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“Sons a’ bitches just won’t quit, will they?!” Dean snarls under his breath. He’s twisting the long-handled lighter in nervous fingers that won’t stop moving, shifting bright, hectic eyes toward the thin beam of light coming from under the crack in the doorway.
“Dean, shhh,” Sam hisses. He knows Dean is anxious and afraid like hell for Castiel. In truth, Sam’s a little afraid for him, too. Castiel is a powerful being, there’s no doubt about that, but he can’t stand against an archangel and he knows it.
“Gabe better know what he’s doing, Sammy,” Dean grumbles, listening to the steady rise and fall of some obscure Enochian chant drift toward them from the other room. “And he better take care of Cas. Goddamn archangels…”
Sam smirks slightly, remembering that out of the two beings next door, Gabe’s the big brother; the one to protect, to be responsible.
Imagining Gabriel being responsible sort of wipes the smirk off Sam’s face, so he concentrates on listening to the Enochian instead.
“What’s this mother’s name anyway?” Dean asks. Sam tries not to sigh too audibly. As much as Dean has berated him in the past for wanting to talk when he’s upset, he sort of deserves to sigh, he thinks; sigh and smack Dean upside the head. Instead, he tries to be understanding.
“Barachiel,” he mumbles, hoping Dean will shut up once the angel arrives so that the sigils carved on their ribs can do their work. “It wants us both dead, too, Dean, and it sounds like they’re almost done. We gotta be quiet so we can hear the signal.”
Dean falls silent; a moment later, so do the two angels in the next room. Dean straightens out the long barrel of the lighter and moves into a crouch just in front of the doorway, ready to stick it through the crack and light the holy oil when he hears the signal.
Sam will wonder later why they ever thought this plan would work.
Barachiel arrives with a herald of thunder so deafening that it drives Sam and Dean first to their knees and then to their bellies, their hands clapped tightly over their ears. Their eyes are slitted against the hurricane that seems to have beset the little house, but Sam can see clearly enough to notice the door being sucked off its hinges. It flies into the next room, narrowly missing Castiel, who lies semiconscious in a corner of the room. Blood trickles from the corner of one of his half-lidded eyes, but he’s staring straight at Dean, shaking his head minutely back and forth.
Sam glances toward Dean; Dean mouths the words Don’t move.
A moment later the storm dies down, and a woman that should have been beautiful is standing in the center of the room. Her hair is long, a shade of blonde so pale and cold that it could have been white. Her eyes are a bright blue, the color of electricity as it crackles out of a socket, but they are filled with a dead fury that sends chills up Sam’s spine.
What frightens him more is the fact that she’s staring directly at Gabriel.
“Brother,” she mutters, and her voice is as dead as her eyes. “Baby brother. You should never have called.”
“What can I say?” Gabriel shrugs his shoulders, eternal half-smirk showing no signs of sliding off his face. “I missed you, sister dear. Though I can see you haven’t quite grown out of the drama queen stage over the eons. Was it really necessary to throw Cas around like that? He’s your baby brother too ya know.”
“He’s a traitor,” says Barachiel, her voice as flat as Gabriel’s is upbeat. “He’s given himself to a human.”
“Oh, has he?” Gabriel cocks an eyebrow, his face breaking out into a sunny grin that simultaneously makes Sam want to slap him and hug him. “I always thought there was something there Cas wasn’t telling me. Anyway, Barachiel, what d’you say we get down to business? Much as I’ve missed your penchant for theatrics, this wasn’t exactly a social call.”
The grin turns dangerous, and Sam actually shrinks back a little as he glimpses the raw power that burns inside Gabriel’s tiny human vessel.
“I’d say not,” Barachiel mumbles. “You’ve called me here to kill me, haven’t you, Gabriel?”
“Hate it for ya,” Gabriel responds, and the shining silver point of his archangel’s blade slips from his shirtsleeve. With a quick little movement, the short sword is gleaming in his hand. “But I’ll kill you from the front, yeah? You’re my still my sister. I wouldn’t stab you in the back.”
“Gabriel,” Barachiel’s red lips twist into a cruel smile. “You already have. You’ve given yourself to a human, too, baby brother…the same as Castiel. And that makes you no more to me than him.”
She jerks a hand over her shoulder; Castiel twists up in sudden agony, and before Sam can reach out a hand Dean is gone, sprinting across the room to the angel. Sam sees Barachiel’s dead eyes fall on him and she reaches out a hand, but then Gabriel is there, sweeping with his sword—
And suddenly everything is hellish (or is it heavenly?) light and the deafening cling of some otherworldly metal as Gabriel and Barachiel begin to fight. Lightning flashes outside the windows, sparks rain down from the light fixtures, Castiel is out cold and Dean is screaming obscenities, and Sam is just watching, his eyes fixed on Gabriel as if it’s the first time he’s ever seen him.
It sort of is, he thinks, watching Gabriel parry and strike, all traces of amusement gone from his face. Its been replaced instead by something eerily reminiscent of Barachiel’s own monotonous anger, but Gabriel’s face still retains something warm and good that is utterly absent from Barachiel. He’s seeing Gabriel as Gabriel was in the beginning, as he was for centuries and eons before Sam ever even knew him; he’s seeing Gabriel, the archangel.
And he’s fighting for me, Sam realizes suddenly, He’s fighting for us.
The thought roots him momentarily to the spot; then he sees Gabriel’s blade go flying as Barachiel’s wrenches it from her little brother’s grip.
“First you,” Barachiel mumbles, drawing back with the blade, “First you, then Castiel, then those troublesome Winchesters.”
Sam and Dean scream No! at the same time, and as Sam moves—he doesn’t think about it, doesn’t even pause to consider it—he can hear Gabriel screaming No! as well. Can see him screaming, because Gabriel’s face is below his now, struck with astonishment and confusion and so much pain—
Then time begins to skip, jumping from point to point like a scratched CD that won’t stop playing.
Gabriel’s face is gone, and Sam is on his knees, and he remembers something like this, doesn’t he, but it was Dean then, and there was pain then, and now there’s no pain and there’s only blood. It’s flooding through his fingers—
Light is blinding him, someone is screaming, screaming so loudly and clearly and purely that Sam can feel his eardrums begin to vibrate in protest, and he tries to close his eyes or bring up his hands to cover his ears but he can’t, his body isn’t listening anymore, then someone with hands like warm light slip his eyelids shut and clutch his ears closed—
Dean is screaming, screeching, sobbing, and Sam opens his eyes and tries to smile, but instead of Dean above him he sees Gabriel, but Gabriel’s eyes are closed tightly and Gabriel’s hands are bright and golden as he presses them against the spreading bloodstain between Sam’s ribs. They’re so warm, so very warm, and Sam is so very sleepy, but Dean is screaming “Sammy!” again and Castiel is holding him back with arms locked across his chest—
He’s sitting up now, and he doesn’t like it; when he opens his eyes the room swims and spins. Even Dean’s harsh and hectic muttering sounds loopy to Sam, as if it’s coming from alternating distances. The only thing holding steady is Gabriel’s face in front of him, Gabriel who is and isn’t an angel, who was fighting before but now his forehead is touching Sam’s and his warm, golden hands are pressed against Sam’s cold skin. He can feel a similar pair of hands on his back, weaker but still warm, and then he hears Gabe mumble, “Cas, more, I know you’re hurt but more, come on…” And the heat against his back doubles—
He wakes up in his bed at the motel. Dean is asleep in the bed next to him, although passed out might be a more appropriate term; he’s lying down sideways across the foot of the bed on his stomach, with the toes of his boots still touching the floor on the other side of the bed. Castiel is lying spread eagled with his head on the small of Dean’s back, scuffed shoes sitting where the pillows should have been. He’s asleep too.
Sam wonders where the pillows are, and then realizes he’s lying amongst them. He tries to sit up, but when his middle doubles up, a bolt of searing pain shoots through him. It’s the kind he associates with burns.
When he lifts his loose t-shirt to peer at his stomach, he sees handprints. Two of them, both looking remarkably similar to the one Dean sports on his upper arm.
“Sorry about that, kiddo,” says a voice, and when Sam looks up, he sees Gabriel leaning in a corner. He’s smiling, but he looks exhausted.
“You…you did this?” Sam drops his shirt. “Why?”
“Do you not remember making the exceptionally gallant but incredibly idiotic gesture of jumping in front of Barachiel’s angel blade?” Gabriel asks, settling down on the edge of the bed next to Sam. “I’m hurt, Sam, really. Makes me think you didn’t mean it.”
“Bara…oh. Oh!” It comes back to Sam quickly, the memories as jagged and uneven as the reality had been. “I do remember, sorry. It’s just…shouldn’t I be dead?”
“Technically yes,” Gabriel says. “Lucky for you, you have me.” He smiles again, but it’s still a little pale and weak.
“You saved me,” Sam mumbles, “You were trying to save us the whole time, but you…you must have brought me back from the edge of death, Gabe.”
“Not to brag, but yeah, I did,” Gabriel says. “Castiel helped, though. As much as he could and as long as he could, but you don’t have his hands on your back I’m pretty sure. He kept it up long enough to get the skin of your back together, but Barachiel did a number on him. I had to knit up your front and your lungs and everything else myself.”
“How…?”
Gabriel only smiles. “Archangel, kiddo. I can work some miracles when I want.”
“Yeah, and what was the cost of this miracle, exactly?” asks Sam. “You look like hell, Gabe.”
“Handsome hell, I hope,” the archangel smirks at him. “Yeah, I drained myself a bit. So what? Barachiel’s crazy ass is dead, and you’re safe…well, for a little while anyway. Why is it that something always wants to kill you guys? And, one more question...” The archangel's tired eyes harden slightly. "Why the blue fuck did you do that, Sam?"
Sam looks down at his lap for a moment, trying to remember his state of mind, trying to recall what had propelled him forward, between an angel blade and the angel it was meant for.
"I..." he pauses for a moment, then runs his hand through his long hair and sighs. "I had to, Gabe. I...I didn't even think about it. You were fighting like hell, for me...for us, and you were so...good. It was in your face, like...you looked like her, you'd gone all Soldier of God on us but you were like the soldier of the God I thought existed. The one that you know, loves and cares about us." Sam swallows hard, hoping he isn't offending Gabriel, not sure if anything could offend Gabriel. He doesn't look up as he adds, “Listen…Gabe…thank you. I mean…well. Not just for saving my life, but, uh…for fighting. For me. Us.”
Gabriel opens his mouth, as if he were planning on making a crack, but he shuts it again abruptly. He glances down at his hands for a moment, then up at Sam through his blond lashes. “Anytime, Sam. I should really be the one thanking you, I guess. It’s good…having something to fight for again. Someone.”
Sam tries to think of something to say to that and can’t. Instead, he scoots to one side of the bed and holds up the covers.
“I know angels don’t need sleep, exactly, but uh…” Sam shrugs, feeling heat creep across his cheeks. “You still look like hell.”
For a moment, Gabe actually looks surprised. Then he grins again, looking something like his old self. “Why Samuel. What makes you think I’m the kind of guy who will save your life just to hop into bed with you? Your thanks are accepted, but I like to think I’m a little more chivalrous than that.”
“Just get in, idiot,” Sam laughs. “You’re too tired to accept my ‘thanks’ anyway.”
“Yeah, for now,” Gabe crawls in beside Sam. “What are you gonna do when I’m not so tired?”
Sam rolls his eyes as Gabriel settles down amongst the nest of pillows, tucking his arm beneath the angel’s shoulders. He’s so freaking tiny, Sam thinks, then grins as he turns over and envelopes Gabriel’s smaller body in his long arms and legs.
“Oh hell, I’m being attacked by a Sasquatch,” Gabe mutters, wriggling around to get comfortable in Sam’s heavy embrace. “Seriously, kiddo, you’re not normal.” He yawns, sinking his head back against one of Sam’s biceps. “And you never answered me—what are you gonna do when I’m not so tired?”
Sam reads the question in the tilt of Gabriel’s eyebrows. What does this mean?
Sam hardly pauses to think before he says, “Make you tired again.”
To that, Gabriel has no comeback. He only smiles as he settles himself more closely against Sam, careful not to disturb the scarlike impressions on his stomach.
Just before they both drift off, Sam asks, “D’you think we should throw Dean and Cas a pillow?”
Gabriel opens one eye and peers over Sam’s shoulder at his brother and the hunter. Neither show any signs of moving any time soon. He closes his eye and buries his face in Sam’s shoulder again.
“Let’s not disturb them.”
They fall asleep.