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Sam couldn’t stop the shaking. Jack had passed out again, after nearly coughing up a lung. Nothing they had tried worked, nothing helped for more than a few hours. The only thing that had saved Sam, when it was him, was shoving an angel inside. There was no way he was subjecting Jack to that.
There was hope, at least. They had a lead on Nick, who might have traces of Jack’s grace, and almost certainly had remnants of Lucifer’s. If they could extract the grace to give to Jack, that might help. Sam couldn’t go try to get him, if Nick saw Sam he would run like hell, but there were hunters on the job. Dean was off on another possible lead, hunting down Michael, but he’d told Sam and Cas to stay with Jack.
Where Cas was, Sam didn’t know at the moment. He’d left, saying he needed to do something, and hadn’t come back yet. He was used to that from Dean, though. Dean sucked at the whole sitting bedside and hoping someone woke up, unless it was Sam. Even when it was Sam, sometimes. Sam was used to being the one who got to do this part. It sucked, it wasn’t fun, but it was worth it.
Castiel came back, carrying a tray. “I know you’re not Dean, but I don’t know what to bake for you,” he apologized as he set the tray in front of Sam. “Somehow, salad didn’t seem appropriate as comfort food.”
“Heh. Pie’s fine.” The pie smelled amazing, and Sam was starving. Besides, pie was comforting for him, too. He picked up the knife and cut the pie. It got stuck on something hard, and Sam frowned at it. “What kind of pie is this?”
Castiel didn’t even blink. “Chess pie.”
A horrible suspicion crept into Sam’s brain. He picked up a spoon and dug around the hard object, biting his lip when he dug out the quartz bishop to keep from laughing. Chess pie. “Dean would kill you for this, you know.”
“I know.” Castiel sat beside Sam and wrapped an arm around him. “Unless he believed me when I did the wide-eyed confused stare and asked what else a chess pie was supposed to be. I get away with that far too easily.”
“I can’t believe you went this far for a bad joke.” Sam took a spoonful of pie and brought it to his mouth, hesitating when something occurred to him. “Is this gonna be safe to eat?”
“Yes. The white pieces are quartz, the black pieces are obsidian, I cleaned them thoroughly before putting them into the pie. Nothing harmful went into this pie, I assure you.” Castiel picked up the bishop and cleaned it off. “When Jack is better, we should teach him to play. I suspect he’d enjoy it.”
Sam swallowed the bite of pie he had in his mouth. It was delicious, although that could just be the hunger and the love talking. “You play chess?”
“Of course. Anna used it to test anyone she thought might be a good commander, and it spread throughout Heaven.” Castiel set the bishop back down on the tray. “I enjoyed the game. Some of the others refused to have much to do with it, not thinking a human game had much bearing on angelic strategy. Those of us who were not so short-sighted managed to survive the Apocalypse and the civil wars that followed at a much higher rate.”
Sam would never admit to finishing the entire pie, and if he did he’d say it was to get the pieces out so he and Castiel could play chess, but the pie was gone and he and Cas were well into their second game when Dean came in. “Hey guys. We got Nick. Uh… we sort of got Nick.”
Sam looked up from the game. “What do you mean sort of?”
“I mean, they called me in because I had the archangel-capturing gear.” Dean paused to let that sink in. “We’ve got Lucifer.”
“How? Archangel blade, wielded by an archangel, he should be dead!” Sam instinctively reached for Jack. “What are we doing?”
Dean held up Michael’s archangel blade. “Neither of us are archangels, we can’t kill him, but we can cut out the grace. Give that to Jack, hope it helps. Then you ram this through his heart because turns out Nick’s become a serial killer so both of them deserve ganking.”
Sam refused to kill Nick or Lucifer until they’d seen what happened when Jack took in the grace. Castiel did the honors of cutting it out, but gave the vial to Sam to pour into Jack’s mouth. Almost immediately, Jack looked better, and his eyes flew open. He met Sam’s eyes. “Dad.” He turned to look for Castiel. “Father.” He looked around again. “Where’s Dean?”
“Guarding our prisoner,” Sam said. “You… how do you feel?”
“Strong. Like myself.” Jack got out of the bed, eyes glowing. “All the way back.” He sat back down on the edge of the bed, eyes back to normal, looking a little lost as he looked up at Sam. “But something feels wrong. Corrupted.”
“That’s probably Lucifer’s grace,” Sam said. He crouched in front of Jack, reaching out to take his face in his hands. “You’re stronger than that corruption, Jack. We’ve seen who you are, and you’re a good person. You can handle this.”
“I know. I have you and Cas and Dean to help me.” Jack nodded and got up. “Does that mean your prisoner is Lucifer? He’s alive?”
“Yes. Do you want to see him?”
“No, but I need to. I need him to know that he didn’t win, that I’m going to be there to witness him go down again. The four of us will be there together, me and my real dads and Dean.” Jack headed out, Sam and Castiel right behind him.
Sam didn’t respond to Lucifer’s taunts. He didn’t even listen. He just took the archangel blade Dean held out to him and ran it through Lucifer. He turned toward Dean, watching him carefully for any sign of Michael. Nothing happened. Jack and Castiel came over to him with hugs. "Hopefully, this time, it's really over," Jack said.