Chapter 20 An Angel in Hell

US-290, Texas

Dean pulled into the small motel at midday, his eyes aching and his head throbbing. He'd grabbed take-out an hour ago and he wanted nothing more than a few hours sleep, the last thirty-six hours had caught up with him in a big way, physically, mentally and emotionally.

He stripped off his clothes and tossed them into the duffle, pulling out a moderately clean pair of jeans and shirt and leaving them on the bed, then headed into the bathroom. After five minutes of clanking, a tepid spray came through the pipes and the wide shower rose, and he fiddled with the taps, trying to get more heat out, giving up when the water became colder but refused to heat up any further.

He wasn't entirely sure what was driving him to get to his brother. Sam hadn't answered his phone, the last three times he'd tried calling back. He'd even resorted to calling from a pay phone, with the same lack of success. He got that Sam was pissed at him. And maybe he had a right to be, he'd been playing fast and loose with his brother's emotions, knowing full well that he wasn't rational at all about the girl. There hadn't been a choice, of course. He hadn't been about to risk Benny to either of them and he hadn't wanted to be forced into choosing between his brother and his friend.

Lying on the hard bed ten minutes later, he looked at the sagging ceiling above him, wondering why Sam was so irrational about the vampire – or was it about him having a friend that Sam didn't know, didn't trust? Or the kitsune he'd killed, year before last. Amy had been a mistake, he knew that. She hadn't even fought back, the knife sliding into her without resistance, her face shocked and disbelievingly and afraid. Sam had asked him for trust with her, and he'd made his own decision. He'd been running scared at the time, but it wasn't an excuse. Just the reason.

He didn't think Sam's reactions really had anything to do with Benny or Amy or anything but what had been happening between them for a long time now. Trust had been broken and mended, taped up and splinted together so that they could finish the job. And then the next job. And the next. He didn't think it would ever come back the way it had been. There was too much scar tissue in the way.

Rolling onto his side, he winced a little at the bruising that covered his chest and shifting to a more comfortable position. He'd told Benny he didn't have a family. It hadn't been true, not exactly.

There was still the job to do, to be finished, and even without trust, he still wanted his brother at his back when they did it.

Kermit, Texas

Sam walked back to the motel, his head spinning. He'd asked Everett for 118, not knowing why. It'd just seemed like he'd wanted to be there.

She'd stood there in front of him, and everything he'd tried to bury had risen up and then she'd said something about having to be somewhere and she'd turned and walked out the door. And he was left with a churning stomach, an aching chest and no idea of what had happened.

He opened the door and walked inside, closing it behind him and going to the sofa. Sitting down he stared across the room blankly, wondering what the hell he was supposed to do now. Seeing her had been a shock, a high-voltage tap that had zapped him back to the real world and out of his bubble of not-there-ness completely.

What he hadn't felt, he thought vaguely, had been relief. He frowned as that thought came into focus. Relief that she'd come looking for him? Relief that she was alright? He wasn't sure of why that was important. It felt important, for some reason.

The relationship hadn't been like the one he'd had with Jess. That had been … inevitable. Passionate but soothing. It'd filled him with excitement yet it had been calm as well, the visions he'd had of the future, of their future together, had been certain and that had brought a certainty to him. With Amelia, he realised uncomfortably, that certainty was missing. The calm was missing. Because of the situation, he wondered? Or because of something more inherent in what they'd looked for in each other? He leaned back against the sofa, his thoughts circling without answers, just more questions.

Geneva, Nebraska

Samandriel swam back up through the layers of pain in his vessel's body, his attention slowly focussing on the metal spike that had been driven between the frontal lobes of Alfie's brain. It was interfering. He drew energy from the body, pushing the foreign object out, as footsteps echoed in the hallway beyond the room.

"Naomi," he said quietly, reaching out, past the building he was in, through the layers of this plane and into the next. "Naomi, Crowley has me –"

Behind him, the door opened, and he froze as the smell of sulphur wafted into the room ahead of the demon. For a moment, the angel lost control of the vessel and Alfie's eyes filled with tears, his muscles locking with the rush of fear and desperation as he heard the demon's heavy footsteps approaching, then Alfie was carefully recaptured, shut back away, where he couldn't feel the pain, couldn't see the things the angel saw.

"Uh-uh-uh," the demon remonstrated softly, bending to speak into Samandriel's ear. "Been chatting across the celestial frequencies, have we?"

"No," Samandriel said, shaking his head, unable to think of anything else to convince the demon.

It straightened up behind him, an older man in the crisp white coat of a doctor or a scientist. The vessel had been a professor, tenured in some university in the mid-west, his specialty history. He'd been mostly interested in World War II and what the Germans had been doing to their prisoners of war. The memories of the professor's research had proved to be useful, and the well-hidden streak of sadism that had lain in the man had been an easy way in.

"Don't lie to me, Alfie," the demon said, walking around the angel.

"I'm not lying," Samandriel protested weakly, staring up at him. "Please, I wouldn't lie to you."

The demon grimaced disbelievingly. "Oh, Alfie, after all these weeks together … I mean, how I wish that were so."

Samandriel stared at him, swallowing as the demon bent and picked up the metal spike from where it lay on the floor in front of him.

"Now we're going to have to turn off that signal ..." it said, looking at the end thoughtfully. "Again."

It looked at him and the vessel's body began to tense, already feeling the remembered pain in the nerve endings, feeling the remembered agony of the insertion.

"No," Samandriel stared at the point approaching him. "No!"

The demon inserted the end into the hole in the angel's forehead and twisted the spike, screwing it back in through the bone, keeping the pressure steady as it passed into the brain tissue.

"NO!" Samandriel screamed, memory of pain and actual pain colliding, the human nervous system that he was locked into flooding the vessel with the precise data of each second of agony.

Kermit, Texas

The room was still familiar. Painful in that familiarity. Sam sat on the sofa, drinking a beer and watching the television absently, not wanting to think about what had happened. Not wanting to think at all.

The faint growl was also familiar, as familiar as the smell of gun oil, of whiskey and leather. He looked up sharply, turning his head to the door and putting the bottle down on the table as the engine roar got closer, the black car's signature rumble pulling up in front of the room, idling then stopping. The squeak of the door and the deep clunk when it was closed.

Dean.

Sam walked slowly to the door, pulling it open to see his brother. He turned away abruptly, automatically closing it again then stopping, pulling it back open. There wasn't any point to delaying this conversation. He cleared his throat and turned his head to look at Dean, lips thinned with the effort of keeping the anger that flushed through him held down.

Dean looked at him for a moment, reading his brother's feelings in the tightness of his face, the rigidity of his body.

"What'd you expect?" he asked, walking past Sam into the room.

Sam pushed the door shut behind him, not quite hard enough to slam it, turning and clearing his throat again, wondering if there was anything Dean could say that would make what he'd done understandable, forgivable. He didn't think there could be.

"Long drive," he said, staring at his brother's back.

Dean turned around, shrugging slightly. "Yeah, well I wouldn't have had to make it if you hadn't hung up on me."

"Yeah, well, I heard all I needed to hear," Sam said, his tone pugnacious. He didn't want a lecture on courtesy right now, it was all he could do to not walk across the room and put his fist into his brother's face.

"No, you heard what you wanted to hear," Dean corrected him dryly, shifting his weight slightly as he noticed his brother's tension. "I told you Benny wasn't killing. Hell, I watched him end the fang-banger that was."

"How 'bout Martin?" Sam asked. "How'd he end that?"

"Stupid, just like I said it was," Dean said, shaking his head. "Crazy sonofabitch didn't give Benny a choice. It was self-defence."

"Seriously, Dean? That's the story you're going with?" Sam walked toward him, ignoring the opening to ask about the details. "That the vampire was the real victim here?"

"Hey, like it or not, that's the truth, okay?" Dean looked at him consideringly. Sam didn't want the truth. He wanted to feel justified in what he'd done. Wanted a good reason for letting Martin blindside his big brother and leave him handcuffed to a gas fitting. "There was a time when that actually meant something."

"Yeah, yeah, no kidding," Sam nodded sarcastically.

"What does that mean?"

"You think this is just about Benny?" Sam's face screwed up disbelievingly, his pulse accelerating at his brother's obtuseness. Benny had been the least of it. The very least of it.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Dean asked.

"What the hell do you think I'm talking about?" Sam demanded, scowling at him.

Dean stared at him for a long moment before understanding came. "Amelia? Come on, man, I sent you that text because I needed you to – to –"

"You needed me to what?" Sam leaned forward, his voice soft. "To tear ass to Texas?" He turned away, waving his hand vaguely. "To be afraid that what had happened to Jessica, what happened to everyone we care about might have happened to her?"

He turned back to his brother, running his hands through his hair in frustration. "Did it occur to you, even for a moment, what that would feel like to me?"

"You were going to kill Benny – what was I supposed to do?" Dean said coolly. He'd known that Sam would go. He hadn't realised that he would go in fear of that. The message had been ambiguous enough, he'd thought.

"Is that what we are?" Sam asked him incredulously. "You think it's okay to save a vampire by making me believe that the woman I love – the woman I told you I love – might be dead?"

Dean looked at him tiredly. "What do you want to hear, Sam?"

Sam shook his head, rolling his eyes at the lack of emotion in his brother's voice. He didn't get it. He'd been there himself, with Lisa, but he refused to acknowledge that anyone else had the same capacity to feel, to fear.

"That I was wrong?" Dean asked, wanting to be past this, wanting to find a way back to where they weren't at each other's throats. Sam didn't answer.

"Fine, I was wrong, okay?" Dean admitted, watching his brother's twitches. He didn't think Sam wanted the same thing. And he wasn't going to beg. "But if you'd've just heard me out, if you'd've trusted me, all of this could've been avoided."

"You didn't want me to trust you," Sam snapped, shaking his head. "You wanted me to trust Benny, and I can't do that!"

Dean looked at him and turned away. "Right."

He looked back at Sam. "You know, you asked me to trust you, about Lenore. You asked me to trust in your instinct that she wasn't killing people, wasn't evil. You remember that?"

Sam looked away, a red flush rising up his neck. He'd remembered it. He didn't want to look at the parallels now. Didn't want to think about what Dean'd done back then.

"That was a long time ago, Dean, things have changed," he said, his voice hard.

"Have they? Or have you?"

"Both."

"Okay, well then, what the hell do we do now?" He stood with his back to his brother, not really wanting to see Sam's face.

Behind him, Sam snorted. "That depends. It depends on you, on whether or not you're done with him."

Dean thought about that for a moment. He wouldn't abandon the vampire, wouldn't cut him loose for no reason. He was a friend. He was the only friend he had that he could trust.

"Well honestly, I don't know."

He turned back to Sam, looking at him, waiting for him to say something else, something that would indicate at least some intention of meeting him halfway. Sam said nothing, the silence itself an ultimatum. Me or him, it said to him. Choose.

Fuck this, Dean thought, anger rising at the position his brother had taken, at what he was asking, at his immovable stubbornness, so like their father's, that he wanted his own way and wouldn't admit at all to what he'd done wrong. Just fuck this.

"Glad I made the drive," Dean said, walking past Sam to the door. He opened it and closed it behind him, careful not to slam it.

Heaven

Castiel found himself in the room of reflections again. This time he was sitting. He'd been talking to a young mother, about her child, in a playground. Then he was here.

"Castiel, we have a situation," Naomi's voice sounded from behind him and he turned to see the cold-faced angel walking past him. "Samandriel has been captured."

"I thought Samandriel was dead," Cas said, watching her walk behind the glass desk.

"He's been missing. And now we know. Crowley has him," she replied.

Crowley, with an angel. He rose from the chair. "Where?"

"His distress call cut out before I could pinpoint his exact location. But you will find him and you will bring him home," she said forcefully.

Cas looked down. "Crowley will have warded against angels, this time. I'll need help getting in."

"Take whatever you need," Naomi said impatiently. Her eyes focussed intently on him. "But you will be certain, Castiel, that it was your idea to rescue Samandriel. Not mine. Not Heaven's. Do you understand?"

He looked at her in confusion. Of what possible importance could that be?

Whitefish, Montana

Dean looked at the blank screen of the television set, a bottle of beer dangling from his fingers. It'd taken him two days to get back and he wanted to unwind, to relax, but his thoughts weren't leaving him alone, a chaotic maelstrom of memory and feeling and voices in his head, pushing and prodding at the anger that was down below them.

Sam had failed him, he thought, over and over again. He'd listened to his little brother, reluctantly, sure, but he'd given him the benefit of the doubt, over Lenore and her nest. He'd understood his brother's anger when he'd made the deal, it'd been selfish, him wanting Sam to live, sure. He'd asked, he'd tried to understand the hold Ruby'd had over him when he'd gotten out – god, he'd made the deal to save Sam, and then had found out that Sam had been getting his powers, his dark power, from drinking the demon's blood, making all that he'd sacrificed a complete and meaningless nothing – he'd done his fucking best to keep Sam alive and whole, getting his soul back, staining his own … and for what? So that he could have his family? His family was gone. Sam had just proved that.

The anger coiled tightly inside, hissing and spitting, as the things he'd done, had tried to do, filled him up.

He finished the beer and got another one from the fridge, stalking across the room, tension tightening his muscles and fury crackling along his nerves. Sam'd chosen Ruby over him, chosen to trust the demon. He'd made him promise to go and live a normal life, a life without anything but pain and confusion and grief and then had pulled him back into hunting and thrown him to a vampire, and lied to him.

The second bottle went quickly, and he grabbed a third, throwing himself back on the sofa. Everything he'd done, every choice he'd made had been the wrong one. He shouldn't have gone to see Sam after Dad had disappeared. Shouldn't have let him take him to that faith healer. Should've gone with the reaper when she'd come for him the first time. Should've let his brother die in Cold Oak …

… but he couldn't have done any of things. It wasn't the way he was wired.

Sometime near dawn his thoughts began to slow. His eyelids dropped, the days of driving and the hours up and the emotions cascading through him taking their toll and his body shutting down without him realising it. He slid down until he was half-lying on the sofa, the last half-full bottle resting against his ribs, fingers curled loosely around it.

He didn't hear the sound of wings, but something had changed in the room, something that tugged at his consciousness, brought him back up from the depths of sleep.

His eyes opened slightly and he saw the blurred figure standing close to the sofa, and the reaction was instantaneous. He jacknifed upright, his heart jammed somewhere in his throat, the beer still in his hand fountaining over him and the sofa. He registered that the figure was Castiel a fraction of a second later as he looked down at the mess, leaning forward and flicking a filthy look at his friend.

"Dammit, Cas," he said, putting the bottle on the low table with a thump. "How many times I gotta tell you? It's just creepy." He looked down at his shirt, plucking the wet cloth away from his skin.

"Dean, I need your help. The angel, Samandriel, he's been taken," Cas said. Dean looked up at him, the name ringing a very faint bell.

"Sam–"

"He's been taken."

Memory came back and he frowned at Cas. "You mean Alfie? The weaner-on-a-stick kid?"

"Yes." Castiel said uncomfortably aware that he wasn't sure how he'd known. "I, uh, I heard his distress call this morning."

"On what? Angel radio?" Dean rubbed at his eyes, yawning. "I thought you shut that down?"

"The penance is going well, and I thought it was time to turn it back on," Castiel explained shortly. "I've, uh, been helping people, Dean."

Unlike Sam, Dean thought, the memories of the last couple of days coming back to him along with the anger. "Uh, well, good for you," he said, getting off the sofa and making effort to shunt that anger aside. It wasn't Cas' fault that he'd lost the last of his family.

"Alright," he said, stretching the stiffness and kinks out of his back and turning to look at the angel. "So, who snatched Heaven's most adorable angel?"

"Crowley."

Of course. The King of Hell hadn't been twiddling his thumbs in the last couple of months, he was all Action-Jackson. The demon had too many fingers in too many pies these days.

"I'm listening," Dean said, his concentration sharpening.

"Samandriel is being held in the general vicinity of Hastings, Nebraska."

"General vicinity," Dean repeated. "That's all you got?"

"Yes," Castiel said. "Which is why I need your help."

Dean glanced away. In the back of his mind, the parameters of what the angel needed were already forming and turning over in his mind.

"Seems that this is going to involve … talking to people," the angel continued uncomfortably.

Dean repressed the urge to smirk at the angel. "Come on, Cas," he said, walking past him to the table. "I thought you were a hunter now."

"I thought so too, but …," Castiel said with a sigh. "But it seems I lack a certain –"

"Skill? Vocation? Experience?" Dean filled in helpfully as he opened the laptop and waited for it to load. "Alright, what I am looking for?"

"Well, when you torture an angel, it screams and that kind of pain creates a ripple effect of strange incidents," the angel said, looking around the cabin distractedly as he spoke. He looked back at Dean as he typed in the search command. "Where's Sam?"

"Sam's gone," Dean said, his face stony as he stared at the computer. "Doesn't matter, we'll find out for ourselves."

On the screen, the front page of the Liberty Globe had loaded, the headline looking about right. Tornados, strong winds, havoc. Demon sign. Or angelic pain. Either way, Geneva looked good.

Kermit, Texas

In the silence of the room her words hit him one after the other, reaching down through him to where they'd been, when they'd been together.

"I care too," she whispered, standing close enough to him to smell the light scent she wore, the feel the heat from her skin radiating softly against his.

Another man's wife, the thought flashed through his mind as he bent his head to press his lips against hers, her arms around his ribs, tightening as the kiss deepened.

The rush of desire was edged with desperation, with an aching yearning for something that he wasn't sure he was going to find. It lit up his nerves as her hands slid over his skin, a mix of intense arousal and a hopeless melancholia that made every touch, every breath seem profound and enriched, drawing deeper sensations through him.

There was a sense of familiarity there as well, a sense of comfort, of shelter and welcome and he knew where and how to touch her, knew what would make her breath catch in her throat, her hips arch up against him, her eyes fill with a dreaming passion.

Another man's wife, the thought lingered as he pushed inside, his eyes closing as her velvet heat engulfed him, swallowed him. I don't care, he thought, I don't care … as that aching pressure built up inside them both, leaking out and spreading through nerve and muscle, breath mingled as they struggled to hold on, to make it last, to return to the connection that had been there, once before.

For a moment, teetering on the edge of release, on the edge of what they'd made together, he opened his eyes and looked at her face. And for a moment, he didn't recognise the woman lying under him, her eyes tightly closed, lashes trembling against her cheeks, mouth parted as her breath hitched.

He closed his eyes and thrust deep, hearing her moan, hearing his own groan rumbling in his chest as the line was crossed and he felt her rippling around him, the heat and pressure squeezing and stroking him until he couldn't hold on for a second longer.

He held his weight off her, slipping out as he shifted to one side, his thigh over hers, his hand cradling the side of her face, kissing her and searching for what he felt was missing.

Amelia stood in the bathroom doorway, looking at the man lying on the bed. It'd been as she'd remembered, better maybe, laced with a bittersweet gall that the time apart and the things that had happened in that time brought with it. At the same time, it wasn't the same, but she couldn't pinpoint what had been missing. Joy, perhaps? The vision of a future?

Sam was lying on his side, staring at nothing, the covers drawn over him.

"Say something," she said quietly, knowing that he wasn't happy, not knowing why. She didn't feel happy, exactly, either.

"Say what?" Sam looked at her. It had been everything he'd wanted. And it had felt like … like something wasn't there. A hope for the future? A connection that they'd both needed, once, but didn't any more? It'd felt somehow like saying goodbye. "That was great? That was … a mistake?"

"I don't know. Both, I guess?" she said, feeling her stomach drop, her pulse accelerate. She suddenly felt as she didn't know what she was doing. Didn't know why she was here. Didn't know the man who'd just made love to her.

Sam levered himself onto an elbow. "I understand."

"Do you?" Amelia said slowly, walking from the doorway to the side of the bed. "Do you understand I have a life here? A good man … who loves me. A man I don't want to hurt."

The words sounded accusing to him. As if … as if he'd done something wrong. "I know."

"And do you know that you're the first thing I think of when I wake up in the morning?" she said, looking at him intently, needing him to understand it. She wanted everything. What she wanted was impossible. "And the last thing before I go to sleep."

He didn't know what to say to that. He felt that too. He'd shot his brother, thinking of her instead of what he was supposed to be thinking of. It didn't make it any better.

"It's tough to let something like that go," she added, her gaze dropping to her hands.

"Yeah," Sam said.

"Especially if you keep showing up here."

"Are you saying … you want me to leave?" he asked her uncertainly. He couldn't follow her emotional processes. Couldn't follow the winding trail of her thoughts. She thought in leaps, she'd told him. One to the next. He couldn't keep up with it.

"I'm saying that if you stay, against everything I believe in," she told him carefully, looking into his eyes. "I would be with you."

Sam felt a flood of hope fill him, straightening up a little.

"But if you leave, then don't come back," she added, her voice thickening as she saw his expression change. "I can't have you with one foot in my life, and the other in whatever it is you do. That life of yours I've no idea about."

Sam looked away. "You don't want to know about it, believe me."

That wasn't quite right, he thought. He didn't want her to know about it, about him, about what he'd done and who he'd been and what had shaped him, formed him. And he realised suddenly that he never would. How could he ever let her love him if he never told her the truth? How could he ever love her, knowing that she didn't know him? How could the relationship ever work that way … hi, I'm Sam, born May 2nd, 2012, fully-formed, no history to speak of, take it or leave it … would he be satisfied, knowing so little about someone?

It hadn't occurred to him before, all that he'd hidden, all that he couldn't, wouldn't, show anyone. He wasn't himself when he was with her. He was a made-up version of Sam. Minus all the things that he didn't like. That worked in the short-term, but not for life. No family. No history. No past choices, memories, mistakes. No curses and no details. Would he make up a past? A family? A job? A life? What would he tell her about the scars he had? Outside and inside? Football injuries? A mugging?

"So, what am I supposed to do, just cut everybody out of my life? You're serious?"

"Look, it sucks, but in a job like this, you can't get close to people, period," Dean had told him, shrugging.

"Hey, like it or not, that's the truth, okay? There was a time when that actually meant something."

There had been a time when he'd done that. Told the truth. That'd been before, though, before he'd … before.

He looked back at her, feeling the memories closing in around him, feeling the fear rising and he drew in a deep breath. "It's a big step."

"For me – or you?" Amelia asked curiously, wondering what had gone through his mind, wondering what was scaring him.

"Both," he said and she dropped her gaze. "I need to think about this. You need to think about this." He couldn't explain what he was feeling. For the last six months, he'd felt like he had no choices. Now he did. He had the choice of living a lie and knowing it was a lie … or letting the lie go. "Words will never cover what you mean to me, what you'll always mean to me, but we should –"

"Think about this," Amelia said, nodding slowly. "Okay. How 'bout, two days from now. Around seven-thirty. I'll be off work then," she said, looking away.

"One of us'll be here. And we'll know. Neither of us will be here, and we'll know." She looked back at him, a faint hope curving her lips upwards. "Or both of us'll be here. And we'll know?"

Sam looked at her for a long moment, then let his gaze drop. His thoughts were churning. He hadn't felt this … uncertainty, this doubt, with Jess, he realised. But he hadn't done what he'd done when he'd met her either. He'd been clear back then. In himself. In what he'd wanted. In everything.

Amelia watched him, seeing the confusion in his face, feeling her own confusion tangling her thoughts. She hadn't told Don. Had wanted to see if what was between her and Sam was real, was permanent. It'd seemed plain when she'd knocked on the door two hours ago. It'd seemed right, when she'd seen him in the bar the night before. Why wasn't that certainty there now? Why did she get the feeling that what she wanted was not real, not for the man lying in the bed next to her. Not even for her.

Geneva, Nebraska

The demon adjusted the stainless steel head band over the angel's forehead. The original spike had been reinserted through it. He thought that there was more, held within the vessel's brain, within its skull, that he could tap with the right amount of pressure.

And if there wasn't, well, both he and the professor were having fun.

"When we demons possess a human, we invade all of them … their muscles, their bones, their brains," it said conversationally to the angel, holding another metal spike. "I can't help but wonder if it isn't the same for angels."

Samandriel stared at the spike helplessly. No more. No more.

The demon leaned forward, inserting the spike through the guiding holes. The professor's memories were helpful, understanding the regions of the brain that each hole corresponded to. For a history Prof, the man had been very hands-on.

The angel's scream rose in pitch, and behind it, the wave-lengths generated by the pain began to spike, the frequency of both harmonising briefly in the precise wave-length that resonated glass. The beaker of reddish fluid on the bench behind the demon exploded in sympathy.

"Lovely," the demon murmured, tightening the screw, watching the angel as the pain deepened.

Samandriel became suddenly rigid, his eyes fixed.

"Var tay ka ra," he intoned in a deep and inflectionless voice. The demon stopped, staring at him.

"Var tay ka ra," Samandriel repeated, more loudly. "Saul vock tay."

"Saul vock tay."

"SAUL VOCK TAY."

The demon glanced around the room nervously. Whatever the angel was saying, and it sounded suspiciously like a spell, it didn't seem to be having an effect on the physical world around them. He needed a translator, he thought. It could be Enochian, it could mean something … something important.

The black car drove down the main street, Dean watching the traffic and the signs, looking for the local hospital. The police report had said that the guy had second degree burns from a bush that had inexplicably erupted into flames. After speaking to him. Seemed reasonably biblical. Cas'd said it was definitely a manifestation.

The angel rode silently in the seat beside him, either occupied with his own thoughts, or just not interested in conversation, he couldn't decide which, but his presence was a constant and vaguely irritating reminder that Sam was gone for good. On the long drive north to Montana from Texas, he'd thought he'd managed to get a grip on that, to deal with it and let it go. It didn't seem that he'd had. The anger at his brother lurked just beneath his conscious thoughts, barely covered and still painful.

At the front desk, Dean smiled at the receptionist and held out his identification. The press pass had been the easiest ID to make on short notice and didn't require anything from the angel walking next to him. The receptionist had smiled back, nodded and given him directions to the Burn Ward.

He found the room and knocked quietly against the jamb, stepping inside when he saw the man's eyes roll toward him.

"Mr Hinckley? We're from the Geneva Gazette, and we'd like to ask you a few questions about your … ambush," he said, trying a light approach, an easy smile, trying to keep his gaze on the man's eyes. The parts of his face that were visible between the thin gauze bandages were an aching red, blistered and peeling off in chunks, like the dude had spent five minutes in a fryer.

Hinckley looked at him sourly. "Yeah, I'd laugh too if it didn't feel like the sun just ate my face."

Dean winced.

"It's a metaphor," Cas muttered helpfully beside him and he turned to look at the angel quellingly.

He looked back at Hinckley, and down to the notes in his hand. "Sorry. Ah, in the police report, it said that the, ah, the bush – it talked to you, yeah?"

Hinckley looked up at him, nodding faintly. "Yeah, I know it sounds crazy, but yeah."

"What did it say?" Castiel asked abruptly.

"No clue," Hinckley said, shaking his head. "Sounded like Klingon to me."

"Get any exact words?" Dean asked.

"You serious?"

"That's his serious face, yes," Cas interjected. Dean repressed the sudden, very strong desire to punch the angel. His brother would've been oozing sympathy. The thought drew his brows together and he looked down at the notebook.

"As much as you can remember, Mr Hinckley?"

Hinckley looked up at the ceiling. "Sounded somethin' like … soul vark … yeah, soul vark tay."

Dean looked around at Castiel, seeing the angel's face harden slightly.

"Anything else? Any other words you remember?" he asked. Hinckley shook his head.

"No. That was it."

"Thanks for your time, sir," Dean said as Castiel turned abruptly and walked out. "Sorry about the … uh, you know, the joke," he added awkwardly, following the angel out of the room.

Dean put his notebook into his jacket pocket as he lengthened his stride to catch up to the angel.

"Well, what do you think? Mean anything to you?"

"Yes," Castiel turned his head to look at him. "It's Enochian, it means 'obey'."

"Obey? Obey what?" Dean asked.

"I don't know," Castiel said, his voice anxious. "But the amount of pain an angel must be in, not just to manifest in that way, but to burn …" He stopped in the hallway, swinging around to the man beside him. "Dean, we have to find him before it's too late."

"Okay." Dean agreed, rubbing his thumb over his chin as he thought about it. "Okay, a sign like that, Alfie can't be too far. So we'll just start at the bush, and work our way out."

"And look for what, exactly? Crowley could have him anywhere." The angel stared at him disparagingly.

"Well, if I know Crowley, the place'll be swarming with demons," he said. "So we'll just drive until we see ugly."

He turned and started down the hall, not waiting for the angel to follow.

"There," the angel looked at the still, silent building. Dean glanced left and nodded, turning the car left into a small dead-end street, and stopping at the end. He turned off the engine and looked through the chain-link fence sourly.

"Well, would you look at that," he said wearily. "Our ninth abandoned factory, ain't that America."

The angel was silent, scanning the cracked concrete parking lot, the soaped and broken windows visible along the wall of the building.

"Hey, whaddya say this doesn't pan out, we head back to that beer'n'bacon happy hour about a mile back, huh?" Dean suggested facetiously, picking up the pair of binoculars from the seat next to him.

"Wait a moment, Dean," Castiel said, leaning forward as he stared through the windshield. "Those derelicts, they're demons. I can see their true faces."

Dean glanced at the three men, shabbily dressed, standing around a forty-four gallon drum with a fire lit in it. He put the glasses to his eyes, studying them, lifting the glasses to scan along the side of the building. Above the men, another demon was pacing along a ledge, looking around.

"Crowley's got that many hell-monkeys outside, he's got have at least double inside," he said, dropping the glasses and looking at the building narrowly.

"And angel warding," Cas sighed. "I can feel it."

"Well, you, me and the demon knife ain't going to cut it," Dean said, glancing at the angel and back to the building.

"Okay, I'll get Sam," Castiel said, shifting in the seat slightly.

"No," Dean said instantly, putting the glasses back on the seat beside him. The last thing he wanted was a job with his brother. Or the sight of his brother. "We don't need Sam."

"But you just said –"

"Look," Dean cut him off sharply. "If Sam wanted in, he'd be here. Okay?" He looked back at the building, his mind translating the outside shape into a rough interior map. With the right gear, they could do this alone. "I got a better idea."

Starting the car, he reversed back out of the street, swinging the wheel and turning to go back the way they'd come. He'd need a safe place to park her. They'd have to teleport there, he thought uneasily, there was no other way to get there and back quickly enough. Time to take one for the team. The thought brought only a very faint lift to the side of his mouth.

Warsaw, Missouri

The river curved gently, the current moving fast between the banks where the water was squeezed into a narrower channel, but the surface was smooth, ripples running back from the chain moorings that held the flat concrete barge in place against the bank, from the stern of the chunky steel vessel that was tied up next to it. Fizzle's Folly, the name on the stern had been painted in white and Dean's mouth twisted into a sour smile as he read it. He wasn't sure what protection the boat would have, looking down the length of the barge at the stairs and gangway that gave access, but decided to bypass them.

"Inside," he said quietly to the angel and they were standing inside, beside a steep companionway ladder leading up to the cabins on deck. Kevin sat at the table near the other end of the cabin, hunched over the piles of papers that covered its flat surface from one end to the other. Dean looked around the cabin's interior curiously. Every clear surface on the walls had been covered with notes and designs and drawings and maps, stuck so closely together that the vessel's hull wasn't even visible. Cupboards in between were filled with tools, plates and bowls and glasses, shelving filled with books. A second, smaller table was positioned in between Kevin and them, books, papers and notes covering that too.

"Slow reading?" Dean asked, seeing Kevin's back tense slightly as he realised they were there.

The prophet turned in his chair slowly, looking at them. "Slowest."

Dean nodded, looking around. "Where's Garth?"

Kevin turned back to the notes. "Supply run? I don't know … sort of lost track of when he comes and goes."

He stared down at the paper in front of him and exhaled irritably, turning back to them. "You guys need help with something? Kind of working here," he said, gesturing to the table.

"You look horrible," Castiel said bluntly. Dean turned around, sending him an exasperated look.

"Yeah, thanks," Kevin said disinterestedly, turning back to the table.

"He's right," Dean said. "You okay, kid?"

"Fine." Kevin nodded tiredly. "I'm just … in the middle of this."

"And?" Dean said, walking to the table. "Any luck?"

"Interpreting half a demon tablet?" He stared at the meaningless notes he had. None of them were worth the paper they were written on. He couldn't read it. Couldn't read it if it wasn't in one piece. The thought should have been cheering, since Crowley obviously couldn't either. But it wasn't. It was a stalemate. No go on either side meant nothing could happen. "No. No, nothing."

Dean saw the slump in the boy's shoulders. "Well, buck up, 'cause we need some more of that demon T-N-T, asap."

Kevin turned around to look at him. "You used it all."

"Yeah, so let's whip another batch," Dean said impatiently.

Kevin counted to three. "Sure," he said, nodding. "West Bank witch-hazel. Skull of Egyptian calf. The tail of some random-assed newt that may or may not be extinct –"

"Alright, alright, I get it," Dean cut him off as his voice started to rise. "Ingredients are hard to come by, huh?"

"That's just the first three ingredients," Kevin snapped, staring at him.

Castiel stepped forward, looking down at Kevin. "Give me the list. I'll get what we need."

Kevin looked at him. An angel. He could see the light, leaking around the vessel's edges.

Dean glanced at Cas and back to the prophet, grinning. "Huh."

Kevin rolled his eyes and flipped to a clean page of his notebook, writing fast.

Leaning back against the counter behind him, Dean watched him. The kid was burning out. Much more of this and he wouldn't have anything left even if they could get the other half of the tablet back. Burning out was pretty common in their line of work. The urgent press of time was an illusion but a strong one. No one was getting any younger.

Geneva, Nebraska

The demon dropped the spike on the tray as the bolts were undone on the steel door leading to the room. He looked at the doorway as Crowley came in, bolting the door behind him and turning to face the white-coated meatsuit.

"What on earth could you possibly need now, Viggo?" he asked tiredly. "I've given you every torture instrument known to man, short of a Neil Diamond album."

"I've found something, sir," Viggo said supplicatingly. "I need a translator."

"You're looking at him," Crowley said, coming down the stairs into the room. He gestured to the angel. "Show me."

Crowley walked to the wall, pulling a clean apron from a number hanging from hooks and putting it on as Viggo tightened the screw that penetrated the angel's right frontal lobe.

"Zor ba lay tar," Samandriel intoned. Crowley paused in the tying of the apron and glanced at the demon.

"What have we here?" he murmured, walking to the angel. Viggo backed out of the way as the King of Hell looked over the metal brace surrounding the angel's head.

"I think it's Enochian," Viggo said.

"Of course it's Enochian, you pigeon," Crowley murmured, his concentration on Samandriel. "The question is, why is he speaking Enochian?"

He looked at the screws thoughtfully. "What have you drilled into here, Viggo?" He twisted the screw.

"Zor ba lay tar," Samandriel said tonelessly. "Sar tay vock lay."

"Bollocks," Crowley said, the possibilities turning over in his mind. This could be a short-cut, a way to get the information he needed. If they could access all of it –

"What is it, sir?"

Crowley turned to look at the demon. "Well, what our feathered friend was uttering – essentially – was 'you, celestial being, have been created to be an angel of the Lord'."

Viggo's face remained hopeful but uncomprehending and Crowley swallowed an internal sigh. "You've got into his operating system. His factory settings."

"From who?" Viggo asked. "God?"

Crowley sent him a derisive look. "Who cares where it comes from? Let's find out what makes this flying monkey tick."

He turned back to the bound angel, twisting the screw hard to the left. Samandriel screamed.

"Sar tay vock lay."

Crowley twisted again and the angel's shriek of agony echoed around the room.

Warsaw, Missouri

Kevin struggled to concentrate on the words he'd written as behind him, Dean paced slowly back and forth across the narrow cabin, clicking his fingers randomly.

He picked up the headphones and put them on, shutting out the man behind him, shutting out the world around him, when Dean started to clap randomly as well.

Dean turned around at the end of the cabin and started back. He needed to be doing something. The quiet in here, it was too much of an invitation to thinking. He glanced at Kevin. Might be okay for a prophet but not for him. He didn't want to think. Didn't want the time to think. Not now. He looked at his watch for the fourth time in the last ten minutes.

"I mean, come on. How long does it take to get a calf's skull from Egypt?"

Turning around at the end of the cabin and pacing back, the tune escaped first as a soft hum, then a louder one, the words sung under his breath. Kevin seemed oblivious. He sang a little louder, going off-key on the high note at the end of the verse. Needed to be louder, he thought.

He was in the middle of the chorus, belting it out, when his phone rang. Glancing guiltily at Kevin, he pulled it out and looked at the caller.

"Hey, I thought I told you to go underground," he said, walking away from the table toward the forward cabins.

"Hey, I'm so far under I'm breathing through a straw, brother." Benny's voice was tense. "Uh, look … what happened to your friend, Martin, back there – he wasn't supposed to go down that way."

"I know. Your grand-daughter told me," Dean said.

"Dean, you did this old dog, real solid, and uh, the way you stood up for me –"

"Shoe on the other foot, you'd do the same," Dean said, glancing back at Kevin.

"Yeah, I hate to ask for much else but … uh … I don't suppose there's any chance you anywhere near the Catskills?"

"Working a case on the other side of the country. Why? What's up?" Dean heard the threadiness in Benny's voice, heard his breathing speeding up.

"Yeah, just hittin' a lil' rough patch, I guess," Benny said, dragging in a deep breath. "You know, doing this whole solo thing."

"Benny, one day at a time, man," Dean said firmly. There wasn't a lot he could do on one end of a phone line, except mouth the usual platitudes and hope the vamp would keep it together.

"You know what … uh, cup of coffee sure would do me good."

Dean looked out the window, letting out his breath in a soft exhale. It must be killing Benny to have to ask him for that. "Alright. Soon as I'm done with this case, I'll be there. Okay?"

"Yeah." Dean heard the relief in his friend's voice. "Alright, brother. Thank you."

The line cut out and Dean looked at the phone, closing his eyes. Hunger. That's what he'd heard in the vamp's voice.

There was nothing he could do about it. Nothing at all. Benny was going to have to sink or swim on his own, sooner or later. He couldn't just take off right now anyway. He put the cell back in his pocket and walked back to Kevin, brushing the headphones with his hand as he walked around the table.

"Hey, where is your mom?"

"Somewhere safe," Kevin said, looking at the notes.

"You kicked your mom to the kerb?" Dean asked, brows shooting up.

Kevin pulled the headphones from his ears and shrugged. "She was too distracting. I couldn't focus," he said, looking up at Dean's vaguely accusatory expression. "Angels said I had to go to the desert to learn the Word of God," he added, gesturing around him. "This is my desert."

Dean shook his head. "Yeah, but your mom's your mom."

"I can't enjoy a world I need to save, Dean," Kevin said, shaking his head. "I can enjoy it when it's all over with. Right now, there's nothing more important than this."

He picked up the stone piece and his pen, staring down at it, hoping that the hunter would leave him alone again.

Dean looked at him. The world always needs saving, he wanted to say. You never get a life that way. He didn't say it. It didn't matter. When you had the ability to do the job, it came with the responsibility for seeing that it got done. That was the bottom line, the only thing that held true. If it meant that your life was forfeit, through death or just abandonment, that was the price that you had to pay. There was no point in dreaming for something different.

He walked slowly away from the table, looking out the portholes in the cabin's sides, at the river beyond, at nothing in particular. The world always needed saving and the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few, he thought distractedly.

Kermit, Texas

Sam sat on the park bench, the rain falling still light enough to ignore. The fact that he was sitting here, trying to weigh the pros and cons should have told him something, he thought bitterly. He hadn't had to think about it with Jess, his heart had led and he'd followed willingly, unthinkingly, straight into her arms.

But he hadn't been – he'd been himself back then. Just a twisted family history and no idea of what was coming. Dean blamed himself for pulling him out of Stanford, for turning up, but the reality was that his brother had had nothing to do with it. The demon had killed Jess to drive him into hunting, and if his brother hadn't been there, he'd probably have stayed in that room and burned alive as well. He sighed. Maybe that would have been the ideal solution. At least for his family.

And Jess' death had driven him, had flogged him along the path he'd been set on.

He'd almost forgotten what loving her had felt like. All the clichés rose to mind … not needing anything else, like coming home, feeling as if they could do anything, so long as they were together … a regular Hallmark fest. It had all been true, the way that clichés are, of course, or they wouldn't be clichés.

He didn't feel those things about Amelia. Not in the same way. He needed her, needed to see the acceptance of him in her eyes, needed her arms around him, keeping the nightmares and the pain and fear away from him, needed to feel that there was a future for him that didn't involve sacrifice and blood and losing everyone. But … he didn't know if he could tell her. And he thought, he had a feeling that not telling her, not giving her the chance to decide for herself, knowing the whole mess, knowing what a mess he was, was being unfair. And would bring them down no matter how good his intentions were in keeping it from her.

When he'd gotten his soul back, he'd asked his brother about the year Dean had spent with Lisa and Ben. One thing had stood out, really stood out from the rest.

"I wasn't myself. I couldn't be myself," his brother had said, half-drunk and getting more and more loaded as Sam kept topping up his glass, knowing it was the only way he'd get close to the truth on the subject. "I pretended that I – I was normal, you know, Sammy? But she never knew me and after a while, I couldn't be me anymore."

He didn't want that to happen to him. To them. That level of deceit – how the hell could any relationship survive that level of lying?

He started as the angel appeared on the bench beside him, Cas leaning forward, staring at the people who moved through the park unaware of either of them.

"Watching humanity, it never gets old, does it?" he said quietly, looking at the children playing on the equipment.

He turned to look at Sam. "We need you."

"Dean doesn't want me around," Sam said stiffly.

"Dean's not asking you, Sam," Cas said, looking back at the children. "I am."

"I've got stuff I need to do, Cas," Sam said uncertainly. Was he going to pretend now that he didn't know what he was going to do at seven-thirty in a day's time?

Castiel looked at him. "Samandriel, an angel, is being held by Crowley and tortured, Sam. Is your 'stuff' more important than that?"

Sam ducked his head, looking at the ground between his feet. "No."

"Then let's go."