Drabble's of the Supernatural King
unfinished Supernatural Snippets. Mostly Sam /& Gabriel ...
Try Not To Breath, Sam/Gabriel
I will try not to burden you
I can hold these inside. I will hold my breath
Until all these shivers subside,
Just look in my eyes
"Why to you pity them?", Gabriel asked. "They don't deserve it."
"Probably", Sam answered and suppressed a violent shiver as he remembered the cage. Michael's tormented screams. Lucifer's endless whimpers. "But it kept me human. Without the knowledge that Michael and Lucifer were just as helpless and undeserving of this place as I was, I would lost any ability to feel. I would have turned into a demon far worse than anything else hell has produced so far."
"You wouldn't have," Gabriel insisted carefully, "turned into a demon."
He raised his hand and grasped Sam around the neck to pull him closer until Gabriel was able to rest their foreheads against each other. It turned his wings into knots, to think he could have lost Sam in the worst possible way there was. Not to Death, but twisted cruelty.
"Never. Not you," Gabriel whispered and graced Sam's lips with his own mouth, trying not to remember he had said the same thing about Lucifer once.
Sam touched Gabriel's soft lips and claimed them intimately. The kiss deepened, when an electric touch sparked between them. Slowly Sam's dread ad Gabriel's anxiety burned away under their warm, erratic breaths.
"Still," Sam said, when they broke apart, "I would have been a demon, hadn't you saved me in time. Not much longer and I would have hated to world, which couldn't save me after I had saved it."
Raw emotions clawed into Sam's heart and Gabriel could see the pain inside Sam's soul. His memories of hell opened window for the archangel and Sam's eyes reflected the torment of every single soul in hell.
Every soul ... Gabriel grasped Sam's shirt and dragged him closer.
Sam tried to express his troubled feelings towards two beings, he confide in, but everyone else condemned.
"Gabriel, they are..." ... able to understand.
"Shh", Gabriel silenced Sam's doubts. He held his love, whispering when the hunter shivered. "It's okay, Sam. I understand. I was wrong to believe hell wouldn't effect my brothers. That they would be above pain and love. Or that they didn't pay for their sins already, far worse than the world believes they deserve."
Gabriel hoped he had finally lifted the worst of Sam's burden. Slowly he pressed his lover on his back and said: "Please don't try to hate someone, when you wish to meet him with mercy and forgiveness."
Sam finally relaxed and Gabriel watches slip his lover back into sleep. This time without feeling guilty for not defending two people he had come to love in the darkest of all hours.
My brothers, Gabriel buried his head in shame. My own brothers, who I gave up and was ready forget, while they are screaming for mercy.
For a moment Gabriel forgot to breath, when his control over his grace slipped and it pulsed violently, rejecting the thought of deliberate cruelty. He didn't know, he told himself. He didn't know the cage was design to torture its prisoners in a way that even archangels would break under it.
I didn't know, he wanted to scream at Michael and Lucifer, who he had actually seen in Sam's memories for the first in a very long time. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I never wanted you to suffer like this. I'm sorry
Silently, with Sam peacefully sleeping next to him, Gabriel lost himself in love and desperation, because he missed his beloved brothers and wasn't able to save them.
Writing On Your Back, Sam/Gabriel
Sam had his head buried in his arms.
Sand tickled his skin sun darkened and the sound of waves began to rock him to sleep. Behind him a red sun was setting and disappearing into a ocean Sam hadn't bothered to learn the name of. Ease slipped into his bones and tension fled from his muscles in return. Never before in his life Sam had felt so rested.
It was the quiet aftermath of something Gabriel had called 'a long overdue holiday from your crappy life, Winchester!'. Sam had tried to protest. In the beginning at least, but Gabriel had silenced him very quickly. One of his madding kisses that left Sam aroused and breathless, a possessive touch around his neck and a roll of his hips later Sam had forgotten that there was a world outside of sensual touches, mind blowing orgasms and real seafood.
Similar to the way he had done it years before, Gabriel coaxed the time to flow the way he wanted. Minutes could stretch to hours, days to weeks and even those were endless. Over and over again Gabriel pulled him back into the little world he had created from them. Sam admitted shamelessly that he had pushed Gabriel just as often during the last days.
Mostly because it made Gabriels eyes shine with happiness, when Sam had asked him the first time to bend time a little more. When Sam had wanted to be lost in time with the archangel, who had grinned and claimed to successfully corrupted a Winchester for the good side of life. Sam had asked, because he wanted to stay and forgetting for a moment of eternity that he was damaged.
Damaged and torn by hell, a world a had grown to understand. A world he had grown to accept.
Then Gabriel happened and the archangel insisted to show him the difference between good and bad, before Sam gave up upon himself. .
With care he had washed the wounds of Sam's battered soul. With clean spring water Gabriel had removed every stain from hell, to bath him in the holy light of his grace and dry his tears with his wings. Sam remembered Gabriel plucking his own feathers out as if he had been asked for a tissue.
They hadn't spent all the time with fucking each other minds out. Large part had been Gabriel watching over Sam's healing process. Which happened when they weren't fucking. Gabriel was more stubborn than a Winchester, when he wanted to be.
Hate To Be Ignored, the Archangels
"Michael," Raphael thundered at his elder brother, who seemed unaware of everything around him. "Michael, make it stop."
The archangel briefly looked up to study Raphael and the extensive chaos around him. After he few long moments he just shrugged and returned to his previous task. Without haste he turned the side of the page in his book.
"I don't think so," he answered. "You should know better than to ignore them. Therefore the damage is your fault. And you will stay like this until you have sorted and repaired all of the threads."
"They have destroyed them," Raphael howled. Mostly since he knew Michael would carry through with this. "Why do I have to clean up their mess?"
"It was your duty to guard the wheel of time this decade," Michael explained. "From all threats, even if these threats are your younger clueless brothers."
Raphael ruffled the feathers of his wings in response only to lose a few more of them in the spider web, the threads of time had become. He vowed he would never again leave Lucifer and Gabriel alone to together, when Michael wasn't there to watch over them.
It's not fair, Raphael silently whined like a little kid. He could only hope he would be done with his task to witness Michael ending the nonsense Gabriel and Lucifer were still up to. He would laugh at them, when he was finished here. He so would.
Damned brats, Raphael cursed silently, knowing he would never laugh at his younger brothers. They are to cute and adorable for me to be still angry with them, when I'm done here.
Creation, Gabriel/Kali
Dancing with Kali was a pleasure Gabriel had believed never to encounter again. Kali was a dark goddess. One of Death and Destruction. But she was also Creation.
She was the one, who collected all her children at the end of their life to make sure they would never get lost. She embraced them, all of them, when it was their time to die. Kali was. Kali was there, when her children got born, when they came of age and sired more children, when they aged and returned to her body again.
Sometimes Gabriel wished he could be one of them, only for the feeling to be loved like this again. But it would never be. Not for Loki and even less for the Archangel.
He had his own place, his own mind and his own God to return to when he would die one day.
Still, watching Kali reminded Gabriel of the time, when the world was young. Wild and burning, with a red sky until something crawled out of the womb of the ocean to experience life.
When the world was not fated to end by his own brothers.
Faith, Gabriel
Gabriel liked to think these days, he was independent. That he answered no one and made his own decisions.
And the Trickster did. The Trickster didn't give a fuck. He stepped on everybody's toes. No god and no deity were safe, unless they protected children. Sacraments, holy places and symbols didn't mean anything for the Trickster. Because the angel inside him knew it was always about faith.
Respecting and believing created the power of gods in the first place, if you didn't believe, even the angriest god couldn't do you any harm.
Yet, Gabriel knew that believing nothing wasn't the way either. It was unfullfilling and frighting, believing nothing. Being utterly neutral, so much that nothing mattered to you, nothing moved you, was a pitiful existence. He wondered if that was, what happened to God. If his father had given up, after realizing that he couldn't interfere without upsetting an important balance.
Forgive Me My Mistakes, Gabriel
I wake up on one of the battlefields angels have fought in all armour. I feel my sword in my right hand even before I'm realising that I'm slashing though a Nephilin with it. The flames of the Holy Fire surrounding the blade are so bright that the light blinds every other opponent.
With a gasp I finally realise where I am and more importantly when …
Nearly 3000 B.C at the Dead Sea. Just right when I made a mistake which would be one of my biggest regrets in my entire existence. Another Nephilin is charging at me, obviously distressed by the death of his friend he just witnessed. I have enough sense to just vanish in thin air, since I can not repeat this mistake.
I cannot. I won't.
Never.
I never wanted to kill another one of my brothers children again.
When I'm pulling the threads of time around me, in order to get back to the day in the future that got me nearly killed in the first place, I hope the Nephilin I just killed in self-defence will forgive me.
Getting stabbed by your older brother with your own sword clearly counts as a reason to lose consciousness for a moment. Lucky me to fall right through time to the year I realized the Nephilin had not been evil. It had been just us, who didn't understand the circumstanced they lived under. Correction: me. It had been me, who had made the decision to kill all, who lived in sin and was not righteous before my fathers eyes.
It had been me - not my father - who underestimated the Nephilin's very human need to avenge the comrades we killed just days before. We didn't think they would hit back nor we knew the source of the strength they would attack us with. We thought they were monsters.
Well, I thought this way.
I was a battle commander in these days and because I didn't believe monsters were capable of feelings too, I ordered to kill them all.
“Leave no one alive,” I said.
I remember how my voice thundered over the battlefield, my only concern being eradicating the enemy that was harming my kin. The Messenger, they called me. The Messenger of Blood and Death, because I killed the mothers as well. And the brothers, who had fallen for siring the children in the first place.
Those I killed as well.
Morning Mist, Sam
“Get up, Sam”, his brother snarled from somewhere.
Sam protested quietly and wondered if Dean would be merciful, when he would just remain here under his blanket. It was much to thin for a cold night in November and again to short for him, but Sam was a master of curling himself into ball in order to get as much warmth as the cheap motel room could provide.
In the early morning mist he could need every bit of it, especially after another sleepless night.
But Dean was unrelenting, shouting something of a hunt and Sam being a whiny ass. With a sigh Sam got up and shivered, when the cold crept into his bones. Since he came back from hell nothing could truly make him comfortable. It was not cold, but also never warm enough. The exact opposite of Lucifer and hell, when everything had always been too much, too much, too much …
Quietly Sam hoped, when he slipped in the passenger seat of the Impala, that the hunt would be over soon. Perhaps they could make their way to Texas next. Texas sounded nice.
Yet he doubted that even Texas would be enough to let him feel warm again.
-
It was the sound of crashing wood which caused Sam to pause and look up. He heard a second creak and had no time to react, when right next to him the ceiling gave in and buried Sam under a pile of dust, rocks and broken wooden beams. He fought for a moment, when the weight took him down and he lost his gun and the flash-light, when he tried to protect his head. He curled himself into a little ball, desperate not to get hit, but it did him little good.
The house they had been investigating had been old and nothing but a ruin, but several children had died here for unknown reasons, because the cause of death and the injuries never matched the presumed accident. Dean had gone upstairs, insisting he was smaller and therefore weighted less, but apparently it didn't protect Sam from the cave-in both Winchesters had feared.
Dean!
Dread filled Sam, while he prayed for not being hit on the head. His brother could die just as well as Sam. Perhaps not from a wooden beam or rumble, but from the fall.
It would be irony if this kills both of us, Sam wondered.
He never would realize it was indeed the last of his thoughts.
In the next second the rest of the house came down on him, leaving behind nothing but a big pile of rubble of a formerly hunted house at the edge of a small down somewhere in the morning mist in Michigan.
In addition to a very dead Sam Winchester.
Cold Winter Days, Sam
It began on a cold winter day somewhere in Montana. Sam was driving a lonely road surrounded by nothing but huge trees, snow and a wide open sky above him. The radio played some country music quietly, but Sam wasn't really able to tell. The volume couldn't be set higher and getting something else but rustling from speaker was a feat for itself, so he cared more for the noise in the background.
It moved the silence from Sam's head to world outside of his car. He tried to avoid being alone with the long stretches of his thoughts, but as long the quiet travelled with in form of clouds, white snow and lonely mountains in the distance Sam agreed with her presence. He has know loneliness too long for not to greet simple aloneness, when it came to him. Easily he can see it as simply privacy, even if there isn't a person anymore, who can disturb it.
Sam knows, theoretically Dean is just a phone call away, but it's not the same. Nagging about his little brothers bitching over the phone would be wrong. Even more since Dean has a kid to care for. Two if you count Ben.
No matter how often Sam thinks about it, it's still off putting, Dean being a daddy. A father. A great father, from what Sam has seen. Better then John was, since Dean did gave up hunting from his new family with Lisa. He didn't completely retreated, they consult regularly, but Dean isn't a active hunter anymore.
Family comes first.
A family which Sam is still a part of, but he isn't the centre of Dean's gravity system anymore. His brother doesn't love him any less, but the small tiny kid in Lisa's womb comes first and the kid won't be save as long as hell is still hunting Sam. Sometimes it's just nightmares, sometimes it's just a shadow in the corner of his eye, but after all his time in the cage and being able to remember it, he can tell that a part of hell will always follow him. He can not escape it, since it's not even a creature or a person, but he still half-heartedly tries.
But how to escape the truth? Or yourself?
With a sigh Sam puts on a bit of speed, with the thought there's really no one to check his speed limit. If he would drive of a cliff in the mountains, even if due to an accident, he doubts someone would notice. Sure, Dean would miss him, but truly notice? Dean had been able to let him drive away and invite him to Christmas a few weeks later, so Sam questioned if his brother would still feel the pull on his soul his something happened to him.
Surely, it hurt. But could same be angry at his brother for finally being a normal and ordinary human? For not to feel the remnants of the codependency, that ruled their life until Sam pulled Lucifer back into his cage?
Perhaps this had been a breaking point. The apocalypse was over, Dean wasn't expected to be a saviour anymore and the weight of the world was lifted of his shoulders, when the Fates looked finally a different way and the Winchester name didn't automatically meant you were cursed. They had finally time to deal with the stuff that had happened to them.
Both Dean and he dealt in their own way, just not together.
Eden, minor Sam/Gabriel
Christmas had always a bitter taste for Sam.
When he was little, he did not understand why their father was rarely there and never had presents for them. Sam learnt that Winchesters didn't celebrate Christmas.
They treated it as just another potential day for trouble, because there were always creatures, who loved to shatter hope and faith. Especially in days like this, when it was the highest. Learning about monsters gave Sam a reason why he did not have friends, why they were basically homeless and why Winchesters rather worked during the holidays than taking time of like everyone else did.
As teenager he also did not understand, why they spend digging graves on Christmas Eve and why the Impala roared over empty roads, when every other child in the country was opening presents.
It took Stanford to realize Sam that his father could not merrily celebrate the birth of Jesus after he had lost his wife. In the first year with Brady he spent the days mostly alone, because even Brady had someone to go to back then and Sam could not bring himself to call Dean.
He would have cracked and run straight back, because even their scare food, the cheap beer and the non-presents would've been better than the heavy loneliness. Enduring these few days was one of the hardest thing Sam had done his life so far, because he was trying to prove a point and chose the solidarity suffering over a week all by himself. At this time he believed it was the prize for his independence.
This had been his hardest Christmas in his life. Mostly because the angels resurrected Dean in September, had be been forced to live through Christmas while Dean was tortured in hell, Sam was sure he would've simply started digging a hole until he met fire and brimstone.
Yet it paled against what he was going through now.
-
The radio was quietly playing in the kitchen and Sam heard Lisa humming along, while she was baking cookies.
Cookies.
Sam's hand clutched into his jeans, why he tried to smile when Lisa lifted her head and waved at him before she resumed her work of beating the dough until it did her bidding. On Sam's left the Christmas Tree was standing proud and beautiful in a corner blinking with ornaments and lights. Behind the window snowflakes were falling and turning Lisa's garden into a winter-wonder land, which perfection could only be found in pictures, movies and childhood memories.
Never before is his life Sam had felt so trapped. In fact, he was afraid his false smile might freeze on his face, when he had to put it up just a bit longer. At some point Sam feared it would break, he would start screaming or try to exorcise Dean. Who had the great idea to drag him here to Lisa's house in the first place.
At first he had been reluctant since he didn't want to intrude, but his brother had insisted.
“It would do you good,” Dean had said and smiled, “To spend time with your family, I mean.”
Magic words and Sam had not been able to resist them. Dean was his family - his brother - and Lisa his wife in all but legal eyes while Ben's fatherhood was still open for discussion. Inviting him for Christmas was a logical conclusion.
For them.
For this felt as unreal and wrong as TV Land had. As Mystery Spot had been and all the other times, everything look fine and real, but still had seemed off in so many ways that Sam couldn't lie back and believe the lie even for a second.
For a lie it was.
It had to be. Nothing in this world or the one down below could be this cheesy and sappy. But it was reality, making Sam's situation even worse. This wasn't an illusion created by a supernatural being like a Djinn or a Trickster.
Just a lie that Dean was telling himself.
I will never fit in here, Sam thought slightly panicked. Never.
Theoretically it was ridiculous to even fret over something trivial as a few days spending time with relatives. There was no reason to be on guard like was about to face a monster with nothing but a single silver bullet in his gun. It shouldn't be this hard to be happy for a few days, to enjoy the life and the gifts it had brought them.
“Hey Sammy,” his brother announced, when he waltzed in the living room and sat down beside him. “How you are doing?”
But it was.
“Fine,” Sam answered and partly hoped partly feared Dean would call Bullshit the next second.
Yet Dean just flashed him a bright smile. “Awesome. Did you try Lisa's cookies yet? Or he pie?”
“No, I did not. The way she beat the dough kept me from stealing.”
That and her too honest the world is alright smiles. That scared Sam the most and he appreciated his tactical spot on the couch.
“Yeah, you're probably right. Wouldn't do that either. Lisa can be scary, when it comes to stealing the food while she is still making it.”
With that Dean left him behind and almost ran into the kitchen to kiss Lisa and charm said food out of her hand into his mouth. Sam was happy to see his brother carefree like this and when Ben stormed into the house Dean laughed like he never had before as long as Sam knew him. For a second he felt envy, but after the second was past, the strangeness of the entire situation was back and Sam wished he were somewhere else.
Hunting down a Wendigo would be welcome right now. Anything to hurry out of the front door, take his car and leave this bubble of sugary sitcom happiness behind.
Because this was a part of the family life Sam never had experienced. Dean had been four and old enough to remember normal, when Azazel had come and killed their mother. He had been a few month old and been reborn into a different world, made of other things which you either hunted or ran from until you got eaten.
Sam was now painfully aware of that he had been made for hunting, while Dean had been pulled into it. Had he been normal, had he understood normal than he had told Dean to fuck off all these years ago. When John Winchester vanished and Jess had been killed, because Sam wasn't there to defend her.
This isn't my world, Sam had realized. There is no normal life for me. Perhaps never was, but I finally chose this road all on my own and not because something needed to be done.
He had chosen with the same determination - fully aware of the finality of his choice - he had seen in Jimmy Novak's eyes, when only the alternative for Castiel had been Claire. This hadn't been an option for the devote father. Very similar to Sam's realisation that Dean would be able to be a perfect father for Ben and the growing embryo in Lisa's womb.
“However... this is not my life,” Sam admitted to himself as he watched the perfect little family interact with each other.
And nearly said destiny …
With a heavy sign Sam closed his eyes, left the leather of the couch under his skin and concentrated on everything but the noise of the happily chatter of Dean's family in the background.
The moment stretched, a heartbeat and an eternity later Sam opened his eyes again to watch his surroundings blur, when he pulled himself out of Dean's reality and vanished from the couch like never had been there in the first place.
Neither Dean or Lisa would remember him, he had been just a dream or a what-if scenario in their heads. Perhaps Ben would, since he was a still child with an open mind and an unlimited perception. Perhaps he did saw his dead uncle for a moment, sitting on the couch in his home, but Ben would forget.
It was Christmas and such things happened on Christmas.
“It's simply part of the magic,” Gabriel had said. “My father opened Gates of Heaven for the birth of the Son and once in a year it brings mortals as close as they can get to He without dying.”
Sam knew how to translate this. It was just on this occasion he was able to see what could have been and how his future could have looked like …
… if it had been his body that Castiel had dragged out of hell.
Try Not To Breath, Sam/Gabriel
I will try not to burden you
I can hold these inside. I will hold my breath
Until all these shivers subside,
Just look in my eyes
"Why to you pity them?", Gabriel asked. "They don't deserve it."
"Probably", Sam answered and suppressed a violent shiver as he remembered the cage. Michael's tormented screams. Lucifer's endless whimpers. "But it kept me human. Without the knowledge that Michael and Lucifer were just as helpless and undeserving of this place as I was, I would lost any ability to feel. I would have turned into a demon far worse than anything else hell has produced so far."
"You wouldn't have," Gabriel insisted carefully, "turned into a demon."
He raised his hand and grasped Sam around the neck to pull him closer until Gabriel was able to rest their foreheads against each other. It turned his wings into knots, to think he could have lost Sam in the worst possible way there was. Not to Death, but twisted cruelty.
"Never. Not you," Gabriel whispered and graced Sam's lips with his own mouth, trying not to remember he had said the same thing about Lucifer once.
Sam touched Gabriel's soft lips and claimed them intimately. The kiss deepened, when an electric touch sparked between them. Slowly Sam's dread ad Gabriel's anxiety burned away under their warm, erratic breaths.
"Still," Sam said, when they broke apart, "I would have been a demon, hadn't you saved me in time. Not much longer and I would have hated to world, which couldn't save me after I had saved it."
Raw emotions clawed into Sam's heart and Gabriel could see the pain inside Sam's soul. His memories of hell opened window for the archangel and Sam's eyes reflected the torment of every single soul in hell.
Every soul ... Gabriel grasped Sam's shirt and dragged him closer.
Sam tried to express his troubled feelings towards two beings, he confide in, but everyone else condemned.
"Gabriel, they are..." ... able to understand.
"Shh", Gabriel silenced Sam's doubts. He held his love, whispering when the hunter shivered. "It's okay, Sam. I understand. I was wrong to believe hell wouldn't effect my brothers. That they would be above pain and love. Or that they didn't pay for their sins already, far worse than the world believes they deserve."
Gabriel hoped he had finally lifted the worst of Sam's burden. Slowly he pressed his lover on his back and said: "Please don't try to hate someone, when you wish to meet him with mercy and forgiveness."
Sam finally relaxed and Gabriel watches slip his lover back into sleep. This time without feeling guilty for not defending two people he had come to love in the darkest of all hours.
My brothers, Gabriel buried his head in shame. My own brothers, who I gave up and was ready forget, while they are screaming for mercy.
For a moment Gabriel forgot to breath, when his control over his grace slipped and it pulsed violently, rejecting the thought of deliberate cruelty. He didn't know, he told himself. He didn't know the cage was design to torture its prisoners in a way that even archangels would break under it.
I didn't know, he wanted to scream at Michael and Lucifer, who he had actually seen in Sam's memories for the first in a very long time. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I never wanted you to suffer like this. I'm sorry
Silently, with Sam peacefully sleeping next to him, Gabriel lost himself in love and desperation, because he missed his beloved brothers and wasn't able to save them.
Writing On Your Back, Sam/Gabriel
Sam had his head buried in his arms.
Sand tickled his skin sun darkened and the sound of waves began to rock him to sleep. Behind him a red sun was setting and disappearing into a ocean Sam hadn't bothered to learn the name of. Ease slipped into his bones and tension fled from his muscles in return. Never before in his life Sam had felt so rested.
It was the quiet aftermath of something Gabriel had called 'a long overdue holiday from your crappy life, Winchester!'. Sam had tried to protest. In the beginning at least, but Gabriel had silenced him very quickly. One of his madding kisses that left Sam aroused and breathless, a possessive touch around his neck and a roll of his hips later Sam had forgotten that there was a world outside of sensual touches, mind blowing orgasms and real seafood.
Similar to the way he had done it years before, Gabriel coaxed the time to flow the way he wanted. Minutes could stretch to hours, days to weeks and even those were endless. Over and over again Gabriel pulled him back into the little world he had created from them. Sam admitted shamelessly that he had pushed Gabriel just as often during the last days.
Mostly because it made Gabriels eyes shine with happiness, when Sam had asked him the first time to bend time a little more. When Sam had wanted to be lost in time with the archangel, who had grinned and claimed to successfully corrupted a Winchester for the good side of life. Sam had asked, because he wanted to stay and forgetting for a moment of eternity that he was damaged.
Damaged and torn by hell, a world a had grown to understand. A world he had grown to accept.
Then Gabriel happened and the archangel insisted to show him the difference between good and bad, before Sam gave up upon himself. .
With care he had washed the wounds of Sam's battered soul. With clean spring water Gabriel had removed every stain from hell, to bath him in the holy light of his grace and dry his tears with his wings. Sam remembered Gabriel plucking his own feathers out as if he had been asked for a tissue.
They hadn't spent all the time with fucking each other minds out. Large part had been Gabriel watching over Sam's healing process. Which happened when they weren't fucking. Gabriel was more stubborn than a Winchester, when he wanted to be.
Hate To Be Ignored, the Archangels
"Michael," Raphael thundered at his elder brother, who seemed unaware of everything around him. "Michael, make it stop."
The archangel briefly looked up to study Raphael and the extensive chaos around him. After he few long moments he just shrugged and returned to his previous task. Without haste he turned the side of the page in his book.
"I don't think so," he answered. "You should know better than to ignore them. Therefore the damage is your fault. And you will stay like this until you have sorted and repaired all of the threads."
"They have destroyed them," Raphael howled. Mostly since he knew Michael would carry through with this. "Why do I have to clean up their mess?"
"It was your duty to guard the wheel of time this decade," Michael explained. "From all threats, even if these threats are your younger clueless brothers."
Raphael ruffled the feathers of his wings in response only to lose a few more of them in the spider web, the threads of time had become. He vowed he would never again leave Lucifer and Gabriel alone to together, when Michael wasn't there to watch over them.
It's not fair, Raphael silently whined like a little kid. He could only hope he would be done with his task to witness Michael ending the nonsense Gabriel and Lucifer were still up to. He would laugh at them, when he was finished here. He so would.
Damned brats, Raphael cursed silently, knowing he would never laugh at his younger brothers. They are to cute and adorable for me to be still angry with them, when I'm done here.
Creation, Gabriel/Kali
Dancing with Kali was a pleasure Gabriel had believed never to encounter again. Kali was a dark goddess. One of Death and Destruction. But she was also Creation.
She was the one, who collected all her children at the end of their life to make sure they would never get lost. She embraced them, all of them, when it was their time to die. Kali was. Kali was there, when her children got born, when they came of age and sired more children, when they aged and returned to her body again.
Sometimes Gabriel wished he could be one of them, only for the feeling to be loved like this again. But it would never be. Not for Loki and even less for the Archangel.
He had his own place, his own mind and his own God to return to when he would die one day.
Still, watching Kali reminded Gabriel of the time, when the world was young. Wild and burning, with a red sky until something crawled out of the womb of the ocean to experience life.
When the world was not fated to end by his own brothers.
Faith, Gabriel
Gabriel liked to think these days, he was independent. That he answered no one and made his own decisions.
And the Trickster did. The Trickster didn't give a fuck. He stepped on everybody's toes. No god and no deity were safe, unless they protected children. Sacraments, holy places and symbols didn't mean anything for the Trickster. Because the angel inside him knew it was always about faith.
Respecting and believing created the power of gods in the first place, if you didn't believe, even the angriest god couldn't do you any harm.
Yet, Gabriel knew that believing nothing wasn't the way either. It was unfullfilling and frighting, believing nothing. Being utterly neutral, so much that nothing mattered to you, nothing moved you, was a pitiful existence. He wondered if that was, what happened to God. If his father had given up, after realizing that he couldn't interfere without upsetting an important balance.
Forgive Me My Mistakes, Gabriel
I wake up on one of the battlefields angels have fought in all armour. I feel my sword in my right hand even before I'm realising that I'm slashing though a Nephilin with it. The flames of the Holy Fire surrounding the blade are so bright that the light blinds every other opponent.
With a gasp I finally realise where I am and more importantly when …
Nearly 3000 B.C at the Dead Sea. Just right when I made a mistake which would be one of my biggest regrets in my entire existence. Another Nephilin is charging at me, obviously distressed by the death of his friend he just witnessed. I have enough sense to just vanish in thin air, since I can not repeat this mistake.
I cannot. I won't.
Never.
I never wanted to kill another one of my brothers children again.
When I'm pulling the threads of time around me, in order to get back to the day in the future that got me nearly killed in the first place, I hope the Nephilin I just killed in self-defence will forgive me.
Getting stabbed by your older brother with your own sword clearly counts as a reason to lose consciousness for a moment. Lucky me to fall right through time to the year I realized the Nephilin had not been evil. It had been just us, who didn't understand the circumstanced they lived under. Correction: me. It had been me, who had made the decision to kill all, who lived in sin and was not righteous before my fathers eyes.
It had been me - not my father - who underestimated the Nephilin's very human need to avenge the comrades we killed just days before. We didn't think they would hit back nor we knew the source of the strength they would attack us with. We thought they were monsters.
Well, I thought this way.
I was a battle commander in these days and because I didn't believe monsters were capable of feelings too, I ordered to kill them all.
“Leave no one alive,” I said.
I remember how my voice thundered over the battlefield, my only concern being eradicating the enemy that was harming my kin. The Messenger, they called me. The Messenger of Blood and Death, because I killed the mothers as well. And the brothers, who had fallen for siring the children in the first place.
Those I killed as well.
Morning Mist, Sam
“Get up, Sam”, his brother snarled from somewhere.
Sam protested quietly and wondered if Dean would be merciful, when he would just remain here under his blanket. It was much to thin for a cold night in November and again to short for him, but Sam was a master of curling himself into ball in order to get as much warmth as the cheap motel room could provide.
In the early morning mist he could need every bit of it, especially after another sleepless night.
But Dean was unrelenting, shouting something of a hunt and Sam being a whiny ass. With a sigh Sam got up and shivered, when the cold crept into his bones. Since he came back from hell nothing could truly make him comfortable. It was not cold, but also never warm enough. The exact opposite of Lucifer and hell, when everything had always been too much, too much, too much …
Quietly Sam hoped, when he slipped in the passenger seat of the Impala, that the hunt would be over soon. Perhaps they could make their way to Texas next. Texas sounded nice.
Yet he doubted that even Texas would be enough to let him feel warm again.
-
It was the sound of crashing wood which caused Sam to pause and look up. He heard a second creak and had no time to react, when right next to him the ceiling gave in and buried Sam under a pile of dust, rocks and broken wooden beams. He fought for a moment, when the weight took him down and he lost his gun and the flash-light, when he tried to protect his head. He curled himself into a little ball, desperate not to get hit, but it did him little good.
The house they had been investigating had been old and nothing but a ruin, but several children had died here for unknown reasons, because the cause of death and the injuries never matched the presumed accident. Dean had gone upstairs, insisting he was smaller and therefore weighted less, but apparently it didn't protect Sam from the cave-in both Winchesters had feared.
Dean!
Dread filled Sam, while he prayed for not being hit on the head. His brother could die just as well as Sam. Perhaps not from a wooden beam or rumble, but from the fall.
It would be irony if this kills both of us, Sam wondered.
He never would realize it was indeed the last of his thoughts.
In the next second the rest of the house came down on him, leaving behind nothing but a big pile of rubble of a formerly hunted house at the edge of a small down somewhere in the morning mist in Michigan.
In addition to a very dead Sam Winchester.
Cold Winter Days, Sam
It began on a cold winter day somewhere in Montana. Sam was driving a lonely road surrounded by nothing but huge trees, snow and a wide open sky above him. The radio played some country music quietly, but Sam wasn't really able to tell. The volume couldn't be set higher and getting something else but rustling from speaker was a feat for itself, so he cared more for the noise in the background.
It moved the silence from Sam's head to world outside of his car. He tried to avoid being alone with the long stretches of his thoughts, but as long the quiet travelled with in form of clouds, white snow and lonely mountains in the distance Sam agreed with her presence. He has know loneliness too long for not to greet simple aloneness, when it came to him. Easily he can see it as simply privacy, even if there isn't a person anymore, who can disturb it.
Sam knows, theoretically Dean is just a phone call away, but it's not the same. Nagging about his little brothers bitching over the phone would be wrong. Even more since Dean has a kid to care for. Two if you count Ben.
No matter how often Sam thinks about it, it's still off putting, Dean being a daddy. A father. A great father, from what Sam has seen. Better then John was, since Dean did gave up hunting from his new family with Lisa. He didn't completely retreated, they consult regularly, but Dean isn't a active hunter anymore.
Family comes first.
A family which Sam is still a part of, but he isn't the centre of Dean's gravity system anymore. His brother doesn't love him any less, but the small tiny kid in Lisa's womb comes first and the kid won't be save as long as hell is still hunting Sam. Sometimes it's just nightmares, sometimes it's just a shadow in the corner of his eye, but after all his time in the cage and being able to remember it, he can tell that a part of hell will always follow him. He can not escape it, since it's not even a creature or a person, but he still half-heartedly tries.
But how to escape the truth? Or yourself?
With a sigh Sam puts on a bit of speed, with the thought there's really no one to check his speed limit. If he would drive of a cliff in the mountains, even if due to an accident, he doubts someone would notice. Sure, Dean would miss him, but truly notice? Dean had been able to let him drive away and invite him to Christmas a few weeks later, so Sam questioned if his brother would still feel the pull on his soul his something happened to him.
Surely, it hurt. But could same be angry at his brother for finally being a normal and ordinary human? For not to feel the remnants of the codependency, that ruled their life until Sam pulled Lucifer back into his cage?
Perhaps this had been a breaking point. The apocalypse was over, Dean wasn't expected to be a saviour anymore and the weight of the world was lifted of his shoulders, when the Fates looked finally a different way and the Winchester name didn't automatically meant you were cursed. They had finally time to deal with the stuff that had happened to them.
Both Dean and he dealt in their own way, just not together.
Eden, minor Sam/Gabriel
Christmas had always a bitter taste for Sam.
When he was little, he did not understand why their father was rarely there and never had presents for them. Sam learnt that Winchesters didn't celebrate Christmas.
They treated it as just another potential day for trouble, because there were always creatures, who loved to shatter hope and faith. Especially in days like this, when it was the highest. Learning about monsters gave Sam a reason why he did not have friends, why they were basically homeless and why Winchesters rather worked during the holidays than taking time of like everyone else did.
As teenager he also did not understand, why they spend digging graves on Christmas Eve and why the Impala roared over empty roads, when every other child in the country was opening presents.
It took Stanford to realize Sam that his father could not merrily celebrate the birth of Jesus after he had lost his wife. In the first year with Brady he spent the days mostly alone, because even Brady had someone to go to back then and Sam could not bring himself to call Dean.
He would have cracked and run straight back, because even their scare food, the cheap beer and the non-presents would've been better than the heavy loneliness. Enduring these few days was one of the hardest thing Sam had done his life so far, because he was trying to prove a point and chose the solidarity suffering over a week all by himself. At this time he believed it was the prize for his independence.
This had been his hardest Christmas in his life. Mostly because the angels resurrected Dean in September, had be been forced to live through Christmas while Dean was tortured in hell, Sam was sure he would've simply started digging a hole until he met fire and brimstone.
Yet it paled against what he was going through now.
-
The radio was quietly playing in the kitchen and Sam heard Lisa humming along, while she was baking cookies.
Cookies.
Sam's hand clutched into his jeans, why he tried to smile when Lisa lifted her head and waved at him before she resumed her work of beating the dough until it did her bidding. On Sam's left the Christmas Tree was standing proud and beautiful in a corner blinking with ornaments and lights. Behind the window snowflakes were falling and turning Lisa's garden into a winter-wonder land, which perfection could only be found in pictures, movies and childhood memories.
Never before is his life Sam had felt so trapped. In fact, he was afraid his false smile might freeze on his face, when he had to put it up just a bit longer. At some point Sam feared it would break, he would start screaming or try to exorcise Dean. Who had the great idea to drag him here to Lisa's house in the first place.
At first he had been reluctant since he didn't want to intrude, but his brother had insisted.
“It would do you good,” Dean had said and smiled, “To spend time with your family, I mean.”
Magic words and Sam had not been able to resist them. Dean was his family - his brother - and Lisa his wife in all but legal eyes while Ben's fatherhood was still open for discussion. Inviting him for Christmas was a logical conclusion.
For them.
For this felt as unreal and wrong as TV Land had. As Mystery Spot had been and all the other times, everything look fine and real, but still had seemed off in so many ways that Sam couldn't lie back and believe the lie even for a second.
For a lie it was.
It had to be. Nothing in this world or the one down below could be this cheesy and sappy. But it was reality, making Sam's situation even worse. This wasn't an illusion created by a supernatural being like a Djinn or a Trickster.
Just a lie that Dean was telling himself.
I will never fit in here, Sam thought slightly panicked. Never.
Theoretically it was ridiculous to even fret over something trivial as a few days spending time with relatives. There was no reason to be on guard like was about to face a monster with nothing but a single silver bullet in his gun. It shouldn't be this hard to be happy for a few days, to enjoy the life and the gifts it had brought them.
“Hey Sammy,” his brother announced, when he waltzed in the living room and sat down beside him. “How you are doing?”
But it was.
“Fine,” Sam answered and partly hoped partly feared Dean would call Bullshit the next second.
Yet Dean just flashed him a bright smile. “Awesome. Did you try Lisa's cookies yet? Or he pie?”
“No, I did not. The way she beat the dough kept me from stealing.”
That and her too honest the world is alright smiles. That scared Sam the most and he appreciated his tactical spot on the couch.
“Yeah, you're probably right. Wouldn't do that either. Lisa can be scary, when it comes to stealing the food while she is still making it.”
With that Dean left him behind and almost ran into the kitchen to kiss Lisa and charm said food out of her hand into his mouth. Sam was happy to see his brother carefree like this and when Ben stormed into the house Dean laughed like he never had before as long as Sam knew him. For a second he felt envy, but after the second was past, the strangeness of the entire situation was back and Sam wished he were somewhere else.
Hunting down a Wendigo would be welcome right now. Anything to hurry out of the front door, take his car and leave this bubble of sugary sitcom happiness behind.
Because this was a part of the family life Sam never had experienced. Dean had been four and old enough to remember normal, when Azazel had come and killed their mother. He had been a few month old and been reborn into a different world, made of other things which you either hunted or ran from until you got eaten.
Sam was now painfully aware of that he had been made for hunting, while Dean had been pulled into it. Had he been normal, had he understood normal than he had told Dean to fuck off all these years ago. When John Winchester vanished and Jess had been killed, because Sam wasn't there to defend her.
This isn't my world, Sam had realized. There is no normal life for me. Perhaps never was, but I finally chose this road all on my own and not because something needed to be done.
He had chosen with the same determination - fully aware of the finality of his choice - he had seen in Jimmy Novak's eyes, when only the alternative for Castiel had been Claire. This hadn't been an option for the devote father. Very similar to Sam's realisation that Dean would be able to be a perfect father for Ben and the growing embryo in Lisa's womb.
“However... this is not my life,” Sam admitted to himself as he watched the perfect little family interact with each other.
And nearly said destiny …
With a heavy sign Sam closed his eyes, left the leather of the couch under his skin and concentrated on everything but the noise of the happily chatter of Dean's family in the background.
The moment stretched, a heartbeat and an eternity later Sam opened his eyes again to watch his surroundings blur, when he pulled himself out of Dean's reality and vanished from the couch like never had been there in the first place.
Neither Dean or Lisa would remember him, he had been just a dream or a what-if scenario in their heads. Perhaps Ben would, since he was a still child with an open mind and an unlimited perception. Perhaps he did saw his dead uncle for a moment, sitting on the couch in his home, but Ben would forget.
It was Christmas and such things happened on Christmas.
“It's simply part of the magic,” Gabriel had said. “My father opened Gates of Heaven for the birth of the Son and once in a year it brings mortals as close as they can get to He without dying.”
Sam knew how to translate this. It was just on this occasion he was able to see what could have been and how his future could have looked like …
… if it had been his body that Castiel had dragged out of hell.