The Day After The World Ends
Adam is feeling like himself again after Castiel cleaned him up and when he rises to put away the broken cup, he nearly falls over, because of Sam appearing from thin air. But what bothers Adam much more is the figure slightly behind Sam, the face of a young John Winchester stares down at him, blue eyes assessing as they take him in.
Adam stands up, suddenly shaky, and mutters a strangled “Hello. Didn’t know you were coming back Sam.”
“Yeah, it took more time than I expected” Sam answers his own gaze landing on Castiel, who has risen as well and is currently looking at the scene unfolding before his eyes. There is wariness in his brother’s eyes, Adam realizes. Sam fidgets, when Michael steps away from him and stops half way between Sam and Adam, eyes resting upon the Angel in the room, expression blank, which both Winchesters have come to learn means something very bad is coming their way.
“You wanna have dinner, I’m starving” Sam makes a hopelessly obvious jester to defuse the situation and break the mounting tension.
“Yes, there’ some food left” Adam says and starts towards the kitchen intend on dragging Castiel out of Michael’s immediate vicinity. “Come on I need some help.” His hand closes around the angel’s arm and he tries to drag him away. Only Sam’s half heard cry gives him warning, in the next moment he’s flying through the air and crashes painfully into the wall, slumming boneless on the floor. Adam doesn’t even get the chance to properly scream.
So it seems neither does Castiel.
When Adam rolls over, his brother by his side, the first thing that comes into focus is Michael with his arm extended and grasping Castiel by the throat. The younger Angel doesn’t seem to struggle at all, helplessly dangling in the Archangel’s grip. Adam makes an aborted move towards them, Sam tries to help him up and at the same time keep him away from the enraged Archangel.
“It is high time you learn respect, Castiel- Michael says calmly drawing all the eyes of the room’s occupants on himself-I’ve tolerated you insubordination long enough. Dean Winchester’s fate is mine to do with as I please, be grateful you are not being punished for you sins.”
Castiel gurgles something akin to a laugh” Sins? Towards who, Father, Heaven, you…”He doesn’t get to finish, suddenly it appears Castiel’s burning from the inside out, slowly, skin boiling off of him and he does scream this time.
All the while Michael is smiling, a chilling self-satisfied smile curling his mouth.
“Stop, please, Cas didn’t, he…I, please he’s my friend-Sam interjects having stepped away from Adam in a desperate attempt to stop Michael from killing Castiel- Please, Father, please don’t. “
Sam is really desperate now, Adam realizes, to call Michael that, whatever has happened in the last few days has left a mark.
For a moment everything stands still, for a moment Adam is certain he’s going to watch Castiel burn alive, for a moment he feverentely hopes he’d be next. It only lasts a moment. It lasts an eternity.
Michael lets the Angel go, watches dispassionately as he falls to the floor moaning in pain, burns not closing up, not healing. Adam crawls next to him and reaches out, hands badly shaking, he has no idea how to touch Castiel and not hurt him any further. Adam looks up when a strangled noise escapes Sam.
His brother hasn’t moved from his position, but Michael has, he’s holding him by the chin, smiling a smile devoid from any affection, from anything even remotely resembling care. In this one stark second Adam simply knows Michael sees all of them as nothing more than property, living, breathing beings so much weaker than him, with emotions yes, but none the less property to be used and abused, cared for or discarded as he sees fit. Expendable pieces on a chess board in a never ending game against his brother. And Lucifer, who has at some point during the whole fiasco entered the room, meets Adam’s tear-filled eyes and gives him an enigmatic smile. Adam is certain Michael has been playing alone for quite a while now.
The moment of clarity is broken by the Archangels soft tone, speaking to Sam like a loving father to a beloved child only his words are lacking any kind of warmth and affection. Any kind of mercy “There, it was hardly as difficult as you thought it would be, Sammy.”
“Don’t call me that” Sam chokes and Adam unexpectedly hurts for his brother. “It changes nothing, I don’t belong to anyone.”
A softer smile is his reply “Blood of my blood, grace of my grace, all you ever were was mine.”
Sam tries unsuccessfully to wrench himself away, but Michael’s grip doesn’t loosen up, not until Sam is desperately struggling to free himself, only then Michael lets go and Sam stumbles back and falls, Lucifer catching him before he hits the floor.
The metaphorical meaning of the whole thing is not lost on his brother. A tear runs down his face as he sags in the Morning Star’s hold.
“And here I thought I was the temperamental one, brother. You’ve managed to scare the children very well.” Lucifer says amusement coloring his voice. He nods towards Adam and the still figure of Castiel “You should help my little brother to bed, Adam.”
Adam does exactly that, he has to physically drag the Angel to his feet and then practically caries him to his own room, depositing him gently on the mattress, Castiel moans in pain and doesn’t move any further. Adam ventures outside for a wash cloth and a bowl of warm water. Michael is still standing in the living room, but Lucifer and Sam are gone, the door to the other bedroom ajar.
Adam keeps his head down as he takes out a bowl from the kitchen counter and waits to fill it with warm water. His hands are still shaking an awful lot.
“You are a very loyal friend Adam.” The Archangel’s voice startles him badly, the breath on the back of his neck an ironic reminder only one of them needs to breath, the hand wrapped around his neck and tilting his face to Michael a vague mockery. Adam doesn’t meet The Archangel’s eyes, keeps his gaze lowered and averted, the heart in his ribcage trying to beat right through.
“Ah, my brother is right. Smart as well.-Michael’s finger runs up his cheek- Make sure you do not find your inner Winchester any time soon, your soul is torn up as it is.” He’s ordered and then Michael is walking away from him, towards the room, where most probably Sam disappeared into. As he enters Adam can barely make out the shape of his older brother sitting on the bed, head in his hands. Michael closes the door after he enters and Adam is left to flee back to the relative safety of his own.
He sets down the bowl and the cloth on the floor next to the mattress, where Castiel still hasn’t move an inch and breaths a few times to calm down a little. Then Adam proceeds to remove the shirt from his friend’s body. But first he goes to get the scissors, there’s little doubt Castiel will not be able to move. When he retrieves them and cuts the cloth away, first the sleeve and then carefully the shirt itself on the side exposed to him, Castiel’s skin proves to be far more damaged than Adam thought it was and the cloth itself is drenched in blood and burned right through at places. Adam swallows a few times after he peels the garment from Cas’s shoulders.
It’s messy, bloody and downright ugly.
The blood and the fluids do not make it easy to separate cloth from skin. Castiel’s gurgled scream freezes him and only then does he realize the somewhat thick liquid preventing him from getting off the shirt in one go is actually the angel’s skin. It comes peeling off of him and Adam is hard pressed not to scream himself.
He stops, one of his hands holding the half raised piece of fabric, as he takes time to compose himself and think what to do next.
The shirt simply has to go, the wounds need to be cleaned and bandaged, whatever Michael did the damage is not healing or if it is Adam fears there’s a possibility the wounds will fuse with Castiel’s clothes. It would mean they would have to practically cut it off from him. Adam does not fancy doing that, so pain or no pain he has to pull himself together and help the Angel.
His medical training, as limited as it were, helps some.
There is nothing in the whole apartment to help with the pain, nothing to easy Castiel’s agony; even the simple act of cleaning his wounds will have to be done with alcohol. Adam gathers as much determination as he can find in himself and goes back to cutting and removing his friend’s shirt. The sleeve comes off with the angel’s skin on the underside, Castiel giving a low cry at that and as much as Adam wants to stop he doesn’t. Instead he pushes every feeling he has at this point in some dark corner of his mind and numbly proceeds to carefully separate the cotton from Castiel’s back. The work is precise, hardly any room for more damage on his body left and as Adam finally manages to expose half of his friend’s back to his worried eyes, he realizes the wounds don’t simply spread on the torso. Far from it, if the long bloody wound on the lower back is anything to go by, Castiel’s whole body is suffering the same condition.
The darkness of the room hardly allows him to see properly, but Adam is willing to bet the stains he barely makes out on the trousers are blood and boiled skin.
He draws a calming breath and tries to figure out how he’s going to remove the rest of the shirt off. Either way Castiel will feel it, so the quicker he does it, the better. Adam carefully turns him over and lays him on his front.
Castiel screams helplessly, moaning at the agony that is racing through him. Adam hushes him, speaking some comforting none sense as much to relieve some of Casiel’s pain as to reassure himself. Adam doesn’t recall how long it takes him to remove all of the shirt, the cries and sobbing all becoming one indistinguishable sound as he works.
When he’s finally done with all of Castiel’s clothing, it’s the early hours of the morning. The cut up fabric lies on a heap on the floor away from the mattress where Castiel still fights to breathe through the pain. Adam has managed to clean him as best as he could with minimal damage, but at this point that is very much debatable. The angel’s body is a mess, bloody and bruised, skin missing more than there is covering tissue and muscle, labored breaths barely passing through his lips. The noise is the worst. The low keening sounds of something hurt and broken, hopeless and waiting to die simply to be denied time and time again. Adam is sure he’s hearing more than Castiel’s human voice and the angelic one sounds even more terrifying, not because it’s powerful or hurtful, but because it appears to be even more fractured. Castiel is begging, he thinks, for something, but what that is Adam has no idea.
The only thing he can do is to lean back against the wall and pull his knees up, wrap his arms around them and bury his head. He’ll keep Castiel company, it’s not much, nothing really, but it is the only thing Adam can do and this, is has to count for something.
Later when the sun has finally risen upon the sky, he’ll venture out and think of something more to do. For now the one possible course of action before him is to sit alone and wallow in misery as the only friend he has in this place suffers not two feet away from him.
***
Sam hasn’t slept at all during the night. The desire, itching just below the surface of his skin, to get up and go check on Cas and Adam has kept him up for hours, but the logical cautious part of him is painfully aware Michael will be far from pleased, another part, the brutally honest one, points out he’d be hardly welcomed anywhere near his brother and the Angel.
As he lies under the puffy covers on the feather soft bed Sam wonders what possessed him to ever consciously make the assumption that he knew what was best for all of them, Dean, Bobby, Adam, Castiel, somehow in his selflessness Sam has once more managed to be utterly selfish. He’s tired, exhausted actually, he couldn’t keep on trying to stay above water back then, not with Bobby dead, not with Dean slowly loosing himself, not with the world ending indisputably this time around. Sam couldn’t fight any longer, so when Lucifer had walked in that hospital in the middle of nowhere with a deal in mind, Sam had taken it, desperately, foolishly taken the only way out he had. But regardless of whether or not it was the only way left, he had no right to make that decision. Sam can admit it in the quiet, honest moments in the early mornings. He had no right to make the decision simply because it was not his to make alone. The leviathans were gone, true, but the world had ended one way or another, his brother, the only one he still had, couldn’t even meet his eye without the urge to hit him or walk away from him.
Actually, if Adam had the choice, he would have walked away from Sam a long time now. And that hurts, that hurts more than Sam cares to admit, it’s a new, unknown source of pain, because no matter how disappointed, how hurt Dean was by Sam’s actions, Sam knew he’d always be forgiven anything and everything. But Adam is no Dean, he won’t do that. Adam would love him, would come to respect him, to truly care about him, when or if and only when the person Sam was, the choices he made, were deserving of that affection. Not because his little brother set the standards for people too high, not because he loved conditionally, but because Adam knew the value of sacrifice. What did he say to Sam during those first few weeks after the Archangels brought him back, a saying, a thought of one of the greatest thinkers humanity had ever seen: “Forgiveness breaks the chain of casualty, for he who forgives you- out of love- takes upon himself the consequences of what you have done. Forgiveness, therefore, always entails a sacrifice.”
How do you dispute that, how do you argue with Einstein? You don’t.
But that is exactly what the Winchesters have been doing all along. Sacrificing without thought or due consideration. And now the consequences finally caught up to them. Time to pay their dues. Sam has no idea how to deal with this, with the bright new world he has helped create, the situation he so desperately wants to escape from. But escape is impossible now, for all of them, and that only leads him to remember the two people left on this planet he still cares about. Adam and Castiel. Sam is hard pressed to admit he had ever thought those two would befriend, but under the circumstances it seems they have. He’s not jealous, as absurd as it sounds, he is not, because in the security of his own mind, Sam knows Adam needs someone other than him, someone to suffer with, somebody to share his misery and these days Castiel is as open about his feelings as he was unaffected in another time and place. It’s ridiculous how things have turned out, Dean, who Sam was trying to save all along, is now forever out of reach. Somewhere, out there, in one of the countless universes littering space, his older brother is living life to the fullest, he has everything he had been denied here, happy childhood, family, friends, Sam hopes it is enough, hopes Dean is finally content. Bobby has his own version of Heaven, but will never again lay eyes on either the Winchesters brothers. As for Adam, Sam suspects, he has condemned his younger sibling to eternal misery with him and the Archangels.
He exhales softly, wondering how Cas is doing, Michael burned him savagely, but still he is alive and it falls onto Sam to figure how to reconcile him and the oldest Archangel. It is the only way for his old friend to survive in the current predicament, but Sam has not the vaguest idea how to manage that. Michael has been perfectly clear on his complete disregard for Adam, but Castiel, him he hates for disobeying, for straying from the “right path”, for all the reasons Lucifer finds him suitable company and as much as Sam would like to stay as far away from the Morning Star as possible, there is little doubt in his mind, the Archangel might be the only one capable of stopping Michael next time. If there is a next time, a nasty voice in his head whispers, Castiel might not make it, Adam is incapable of giving him the help he needs. The injuries the Angel sustained are not physical, those are only the manifestation of the wounds he has on his grace and help of that sort is beyond Adam and Sam.
But there is nothing he can do at this point, all Sam has left is to wait for morning to see whether or not his only true remaining family made it or not.
And morning can’t come fast enough as he catches Michael’s smile in the window’s reflective surface.
Adam stands up, suddenly shaky, and mutters a strangled “Hello. Didn’t know you were coming back Sam.”
“Yeah, it took more time than I expected” Sam answers his own gaze landing on Castiel, who has risen as well and is currently looking at the scene unfolding before his eyes. There is wariness in his brother’s eyes, Adam realizes. Sam fidgets, when Michael steps away from him and stops half way between Sam and Adam, eyes resting upon the Angel in the room, expression blank, which both Winchesters have come to learn means something very bad is coming their way.
“You wanna have dinner, I’m starving” Sam makes a hopelessly obvious jester to defuse the situation and break the mounting tension.
“Yes, there’ some food left” Adam says and starts towards the kitchen intend on dragging Castiel out of Michael’s immediate vicinity. “Come on I need some help.” His hand closes around the angel’s arm and he tries to drag him away. Only Sam’s half heard cry gives him warning, in the next moment he’s flying through the air and crashes painfully into the wall, slumming boneless on the floor. Adam doesn’t even get the chance to properly scream.
So it seems neither does Castiel.
When Adam rolls over, his brother by his side, the first thing that comes into focus is Michael with his arm extended and grasping Castiel by the throat. The younger Angel doesn’t seem to struggle at all, helplessly dangling in the Archangel’s grip. Adam makes an aborted move towards them, Sam tries to help him up and at the same time keep him away from the enraged Archangel.
“It is high time you learn respect, Castiel- Michael says calmly drawing all the eyes of the room’s occupants on himself-I’ve tolerated you insubordination long enough. Dean Winchester’s fate is mine to do with as I please, be grateful you are not being punished for you sins.”
Castiel gurgles something akin to a laugh” Sins? Towards who, Father, Heaven, you…”He doesn’t get to finish, suddenly it appears Castiel’s burning from the inside out, slowly, skin boiling off of him and he does scream this time.
All the while Michael is smiling, a chilling self-satisfied smile curling his mouth.
“Stop, please, Cas didn’t, he…I, please he’s my friend-Sam interjects having stepped away from Adam in a desperate attempt to stop Michael from killing Castiel- Please, Father, please don’t. “
Sam is really desperate now, Adam realizes, to call Michael that, whatever has happened in the last few days has left a mark.
For a moment everything stands still, for a moment Adam is certain he’s going to watch Castiel burn alive, for a moment he feverentely hopes he’d be next. It only lasts a moment. It lasts an eternity.
Michael lets the Angel go, watches dispassionately as he falls to the floor moaning in pain, burns not closing up, not healing. Adam crawls next to him and reaches out, hands badly shaking, he has no idea how to touch Castiel and not hurt him any further. Adam looks up when a strangled noise escapes Sam.
His brother hasn’t moved from his position, but Michael has, he’s holding him by the chin, smiling a smile devoid from any affection, from anything even remotely resembling care. In this one stark second Adam simply knows Michael sees all of them as nothing more than property, living, breathing beings so much weaker than him, with emotions yes, but none the less property to be used and abused, cared for or discarded as he sees fit. Expendable pieces on a chess board in a never ending game against his brother. And Lucifer, who has at some point during the whole fiasco entered the room, meets Adam’s tear-filled eyes and gives him an enigmatic smile. Adam is certain Michael has been playing alone for quite a while now.
The moment of clarity is broken by the Archangels soft tone, speaking to Sam like a loving father to a beloved child only his words are lacking any kind of warmth and affection. Any kind of mercy “There, it was hardly as difficult as you thought it would be, Sammy.”
“Don’t call me that” Sam chokes and Adam unexpectedly hurts for his brother. “It changes nothing, I don’t belong to anyone.”
A softer smile is his reply “Blood of my blood, grace of my grace, all you ever were was mine.”
Sam tries unsuccessfully to wrench himself away, but Michael’s grip doesn’t loosen up, not until Sam is desperately struggling to free himself, only then Michael lets go and Sam stumbles back and falls, Lucifer catching him before he hits the floor.
The metaphorical meaning of the whole thing is not lost on his brother. A tear runs down his face as he sags in the Morning Star’s hold.
“And here I thought I was the temperamental one, brother. You’ve managed to scare the children very well.” Lucifer says amusement coloring his voice. He nods towards Adam and the still figure of Castiel “You should help my little brother to bed, Adam.”
Adam does exactly that, he has to physically drag the Angel to his feet and then practically caries him to his own room, depositing him gently on the mattress, Castiel moans in pain and doesn’t move any further. Adam ventures outside for a wash cloth and a bowl of warm water. Michael is still standing in the living room, but Lucifer and Sam are gone, the door to the other bedroom ajar.
Adam keeps his head down as he takes out a bowl from the kitchen counter and waits to fill it with warm water. His hands are still shaking an awful lot.
“You are a very loyal friend Adam.” The Archangel’s voice startles him badly, the breath on the back of his neck an ironic reminder only one of them needs to breath, the hand wrapped around his neck and tilting his face to Michael a vague mockery. Adam doesn’t meet The Archangel’s eyes, keeps his gaze lowered and averted, the heart in his ribcage trying to beat right through.
“Ah, my brother is right. Smart as well.-Michael’s finger runs up his cheek- Make sure you do not find your inner Winchester any time soon, your soul is torn up as it is.” He’s ordered and then Michael is walking away from him, towards the room, where most probably Sam disappeared into. As he enters Adam can barely make out the shape of his older brother sitting on the bed, head in his hands. Michael closes the door after he enters and Adam is left to flee back to the relative safety of his own.
He sets down the bowl and the cloth on the floor next to the mattress, where Castiel still hasn’t move an inch and breaths a few times to calm down a little. Then Adam proceeds to remove the shirt from his friend’s body. But first he goes to get the scissors, there’s little doubt Castiel will not be able to move. When he retrieves them and cuts the cloth away, first the sleeve and then carefully the shirt itself on the side exposed to him, Castiel’s skin proves to be far more damaged than Adam thought it was and the cloth itself is drenched in blood and burned right through at places. Adam swallows a few times after he peels the garment from Cas’s shoulders.
It’s messy, bloody and downright ugly.
The blood and the fluids do not make it easy to separate cloth from skin. Castiel’s gurgled scream freezes him and only then does he realize the somewhat thick liquid preventing him from getting off the shirt in one go is actually the angel’s skin. It comes peeling off of him and Adam is hard pressed not to scream himself.
He stops, one of his hands holding the half raised piece of fabric, as he takes time to compose himself and think what to do next.
The shirt simply has to go, the wounds need to be cleaned and bandaged, whatever Michael did the damage is not healing or if it is Adam fears there’s a possibility the wounds will fuse with Castiel’s clothes. It would mean they would have to practically cut it off from him. Adam does not fancy doing that, so pain or no pain he has to pull himself together and help the Angel.
His medical training, as limited as it were, helps some.
There is nothing in the whole apartment to help with the pain, nothing to easy Castiel’s agony; even the simple act of cleaning his wounds will have to be done with alcohol. Adam gathers as much determination as he can find in himself and goes back to cutting and removing his friend’s shirt. The sleeve comes off with the angel’s skin on the underside, Castiel giving a low cry at that and as much as Adam wants to stop he doesn’t. Instead he pushes every feeling he has at this point in some dark corner of his mind and numbly proceeds to carefully separate the cotton from Castiel’s back. The work is precise, hardly any room for more damage on his body left and as Adam finally manages to expose half of his friend’s back to his worried eyes, he realizes the wounds don’t simply spread on the torso. Far from it, if the long bloody wound on the lower back is anything to go by, Castiel’s whole body is suffering the same condition.
The darkness of the room hardly allows him to see properly, but Adam is willing to bet the stains he barely makes out on the trousers are blood and boiled skin.
He draws a calming breath and tries to figure out how he’s going to remove the rest of the shirt off. Either way Castiel will feel it, so the quicker he does it, the better. Adam carefully turns him over and lays him on his front.
Castiel screams helplessly, moaning at the agony that is racing through him. Adam hushes him, speaking some comforting none sense as much to relieve some of Casiel’s pain as to reassure himself. Adam doesn’t recall how long it takes him to remove all of the shirt, the cries and sobbing all becoming one indistinguishable sound as he works.
When he’s finally done with all of Castiel’s clothing, it’s the early hours of the morning. The cut up fabric lies on a heap on the floor away from the mattress where Castiel still fights to breathe through the pain. Adam has managed to clean him as best as he could with minimal damage, but at this point that is very much debatable. The angel’s body is a mess, bloody and bruised, skin missing more than there is covering tissue and muscle, labored breaths barely passing through his lips. The noise is the worst. The low keening sounds of something hurt and broken, hopeless and waiting to die simply to be denied time and time again. Adam is sure he’s hearing more than Castiel’s human voice and the angelic one sounds even more terrifying, not because it’s powerful or hurtful, but because it appears to be even more fractured. Castiel is begging, he thinks, for something, but what that is Adam has no idea.
The only thing he can do is to lean back against the wall and pull his knees up, wrap his arms around them and bury his head. He’ll keep Castiel company, it’s not much, nothing really, but it is the only thing Adam can do and this, is has to count for something.
Later when the sun has finally risen upon the sky, he’ll venture out and think of something more to do. For now the one possible course of action before him is to sit alone and wallow in misery as the only friend he has in this place suffers not two feet away from him.
***
Sam hasn’t slept at all during the night. The desire, itching just below the surface of his skin, to get up and go check on Cas and Adam has kept him up for hours, but the logical cautious part of him is painfully aware Michael will be far from pleased, another part, the brutally honest one, points out he’d be hardly welcomed anywhere near his brother and the Angel.
As he lies under the puffy covers on the feather soft bed Sam wonders what possessed him to ever consciously make the assumption that he knew what was best for all of them, Dean, Bobby, Adam, Castiel, somehow in his selflessness Sam has once more managed to be utterly selfish. He’s tired, exhausted actually, he couldn’t keep on trying to stay above water back then, not with Bobby dead, not with Dean slowly loosing himself, not with the world ending indisputably this time around. Sam couldn’t fight any longer, so when Lucifer had walked in that hospital in the middle of nowhere with a deal in mind, Sam had taken it, desperately, foolishly taken the only way out he had. But regardless of whether or not it was the only way left, he had no right to make that decision. Sam can admit it in the quiet, honest moments in the early mornings. He had no right to make the decision simply because it was not his to make alone. The leviathans were gone, true, but the world had ended one way or another, his brother, the only one he still had, couldn’t even meet his eye without the urge to hit him or walk away from him.
Actually, if Adam had the choice, he would have walked away from Sam a long time now. And that hurts, that hurts more than Sam cares to admit, it’s a new, unknown source of pain, because no matter how disappointed, how hurt Dean was by Sam’s actions, Sam knew he’d always be forgiven anything and everything. But Adam is no Dean, he won’t do that. Adam would love him, would come to respect him, to truly care about him, when or if and only when the person Sam was, the choices he made, were deserving of that affection. Not because his little brother set the standards for people too high, not because he loved conditionally, but because Adam knew the value of sacrifice. What did he say to Sam during those first few weeks after the Archangels brought him back, a saying, a thought of one of the greatest thinkers humanity had ever seen: “Forgiveness breaks the chain of casualty, for he who forgives you- out of love- takes upon himself the consequences of what you have done. Forgiveness, therefore, always entails a sacrifice.”
How do you dispute that, how do you argue with Einstein? You don’t.
But that is exactly what the Winchesters have been doing all along. Sacrificing without thought or due consideration. And now the consequences finally caught up to them. Time to pay their dues. Sam has no idea how to deal with this, with the bright new world he has helped create, the situation he so desperately wants to escape from. But escape is impossible now, for all of them, and that only leads him to remember the two people left on this planet he still cares about. Adam and Castiel. Sam is hard pressed to admit he had ever thought those two would befriend, but under the circumstances it seems they have. He’s not jealous, as absurd as it sounds, he is not, because in the security of his own mind, Sam knows Adam needs someone other than him, someone to suffer with, somebody to share his misery and these days Castiel is as open about his feelings as he was unaffected in another time and place. It’s ridiculous how things have turned out, Dean, who Sam was trying to save all along, is now forever out of reach. Somewhere, out there, in one of the countless universes littering space, his older brother is living life to the fullest, he has everything he had been denied here, happy childhood, family, friends, Sam hopes it is enough, hopes Dean is finally content. Bobby has his own version of Heaven, but will never again lay eyes on either the Winchesters brothers. As for Adam, Sam suspects, he has condemned his younger sibling to eternal misery with him and the Archangels.
He exhales softly, wondering how Cas is doing, Michael burned him savagely, but still he is alive and it falls onto Sam to figure how to reconcile him and the oldest Archangel. It is the only way for his old friend to survive in the current predicament, but Sam has not the vaguest idea how to manage that. Michael has been perfectly clear on his complete disregard for Adam, but Castiel, him he hates for disobeying, for straying from the “right path”, for all the reasons Lucifer finds him suitable company and as much as Sam would like to stay as far away from the Morning Star as possible, there is little doubt in his mind, the Archangel might be the only one capable of stopping Michael next time. If there is a next time, a nasty voice in his head whispers, Castiel might not make it, Adam is incapable of giving him the help he needs. The injuries the Angel sustained are not physical, those are only the manifestation of the wounds he has on his grace and help of that sort is beyond Adam and Sam.
But there is nothing he can do at this point, all Sam has left is to wait for morning to see whether or not his only true remaining family made it or not.
And morning can’t come fast enough as he catches Michael’s smile in the window’s reflective surface.