Title: Strange Face of Love
Author: mangacrack
Characters: Gabriel/Sam, Castiel
Rating: PG 13
Spoilers: post season 5
Warning: schmoop, angst, hurt/comfort
Word count: 1006 words
Summary: Sam is involuntarily changed into an angel. Gabriel helps him adjust.
They called Gabriel because Sam wouldn’t stop screaming. He didn’t knew what happened and usually Gabriel hadn’t made any effort to find out since he was still recovering form his near death experience with his so sweet older brother.
But since it was Sam who had stuffed earlier mentioned older brother back into his cage and left him an adequate distraction, which would last at least a few millennia, Gabriel felt obliged to answer Castiel’s rather desperate call for help. Who shouldn’t know that he was alive in the first place, but Castiel had proven to be devious enough to survive the family dinner and for that Gabriel could at least have look at the Winchester.
Despite that, it was Sam, who always had been interesting. Had Castiel called because of Dean, he certainly would’ve told his little brother to go and bother someone else, since he would not get between a sneaky, slightly obsessed angel and his object of desire.
So Gabriel made the effort to stretch his wings and fly towards the place he senses Castiel. He wasn’t as fast as he liked or as used to be, but he could still follow Castiel’s request immediately enough not to attract attention from his brother to his own limited condition. Thankfully it only applied to his aching vessel and his grace beneath it. His mind was still aware enough that Castiel didn’t call him to one of the endless motel rooms the Winchester spend their life in nor to Singer’s refuge for particular stupid and suicidal idjids.
But it seemed this time it wasn’t Sam’s fault.
It couldn’t be.
Gabriel choked on his snarky remark he had prepared. It didn’t happen often you could render the arch herald speechless, but he needed time for his mind to grasp, what his senses were telling him.
Sam was screaming.
But it wasn’t the human way: screaming with their voice until the pain they felt drove them hoarse long before insanity took place.
No, Sam was screaming. Screaming with a voice he shouldn’t possess in a first place, with a pain beneath Gabriel wouldn’t wish anyone. If someone thought a cramp, a torn muscle or a broken arm was pain, than he never experienced the anguish of an angel with strained grace.
An angel, who didn’t even knew what was happening to him.
“Samuel”, Gabriel mumbled quietly.
He used his own wings to rub soothingly over the grace lingering in this room, because Sam the angel wasn’t aware enough of himself to wrap his grace around the human body he possessed. Or was inhabited a better word? Because the flesh he was carefully touching with his hands now, seemed to belong to Sam Winchester.
Sam Winchester, the human.
The Sam in front of him, who still hadn’t stopped screaming, was an angel. An angel, who he distinctly recognized, but that wasn’t helping at all. Dead angel’s didn’t return to life. When they died, they were blown into oblivion, they grace scattered over the earth and never assembled again. Not enough to declare it as an angel.
Any possible remaining grace was either absorbed by nature or mingled itself into a human soul. Often enough Gabriel had observed that some newborn children had been literally touched by the light.
An angel’s light, an angel’s light, who was dead or dying.
Gabriel swallowed thickly. At some point he would get to the ground of this and a suspicion already told him that a little chunk of grace in Sam Winchester’s soul would explain much about the current events, it still didn’t made any sense. He turned his head to Castiel, who had stepped back the moment he had felt him arrive and looked as lost as Gabriel felt. In addition to the guilt he felt beneath the surface.
“What happened?”, he asked as sharp as he could without disturbing Sam, who had finally begun to relax in his arms.
“I…”, Castiel said, “I brought him back from hell. He didn’t deserve facing being stuck between Michael and Lucifer for the rest of eternity, but when I his body and his soul, he already … ”
“He was like this already, when you separated him from Lucifer?”, Gabriel asked to make sure and an idea formed in his head.
Castiel nodded.
“It grieves me, since I seem to be responsible for his pain. And I can not help him, so I called for you.”
The archangel sighed and turned back to Sam.
He had an idea now, what happened. Between Michael and Lucifer it could be possible a thread of grace had touched Sam’s soul, so deep it was even felt the tiny remnant of the dead angel, who would’ve instinctively clung to the wide spread of grace neither Lucifer or Michael would’ve cared to suppress. Not when they were fighting, it could’ve given them a tactical disadvantage and they never noticed anything at all as soon as they were lost in their own little world.
And both of them had enough grace to spare to revive an almost dead angel, who had been hiding in the depths of a human soul.
Gabriel even went so far to suspect his elder brother hadn’t even noticed the return. Or Castiel’s intrusion.
“Gavri'el“, a desperate voice cried out. “Gavri'el!“
The archangel braced himself for it, but the touch of the grace came with surprise anyway. Sam (Or was it Samuel? Or Sammael even?) finally responded to Gabriel’s own grace. Thousand little desperate hands touched him, hugged him desperately and feathers were brushing against his own.
„'achawA“, Gabriel answered in Enochian. “barUch ha'bA' 'achawA“
Regardless who’s memories this Sam would’ve or as who he saw himself in the end, Gabriel gained a brother. After all those he had lost or missed, there was one dropped into his arms.
„Ani ohevet otcha 'achawA!“
***
in Hebrew:
Gavri'el means Gabriel
'achawA" means brother
barUch ha'bA'" means Welcome home
Ani ohevet otcha means I love you
I used an online dictionary for this, please excuse me if I got it wrong.