Author's note: Once again, thank you to everyone for reading and giving this story (my first fic!) so much love. I wanted to give you one last update today, because tomorrow I'm going on vacation to a place where I won't be able to get online. I'll be back on the tenth of August and I'll be updating the second I get home, I promise. This chapter is slightly lower on hurt/comfort, digging into a bit of plot instead. I hope you enjoy. Thanks again for reading and please bear with me.

Chapter 4
It had been nearly a little over three months since the night Sam had quit the Trials and Dean still hadn't found a cure for his pain. So the brothers kept going through the motions: the bad days, the surprisingly not-so-bad days and the really, really bad days. The call came on one of those latter days.

Dean had just spent half an hour cleaning up, after Sam had vomited all over his covers. This was a rare occurrence: Sam didn't usually have that reaction to pain. For a moment, Dean had thought it was food poisoning, that he'd somehow screwed up dinner.
One glance at his brother's pained expression, however, had told him he couldn't have been more wrong. So Dean had taken Sam from his own room to Dean's (Sam was leaning on Dean so heavily he was practically carrying him) and put him to bed there instead. Then, he'd gotten two Vicodin and made a cup of camomile tea for Sam to wash them down with.
After he'd made sure that Sam had drained the cup and taken the pills, he went back to his little brother's room to clean up the mess.

Then, just when he was about to go check on Sam again, Dean's phone rang. The display read 'Kevin Tran'.

"Hey Kevin, what's up?", Dean asked, slightly surprised by the call. It was usually him who called Kevin, not the other way around.
"Dean, I think I found something." Kevin sounded tired, but excited.
"Like what?"
"Like, something that could help Sam. You know how I took photocopies of the tablets? Well.. I've been studying them again. I found something. Fineprint, if you will. It explains what happens to a person who doesn't finish the Trials once he's started."
Dean felt a weight lift ever so slightly of off his chest. Could this be their answer? Then he had dark thought and snapped:
"Wait, what? How did you not figure this out sooner? I was gonna do the Trials in Sam's place after he did the first one! What if I'd made him quit?"
"Then he'd be in the exact same place where he is now, Dean. Look, I was strung out on pills, I wasn't sleeping, I was barely eating and oh yeah, my mom and my girlfriend had just been killed. I was studying the damn thing day and night and I missed some stuff. It was hidden away pretty carefully. I'm sorry I'm not perfect at this, Dean."
"Yeah, whatever. What did you find?", Dean pressed on.
"A bit about punishment. Apparently, God didn't like the thought of someone beginning the Trials, but not finishing them. I guess He thought it made it too easy for someone to chicken out. Like, try the first one and then quit if they got scared by how hard it-"
"But that's not what Sam did! He was about to finish the third one when I stopped him. He didn't chicken out!"
"Dean, I'm not saying Sam deserves this. Obviously I don't think that, otherwise I wouldn't be up at this hour searching for a cure. This is just what the tablet says. It's not like I'm the one who wrote it." Kevin was starting to feel a little angry and a lot defensive. Here he was, trying to help the Winchesters out, and this was what he got in return?
"Right. I overreacted, sorry Kev. It's just... I'm wound pretty tightly these days. Sam's not doin well at all and I guess it's... It just really sucks seeing him this way. But I shouldn't be taking it out on you." Dean sounded tired and sad and Kevin decided not to push it.
"It's fine, Dean." Kevin sighed, looking around his tiny apartment: the walls, blank safe for the bright orange angel and demon warding, the cot in the corner, the crappy little kitchenette.

The day the angels had fallen, Kevin had given Dean a call from the hospital. He'd filled Kevin in on what little he knew about what was happening and had told him to stay put until he could get back to the bunker. However, Dean did say it could take a while, because Sam wasn't doing so well. Kevin had wanted to ask Dean a million questions, but after he'd said that, he had thought better of it. There would be very little on Dean's mind besides Sam in that moment. So instead, he had waited for the Winchesters to come home.
And come home they did. After Sam had checked out of the hospital against medical advise, Dean had taken him straight back to the bunker and put him to bed right away, barely sparing Kevin a look.
It was only after Sam had gone to sleep that Dean had come into the control room to talk to Kevin by the glare of the red lights were still burning brightly all over the map and the control panels. Together, they had come up with Kevin's new living arrangements. At first, Dean had offered to let Kevin stay in the bunker, but he could tell that Dean's heart wasn't in it, that he was only saying it out of a sense of obligation. Kevin had known that Sam would be Dean's first priority, and besides, he didn't really feel like staying. Garth's boat had been compromised, so that was out. Instead, Dean had called in a few favors and pretty soon, Kevin had been set up in a tiny little apartment in a tiny little town in Illinois.
After the move, Dean started calling Kevin about one every two weeks, filling him in on the angel stuff and occasionally, on what was going on with Sam. There was rarely any good news on either subject and after a while Kevin had started going back to his research. He'd done so partially because he wanted to help, partially because he didn't have much else to do. He hadn't found anything useful, until today.

"So, what does it say, exactly?" Dean's voice brought Kevin back to the present.
"It doesn't go into details. It's just this one paragraph that puts the punishment of the one who abandons the Trials into the hands of an enforcer. He's the guy that gets to judge the guy who quits and he gets to pick what his punishment will be."
"Who is it?"
"The angel who God trusted enough to let him take down the word. It's-"
"Metatron. Metatron is doing all of this? God, all this time I've been looking for a cure when really what I should have been doing is hunt that pudgy little bastard down." Dean suddenly sounded fired up, ready for a fight.
"Yeah, it's him Dean. But how would you find him, he could be anywhere!"
"Oh I'm gonna find him and I'm gonna make him stop doing this to Sam if it's the last thing I do. Does the tablet say anything else important?"
"No, that's pretty much it, far as I can see."
"Okay, thanks Kevin. I gotta go check on Sam now. But seriously, good work."
Dean hung up. Kevin put down his phone and finished his somewhat stale sandwich.

The cogs were already starting to turn inside Dean's head. He would dig up their old research on Metatron and find out everything there was to know about the bastard. Then he would find him and get him to reverse the punishment and then Sam would be fine again. But that was exactly the problem. Sam wasn't fine, far from it. There was no way Sam could come with him on this hunt, but there was also no way that Dean could (or would) leave him on his own. It was a dilemma Dean failed to find a way out of. It would have to wait anyway, because Sam was calling for him.

"Hey, Sammy." Dean squatted down next to Sam, who was still laying in his bed, looking pale but a lot less green than he had earlier.
"Hey. I'm sorry."
"For what, Sam?" Dean was genuinely surprised by his brother's words.
"Throwing up all over the place. Making you put me in your bed. Making you clean up my puke. I'm really sorry."
"Come on, we've talked about this. You got nothing to be sorry for. You can sleep here tonight, I'll take your bed. I've already changed the sheets."
"Thanks, Dean."
"No worries, Sam."
"Who was that on the phone just now?"
"Kevin."
"What's up with him?"

Dean had to think fast. Should he tell Sam what Kevin had just told him? Sure, it would probably give him some hope, but until Dean figured out a way to actually go after Metatron, it would be false hope. What's more, if Dean told Sam about Metatron, he would probably want to help Dean find him, despite not being able to. Dean knew his brother: he would feel guilty as hell if he couldn't help him out. Hell, Sam was feeling guilty right now, for having thrown up out of sheer agony. Knowing that Dean was looking for Metatron and he couldn't do anything to help would be really hard on Sam and that was the last thing his little brother needed right now.
On the other hand, Dean didn't want to lie to Sam. Sam was going through a lot and he would probably find out at some point and be really upset that Dean lied to him.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Dean mulled this over for a quick moment, then spoke.

"Not much, he was just checking in."