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Sam does not look into the lore.
Sometimes, the visions come like whispers, little more than a sense of ice-cold displacement to mark their arrival. This time, when he sees fingers clawing at openings in the immortal walls of the tiny cage, it's like he's there. He can smell the air down there, thin and ageless and charged with indescribable energy, cold in the way that nestles in your marrow before you realize it's there.
He hears whispers and laughter and the clink of chains, and his body aches as he remembers every single way they brought him low. When centuries turn to millennia, even the most innovative of God's creations start running out of options and have to remix their old games.
Cas took what he could of the damage. He didn't take the memories.
The human mind, of course, isn't made to hold thousands of years' worth of remembrance, and his mind has done a good job of building its own walls.
With these visions, though, Sam sometimes thinks he's going crazy. It's too much like when his wall first broke. The visions come sometimes with pain and sometimes with nothing but a faint ringing in his hear: he blinks and he's in the Cage again. He'd welcome the pain, anything to mark the transition.
The visions fade for a moment, but the chill of the lowest and most isolated level of hell, the part they never bothered renovating, still makes him shake. Breath freezes in his chest. The visions linger like a presence behind him (the old, familiar presence). Sam dares to turn and look behind out of the corner of his eye.
No one's there.
The second wave comes upon him with vertigo and pain. His head throbs and the world tips on its side. Sam flails out with both hands, seeking a handhold. He recoils when he meets only agony.
For a split second, he has the pleasure of gravity and the warmth of his own blood, but then he's back. A flicker of a second finds him in the Cage, flames and light and the lazy peel of flesh from bone. Who wants to hurry when they have all the time in the world? Certainly not Lucifer.
(In the early days, Lucifer removed his eyelids because he didn't like when Sam closed his eyes.)
Another flicker. Weightlessness. Displacement. He's outside the cage, and it rocks and rattles with their rage and panic.
He doesn't hear their laughter, now. He hears their screams.
Sam fears whatever it is that makes archangels quake.
Another shift. Cold hands—the start of a familiar whisper.
He never gets to hear the words. Everything fades.
Slowly, gravity reasserts itself. Sam rises into his body to blackness and crushing pain. His hands and arms sting, head throbbing molasses-thick with gong-thuds of agony that only intensify with each heartbeat. He tries to move his hands and cries out when the sting intensifies.
Sound returns with sight, slow and tin-can distant. The first sound he hears is the ragged, too-fast rasp of his own breaths.
"Sam," he hears, faint and far away. "Sam, please—" but then the voice fades out.
A warm hand clenches around his shoulder, and Sam slaps it away, recoiling from the touch. The person retreats and gives Sam a moment to collect himself. "Who did this?" the voice demands at last, low and gravelly. Castiel.
Sam opens one eye and clenches it shut again at the light, but it's enough to see dark brown hair and ice blue eyes. "Where's...Dean?" he asks.
"He's drinking. He went away. Sam, what did this to you?"
Sam swallows. "Loud," he says. "Bright."
"I don't..." Cas pauses for a moment. "I'm loud?" he asks.
Sam nods.
"I am speaking at a very reasonable volume." Cas sighs, but then lowers his voice to a whisper. "I can heal you, if you'll allow me to come closer."
Sam shakes his head and opens his eyes. "I'm... I'm fine, Cas. Dean didn't...?"
"He did not notice. I'm afraid... he seems distracted by something. I fear there's something he feels uncomfortable sharing. Has he told you anything?"
A brittle laugh rocks through Sam, spiking his pain. "He certainly wouldn't tell me."
"He has not told me anything, either."
A moment of silence passes between them.
"Sam, your hands are bleeding profusely."
Sam turns his head and stares down at his hands. He supposes he shouldn't be surprised that Cas is right, but the sheer amount of blood on his palms and the wall and over the polished hardwood almost makes him sick. Ignoring the throb of pain in his head, Sam lurches forward, covering Castiel's hand with his own. (Warm.) Cas is warm, the room is warm, the air humid and still. He listens for screams and the groan of taut chains, but hears nothing. He's not back there.
"Sam!" Cas says, and Sam almost smiles at how his voice is still whisper low, hand statue-still even while Sam bleeds on it. "You'll worsen your wounds."
Cas stares somewhere behind Sam for a moment, eyes trailing up the wall. "Ah," he says. Solemnly, his gaze returns to Sam. "Can you tell me what happened?"
Sam lifts his hand away from Castiel's and turns to where the angel was looking.
His eyes settle on the swords on display. The blade of one in particular is slick with blood. Squinting, Sam sees faint splatters on the wall, as well. In a couple places, there are much darker, longer smears: he must have tried to catch himself. All in all, it looks terribly macabre. Sam is a bit ashamed of himself.
"I got a bit dizzy, and... I must have hurt myself when I fell."
Sam looks at his feet and the floor and the walls before he finally meets the angel's eyes.
"Are you ill?" Cas says.
"No! I mean... not really."
Cas stares at him, unblinking, until he observes, "You are also hiding something."
It's almost sad how observant Castiel is. Dean has been so wrapped up lately that Sam has been able to get by with half-assed explanations. Dean said nothing when Sam was quiet all the way home, hands shaking and eyes wide in the dark on the back roads, staring at every unexpected shape like the Cage might be hiding behind it, as if those hands might reach out to get him.
"You won't believe me," Sam says.
He trusts the angel. He considers Cas his friend. He isn't foolish enough to believe that the angel doesn't remember that Sam is an abomination, though, and Castiel is still an angel. There will always be distance between them. It's a matter or worthiness.
"I will believe you," Castiel says, staring unflinchingly into Sam's eyes. "Please tell me. And... please, Sam, allow me to close your wounds, at least."
Sam shrugs, lifting his hands up to the angel. A wave of dizziness nearly knocks him over. His hands turn, ready to slam down and support him, but Castiel moves in, taking them and catching Sam's chin on his shoulder. Almost reverently, he turns them palm-up, clearing dirt and blood away with a callused thumb. "They're deep," he observes, and then Sam feels tingling and the peculiar warm tickle of flesh knitting back together under the warm blue glow.
Sam's head still throbs faintly when the glow fades, but he smiles. "You didn't have to do that," he says. "Thank you."
Castiel smiles in return. "I am glad that I can help. Now... if you're willing...?"
"I..." Sam looks up. "It's a long story."
"I am not opposed to long stories. I can wait."
"When the Darkness—" Sam frowns. "I..."
"Dean will be drinking for a while yet." Castiel leans back and sits with his legs folded under him, waiting.
Sam takes a while finding the right words. "After the Darkness was released, Dean and I were in a town of infected people. They were... rabid, uncontrolled."
Castiel nods and says nothing. He knows this.
"I was infected."
This, he obviously didn't know. His eyebrows knit, lips thinning. "I'm sorry," he whispers. "I know... I understand the fear of... of becoming something you are not."
Sam clenches his teeth and moves on, blinking against the sting of foolish tears. Sympathy has always been his undoing, especially after so long without the kind of singular attention and care Castiel is giving him. He's not weak. He's just tired. He's not going to break down and fucking cry. He shrugs. "I mean, it was okay. I fixed it. Found the cure. It was too late for some, but I cured others, and we saved as many people as we could. I was... it was scary, but I was fine. I... Castiel, I prayed."
The angel tilts his head. "I'm sorry, Sam. Had I heard it, I may have been able to come to your aid."
Sam shakes his head. "Prayed to God. Asked for... a sign, I guess."
Castiel nods again. This, too, he understands. Sam wonders if Castiel prays, as well.
He continues. "Then, when I left the chapel, I felt—there was this pain, and then I had this vision."
When Sam looks, he sees something like a mixture of pain and childlike awe on the angel's face. "What did He show you?"
Sam can't help laughing. "Me. Getting tortured in the Cage."
Castiel frowns. "That's very..."
Sam shrugs. "A bit of a shocker. I was kind of... frustrated, I guess. Anyway, it's still happening. I'm having visions, Cas. Someone's trying to talk to me. I had a dream with Dad—but he wasn't my dad, he was someone or something pretending to be my father. I don't know who it is, Cas, but I'm getting visions from someone, and I... I have to find out who it is."
The angel nods. "I understand. If there's any way I can assist..."
"Thank you."
A weight loosens inside of Sam. He looks into Castiel's eyes just to be sure, but he sees no mockery, no doubt or disbelief. Only earnest determination and kindness. "Thank you, Cas," he says again.
"You don't need to thank me, Sam. I'm happy to do this. And if... if my Father is sending you visions, I would like to seek Him... with you."
A laugh comes out cracked and weak, close to a sob, and Sam closes his eyes for a moment. "Sure you're up for another God hunt?"
"Certainly." A pause, a sharp inhale, and then a brush of cloth across Sam's lips and chin. "Sam."
"What?" he mutters.
"Your nose is bleeding."
Sam opens his eyes again to see Castiel's sleeve damp with blood. Now that he thinks about it, his upper lip feels warm. He didn't really notice it. The pain in his head has gotten better, actually, like a bubble popping. He wipes the back of his hand over his upper lip and blinks at the smear of red. "I've had worse," he decides. "It's nothing to worry about."
"The fact that you have had worse in no way supports the assertion that it's not worth concern," Cas says. "Is this related to your... visions?"
Sam shrugs. "I got 'em a lot when I had visions when I was younger... you know. With... uh." He waves his hands and forces the next words out in a whisper. "Demon blood."
Castiel tilts his head to the side and frowns. "I was under the impression that you had not willingly consumed it until after your brother died."
Sam looks down, eyes settling on the smears of his own blood on the floor. "When I was a baby..."
"Ah." Again with that sound. Sam frowns and looks up until he catches Castiel's eye. "Sam, I do believe the demon blood helped to awaken your abilities on a timetable, if you will, but Azazel chose you and the other children for the gifts given to you by my Father."
Sam can't bring himself to speak, only swallow as Cas continues.
"Why do you think the children were so scattered, so varied? Could he not have chosen anyone? He looked for children with gifts. Sam, your visions as a young man were awakened and guided by the blood, but they were given by my Father. The ones you're experiencing now, however..." Cas frowns. "We cannot know if some other entity is using them to harm you. I'll do what I can to help if that is the case." With no pause or time to transition, Cas says, "Can you stand?"
Sam leans back against the wall and tries to push himself up on trembling legs.
He's had a hell of a night; he feels weak like an infant and strangely light, still floating on Castiel's revelations.
He gets halfway up before he starts to fall again, vision spotting with bursts of staticky blackness. He doesn't make it all the way down. Hands reach out and pull him up. "I'm sorry. I closed the wounds but I cannot easily restore the volume of blood you lost."
Sam shakes his head. "Thank you," he whispers. He sniffles at the tickling sensation of blood slipping down his lips, then reaches up to wipe it away. The flow is slowing, now, nearly stopped.
Cas lets go of Sam when he seems stable enough to stand upright, and he turns to look up at the taller man. "You're welcome."
Their attention turns to the gruesome smears and puddles of blood on the wall and floor. Now that he looks, Sam notices a bit on the binding of a book.
"I will return with cleaning supplies," Castiel offers, and blinks out of view. Moments later, he arrives again with a flutter, clutching a bucket, a few spray bottles, and several frayed rags.
"Cas," Sam starts. "Obviously this is all mine. This is my mess to clean up. You don't have to—"
Castiel says nothing. He grabs a rag and kneels, rinsing it in the bucket. Sam stumbles to his knees and grabs a rag of his own. The sight is familiar enough to make a shudder run through him; he remembers removing the young Styne boy's corpse and scrubbing his and Castiel's blood off the floor. He bites his lip to bring him back to the here and now and wipes his blood from the book's binding before he turns to a smear on the wall.
"I noticed," Castiel starts, barely audible. "When I returned, I noticed that the floors had been cleaned. I could think of no one else who would have done that. That was not... 'your mess to clean,' but you cleaned it anyway."
Sam puts his back into scrubbing and ducks his head to hide his burning ears. "Well, it... helped me put some things in perspective."
"Perhaps this will do the same for me, then."
Sam stifles a chuckle and shakes his head, letting the thoughts of the past fade from his mind. "Maybe," he says.
They finish cleaning quickly between the two of them, and as they stand (Sam slower and more careful), Castiel tilts his head to the side, suddenly looking a bit nervous.
"Everything okay?" Sam asks.
The angel nods. "Yes. I will return the cleaning supplies."
Sam grabs a sleeve before the angel can blink out. "I'll help," he says. "And...?"
Cas sighs. "You may not be interested, but I found a program on Netflix you may enjoy, and I would like you to watch it."
Sam expected something much more solemn than an invitation for a Netflix marathon, and Castiel's nervous request startles a laugh out of him. "Yeah, sure. I mean, but shouldn't we...?" he gestures at the library with a tired sweep of his arm. They have a lot of research ahead of them, even though there's likely nothing to be found in the archives here.
"You have had quite an evening, Sam."
"We both have," Sam agrees.
They walk out of the room, Sam just a half-step behind the angel, who has begun to talk with animated sweeps of his arms about characters Sam knows from myth and legend, about friendship and quests and destiny and magic and grand adventures. With each sweep and gesture, the water in the bucket clutched in one hand sloshes dangerously, but by some miracle, he never quite spills it.
"I believe you will enjoy the first installment..." Cas is saying, and Sam lets the words wash over him.
Sam finds himself smiling as they stride through the halls.
His own blood has crusted under his fingernails and soaked into his sleeves and collar. Rusty-colored suds from the bucket linger on the back of one hand. He's sweaty, bloody, and more-than-a-little off-balance.
He feels cleaner than he has in years.