as he yelled, something...snapped. Like a rib breaking, but from the inside. And something else ripped off him in a savage wave of force.

Green was knocked off him, right onto the floor. The window shattered, flying outwards in a burst, taking crumbs of withered ivy with it. The lightbulb and the fixture around it rained hot broken glass, and Bernard and Agatha were thrown into the nearest walls. The door bucked in its frame.

When it was over, Wyatt shouted something, then went dead limp.

Swaying on his feet, blinking slowly, the ringing in Sam's ears was too loud for him to have heard what he said. After a second, he looked down at Green, who was staring up at him.

"Perhaps we can try a final exorcism," Green said, muffled. "Hold off on Last Rites. He seems...a bit stronger than he did at first glance."

"You won't do anything else to him today?" Sam's own voice sounded strange to him. His throat felt sore and rubbery.

"You have my word."

He looked at Green as he slowly climbed to his feet, then at Bernard and Agatha. There was a spreading wet spot on Bernard's habit, something fragile crushed in the pocket. Like a glass vial.

The naked shock in their faces, the fear they didn't seem able to hide, jumped out at him, painted Green's words with truth. Sam slowly nodded.

"Fine."

He didn't see the need to thank them as he turned around. The glass in the door's window had shattered into a snowy rectangle, but the embedded wire kept it from blowing out. He opened it, stepped into the hall. Mary Ruth was standing frozen at a telephone on the wall several doors away, handset clutched with bone-colored knuckles as she stared at him.

Sam looked back, then realized he could feel something running out of his nose at both ends. He touched a finger to one nostril, pulled it away. He knew it was blood even before he saw it. Holding a hand to his nose, he turned and speed-walked for the stairwell.

Panic was running down his throat, carried along by the nosebleed. He needed to get to Dean, right now. He didn't fucking care if he had to break a priest's neck, he was going. He'd figure out why he didn't come when he yelled, why he didn't come last night, and then they'd get Wyatt to a hospital, and then they'd shut this fucking place down, and dealing with or even thinking about this could wait all the way until that was finally accomplished and -

Both Sam and his thoughts were stopped in the first-floor hallway by an absolutely massive priest, a guy he recognized but hadn't ever talked to. He was a couple inches taller than Sam himself, and much heavier. Hand still on his nose, Sam looked him up and down. Under ordinary circumstances, he would have assumed he could take him in a fair fight, so long as he was willing to pick up some bruises. Clergymen probably didn't receive a lot of combat training.

But Green had nearly hauled him all the way out of a room in one go. Between that and how much...the thing that'd just happened had taken out of him, Sam wasn't so sure he liked his odds. Even before he saw the small, black object the guy's hands were folded over.

Reflexively, Sam swallowed. He knew a taser when he saw it.

Looking slightly up, Sam forced a smile. "You must be Father Rosen."

"I am," Rosen agreed, nodding. "I was very sorry to hear what a difficult time you're having, Father Unterweger. Let's get you back to your room so you can rest."

Sam took a deep breath as Rosen guided him out of the building with a hand on his back, glancing automatically down the hallway that led to Dean when they passed it, seeing his door and the priest still sitting next to it. He knew he had a much better chance of getting to him and burning the Center to the ground (figuratively or literally, he wasn't picky at this point) if he wasn't tased, beaten bloody, or both. So he tried to cram down the irrational, clawing panic that demanded he get to Dean if he had to chew through Rosen's throat to do it, and let himself be taken back to the dorm.

More rain on the way. It was cold outside and the air smelled like smoke and the plants all looked dead and the wind was thrumming. Sam tried not to look at anyone, but somehow caught Presley's eye anyway where he was coming out of the library, and felt him watching him all the way to the door.

Rosen saw him into his room when they reached it. Sam closed the door, then put the chair under the knob again. Even though he knew it wouldn't slow anyone down for long if they were really trying, and there was no point slowing them down at all when he couldn't even fit through the window to get out, it made some stupid animal part of him feel safer.

The succulent on his nightstand was brown and soft.

Rosen was still outside. Sam could see his feet under the door when he knelt and put the side of his face to the ground. Straightening, he grabbed a handful of tissues out of the box next to the very dead succulent, then pressed them to his nose.

While he waited for the nosebleed, which had slowed considerably, to stop all the way, he sat down on his bed and made a mental list of options. It seemed like his only choice was to call in backup, and keep it human. Garth, Jo, and Bela were the most obvious and immediate options, although strength in numbers felt like a good idea, and he'd spent six years tenuously rebuilding his extended support network...he could only hope it would pay off now.

He reached under his bed. After groping around for a couple of seconds with no results, he climbed off, looked underneath.

His backpack was gone.

Sam just stared at the empty space as he automatically cataloged the losses. No phone. No laptop. No weapons or supplies. All he had, very literally, were the clothes on his back and what little remained in the room.

He checked the window again, numbly. It didn't even open, and was still too small to serve as a means of escape. There was a vent on the ceiling, but the same went for it. He wouldn't even be able to fit one shoulder through.

First of all, Sam stashed the amulet. Just in case. Then he began to pace, agonized. He was squeezing the bloody tissues in one hand down into a rock-hard little wad of paper with the lines of his palm stamped into it. Maybe it would help if he could just figure out what was hidden in the rotten bones of this place, what was behind the pseudo-possessions and the dead plants and the smell of roasting flesh. He felt like he had all the fragments of the whole laid out neatly in front of him, but he'd never figure out where each one went unless he identified the anchor piece he'd been puzzling over for days: the language Heather had snarled at him with black eyes.

If he could just figure out the culture this thing belonged to. Sam knew the language was Middle Eastern, archaic, but that just gave him a list of thousands to choose from instead of millions. It wasn't Aramaic. Wasn't Arabic or Hebrew, or Greek, or Latin, he didn't think it was Sumerian, Egyptian, Akkadian, or Sabaic, so -

"Phoenician," Sam whispered to himself. Like leaning on an uneven tile for hours, feeling it finally grind to the side and fall abruptly into place.

He went to his desk, and the books still piled there from last night. He didn't even notice someone else was outside the door until they tried to turn the knob.

The knob jerked a few times. Sam tugged the desk away from the wall, so he could get a hand behind it, and grabbed the terra cotta pot off the nightstand with his other hand. He waited, watching the door rattle in its frame, then a muffled voice instructing someone to just get it open. The door banged powerfully once, twice, the cheap wood splintering near the knob, and at the third blow, the chair gave. It scooted backwards, tearing up an inch of carpet, then both back legs snapped.

The door swung open, rebounding off the wall. Sam immediately upended the desk, sending books spraying towards Green and the other priests he was with as they entered, then darted along the back wall of the room, leaping over the bed and trying to go around them. He didn't even get close to the door before Rosen caught him by the throat with one hand and the wrist with the other, keeping him from swinging the pot. Sam gagged, struggling. Making calm eye contact, Rosen squeezed insistently at his wrist until the pressure on the tendons forced his hand to open. The pot fell to the ground, breaking and spilling dry soil in a scattered pile. Then he shoved Sam hard by the throat.

He had to backpedal hard to keep his ass off the floor, back and head smacking firmly into the wall that appeared way too soon. Planting both hands firmly against it to stay upright, one wrist throbbing and trembling with painful weakness, Sam bent at the waist, coughing. It hadn't done the budding sore throat his yelling had left him with any favors, the sides of his larynx grinding together.

Green seemed more than willing to wait for Sam to pull himself together. He stood calmly in the middle of the room, hands folded at his waist, at least half a dozen other priests including Rosen fanned out behind him and crowded into the hall. Swallowing, nose and eyes wet, Sam straightened, and roughly asked, "What's going on?"

It was already painfully obvious. Literally. But he wanted to make Green say it. Green looked down at the floor and sighed, shaking his head.

"Sam, Sam, Sam." He glanced up at him. "Is that really your name?"

"Yeah." Sam wiped at the corner of his mouth with a thumb, spat.

"But you're not a priest." Green began to walk towards him. "Are you?"

"What, d'you think I'm a demon?" Pushing off the wall, Sam spread his arms. "Go ahead, test me. You're not gonna see holy water burn me, or a cross, or anything else."

"Of course not," Green agreed. "You're right, you're not a demon." He paused, as if for effect. "You're a witch."

Sam couldn't help barking out a laugh at that, even though it hurt. "You think I'm a witch?" That was new, or at least something he hadn't heard in years. There definitely weren't many days where he didn't use at least one spell or ritual, but he didn't think sharing that particular tidbit about himself would help the situation much.

"I don't put stock in superstitious nonsense," Green said flatly. "This isn't the fifteenth century. I do, however, make decisions based on the evidence presented, and you know things you shouldn't. You consort with demons. You wear an unholy brand on your skin. You present a dark temptation...and the foul weather we've been having, along with the loss of our garden, coincided exactly with your arrival here."

"Well, if you really think that...what're you gonna do?" Sam asked him. "Murder me?"

"I haven't murdered anyone," Green snapped, "but it doesn't surprise me in the least you see it that way. I've made sacrifices, certainly, to rescue souls from the grips of Hell. You can accuse me, all of us, of however many atrocities you want to, but the fact remains everything I've done here needed to be done. I took a difficult decision upon myself, I know in my heart I've done right by all those I've saved, and you will not convince me otherwise. I know I'm doing the Lord's work, following the plan He's set for me, but if that somehow means I'm damned anyway, I'll go to my eternal torment knowing it was a worthy cause. That because of me, countless others - children! - don't have to bear this agony."

Sam felt his mouth pull into a bitter smirk. "So. You're done denying it, huh?"

"I want to help you." Green all but snarled it out. "It's my greatest hope you aren't too far gone, that I can save your soul. I'm certainly going to try, whether you appreciate it or not."

Green stepped back. As he nodded to Rosen and another priest in his late fifties, Sam's hands drew into fists. Rosen reached him first, but this time, he was ready.

A sharp heel to the side of his knee, followed by the straining crack of important structures going directions they weren't meant to. Bellowing, Rosen went down. He grabbed for Sam on the way, but Sam easily dodged, turning to the other priest and driving a knee into his stomach then, when he doubled over, his forehead. As he fell, Sam went for his desk, vaulting over the top of it, skidding on books and paper, feeling pages rip and feeling fleetingly guilty even as he lowered a shoulder and bullrushed through the rest of the crowd and out into the hall. They tried to stop him, most of them. They weren't any match for the adrenaline pounding behind his eyes and whipping bright through his veins.

"Don't let him out of the room!" Green shouted. He tried to take Sam down himself as he passed, and Sam took immense pleasure in throwing an elbow into his eye socket.

As soon as he could full-on sprint down the hallway, he did. He was built much more for distance than speed, but a short stretch like this he could take no problem. One turn soon as he was out the door, and then it was a straight shot to the patient building, and there was no way anybody would be able to catch him outside.

His only goal was getting to Dean. He knew what it was now, the festering heart of this place. He knew how to beat it. They could take care of it, they could put an end to everything, starting just as soon as he got him out of -

Sam heard the click of the taser's trigger half a second before the barbs hit him, one on either side of his spine. Not enough time to react when he was devoted wholly to running. Agony crashed through him almost the instant he felt metal bite skin, like the cramping he used to get in his leg but all over his entire body, straitjacketing him in his own muscles. He fell flat on his face, momentum dragging him an inch or two over the carpet, and there was immediate pain spiking through his right cheekbone and the side of his jaw.

Maybe he just ought to be grateful he hadn't landed on his nose.

It felt like he was shaking for an hour, twitching uncontrollably, before the stinging fire of the electrical current finally started subsiding. Even as he went limp, the occasional painful aftershock spasm kept cropping up. Only hazily conscious, he tried to push himself up. He needed to move. The phantom sensation of rising repeated over and over again, but every time he snapped out of it, nothing had responded.

"Thank you," Green said tiredly behind him, "Father Rosen." A pause, then, "Let's get him back to his room."

What felt like four or five people picked Sam up, carried him down the hall, and heaved him none-too-gently into bed. Then the straps came out, the same ones they used on the patients. Wrists secured to the headboard, ankles to the frame after spreading his legs awkwardly wide, and one band each across hips and chest. Sam was only surprised they hadn't called any nuns to strap him in.

He could move a little, though every muscle in his body hurt and buzzed, by the time they were finished. When Green put a hand on his forehead, looking earnestly down at him with his other hand over his own eye, Sam stared back.

"I'm sorry," Green told him. "I promise, we'll do our absolute best with you. Someone will be in later to look at those wounds."

He indicated the scrapes on Sam's face, searing where they were exposed rawly to the air, then stepped back. Sam heard him leave, along with the other priests, and the door closed (as much as it was able to after being kicked open), but he had no doubt they left somebody to guard him.

He stared up at the ceiling, probing the inside of his cheek with a numb tongue, where the impact had forced the fragile tissue into his teeth hard enough to split it deep. Drool ran out of the corner of his mouth as he thought his way around his aching body, feeling and strength taking their sweet time about seeping back into him.

Sam wasn't really sure how he'd gone this long without ever being tased before now. He was glad he had, just wished his luck had held out a little longer.

Soon as he could, he began to tug experimentally at the straps on his wrists and ankles, straining against the ones on his body. Unfortunately, they'd done a good job of securing them, buckles tight and firm. He probably could have broken the bedframe, but the position he was in wasn't exactly ideal for generating power, and with his muscles fried from fifty thousand volts, he would have needed all the leverage he could get.

His head pounded, aching hurt rebounding inside all the hollow spaces, as he wrapped the fingers of his left hand around the thumb and twisted his wrist. He'd practiced this so many times that the sickening feeling of dislocation was actually worse than the pain. To begin with, at least. The straps were on his wrists a whole lot tighter than the handcuffs he'd practiced with had ever been, and working a hand with a dislocated thumb free was a persistent agony that had Sam clenching his teeth to try and keep his lurching stomach under control. Once it was finally out of the cuff, he had to take his thumb in his mouth and manipulate the joint back into place with a lot of extremely unpleasant stretching and grinding. Usually, it just popped back in on its own, and he could only hope he hadn't done too much damage. If he had...there was a reason he did this with his left hand.

Thumb stiff, Sam fumbled open the strap on his right wrist, then worked his way down his body. He was undoing the one across his hips when he heard somebody right outside his door call to somebody else. Banging and shouting followed immediately afterwards.

Tensing, Sam hurried up. He was just swinging his legs off the bed, straps dumped unceremoniously onto the ground, when the door tore open with enough force to lose a sizable chunk of itself in the process. Like a bad repeat of last night, Presley was standing there, staring in. Sam froze, but Presley didn't look surprised or upset to see him loose. In fact, something about him sent a tepid little wave of warm relief bumping against Sam's heart. Presley looked at Sam, then his eyes went to the bed, and the one strap still hanging off the headboard.

"They strapped you down?" he demanded, angry. "Oh my god - what the fuck happened to your face?"

"They…" Sam blinked, a little startled by the curse. "Tased me. I fell."

"Course they did." Presley glanced over his shoulder, at something in the hall, and shook his head. "Well. Now I don't even feel bad."

He stepped into the room, and Sam stared at the splayed legs that had just become visible on the ground behind him. As Presley walked around the desk and the books and the dirt that no one had bothered to clean up, Sam pushed himself slowly to his feet.

"Hey, hey, hey, careful there." Presley steadied him with one firm hand on his bicep. The other hand came up to very gently cup the side of his jaw. Examining the rugburn on his face, Presley sympathetically sucked his teeth. "We gotta do something about that. Must hurt like a bitch."

"Uh," Sam began, wincing and shying away from Presley's touch. "Yeah."

Before he could say anything else, or ask any questions, Presley quietly told him, "I missed you," then leaned in.

Sam shoved him back. A second slower than he probably should have, which meant their lips actually touched, but he figured he could write that one off as lingering taser damage. Hands up to ward Presley off if he tried to close the distance between them again, Sam shook his head firmly.

"Okay, whoa! Whoa." His face stung as he talked, blood rushing rapidly in for a blush. "No. I don't...look, I mean, you seem pretty all right, but I've got a - " He was tripped up unexpectedly by not knowing what to call Dean.

"Boyfriend." Presley blinked, and with an organic camera-shutter sound, his eyes turned black. He pointed to them. "Yeah. I know."

Absurdly enough, Sam's first urge was to point out that "boyfriend" didn't feel right, given their house-and-kid-and-more-than-five-years-invested-in-the-relationship situation. More taser damage.

"I...that makes sense." Sam's relief. His delayed reaction to the kiss. But… "Actually no, it doesn't. What the hell're you doing in Presley?"

"It's definitely not for shits and giggles, lemme tell you that," Dean answered grimly, eyes changing back. "You know I hate anything that's not, y'know, mine, but my meat's on lockdown and I needed a ride." He eyed Sam, reached for his face. "I can tell that's bothering you, just lemme - "

"No, no." Sam pulled away. "You need to be at full power, I don't want you wasting…"

"It's not wasting. Downright offensive." Dean grabbed Sam, and Sam relented, not wanting a lecture. For maybe about a minute, the pain of his scrapes seared lemon-juice worse before finally ebbing back down into an echo. Sam reached up to wipe reflexive tears out of his right eye. Seemed like that had lasted longer than it normally would have.

"Thanks, but. What d'you mean, your meat's on lockdown?"

"That. Maybe these assholes somehow got a clue, maybe something else took it on to ground me. But when they threw me back in my straps last night, I was stuck there. Couldn't teleport, couldn't bust out, couldn't set fires, grab anything, zilch. It was like being human again."

"So why didn't you smoke out earlier?" Sam realized he'd unconsciously drifted closer to Dean. It was like edging up to a space heater after hiking through a blizzard for twenty hours.

"'Cause I was afraid to," Dean answered, practically biting the words out in frustration. "Felt like I was being caged in there, like I was being watched. Look, I move a lot freer when I'm not wearing somebody, but - "

"It's like a snail without its shell," Sam agreed, nodding. No human flesh or soul to use as a shield against iron or salt or angelic Grace.

"Way gooier metaphor than I would've liked," Dean told him, nose wrinkled, "but yeah. Felt like I'd be putting myself in trouble if I tried to bail. But this guy - " He indicated Presley. " - climbed in through the window about an hour ago and bent right over me. Just inches between orifices. That didn't feel too dangerous."

Sam would wait until later to tell Dean how much he disliked "inches between orifices." "Why would he do that?"

"He was gonna let me out. To help you. Saw you being frog-marched back here, took a wild guess you were in trouble." He looked down at himself, smoothing his hands over Presley's black clerical shirt. "Gotta say, real good luck, him doing that. This guy's way less of an adjustment than somebody else might've been, and oh boy."

Dean flashed Sam a grin. "He is interesting."

"I'm really gonna enjoy hearing all about that later," Sam said, with genuine regret. Even with the urgency of the situation, a not-insignificant part of him wanted to lay back down on the bed and just listen to Dean's voice until his muscles stopped aching. He felt stomach-to-spine starved for him in a way he hadn't known or maybe remembered he could be, and how much just having him around was unknitting the tension around his shoulders and spine wasn't nearly enough. "But right now, we've got a really big problem here."

"Yeah, I know," Dean agreed. "Something big's going on. Something...I don't know, it was always here, I could always kinda feel it, but now it's outta the brush and I'm pretty sure it's mad. It feels…" He trailed off. "So, you know when you get an island out in the middle of the ocean, just a little rock, but if you go under the water and you follow it down, it's massive, goes to the ocean floor, and most of it's always existed in the dark, and it's been there forever and there are those deep-sea vents with all sorts of awful things crawling out of them and caves and old stuff and shipwrecks and it's not exactly alive, not in our sense, but you get the feeling anyway that this is something that eats other things? And it's been doing it for thousands of years?"

Sam stared at Dean, as a very unpleasant chill prickled its slow and crawling way up his back. "That...that would make sense."

"You figured out what it is?" Dean asked, incredulous and a little proud. Sam nodded. "Well, awesome." He brought his hands together in a brisk clap. "How d'we kill it?"

Sam went to the pile of books on the floor, taking a knee and digging through them until he found the one he'd had open when Green had stormed his room. He flipped to the necessary page, tapped the paragraph, and handed it up to Dean. "Here."

Dean took it, eyes flickering across the page. "Get him in each of his seven chambers with a stake made outta...Mediterranean cypress?" he asked after a second, looking at Sam. "We're in the goddamn American south, where in the hell're we gonna get that?"

"Believe it or not…" Sam pushed himself to his feet with a grunt. His knees had hit hard when he collapsed. "I actually know a place."

"Attaboy." Dean helped Sam up the last few inches, then gave his shoulder a fond shake. He snapped the book shut, tossed it on the bed. "Okay. I'll go ahead and swing you out to - "

"No." Sam shook his head. "Gotta be a human holding the stake."

Dean chewed at his lower lip. "Then we'll go grab - "

"Dean, we can't." Sam spread his hands. "You said it yourself, it's mad. We got a time crunch here."

Dean stared at him for a long second before he stated, "I don't like this. I can feel you, you're not in any kinda shape to be doing this."

"We don't have a choice," Sam pointed out grimly, "and I've got you. That's enough."

"Yeah. Right." Dean blew out a reluctant breath. "Wanna get this show on the road, then?"

"Just a second." Sam went to the desk, jerked one of the drawers free. The impact with the floor had knocked it askew and left it wedged awkwardly in. He reached inside, to where he'd wrapped the cord of Dean's amulet around the runner earlier, and untangled it, pulling it out. He shouldn't have bothered, they hadn't even searched his pockets. Green wouldn't know a real witch if she made him vomit maggots. "Here."

Dean's eyes brightened, and his face softened. He dipped his head so Sam could put it around his neck, then guided him close, and kissed him again. This one, Sam was only too happy to let him finish, even though the lips were thinner and the mouth didn't taste nearly the same, not even as much sulfur. When they pulled back though, Sam grimaced.

"Squicked?" Dean guessed. "It's only temporary."

"There's just kind of a, y'know...consent thing…"

"Better wrap up that heart, Sammy, it's bleeding all over the floor." Dean rubbed his back reassuringly. "But...fuck. I missed you." He touched his forehead briefly, lovingly, to Sam's. "Anything else you need?"

"No." Sam took a deep breath. "It's go time."

"Good, 'cause our mountain just surfaced. It's at the church."