SPN: Unify 1/5
SUMMARY: Written for the 2012 gabriel_bigbang. AU from the end of "Hammer of the Gods". Art by placeofinsanity. I needed a temporary vessel until my new True Vessel reached adulthood. I just didn't know how much work it would take!
Talk about your classic "What the hell just happened here?" moments!
One second I'm battling my brother - my deluded Lucy, who thinks he's on a par with Father? Please... -- and the next there's this terrible pain in my belly.
I don't know what Lucy said to me, but I know he said something. I could hear his vessel's voice, laced with his true one - but I couldn't make out any words. There was nothing but a huge buzz in my ears and a feeling of being slowly ripped apart.
That was when I realised he had used an angel blade and my Grace was wounded.
I was going to die if I didn't do something - yesterday.
So I blew myself out of my vessel, my wounded Grace making the silhouette of my wings visible on the ground as I did, and slunk off to recuperate.
It must have taken me longer than I thought, because when I was strong enough to rejoin my vessel, it had been cremated.
Angels can do many things - even archangels - but we are not permitted to recreate a body from ash.
Not any more. Not after the Deluge.
So, I would have to find a new vessel. No big deal - done it many times before. Should be easy.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Now I know what humans mean about Famous Last Words.
I had been looking for nearly a year - and I found nothing. All my vessel's bloodlines that were pure enough to house me were gone. All of them! I still don't know how that happened, but it did. The last one I knew of - my last hope for my vessel's pure bloodline - passed to her reward two days before I found her.
I was alone.
I was unvesseled.
And I was not permitted to create my own.
It takes a special bloodline to house me, since I am more powerful than a run of the mill angel. I'm an archangel, and it takes a powerful bloodline to hold me as a.....
Wait.
A special bloodline. Able to house an archangel.
As in a pair of brothers - each of whom is able to house an archangel without harm to themselves.
Since the world is still here, it was plain to me that they had somehow managed to stop the Apocalypse. So I cast out, looking for them.
And I found them. One was with his girlfriend and their son - oh, my, the power in that boy's fierce loyalty and love - but his brother was not near him.
That was unusual.
I found him a state away, and instantly I realised something was not right with him. I drifted closer to find him and find out what was wrong with him.
When I did, I was glad I was unvesseled. If I had had a body at that point, I probably would have thrown up.
Sam Winchester had no soul.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
I had 'officially' met them four times and learned much in those encounters. Plus, I'd dealt with them several times without them realising it was me. I'd learned that jumping in without scoping out the lay of the land with these two was sheer stupidity.
And I was not stupid.
I watched a djinn couple attack. I watched Sam and Dean take them both down. I watched them part again, and Dean return to the embrace of the woman he loved and the special child that bore his blood and could be the answer to my issues.
I watched him go to bed, completely confused as to what was going on with his brother.
I bided my time. I waited a week. Two weeks.
And I gathered intel during that time. I learned exactly what had gone down a year earlier and what had pulled Sam out of the Cage. And why.
Once more, I felt like throwing up, though I had no body. That stupid child. Playing with forces he had no idea of and thought he could control? He was going to get himself - or others - killed!
He'd already done severe damage to both Winchesters by botching bringing Sam back whole! Now he was hiding his face from everyone and trying to fight a war all alone - with only a demon for backup?
It looked like I had more work to do than I initially thought I did.
Where did I even start?
I drifted for awhile, thinking it over, slotting plans into place.
Then I knew what to do and where to start.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Out of all the mooks I've ever encountered or worked with, these two had always had the capacity to startle me. When I entered his dreams, I was not quite certain what I would be expecting. Perhaps I was thinking it would be a country road with rock music blaring and his brother sleeping by his side.
At any rate, I was not expecting to walk down a dock on a beautiful late spring day, with only the sounds of birdsongs and gently lapping waves as music and to find him sitting at the end of it, a tackle box by his side and a fishing pole dangling in the water.
I found his shoulders bent in concern, even here. The weight of the world bore down heavily on his denim-clad shoulders.
Huh. I wondered why he wasn't wearing his leather jacket. That was a little odd....until I got close enough to see it laying by his side. Dangling from his neck was the amulet that he had not been wearing the last time we met.
He looked tired. This was not a setting of peace, despite the tranquility that surrounded us. He looked almost as if he were - waiting for someone.
Testing a theory, I let him hear my wings beat as I formed an illusion of my now-departed vessel. It was a dream, so I could do this.
Sure enough, when he heard the wings, he straightened. "About time, Cas. I've been calling for you for days now---" As he spoke, he turned in his chair - and froze.
I stepped forward, hands in my pockets, smiling. "Hello, Dean."
He jerked to his feet and spun at the same time, so fast that his feet tangled together and he toppled
backwards. I snapped my fingers and not only did the dock extend to catch him, but he landed in a soft armchair. He sat there for a second, staring at me with huge eyes.
Huh. He had green eyes. I never realised that before.
"You're dead," he squeaked out.
I decided not to tease him about the fact that he suddenly sounded like he'd had his balls removed as a child. I had a feeling that he was wound so tight that I needed to shoot straight or he'd shatter. "No, not quite. Out of my body, yes. Dead?" I spread my arms and tilted my head, letting my slight smirk speak for me.
"Was it you?" Dean asked, leaning foward in his chair. "Was it you that got my brother out of the Cage?"
The smirk erased of its own accord. "No. That wasn't me."
"Who was it? Do you know?"
"I know. I intend to deal with him about it. He botched the job."
Dean's eyes widened. "You can tell? I wasn't crazy? There... There really is something wrong with Sammy?"
"There is." I moved forward and sank into the chair Dean had vacated, reeling in the empty hook and putting the pole by the tackle box. "He's missing something very important. Something that's still in the cage." I looked at him. "I'm not going to tell you what, because I know you and you'd go all spastic trying to get it back. You'd go into bad decisions with worse consequences."
"Now, you look --" he began, but I cut him off with an upraised hand.
"Dean. I'm on your side, remember? I'm going to try to fix this situation. To fix Sam. Right now, I'm not sure I have the power to do so, but I'm going to give it my best shot. I need you to trust me and ..." I licked my lips and took a deep breath. "I need you to pray."
"Pray?" He scoffed. "What's there to pray about? Who's there to pray to?"
I smiled a real, genuine smile. "I have a feeling God isn't as absent as everyone has assumed Him to be. You succeeded, after all - when everything pointed to your failure. I'm alive, after all - when I should have been killed by that blade. Sam is back--"
He nodded. "I gotcha. That's one question - what's there to pray about?"
"That I would succeed in this quest and make your brother whole again."
His chin raised. "That, I can pray for."
"Thank you." I looked away from him, and back. "And just so you know - this isn't entirely altruistic."
"No?"
"I need a vessel to operate on this plane. I'm an archangel - it takes a special line to house me."
Dean raised his hand. "So you're fixing Sam -- to wear him?"
"Partially, yes. You could do, just as well - except that Sam already has that space in his head where a Grace - tainted though it was - resided. Once you have been a Vessel, it changes a person. It's made him much darker, and I'm hoping that my Grace can heal the dark places. And it wouldn't be forever, Dean. I do have a potential true Vessel here on Earth."
"So use him!"
"I can't, Dean. He's a child. I have to wait until he is old enough, or my Grace will completely overwhelm him and erase his identity completely. Because I am much stronger than an ordinary angel."
Dean ran a hand down his face, thinking. "So this arrangement has something in it for all of us. I get Sam back - whole. You get a place to rest until your vessel is grown up, so you don't erase him. And Sam gets healed?"
"That's about the size of it."
"And you expect me to say yes for my brother?"
"No, Dean. I don't. That would be absolutely wrong - he's an adult, and I need his consent. But you and he are so close, I wanted you to be aware of what was going on."
"What the hell is it with archangels wanting to ride our asses, huh?" he erupted.
I shrugged. "You're the right bloodline for it, that's all. Your father's got the archangel bloodline - your mother's that special fire inside that makes both of you so strong. At least the stakes this time aren't world-shattering."
Just potentially Heaven-shattering, but there was no need for him to know that.
"There is that," Dean conceded with a sigh that seemed to come from his toes. "I just want Sam fixed."
"I'll do my best, Dean. That's all I can say. All I want from you is a promise that you will pray."
"I will pray," he agreed.
"Good." I stood up. "We'll talk about my possibly needing you as a vessel later on." I smiled and snapped my fingers, teleporting out of his dream.
His outraged, "Gabriel, you feathered son-of-a-bitch!" behind me was sweet music to my ears.
Hey - I'm still a Trickster, after all. What fun would there be if I didn't wind him up every now and then?
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
I hovered, invisbly watching Sam drive toward Pennsylvania. His face never changed expression. His eyes were awake and alert, though it was nearly 3 in the morning.
He didn't sleep. Without a soul to drive dreams, he found no logical need to sleep. His body could function quite well without it.
He did allow himself to rest and build up stamina, which his body did require. But without a soul, he could not dream. He was all logic and no emotion or imagination.
Sam Winchester without a soul was a sociopath and a psychopath.
I could see very clearly that this was what Lucy had done to him.
My head tilted slightly as I felt a burst of strength and stamina flow into me and I found myself smiling.
Dean was keeping his promise. He was praying for me to become stronger, more able - so that I could fix his brother.
I just needed a little more time and a lot more strength.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
It was hard for Dean to work with his brother, knowing something was seriously wrong with him. I appeared in his dreams twice more over the next few weeks, telling him that I was getting stronger and soon the time would be right for my rescue mission.
After the disaster with the heavenly weapons, the brothers were working fully together again - down to sharing a motel room.
And I got my first close-up look at how far off the rails my own baby brother was going.
Aw, Cassie...
Watching him in action now was a knife into my heart. He was so convinced he was doing the right thing that he was becoming prideful and arrogant.
He lied so easily now. His Grace was tarnishing - becomng corruptred by each compromise he made with Crowley. By each lie he told for the wrong reasons. By each time he did not trust the Winchesters as he once had.
By each time he thought himself superior to them or "this is for their own good". Or, worst of all, "This is for the greater good. This is to win the war."
Castiel was well on the road to becoming another Lucifer.
It looked like my stubbourn baby brother was another of the wrong things I was going to have to put right.
This was rapidly becoming a very long list.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
On this visit to Dean's dreamscape, I found no peaceful dock on an idyllic late spring day.
This time, Dean was sitting in a motel room - in a rather incongruous white rocking chair - watching the traffic roll by across the bridge as he silently fed a bottle to the infant in his arms.
Abandoning my plan of announcing myself by snapping a beer into his hand, I let him hear my wings rustle. "Is that Sam?"
"Yeah," Dean said, looking down and smiling softly as the baby curled both tiny hands around the bottle. "Back when he was all mine."
I tried to hide my surprise at this tone. Dean was Sam's older brother, but those inflections had not been those of a brother.
Those were the unmistakeable tones of a proud father.
"All yours, huh?" I sat down on the end of one of the beds, facing him. "I didn't know you raised him."
"Oh, yeah. He was mine from the first moment Mom put him in my arms and said I had a little brother. He became all mine the night Dad put him in my arms and told me to get him outside. He never really took him back, so...." Dean shrugged. "He became my baby. My boy." A frown suddenly creased his features and he looked up at me. "And why the hell am I telling you this?"
"Because we're two of a kind," I sighed. "Castiel is my baby in much the same way. My boy."
Dean nodded slowly, looking back down at the baby, who was now peacefully sleeping. "I miss this, sometimes. He's all grown up now. He doesn't need me anymore."
I curled my hands over his shoulder. "He'll always need you. I came to tell you I'm heading down tonight. When I leave, you're going to wake up. I need you to - silently - pray hard until you go back to sleep."
"Sammy will be okay?"
"Not immediately," I shot straight with him. "I don't know what state what was left behind will be in. If I have to do some healing, I will let you know. But don't be alarmed or disappointed if he is just the same tomorrow or for a little while as he is right now. If I have to heal him, it might take some time."
Large jade eyes looked up at me. "But you'll let me know."
"You know I will. I've shot straight with you this whole time, haven't I?"
"Yeah," he admitted, but it looked like it hurt him to say. "You have."
"Well, then." I stood and reached out, carding my fingers over the infant's warm skull. "Take care of your brother."
"I'll do my best."
I nodded and left his dream.
Moments later, I felt power and strength flow into my metaphysical limbs. My Grace was strengthened more than it had been since I had woken after being stabbed.
Dean was doing exactly what I had asked him to do.
I glided silently towards the Hellmouth in Stull Cemetery. It was one of two locations in the United States that opened in the Cage.
Taking a deep breath, I focused my energy like a laser beam - and blasted inside.
It was worse than I thought.
Two brothers had fallen bodily into the Cage. One had been pulled bodily from the Cage. I could see the battered soul of Sam Winchester in the corner, shivering and mangled almost beyond recognition.
I had been expecting that. That wasn't the greater shock.
The greater shock was seeing my brothers working in tandem - as one unit - to inflict terrible tortures on the soulless body of Adam Milligan. A quick search showed me that Adam's soul was nowhere in the Cage.
That was not what I had been expecting. Where was the boy's soul?
Feeling another burst of strength, I fashioned my Grace into something I had not manifested for millenia. My wings shimmered into view and armour clothed my body. With a sword in my hand, I stepped forward and let my True Voice ring into the Cage.
"You! Will! Stop!"
On to Part Two
Talk about your classic "What the hell just happened here?" moments!
One second I'm battling my brother - my deluded Lucy, who thinks he's on a par with Father? Please... -- and the next there's this terrible pain in my belly.
I don't know what Lucy said to me, but I know he said something. I could hear his vessel's voice, laced with his true one - but I couldn't make out any words. There was nothing but a huge buzz in my ears and a feeling of being slowly ripped apart.
That was when I realised he had used an angel blade and my Grace was wounded.
I was going to die if I didn't do something - yesterday.
So I blew myself out of my vessel, my wounded Grace making the silhouette of my wings visible on the ground as I did, and slunk off to recuperate.
It must have taken me longer than I thought, because when I was strong enough to rejoin my vessel, it had been cremated.
Angels can do many things - even archangels - but we are not permitted to recreate a body from ash.
Not any more. Not after the Deluge.
So, I would have to find a new vessel. No big deal - done it many times before. Should be easy.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Now I know what humans mean about Famous Last Words.
I had been looking for nearly a year - and I found nothing. All my vessel's bloodlines that were pure enough to house me were gone. All of them! I still don't know how that happened, but it did. The last one I knew of - my last hope for my vessel's pure bloodline - passed to her reward two days before I found her.
I was alone.
I was unvesseled.
And I was not permitted to create my own.
It takes a special bloodline to house me, since I am more powerful than a run of the mill angel. I'm an archangel, and it takes a powerful bloodline to hold me as a.....
Wait.
A special bloodline. Able to house an archangel.
As in a pair of brothers - each of whom is able to house an archangel without harm to themselves.
Since the world is still here, it was plain to me that they had somehow managed to stop the Apocalypse. So I cast out, looking for them.
And I found them. One was with his girlfriend and their son - oh, my, the power in that boy's fierce loyalty and love - but his brother was not near him.
That was unusual.
I found him a state away, and instantly I realised something was not right with him. I drifted closer to find him and find out what was wrong with him.
When I did, I was glad I was unvesseled. If I had had a body at that point, I probably would have thrown up.
Sam Winchester had no soul.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
I had 'officially' met them four times and learned much in those encounters. Plus, I'd dealt with them several times without them realising it was me. I'd learned that jumping in without scoping out the lay of the land with these two was sheer stupidity.
And I was not stupid.
I watched a djinn couple attack. I watched Sam and Dean take them both down. I watched them part again, and Dean return to the embrace of the woman he loved and the special child that bore his blood and could be the answer to my issues.
I watched him go to bed, completely confused as to what was going on with his brother.
I bided my time. I waited a week. Two weeks.
And I gathered intel during that time. I learned exactly what had gone down a year earlier and what had pulled Sam out of the Cage. And why.
Once more, I felt like throwing up, though I had no body. That stupid child. Playing with forces he had no idea of and thought he could control? He was going to get himself - or others - killed!
He'd already done severe damage to both Winchesters by botching bringing Sam back whole! Now he was hiding his face from everyone and trying to fight a war all alone - with only a demon for backup?
It looked like I had more work to do than I initially thought I did.
Where did I even start?
I drifted for awhile, thinking it over, slotting plans into place.
Then I knew what to do and where to start.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Out of all the mooks I've ever encountered or worked with, these two had always had the capacity to startle me. When I entered his dreams, I was not quite certain what I would be expecting. Perhaps I was thinking it would be a country road with rock music blaring and his brother sleeping by his side.
At any rate, I was not expecting to walk down a dock on a beautiful late spring day, with only the sounds of birdsongs and gently lapping waves as music and to find him sitting at the end of it, a tackle box by his side and a fishing pole dangling in the water.
I found his shoulders bent in concern, even here. The weight of the world bore down heavily on his denim-clad shoulders.
Huh. I wondered why he wasn't wearing his leather jacket. That was a little odd....until I got close enough to see it laying by his side. Dangling from his neck was the amulet that he had not been wearing the last time we met.
He looked tired. This was not a setting of peace, despite the tranquility that surrounded us. He looked almost as if he were - waiting for someone.
Testing a theory, I let him hear my wings beat as I formed an illusion of my now-departed vessel. It was a dream, so I could do this.
Sure enough, when he heard the wings, he straightened. "About time, Cas. I've been calling for you for days now---" As he spoke, he turned in his chair - and froze.
I stepped forward, hands in my pockets, smiling. "Hello, Dean."
He jerked to his feet and spun at the same time, so fast that his feet tangled together and he toppled
backwards. I snapped my fingers and not only did the dock extend to catch him, but he landed in a soft armchair. He sat there for a second, staring at me with huge eyes.
Huh. He had green eyes. I never realised that before.
"You're dead," he squeaked out.
I decided not to tease him about the fact that he suddenly sounded like he'd had his balls removed as a child. I had a feeling that he was wound so tight that I needed to shoot straight or he'd shatter. "No, not quite. Out of my body, yes. Dead?" I spread my arms and tilted my head, letting my slight smirk speak for me.
"Was it you?" Dean asked, leaning foward in his chair. "Was it you that got my brother out of the Cage?"
The smirk erased of its own accord. "No. That wasn't me."
"Who was it? Do you know?"
"I know. I intend to deal with him about it. He botched the job."
Dean's eyes widened. "You can tell? I wasn't crazy? There... There really is something wrong with Sammy?"
"There is." I moved forward and sank into the chair Dean had vacated, reeling in the empty hook and putting the pole by the tackle box. "He's missing something very important. Something that's still in the cage." I looked at him. "I'm not going to tell you what, because I know you and you'd go all spastic trying to get it back. You'd go into bad decisions with worse consequences."
"Now, you look --" he began, but I cut him off with an upraised hand.
"Dean. I'm on your side, remember? I'm going to try to fix this situation. To fix Sam. Right now, I'm not sure I have the power to do so, but I'm going to give it my best shot. I need you to trust me and ..." I licked my lips and took a deep breath. "I need you to pray."
"Pray?" He scoffed. "What's there to pray about? Who's there to pray to?"
I smiled a real, genuine smile. "I have a feeling God isn't as absent as everyone has assumed Him to be. You succeeded, after all - when everything pointed to your failure. I'm alive, after all - when I should have been killed by that blade. Sam is back--"
He nodded. "I gotcha. That's one question - what's there to pray about?"
"That I would succeed in this quest and make your brother whole again."
His chin raised. "That, I can pray for."
"Thank you." I looked away from him, and back. "And just so you know - this isn't entirely altruistic."
"No?"
"I need a vessel to operate on this plane. I'm an archangel - it takes a special line to house me."
Dean raised his hand. "So you're fixing Sam -- to wear him?"
"Partially, yes. You could do, just as well - except that Sam already has that space in his head where a Grace - tainted though it was - resided. Once you have been a Vessel, it changes a person. It's made him much darker, and I'm hoping that my Grace can heal the dark places. And it wouldn't be forever, Dean. I do have a potential true Vessel here on Earth."
"So use him!"
"I can't, Dean. He's a child. I have to wait until he is old enough, or my Grace will completely overwhelm him and erase his identity completely. Because I am much stronger than an ordinary angel."
Dean ran a hand down his face, thinking. "So this arrangement has something in it for all of us. I get Sam back - whole. You get a place to rest until your vessel is grown up, so you don't erase him. And Sam gets healed?"
"That's about the size of it."
"And you expect me to say yes for my brother?"
"No, Dean. I don't. That would be absolutely wrong - he's an adult, and I need his consent. But you and he are so close, I wanted you to be aware of what was going on."
"What the hell is it with archangels wanting to ride our asses, huh?" he erupted.
I shrugged. "You're the right bloodline for it, that's all. Your father's got the archangel bloodline - your mother's that special fire inside that makes both of you so strong. At least the stakes this time aren't world-shattering."
Just potentially Heaven-shattering, but there was no need for him to know that.
"There is that," Dean conceded with a sigh that seemed to come from his toes. "I just want Sam fixed."
"I'll do my best, Dean. That's all I can say. All I want from you is a promise that you will pray."
"I will pray," he agreed.
"Good." I stood up. "We'll talk about my possibly needing you as a vessel later on." I smiled and snapped my fingers, teleporting out of his dream.
His outraged, "Gabriel, you feathered son-of-a-bitch!" behind me was sweet music to my ears.
Hey - I'm still a Trickster, after all. What fun would there be if I didn't wind him up every now and then?
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
I hovered, invisbly watching Sam drive toward Pennsylvania. His face never changed expression. His eyes were awake and alert, though it was nearly 3 in the morning.
He didn't sleep. Without a soul to drive dreams, he found no logical need to sleep. His body could function quite well without it.
He did allow himself to rest and build up stamina, which his body did require. But without a soul, he could not dream. He was all logic and no emotion or imagination.
Sam Winchester without a soul was a sociopath and a psychopath.
I could see very clearly that this was what Lucy had done to him.
My head tilted slightly as I felt a burst of strength and stamina flow into me and I found myself smiling.
Dean was keeping his promise. He was praying for me to become stronger, more able - so that I could fix his brother.
I just needed a little more time and a lot more strength.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
It was hard for Dean to work with his brother, knowing something was seriously wrong with him. I appeared in his dreams twice more over the next few weeks, telling him that I was getting stronger and soon the time would be right for my rescue mission.
After the disaster with the heavenly weapons, the brothers were working fully together again - down to sharing a motel room.
And I got my first close-up look at how far off the rails my own baby brother was going.
Aw, Cassie...
Watching him in action now was a knife into my heart. He was so convinced he was doing the right thing that he was becoming prideful and arrogant.
He lied so easily now. His Grace was tarnishing - becomng corruptred by each compromise he made with Crowley. By each lie he told for the wrong reasons. By each time he did not trust the Winchesters as he once had.
By each time he thought himself superior to them or "this is for their own good". Or, worst of all, "This is for the greater good. This is to win the war."
Castiel was well on the road to becoming another Lucifer.
It looked like my stubbourn baby brother was another of the wrong things I was going to have to put right.
This was rapidly becoming a very long list.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
On this visit to Dean's dreamscape, I found no peaceful dock on an idyllic late spring day.
This time, Dean was sitting in a motel room - in a rather incongruous white rocking chair - watching the traffic roll by across the bridge as he silently fed a bottle to the infant in his arms.
Abandoning my plan of announcing myself by snapping a beer into his hand, I let him hear my wings rustle. "Is that Sam?"
"Yeah," Dean said, looking down and smiling softly as the baby curled both tiny hands around the bottle. "Back when he was all mine."
I tried to hide my surprise at this tone. Dean was Sam's older brother, but those inflections had not been those of a brother.
Those were the unmistakeable tones of a proud father.
"All yours, huh?" I sat down on the end of one of the beds, facing him. "I didn't know you raised him."
"Oh, yeah. He was mine from the first moment Mom put him in my arms and said I had a little brother. He became all mine the night Dad put him in my arms and told me to get him outside. He never really took him back, so...." Dean shrugged. "He became my baby. My boy." A frown suddenly creased his features and he looked up at me. "And why the hell am I telling you this?"
"Because we're two of a kind," I sighed. "Castiel is my baby in much the same way. My boy."
Dean nodded slowly, looking back down at the baby, who was now peacefully sleeping. "I miss this, sometimes. He's all grown up now. He doesn't need me anymore."
I curled my hands over his shoulder. "He'll always need you. I came to tell you I'm heading down tonight. When I leave, you're going to wake up. I need you to - silently - pray hard until you go back to sleep."
"Sammy will be okay?"
"Not immediately," I shot straight with him. "I don't know what state what was left behind will be in. If I have to do some healing, I will let you know. But don't be alarmed or disappointed if he is just the same tomorrow or for a little while as he is right now. If I have to heal him, it might take some time."
Large jade eyes looked up at me. "But you'll let me know."
"You know I will. I've shot straight with you this whole time, haven't I?"
"Yeah," he admitted, but it looked like it hurt him to say. "You have."
"Well, then." I stood and reached out, carding my fingers over the infant's warm skull. "Take care of your brother."
"I'll do my best."
I nodded and left his dream.
Moments later, I felt power and strength flow into my metaphysical limbs. My Grace was strengthened more than it had been since I had woken after being stabbed.
Dean was doing exactly what I had asked him to do.
I glided silently towards the Hellmouth in Stull Cemetery. It was one of two locations in the United States that opened in the Cage.
Taking a deep breath, I focused my energy like a laser beam - and blasted inside.
It was worse than I thought.
Two brothers had fallen bodily into the Cage. One had been pulled bodily from the Cage. I could see the battered soul of Sam Winchester in the corner, shivering and mangled almost beyond recognition.
I had been expecting that. That wasn't the greater shock.
The greater shock was seeing my brothers working in tandem - as one unit - to inflict terrible tortures on the soulless body of Adam Milligan. A quick search showed me that Adam's soul was nowhere in the Cage.
That was not what I had been expecting. Where was the boy's soul?
Feeling another burst of strength, I fashioned my Grace into something I had not manifested for millenia. My wings shimmered into view and armour clothed my body. With a sword in my hand, I stepped forward and let my True Voice ring into the Cage.
"You! Will! Stop!"
On to Part Two