A/N: there's going to be at least one more chapter to this. Castiel explains to Sam how he got out of hell. And Sam doesn't exactly like the reason.
"In the struggle for existence, it is only on those who hang on for ten minutes after all is hopeless, that hope begins to dawn." GK Chesterton
"Hell is weird."
"And that, my little brother, wins understatement of eternity."
Sam was back and I'd finally let go of him and wiped my eyes – damn allergies, you know – and Lisa offered him dinner, but he asked for a peanut butter sandwich and a glass of milk and we were sitting at the kitchen table and I was waiting for him to spill everything about what happened to him downstairs.
I'd told Lisa what happened to Sam, but we hadn't told Ben. Well, not the geography, just that Sam was missing and more than likely dead. So to have said-dead-guy suddenly appear on his front step was totally cool, which I totally agreed with. He wanted to sit and talk to Sam almost as much as I did.
Almost as much.
Lisa finally dragged him back to the dining room though and dinner, and Sam and I were alone and together finally.
"I don't know how I got out." Were the first words he said when we were alone. There was no question or accusation in his words; he said them down to his peanut butter sandwich, offering me his best explanation as though I might care how he got out.
"Sammy, if that's all we have to worry about, I'll be happy."
He smiled up at me, relieved, and poked a little at his sandwich.
"I don't know if I'm hungry."
I thought back to my own just-back-from-hell experience, the fear and disorientation and heightened awareness that blocked out everything but immediate survival.
"You're hungry." I told him.
He gave me his puzzled, 'All right, if you say so' squint, and picked up the sandwich. Then put it down again.
"You're okay? Really? I didn't - ? You didn't -? When I - left – you looked so bad."
Seriously, I wanted to hug him again. My geek little brother just escaped hell, and he wanted to know that I was okay.
"I'm okay, Sammy. Cas fixed me back up."
"Cas?Castiel? He's okay? I saw him – he – he –" and he made the universal 'exploding' gesture with his hands. I wondered why he wasn't saying the word. I probably already knew.
"God brought him back. That's what Cas said. Got his angel juice back. He healed me, he healed Bobby too."
"Bobby? Bobby's OK? He's alive?" Sam's desperation made me ache. Whatever happened to him in hell never hurt him as much as thinking he'd left us dead on the way.
"Yeah, he's fine. Good as new. Says the crick in his elbow is even gone…"
"Oh. I – oh." He grabbed his sandwich up then and took a huge bite and scrubbed one eye with the heel of his hand and then scrubbed the other eye and then stared at the sandwich like he had to memorize it or else. Then he scrubbed his eyes again.
It's something to see the only man in history strong enough to control absolute evil reduced to tears by good news.
"I thought I killed everybody. I was trying to save the world and I thought by doing that I'd finally killed everybody I loved."
I seriously wanted to hug him again.
"We're all okay, Sammy. Including the world. You saved us."
I wanted him to be happy about that, I wanted that to make hell fall away for him; I knew it wouldn't but I wished it would. He smiled but it didn't last and he kept on not looking at me. That was OK. To come out of wrenching bedlam into humdrum normal was going to take some doing. Just because feeling safe was good didn't mean it was instant.
"It'll take a little while, but things will normal out." I told him. "Until then – it just is what it is."
"Yeah." He didn't take another bite of sandwich. He looked at me. "Was it God? Did God make everything right?"
"You made everything right." I said. "God only took care of what He shouldn't have let happen in the first place."
Sam gave me a perplexed face. Apparently, even after everything that happened, I wasn't allowed to diss God. Not in front of Sammy. He took a second bite of the sandwich.
"Hell is weird." He said again after he'd chewed and swallowed.
"To say the least."
"It wasn't – it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be." He looked and sounded puzzled. "I thought it would be more – more internal. You know? But it was all external. I mean – I felt the pain, I felt all the physical pain, but I didn't feel the anger or despair or hatred. He wanted me to. Lucifer. He kept trying to – actually I don't know what he was trying for. He kept trying to make me blame everybody else, anybody else, that I was in hell. Mom and Dad and what happened to Jess. He tried to get me angry or despairing that you'd gone on with living, just like I asked you to. I just kept saying that whatever anybody did that put me in that hole meant that they put him in that hole too, so it was good thing. Boy, did he hate that."
He finished the sandwich and drank all his milk and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
"You sound like you enjoyed that he hated it." I said. I could only imagine absolute evil angry.
"I did. Sort of. I mean, every time I cracked a hole in his reasoning, he pretty much boiled my brain out of my skull but what was I supposed to do? Tell him he was right? That would've been lying. I wasn't going to lie." He shrugged like he was only talking about facing down the homeroom bully. "If he was pissed, it meant I was doing something right. I enjoyed that. Can I have some more milk?"
The transition from hell to milk confused me at first. One second he's talking about boiling brains – and I couldn't help wincing at the description, because this was Sammy, he wouldn't exaggerate - the next second he's asking for a glass of milk like it's any night in our life and I get to tell him if we have enough milk left for him to have more.
"Uh – yeah. Sure. Give me your glass. Want some more PB?"
He thought about it.
"I don't know. Do I?"
"We got pie." I offered him with a grin. "Strawberry rhubarb."
He's not nearly as much a pie-guy as I am, but he grinned back.
"Sure."
I poured him the glass of milk and took his empty plate. I cut out a big piece of pie and slid it onto the plate and set it and a fork on the table in front of him.
"Thanks." He picked up the fork and started to get started. Then he froze and stared down at the pie like he suddenly saw things crawling through it. His breathing turned to panting.
I looked at the plate and saw it. It wasn't blood red, but it didn't have to be - out the sides of the crust, spongy chunks of strawberries and rhubarb oozed through thick, sticky pie juice. I knew that's what we were both looking at; I also knew what we were both seeing. I grabbed the plate and set it into the sink, out of Sam's line of sight.
"I'm sorry." God, I couldn't be sorry enough.
Sam nodded, still staring at the table where the pie had been. He set the fork down very precisely, pressed both hands against the tabletop, and tried to control his breathing.
"How long?" He finally asked. I'd been waiting for him to ask. "How long has it been? I can't tell."
"A little over a month." I said. I sat down again. "Forty days." I knew he'd do the math just that fast in his head and come up with,
"Thirteen years. That's thirteen years and four months I was falling."
"Falling? You didn't land?"
"No. We kept falling. Just falling. It was -." He shrugged and gave me a look that told me he knew he was saying it a lot. " – weird. Things kept – cutting me, slicing me. But it was like they were trying to make me fall faster. Like they were catching hold of me, not to keep me where they could cut me some more, but to impel me that much faster down the hole. Like I couldn't get there fast enough for them."
His hand gripped tight around his glass but he didn't take a drink.
"Is this how you felt when you got out?" He asked me. "I feel…"
"Gobsmacked?" I supplied when he couldn't seem to find the word. He looked at me like he'd just smelled something really bad.
"Concussed." He said, with the exact same tone from when he was nine and I'd used the word 'discreet' when I should've used 'discrete'. I guess even hell couldn't burn the geek out of my brother.
"I feel like a really loud noise just got shut off." He kept on. "Like the world is just going to roll away beneath my feet if I try to walk. Like nothing is sure. Like all I have is you."
I seriously wanted to hug him again. Sammy had a lot more than me, but I wasn't going to dispute him right now. I settled for putting my hand around his wrist. His breath hitched, like he'd been waiting for me to do just that. He stared at my hand.
"You've got me." I said.
He nodded and gave me a thankful smile. I kept my hand right where it was.
"How do you think I got out?" He asked. "Did God pull me out? Would He? I mean there's no handprints on me, not that I can tell. If an angel didn't pull my out, what did?"
He was starting to sound a little freaked, so I cut him off.
"Sammy – c'mon, think about it. When I came back, we pretty much established from all the lore that only angels can pull somebody from hell. If there's no handprint, maybe it was just easier to haul your skinny ass out of there."
"Yeah, okay." He wanted to smile, but it wasn't working. "D'you think Cas would know? He'd know, wouldn't he? Could we call him?"
"He's kind of gone out of range, now. The job in the Corner Office opened up and he was the only one available to take it. Talk about phone home."
"He's back in Heaven? Really?" Sam sank back in the chair when I nodded, and he closed his eyes with a sigh. "Good. I'm glad. He deserves it."
My geek little brother. He sacrificed himself to hell to save six billion strangers, and he's honestly glad when anybody else gets the happy ending.
"You deserve to be home, too." I told him.
He nodded, kinda stiff at first, but then he seemed to get the hang of agreeing with me.
"Good. Finish your milk then. I'll get your gear out of the car and you can take a shower, then get some rest. Anything we need to figure out, we can figure out tomorrow."
So he drank down the milk and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and I put his glass in the sink so he wouldn't see the treacherous pie.
"Thanks." He said. He stood up and gestured to the table and the sink like he thought he had to thank me for feeding him. Like he had to thank me for anything. "And thanks – thank you – for – for -."
Just as I was thinking that I seriously needed to hug him again, he moved first and pulled me close so hard I was practically behind him. I put my arms around him and held on just as tight.
"Thank you for being here." He whispered against my shoulder, tearful and desperate and so grateful.
"That's my line." I told him and he laughed and held on. "Welcome home, Sammy."