FIC: SPN - With These Broken Wings (Take Flight) - Dean/Gabriel - 3/3
Completed, finally. And just in time for big bang season to begin. *grins*
Part 1 | Part 2
He hits the ground running. Gabriel’s little stunt has put him hours behind schedule.
RATING: R - Because apparently Gabriel has a potty mouth
PAIRING: Dean/Gabriel, Gabriel/Michael
Author: Melanie
DISCLAIMER: I don’t own them, but I’ll put them back in almost the same condition I found them in.
SPOILERS: Up to and including 5.18.
SUMMARY: He hits the ground running. Gabriel’s little stunt has put him hours behind schedule.
With These Broken Wings (Take Flight) 3/3
Dean/Michael:
He hits the ground running. Gabriel’s little stunt has put him hours behind schedule.
He hunts for Lucifer because there’s not a chance in Hell that he’s losing one little brother to another little brother.
He doesn’t know if Lucifer knows that it’s him that’s looking for him, but he knows that Lucifer knows someone is looking.
Lucifer is not going to jeopardize what he believes to be the right course of action by trying to determine who is attempting to run him to ground. He’ll be found eventually, he’s nothing if not determined that Lucifer will not wear Sammy, ever.
******************************************************************************
He doesn’t think of himself as Dean or Michael. In his mind he’s some conglomeration of both of them. He remembers being Dean Winchester and he remembers being Michael and he remembers loving his parents and brother without measure and he remembers loving Father and Gabriel and his brothers the same.
The sting of Gabriel’s betrayal is still there, it’s probably lucky that he was still mostly Dean Winchester when the Trickster was finally unmasked as Gabriel, if he’d been a fully aware Michael at the time the jig would have been completely up.
Gabriel looks different, when he’d run away it appears he tried to find the form that was the absolute complete opposite of what he was before; he probably could have hidden forever if he hadn’t been drawn to the Winchester’s.
If he hadn’t gotten involved.
Dean would never have looked for him; he’d given up looking for him years after he’d originally vanished. He’d never been quite sure what he’d done wrong, what he’d done that had driven Gabriel away from him.
Father had insisted that it was nothing that he’d done. Michael hadn’t believed him then, Dean doesn’t now.
******************************************************************************
Raphael finds him in Pakistan. Dean doesn’t know what Lucifer was doing there, though there is a town that is mostly destroyed so he has a pretty good idea that it wasn’t for the sun or the heat.
“So you let Gabriel back in your bed,” Raphael says. When Dean turns he can see that Raphael has chosen a new host; this one has his nose turned up and he looks as disapproving as a 25 year-old boy with eyeliner and girl jeans on can look.
“That’s not any of your concern, brother,” Dean states, his tone brooks no argument. He turns away and sifts through another pile of debris.
He’s not sure what he’s looking for, he thinks if there was something to find here that Lucifer has probably already taken it with him. There might be remnants left though, something that might pinpoint why Lucifer has seemingly given up pushing at Sam and shifted focus to other things.
He sits back on his heels and surveys the wreckage of this town. There is a black and white tom making himself comfortable in what might have once been a window, it begins cleaning his paws and when it deigns to look at Dean it does so with complete and utter derision.
“I think it is,” Raphael says. But then Raphael is third created, of course he’s going to argue. “If it distracts you, keeps you unfocused, then it is a concern.”
“Do I seem distracted or unfocused to you?” Dean asks. He comes easily to his feet and turns to face Raphael.
Raphael studies him, tilts his head to the side and narrows his eyes. He sighs finally, it’s long-suffering.
“I didn’t think so,” Dean says.
“What is he looking for?” Raphael asks finally, the subject change is not smooth. But nobody would ever call Raphael smooth; he’s never had to be.
“My sword most likely,” Dean says, he scans the horizon. It’s the only thing that he can think of that would draw Lucifer’s attention like this.
“It is here?” Raphael sounds incredulous, “you let it fall with you?”
Dean looks at him and Raphael looks suitably chastened at the expression on his face.
“I didn’t let the sword do anything; it fell all on its lonesome.”
******************************************************************************
If he thinks about family, he thinks he has two. Split unevenly like the product of a messy divorce and child custody battle. Where the children had been old enough to choose a side and not everyone made the same decision.
There are those that he has known forever and a day, those that he’s stood at the beginning of time with.
And then there are those that he has bonded with now, as this mixture of Dean and Michael.
Sam and Castiel and Bobby and, though he’s loathe to admit it or even say it out loud, Gabriel.
******************************************************************************
Dean feels like he’s two steps behind Lucifer, he finds two more towns decimated; the burning, smoldering remains of temper tantrums thrown by a bratty younger brother.
He sighs.
“Is that the same…” Raphael is behind him, again. Dean would almost rather go back to the days when Gabriel was attempting to badly stalk him instead of Raphael hounding his footsteps. When Dean looks at up he sees that Raphael isn’t looking at him, he’s looking at the black and white tom sitting on a pile of rubble.
“It’s markings are completely different,” Dean says, rolling his eyes, he looks away. There’s frustration gnawing in the pit of his stomach.
“Maybe it is time to call in the others,” Raphael says, his tone is sweetly saccharine. If he wasn’t wearing a boy younger then Sam, Dean might be inclined to hit him. “I can summon them if you like.”
“I can handle this,” Dean says.
“Yes, you are doing such a wonderful job at ‘handling this’, brother,” Raphael mutters and Dean looks over at him with eyebrows arched, Raphael looks suitably abashed at sounding like the petulant barely out of his teen-age years that he’s possessing.
******************************************************************************
Gabriel is waiting for him when he returns home. Dean has been trying to time his returns for when the house is quiet, some nights he returns and lingers a ways away from the house, waits until the house goes quiet and dark before he goes in.
It’s wrong, and kind of childish, but he spends all day trying to track one brother down, he doesn’t have the energy to fend off Gabriel’s advances.
“Should I be concerned that Lucifer is more important to you then I?” Gabriel asks. His eyes are boring holes into him and Dean rolls his own in response.
He leans into him, it’s the first time that he can recall voluntarily going into Gabriel’s space since he remembered, Gabriel touches his arm. The fingers of one hand go around Dean’s arm and his grip is tight and sure.
“I’d be more concerned about the impending apocalypse, but whatever floats your boat, dude,” Dean says.
Gabriel kisses him, surging forward, turning him in a smooth move that leaves him pressing Dean back against the side of the house. Dean lets him, even kisses him back after a moment; it’s been a long time since he’s wanted Gabriel to touch him. When Gabriel had first run out on him all he’d wanted to do was punish him, to hurt Gabriel as Gabriel had hurt him.
Now…
Dean places one hand against Gabriel’s chest and pushes, Gabriel backs off willingly enough, maybe because he’d gotten something of what he’d wanted.
“This is not the time,” Dean says softly. He doesn’t say that it’s wrong, that it’ll never happen. Because he knows enough about himself and Gabriel to know that it isn’t and that it will. He just hopes that it’s after Lucifer has been bound either back in Hell or in chains at Father’s feet to do with as he so wishes.
He peels Gabriel’s fingers from his arm and steps away, sliding out of Gabriel’s space as easily as he’d slid in.
The house is silent when he walks in, Sam is most likely tossing and turning fitfully, he wonders what task Gabriel has given Castiel to accomplish that would take him away. He walks up the stairs and he doesn’t need to look to know that Gabriel is following him. Since that night when Gabriel first confronted him with his knowledge, Gabriel has left him mostly in peace; that looks to be over.
He pushes the door open and stops dead; he feels Gabriel’s hand settling low on his back as he stares at the bed.
Gabriel nudges him into the room and aside, closing the door with a soft click behind them.
In the center of the bed a black and white tom is having a staring contest with Dean. Dean is sorry to say that it is a contest that he’s sure that he’s losing.
“Well that’s not a sight that you see every day,” Gabriel says, his voice is amused. “A pussy in Michael’s bed, who would have thought.”
The tom looks at Gabriel and the look that it shoots him is less then impressed.
Dean takes a step forward.
“Michael,” Gabriel says, he grabs at Dean’s shoulder and Dean shoves his hand off. He takes another step.
The tom stares at him and its tail flicks lazily against the bedspread.
“You, are a nuisance and a half,” Dean says. He picks the tom up off the bed and it goes gracefully enough, settling itself in the cradle of Dean’s arms, rubbing its head against the underside of Dean’s chin.
When Dean turns he sees Gabriel staring at him, incredulous eyes going back and forth between Dean and the cat cradled in his arms.
“What. The. Hell.”
Dean smirks and runs a hand along the cats back, it arches into his touch and he doesn’t know what it looks like to Gabriel but to his eye, to eyes that have seen this happen before and taught it how to be done…
It looks like the cat’s body is stretching and morphing until Dean is cradling his sword in his arms.
******************************************************************************
Lucifer attacks in the morning, Dean has barely risen when the wards on the house shudder with the impact and the rest of the house wakes in a panic.
He stands at a window and looks. He can’t see Lucifer yet but he knows he’s there, just as he knows that the youngest of his siblings won’t physically show himself until he can no longer wait.
******************************************************************************
He wants to send Sam away, wishes that it was an option to send Sam and Castiel to a safe haven. If he thought he could get Gabriel to go, if he didn’t know without a doubt that if he sent Sam away that Lucifer would follow him, he would. He keeps them in the house, even though a part of him is desperate to protect his family. If Sam is still in the house then they trap Lucifer into attacking them there.
Raphael appears at the doorway and Dean isn’t sure how he came to be there, Gabriel’s wards are some of the best.
Behind him, scattered on the porch are ten of their brothers. They look battle worn already and Dean wonders if they fought their way through Lucifer’s lines just to get to the house.
******************************************************************************
Gabriel and Raphael snap and snarl at each other as only brothers who feel as if they’ve been betrayed by the other can do.
Castiel sits in the corner of the room, watching, he does not offer any comment on the fights breaking out around the house. Besides Sam he is the youngest being in the house. He probably feels like a child being allowed at the big people table only because half the family didn’t show up and there were enough chairs.
Dean should probably intervene but he finds his attention consumed by keeping Sam from giving himself to Lucifer in order to stop the assault on the house.
“He would kill us all,” Camael says bluntly when nothing that Dean is saying is penetrating Sam’s thick skull any longer. “He’ll take you, then he’ll use your body to fight Michael and then he’ll kill the rest of us.”
“I might be able to control him, long enough…” Sam says.
“Long enough for what? For your brother to plunge his sword through your heart? Because that won’t completely destroy him or anything,” Gabriel snaps.
Dean looks over at Raphael and he’s staring at Gabriel with a considering expression on his face.
“Stop looking at me like that,” Gabriel snaps, then turns on his heel. “I’m going upstairs, call me when we’re going to decide to stop hiding like scared teen-age girls and fucking do something.”
******************************************************************************
Dean faces Lucifer alone. Gabriel is sulking in his room and the others are still arguing over what their options are.
He goes out the backdoor and he thinks Castiel sees him leave but he doesn’t stop him, he also doesn’t follow. On his back he can feel the comforting weight of his sword.
Lucifer meets him halfway, he’s a mess. A bloody, horrific mess, the body he wears is almost completely burnt through and Dean feels sadness for him because it didn’t need to be this way. He could have just accepted the new children and all would have been well.
“Come to fight me, brother?” Lucifer asks. “Come to be Father’s lapdog and assassin and put me in my place?”
“I can’t let you destroy these people, this world,” Dean says quietly. “If it means killing you then that’s a sacrifice that I’m prepared to make.”
His hand goes to his sword, and it’s warm to his touch, familiar and comfortable in his grip.
Besides Gabriel, the sword had been his best friend for as long as he can remember.
******************************************************************************
Pain.
There’s pain and light and there’s an echoing, never ending scream.
It takes a millisecond for him to realize that scream is his.
******************************************************************************
He’s on his stomach; the bed below him is soft and there’s a weight against his back and his side.
His hand is still gripped tight around the hilt of his sword and he blinks, turning his head to the side where the weight is situated.
Gabriel sleeps next to him, his face is pale and wan and he does not look peaceful.
“Dean?” he hears and he turns his head to the other side.
Sam is sitting in a chair by the edge of the bed. He looks scared and there is relief just dawning in his eyes.
“Four weeks,” Gabriel whispers in his ear. “Four fucking weeks, and you just had to do it by yourself, didn’t you.”
“I wouldn’t sacrifice any of you to anything that I wouldn’t do myself,” his voice is hoarse and sounds unfamiliar to his ears.
Gabriel rests his head against Dean’s shoulder and when Dean goes to shift, to sit up, he realizes that the heavy weight against his back is his wings.
His wings, in full view of Sammy and everybody that would choose to walk into the room. The proof of who and what he is.
“We couldn’t get them to go back,” Gabriel says. “Even Raphael tried and he said that when you were ready, when it was time that they would go.”
Dean twists his head so that he can see them and they flutter at him like they have a mind of their own and are waving their hello. Dean lets his head drop and breathes; concentrates and he can feel the moment where they phase out of existence.
Gabriel takes their place, pulling Dean onto his side and wrapping his arms around him. The expression on Sam’s face is pained as Dean reaches up and lays one hand against Gabriel’s skin.
He can feel the smirk against the side if his neck.
“Where’s Cas?” he asks. When he’d thought about how this would end, if he was triumphant over Lucifer, he’d thought it would end the same way that it had begun. With the four of them in a room, waiting for the injured party to waken.
“He’s helping the others with clean-up,” Sam says. “He’s been here though, they’ve all been here.”
“So Sammy and I have reached an agreement,” Gabriel says brightly. “If I promised to not molest you in front of him he promised to not try and stab me with whichever Archangel Blade he could get his hands on first.”
“I didn’t promise that, I promised that I’d think about it.”
“Same diff.”
Dean laughs.
******************************************************************************
Part 1 | Part 2
He hits the ground running. Gabriel’s little stunt has put him hours behind schedule.
RATING: R - Because apparently Gabriel has a potty mouth
PAIRING: Dean/Gabriel, Gabriel/Michael
Author: Melanie
DISCLAIMER: I don’t own them, but I’ll put them back in almost the same condition I found them in.
SPOILERS: Up to and including 5.18.
SUMMARY: He hits the ground running. Gabriel’s little stunt has put him hours behind schedule.
With These Broken Wings (Take Flight) 3/3
Dean/Michael:
He hits the ground running. Gabriel’s little stunt has put him hours behind schedule.
He hunts for Lucifer because there’s not a chance in Hell that he’s losing one little brother to another little brother.
He doesn’t know if Lucifer knows that it’s him that’s looking for him, but he knows that Lucifer knows someone is looking.
Lucifer is not going to jeopardize what he believes to be the right course of action by trying to determine who is attempting to run him to ground. He’ll be found eventually, he’s nothing if not determined that Lucifer will not wear Sammy, ever.
******************************************************************************
He doesn’t think of himself as Dean or Michael. In his mind he’s some conglomeration of both of them. He remembers being Dean Winchester and he remembers being Michael and he remembers loving his parents and brother without measure and he remembers loving Father and Gabriel and his brothers the same.
The sting of Gabriel’s betrayal is still there, it’s probably lucky that he was still mostly Dean Winchester when the Trickster was finally unmasked as Gabriel, if he’d been a fully aware Michael at the time the jig would have been completely up.
Gabriel looks different, when he’d run away it appears he tried to find the form that was the absolute complete opposite of what he was before; he probably could have hidden forever if he hadn’t been drawn to the Winchester’s.
If he hadn’t gotten involved.
Dean would never have looked for him; he’d given up looking for him years after he’d originally vanished. He’d never been quite sure what he’d done wrong, what he’d done that had driven Gabriel away from him.
Father had insisted that it was nothing that he’d done. Michael hadn’t believed him then, Dean doesn’t now.
******************************************************************************
Raphael finds him in Pakistan. Dean doesn’t know what Lucifer was doing there, though there is a town that is mostly destroyed so he has a pretty good idea that it wasn’t for the sun or the heat.
“So you let Gabriel back in your bed,” Raphael says. When Dean turns he can see that Raphael has chosen a new host; this one has his nose turned up and he looks as disapproving as a 25 year-old boy with eyeliner and girl jeans on can look.
“That’s not any of your concern, brother,” Dean states, his tone brooks no argument. He turns away and sifts through another pile of debris.
He’s not sure what he’s looking for, he thinks if there was something to find here that Lucifer has probably already taken it with him. There might be remnants left though, something that might pinpoint why Lucifer has seemingly given up pushing at Sam and shifted focus to other things.
He sits back on his heels and surveys the wreckage of this town. There is a black and white tom making himself comfortable in what might have once been a window, it begins cleaning his paws and when it deigns to look at Dean it does so with complete and utter derision.
“I think it is,” Raphael says. But then Raphael is third created, of course he’s going to argue. “If it distracts you, keeps you unfocused, then it is a concern.”
“Do I seem distracted or unfocused to you?” Dean asks. He comes easily to his feet and turns to face Raphael.
Raphael studies him, tilts his head to the side and narrows his eyes. He sighs finally, it’s long-suffering.
“I didn’t think so,” Dean says.
“What is he looking for?” Raphael asks finally, the subject change is not smooth. But nobody would ever call Raphael smooth; he’s never had to be.
“My sword most likely,” Dean says, he scans the horizon. It’s the only thing that he can think of that would draw Lucifer’s attention like this.
“It is here?” Raphael sounds incredulous, “you let it fall with you?”
Dean looks at him and Raphael looks suitably chastened at the expression on his face.
“I didn’t let the sword do anything; it fell all on its lonesome.”
******************************************************************************
If he thinks about family, he thinks he has two. Split unevenly like the product of a messy divorce and child custody battle. Where the children had been old enough to choose a side and not everyone made the same decision.
There are those that he has known forever and a day, those that he’s stood at the beginning of time with.
And then there are those that he has bonded with now, as this mixture of Dean and Michael.
Sam and Castiel and Bobby and, though he’s loathe to admit it or even say it out loud, Gabriel.
******************************************************************************
Dean feels like he’s two steps behind Lucifer, he finds two more towns decimated; the burning, smoldering remains of temper tantrums thrown by a bratty younger brother.
He sighs.
“Is that the same…” Raphael is behind him, again. Dean would almost rather go back to the days when Gabriel was attempting to badly stalk him instead of Raphael hounding his footsteps. When Dean looks at up he sees that Raphael isn’t looking at him, he’s looking at the black and white tom sitting on a pile of rubble.
“It’s markings are completely different,” Dean says, rolling his eyes, he looks away. There’s frustration gnawing in the pit of his stomach.
“Maybe it is time to call in the others,” Raphael says, his tone is sweetly saccharine. If he wasn’t wearing a boy younger then Sam, Dean might be inclined to hit him. “I can summon them if you like.”
“I can handle this,” Dean says.
“Yes, you are doing such a wonderful job at ‘handling this’, brother,” Raphael mutters and Dean looks over at him with eyebrows arched, Raphael looks suitably abashed at sounding like the petulant barely out of his teen-age years that he’s possessing.
******************************************************************************
Gabriel is waiting for him when he returns home. Dean has been trying to time his returns for when the house is quiet, some nights he returns and lingers a ways away from the house, waits until the house goes quiet and dark before he goes in.
It’s wrong, and kind of childish, but he spends all day trying to track one brother down, he doesn’t have the energy to fend off Gabriel’s advances.
“Should I be concerned that Lucifer is more important to you then I?” Gabriel asks. His eyes are boring holes into him and Dean rolls his own in response.
He leans into him, it’s the first time that he can recall voluntarily going into Gabriel’s space since he remembered, Gabriel touches his arm. The fingers of one hand go around Dean’s arm and his grip is tight and sure.
“I’d be more concerned about the impending apocalypse, but whatever floats your boat, dude,” Dean says.
Gabriel kisses him, surging forward, turning him in a smooth move that leaves him pressing Dean back against the side of the house. Dean lets him, even kisses him back after a moment; it’s been a long time since he’s wanted Gabriel to touch him. When Gabriel had first run out on him all he’d wanted to do was punish him, to hurt Gabriel as Gabriel had hurt him.
Now…
Dean places one hand against Gabriel’s chest and pushes, Gabriel backs off willingly enough, maybe because he’d gotten something of what he’d wanted.
“This is not the time,” Dean says softly. He doesn’t say that it’s wrong, that it’ll never happen. Because he knows enough about himself and Gabriel to know that it isn’t and that it will. He just hopes that it’s after Lucifer has been bound either back in Hell or in chains at Father’s feet to do with as he so wishes.
He peels Gabriel’s fingers from his arm and steps away, sliding out of Gabriel’s space as easily as he’d slid in.
The house is silent when he walks in, Sam is most likely tossing and turning fitfully, he wonders what task Gabriel has given Castiel to accomplish that would take him away. He walks up the stairs and he doesn’t need to look to know that Gabriel is following him. Since that night when Gabriel first confronted him with his knowledge, Gabriel has left him mostly in peace; that looks to be over.
He pushes the door open and stops dead; he feels Gabriel’s hand settling low on his back as he stares at the bed.
Gabriel nudges him into the room and aside, closing the door with a soft click behind them.
In the center of the bed a black and white tom is having a staring contest with Dean. Dean is sorry to say that it is a contest that he’s sure that he’s losing.
“Well that’s not a sight that you see every day,” Gabriel says, his voice is amused. “A pussy in Michael’s bed, who would have thought.”
The tom looks at Gabriel and the look that it shoots him is less then impressed.
Dean takes a step forward.
“Michael,” Gabriel says, he grabs at Dean’s shoulder and Dean shoves his hand off. He takes another step.
The tom stares at him and its tail flicks lazily against the bedspread.
“You, are a nuisance and a half,” Dean says. He picks the tom up off the bed and it goes gracefully enough, settling itself in the cradle of Dean’s arms, rubbing its head against the underside of Dean’s chin.
When Dean turns he sees Gabriel staring at him, incredulous eyes going back and forth between Dean and the cat cradled in his arms.
“What. The. Hell.”
Dean smirks and runs a hand along the cats back, it arches into his touch and he doesn’t know what it looks like to Gabriel but to his eye, to eyes that have seen this happen before and taught it how to be done…
It looks like the cat’s body is stretching and morphing until Dean is cradling his sword in his arms.
******************************************************************************
Lucifer attacks in the morning, Dean has barely risen when the wards on the house shudder with the impact and the rest of the house wakes in a panic.
He stands at a window and looks. He can’t see Lucifer yet but he knows he’s there, just as he knows that the youngest of his siblings won’t physically show himself until he can no longer wait.
******************************************************************************
He wants to send Sam away, wishes that it was an option to send Sam and Castiel to a safe haven. If he thought he could get Gabriel to go, if he didn’t know without a doubt that if he sent Sam away that Lucifer would follow him, he would. He keeps them in the house, even though a part of him is desperate to protect his family. If Sam is still in the house then they trap Lucifer into attacking them there.
Raphael appears at the doorway and Dean isn’t sure how he came to be there, Gabriel’s wards are some of the best.
Behind him, scattered on the porch are ten of their brothers. They look battle worn already and Dean wonders if they fought their way through Lucifer’s lines just to get to the house.
******************************************************************************
Gabriel and Raphael snap and snarl at each other as only brothers who feel as if they’ve been betrayed by the other can do.
Castiel sits in the corner of the room, watching, he does not offer any comment on the fights breaking out around the house. Besides Sam he is the youngest being in the house. He probably feels like a child being allowed at the big people table only because half the family didn’t show up and there were enough chairs.
Dean should probably intervene but he finds his attention consumed by keeping Sam from giving himself to Lucifer in order to stop the assault on the house.
“He would kill us all,” Camael says bluntly when nothing that Dean is saying is penetrating Sam’s thick skull any longer. “He’ll take you, then he’ll use your body to fight Michael and then he’ll kill the rest of us.”
“I might be able to control him, long enough…” Sam says.
“Long enough for what? For your brother to plunge his sword through your heart? Because that won’t completely destroy him or anything,” Gabriel snaps.
Dean looks over at Raphael and he’s staring at Gabriel with a considering expression on his face.
“Stop looking at me like that,” Gabriel snaps, then turns on his heel. “I’m going upstairs, call me when we’re going to decide to stop hiding like scared teen-age girls and fucking do something.”
******************************************************************************
Dean faces Lucifer alone. Gabriel is sulking in his room and the others are still arguing over what their options are.
He goes out the backdoor and he thinks Castiel sees him leave but he doesn’t stop him, he also doesn’t follow. On his back he can feel the comforting weight of his sword.
Lucifer meets him halfway, he’s a mess. A bloody, horrific mess, the body he wears is almost completely burnt through and Dean feels sadness for him because it didn’t need to be this way. He could have just accepted the new children and all would have been well.
“Come to fight me, brother?” Lucifer asks. “Come to be Father’s lapdog and assassin and put me in my place?”
“I can’t let you destroy these people, this world,” Dean says quietly. “If it means killing you then that’s a sacrifice that I’m prepared to make.”
His hand goes to his sword, and it’s warm to his touch, familiar and comfortable in his grip.
Besides Gabriel, the sword had been his best friend for as long as he can remember.
******************************************************************************
Pain.
There’s pain and light and there’s an echoing, never ending scream.
It takes a millisecond for him to realize that scream is his.
******************************************************************************
He’s on his stomach; the bed below him is soft and there’s a weight against his back and his side.
His hand is still gripped tight around the hilt of his sword and he blinks, turning his head to the side where the weight is situated.
Gabriel sleeps next to him, his face is pale and wan and he does not look peaceful.
“Dean?” he hears and he turns his head to the other side.
Sam is sitting in a chair by the edge of the bed. He looks scared and there is relief just dawning in his eyes.
“Four weeks,” Gabriel whispers in his ear. “Four fucking weeks, and you just had to do it by yourself, didn’t you.”
“I wouldn’t sacrifice any of you to anything that I wouldn’t do myself,” his voice is hoarse and sounds unfamiliar to his ears.
Gabriel rests his head against Dean’s shoulder and when Dean goes to shift, to sit up, he realizes that the heavy weight against his back is his wings.
His wings, in full view of Sammy and everybody that would choose to walk into the room. The proof of who and what he is.
“We couldn’t get them to go back,” Gabriel says. “Even Raphael tried and he said that when you were ready, when it was time that they would go.”
Dean twists his head so that he can see them and they flutter at him like they have a mind of their own and are waving their hello. Dean lets his head drop and breathes; concentrates and he can feel the moment where they phase out of existence.
Gabriel takes their place, pulling Dean onto his side and wrapping his arms around him. The expression on Sam’s face is pained as Dean reaches up and lays one hand against Gabriel’s skin.
He can feel the smirk against the side if his neck.
“Where’s Cas?” he asks. When he’d thought about how this would end, if he was triumphant over Lucifer, he’d thought it would end the same way that it had begun. With the four of them in a room, waiting for the injured party to waken.
“He’s helping the others with clean-up,” Sam says. “He’s been here though, they’ve all been here.”
“So Sammy and I have reached an agreement,” Gabriel says brightly. “If I promised to not molest you in front of him he promised to not try and stab me with whichever Archangel Blade he could get his hands on first.”
“I didn’t promise that, I promised that I’d think about it.”
“Same diff.”
Dean laughs.
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