Thank you MaggieMay17 for beta'ing, Ncsupnatfan and VegasGranny for pre-reading, and you all for reading.
I got my chapters mixed up. I told some of you we'd see the Castiel/Dean confrontation in this chapter, but that's not yet. Sorry for the confusion.
Chapter Twenty-One
Dean's alarm blaring pulled him from sleep. He slapped his hand down on it then pulled the pillow over his head.
He didn't want to be awake yet. There was no reason to be awake. It wasn't like there was anything waiting for him right now. There was no fight, no one needing his help. The person that he wanted to help, Sam, was gone, and that was probably for the best. What help had Dean been when it mattered?
When he'd discovered Sam and Castiel were gone, he'd been shocked. As angry as Castiel was, Dean had not imagined the angel would take Sam away. How was Dean supposed to help Sam now? Sure, Sam was an angel himself, an archangel even, and didn't need food or sleep or anything else that he once had , but Dean could have been close to him, could have talked with Sam when he woke up. And he would wake up, Dean was sure of it. Now Sam was going to wake up, and it would just be him and Castiel. He might even think that was what Dean wanted.
And Dean wouldn't blame him.
When Nick had been unconscious, with Hell and Lucifer spilling free, Dean's sole focus had been on helping him, fixing what was going on in Nick's head, and Sam had been the only way he could think of to do that. He'd been scared for Nick, and that had made his reactions to Sam harsher than they should have been.
He hadn't been choosing one brother over another, though he realized now that was how Sam might have seen it. He'd just known one of his brothers was an archangel with immense power, and the other was dealing with a head full of hell that had almost killed him once already. One brother could save the other, so why wouldn't he have pushed for that?
Sam had proven in the past that he would give up everything for Nick. He'd given Lucifer consent to possess him to save Nick from doing it, and Dean had known he would do it again in a heartbeat; they were family.
He should have taken a breath, though, not let Castiel's anger and objections goad him into arguing so uncompromisingly. It must have seemed that he cared less for Sam than he did Nick.
Dean hadn't stopped long enough to find out what Sam was trying to communicate with him before he'd done it. He'd let it go unsaid, and now he saw that was a betrayal of the brother he'd never thought he would have a chance to know again. And unless Sam saw past how Dean had behaved in his panic and fear, he wouldn't have that chance again. Castiel wouldn't be encouraging him to come back to them, to give them another chance. He was so angry when he'd left, so twisted up in what he was thinking and feeling, that he wouldn't help Sam to see their side of it.
It had been hard enough trying to forge a bond with Sam again after they'd gotten their memories of him back, with Sam so reluctant about being with them. Now, unless Sam was able to see the truth of the situation on his own, and forgive Dean, it was going to be impossible.
Dean had really screwed up.
There was a knock on his door. He lifted the pillow from his head as it opened, and Mary peered inside. "Dean?"
He sat up and swung his legs around to the edge of the bed, trying to look as though his thoughts weren't spiraling into guilty tangles. "Hey, Mom. You okay?"
"I heard your alarm," she said. "I wondered if you wanted me to make breakfast. Nick and Jack are moving around, too."
Dean appreciated the offer, even though his mother was a terrible cook. He could sense it came from a point of need rather than desire. She wanted to do something for them as she couldn't do anything for the son that had been hidden from them by Castiel. She'd been distraught when she'd heard Sam and Cas were gone the evening before, and Dean had struggled to comfort her when he was so deep in his own frustration and guilt for making it happen.
Dean stood up and ran a hand through his hair. "I'll fix us something. I could do with a distraction," he said. "Nick can help. Maybe you can talk to Jack. He still seemed pretty shaky last night after everything that happened."
Mary looked pleased, though also a little relieved, and said, "Of course, I'll go find him."
She slipped out of the room again. Dean got up, grabbed clothes from the dresser, and carried them out.
Nick was just coming out of the bathroom when he reached it, and he gave Dean a quick nod then walked in the opposite direction towards his own room.
"Nick, wait," Dean called after him. "What's going on?"
Nick turned back, his eyebrows raised and a look of incredulity on his face. "Apart from the fact our brother is missing?"
Dean sighed. "Yeah, I know, but you and me have got to be okay on this. Mom's all twisted up about Sam. Jack's still struggling after what happened to him. We don't get to fall apart over it. Not in front of them anyway."
When Dean was hiding in his bedroom it was a different matter. They had to be solid when the others were there, or there was going to be no one handling it.
"Mom's not good?" Nick asked.
"She offered to cook breakfast," Dean said pointedly.
Nick grimaced, and then a small smile curled his lips. "I get the message. I'm good."
"Good," Dean said. "You and me are making breakfast."
"Thank God," Nick said, lifting a hand and then walking away again.
Dean went into the bathroom, set his clean clothes down on the counter, and then started the water running to shower. While he waited for the temperature to regulate, he avoided looking into the too-many mirrors above the row of sinks. He concentrated hard on what he could make for breakfast, instead of thinking of Sam and Castiel, or Jack's trauma, or Mary and Nick. Or, worst of all, the fact he'd screwed everything up for all of them when he'd not taken time to talk to Sam before letting him jump off the cliff to save Nick.
The door banged open, and he spun around as Nick marched in, his phone pressed to his ear. "Hold on, Father Lucca," he said. "Dean's here. I'm putting you on speaker." He lowered the phone, pressed a button, and held it out between them. "Go ahead."
The accented voice that came through the speaker was concerned. "Who was the man you sent to me?"
"What man?" Dean asked as he turned off the shower.
"He said he was a friend of yours," Father Lucca said. "He asked for my blood."
Dean gasped. There was one reason someone would want Father's Lucca's blood, and Dean could only think of one person that both knew about it and could want to make use of it.
His heart lurched. Castiel hadn't just taken Sam away from them at the bunker. He was planning to take him away from their world.
Sure, Dean had screwed up, and Castiel was right to be pissed, but he had no right to steal Sam away from them like that. He'd thought Castiel was family, but family would never betray them like that.
He saw the same horror dawn on Nick's face, and he asked, "Father, the man that came, was he a dark-haired man in a beige coat?"
"No," he replied, and Dean's breath came easier, and then his next words stole it all from his lungs. "His hair was dark, but he was wearing a plaid shirt and jeans. He was very tall."
"Sam!" Nick gasped. "He's awake!"
Dean nodded mutely. Yeah, Sam was awake, but he also wanted Father Lucca's blood—the blood of a most holy man—which meant he wanted to open a rift.
Castiel wasn't taking Sam away from them. Sam was doing it himself.
"I didn't get his name," Father Lucca said. "He told me…" There was a pause and the crackle of a sigh on the line. "This man told me he was an angel. And I think I believe him. I understand you live in a different world from the one I am immersed in myself. It must be if there is a way for my blood to save someone you care about. That's not faith or religion; it's something different. But that troubled man was different from any I've known. I fear for him."
"You're not the only one," Dean whispered and then asked intensely. "Did you give him your blood?"
Nick seemed to be holding his breath as he waited for an answer, and it rushed out of him when Father Lucca said, "Yes. I wanted to help him. I told you, he was troubled."
Dean squeezed his eyes closed and tried to wrangle his thoughts. Sam had the blood. He was part of the way there. He'd never returned the Seal after taking it to see if it had been used. Dean hadn't even asked. When he'd seen Sam after that, he'd been preoccupied with other things, with relief that he was there, and he'd never asked.
"We've got to go, Father," he said. "There's something we've got to do."
"Have I done something wrong?" Father Lucca asked.
"Not wrong," Dean said. "But not good for us. Thanks for contacting us, though." He tugged the phone out of Nick's hand and ended the call, and then shouted, "Sammy! Please don't do this. Come talk to us!"
"You think he's still around to hear?" Nick asked. "You don't think he'd have gone already?"
"I sure as hell hope he's not gone."
Dean ran from the bathroom and down the hall. He passed Mary and Jack coming out of Jack's room, and Mary caught his arm and said, "Dean, what's wrong?"
Dean yanked himself free and kept running, hearing footsteps behind him that meant Mary and Nick, and perhaps Jack, were following him.
He yanked open the door to the storeroom and made straight for the shelf where he'd seen Nick put the jar holding the remaining Fruits of the Tree of Life. There was an empty space on the shelf, though, and Nick spoke behind him. "He's got it, Dean."
Dean turned and saw that Nick was holding the large glass jar, which contained only two of the three fruit that should have been there.
"What's going on?" Mary asked.
Dean felt the muscles of his legs loosening, and he gripped the shelves to keep himself upright. "Sam's gone," he whispered.
"Gone where?" Mary asked. "You mean…" She looked at the jar. "Is that the fruit you used to come to get me and Jack? The spell you told us about?" She blanched. "Has he gone to that world?"
Jack looked stunned. "The world with the apocalypse?"
"That or a few hundred other possibilities," Nick said. "He's taken off."
"No, he's gone to that world," Dean said, the words passing through numb lips. "He'd need something that's been there, and he was there."
"No!" Mary said. "He never went there. He can't have gone."
Dean saw the hope in her eyes, and he felt like an asshole as he destroyed it. "Sammy wasn't there, but Lucifer was when he was still riding him. I think that would be enough for the spell to work. Technically, his body was there."
Mary squeezed her eyes shut. "Why would he do this?"
"Because of me," Nick said.
His voice was strained with some emotion Dean couldn't define. He didn't think it was sadness, but he didn't have the mental capacity to work it out while his thoughts were so consumed with what Sam had done.
"We have to stop him," Mary said.
"I think we're too late," Nick said. "Dean tried praying, but he's not here."
"He can't get in," Mary said. "We haven't taken down the warding." Her eyes widened. "He could be trying."
She sprinted out of the room, and Dean followed at a more sedate pace. He knew she was hoping to find Sam standing outside the bunker, waiting to be let in, maybe breaking down the door again, but she wasn't going to find him. He knew how betrayed Sam was feeling: he was the one that had done it to him.
He'd screwed everything up.
He got to the library in time to hear the door clanging closed and her footsteps coming down the stairs. "He's not out there."
"He's not here at all," Nick said. "He has what he needs. He wouldn't delay following through on his decisions. That's not Sam's style. He's gone."
"But how would he know what to do?" she asked.
"Lucifer knew, which means Sam knew," Dean said dully. " Lucifer saw us doing it, then he and Michael used the same spell to get to this world after they made their deal.. He… Dammit!"
He swept a hand across the table, and the lamp was knocked onto the floor, where it landed with a crash. The shards of broken glass glittered.
"What do we do?" Mary asked.
"I don't know," Nick said. "Sam took the seal, so we can't open a rift here."
"Why didn't Castiel warn us?" Mary asked. "Or do you think they've both gone?"
Nick shrugged helplessly. "It could be both of them. He wasn't with Sam when he got the blood, but he could have been waiting somewhere."
"No," Dean said. "If Castiel was in on it, Sam wouldn't have come here for the fruit. Castiel got them for us in the first place so he'd know where to get more. If Sam hates me enough to leave this world, he wouldn't come back to the Bunker unless he had to."
"He doesn't hate you, Dean," Nick said. "He loves you."
"You weren't there, Nicky," Dean said. "When you were ill, when you had all that going on in your head, I was pushing so hard. I gave him every reason to hate me."
"No," Nick said firmly. "It's me he hates."
"It's neither of you," Mary said fiercely. "Sam loves all of us. He's just confused. You said Castiel was crazy after he woke up when he did the same thing for Nick last time. Sam is struggling with what he took from Nick, and he's making bad choices."
Dean clung to the hope as it would mean he hadn't driven his brother away, but he didn't truly believe it. Whatever the reason Sam had gone, it didn't matter now. The problem was that he had.
"What do we do?" Mary asked. "How do we fix this?"
"I don't know," Nick said. "He took the Seal with him so…"
"Then we go after him," Dean said. "The rift stays open twenty-four hours. We just have to find where he opened it and go after him."
"He could have done it anywhere," Nick said, his tone insufferably reasonable. "We'd be searching the whole world for it."
"We find someone that knows then," Dean said. "Castiel! Get your ass here now!"
"He can't get in," Nick pointed out.
Dean ran through the war room and up the stairs to yank open the door and raised his voice in a shout. "Cas, come on. We need you. We know what Sam's doing. Do you? Cas!"
There was no new presence. Dean stood in the early morning sun streaming through the open door and willed the angel to arrive.
"I don't think he's coming, Dean," Nick said, coming to stand beside him.
"Then we find him on our own," Dean growled, turning and leaning over the railing to where Mary and Jack were standing. "Jack, can you find Cas? Can you sense him or something?"
Jack frowned. "I don't know. I've not tried before. He's always just been there."
"Try," Dean urged.
Jack closed his eyes and his brow furrowed, and then his eyes snapped open, and he hurried up the stairs. "I think it's him. It's…" Jack waved a hand, trying to describe power, familiar."
"Or it could be Sam," Mary said eagerly. "He might not have gone yet. Go now. Try to convince him to see us one more time, at least. Please, Jack…"
Jack nodded, then stepped outside the door and disappeared.
So…Now they know. Dean's mind was hard to tap into for this chapter, and Ncsupnatfan and VegasGranny really had to help me get there. Hope it turned out okay.
Until next time…
Clowns or Midgets xxx