Chapter Text
In the end, Sam thought, things had gone much better than they could’ve.
The apocalypse had been a disaster. A catastrophe. A calamity. It had quite literally been one long sprint through hell. But here they were, safe on the other side.
Sam had been ready to close his eyes, block his nose, and take the plunge for humanity. It had been him that started the whole mess in the first place; he ought to be the one who fixed it. But Dean – loyal, reckless, borderline-suicidal Dean – had reached out and snagged the back of Sam’s jacket as he fell. But Adam – Michael – whoever, hadn’t been quite so lucky. He’d fallen in.
Sam was about to do the same; he was going to tell Dean to let go, because if he just hauled his brother back to the surface, what would they’ve accomplished?
As it turns out, it didn’t matter all that much. The Cage would have its own back, one way or the other. Sam could still pinpoint the exact moment he’d completely regained control of his body. White, blinding light poured out of him, and was sucked into the abyss below them.
Dean tried to drag a freed Sam out of the Pit, he really did, but he was just too weak. His grip on the back of Sam’s jacket slowly started slipping. Sam thought that was it; despite Dean’s best efforts, Sam was going to be lost to the Cage; and its current occupant’s wrath.
It was no less than he deserved, after all.
Then another, stronger, hand seized Sam, and flung him back into the open air. Three large bodies toppled over each-other, flailed, then landed messily by the side of the Pit. As they watched, stunned, the hole closed; like a giant gash being pulled shut by an invisible needle and thread. After maybe a minute, there was nothing to suggest what had just happened other than the three men still lying in a crumpled heap on the ground, in a random cemetery in Kansas.
Sam stared at Dean. Dean stared at Cas. Cas stared at the sky, on his back, looking just as shocked and confused as they all felt. It was Dean who, at long last, broke the silence.
“Did we just…”
Sam looked at Cas for answers. Cas finally broke his gaze away from the sky, and studied the two brothers. Just when Sam thought he wasn’t going to say anything, he started to laugh.
Not the amused, if slightly confused grunts they’d heard from him before, but honest, gut-wrenching hysterics.
The laughter spread as if it were contagious. Despite the demon-blood hangover he could feel coming on, and the fact that his entire body felt like a dried-out husk, Sam laughed till his abdomen went into cramp. Dean wasn’t too far behind, even though he must’ve had at least a few broken and cracked ribs from earlier.
After that… well, what was there to do? Castiel healed Bobby, and made sure he knew they were all as fine as could be expected. Cas then healed them both, despite his own weakness; and when asked, he couldn’t tell them how or why he’d been resurrected. It had simply… happened.
He’d also shipped out pretty quickly. He had to check on Heaven; assuming he wouldn’t be executed for treason the moment he stepped foot inside the Pearly Gates. He needed to find out how many of his brethren still lived, a mission that neither Dean nor Sam could oppose.
Sam and Dean decided to take a similar approach. Using Bobby as a go-between, they checked out every hunter they knew of, and passed the word around. ‘The apocalypse is over’.
The next month was just as busy as the previous one had been. The world’s emergency forces needed lying to, the conspiracy theorists needed putting down, and the planet needed rebuilding. However, come the end of the month, Dean decided enough was enough.
“Dude, we just saved the world. Would it really kill us to take a vacation?”
And so, they did. They used all the money they’d saved up, stolen, or hassled – a good ten thousand dollars – and found a nice little cabin in the woods of Minnesota where they could ‘lay low’ for a while.
For the first three days, they did nothing. Absolutely nothing. They lay on lounging chairs, they sipped fruity alcoholic drinks with little umbrellas in them, and they even managed to have a heart-to-heart about everything that had happened.
Which is where Sam found himself now. One week into their vacation, he sat outside the two-room cabin on one of the lounging chairs, sipping a coffee, with sunglasses on in preparation for a hot day that hadn’t even begun yet. The sun was just rising above the horizon, painting the few clouds in the sky a soft, cotton-candy pink.
The water of the lake that stretched out to his left was steely, and the birds chirped happily from the pine trees on his right. The smell of pine and gas fumes from the nearby road permeated the air; and Sam breathed it in greedily. God, it was good to be alive.
He took the time, as he did every morning, to just breathe deeply and remember. Remember those who they’d lost, and those who they’d saved. Most of the world fell into the last category, but there were names in the first he swore to himself he’d never forget.
Mom. Dad. Jess. Jo. Ellen. Ash. Even Gabriel earned himself a spot in Sam’s daily angst-session.
This also happened to be where Dean found him when he finally crawled out of bed. The novelty of being able to sit here and bitch at Dean each morning wasn’t lost on him; if not for his older brother’s loyalty, God knew the shape he’d be in right now.
“Saved you a banana sundae,” he said by way of greeting, and Dean immediately perked up. Even in his fragile, pre-coffee state, dean could still be trusted to respond to words like ‘food’, ‘gun’, and ‘boobs’.
Dean was, at heart, not a very complicated man.
He sat down on the chair next to Sam’s with a bone-deep sigh, and happily started eating his ice-cream breakfast.
“So, what are you doing up so early?” He asked around a mouthful of sundae.
“Oh, the usual,” Sam responded, taking another sip from his coffee.
“Uh-huh,” Was Dean’s articulate response.
For a long moment, they just sat there, enjoying the feeling of not being hunted. The sun had just touched the tips of the tall palm trees when Dean put his empty bowl down and turned Sam, face serious.
“I’m worried about Cas.”
Sam frowned. After he’d healed them, Cas had disappeared, and they hadn’t heard a peep from him since. He’d started to think something bad had happened; or that, maybe, Cas was just enjoying his new-found freedom. Maybe he didn’t even know something was up; angels were immortal, after all, and probably had a skewed sense of time compared to humans.
“What, you think something bad’s happened?” He asked, turning to his brother.
“I don’t know,” Dean said, “I just have this feeling. Like, why hasn’t he visited? Where is he? We all kinda just assumed he’d be welcomed back in Heaven, but a lot of the angels were pretty gung-ho about judgement day. For all we know, they killed him a month-and-a-week ago, and just haven’t spread the word around.”
Sam took a moment to digest that, brow furrowed. Dean had a good point.
“Well, why don’t you just call?” he asked, “Cas has always come when you’ve called him.”
“That’s the thing, man,” Dean responded, “I have called. This whole past week, I’ve done nothing but call. He’s not answering.”
That got Sam to sit up straight.
“So, what do we do?” Sam asked, “How do we get a hold of him?”
Dean sat up as well. There was a bit of melted ice-cream smudged on his chin, which was at odds with how serious he looked.
“I could call Bobby,” he said, “I mean, the man’s gotta know something.”
Sam nodded, then sighed. It looked like their vacation was over.
“Alright,” he said, “But look man, after this, if it turns out to be nothing bad, you’ve gotta swear we can visit the Natural History Museum in DC. You know I’ve wanted to go there forever.”
That got Dean to smile, so Sam counted it as a personal victory.
And even if something was wrong with Cas, they’d all just finished stopping the apocalypse. How bad could it be?
…
Bad. It was very bad.
It took them less than a day to get everything ready. There was a town not two miles away from where they were staying, and Bobby had mercifully kept a summoning spell handy. Any ingredients they didn’t already have – dried myrtle, mountain ash, camellia petals, beeswax candles, and a dutiful priestess’s ‘extra’ rib – were easy enough to get a hold of.
They cleared out the main floor of their cabin, making sure it was empty enough to make room for an angel; they made sure all the blinds were closed, so that no peeping toms happened across a successful satanic ritual; and made sure they had their angel blades ready in case things got hairy.
Dean had finished drawing the summoning sigils onto the floor by the time Sam got back from the florists at around sunset.
“Dude, you won’t believe how hard I had to work to get proper camellias. It was li-,” he paused in the doorway, staring at his carefully spray-painting brother, “Uh, Dean? What am I looking at?”
Dean glanced up from his work only briefly.
“The art store was out of stock. As it is, I got the last can, and the second-to-last ruler. Let’s just hope Cas doesn’t mind us summoning him with hot-pink sigils.”
Sam took a moment to remind himself that the two of them, one mail-order angel, and an ornery, old, junkyard-owner had legitimately saved the world. If that wasn’t proof enough that miracles existed, then Sam was honestly lost.
The sky outside was dark with thick, grey clouds. There was only a slip of horizon visible over the treetops, and the setting sun seemed to set the slip of visible sky ablaze with harsh reds and oranges. A strong, surprisingly chilly wind blew the pine trees to-and-fro. The air smelt of ozone, pine, and something burning far away.
As Sam watched through the open doorway, the glaring setting sun was swallowed by the maelstrom of clouds above them.
“What do you think?” Dean asked, following Sam’s gaze, “Some kind of typhoon, or hurricane?”
“No,” Sam said, “No alarms have been sounded, and in any case, those come over from the sea. This is from inland.”
Dean frowned. Hoping the weather wasn’t an omen of any kind, he left Sam to his brooding, and finished preparing the ritual.
Sam shivered in the wind, lazily watching small leaves, food wrappers, and pieces of paper get blown out to the lake. Somewhere in the distance, thunder boomed. Unnerved, Sam backed into the cabin, closed and locked the door, then turned to see if Dean needed any help.
A large ring, not unlike your ordinary devil’s trap, was painted onto the floor. It was filled with a myriad of summoning symbols, most in Enochian, and was ringed by seven beeswax candles.
The candles were supposed to represent a ring of holy fire, which could cage an angel for a time. A real line of holy oil had been carefully smeared around the circle; just in case.
A blessed pewter bowl sat at the base of the ring, where an eighth candle would’ve stood. In it, Dean had already crushed up the ingredients and set a stick of dried-myrtle incense in the middle.
Mountain ash had been sprinkled over the outside of the circle, and around where Sam would sit. This was to ward off impurities and evil. Camellia petals were covering the base of the bowl; they were the flowers of devotion, and they were supposed to remind the angel that they were devoted to mankind; whether they wanted to be or not.
The priestess’s rib; that had also been crushed and set in the bowl. That was a symbol of creation, for obvious reasons. Eve was made from Adam’s rib; similarly, the angel would be pulled into physical form before them using it.
Sam stepped forward, pulling an A5 notepad and small, black pen from his breast pocket. It stood out in the room full of ancient things, but it was arguably the most important part of the ritual. Scribbled onto the first page was the spell Sam would have to chant to summon Cas. It was written down both literally and phonetically, so there could be no excuse for getting it wrong.
Sharing a nod with Dean, Sam moved forward and sat before the bowl. Using a match, he lit all the candles, barely managing to reach the farthest one, but he managed. Then he lit the incense, and set the notepad on his lap as a cheat-sheet. Once certain that all was right, Sam began to chant.
It was only a few, barely-pronounceable lines, but Sam made sure he said it all slowly and clearly, repeating it twice over, for luck. Thunder sounded again, this time closer, and Dean glanced at the roof warily.
Sam looked around. The wind outside was blowing harder, shaking the trees vigorously. Through the blinds, he could see a shaft of lightning strike the ground, temporarily lighting up the world. Only a second later, thunder practically shook the cabin.
The incense was already more than half gone, and Cas hadn’t appeared yet. Sam was certain they’d followed Bobby’s directions to the letter; so, what was going wrong?
It was bad decorum, and bad luck, to interrupt a ritual, but neither of those things had stopped Dean before.
“Uh, Sammy? You sure you got the spell right?”
Barely withholding an eye-roll, Sam answered, “Yes, Dean, I’m sure. Now shush.”
Dean muttered something sarcastically under his breath, but Sam chose to ignore him.
Turning his attention back to the ritual, Sam tentatively reached for the pool of power that had existed in the back of his mind. He hadn’t even sought out his gift since the end of the apocalypse – he’d been too scared – but now, he reached for it. It was pitifully small, barely anything, but it was there. Grasping it firmly, he tried to focus his power solely on the spell.
‘Come on, Cas. Where the hell are you?’
Thunder cracked right outside their window, with all the force of a jet engine, but Sam didn’t flinch. The windows shattered, spraying fine pieces of glass everywhere. The wind roared into the small cabin, pinning Dean to the far wall. The ingredients in the bowl blew away, swirling in what could almost have been an indoor dust-devil.
Sam’s hair blew in every direction, but his face and body remained perfectly still. The small pool of energy he had was starting to throb, like a second heartbeat, and his nose had started to bleed.
“Sam?! Sammy!” Dean yelled, but the sound never reached his brother’s ears. The wind was too loud, despite the fact that his brother sat not feet away.
Sam’s nosebleed picked up the pace. The candles went from a flickering orange to foot-tall purple licks of flame. It was like the wind was feeding it, rather than killing it.
Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the storm was gone.
The air stilled; the candles went out; the lightning and thunder vanished; and finally, the incense burnt away.
Sam and Dean were left in darkness eased only by the far-off lightning-strikes outside. Sam swayed for a moment, before toppling to the right. Dean shot forward like a bullet, and caught Sam just before his head hit the ground.
“Sam? Sammy? Come on, talk to me…”
Sam groaned, and tried to roll onto his back. Dean helped him, setting his body down gently. He was feverish, his face flushed and sweaty, his body practically on fire. Blood from his nose trailed into his mouth, staining his teeth. The sweat on his body made his hair stick to his face, and his lips moved as it he was speaking, but no sound came out.
A loud ‘tha-thump!’ came from the roof, and Dean paused. What now? he thought, looking up. He could see nothing different; but then again, he hadn’t expected to.
“A’right, Sammy,” he said softly, “I’m just gonna check something out. Stay here, and…”
Glancing at Sam’s uncomprehending face, he sighed.
“Just don’t die.”
Dean grabbed his nine-millimeter, Ruby’s knife, a flashlight, and an angel blade, before trekking outside. The sky was still heavy with clouds, and a light drizzle wet Dean’s skin and clothes. Looking up, he could see nothing on the roof. Frowning to himself, he started working his way around the cabin, looking for what had caused the noise.
He found it lying splayed behind the back of their vacation home. Bare-chested, bloody, and bruised, Cas was passed out on top of a small pile of firewood they kept handy for emergencies. His chest was covered in a plethora of cuts, all thin and precise. His face was barely recognizable, and it looked as if both of his legs were broken.
For a second, Dean was too stunned to move. Then, his brotherly instincts kicked in, and he rushed forward.
“Son of a bitch! Cas?!” he asked frantically, kneeling next to the angel. He put the butt of his flashlight in his mouth, and checked Cas’s pulse. It was weak, but there.
He decided to risk agitating Cas’s injuries to carry him inside. It was better he was in there, getting looked after, than out here, catching his death. Moving as slowly and gently as he could, he lifted Cas into his arms and carried him back inside. (Some out there would call this a ‘bridal carry’. Dean called it ‘Not hauling around the guy who died for him twice like a sack of potatoes’).
Sam was still prone on the floor, but he looked a little more coherent. He reacted when Dean slammed the door behind him with his foot, but only to glower. A few droplets of blood had successfully stained his T-shirt.
Dean paused to flick the light on with the flashlight still in his mouth, then rushed to where he’d hastily shoved the couch aside earlier, and softly set Cas down on it. While tucking a pillow under the angel’s head, he realized Cas was mouthing something almost too faint for Dean to hear.
Leaning in to listen, he managed to catch a few words:
“…Wards…Ra…Find…” The meaning was lost on Dean, but in the area of ‘wards’ he couldn’t agree more. Now that he could see Cas’s wounds clearly, he recognized them. They were slashes from an angel blade.
“Dean?” Sam’s soft, pained voice came from the floor, “What happened?”
Dean left Cas long enough to get Sam a tissue, a glass of water, and some Tylenol.
“Buck up, Sammy,” Dean said, voice sounding ten years older than he was, “We’re back in business.”