It was only after standing in the same spot and staring up at a jungled, rocky, incline that a deep disquiet settled in Sam's soul. The weight of Gabriel's body in his arms, the press of the angel's head against his neck, even the folds of the sheets draping around his fingers conspired to impress upon him the realization that - This. Was. Ludicrous. Sam tilted his head back to peer up the slope, feeling his insides squirm as the grade bent upward into the sky and out of sight.
"Gabriel?" he asked quietly, because although their surroundings appeared to be just another rain forest, nothing stirred the reverent silence.
A shifting against his neck was the mode of reply as the angel lifted his head and peered at him. Sam jostled Gabriel's weight.
"I climb the mountain right?" Sam whispered. With effort, Gabriel nodded, still sucking in air with labored heaves. Sam glanced up and then at his companion. "I'll know it when I see it?"
A slow grin stretched across the angel's blood-darkened lips, and he let himself fall limply against Sam's shoulder, chest rising and falling like noisy furnace bellows.
Right. Up the mountain. Only mountaineering wasn't one of Sam's natural talents, and if he'd had any intelligence at all, he'd have brought something in the way of gear with him, like a good little Boy Scout.
He hiked Gabriel higher, blew out a breath, and started walking.
Trouble found them in the form of a slight tremor in Sam's arms as he went. He ignored it at first, forging over exposed roots and uneven rocks. Moss and grass grew up around the mulch that covered the forest floor, making the ground alternately soft, slippery, and sharply angled. Sam took each step with caution out of infuriating necessity. Holding Gabriel the way he was, he couldn't see, and because he couldn't see, he had to feel around before setting down his full weight. They weren't fifty yards from where Castiel had dropped them before Sam was dripping with sweat and his arms aching with exertion. He kept gripping and ungripping his fingers trying to maintain hold, and readjusting his burden.
Gabriel was slipping anyway.
Panting, Sam sank down, settling his charge as gently as he could between the buttress roots of a ceiba. Bright indignation burned at his skull. He couldn't possibly have failed already.
Gabriel stirred, sucking in a breath that sounded shot with stringy phlegm. He opened his eyes, though they were hooded and glassy, and blinked slowly. For a second, Sam felt Gabriel's gaze focus on him, and then it was torn away by the rush of short, short, breathing. The angel's eyes scrunched shut, and he pressed his lips together into a white, defiant line.
Sam watched helplessly as Gabriel arched in pain, his fists striking deep into the dirt and his skin going waxen and pale from the effort it took to restrain a scream. He convulsed, curled, and finally collapsed back against the roots, scrabbling for air. The sore on his cheek cracked and bubbled red, releasing a pinkish ooze, and more purple bruises ruptured into being, flowing across his skin as though an artist were inking an unfinished work. He shivered with agony, eventually blinking tears from his eyes. Sam just about screamed for him, and hauled him forward into a fierce hug. Sam clenched his jaw shut so hard it ached, emotions whipping through fury to care and back.
He settled Gabriel back against the roots of the tree with light touches to his forehead and unmarred cheek. The angel lifted his face toward the contact and briefly smiled. Sam swallowed hard.
If he was getting up this mountain, and he was getting up this mountain, they were going to need a new plan. Sam eyed the sheet he'd wrapped Gabriel in. It wasn't that he wasn't strong enough. It was that the burden was unbalanced. Simple physics really. And physiology. And Stanford didn't let just any dumbass in to take classes.
Necessity being the mother of invention and all that, Sam grabbed his knife out of his pocket. He unwound and disentangled the sheet, and started making his cuts. Gabriel watched with interested, but hazy eyes.
"Trust me," Sam said to him, offering a small smile, "this is gonna work."
He came at Gabriel with one thin strip of fabric dangling from his hand. The angel frowned slightly, but made no attempt to struggle when Sam started folding his arms over his chest. Sam sheepishly met his curious gaze.
"If you could hold on, that'd be one thing. But you can't," he said, and started wrapping one of Gabriel's wrists. He made a tight knot to hold the strip on and then settled Gabriel's hand against the inside of his forearm, up against the elbow. Gabriel's eyes flicked down to his crossed arms and back up at Sam. "So I'm gonna tie them in place, okay?" He looped the other end of the strip around the angel's elbow and tied that off with a knot as well, his big fingers surprisingly deft.
Sam studied the archangel's face for a reply. It took a few seconds and a few querulous looks before Gabriel realized he was being asked a question and nodded vaguely. Sam gave his companion's clammy hand a squeeze before binding it to his arm. Tied to himself, he looked shockingly mundane, eminently diminished. Or maybe that was the sunken eyes and deathly dark circles beneath them.
The angel started to cough with a crisp, wet, painful sound that cracked open the seal of his lips. Sam gripped him quickly by the shoulders as he doubled over, and had to look away as a string of blood flung across his bare legs and dripped tentatively from his gasping mouth. The sound of Gabriel's struggle made Sam look, though. And he cleaned the blood off with his shirt sleeve as he ran his fingers soothingly through the angel's hair.
"It's okay," he murmured a few times. Gabriel just blinked back and smirked. "What do you say we give this a try?" Sam asked softly.
At that, the angel leaned forward under his own power.
It was the best Sam could come up with on short notice and not exactly ideal for either of them. He hauled Gabriel, naked, onto his back and looped the angel's bound arms over his head. He fit, so that was a good sign. Step one accomplished. Step two was possibly more important, but about a million times more mortifying. Not that that mattered. Because Sam could feel Gabriel's chest rattling, and it was making his hands numb.
Crouched onto all fours, Sam took a large swath of cloth and wrapped it around the both of them, pulling it tight around Gabriel's backside to form a sling. He knotted the ends tightly across his stomach and then searched for the angel's knees. When Sam had a firm grip, he pushed himself up to standing, grunting at the weight and awkwardness of giving a grown man a piggyback ride. Gabriel's arms hugged his neck without cutting off his air, and that was as good as it was going to get.
"Okay?" Sam asked, turning slightly. The archangel's head loomed above his left shoulder.
Gabriel's fingers moved against Sam's collarbone. He took that as a yes.
Inelegant would have been a kind description. But it worked. Sam leaned his weight into the hillside and kept his eyes trained on the ground. Gabriel's breathing kept strange time in his ear, but that, too, was a way to track progress. It meant the angel lived, for one. And Sam kept forcing away any thoughts that tried to predict beyond that point. Every time such a lurid imagining came up, his attention narrowed to the piece of ground he was going to step on next.
On his own, he'd have found scaling the steep incline difficult. Now, Sam's body protested in every way it could imagine— an ache in his back, a jittering weakness in his arms and legs. His lungs burned from so many heavy breaths. Small muscles strained with stabbing pain to keep them balanced.
Sam paused and cast a bitchy, unamused look at the path before him. There were large trees with their jutting roots and an array of rocks better described as little boulders blocking the way. Not that there was a way, other than forward and up. But he'd have to either circle wide around the trees or go over the rocks to get anywhere. Sam jerked to shift Gabriel's weight and adjusted his grip on the angel's legs.
Walking around the trees would cost him effort without gaining altitude. Honestly, he didn't think he could afford to waste any amount of effort. So, he started for the rock-strewn patch of ground.
Delicately, one step. Balance, balance, then another. He lunged quickly for a safe foothold on flat rock and connected. But it left him stretched, wobbling as he tried to keep them upright. Not good, shit, not good. Sam could feel himself starting to pitch over and made a desperate step onto a jagged rock to try to straighten. His body moved on its own, and Sam came stumbling through the rock patch too far forward and all kinds of wrong. Giant strides did nothing against his momentum.
Sam's knees crashed into the forest floor, and the world went suddenly dark.
Sam blinked, his chest heaving and body shaking. He'd dropped his hold on Gabriel to catch himself on his hands. But he couldn't see his hands. Sam's heavy breaths took on the sharp edge of panic.
"Gabriel!" Sam lifted his head to look up and around as though it might help.
Gabriel's fingers curled against his skin.
"Can you see?" Sam's voice shook and came out higher than he would've liked, anticipating an answer he wasn't going to like.
Gabriel's fingers curled against his skin, again. Sam felt a cough shake through the angel's frame.
"I can't," Sam told him in the soft tenor of confession. Terror rose like a sea beast in the tide, showering down cold ocean water and flashing whitest teeth. This wasn't happening, this couldn't be happening. Sam whole body tensed in panic. "I can't see, why can't I see?" His voice kicked up to shouting. Like this hadn't been hard enough? Now he was blind? Of all the fucking impossible—how could anyone?—it wasn't fair—
The thought struck like a gong in his core: this was penance. If he'd learned anythinge in life, it was that nothing was ever free. No hunt without bruising, no power without corruption. No love without pain. So maybe . . . maybe this was the cost of finding the Fountain of Youth. Maybe you got what you came for and had to leave something behind.
Maybe this was it.
The end of the hunter road. He'd always wondered how it would go down. If it'd be some stupid mistake on an easy case, and he'd be a victim of irony. Lately, he imagined it would be a demon and hoped for the dramatic, a Hail Mary and a nuclear option so at least he'd take the bastards with him. Fighting, though. Always, he was fighting. Not puttering around, filling mugs with his finger over the rim to gauge their fullness, waiting to hear the fate of the world over the crackle of an old radio.
A chill racked him and was replaced by a rip of indignant anger.
No one had said this was going to cost him his sight. No one said he'd be permanently useless. What the Hell was he supposed to do about the end of the world if he couldn't cross a room or aim a gun? Sam's teeth ground down, and he pawed at his eyes with one hand. He needed to see. He really, really, needed to see. The first true inkling that this could be permanently permanent touched his brain—the difference between knowing and knowing—and the animal scream building in him came out as a surprised, choked wail with all the heart notes of desperation, fear, and anger that such a sound could carry.
No. Nonononono. He could feel himself slipping down a graceless slide into hysteria and put on the brakes 'cause he couldn't afford that right now. Sam sucked in a breath and sniffed back a swell of confused, angry, dreadful tears. He was not going to fall apart. Not yet.
Gabriel's fingers rubbed a small circle on his collarbone, and Sam sniffed again, concentrating on the tender sensation that said so many things to him at once. The burden pressing down on his back resolved again from the abstract into Gabriel—friend, lover, waiting, expiring. Sam flushed with guilt and reached a tentative hand back over his shoulder, moving slowly until his fingertips connected with warm skin. He set his hand back against the ground and cleared his throat.
"I, uh, I'm gonna need you to tell me if I'm going the wrong way, okay?" Sam turned toward the angel's face where it rested against his shoulder. He felt Gabriel nod, too slowly and too weakly. A piece of Sam's heart froze and flaked off.
He tried twice to carry on walking. And twice tripped over an obstacle he could not see, hitting the ground hard with all their combined weight. That alone hurt like a son of a bitch, but it wasn't the pain, not really. Collapsed again on the dirt, Sam fought the urge to scream. He clenched his hands into the mulchy ground and shook his head in vigorous despair. He couldn't do this. Not that he didn't want to do it, could not make this journey this way. Not with Gabriel helpless. Not without his fucking eyes.
The pattern of Gabriel's breathing shifted to the punctuated anticipation of pain, and Sam's thoughts stopped. One hand found the angel's forearm hugged across his neck. He reached back with the other, and finding only thigh, held there as well. It was awkward and pathetic support, but all he could do, folded as he was on his knees. Castiel had warned him that the archangel's strength was still more than enough to break fragile human bones, and the thought of being accidentally snapped sat close on the surface of his mind. Gabriel's attack hit, wrenching him into contortions. Sam felt every twist and flinch cut into his heart, but he tried to be steady, be strong. As the last convulsion eased, a small, human sob escaped Gabriel's control as he drew against Sam's neck. He was crying. A second later, Sam realized they both were.
"No," Sam ground out. He wiped at his eyes in annoyance. "No, it's not gonna happen, all right? You hear me?" He shook the angel's bound arms roughly. Gabriel's fingers brushed against his skin with barely perceptible purpose before he lapsed into a constant shiver. Not gonna happen, not another one. Not this one.
Sam lurched forward on all fours and started to crawl. He could only imagine how they looked: one guy in the remnants of a business suit with another guy, naked, tied to his back like an overgrown infant. It was ridiculous. Absolutely fucking ridiculous, and the more Sam thought about what he must look like, the hotter his mortification burned. His brain kept tossing out words like "reduced," "child," and "weak." He should've been able to stand at least, instead of groveling in the dirt.
He edged forward, feeling his way over a rock in his path, skirting the sharp parts. Pebbles punctured his palms, small thorns scored scratches along his fingers. Sam found himself almost glad he couldn't see, because the throbbing in his hands told him he was probably bleeding.
That wasn't the worst part, though. Pain was ordinary. More than anything, he really did want to stand. Not for the ache in his knees or the slices in his hands, but because this was a rescue. He was supposed to sling Gabriel over his shoulder and hurry like he'd never hurried before. Bear him up on strong arms like a man. Plunge him into the Fountain and pull him free, alive and healthy. Because that's what a hero would do. If Dean were here and Cas were here, it's what Dean would do.
Sam pushed at the thought, and it pushed back, clanging against the inside of his skull. It's what Dean would do.
He came to a stop, staring hard at the blackness that was in front of him—that was everywhere. He felt at once the embarrassment of his situation and the sinking disappointment of failing to compare. Gabriel shuddered, whimpering behind closed lips, and Sam automatically touched his arm. It was colder than it should have been.
The archangel was dying. Well and truly dying, and suddenly the far lens shifted from poor Sammy looking pathetic and silly and poor Sammy never living up to his brother's shadow to something so internal Sam hadn't known it had a name. It struggled under his sternum, frantic as he clutched Gabriel closer—Gabriel, eternal, who was going to die.
Pride bucked in Sam's chest, screaming, promising misfortune—only what misfortune could be worse than this? What horror more threatening than dying on a mystic mountainside, failing to save someone you love?
Here, it was only them. No one else to judge what Sam did or did not do. No one's commentary existed but his own, and if he ranked how he saved Gabriel above whether, then death in this strange place was what he deserved. His struggle stopped, and every useless emotion stripped itself from Sam's body. He pushed a hand through the fallen foliage and pressed on, trusting that so long as the ground sloped higher and every single foot he moved was harder than the last, he was going the right way.
If time is the measure of movement in space, then time passed with a new kind of slow. There was no breeze, no shift in temperature, and no sound of life other than those Sam made on his own.
The first thing that broke the monotony had him recoiling.
"Gabriel!" Sam rasped, his voice cracked from disuse.
The angel moved to show his attention.
"What do you see?" Sam reached out, and his hand came into contact with something that felt like a little like Jello. It resisted his touch, and as he traced his hand up and around, it seemed to be everywhere.
Gabriel made no movement other than breathing, and Sam wished desperately that he would at least try to speak. Even if it came out all angel-voiced and ear-shattering.
"Nothing?" Sam ventured, and pressed his palm flat. "You don't see anything." Cause he sure as hell felt something.
Gabriel's fingers curled against Sam's skin in assent.
Sam scowled and crowded closer to the wall asserting itself against his hand. He pressed, and it was like sliding into a pliant body. Strange pressure swamped across his face, cut off his voice, and the world stretched like silly putty.
XXX
He doesn't know this house at all. It looks like a log cabin, but it's well lit, and by the state of the furniture, well used.
The first thing he sees is his brother, sitting in a chair beside a bed filled with, Sam sees now, his own unconscious body. Dean looks young. It's a shocking thought, because he's never really thought Dean looked old. He has his elbows resting on his knees, hands together, his head bowed but peering over at the other Sam. And then he looks up toward the doorway, eyes searching, and Sam knows instantly what the difference is. This Dean hasn't been to Hell, and that makes him younger in so many ways. Sam would never have thought he'd call his brother innocent, but that's how he looks—shiny and unbroken.
Dean's gaze sinks toward the floor, and then he pushes himself up and crosses to the bed. His movements are slow as he pulls the thick blankets back, revealing a Sam covered in bandages.
He doesn't remember this. But then, his other self seems to be completely out of it, so that makes sense. He thinks maybe this was when they were in Maine, hunting Frosty the Carnivorous Snowman. Sam moves to the foot of the bed and just watches.
Dean places a hand against his brother's sweaty forehead and grimaces as he tests his temperature with both his palm and the backs of his fingers. He says nothing as he disappears into the bathroom and returns with a stack of bandages and more medical tape.
Sam watches as his brother starts to peel off the dressings, and he wonders at it, because they look pretty new. They haven't bled through.
But Dean is cautious with the Neosporin, pausing every once in awhile to watch his brother's face for signs of a response. He's methodical but uneasy. This is Dean when he frets. And as he starts cleaning a gash in Sam's side that doesn't really need it, he starts to talk.
"I'm sorry, okay?" he says quietly. His fingers touch lightly at the edges of the wound he's sewn up. "I shoulda gone in first. I jus' . . ." He draws a deep breath and sighs it out. He cuts down a piece of gauze to keep his hands busy. "I never thought there might be two of 'em, you know?" He shakes his head. "Dad never would've made that kinda mistake. He'd've done better recon, scoped the place out more." Dean rips off a strip of medical tape and fixes the bandage in place. "He'd've done it right," he says, voice falling to a whisper. For a minute, he works in silence, affixing the dressing, adjusting it, and perhaps using a little more tape than is necessary.
When he looks up, tears cling to his eyelashes, but he sniffs to pull them back. He clears his throat gently. "I'm sorry, all right?" His voice quivers, and the breath he takes goes down with effort. He packs the medical supplies back up and returns them to the bathroom. On his way back, he forces a smile to his lips. "Running low on gauze. I'm gonna see if there's any in the car," he mutters to Sam's unconscious self. "Don't, uh. Don't go anywhere." He means it lightly, but that's not how it comes out. The smile fails.
Sam feels his heart clench into a painful knot in his chest.
He doesn't remember this place because he woke up in the hospital in Millinocket. He'd been so angry that Jillian had died right under their noses. He'd grabbed a gun, ready to take care of the situation himself. He was going, with or without Dean.
He remembers he took lead because he'd wanted first blood.
XXX
The fall back into his body was swift, and the sudden darkness of being blind again disorienting. Sam nearly buckled under the weight and weariness of his own flesh, and he struggled for competency over his limbs. Gabriel's bulk pressing down didn't help much either.
"Did you see that?" he said, shakily, turning to where he knew Gabriel's face to be.
The angel did not move, and Sam's heart beat harder.
"Gabriel!" He clutched at the arms bound around his neck with one hand and gave a shake, dread-filled thoughts piling on each other half-formed.
Sam felt the archangel curl into him then, a great gathering of effort pulling his frame tight in what could have been an embrace. Sam sighed in abject relief and rubbed his unsteady hand up and down Gabriel's forearm. He encountered something rough, and his fingers came away slick and wet. It took a second to recognize the effluvia from an open sore, and Sam had to press his hand back into the dirt to keep from thinking about it.
Having answered Sam's call, Gabriel relaxed again. His breathing drifting to an imperceptible lightness.
"So you didn't see that?" Sam asked again. "Me and Dean?"
This time he understood the lack of reply as denial.
It was just for him, then. Somehow, that made it worse.
Sam lurched into motion over ground that felt different from before. His fingers threaded through small vines, as if he crawled over a patchwork of cargo netting. They were hard against his hands and kneaded the muscles into swelling bruises.
In the distance, something living and dreadful howled. Sam's head jerked up, despite his blindness, and he stopped, straining. They weren't alone.
Seconds ticked by, and he heard only himself, breathing. So he pressed forward.
It came without warning.
Dog snarls and snapping jaws, Sam jerked back. He hid his face, felt it lunge. The loud ripping sound of its bark, the stink of its hot breath. Primal terror flashed through him, heart racing, gasping for air, and he swung wildly in the creature's direction. It growled, Sam wheezed.
Silence.
Pant. Pant . . .
Sam shook from adrenaline and lowered both hands to the ground.
"Did you see it?" he asked in quiet urgency. Gabriel made a small sound, but didn't shift his hands. "No?" The angel's fingers moved. "No."
Sam sagged in relief.
But his body was tuned to danger, and cared nothing for what facts his mind knew. The things attacked, and kept attacking. Breaths laden with foulness of meat washed Sam's face. Barks so sharp they hurt pierced his ears. Sudden, swift, terrible, so close. Every time, Sam recoiled instinctively to protect himself, crying out. Every time, left shaking and exhausted, panting into the darkness. They were phantoms, but that failed to matter, and he could have sobbed in frustration, at the power of his reflexive fear.
It was a new level of misery, and it felt nothing like progress. Only the land still sloped upwards, so he followed. He was almost happy when another wall blocked his path and eagerly let it swallow him into a vision.
XXX
Windom, Minnesota. More precisely, Adam Milligan's house. Sam can hear voices in the living room and he drifts, as one does in dreams, from the kitchen towards the sound. Dean is propping himself up on the arm of a chair, a look of resentment slowly deepening on his tired face. Adam is staring at Sam's other self. It's a ghoul, Sam knows now. But he didn't then. He thought it was a new brother, a new ally.
That's imprecise. He thought it was a new recruit.
The look in his eyes isn't warm when he turns them on Adam. It isn't about missing all those years with someone they should have known, sorrow at a lost family bond. It's something else. And the first thing Sam thinks when he looks at himself is that he looks angry.
"Being a hunter isn't a job, Adam. It's life. You're pre-med, you've got a girlfriend, friends? Not anymore, you don't. If you're really gonna do this, you can't have those kinds of connections. Ever. They're weaknesses. You'll just put those people in danger, get them killed. It's the price we pay. You cut 'em out and you don't look back. There's only one thing we can count on. Family."
He nearly shouts it at this boy, this innocent boy, who he knows will see it as a dare, a challenge. Because he wants him to join them. Sam can see in the fire of his own eyes, what he'd longed for was the chance to make someone else as he had been made. To pass along the family legacy. Make someone suffer as he had suffered. Lose what he had lost, and call it good.
He could teach Adam to be smart and merciless. He could fashion him into someone powerful. He could teach him to kill.
Beyond his other self, he can see Dean watching and withdrawing in slight horror. Sam remembers thinking he was being brutally honest in what he'd said. Now, he thinks, just brutal. And Dean saw it, too. Saw how much Sam wanted to tear Adam's innocence away and call it a necessary evil. The dawning disgust Dean's hazel-green eyes shifts into an appalled look, and eventually he turns away.
Maybe one of the things you learn in Hell is how to recognize a demon when you see one.
Wet watercolors wash away the Milligan's house, and for a moment Sam feels the creep of cold and the sensation of falling. After a gasp, his eyes blink open, revealing a different dark house—a different innocent boy. Cole Griffith is squirreled away in his room, hiding because he doesn't want to die for good. Who can blame him? Sam watches himself coming down the hallway, looking thoughtful—no, looking calculating. The other him stops outside of Cole's door just long enough to shrug into his hoodie a little more and adopt a look of abiding sympathy.
It looks so false from this vantage point, at the moment of slipping the mask on. It was false. But watching himself craft the lies is different than being in them, when it feels necessary, even if it doesn't ever feel right.
He follows himself into Cole's room and watches an Oscar-worthy performance roll right on out. He's gotten good. Maybe it was ever always thus, but he doesn't think so. It was a long, slow descent, with so many hills and valleys, he never really noticed arriving at the sea. Until he watches himself tell a frightened boy that he won't have to leave his grieving mother, not if he just tells the truth. And the boy believes him.
They got the job done.
Dad, he thinks, would be proud.
XXX
Coming back to himself was easier the second time. Sam didn't almost faceplant into the strange terrain. Nor did he bother asking Gabriel if he had been witness to the vision. He just touched the angel's face and breathed easier when he got a physical reply.
He forgot the pain in his hands and knees, the aches in his back, because all he could see was himself from the visions, merciless. Denial boiled like lead in his stomach. He wanted to scream to the mountain that it was wrong. Somehow, the truth was being twisted so it no longer resembled his memory. But yet, every word was as he recalled, and the only difference was that of perspective.
The protests gathered in Sam's throat and stayed there, melting into tears of confused emotion that he hid away.
The land sloped upward under his hands, and he followed. It became a bed of pine.
Sharp points impaled his skin, and if he'd ever doubted that this journey was meant as a punishment, he couldn't anymore. This was agony. With each padding movement forward, he hissed, trying not to flinch as the needles bit in and burned.
Gabriel made a low sound, his chest vibrating against Sam's back, and he moved the fingers of one hand against Sam's collarbone.
Sam shook to a fearful halt, saying the angel's name. It was from the sound of his own voice that he realized he was sobbing.
XXX
Sam wonders if Scrooge ever felt relieved when a spirit showed up. He thinks he prayed for this vision to arrive—to have crawled far enough to reach it. He wonders vaguely if Gabriel heard him, if he had, in fact, been praying and not just muttering like a broken record in his mind. And then he wonders if the archangel could hear that, too. He's never asked about mind reading, and Gabriel's hardly a paragon of self-control at the moment.
The vision, when it takes shape, isn't what he expects.
His stomach growls loud enough that he can hear it, which stopped being funny like ten minutes ago, and Sammy looks up to peer over at his brother, who's staring at the ancient stove in the old bungalow like he can't believe anyone expects him to work under these conditions. Dean's small arms cross over his chest. And then he looks over to see Sammy watching and smiles.
Sam remembers this. He can feel the rough texture of the wood of the table under his young hands while still watching his smaller self fidgeting and kicking his feet under the chair with impatience. It's not quite synesthesia, but the clash of sensation and cognitive dissonance makes his stomach quiver with nausea. He blinks, he thinks, only nothing goes dark, and the scene of his memory unrolls.
Dean pulls the oven door open and stabs at something inside with a fork. His face tightens in concentration, and then he draws a hot dog out, dangling precariously on the tines. He sets it carefully on a plate and brings everything to the borrowed table of the borrowed house. It doesn't even matter where they are, 'cause they aren't staying long. Home's not a place, anyway. Sammy knows that. His shoulders lift in excitement—dinner!—and then he stares down at the food in front of him. His expression falls from a hopeful smile to a perfect scowl of petulance.
Dean has gone back to the kitchen, so he doesn't see it at first, but Sammy holds the expression with extra effort. Dean returns with two glasses of red liquid, setting one down by Sammy's plate, the other on the table in front of himself. He blinks innocently at his little brother's glare.
"What?" Dean says, sliding onto his chair.
Sammy glances at his dinner, and Sam can feel the disappointment and revulsion that he felt back then, too. "Creamed corn?" his little voice says. "Dean, I hate creamed corn!" He sounds bratty, even to himself.
Young Dean regards his little brother seriously. "Sorry, dude. It's what we've got."
Aside from creamed corn, there's a hot dog and an unwrapped Kit-Kat bar. "I'm not eating it."
Dean sighs, and Sam can tell by the dulling of his eyes that it's not so much exasperation as apology. "Sammy, you have to eat it, okay? So, you can grow up to be big and strong like Dad. It's good for you."
"It's gross!"
Dean's hands wrap around the glass in front of him. "Cherry soda," they used to call it. Part of a game, where Dean pretended things were better than they were, and Sammy went along with it to make him happy. It was just water with some red food coloring, but if you tried hard enough, it could taste like cherries. Dean discovered he could steal sugar packets from just about any fast food joint without so much as a second glance, so sometimes the cherry soda was sweet. He'd tried mixing in stolen packets of jam once. Both brothers agreed to file the results away as unmentionable.
Sam stares at the reddish glasses. It's been so long, he'd almost forgotten.
"I'll make you a deal," Young Dean says, looking over at his brother. Sammy's eyes narrow skeptically. "Eat that, and I'll tell you how Wolverine kicked Sabertooth's butt."
Oh, God. Sam really does remember this night. He remembers how excited he was to hear the story, and how animated Dean was in telling it, making all of it up on the fly, most likely. Back then, it was the greatest story ever.
"And Cyclops," Sammy adds.
Dean smirks. "Easy. Anyone can kick Cyclops's butt."
"Noooo!" Sam's younger self howls, and he sees Dean grin wickedly.
"Okay, okay. Wolverine and Cyclops can beat him up together. All right?"
Sammy settles and nods, like he's just struck the best pact in the world. Reluctantly, he starts in on the creamed corn. Sam can remember his resentment, how much he really hated every damn mouthful. And for a moment he's stuck in that memory, suffering it all over again, feeling his young self gag and persevere. But this strange double vision has him floating, like he's in the room somewhere else. And his attention falls on Dean, who takes a sip of red water.
Dean's eyes are trained on the plate of food. He follows Sammy's fork, plate to mouth, plate to mouth. Sam remembers his brother was watching him like a hawk, making sure he didn't try to break their deal. As if! But then he notices a thin line of a frown crease his brother's young forehead. And then Dean's jaw drops a little, and his young green eyes look hungry. It lasts a second maybe, before he swallows and then takes a big drink of water. Sam stares at him and goes cold, because from over here, he's looking at two kids sitting at a table: one of them eating, one of them not.
Dean doesn't have a plate.
Sam's memory is all annoyance and disgust and how much he hates creamed corn and thinking that his life sucks and that Dean should make Spaghetti-O's instead.
But Dean doesn't have a plate. And when Sammy snaps off a piece of Kit-Kat and offers it to him, he looks both pleased and humbled, but says no anyway. Sammy never once asks why his brother isn't eating anything. He doesn't notice. Sam watches Dean watch him eat the candy bar and realizes that Dean probably stole it for him, just to make up for the creamed corn and hot dog.
He never noticed. He'd remembered that night a bunch of times over the past twenty years, and never, not once, did he notice. It was a cold bolt right between the eyes, a chilly snake in his stomach. Because if he hadn't noticed that one night, then how many nights hadn't he noticed either? How often had Dean given him the last of what was left and just done without, not because anyone made him, but because he thought it was the right thing. Oh, God, Dean . . .
Sam's vision darkens, and his selves go their separate ways.
XXX
The vision knocked clean the dusty shelves in Sam's mind, and suddenly he was flipping through picture books of his childhood, past birthdays, Christmases. Somewhere, there had to be a record of Dean getting his fair share. Sam couldn't believe otherwise, even if his heart thudded with apprehension.
Worse than being emotionally manipulated is knowing that you're being manipulated and falling for it anyway. It felt in some way gullible. Sam's reasonable mind said that he knew these things already. Or most of them. That he couldn't possibly fit any more guilt inside without it cracking open his bones and drilling out his marrow.
And yet. The only image his lost eyes could see was Dean trying so hard not to complain.
He got it, okay? Bad Sam. Uncaring, stupid, blind, ungrateful Sam, who broke his brother and broke the world and broke everyone. So what was this beyond exquisite torture?
Anger and frustration whipped a whirlwind through his hurting body, and he had to stop. He had to stop. He searched the ground around him with frantic hands, trying to map the landscape, scattering leaves and soft things he couldn't see. If he could put everything down for a second, for just a second lay Gabriel's burdensome weight aside and not have to hold them both. It was suddenly the sweetest, most welcome thought he'd ever had. Just unbind them both, and he'd be free.
He came up on his knees, straightening for what felt like the first time in ages so that Gabriel's arms tugged against his neck. It was strangling, stunting, claustrophobic, and Sam's instinctual response was to thrash and elbow him off. Free, oh God, he wanted to be free. With scrabbling hands he fought with the knotted sheet at his waist, fighting harder and faster in spiking frustration.
The angel pressed his face down against Sam's shoulder and curled his fingers against Sam's skin.
"Stop that!" Sam roared and struggled in darkness against the bonds that held him. "Will you stop! I can't—just talk to me!" He yelled, then clenched his teeth and squeezed every muscle, wringing anger and frustration into tears that slipped from his eyes.
The fit left him shuddering and gasping and exactly where he had been.
"Why can't you just talk to me?" he said in a small voice and held onto one of Gabriel's arms at his neck, open sore be damned.
Someone so close had never felt so far away. He was nowhere, nowhere in this void, where nothing lived and nothing made a sound, except for himself. And if he was blind and Gabriel was mute, then FUCK!
I don't care if it hurts to hear you! He screamed the thought inside his head.
The angel's fingers moved in slow circles, present, but silent, and Sam didn't know whether he should laugh or cry.
XXX
The next time, he welcomes the slip into dreamspace and the sudden ability to see again, even though the images will be cruel. For as long as he's here, he doesn't have to feel the burning of his muscles pushed beyond their capacity and the shake of feebleness that comes before collapse. For a few dizzy moments, his failures are past deeds and not a catastrophe unfolding. This punishment is a respite, and a small part of him is thankful for it.
It's the hotel. Sam uses that word rarely. He'd hoped the upscale scenery would throw Dean off his trail, so he could save the world that Dean doomed in private. That Dean had found him anyway and so quickly was just twisting a knife that didn't need any fucking twisting. If he hadn't already been pissed off, having his best efforts at clandestine travel cracked like the encryption was 8-bit would've pushed him over the edge anyway. He was stronger. He was faster. He was smarter. He was better. And Dean found him anyway.
Sam drops into the vision and into his own skin. Fresh demon blood courses through his veins and he can feel it, every drop. Hot lightning sparks down his arms, and every sense pours in data. Lights, brighter; smells sharper. Power and confidence glow like hot iron in his core. Dean is swinging at him, connecting painfully with his jaw. But this is how weapons are made, and he returns the punch with more strength than he's ever had. He's strong enough for Dean, strong enough for an army, and the black pleasure of it makes him want to laugh.
He sends his brother sprawling into a table, and it's so damn good to see him like he should be, rolling weakly on the ground. Dean came back broken; he stayed broken, and now they both know it. Sam falls to his knees and wraps his hands around his brother's throat, squeezing, not to win, but for good measure.
He could kill him. Just keep on squeezing, and he'd never have to live up to anyone's glory blighted shadow ever again.
But it isn't about the kill. It's about the principle, so he shoves off with a sneer, for every time Dean never gave him enough credit, for every time he ended up being right.
"You don't know me," he growls, "You never did. And you never will."
Even now, Sam can't tell if he meant it—if he's always been someone Dean has never known or if it's just the blood talking. He turns to leave, pausing only when Dean's voice croaks out words that Sam's heard once too often already.
"You walk out that door, don't you ever come back," his brother gasps. All he'd heard then was hatred and disgust. The Sam from a couple weeks ago glares wordlessly and leaves, taking the sweet balmy liqueur of his demon blood with him. The loss carves into Sam's consciousness, like his ribs have each been broken and extracted through his skin. Cold and small and unable to move, he is left frozen, staring down at his brother.
Dean watches the empty space of the doorway for a moment. And then he gives up.
Sam can't imagine another way to describe it. Dean doesn't try to get up or run after him. His fight evaporates. Alone, he curls onto his side amid debris, and he cries. It's a delicate thing, and Sam watches with deepening despair as fissures spider through his brother's soul. He doesn't look like anyone's hero, or anyone's older brother.
He looks small, infinitely human, and discarded.
It was never hatred in his voice, after all.
XXX
Darkness and hunger were the universe. Briefly, when the vision ended, Sam'd had the sense of himself on his hands and knees, but it got jumbled with need and a sucking emptiness, and his body collapsed without his permission. The contrast with his other self, his empowered self, told him everything he needed to know about what was wrong. If only he had blood, he'd be strong enough to keep going. If only the void were filled, he'd feel alive and capable.
Gabriel's arms around his neck threatened to choke him, pressing painfully against his Adam's apple, so he shifted. The movement brought his lips against the angel's skin and fragile pulse.
Sam stopped.
His soul howled for power, for blood. He could taste the bitter copper and remember the warm heat as it went down. Every time, it felt so good.
His lips parted on their own. Blood rushed through the angel's flesh, so close that in the blackness Sam was sure he could smell it.
So little between him and what he needed.
If a demon's blood was good, maybe an angel's . . . Oh . . . Just one taste would be enough. A few drops maybe. He could be good, he could control it. Then he licked a line up the soft inside of Gabriel's wrist, trembling with hunger and struggling for what he craved.
It wasn't until he raked flat teeth over the thin skin and held onto a tiny fold that he realized he'd come up onto his knees and was holding Gabriel's arm in both hands—a vampire ready to feed.
He stopped, stunned. Revulsion made his stomach turn, and panting, he slowly, deliberately pulled the temptation away and held the angel's arms where they should be, to keep them in place, to keep them from traveling to his mouth.
Sam's grip on Gabriel's arms tightened.
A few bites and he'd have been through to a vein. He would have gnawed through human flesh to do it.
Sam felt his whole body go cold at once. Gnawed through, savaged like an animal, practically eaten part of Gabriel alive. He'd hoped that knowing it was wrong, admitting it was wrong would be enough. Hunger didn't care for ethics.
For a long moment Sam was stunned to silence, the realization of his depravity unfurling numbness down to his fingertips. Gabriel couldn't have fought him if he'd wanted to. Couldn't have stopped him.
No one was safe with him. Not anyone. Not with a monster.
Sam had never forced himself on anyone, not— But maybe that was wrong. Even through the hazy memories, he could remember Gabriel voicing protests. Maybe he had.
And maybe this was just a whole new level, for which violate didn't come close to strong enough. Jesus . . . he'd held him to his mouth like a thing.
Sam pressed his eyes shut and focused on the clawing hunger. Gabriel is not thing, he told it, snarling. And you are not me.
Sam didn't know if Gabriel was even aware of how close he'd come to being betrayed, and the coward in him hoped he didn't. The hunger subsided to a low simmer. Sam leaned into his task, palming one of the archangel's legs once, briefly, as a promise. You are not a thing. I am so sorry.
He crawled forever, over small stones like cut glass, or crawled for merely seconds. Cut free from place, he was cut free from time. Moving forward became a singular purpose of being; if it ended, he ended.
The passage into visions felt like nothing, as though the veil had become too thin to sustain. He crawled and he saw:
Himself in the midst of a fight, lifting his head from the corpse of a demon, red blood smeared across his face like candy—a pleased, sated cannibal.
Himself closing his fist to squeeze the life out of a demon, and his eyes were as black as beetles.
Killing, killing, his heart racing with the joy, almost unable to contain such blissful power.
Lilith, dying.
Himself holding Ruby, once loved, as she is gutted.
Slowly, at first, then in rapid succession, they blink through his mind, faster than he can see, than he can feel. Triumphant murder, power, depravity, dead, stop, Dead, Stop, DEAD.
"Stop it!" Sam cried out full and cracking into the black. He sat up on his knees, wavering, and brushed fingers too weak to grip into Gabriel's hair to hold him into his shoulder.
"Please." Sam tilted his head back and imagined he looked upward, toward a cave where the Fountain of Youth should be. Quivering lips formed the word a second time. "He's gonna die," he said in an exhale. Hearing it out loud hurt worse than he could have predicted, and a pathetic sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob tumbled out. "Look. Look, I know I'm not the Righteous Man, but please, please, don't make him pay. Whatever's in the Fountain, I swear, I don't want it, not for me." He fell into a whisper. "It isn't for me."
Sam turned, clumsy in the dark, and kissed Gabriel's cool cheek. What little control he had over himself faltered at the lack of reply, and as Sam bent their heads together, tears fell from his eyes but ran down the angel's skin. Sam sniffed once, hard, and lifted his face skyward. "Please, don't punish him 'cause I'm not the right guy. I know, I get it. I use people and I'm stupid and I don't think and I don't listen, and it's petty and childish. But Gabriel's not any of those things. He's good. Please . . ."
Part of him felt stupid for talking to a void and expecting an answer. But if there was ever a holy place, then this had to be that. And he was out of options anyway.
For the first time, Sam felt the stirring of a breeze. If he hadn't been so keyed on every sound and motion, he might not have even felt it at all. Then suddenly, his knees ached sharply, and Sam dropped to feel the ground beneath him.
Solid stone.
He felt forward, and his fingers came up against a perfectly flat vertical rise—a stair. With a bursting surge, Sam hauled them both up it, seven in total. He tumbled over the top one, and plunged into daylight.
Sam gasped, his hands going automatically to his eyes, and then he blinked at the cave opening before him. Laughter bubbled in his chest, and his hands flew to the bed sheet at his waist, undoing the knot with ease. Gabriel's weight hung strangely off him, and Sam frowned in confusion, despite the smile that stretched across his face. He tugged at the angel's arms and looked at him.
"Gabriel?" Cautiously.
Sam felt slight movement against his shoulders and saw a twitch behind closed eyelids.
Then nothing.
Nothing at all.