The night is calling
I have to go
The wolf is hungry
He runs the show

Sam tumbles forward in a world without colours. He falls to his knees, and his fingers close on a bed of pine needles which crumble in his grip.

Slowly, he raises his head.

There is a grey forest around him. Tall trees, cloudy skies. That kind of air you only get very high up in the mountains, that makes you believe you can be anything.

“Crap,” he mutters, and there is no echo to his voice, because this is what Purgatory is like.

It’s there and not there at the same time; an unnerving, yet empowering feeling Sam has never forgotten. It’s a wonder Dean spent so long down here and remained sane. Even though, well, ‘sane’ is more of a general idea than an actual dictionary entry by this point.

Sam gets to his knees and turns around. The forest extends around him, as far as he can see, diverse enough to look like a real forest, and yet with that vague shimmering around the edges that tells Sam, plain as day, that the thing is not real. Not natural.

Still, it can hardly be worse than Hell, can it? Hell means Crowley, and whatever side he’s on, he’s not on theirs. Sam is sure of it, always has been. Dean sort of changed his mind after the Trials, after Sam had told him about Crowley breaking down, crying and shouting - he regretted telling Dean, after, because he’d probably told it wrong, given the impression Crowley could - care, or change, or something. But demons can’t change, and can’t care. Sam had learned his lesson with Ruby. He’s not going to be fooled again. So, well, no Crowley here, which is great. Also, there’s actually a door somewhere in this forest. A way out.

As Sam stands up and takes a step forward, someone falls on him.

He reacts instinctively, turning on himself as he falls to the ground, his hand going to his belt before he remembers he’s not carrying any weapons, and he’s about to headbutt his assailant (faster, stronger, but a lot lighter) when he realizes two facts in quick succession, and then he’s too stunned to move, because, one, the person is laughing and saying his name, over and over, and, two, this is Madison.

Sam remains frozen where he is, staring up at Madison’s face - her huge brown eyes (the first thing he noticed about her, always had a soft spot for kind eyes), her wide smile (he remembers when he saw her smile for the first time, that dimple appearing and disappearing at the corner of her mouth), her dark hair, now dishevelled and dirty, framing her beautiful, pixie face (how she would push it behind her right ear, a little, impatient movement) - and then she lowers herself down and she kisses him, and she’s still laughing, so it’s a bit messy and completely sweet.

And for a second, Sam kisses her back. How could he not? His body reacts like it’s been jolted with electrical current - soft lips on his, and the weight of a woman on top of him, how long has it been? Sam has spent the last year focused exclusively on Dean, on saving his brother, and, anyway, this is exactly how he likes it, this is why he’s not one to pick up a random girl in a bar, because this is what is important, a woman laughing in his mouth, someone who’s so happy to see him she can’t stop touching him (her hands are moving now, Sam can feel Madison’s fingers on his face, his hair, can feel them moving downward, to his shoulders, to his chest, and then coming back up in stunned, joyful disbelief, and again they trace his cheekbones, the corners of his mouth, as if Madison wants to make sure he’s really, actually here, and not a figment of her imagination), because Sam is starved for touch, always was - his dad was never the hugging type, and, God, Sam is not sure he would have wanted him to be, not with his military bullshit and his disappearing acts, and Dean - Dean is affectionate only when things are really, really bad. He’d done his best when they were kids, but, really, once Sam had been ten or so, physical contact between them had basically been limited to checking for injuries. Sam had tried to keep hugging Dean, but Dean wouldn’t have it. He would always start with his stupid banter (the whole Samantha thing, Sam remembers it well, began when he was thirteen - he’d hugged Dean a bit too long after his brother had been nearly killed by a ghoul, and Dean had teased him about it for weeks) and push him away. Unless it was a matter of life and death, which, well.

And Madison knows him; in a way, she knows more about him than Amelia, or even Jess, ever did. She knows what his life is like, she has been close to this ugly thing inside him, this oily shadow which can’t decide if it likes the job or not; if it likes killing and living on the edge or not. When Dean had told him about the Djinn’s enchantment (very late, in a very vague way, and basically under duress), Sam’s first reaction had been an immediate sense of nausea deep in his stomach. The expensive car, the woman with a diamond ring. A respectable life.

(Also, his brother a petty criminal, estranged from his family -)

No.

But Madison knows. Madison has seen him at his worst - he’s shot her in the head, God forgive him - and she still liked him. Still likes him, apparently.

“Hey,” Sam says, disentangling himself gently and smiling up at her.

“I can’t believe you found me,” she says.

Sam just keeps smiling as he thinks what to tell her about it all - why he’s here, and what’s going on. Just as he decides on full honesty, Madison speaks again.

“So, what happened to Kendall?”

“Er...Kendall?”

“Kendall was going to marry Zach, remember? Did she go through with it?”

She is as excited as a little girl, but her eyes are alive with mischief. Sam lets his head fall back on the forest floor and start laughing.

“This is the first question you have?” he says, choking a little, trying to think about anything else but Madison’s body, bouncing lightly on top of him as he laughs.

When it seems inevitable he will completely and utterly disgrace himself, he puts his hands on her hips and lifts her off him, managing to sit up in the process.

“Seriously, you could have asked me anything. You were down here for -” he starts, and the words die on his lips as he takes in her expression.

“For?” she asks, quietly.

Full honesty it is, then.

“Eight years,” he says, looking away.

Madison gets to her feet, takes a step back, stumbles.

“It’s not possible,” she mutters. “I got here yesterday, I -”

She looks at him, suddenly furious.

“Why did you even kiss me back?”

If Sam knows one thing, it’s that this is not how this place works. It is all about punishment and redemption, after all (‘God is one sick bastard,’ as Dean would say) - it makes no sense that Madison would lose her sense of time - being stuck here, day after day, is the whole point. Also, well - after Purgatory, whenever Dean would get drunk (which tended to happen a lot less than before, but still), he would start on Cas, and I prayed to him every night, Every damn night, I thought he was dead, I spent months in the place, and he never bothered, and on Dean went, downing one glass after another while Sam was left looking askance at him and wishing he could do something, anything, to fix whatever was wrong between Dean and his personal angel; to make it up to Dean for never looking for his brother in the first place.

Because, well.

“There was no need to pretend,” adds Madison, and Sam pushes the problem to one side for the moment.

“I wasn’t pretending.”

“Eight years. Are you telling me you haven’t moved on? We knew each other for three days.”

“I - it never worked out. With anyone. Not that I tried all that hard,” he replies, getting to his feet. “You know what I do. My life is complicated.”

“Right. Okay. What are you even doing here?”

“Madison, I -”

God, sometimes he hates being this tall. He really wants to take a step forward, but he’s acutely aware of the impression he gives, towering on people like that. It was fine when he was a baby-faced bumbling idiot, but now -

“I wasn’t pretending. I am very happy to see you.”

“What are you doing here?”

Sam looks at her. She’s wearing a dress, a polka dot thing, a bit creased and dusty, and Sam knows, because they do know each other, they know each in that Tell me something else about you and then make love to me again you get when you’ve only just fallen for somebody and all you do is talk and have sex, Sam knows she doesn’t like skirts all that much. She used to wear them for work, but she’s kind of a jeans girl. This must be the dress her mother chose for her - the dress she was buried in.

Sam hadn’t been able to attend her funeral. He just hadn’t. Once they had been back in the car, Dean had hesitated before turning the engine on, had drummed his fingers, once, twice, on the wheel, before looking to his right, to the crumpled mess of tears and desperation that was his little brother, before offering to stick around. Just long enough to bring flowers, or something.

When he’d thought about it later, Sam had come to recognize this gesture as a truly selfless suggestion (Dean hated graves, saw no point in visiting them), had been grateful to his brother for it. It still hadn’t mattered, though. After Jess had died, Sam had been too angry and thirsty for revenge to mourn her properly. After shooting Madison, though, he’d finally understood why his brother drank as much as he did.

“They came to love each other,” he says, remaining very still, looking down at her. “Kendall and Zach. They had a kid together, I think. But then she was struck by lightning, or got caught inside a hurricane or something, and I stopped watching. Sorry. The whole thing was just -”

He sort of shrugs, trying to convey how preposterous the plot had turned, how bittersweet it had been to keep watching the thing without her, stolen moments in rundown motels, changing channels as soon as Dean walked back in the room. The sharp pang of regret every time he thought about that afternoon, which had blackened with sorrow and crumbled up like burning paper in his memory. Madison sitting down next to him, that smiling I saw that after he’d rolled his eyes at the credits.

Madison uncrosses her arms, makes a movement, as if to step closer to him; and Sam sighs and starts to tell her everything.

.:.

Sam had always fallen in love too hard, and too quickly. In this, he had something in common with his brother, even if Dean would have denied this fact to his dying breath. Was it a family thing? Bobby had not idea. Because, well, John - who the hell could even guess what went through John’s mind half the time? And Mary - Bobby had never met her. The Campbells, of course - them, he knew - everybody knew Samuel Campbell, or, rather, everybody knew of him, since he'd been a paranoid bastard and only hunted alone. He’d also known, in a sort of vague, keeping track of people way, that Mary existed, but nothing more. And apparently she’d never talked about hunting with John. Not that John had ever said anything - Bobby had never found out if he actually knew about Samuel Campbell’s side business or not, if he’d chosen to close his eyes to all of it - to his wife lying through her teeth for the short few years they had had together - but, still, Mary had made the sensible choice and John had loved her, as much as he’d been able to. He had not loved her enough, perhaps, to realize that all she’d wanted for her kids was a home and proper birthday parties, but then, men never do. Men prance around in their uniforms, they peacock their shiny cars up and down the street, and maybe they think women want them to, or maybe they simply like it that way. Bobby had had his fair share of uniforms and shiny cars, and he still couldn’t answer that.

And, after all, he knew what John had been through, he knew it better than most. After he’d - after Karen had died, Bobby had walked out of the house and had kept walking. He’d walked and hitched rides for days, sleeping rough and dreaming about fire and blood, until one day he’d found himself in Minneapolis, had seen the word Airport through the bus window; and the little drawing next to it, a plane taking off. Of course it hadn’t been a sign - there was no such thing as signs - but Bobby had found it easier to give in than to make his own decisions, so he’d gone to the bloody airport and he’d bought a ticket for the first departing flight. Back then, he was still traveling with a real passport, a dark blue thing with his actual name and face inside it. Robert Singer, the thing said, and there was so much more it didn’t say (killed his wife - killed his wife - killed his wife) that Bobby had thrown it into the Sumida River the moment he’d landed in Tokyo. And, again, not a sign, and definitely not destiny, but still, because of that bloody passport, and his need of a new one, and his stubborn unwillingness to ever be Robert Singer again, he’d found Hayao-san, and the man - almost a caricature of a 1950s gangster, half terrifying cruelty and half purest generosity and highest moral standards - had requested his American cars fixed in exchange for his service. And Bobby had fixed one car, then another, and then another, Hayao’s first, then his friends’ and customers’; he’d spent his days on his back, covered in grease, listening to exotic sounds as they linked themselves into words and sentences. In the end, it had been more than a hundred different cars, many legit, most not, and when Bobby had finally left he’d had two suitcases filled with katanas and tekkans and chigirikis and two dozens books on Japanese lore. He’d also had ten different passports, ten different names, and yet he’d been, in a way, Bobby Singer again. Completely himself, despite the pain and the scars; despite that one stab of regret and loss he would never be free of.

And this, now, is what this bloody woman is asking him to give up. She’s already taken his memories, and it doesn’t count, not for a second, that she was forced to give them back, that’s not how it works. No, what matters is that Bobby knows what she’s going to ask. He knows before she opened her mouth. He knew the moment she said, awe and hope perfectly clear on her honest face (a borrowed face: never presume to know what angels, or demons, for that matter, look like), that Raguel had come back. A miracle, she’d whispered. God’s first creation, and the last possibility to save the world.

“Raguel Spenta Mainyu, the Most Holy, the Spectre, God’s Companion, has returned to this earth,” Hannah repeats softly. “He has been imprisoned in the Darkness for a time beyond ken, and now He has been restored to us.”

Bobby doesn’t like this, not one bit. First of all, who even says ‘beyond ken’? And, secondly, Bobby knows perfectly well Raguel is an archangel, the most powerful of them all, and so far his experience with archangels has been pretty mixed. No, scratch that: his experience with archangels has been a Kill them all and good riddance nightmare.

Michael had tried to kill Dean for months, and let’s not mention he wanted to bring the Apocalypse down on them all, in a And God will recognize his own kind of way. Also, really, everyone is basically entitled to be mad a Michael, bloody forever, because he was the one to overreact over an apple. At this point, Bobby is not even sure God had still been around to give that particular order.

And Raphael, well, Raphael also wanted to kill Dean and to end the world. Shocker.

As for Gabriel - Bobby’s opinion on Gabriel is complicated. He couldn’t deny he had style, and that he'd helped them out just as much as he'd screwed them over, but, at the same time, being close to the archangel had always scared the shit out of him. He’d been sort of relieved when Gabriel had died, to be honest. Too much power is never a good thing.

“He has been flying over the deepest seas and the highest peaks in search of a vessel, but no living man can hope to contain Him,” Hannah goes on, and now she’s looking at Bobby rather pointedly, as though she can’t believe Bobby hasn’t cottoned up yet.

And Bobby wished he hadn’t. Because, well, he doesn’t trust angels, but, on the other hand, what choice does he have? If the world is ending, if there is no other way -

Becoming the vessel of something so powerful will burn him out of his own body, though. Or what’s left of it, anyway. Bobby thinks, fleetingly, painfully, about the people he loves and whose memories he will lose forever - Karen singing Fly Me to the Moon (horribly off-key) as she does the dishes; Sam preparing for his SATs, his head in a book, a pencil halfway to his mouth; and Dean watching him from the door, his hands black with grease, and such an intense, parent-like look on his face (worry, pride, mild exasperation, and a fierce, undying love) that Bobby had had to turn his eyes away.

“Why me?” he asks, before Hannah can say anything else.

“Nobody who is worthy of the question ever says anything but yes,” she replies, and that’s it, really.

Bobby turns his head, and Hannah seems to know what he’s looking for, what he needs, and all of a sudden there is a window in the white wall, and outside that window there’s his porch, his cars, now looking up at a dark, threatening sky.

“Yes,” says Bobby, and the clouds open, and a green-yellow light appears on the horizon.

It is majestic, and scary as fuck, and the most incredible thing Bobby has ever seen. It fills up the sky for a second, like an incredibly bright display of fireworks, and then it swirls and turns and heads straight for Bobby.

And Bobby breathes in and closes his eyes.

You better save the world, you fucker. And if you hurt my boys, I’ll -

There is a loud noise, and Bobby knows no more.

.:.

Sam has never fully realized how insane his life is until he finds himself summarizing it for Madison.

They start walking as he talks, end up sitting in the shadow of a gigantic, uprooted tree in the middle of a clearing. It’s weird, perhaps, that the place is so empty. Perhaps the creatures haunting it can smell Sam is dead. Or maybe he's just lucky. It’s bound to happen, sometimes, isn’it?

“So, the world is,” she says, and she doesn’t finish what is clearly a question.

“I don’t know.”

“And your brother -”

“We were in the car together, but I woke up alone. I must assume he’s still alive,” he says, and Madison reads him right (it’s not about grammar or logic, because, really, Dean will be alive even if Sam has to force him to, give his last drop of dead blood to make him so), closes her right hand over Sam’s, squeezes his fingers.

Without looking at her, he turns his hand to take hers and squeezes back.

“And all those women you met?” she says, trying for humor, trying for anything, Sam knows, that isn’t about death and apocalypses, plural.

“There was someone. For a while. She was a bit like you. Beautiful. Smart. A big heart.”

Madison smiles, pretends to ignore the compliment.

“What happened?”

“I walked away. She didn’t deserve to get dragged into my true life.”

“And I did?”

“You were a mess in the first place,” he says, smiling up at the dark sky.

She punches him, lightly.

“If you’re right,” she says, after a pause, “tomorrow morning I will have forgotten today. You make me remember, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Promise?”

“I do.”

Madison lets go of his hand and turns a bit under Sam’s arm, nesting against him, inching even closer, a small miracle in itself - they are already as close as two people can be. Her right arm tightens across his chest, and she nuzzles at his skin for a second before relaxing.

A few minutes later, she’s asleep.

.:.

When Dean wakes up, he is immediately, painfully aware that this is Day One. The first day of the rest of his life, such as it is.

Unwilling to get up, ever again, he remains where he is, in a bed which is not his own, in a room not meant for him, as he listens to the house waking up around him (two children squabbling, the shower turning on, Jody's quiet voice). He still feels as bruised and dog-tired as he’d felt crawling inside the sheets the night before, like he hasn't slept, not really, but it doesn't matter, because there is no such thing as night and day anymore. Also, he's already dead. It's possible he won't need to sleep ever again, not like he used to, and that he'll be perfectly fine. Though, knowing his luck, it looks more probable that he'll just end up spending his nights terrified and regretful and awake, and his days trudging about only half-conscious.

Yes, only reason he'd even forced himself to fall asleep was -

Well.

Dean doesn't know how long he remained on his knees next to that stupid box. Not long enough for anyone to notice anything amiss, so thank God for that. Or maybe people were just being polite. Who knows. Anyway, when Dean had finally picked himself up and gone back to the house, he'd found the kitchen empty except for Donna. She’d been fiddling with the radio, an open notebook in front of her.

"Just keeping track of the latest news," she'd said, a forced cheer in her voice. "Congress still exists, so that's good, right?"

Dean hadn't been able to say anything.

Donna had hesitated for a moment - she’d picked up a pen, then put it down again, but then something in Dean’s face had convinced her to start talking again.

"I've seen your fellow, glad he's in one piece. We've put them both in the attic – wide space, not fully furnished, I’m afraid – but, then again, they don't sleep, do they?"

She'd waited for Dean's nod before picking up her pen again and clearing her throat.

"Dean, I -"

She'd glanced up at him, then away.

"- I've been through a broken marriage myself. If you ever need to talk."

"Yes, thank you," Dean had said, curtly, before bidding her good night and walking up the stairs.

There had been no need to correct her. She meant well. And the misunderstanding didn’t bother Dean, not anymore. Many people had mistaken his and Cas' relationship over the years, and he'd never had the heart to blame them. Because what they had between them – of course it wasn't like that, Dean wasn't gay, for Chrissakes – but it was something deep, and you really had to be a part of it to – not that Dean understood it, not really, not any of it.

And now it hardly mattered, because it was broken.

Forever.

Dean turns on his side, picks up the second pillow from the floor and shoves it over his face, drowning out all sound.

He doesn't know what to do, what to think.

Because it is - there’s too much of it.

Because one part of it is astonished and grateful, as it always is, by Cas' liberal use of the word 'love'. Maybe it's an angel thing, or maybe every other goddamn person on the planet is able to come out and say it when they goddamn please (a mess of tight discomfort in his throat, so tight he can't breathe, and Sam looking at him from the other side of the car, his eyes fond and knowing – 'I love you too, Dean').

Whatever the case, it hardly matters, because that part of Dean, the part capable of rational thought, is buried in a blue and black place inside him; his whole being feels like it has been crushed and discarded.

Because it's also everything else, really. It's Cas saying he won't care anymore (Dean had never fully realized, because he's a goddamn fool and an idiot to boot, how much he was relying on Cas' firm and unshakable affection), but it's also – it's mostly, perhaps, the spit-out subtext.

That Dean isn't, in the end, worth it.

And Dean knows he shouldn't be surprised, because of course he's not worthy, he's never been worthy and he full well knows it – he's never understood why Cas sacrificed the lives of half his garrison to come and find him in Hell, why he'd decided Dean was worth dying for, again and again ('I'll hold them off – I'll hold them all off!'). He's been living, for the past five years, with the constant fear that Cas would suddenly wake up and see it too. And now he has, and it hurts far more than Dean ever imagined it would.

Because -

Because never mind what they did to him in Hell (a demon wearing his dad's face, slowly pushing a red-hot blade through his ribs, telling him, in a low, malicious voice, that he'd never loved him, because who could; that it would have been better if he’d never been born at all). No, never mind that. This is worse. This is real.

Dean has never fully understood his ‘deep bond’ with Cas, he’s never been able to put it into words, but he goddamn felt it, he felt inside his bones and blood, inside his very soul.

Doesn’t that count for anything?

And how is he supposed to save the world, to save Sam, when he doesn’t even want to save himself?