Of course, I had been expecting the angel to return my call.

Eventually.

But waiting for it was like waiting for water to boil. Watching with hungry intensity for bubbles to rise, only to be sucked into a parallel realm where time stands still. Ultimately the water comes to a roil and time ticks on, but only after your back and attention have turned.

One might think that knowing what had to be done would help, that it could pull a person back from the threshold of control, but it didn't. Not with the mechanical sighs of the ventilator and dull breedle of the heart monitor echoing throughout the lonely room. The sight of catheters plugged into Sam's skull, the blast of purple and blue and red across his face, the utter stillness in which he lay. They all served as an unrelenting reminder that all I could do now was to wait, and hope the foreboding shadow that marked our path didn't swell.

Say something, a voice in the back of my head urged, though I couldn't tell if it was Max's or mine. You might not get another chance.

I argued internally, insistent that speaking my peace would only goad his soul to move on, and he would truly be gone.

Who says he's the one who's going to leave?

I drew in a staggered breath and rubbed at the stubble on my chin. There was so much I should have said, but words failed me every time I looked at him. The blackest parts of me promised relief from this fresh Hell if I just let go, just give in, but this spurred the lingering fragment of John to pull the pain closer.

It took me two hours to work up the words, but I had gotten no more out than a deep sigh and a quiet "Listen, Sammy…" when the proverbial pot finally erupted in computerized songs and vibrations. I dug Sam's phone out of my leather jacket and read the screen with my heart in my throat.

Cas

"Your timing is piss poor," is how I answered his call, my eyes casting to the corner like I could will him to travel there through the phone.

"I think that depends on the situation," the angel's baritone voice replied. "On this particular instance, I think you may be right. What's happened to Sam?"

I shot my gaze to my son.

"Dean has been calling," Castiel informed me as I closed my eyes against the grisly scene I'd been steeping in.

"And you didn't answer?" My tone bordered on a growl.

"My phone was off," he told me, nonchalant and unapologetic. "I tried calling him back, but it went to voicemail."

"Good," I said, more to myself than him. "That means he's catching some shut eye." I paused. "Shit really hit the fan once you left." I could feel the rogue heat blooming across my face as the angel's broken promise rang sharp in my memories. "You said Heaven can wait."

Castiel sighed, heavy and tired.

"If it were up to me, it would still be waiting," he said before another sigh rolled through the phone. "I'm sorry, John. It was, on my part, bad timing. What's happened to Sam?"

I opened my mouth to illustrated the macabre that laid out before me, but all that came out was a gruff command;

"Don't use your grace."

"John–"

"You need to tell your ate-up motherfucking kind to fuck off for another week."

A long, sullen pause passed before he attempted a response.

"Where are you?"

I heaved a sigh of relief at my interpretation of his words.

"Tennessee," I said. "Place called–"

"No," Castiel cut me off. "Where are you, John."

My heart stopped again, receded to the fire that burned in my chest.

"I'm in a hospital room watching my son die!" I shouted into the speaker, rising in defense and anger from my seat at Sam's bedside.

"You're on the verge of losing control again." His voice was patient, his calmness irksome to my torn being. "Come back."

"You wanna know why I'm on the goddamn edge?" I growled.

"Yes."

I told him everything that had happened since he deserted us in Powell's Crossroad. The parts about meeting Mystery I glimpsed over, a side-note that set up the gruesome details that I spilled over the attack. Details I peppered with creative curses that supported the dismay of Sam's collapse, the time-altered dash to the hospital, the murder I nearly committed. Sam's prognosis.

"You can't use your grace, Cas," I reiterated after everything – everything, that is, but Xael – had been laid out for the angel to see. "Not yet."

Another long pause erupted, and I checked the phone for connection. That was when I realized his silence was his answer, and a wave of numbness washed over me.

"Goddamnit, Cas," I growled in a deflated sigh. My head hung, my free hand ran down my face as I took my turn to pause. "What the fuck am I supposed to do?"

"I don't know," was the utterly useless beginning to his reply. "But if it has anything to do with you undergoing the trials, I would advise against it. They weren't designed for mortal men to survive, and it won't save Sam."

I shifted my gaze back to my son, like he could hear us and suddenly wake up and chew me out for bringing up self sacrifice again.

"I don't know if you've noticed," I said, taking long strides to the door where I halted to give Sam a long look. "But I'm not exactly mortal these days."

I trudged through the halls with my head down and my cigarette pack in my clutch.

"It's too divine," Cas emphasized without humor or pride. "Two of the three trials nearly killed Sam. One would destroy you."

I pulled a cigarette from a fresh pack and stuck it between my lips as I took the exit into the back parking lot. Freya shot up from her place by the door and greeted me by running headlong into my legs. I returned her zealous hello with a distracted scratch behind her ears.

"Is that what it says?"

"... what what says?" Castiel asked, hesitant.

"The demon tablet." I lit the cigarette with my silver zippo and exhaled in a cloud of smoke; "Does it say it has to be a human? That a demon can't close the gates?"

Freya followed as I fell into an uneasy pace around rows of trucks and cars baking in the summer sun.

"No..." The word was drawn out and halting. "They're Trials of God. And you're… well…"

Unclean. Abomination.

"What are they?" I said, taking a drag of my cigarette.

More silence that loomed in hesitance.

"Goddamnit, Castiel!" It wasn't my voice so much as it was an echo of it, like a shouted growel rebounding off of shadows and smoke. It drew curious looks from a nearby elderly couple and an off the clock receptionist, but Freya's held the longest and the sharpest. The other eyes were prying and curious; my companion's was nothing short of caution and bubbling fear.

There's no time to worry about the goddamn dog.

"It's the only surefire way out of this mess," I began, death metal in low volume. "And you know it."

"I believe the goal of 'this mess' was to repossess your soul," Castiel corrected. "Sam almost died for it."

"Sam is dying," I spat. "For Mystery."

"Whose rescue was an effort to keep yourself from going 'dark side'."

I took a long drag from my cigarette, let the filthy smoke fill the spaces Castiel's reminder hadn't, and exhaled a slow gray cloud.

"I don't know how much longer I can hold it back."

The confession surprised me, partially because I hadn't really allowed myself to admit it. I wasn't just on the edge, I was losing balance to the wrong side.

"John–"

"You got your penance," I said, cutting him off before he could protest or apologize or whatever it was he never got to say. "Let me have mine. Before Sam dies and I turn into a raging death machine."

A defeated sigh rolled into my ears, and the tension in my mind eased up, if only a little.

"It won't work," Cas reiterated, this time with a more yielding tone. "But Heaven knows there's no stopping a Winchester from sacrificing themselves for each other. And I suppose you're right. You deserve your redemption. Or a shot at it anyways." He paused and I could all but see the sad, sympathetic smile. "For what it's worth, I believe you can hold on."

"Yeah?" I scoffed. "For how long?"

"For as long as you need to," he replied, simple as fact. Water wet, fire hot. "You are, after all, a Winchester."

I wanted to believe him, but anymore, there wasn't much left for me to believe in.

I stopped my random ambling to jot down the instructions as they came to me, my cigarette between my lips as I used my arm as a temporary notepad. He made it clear that the trials had to be done in order before he listed them and their intricacies in reverse.

Cure a demon. Retrieve an innocent soul from Hell. And don't forget to say the Enochian incantation kah nah om dar after each one or it will all have been in vain.

I mouthed the Enochian words as I wrote them between scars, and they burned the tip of my tongue.

When it came down to the first task he faltered, and I didn't blame him. Not after I understood that he wasn't biding his time, hoping I had somehow changed my mind. He knew what it would mean for me if my intentions came to fruition.

"The first trial is to kill a Hellhound and bathe in its blood."

My blood ran with ice, my heart froze. I looked down at Freya, who sat at my side, patient and none the wiser. I can find another Hellhound, was my immediate thought, and it was one I tried desperately to hold onto. The second thought – the one that carried logic and reality – swung in like a fist to the throat. Crowley knew the trials well enough. A missing hellhound would not go ignored, let alone one taken by yours truly in a savage raid, which would undoubtedly make a lot of noise. Even if it didn't, the time it would take to find another one was gone, because time was running screaming away from the Winchesters.

"John?"

"Yeah," I said, dazed in the weight reality brought. "I heard you."

In the pause I could see his stupid, empathetic face.

"I'm sorry, John."

"Yeah, yeah." A faux brush-off. "Thanks."

"Good luck, John." His words were woven with regret, with sorrow and with finality. "I hope you find what you're after."

This wasn't a see you later goodbye. In his eyes, it was the goodbye.

"Likewise," I returned with less warmth than his farewell had packed, hoping without praying his gut feelings were wrong. "I'll see you on the other side?"

"I'd like that," he said, and I could hear the small smile he was wearing.

And the call ended.

I chucked the tail end of my cigarette into the parking lot and watched the embers spew sideways before I turned to Freya. She cocked her head at me, emitted an impatient whine. Waiting for me to tell her she was a good girl. I debated letting her into the hospital, letting her guard Sam at my side, but the idea was short lived and wholly awful.

"Good dog," I ended up telling her as I scratched behind her ears before I ambled back to the tall, steril building.

I tried not to dwell on how much I was about to throw on the self built proverbial pyre, strove instead to focus on the prize that the flames would unfurl. But when I rounded the corner into Sam's room, all of it fled like a murder of crows escaping the sudden appearance of a wolf.

She was wearing the same brunette, this time clad in purple scrubs and sneakers over a tan coat and heels, and she was leaning over Sam. My lips curled, my brows folded as her name rolled off my tongue in a murderous growl.

"Touch him and I'll cut you into pieces, Xael."

Sorry it's been a while, guys. Don't worry, I've got the next chapter almost done. xx