Author's note: Thanks so much to Ghastly Eternity for beta-reading and to Maknatuna, Mello18, midnight0211, SARA1988, keacdragon, the Quote Bandit, Maddy Love Castiel and Larkafree for last chapter's reviews.

If anybody is up for making a drawing or something of baby Gabe for me, I'd be very grateful and use it as a story cover (with your permission, of course).

1

Sam awoke with a start.

His eyes snapped open for a moment before he pressed his palms against them with a groan. He felt like his eyes were burning right out of their sockets, a feeling he was much better acquainted with than anyone should ever be. Instead of intensifying, the feeling died down slightly after a while which didn't really make sense to the younger Winchester.

Nothing ever got better! Well, there were the moments when he got put back together only so he could be taken apart again, but there was only a split second in which he'd be relatively unharmed before things took a turn for the worse. Always for the worse.

Sam removed his hands from his face, preparing himself for the worst and then preparing himself for the fact that his imagination would never do to even come close to what Lucifer and Michael had in store for him. Pissing off the devil and the mightiest archangel of the Lord really paid off.

What he saw made even less sense than the fact that he still felt relatively okay. If he hadn't known better, Sam would have said that he was staring at the ceiling of some motel room he might have been sharing with Dean before he had jumped into the cage.

Oh joy! They were getting to the mental torture again! Only there was nothing but peace and quiet and a soft enough bed he only now noticed he was lying on. Neither Michael nor Lucifer had the patience to torture him with peace and quiet, though. Even if he was suspicious and was waiting for the other shoe to drop, it would take a long time before he really went insane just from being in a simple motel room.

The younger Winchester sat up gingerly, not exactly trusting his own body. He wasn't quite sure how much time he had already spent in the cage, but it was long enough to really mess with his perception of many things. The perception of time obviously, but there also was his perception of pain and the general perception of which things were real and which weren't.

Sam breathed deeply a couple of times and was filled with a strange sense of serenity which – ironically – unsettled him a lot once he noticed it was there. If there was something that had no place in his life – or afterlife, or whatever the hell he was supposed to call this – it was tranquility or any other good feelings, really.

Still, the other shoe didn't drop, the pain didn't come and the taunting didn't start. He was still simply sitting on a motel bed, looking at a wall without really seeing it and for once there was nothing else he'd rather do.

Well, there was one thing he wished he could do, but that was so far from everything possible that he didn't even finish the thought before he dismissed it.

A few more minutes ticked by without anything whatsoever happening. Maybe Sam had overestimated the time it would take for him to go crazy from simply waiting for the time when the torture would start again severely.

He nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard a gurgling that disturbed the usual motel sounds he had shrugged off as a part of the illusion before. The quiet gurgling seemed to come from behind the screen that some motels seemed to have standing around for some reason. Mostly to hide mold or serious damages in the walls, if you wanted to be realistic about it. This one, however, hid a portacrib and a small baby that was the source for the sounds, as well.

"What the hell?" Sam muttered. He couldn't stop staring at the infant, even if he wanted to. What was a seemingly happy baby doing in some illusion Michael, or Lucifer, or both of them had thrown him into?

The younger Winchester was pretty sure that he had never seen the baby before, either. There weren't that many babies he had ever known to begin with and the little boy – if the blue romper suit was anything to go by – didn't look like Sam or Dean had as a baby. Those would have been the most likely options for infants that were meant to be a part of some sort of mental torture the tall human had been able to come up with.

It was then that the baby fixed his huge, golden-brown eyes on Sam's green ones. The younger Winchester's swallowed and shook his head in denial.

Alright, so the infant did resemble someone he had known as an adult. Only, it didn't make any sense whatsoever.

"Gabriel?" Sam whispered, because his voice wouldn't work quite right. He probably should have tried to find a glass of water before, but he still assumed that it would only turn to dust or worse as soon as he tried to actually drink it.

The infant gurgled happily and stretched his tiny arms as a sign that he wanted to be picked up. The growing feeling of dread made Sam back away instead, though.

None of this made any sense! Hell, being tortured by Lucifer and Michael made sense to the younger Winchester in some twisted way. He knew why they were doing it, he knew quite a few of the things they enjoyed doing the most and he knew for a fact that they would be doing it over and over again just to get the most out of the eternity they all had together.

Being in a motel room with an infant-version of Gabriel did not make sense, though. It probably wouldn't even have made sense, if he had never gone to hell.

Well, a lot of things that didn't make sense had happened to them over the years, so if he had never jumped into the cage, chances were, he would have taken it in a stride and tried to figure out what had happened to the archangel. Dean, of course, would have had a blast with that one. The Trickster as an innocent little baby. Okay, his older brother would have assumed that it was some sort of stupid joke first, but if they had found out that it wasn't, he would have had a lot of fun with someone playing a prank like that on Gabriel, of all people.

Sam wasn't content with the direction his thoughts were going. He had tried to ban all thoughts from his former life from his mind, so they couldn't be used to hurt him. For a while he had been rather sure that he had succeeded, but then this had happened!

It was pure instinct that forced him to walk back towards the portacrib when the infant started to cry. The baby was still stretching his arms toward Sam, but he had tears in his eyes and a completely displeased expression on his face now.

The younger Winchester had a very bad feeling that didn't purely come from the fact that he knew next to nothing about babies when he bowed down to pick the infant up. At least, the crying toned down to simple sniffling as soon as he held the baby securely against his shoulder.

A tiny hand reached for Sam's neck and the very strong feeling that he was actually holding Gabriel spread throughout the younger Winchester's entire being. It wasn't like he had been in contact with the archangel all too much before both of them had died, but he still felt that he knew who the baby was with every fiber of his being.

"This is messed up," Sam sighed as he sat back down on the motel bed, suddenly feeling dizzy, "Even for our standards. Totally messed up!"

If the infant did or didn't understand what he had just said was up for interpretation, but the baby cuddled up more against his shoulder and the sense of tranquility that came with it wasn't leaving him feeling all too unsettled this time.

"What the hell happened to you, Gabriel?" the younger Winchester asked, turning his head sideways so he could look into the infant's face.

He really couldn't say why he was so damn sure that the baby somehow was the archangel, but there was no place for doubts in his mind. The golden-brown eyes and the full mop of light brown hair surely helped, but there was more than simple physical similarities to Sam's conviction that he was currently holding a babyfied version of the dead archangel.

The infant squealed happily at the mention of his name, but gave no other signs that he had understood the question. That, of course, didn't necessarily mean that he hadn't, though. Yes, Sam would have to find a way to figure out if and how they could communicate.

Hell, first of all he would have to figure out where they actually were and he didn't mean the name of the hotel or the state they were in. Sam was more thinking along the lines of them being in the cage or somehow back on Earth. Both options didn't make all too much sense, though.

After a couple more moments with Gabriel just sucking on his thumb and the younger Winchester trying and failing to come up with any explanations of what the fuck was going on, Sam sighed deeply and gently removed the baby from his shoulder to put him on the bed.

For the moment being, he just had to assume that this was – again, somehow – real and that meant he should go and try to find out where they were and how they were going to get away from there.

"Okay, listen, I'll search for clues and you just stay there," Sam told the infant who gave no signs whatsoever that he was understanding or even listening to a word that had been said.

Instead, Gabriel was lying on his back with his little fingers grabbing his toes and gurgling happily. As far as the younger Winchester could remember, there was a yoga position like that called 'happy baby pose'. Yes, that one had been named very adequately.

It probably wouldn't win him any points in the parenting department, but Sam just had to leave the infant like that at least long enough to find out where the motel was. He had already located the phone, but he was still thinking about who he should even try to call, so that could wait another little while.

In his quick search of the room the younger Winchester came across something that made him want to sit back down again, immediately.

"Two weeks," he mumbled disbelievingly, staring at the newspaper that had been left on the table. Granted, he didn't know how old it was, but something told him that it couldn't be more than a couple of days, if even that much.

Of course, Sam had known that time passed differently in hell, but this was a lot to take in. At least, approximately knowing the date made the decision whose number he should dial easier.

It was then that Gabriel squealed and tumbled off the bed, however. The younger Winchester knew that he was already reacting too late, but he sprinted back to the other side of the room and nearly threw himself to the floor to see if the infant was okay, anyway.

The baby had teary eyes, but looked strangely calm otherwise, considering the circumstances. Sam scooped him up and held him against his chest while running his fingers through his soft hair to look for any lumps that might be forming. There were none, luckily. The human was pretty sure that allowing a baby-archangel to hurt himself seriously was a one-way ticket straight back to hell!

"You're not a normal baby, are you?" the younger Winchester sighed relieved, leaning back against the bed and still holding the tiny archangel close to his chest.

Okay, what should have been normal about an angel in a baby's body? So, that wasn't exactly the new discovery of the century.

Actually, it seemed like Gabriel wasn't only in a baby's body. For all Sam knew about angels, he would have thought that an angel in a baby's body would have possessed the same adult mind as they had in their usual vessels. The thought was creepy as hell, but it seemed logical.

Gabriel, on the other hand, seemed to be an infant, possibly with a couple of angelic extras.

A part of the younger Winchester wished that this was just one of the archangel's stupid pranks and he'd turn back into an adult any second and have a good laugh at his expenses. Things truly were messed up enough to make that the preferable option.

Instead, the baby rubbed his little head against Sam's chest for a few moments and finally put his thumb back into his mouth, sucking contently.

The younger Winchester sighed – not all too contently – and absentmindedly petted the infant's hair. The most likely explanation for all this would have been that Sam had lost the last of his marbles and had landed himself a permanent place in the loony bin, but ironically that option just wasn't realistic.

"We'll figure this out," he whispered mostly to himself, "We will figure this out."