Fic: If I Have Freedom (1/15)
If I Have Freedom
Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for a hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone that soar above
Enjoy such liberty.
(Richard Lovelace)
Chapter I: The Undiscovered Country
There were still days when Dean couldn't believe it. Sometimes he'd wake up dead certain it had all been a dream and he was going to find either Lisa next to him or an empty bed and the body that wasn't Sammy sitting by the window playing with his laptop. He didn't know which would be worse.
Neither had happened yet.
Sure, he'd woken up once to find Sammy in tears over some mother of three whom he'd apparently had to kill in that year because she was possessed, and another time to have Sammy turn to him and say in that tortured voice Dean hated, "How can you even stand to look at me?"
But while that sucked, it was also Sam, and Dean knew how to deal with Sam. They'd wound up having a few chick-flick moments, he'd done what big brothers do best, and Sam wasn't even having nightmares. When he'd realized Sam's soul was still in the Cage and had started the quest to retrieve it, nightmares had been the least of the things he'd been prepared for: it had been a question of Sam, and Dean had been ready for anything.
So to have Sam here, aware enough to know him and lucid enough to angst at him, was more than he'd dared hope for and he was beyond grateful for it.
Dean put down his empty beer bottle and glanced at Sam, who was buried in a book. Dean was pretty sure he knew which one it was: Sam had gone through Bobby's shelves, visited libraries, trawled the Web, and he always came back to the same thing: Dante. Purgatorio.
Sam had at least four translations of it, and he'd read all of them so many times that Dean wondered why he even bothered anymore - he had to know them off by heart by now.
"Come on, Sammy," Dean said. "Bed."
"I'm not sleepy."
"Of course you are. Dude, I know you. Any minute now you're going to rub your eyes and try not to yawn, because you still seem to think you can get stuff past me, and then I'm going to haul your sorry ass to bed by force. Save us both a lot of trouble if you just do it voluntarily." The look Sam gave him was three parts bitchface and one part… something else. "Everything OK, Sam?"
"I'm fine, Dean."
"I'm not an idiot, Sam."
Sam looked at Dean, eyebrows raised sceptically, and Dean didn't know whether to laugh or hit him. He settled for the best of both worlds, grinning at his brother as he swatted him upside the head.
"OK, how about this?" Dean told him. "Either you go to bed, or you tell me what's bothering you. Your choice."
"Nothing's bothering me."
"Right. Bed it is, then."
"Dean."
"Hey, I just call 'em as I see 'em." Sam's direct gaze faltered a little. "Come on, Sam. What're you worried about? I promise I won't go ballistic on your ass no matter what you've done this time." Something shifted in Sam's eyes, and Dean gave himself a mental right hook and said quickly, "Kidding. Well, not about the other thing - you want to stay up, you talk to me. You don't want to talk, you go to bed. You sitting up all night brooding is not something that's going to happen."
Sam shook his head. "Dean, you don't get it - I have to keep looking. There has to be another way to get to it."
"Purgatory? Give it a rest, Sam. It's -" Dean broke off when he realized what his brother had just said. "Wait, another way? You mean you already found a way?" Sam's eyes flickered from the book to Dean guiltily. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"I… I was scared," Sam whispered, sounding ashamed.
Well. That was new. Not surprising, Dean supposed, because he of all people knew Hell could give you some weird phobias - he had just been kind of hoping that with the whole memory-wall-dam thing, Sam would be spared those.
"That's OK," he said, keeping his voice light. No sense in letting the kid think Dean was annoyed with him. "We don't have to do anything about it if it's something that freaks you out. Just tell me what it is, we can tell Cas, and… That's it. We back off. The angel brigade can take it from there."
"We can't… I can't."
Dean sat in the chair across from Sam and poured himself coffee from the pot. He held the pot out of the way when Sam reached for it. "No way. The last thing you need right now is caffeine. Just tell me and go to sleep."
"I thought it was tell you or go to sleep."
"Times change, rules change."
"It's been about two minutes!"
"Keep wasting time and I'll make you talk to me while you're tucked up in bed. Just tell me, Sam. Why's it bothering you so much?"
Sam sighed, glowered, sighed again, flipped a few pages of his book, glowered some more, and finally said, "Dante… I think he had the answer, I mean I think he knew. I doubt he actually went into Hell and Purgatory and Paradise the way he claims, but I'm guessing he had firsthand information from somewhere."
"OK… So?"
"So… Dante says Purgatory was created by the impact of Satan's fall… and it's diametrically opposite the entrance to Hell."
"Sam, the gates open anywhere."
"No, he means the original Hell, where Satan fell. He says it was Jerusalem, so his Purgatory is in the southern hemisphere, but I don't think it's really a physical place. It's more the… the concept. But the thing is… Dante says he went to Purgatory after descending to the lowest level of Hell."
Oh.
Oh.
No wonder Sam had been so freaked out.
"So you think the way to Purgatory is through the Cage?"
"I think that's one way. There might be others, but if there are I haven't found them."
"Does he say how to get there?"
"Not really… Nothing useful."
"So… How do we find out?"
"I think…" Sam looked down, chewed at his lip a little, and looked back up at Dean. "I think… I might know."
Dean rolled his eyes to hide the surge of pride he felt. Trust Sammy to have figured it out.
"Well?" he asked. "How?" Sam just looked at him, and, with a sinking feeling in his gut, he finally understood what his little brother meant. "No. No way, Sammy. You're not - we're not - no."
"I don't want to," Sam admitted, sounding about four. "But, Dean… What if there's no other way to find out?"
"Then we'll make a way."
"But -"
"No." Sam flinched, and Dean softened his tone. "No, Sam. I promised I'd take care of everything, remember? I promised I'd make sure having your soul back didn't destroy you. You are not going to have those memories put back. You just - just get some rest. Leave this to me. We will figure something out. There has to be another way. Come on, Sammy."
Dean got up and pulled Sam to his feet, marvelling again at the fact that Sam came up unresisting. The old Sam - well, not the old Sam, but the Sam he'd had in between - would have made sure Dean felt every last ounce of those two hundred and twenty pounds of muscle if he'd tried to force him to bed.
"Come on, Sammy," he said again.
"Dean."
There it was. This was why he'd needed his Sammy back. Nobody else could say his name in quite that way, that way that said Sam trusted him and Dean was the best big brother in the world. It made him feel like he could do anything, not because he could, but because Sammy expected him to and he wasn't going to see Sammy disappointed.
"Yeah, I've got it." He lowered Sam to his bed. "I'll take care of it, Sam."
Even as he said it, he knew it wasn't going to be that easy. There was just no way the universe was going to pass up another opportunity to screw the Winchesters.
"Dean, maybe we should think about this before we dismiss it out of hand."
Dean stared at Castiel, not sure if he had heard right.
"What?"
Cas glanced from him to Sam, who was suddenly watching Dean with eyes like saucers and damn it how could the kid rip his heart out of his chest just by looking?
"Cas," Dean growled, trying to keep his voice too low for Sam to hear but not really believing it would work, "No. Look, the only reason I told you was so that you could say it's a stupid idea and we'd think of something else and Sam would stop agonizing over it."
"I agree it's not the best plan," Cas said, not bothering to speak softly. "Unfortunately, it's the only plan we have."
"Not helping, Cas."
"Dean, I'm sorry, but this is war. We're trying to stop the Apocalypse."
"Sam jumped into Lucifer's Cage to stop the Apocalypse the first time around! Now you expect him to sacrifice his sanity just because all you feathery idiots can't figure out how to get to Purgatory on your own? Not happening, Cas. Find somebody else."
"Isn't that Sam's decision?"
"When it's a question of Sam's health and safety, it's my decision."
"Dean," Sam cut in. "It's OK."
"What? No! Don't be an idiot." Dean directed a glare at Sam before turning back to Cas. "There, you see? Now you've got him back in that self-sacrificing hero mindset. That's exactly the kind of crap we don't need right now! Find another way, Cas. Purgatory leads up to Heaven, doesn't it? So there has to be a way to get there from Heaven."
"Maybe, but I don't know how that works, Dean."
"Then find the people who know."
"That would be Lucifer and Michael."
"Good. There you have it. Go down and ask them."
"They won't be willing to help."
"Tough."
"Dean, I know this is difficult. I don't want Sam to lose his mind -"
"Really? Because you sound pretty willing to let that happen."
"I have no choice, Dean! We're at war."
"We've already sacrificed enough for your war! Sam's already sacrificed enough."
"Dean, Raphael wants something that's in Purgatory. We don't know what it is. We don't know why he wants it. But we do know that if we don't get there before he does, he's going to bring about the Apocalypse. Do you want Sam's sacrifice to be useless?"
"You can't force Sammy to -"
"I'm not talking about forcing Sam. I'm talking about asking him."
"You know," Sam said unexpectedly from behind Dean, "I'm still here."
"Don't worry, Sammy," Dean said promptly, turning to his little brother. "I'm taking care of this. Cas is just being a dick. You let me deal with this, OK? I am not going to let him do anything to you."
"Sam," Cas said, coming up next to Dean, "I'm sorry. I really don't like to ask you to do this. If you do, I promise I will do everything in my power to help you -"
"You said you wouldn't know where to start," Dean said coldly, smothering a smile at Sam's raised eyebrow. "What, Sammy, you think you're the only lawyer in town? Cas, you said you wouldn't know where to start. Now you're telling me you'll be able to fix Sam -"
"No, I'm saying I will try to help him."
"That's not good enough."
"It's good enough for me," Sam said quietly.
Dean stared at him, mouth working noiselessly for several moments before he found his voice.
"Sammy, you've got no idea what you're talking about."
"Yes, I do. Cas, can you give us a minute?" The angel vanished, and Sam stood up to face Dean directly. "Look, I may not remember anything that happened in the Cage, but I remember what happened before. I remember saying yes and having Lucifer in me. I remember jumping. Dean, I was prepared to stay down there forever. I knew you wouldn't just let it go, no matter what you promised, but I didn't think you'd ever find a way. I was… I was ready for that, Dean."
Dean felt his throat getting tight. "Sammy -"
"Let me finish. You brought me back, and thank you, and this is more than I'd ever hoped I could have. It's certainly more than I deserve -"
"Sam."
"OK, we'll debate that later. The point is, I didn't think I'd ever be here again, with you, notbeing tortured. I know it'll be difficult to have those memories back - I can sense that, even without remembering anything. But being up here remembering what Michael and Lucifer did to me will still be way better than being down there having them actually doing it. It's a small price to pay."
"Sam."
"Please."
Dean sighed. In the year and a half he'd been apart from his Sammy, he'd forgotten how easily the kid could wrap him round his little finger. And Sam seemed even better at it now - or maybe Dean had gone soft. One way or another, Sam hardly even had to use the eyes anymore.
"Fine," Dean said. Before Sam could say anything else, he added, "One condition. If we do this, we do it my way. I stay in the room while Cas does it and I call the shots on what he's doing, when he starts, when he stops, everything."
Sam huffed out a breath. "I would've done that anyway, Dean. I'm not an idiot."
"Had me fooled."
Dean clapped a hand on Sam's shoulder, looking him in the eye. I promise I'll make sure you come through this OK. Sam smiled at him, a shy half-smile that did more than even the puppy-dog eyes to wring Dean's heart. I know you will.
Chapter II: Taste Not the Pierian Spring