In His Image: Volo
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In which Stull Cemetery sees far more angels than expected.
Sam, Lucifer, Michael, Gabriel, Castiel.
volo [v] (Latin): The first-person singular present active indicative of either of the verbs velle (to want/prefer/choose) and volare (to fly); i.e., “I choose,” or “I fly.”
Present day.
Lucifer. The bringer of light. Light harsh and pure as solid steel, searing into every part of him, everything that had ever been Sam, and freezing him like a black and white snapshot.
Not chained to a comet. Chained to a star. Chained within a star.
There were glimpses, here and there. A few things he saw of the world, when Lucifer let him, or turned his attention away, or if Sam shoved really hard. A glimpse of asphalt underfoot (and had his feet always been that far away?). A demon, cowering, its true face distorted in terrified adoration. An angel Sam didn’t know and Lucifer didn’t care about, all brightness and desperate glory for a moment before Lucifer spun it away into nothingness. Trees in the distance. The arch of a great bridge, falling.
But mostly, it was a blur. Mostly, Sam fought, vicious and dogged, not knowing whether it had been five minutes or a century.
Sometimes Lucifer spoke to him. He would pin Sam under the full weight of his attention and puzzlement, trying to win him over by showing him how the world had betrayed him and how he was no different from Lucifer. Like there was nothing else to Sam than that, like he was trying to absorb Sam into his bloodstream and make him part of himself. As if Lucifer did not understand, really couldn’t understand, how, having won Sam, the only thing in the human world that he’d thought worth winning, with every little piece of him starkly visible inside, Sam was still so unknowable. Why he was still fighting.
If only he could remember how to use his limbs.
Like that struggle inside a dream where you insist that you’re in control here, you can choose to wake up, and any minute now you will do it, you will move your hand just so. And the creatures around you look on with faint bored sneers, and say nothing.
Like pushing against a fog.
And then, Michael.
Burning fierce and self-righteous and red, and all of Lucifer’s joy and love and fury and pleading was turned on him, and it felt so very terrifyingly familiar. It was almost a shock to peer out and see Adam’s face in the midst of that brilliance, the little brother that Sam could have liked (though Adam wasn’t there, no soul in the vessel, only ferocious grace), where every instinct thrilling through him from Lucifer was screaming that this should be Dean, DeanDeanDean, who had built Sam up and clung to him and could tear him apart like no one else. The other half of Sam’s heaven.
Then, distraction. And then, fury. Incandescent betrayed protective fury, and -
“No one dicks with Michael but me.”
No, no, please no, not Castiel.
Lucifer clicked his fingers.
Castiel died like a footnote. Sam roared for him.
(You promised. You promised to look out for him.)
he hurt my brother.
Dean said nothing, blank like he’d expected it.
He had known. Castiel had expected to die, and Dean had known. Castiel had come in anticipating this, knowing this, planning to die to give Dean a chance. Planning to die to win him five minutes.
(Michael will put himself together in five minutes. Castiel is dead. That what your promises are worth?)
“Sammy, can you hear me?”
Five minutes. That’s what Castiel thought he was worth?
my brother is worth more than my word. as are you. i had no choice.
Lucifer’s fury was hard as ice, inevitable and implacable as when he had said the same thing about Sam. When Sam had come to him asking for help to find Castiel. When Sam had made him promise.
(Dammit, Lucifer, you always have a choice.)
“You know, I tried to be nice. For Sammy’s sake…”
Sam felt Lucifer reach treacle-slow for Bobby’s frail vertebrae.
(… No. No, hell no, what do you want from me?)
he made promises to you that he could not keep.
(He kept them, you bastard. He kept them, every one. He gave us everything a father should don’t you dare touch him.)
“… But you… are such a pain in my ass.”
oh, he made you think that, Sam. i will wipe the world clean for you.
Bobby’s neck twisted and shattered.
Down, and down, and down. One by one by one, until there was nobody left but only Sam.
“Sammy, are you in there?”
And… Dean. Stubborn and firm and stupidly beautiful, not backing away from Lucifer’s fist (Sam’s fist, dammit, just as soon as he remembered how that worked).
“Oh, he’s in here alright. And he’s going to feel the snap of your bones.”
Bobby’s voice. You fight him tooth and nail, you understand? Keep swingin’. Don’t give an inch.
He raged against Lucifer.
“… Every single one.”
Castiel had died for five minutes. Five minutes of Sam’s stupid, stupid, beautiful brother dying slow on Lucifer’s fists and I can hear you Dean, stop shouting to me, stop trying to reach me, I know you’re there you dear stubborn idiot Dean, go away, I know, live.
I will hold the world safe for you.
Sam. they made me do it.
(No one makes you do anything!)
Lucifer stilled for a moment. Shocked. Sam didn’t know why, but caught the moment in his teeth and tore at it, until Lucifer gently pushed him down like he was a cute little puppy trying to climb out of its basket.
i know it hurts, Sam. but he didn’t believe in you. not like he should have. he would have turned on you.
(Yeah, well, guess who gets to dick with my brother?)
i love my brother. yours betrayed him. betrayed you.
Sam felt the snap of Dean’s bones. Just as Lucifer had promised.
(You don’t know what love is. You never chose it, you never fought for it.)
A low growl, a warning.
don’t you dare. Michael is mine.
(Yours to kill, Lucifer.)
and I will mourn him.
Dean’s head cracked back hard against the Impala.
(Like you mourned Gabriel? Making yourself out to be some big tragic hero like you’re the only one who suffered, like there was never a moment you could have dropped the blade?)
Sam felt something hit there, like pushing a stick into dark water and touching something deep inside it, not knowing what it is.
Gabriel should have been mine.
Dean spoke through a broken jaw. “Sam, it’s okay.”
Sam raged helplessly.
(No, you killed him because he didn’t want to hurt his family. Well, guess what, big guy, he survived. Even being killed didn’t stop him. He came back, and he’s been fighting with us, even though he’s not an angel anymore, because he chose it, because he decided that was right.)
“It’s okay, I’m here.”
… Gabriel?
There, something, something. Sam grinned viciously without a mouth. Gabriel was the key. Brother against brother, only not the one Lucifer had expected. Wasn’t in the script.
“I’m here. I’m not gonna leave you.”
Dean, sprawled and broken against the Impala, home, every one of Sam’s memories of safety and family and love and fighting for what had to be done. Dean, about to die and staring at him and… so very very far from broken.
“I’m not gonna leave you.”
Lucifer drew his arm back for the final blow.
And hell no you don’t get to do that. Not to him. Not Dean.
Sam threw every fierce and good memory he had of Gabriel, of Dean, at the inside of Lucifer’s consciousness. Gabriel upright and believing and fighting for humanity. Dean, Dean, Dean, every moment of home and love and laughter and bitching and ragging, everything inside that sleek black loyal beloved car. Because whatever Gabriel had said to Lucifer in that moment before he had died, something had stung, something had stuck. And Michael, and Dean, they were his grief and his rage and his hope. My brother. Your brother.
Sam reached out, and grabbed Lucifer’s fist.
(He told you, didn’t he? Herald of God, his last message, he died for that. Did you hear him, Lucifer?)
And just that one moment of shock, of doubt, of love or fear or regret, shook the Morningstar enough for one tiny human called Sam Winchester to take over, even as Lucifer roared in his turn, feeling Sam surge forward, trying to shake him back. Subsiding.
“… It’s okay, Dean. It’s gonna be okay. I’ve got him.”
Sam opened the Pit, and fell.
He took Michael with him.
It felt more like sinking than falling. Wind and pain rushed around him thick like water, a torrent that buffeted him back and forth, tearing him loose from Michael’s rage and desperate protection. There were lights, flashing and dizzying, or something that his brain interpreted as lights, and twisting agony that wasn’t Sam’s, spreading vaster and vaster around them as they went deeper, helpless against the pull. Michael’s wings stretched out, filling Sam’s senses, trying to pull himself to a stop, trying to fly up, reaching for Sam (no, for Lucifer) to pull him back too; but of course, this spell, this passage, this tunnel, this route, was made for an archangel, and an angel’s wings were useless against it.
A human, of course, stood no chance. But then, Sam wasn’t fighting.
Lucifer screamed, twisted inside Sam’s mind, reached out with both arms for his brother - no, upwards, back up to where they’d come from, and it wasn’t this brother he called for.
Gabriel. Gabriel, brother.
And then Lucifer left him - no, flung him away, threw him upwards, past Michael, and without the angel inside him everything was a blur, too much, too dazzling and hot and harsh and airless and cold and he was dying, would die. Except that suddenly there was a hand closing on his hip and another grasping the back of his neck, bright and strong. He was surrounded and held and carried, not by the brilliant deadly purity of Lucifer or Michael, but by something far richer and messier and warmer, and just as fierce. Maybe more so, because there were so many other complicated emotions and impulses in there, all feeding back into this. And he knew that feeling, and remembered the pressure of that crushing hand on his hip, the same hip, back when the touch had felt like an enemy’s. Only now he could feel, really feel, the strain of sinews behind it, the thud of a heart against his breastbone, the struggling muscles in the back under his hands, the brush of very physical feathers against the back of his fingers, as he wrapped his arms around and clung by sheer desperate instinct.
Then everything else was retreating, the rush and the burn and the screaming in the back of his mind, leaving the slide of sweat-slick cotton under his hands, the smell of burning, the puff of afternoon air, and then, finally, finally, the brush of warm sun on his skin. And Sam was stumbling, legs like sodden rope, and falling again except this time only as far as the ground, the solid real dusty earth, with a hot gasping weight on top of him.
“Gabriel,” he choked out. “Gabriel.”
He barely caught a flash of bright golden eyes and exhilaration before he was being kissed, devoured, all nerves and adrenalin and old, old joy. There were teeth clacking clumsily against his, and a stone digging painfully into his left shoulder, and Sam wrapped his arms (his arms, obeying him) around determined, shaking shoulders and held on. Gabriel was sprawled uncomfortably across him, hot weight and sharp angles, and Sam bit into his mouth in return, sheer relief and incredulity and the bitten-back gut-thumping terror of the past two days swelling up and choking him. Gabriel dug in his nails like a cat, snarled and laughed all in one shared breath, all messy and wet and beautiful and here, alive, bright and joyous. Sam buried one hand in soft silky vigorous hair and cradled his skull in it, hooked one leg up over his hips and shoved against him, making him real, making him gloriously solid. Not a dream, not a trick.
There was barely any breath in him and Gabriel was stealing it, laughing it back into his mouth, so Sam didn’t say “You fucking bastard where the hell have you been,” or “Nice timing,” or “I didn’t think you’d come,” or even “Hey, wings, flying, how did that happen.” He just grabbed, grasped, gripped, held, and wasted his breath on laughing right back.
Gabriel made a noise that sounded like pain, and collapsed too heavily on top of Sam, laughing and shaking all over. “Fuck. Fuck, that was insane. We’re insane, Sam.”
Sam buried his face blindly in what had to be the curve of Gabriel’s neck and just clung, held on tight to this promise of reality and salvation and life. Only it would be really embarrassing if Gabriel had suddenly regained the ability to mindread and heard that, so he mumbled into his skin instead, “Insane? Hey. I’m not the one who just volunteered for a swan dive into Lucifer’s cage.”
Gabriel smelled like sweat and ash and blood and warm skin and honey (Lucifer had smelled like frost and eternity). “No, yours was more of a penguin dive.”
Sam blinked very slowly, relishing the details of sensation, the push of his eyelashes against the tendon in Gabriel’s neck.
“A penguin.”
“Something without wings,” Gabriel explained helpfully into his hair. Which was a… something. A gross slander against nature. Possibly.
Because.
“Penguins have wings.” It was a very important point.
Gabriel’s right shoulder jerked, like his hand was making one of those far too extravagantly detailed gestures that Sam was sure he remembered seeing, that he could hear in his voice over the phone, that every text message had implied. “No, they have… those funny little flapping things.”
“Yeah. Wings, Gabriel.” Sam felt his mouth curving into a wide, maybe possibly slightly hysterical grin, and he let himself flop back uselessly onto the ground, squinting up with eyes that still hadn’t caught on to this whole back-in-reality business at the blurry figure outlined against the sky. It drew back enough to stare at him, eyes kind of narrowed and glaring, then something funny happened to its face and Gabriel was hauling him up by the collar and shaking.
“You stupidsmugridiculouslylucky sunflower of a man, if you ever, ever jump in a hole again, Samuel Winchester, I’ll…”
“What? Pull me out?”
“Damn right I will,” Gabriel growled into his cheek. “So I can kill you myself, over and over again. Just you wait. There will be infinite Tuesdays. The squirrels will be nothing to it.”
Sam blinked slowly at the curve of gold against the sun - hair, his brain supplied helpfully, ordinary human hair - quivering in his vision as one of them, or both of them, trembled all over.
“Sunflower?”
“Tall. Made sense before I said it. Shut up.”
… This was Gabriel. Gabriel was here. Talking to him. Being here. Pulling him out of… literally out of Hell.
Sam blinked his bleary, confused eyes, fumbled his slow hands onto sweat-damp shoulders, and pushed Gabriel back to stare at him.
Skinny. Far skinnier than he had been when Sam had last seen him, and the assured smirk Sam remembered had morphed into something determined and exhausted and delightedly astonished, and he had too much ragged beard to look smooth, and his eyes were boring into Sam like the sun, and out behind his shoulders arched two great ragged wings, translucent as carved glass, trembling and torn and burnt, broken at the edges, obviously useless.
Sam blinked again, and levered himself carefully up on one elbow, forcing Gabriel to shift himself back to sit on Sam’s knees. The wings didn’t disappear, just sort of… quivered, like water when something moved under the surface.
Wings. An angel’s wings. And Sam, Sam of all people, was seeing them. Only… they weren’t, they couldn’t be, because Gabriel wasn’t an angel and if he had been they’d all four of them be in the Cage right now.
“Gabriel.” Sam’s finger dug into the meat of his shoulder. “Wings, Gabriel. Your wings. Where’d these come from?”
Gabriel smirked, his mouth curling (in a way that made Sam want to taste it because apparently his body was confusing the possessive burn in his neck and hip and the return of life and blood tingling all over in every extremity with other kinds of life and blood and extremity-tingling) in a way that had to precede that tone of voice that meant he was being helpfully unhelpful. And sure enough: “Surrey, 1406.”
“Huh.” Sam grinned at him, the almost-reluctant grin that was always called up by that tone of voice, only now Gabriel saw it rather than just hearing it in Sam’s voice, and his eyes lit up with it, and it was sort of breathtaking. “There’s a story there, isn’t there.”
Gabriel half smiled, then sort of collapsed in a slow sideways slide.
“Hey, hey hey. I gotcha.” Sam caught him without even thinking about it, gathered him in against the broad steady wall of his own chest. Gabriel just sort of went with it, falling against Sam like he’d never expected someone else to be there and didn’t quite know what to do about it.
They stayed there like that for a while, just breathing, hearts thumping gradually back towards something like normal, Sam’s eyes adjusting to the real world and the sun and the shadows.
Then Gabriel offered carefully, “I should probably get off you at some point, shouldn’t I.”
Because of course. Sam was a prude who couldn’t take random bouts of adrenalin-fuelled making out without having a gay freak-out. He snorted, and closed one hand around Gabriel’s hip in deliberate mocking suggestion.
“Why, you uncomfortable?”
Gabriel went very still, like that was unexpected too. Then he shifted a little, fingers trailing thoughtfully up Sam’s side, and turned his face into Sam’s neck. Nestling. Really. Nestling. And his voice was a sort of a thoughtful hum: “…Nope. I’m good.”
And hello, euphoria-induced life-affirming erection. Dammit. Trust Gabriel to raise the stakes. Sam shifted carefully. The world rippled through the feathered screen in front of his nose.
“Not what I thought an angel’s wings would be like,” he offered carefully.
“Not an angel’s wings, kiddo,” Gabriel slurred, all loose and cocky like Dean got sometimes when he was on the verge of passing out. “One hundred percent made in humanity.”
And maybe it was the Dean similarities that made Sam’s voice come out sort of fond and tender, but if it wasn’t he couldn’t really find that he cared. “Yeah, don’t know if you’ve noticed, but humans don’t actually have wings.”
Gabriel made a faintly condescending noise into his neck, like that was a completely irrelevant detail and he was a ridiculous puny human for even bothering with it. Then he made another tiny pained one. And never mind the supernatural translucence - what Sam should have been paying attention to was the smell of the burnt feathers, the blood and the torn flesh, the unnatural droop of broken wing-bones. His hand curled itself protectively around Gabriel’s shoulder, and it was weirdly reassuring that, whatever Gabriel was, Sam’s hand was large enough to cover the whole of it.
“You’re actually in a pretty bad way, aren’t you?” he asked softly, now that he was looking. Now that reality was actually reality, with all its responsibility and its consequences.
“Wouldn’t know,” Gabriel grumbled, and then flinched again. “Swear they didn’t hurt like this two minutes ago.”
“That’s what happens when adrenalin starts to wear off, genius,” Sam informed him, smug and superior in his entire decades of experience wearing a human body. “We should get you to…”
He trailed off, and looked around for the first time. Stull Cemetery, just where he had been before. Lawrence, Kansas, and what did one do with a not-angel with broken wings? A basic first-aid kit, get him under cover, get him washed and patched up and rested and - get him somewhere. Move him. A car.
Sam looked around again, matching up the landscape with what he’d glimpsed when his eyes hadn’t been his, and tried to bite down the rising flood of panic.
“… Gabriel. How long is it since I jumped? Did something screwy happen with time? Did you do something?”
The slow slur of a voice, adrenalin and pain and maybe even a bit of human shock, reverberated against Sam’s throat. “About half an hour. What’s up?”
Sam swallowed carefully. “I beat Dean up pretty bad. There’s no way he was driving away in that condition. And where’s Bobby’s truck?” And where’s Bobby?
Gabriel mumbled something rude and planted his hand in the middle of Sam’s chest, shoving back to take his own weight on his heels. Then he tipped his head back thoughtfully, the same abstract expression on his face that Castiel got when he was looking something up in what Sam thought of as his mental library. “Looks like Singer’s heading back to Sioux Falls. And Dean…” He fumbled with one pocket and pulled out a smartphone, which for some arcane terrifying smartphone reason apparently hadn’t minded falling halfway into Hell, and weighed it in his hand thoughtfully without opening it. “If he’s where his phone is, heading east. Somewhere south of Kansas City already.” A faint tired smirk played around the corner of his mouth. “And he calls me a reckless driver. Should tell him you’re topside and kicking - lower the state’s road rage stats by one.”
“They’re alive?”
Gabriel quirked an eyebrow at Sam pointedly. “You’re alive.”
Sam drew in a shaky breath. “I felt Bobby’s neck break. And Dean was halfway dead, too.”
“Guess the little angel that could must be feeling a bit more like his old self, then. If Singer hadn’t gone with the reaper yet, fixing him up and popping him back in’s a piece of angelfood cake.” Sam winced and closed his eyes. Re-opened them to an interrogative you’re-harshing-my-buzz scowl. “What?”
“Cas… didn’t make it, Gabriel.”
And there, suddenly, all the exhaustion and the smug contentment and the joking dropped away, and the creature crouched in front of him was very old and almost terrifying, with eyes that burned.
“Say that again.”
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t stop him fast enough. Lucifer killed him.”
For a moment, Gabriel was very still. Then he was on his feet and whirling away, half stumbling under the drag of lopsided wings, and there was a dull crack as he slammed his fist into a granite headstone.
“You stupid, sorry sons of bitches.” He choked out half a laugh. “You know, you’ve really got to stop facing down angry archangels now I’m not around to snatch you out of the way or stick you back together again.”
Sam tried to lever himself to his feet, but his legs were too shaky to move properly and there was a broken wing lying heavy across his thighs. He settled for touching that, carefully, laying one hand on the strong curve of the leading edge like he might on someone’s hunched shoulder. “Well, the only time you did that you ended up dead, Gabriel. Not exactly something I was planning to make a habit of.”
Because sometimes “I’m here, I care” was the only useful thing you could say.
Gabriel growled something impatient and raw. “Oh, come on, you worked out the rest and you didn’t pin that one on me?”
… Hold on. Because there was only one thing that fit that outline. “You. Are you trying to say you brought Castiel back after Raphael killed him, and put us on that airplane?”
“I stuck Yosemite Sam and the devil on the plane’s entertainment system, for crying out loud.” He leaned on the headstone with his bloodied hand like he was suddenly very tired, the line of his shoulders tight and thin, and mumbled, “Not that I was going to dance the hornpipe in front of my little brother or anything, but I was hardly being subtle.”
Sam pressed his fingers into the cool weight of translucent feathers, just a little, and kept his voice gentle. “Okay… because, according to Joshua, God did that.”
Gabriel froze. Then the wing was ripped out of Sam’s hand as Gabriel spun around to stare at him - just for a moment, mouth opening around words that ground to a halt on the way out - before he wheeled again, wings scraping over tombstones, and he strode away, footsteps jarring against the ground with a shudder that Sam swore he could feel in his bones.
Sam bit down words, the instinct to reassure, and waited.
“No,” like a question. “No. I did it. But…” His voice and his footsteps slowed, like he was fending off realisation, or grabbing for it. “… I shouldn’t have been able to do it. I wasn’t watching Castiel when he died, I just suddenly knew, and I tried to fix it and I shouldn’t have been able to but - I could, it worked.”
With a sudden violent euphoria, Gabriel whirled around and struck a tree with his fist (the same bloody fist, the idiot), then slammed his palm into it.
“Dad, you sneaky fucking bastard.”
Sam grabbed the nearest headstone, the one Gabriel had punched, and tried to pull himself up by it. Because Gabriel’s face was shining far too bright, and his breath was coming ragged and fast, and angel or god or human or hybrid, that couldn’t be healthy. But the granite crumbled like gravel under his hand, and Sam staggered back to his knees.
“Gabriel,” he started instead, that stern whipcrack of a voice that could pull Dean up short in the middle of a rant. But Gabriel overrode it, carried on a wave of wide-eyed revelation.
“Don’t you see, Sam, dear stupid Sam? None of us should have been able to do any of it. In the panic room, Sam, I couldn’t just snap it out of you, I had to concentrate, it took time and thought and contact, but when I put you on that plane I fixed you up with a thought. And you, fighting off Famine - and Lucifer, Sam, Michael couldn’t have won going head to head with Lucifer for sheer bloody willpower, and you tried and you could and it shouldn’t have been possible but you made it possible. And getting through to Dean in the green room, and Dean getting himself out of that funk because he had to, because he wanted to, because of you, and killing Zachariah and not getting his eyes burnt out. And Castiel, again and again and he should have been dead twenty times over. And getting in there to drag you out, and - Sam, my wings were shredded before I even touched you, there was no way I should have been able to drag myself out of that, let alone…”
Gabriel drew in a delirious breath. Pointed at Sam, like he was just daring contradiction to show its head. “He was helping, Sam. He wasn’t doing things, he was helping us do things. Letting us make the script. Letting you decide. Giving us strength to do it when we really needed it. Sam, Sam, he hasn’t abandoned us, he’s letting us grow the fuck up.”
And that was… a nice thought, Sam supposed, at least from the angels’ perspective, but it all came down to the same thing for him, thanks. Except that it didn’t, not really, because Gabriel was positively radiant - a picture of joy, dirty, dishevelled, trailing broken feathers, one shoe lost, head thrown back and burnt wings and arms thrown out to embrace the world. Shouting to the sky.
“Castiel, get your pert little ass down here, stat!”
And the air squeezed tight and shifted and, wonder of wonders, there was Castiel, with his ridiculous trench coat and that familiar defiant set to his shoulders underneath it, like he expected anything in the world to come up behind him and drive a dagger between his shoulders. Like he was ready to fight and die for whatever was in front of him. And Gabriel’s eyes went wide and he threw himself at the stiff, awkward figure and embraced him, fierce and joyous, with everything he had.
“You featherbrain. You were looking for Dad in all the wrong places. In places, you hopelessly literal shmuck. Should have been looking in his image.” Castiel stood and took it, with that stoic frozen set to his spine that Sam had come to categorise as “too many emotions, must cut some corners,” and Sam just collapsed back against the half-crumbled headstone and laughed, silent and happy, carried on the tide of whatever it was that Gabriel was working through, the sheer unabashed hope. The miraculous shape of one of his best friends there again, in the world, when Sam had believed he’d delivered him to oblivion. And Gabriel laughed with him, open and beautiful and joyous, pushed further into Castiel’s space, and cupped his hands around the angel’s cheeks. “In them, you prize idiot. In people. It’s where you always came closest.”
“Gabriel.”
Castiel’s voice was like a shock of cool water, grieving and resigned, gentle, and a little reproachful with it. He put his hand up to his cheek to cover Gabriel’s, or maybe to contain it. “Why are you here, now?”
Gabriel snickered, eyes crinkling easily around the edges as if Castiel’s rebuke was all he’d ever wanted from life. He stepped back, taking Castiel’s hand with him, and spread his injured wings like a picture, like a trophy, unangelic and iridescent in the sunlight, smelling of sulphur and ash.
“Because I stole your thunder, little bro.”
Castiel blinked, slow and cautious, and Gabriel went very still for a moment. Then he narrowed his eyes, and glared. “Don’t pretend you weren’t going to try a heroic little kamikaze flight of your own.”
Castiel’s head tilted very slowly over to one side, like he couldn’t quite believe what he was making out until he saw it from every possible angle. Then suddenly he was all movement, spinning on one heel, staring, searching, until his eyes locked on Sam, where Sam was grinning helplessly at him and feeling the weight of his gaze like a hot iron.
“Samuel.”
Disbelief, and joy, and maybe even a little love. And okay, so normally anyone using his full name made his spine itch, but when it was Castiel, when Castiel forgot to trivialise the last three letters, it felt different. Like he was seeing all of him, not just his everyday façade.
“Hey Castiel,” Sam croaked, unintelligently.
Castiel crossed the space between them in a few curt strides and went down on one knee by Sam’s side, cradling his face in hands that were cool and angelic and didn’t sweat or tremble anymore, but looking at him with eyes that spoke disbelieving volumes.
Sam hooked an arm around his neck and gave him a rough, firm hug. “I’m so sorry, Cas. I tried to stop him.”
“Samuel Winchester, you are magnificent,” Castiel growled, low and harsh, and pressed his lips to Sam’s forehead, because he was weird and non-human like that sometimes. Grace flooded through Sam’s veins like ice-melt, healing him, strengthening his shaky limbs. Feeling him out through and through - not glaringly harsh like Lucifer, but eager and careful, almost ticklish.
Sam laughed, and shoved at Castiel half-heartedly. “Enough with the touchy-feely, Cas, it’s all me. I’m fine.”
Castiel pulled back, and his mouth pulled up just a little at the corners.
“Yes. Yes, you are.”
Then he bowed his head, and Sam felt his voice booming through the air and the earth and his blood, though Castiel’s mouth didn’t move. Proclaiming the news fierce and joyous to all the hosts of Heaven.
Samuel Winchester is saved. Samuel Winchester is saved.
Sam slid his gaze up over Castiel’s mussed dark head to where Gabriel had drifted closer, and was leaning with one hand on a headstone. He had heard Castiel too - his eyes glittered, sparking up bright amber with mischief and delight and completely smug triumph, which, hey, to be fair, Sam could hardly call undeserved just now.
Sam grinned at him and shook his head in a you’re incorrigible sort of way, which earned him a decent attempt at a leer, before Castiel raised his head. He was wearing that characteristic look, that weird mixture of diffidence and unyielding determination that Sam had once thought was angelic and was now sure was just Castiel, just him, which he’d thought he’d never get to see again. And if you weren’t allowed to be sentimental about your friends when you’d just saved the world and been pulled out of an eternity in the bottom of Hell at the last minute then when were you.
“Hey, Dean knows you’re okay, right?”
Castiel nodded briefly. “I was with him when Gabriel called. And Bobby is well,” he pre-empted helpfully. Then he cocked his head, precise and quick like a bird, as if he was reconsidering the basic makeup of the universe as evidenced by Sam. “How did you get Lucifer out of him so quickly?”
Gabriel, leaning against the headstone in a nonchalant I-can-totally-stand-up-on-my-own-if-I-want-to way, made an elaborate feathery shrug. “I didn’t. Lucifer gave him to me.” That brought Castiel’s gaze up and onto him. Gabriel ducked his head under it, then covered everything with a rueful grin. “Lucy’s a vindictive bastard with a chip on his shoulder the size of Norway when it comes to humans. But he cares about Sam.”
Castiel looked closely at him, through him, eyes narrowing like Gabriel was a jigsaw and Castiel was trying to see how all the little pieces fit together. “You… are something extraordinary.”
Gabriel chuckled, self-conscious and fond, and rested his hand on Castiel’s head. “Like you aren’t, little sparrow.” And Sam shamelessly used the just-saved-the-world excuse again to sprawl back comfortably in the grass and enjoy the sight of two beautiful angels, practically in his lap, trying to remember how to be friends and brothers. The strong, tentative curl of Gabriel’s fingers in the dark waves of Castiel’s hair; the way Castiel’s eyes crinkled enquiringly at the corners even in the midst of his inscrutably intense stare; the helpless, hopeful delight Gabriel took in it all, and the way it lit him up, made his mouth crook around a sort of a smile.
Then Gabriel had to break the weighted moment with an obnoxious wink. “So, have you and Dean worked out your epic silent love affair yet, or do I have to turn somebody into an ostrich?”
Sam carefully did not roll his eyes, because if anyone knew just how easy this wasn’t (after a lifetime with Dean, after a day in Lucifer’s head), it was Sam. Castiel just gave Gabriel a flat stare that looked like it might be his version of the I-can’t-believe-I’m-related-to-you glower Sam had had years to perfect. Gabriel grinned back, waggling his eyebrows unrepentantly, and Sam would find it kind of creepy except that, if he thought about it, he and Dean probably were their best models of how to be brothers.
For a given and terrifying value of “best,” anyway.
He cleared his throat pointedly. “Cas, can you heal him?”
“I can. The question is, would he rather do it himself?”
For some reason, there was an undercurrent to the quiet question that made all the irreverence and the awkwardness slip away. Gabriel’s eyes went dark and solemn, like there was a whole other conversation under there that Sam knew nothing about.
Castiel stood up with a soft rustle of polyester and invisible feathers, and Sam unfolded his legs and got to his feet himself. Gabriel, slouching against the headstone with his arms crossed over his chest and his eyebrows sharp raised lines of wary sarcasm, should have looked small between them. Instead, he looked tightly drawn in, carefully controlled, vastly and quietly unfathomable.
“It will be chaos up there, Gabriel. And you are still beloved,” Castiel went on inexorably, and oh, that’s what this was about.
“I won’t become Michael,” Gabriel said, warning and soft.
Sam couldn’t keep back the soft noise of amused protest, which brought Gabriel’s eyes flickering over to him for one little startled moment. Sam quirked an eyebrow back at him, because, seriously, Michael? Sam had met Michael, had felt him, and that was… well, Gabriel trying to turn himself into Michael would be like all the oceans, with their variety and their motion and warmth and salt-spice and everything, trying to turn into a single icicle of pure water.
Gabriel blinked.
“Heaven does not need another Michael,” Castiel growled back at him. “Heaven needs you.”
The corner of Gabriel’s mouth curved up, small and genuine. “Not half so much as it needs you.”
Which threw Castiel in his turn, or at least made his mouth do that strange confused twist it did whenever Bobby’s washing machine got the better of him and he wasn’t sure why. Gabriel sighed, loud and messy like he wanted the world to know just what a virtuously long-suffering big brother he was. Then he pushed himself to his feet, and made little grabby hand motions.
“Okay, come on. Lay it on me.”
Castiel gave him a deeply dubious look, like he suspected “lay it on me” of being the mysterious phrase that automatically invalidated the solemn and ancient ritual of re-angelification. Then Gabriel smiled, a faint lopsided little smile like a promise, and Castiel swayed forward into his space and slid his hands tight and possessive into his hair.
“Sam. Be ready to close your eyes if it gets too bright.”
Gabriel let his eyes drift shut, let Castiel tug his head back to bend over his mouth, exposing the long vulnerable curve of his throat.
“Won’t this bring down the Host?” Sam asked softly, half mesmerised.
“Let it,” Castiel growled low into the corner of his brother’s mouth. “We’re done hiding.”
“Honey, I love it when you go all caveman like that,” Gabriel drawled.
Castiel shut him up.
It lasted less than a minute, all told. Time seemed to stretch itself out far longer than that, though, syrup-slow in air that crackled lazy and hot. Castiel’s body lit up radiant, making Sam’s skin crawl with little shivers of electricity; pale light arched like slow lightning between him and the sky; and everything centred on the brilliant white glare of power bleeding out between the slow press and slide of the angels’ mouths.
Sam suspected Gabriel of deliberately making it filthier than it had to be, for Sam’s benefit.
Then Gabriel made a tiny noise into Castiel’s mouth, startlingly unsteady and human in the midst of the ethereal light display, and bunched his hand in the collar of Castiel’s jacket. Little glowing shocks rippled over his face, his hand, the little slice of skin just above his belt where his shirt had ridden up, then he… exploded. Gold and fierce white rushed out of him like the breaking of a dam, sharp and indiscriminate and full of life. Sam staggered under the pressure, clung to reality, set his feet firm and square on the ground, and looked into the heart of it with open eyes. Saw the tattered wings shake out and fill with golden light, with the joyous strength not of Heaven’s grace, but of Gabriel’s soul.
As the impossible glare ebbed, the archangel turned his head. Looked at Sam with eyes like the heat of the sun.
Sam took a deep, careful breath, narrowed his eyes in a pointed glare, and prayed.
Gabriel. Hi there. This doesn’t change anything. You run away again, I will hunt you down and make you sorry. You know I can.
Gabriel tossed back his head and laughed, warm and possessive and absolutely filthy, the little bitch. Then he pressed his forehead against Castiel’s, too tight not to hurt, and folded them both firm and safe in half-human wings that now shimmered through with gold. Sam didn’t catch what Gabriel whispered fierce and sweet and repentant against his brother’s cheek, but he heard the soft vow in Castiel’s murmured reply.
“I would have come to find you, Gabriel. If I’d known.”
“I know.” Gabriel stepped back, grinning at him, and the Host began to descend. Stiff-shouldered individuals balanced precariously all around the cemetery, blinking wonder and hope and confusion, wearing suits and jeans and saris and whatever else their vessels had dragged on the morning before their lives had been put on pause. Then, the shrill vibrating whine of a voice, another voice, and the burgeoning gleam of angels in their true forms. Sam clapped his hands over his ears and, when Gabriel quirked an eyebrow in his direction, shook his head with a grimace.
Gabriel spun on his heel and flicked his wings open, command falling onto him like a cloak, and brought his hands together in a ringing clap. “Okay, folks, here’s how this is going to go.” He didn’t shout - he didn’t need to. His voice was just louder, rich and resonant, rolling out over the headstones and trees and through the assembled angels, and down the hills and valleys until Sam swore they could hear him in Missouri. “There are humans down here, remember? Anyone who ain’t in a vessel can shift their pretty little metaphysical ass right back up to the royal box. Promise we’ll take this show on tour. Scout’s honour. Shoo.”
The sharp pressure on Sam’s eyes and ears fled like it had tucked its tail between its legs. He cautiously lowered his hands.
“Scout?”
Gabriel tipped him a wink. “Back in the seventies, sure. Should have seen those cookies.”
Castiel moved then, striding forward upright and sure into the centre of the cemetery. And Gabriel may have glowed, Gabriel may have shone with the greater heavenly power, but to anyone with the basic wit to see it, Castiel carried himself like a visionary, like a general, like someone you sure as hell did not want to fuck with.
Like Dean, Sam thought, very quietly. Only, not quite. A little like Dean, but with all of Castiel’s faith, and all of his crafty and bloody-minded persistence.
The angels’ eyes followed him, a little puzzled, some questioning, some hopeful, some openly hostile. Sam took note of those.
“Michael and Lucifer have both chosen the Pit,” Castiel pronounced, crisp and clear. “The Apocalypse was not God’s will. More importantly, it was not the will of those He created in His own image, and who belong in this world more truly than we ever have.”
There was a pause, like half of the crowd wasn’t sure whether this was rebellion or blasphemy or madness, and the other half was waiting to see what the long-lost archangel would do.
Then Gabriel’s wing brushed lightly against Sam’s arm, like a tease, and the archangel stepped forward, and went down on one knee in front of Castiel.
A soft rustling breath passed around the cemetery, like a murmur of surprise would feel if it had no words and no casual voices to express itself. Then one angel followed, sank to her knee, pressed dust into the precise crease of her formal black slacks. Then another, and another, folding down onto the grass and the soil and the sleek dark slabs of the graves, a wave of promise and devotion. Until finally the last angels standing obeyed the mass of their companions, and knelt.
Sam was watching Castiel’s face too closely to miss the soft intake of breath, the rapid flicker of surprise, then gratification, then dismay. And okay, so free will chez Winchester didn’t tend to involve much kneeling. But Sam suspected Gabriel kind of had a sneaky point here. How did you explain freedom to angels, to creatures who had only ever served a hierarchy?
If you wanted them to listen, they had to obey first. They had to know it was alright to obey, and who was in charge if they did.
“Stand up,” Castiel said, gentler now and quietly passionate. As if he was remembering his family, speaking to each one there, and not to a mass of semi-hostile strangers. “We were built to be soldiers, when our Father had need of soldiers. We were built to follow, when he gave us clear orders to be followed, and we learned that we need never answer for anything that we did.” He took a careful breath, a breath that he didn’t need for his body, but that Sam thought he might now, for the assurance of habit and humanity. “But times have changed. Our Father has changed. So must we.”
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