Legacy, 1/2

[juliasets]

Title: Legacy
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 16,457
Warnings: Canon-typical violence, AU from 13x12
Summary:
Sam's still searching for a way to save Mary and Jack from the apocalypse universe.
Rowena offers to help.
This will end well.

Author's Notes: Story starts between 13x12 (“Various & Sundry Villains) and continues through 13x13 (“Devil’s Bargain”). Everything after that is very not canon.



This idea came to me when I was watching Sam and Rowena bond over their shared experiences with Lucifer in 13x12. Some people online said that she should teach Sam magic and this whole story was basically born from how desperately I want that to happen. That and my fannish desire to spackle over several plot holes and wrap everything up nice and (mostly) neat. After now having seen the season finale, I still think I had the right idea.

Sam sat in the parking lot and contemplated, not for the first time, turning around and driving back to the bunker.

Dean meant well, trying to get Sam to take a break from his (futile) research into alternate universes. Working his way through Jour et Nuit had taken the better part of several hours and a hefty application of Google Translate. His French was passable if he needed to ask directions or cuss someone out, less so when it came to metaphysics. Ultimately the book was more theoretical than practical.

Truth be told, he was finding it hard to concentrate. He could spend days on end poring over obscure texts when on a hunt, but without even a starting point he felt unmoored. So Dean’s suggestion of going to see a movie hadn’t seemed like the worst option in the world. It was hard to feel guilty for wasting time at a movie when he didn’t feel like there was any hope to begin with. Instead he just felt guilty for being whole and healthy while his mother and Jack were trapped in a hellish, apocalyptic wasteland with the devil.

Much better.

In the end he’d chosen a recent film that he knew Dean would have no interest in, played up the artsy side, and felt relieved when his brother ultimately begged off accompanying him. Dean meant well, he knew that, but it didn’t stop his attempts at being supportive from feeling smothering. Ever since Cas's return Dean was suddenly all optimism, but Sam couldn't muster up the same enthusiasm without a plan.

The nearest theater was in the next town over, only twenty minutes of flat country road away. He’d been there once or twice before. It played a decent mix of blockbusters and arthouse films. He wasn’t really hungry, but he bought a small bag of popcorn anyway because he knew in the back of his head that he could probably stand to eat something and sometimes having a distraction helped. The salt came in the same cheap, white scalloped plastic shakers he’d seen at diners in every state in the lower forty-eight.

The theater itself was quiet on a weekday morning. A few elderly couples sat in the middle rows. Sam chose a seat near the back corner and set his phone to silent (though, of course, Dean’s number was programmed as an exception).

The previews were still showing when the seat immediately behind him squeaked as someone sat down. Sam kicked himself for not taking the last row. He hadn’t wanted to be the looming, creepy guy in the very back, but now regretted it. Tall as he was, people usually avoided sitting behind him. He was about to move when the person behind him spoke up.

“Fancy meeting you here.”

Sam let out a deep sigh and turned in his seat. “Rowena. What are you doing here?”

“Och, so suspicious, Samuel. A girl can’t take in a movie?”

“In Smith Center, Kansas? In the middle of the day?” he said wryly.

“Touché,” she said, casting a haughty glance around the dark room. “I’ve seen more stylish abattoirs.”

“Rowena,” Sam said, trying to direct her back on track. “What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to talk to you.”

“You know where we live,” he pointed out.

“It’s not as if your cave has a doorbell,” she said. “And I wanted to speak… privately.”

Without Dean. Of course.

“And you couldn’t wait until after the movie?” he asked, unable to keep the exasperation from his voice.

“Really, Sam. Doesn’t your whole sordid history make this choice of film a bit on the nose anyway?”

The glare he leveled at her made most monsters quail, but Rowena was clearly made of sterner stuff. She gave him a patronizing smile. With a sigh, he stood and shuffled his way out of the row of seats.

Outside the theater he leaned on the hood of the car, wishing suddenly that he’d taken the Impala and its stash of weapons. He had his gun, but the rounds were standard, not witch-killing. They probably wouldn’t even slow Rowena down much, especially if the spell page he’d let her take from the Black Grimoire had worked. He wanted to ask, but it seemed strangely improper.

He folded his arms across his chest and glared down at her. “So what do you want?”

“Really, Samuel, is this any way to treat a friend?”

His silence at that seemed to amuse her.

“I have a proposition. For you.”

“No.”

“You don’t even want the details?”

“I’d like to believe that I’ve learned my lesson about making deals with people like you.”

“You needn’t make it sound so tawdry,” she said. “You helped me. I want to help you.”

“We don’t need your help.”

“Even to find Lucifer’s darling child? And your mother?”

It was an effort, but he managed to keep his muscles relaxed, his face casually blank. Rowena was studying his face, but his lack of a reaction didn’t seem to bother her in the slightest. Sam had once beat an immortal witch at an actual game of poker, so he liked to think that his poker face was pretty good, but Sam supposed three hundred years would be long enough to pick up a few tricks of her own.

“I recognized several of the books lying about when I visited your hobbit hole. So I did some digging, some asking around.” Her gaze flicked along his body. “Some scrying.”

At the very least, Sam thought, talking to Rowena was good practice for that same poker face.

“You’re looking to break through the barriers of our reality. Without your precious nephilim that will take substantial power.”

“Can you do it?” Dean was going to kill him for playing into her hands, but he needed to know. It had occurred to him that even if he found a spell that could bust into the apocalypse world, he might not be able to perform it. He’d been hoping that there was another, non-magical avenue, but that faint hope had dimmed.

“I don’t know,” she said and Sam was a bit taken aback by her honesty. “But if the spell exists then I am your best shot.”

Sam put his foot down when it came to keeping Dean in the dark, even as both Rowena and a very logical part of his own brain pointed out that it would probably sabotage the whole project. That part of him said that Dean would tell Rowena to shove her help.

In fact, he’d probably say it much more graphically.

But Sam had come too far to keep making the same mistakes.

(Instead he’d probably be making all-new, much bigger ones.)

Dean was surprised to see him back so soon and Sam felt a fleeting wave of relief that he hadn’t found his big brother doing anything more awkward than lying under the Impala, changing her oil. They didn’t often get the bunker to themselves.

Dean slid out from under the chassis and leaned on a workbench, rubbing a grease-stained rag over his hands. Sam paced next to the car as he laid out Rowena’s offer as impartially as possible, but he could see Dean’s face darken as he went on.

“What does she want in return?” Dean asked when he finished.

“She wouldn’t say. Or, rather, she said she didn’t want anything.” Dean’s face said what he thought about that and Sam held his hands up to forestall the inevitable argument. “I know, I know. It’s not like I trust her, either.”

“No, you just gave her a page out of an incredibly powerful spell book.”

Sam absorbed that blow, closed his eyes, let it go. “We’ve worked with her before, when things were bad. Well, things are pretty bad now. We have no leads on Mom and Jack. This might be our best shot, Dean.” By the end he knew he was begging, but he couldn’t help it. Rowena’s offer was dangerous, but it was also the only lifeline he’d had in weeks.

“No, Sam. No. We’ll find another way, a better way.”

“You keep saying that, but this is the best way I’ve found and you won’t even give it a shot!”

Dean looked a little pained, but he didn’t waver. Sam knew he wouldn’t.

Anger and frustration closed his throat and with a glare Sam beat a careful retreat, walking out as calmly as he could. He resisted the urge to slam his bedroom door. By the time he reached his bed, it was more than anger clogged in his chest. He sucked in a deep breath through his nose, tried to exhale the frustration away before grabbing his phone. Rowena picked up after the first ring.

“Winchester.”

“Rowena.”

She paused. “I take it Saint Dean won’t sully himself to work with me.”

“We’re a no.”

“He’s not your mother, you know. Or your keeper. You-”

“Rowena,” Sam interrupted. “No.”

She sighed. “Fine, fine.” Another pause. “I expected better from you.” And she hung up.

Sam set his phone on his night stand and didn’t move for a very long time.

The next day, Cas showed up at the bunker door.

Once Castiel finished his story-including the revelation that the Cas they’d been speaking to for weeks had actually been Asmodeus-he turned to Sam. “Have you heard from Jack?”

Sam froze. Dean jumped in, filled Cas in on Jack’s quest to save Mary and their inadvertent trip to a different reality. Sam managed to make some supportive noises.

After that there were things to do, concrete steps to take. Sam drove to Oklahoma to pick up Donatello, which was a haul-14 hours round trip and that was using the interstate. By the time he got back there was a dead cupid and then a faith healer who ended up being an angel, Ketch, Lucifer. It was easy to keep moving.

Eventually, though, the momentum died away as they were bottlenecked by Donatello’s translation of the demon tablet. Dean left to make dinner; apparently even his stomach could be turned by the piles of fried chicken stacked on the map table.

Even though he didn’t eat, Cas joined them for dinner in the kitchen, aiming to give Donatello some space. Sam wondered idly if being high strung was a requirement of being a prophet, but that seemed somewhat unfair to Kevin, who had been dealing with a lot more than just incomprehensible translations.

Sam focused on the repetitive motion of moving food from his plate to his mouth. He hadn’t eaten much during the hunt and the memory of Lucifer’s ice water grace tearing at his insides made him queasy. It was like one of those magic eye tricks: if he didn’t focus on it, he could make eating work. He’d grabbed a small portion to begin with. They needed to keep up their strength.

He wondered about the alternate universe’s Kevin Tran. Was he working with the other Michael willingly? It didn’t mesh with what Sam remembered of Kevin, who may have been driven and angry, but not amoral. Maybe they could bring him back with them. How would Linda Tran react to that? Would having an alternate universe’s version of your dead son be better or worse than no son at all? Meeting the apocalypse world version of Bobby had been bittersweet.

He was aware that he wasn’t doing the best job holding up his side of the conversation. When he’d finished up his food he stood to take his plate to the sink, realizing a second late that he’d done so in the middle of Dean’s sentence.

“I’m going to head to bed.”

He didn’t catch their response, if any. His plate was rinsed off and left in the drying rack.

He lay on top of the covers. After a while he considered turning off the light, even though it was early, but instead remained prone. The switch seemed very far away. Maybe he could install those smart lightbulbs, turn them off with his phone.

His phone.

He looked at it.

Rowena.

He grabbed the phone off the night stand. Rowena’s name showed up in his recently called list. It was quicker than going to ‘R’ in his contacts. Though, he didn’t have that many contacts. Not anymore, at least. So maybe it wasn’t quicker.

She picked up, which surprised him. He’d expected to leave a message.

“What is it, giant?”

She sounded very far away.

He got tripped up on what he should tell her. But in the end there was only one thing to say. “He’s back. Lucifer.”

He didn’t get up the next morning. He thought he might have fallen asleep for a little bit, but if he did it was a brief and restless slumber, just below the surface, ready to wake at the slightest sound. Dean stopped outside the room around nine to announce that he was making breakfast. Sam wondered if it would be pancakes again. He thought probably not. Dean was surprisingly versatile in the kitchen. Sam had never realized, growing up, how much Dean’s cooking ability had been hobbled by the cruddy motel kitchenettes and lack of money.

Food was a good topic to consider, though Sam wasn’t hungry, so he didn’t get up for breakfast. There was no call from Donna this morning, so ten o’clock came and went.

He wanted to believe that he was safe here in the bunker. Sure, he’d been hurt here before. Toni Bevell had shot him. Dean had tried to take his head off with a hammer. Gadreel used his body to kill Kevin here. He’d suffered the effects of the trials to close the gates of hell.

But Lucifer.

When Chuck and Lucifer were here, Chuck had taken Sam briefly aside to explain that he wouldn’t allow Sam or Dean to come to any harm while the celestial family worked through their issues.

But it had already been too late, even then. Because before that, when Sam still thought that Cas was Cas, Lucifer had raked fingers like icicles through his soul.

Lucifer had been in here, in Sam’s room. Maybe in this bed.

A chill ran through him and he considered getting up, but by the time the thought made its way molasses-slow through his brain he’d already discarded the idea. Lucifer had been everywhere else in the bunker as well. No place was any safer.

Activation energy. It was a term he remembered distantly from high school chemistry classes. The amount of energy necessary for a reaction to begin. That’s how he felt. Like doing anything required a certain threshold of willpower that he couldn’t reach and so he just.

Remained.

Still.

He hadn’t eaten or drank all that much at dinner the previous night, but eventually the pressure on his bladder provided the catalyst to get him moving. It was an unconscious movement, standing to go to the bathroom, and once he was up it shocked him how easy it had been.

Not for the first time he wished that the Men of Letters had sprung for en suite bathrooms.

After finishing he decided that he might as well grab a shower. He hadn’t checked the time, but it was probably early afternoon and his hair already had that greasy consistency he hated. The heat and water pressure succeeded in making him feel marginally more present. He hadn’t planned ahead and brought a change of clothes, so he wrapped a towel around his waist. The hallways were mercifully clear as he made his way from the showers and turned into his room, only to flinch back, startled.

“Well, hello there.”

Rowena was perched on the end of his bed, an incredibly self-satisfied smile stretched across her face. Her eyes raked along his torso and he resisted the urge to fold his arms across it, if only because one hand was still gripping the edges of the towel. His only saving grace was that his reaction to being startled had been to grip the fabric tighter instead of letting go. Not a great reflex for fighting, but it managed to save some of his dignity.

“What are you doing here?”

“Well, at the moment I’m enjoying the view. Why you feel the need to cover all…” she waved her hand in a circle that vaguely encompassed his chest, “that underneath so many layers of plaid is really beyond me.”

He closed his eyes and forced a deep breath. “Rowena.”

The amused grin slipped off her face. “Given what you told me last night, I thought you and your brother may have reconsidered my offer. With Lucifer on the loose he seems much more amenable.”

“You talked to Dean?”

“He let me in, of course. The warding on this dungeon is impressively strong. He suggested I try to rouse you.” The way her voice stretched over the word ‘rouse’ infused it with enough suggestion to rival Dean at his sleaziest.

Sam rolled his eyes. “Let me get dressed and we can discuss terms.”

He stepped towards the dresser, but Rowena made no move to stand.

“Rowena. Out.”

“Och, you’re no fun.”

When he finally made his way into the Library he found Dean and Cas seated next to each other at one of the long tables, facing away from him. Donatello was absent from the map room, but the table was still strewn with half-eaten buckets of fried chicken, so Sam assumed he was taking a quick nap.

Rowena was seated across from Dean and Cas and she smirked when she caught Sam’s eye. Dean turned in his seat, his eyes flicking up to Sam’s hair, which still hung damp around his face, and his face contorted into something equally amused and horrified.

Sam rolled his eyes. Rowena must have been riling Dean up. Sam knew his brother could charm the socks off of nine out of ten women, but whether it was because Rowena was a couple hundred years old or because she was Crowley’s mom, she seemed to exist in his charm blind spot.

Sam chose the seat next to Cas, leaving the table lopsided, three against one. It felt like an interview. Or an interrogation.

If Rowena was bothered by the power imbalance, it didn’t show. “Samuel. Your brother was just informing me that you may have a lead on a way to open a portal to another dimension.”

He wasn’t sure how much Dean had told her, but he wasn’t going to reveal any more than necessary. “We may. Lucifer used a spell powered by his grace to come back. We don’t have the same spell, but we might have one that’s similar.”

“You say the spell was powered by his grace?” Rowena said. “Archangel grace. That amount of power is difficult to wield.”

“I’m sure we can handle it,” Dean replied.

“And what about retrieving the grace? You said that Lucifer had regained some of his power. What’s your plan for that?”

They exchanged looks. Truth was, they didn’t have an answer for that problem. They’d thought Lucifer would be still weak enough that they could force him into submission, but that plan had gone up in smoke when Lucifer threw them around a motel room like rag dolls and then tore into their innards.

“Holy oil?” Dean suggested.

“One of us would need to be inside the ring to harvest the grace,” Sam pointed out.

“As much as I have no desire to see that monster ever again,” Rowena said. “I can probably help you.”

“You know how to incapacitate an archangel?” Dean asked.

“Not exactly,” Rowena said, “but I may know where to look.”

“You were the last person to have the Book of the Damned,” Sam pointed out. He could see Dean shoot him a look out of the corner of his eye. He hated bringing it up, hated reminding them of the horrible time Dean spent under the influence of the Mark of Cain, hated reminding them of when Sam almost ended the world again.

“So I am. And any spell of that magnitude will take both power and finesse. Ergo, me.”

“Where is it?” Dean asked. His voice had dropped, his loathing of the Book on full display.

“It should still be where I hid it,” Rowena admitted. “I didn’t want to move it unless absolutely necessary. It’s all curses and counter-curses. I thought I was helping you break through to another reality and that magic isn’t quite so… grim.”

“Clearly you haven’t seen the other universes on offer,” Dean grumbled.

“But I can retrieve it. The Black Grimoire may also contain something useful. Perhaps, if I could take a look…?”

“Not a chance,” Dean answered.

“We’ll look,” Sam added. “If we find something, then you can help.”

“So suspicious!” Rowena said, but the terms didn’t seem to upset or surprise her. “And I even brought a peace offering.” She reached into her oversized purse, unfolded a piece of parchment, and slid it across the table.

It was the page from the Black Grimoire that Sam had let her rip out. He picked it up, gingerly, but the symbols and words didn’t mean much to him. “You don’t need it?” he asked, feeling around the edge of the question he wanted to ask.

“Not anymore,” she replied, her smile like a knife.

Donatello returned to the map room an hour later. He didn’t look any less frazzled, but he’d responded to Sam’s pleasantries with his usual befuddled geniality, so he must have felt better. Sam hadn’t been able to keep Donatello from introducing himself as a prophet, which noticeably piqued Rowena’s interest. After that Sam had banished her to one of the far corners of the Library, near the telescope.

Sam himself had posted up at the table closest to the Map Room, using his body as a firebreak between Rowena and Donatello as he pored over the Black Grimoire. Dean and Cas left to the stacks, looking for any other powerful spell books that might have what they need. They’d opted to hold the Book of the Damned in reserve, given its history of nearly ending the world the last time they’d used it.

“Winchester,” Rowena drawled. She was nursing a glass of their Scotch. “This would go quicker if you let me help,” she sing-songed.

“Yeah,” Sam agreed, not looking up from the Grimoire. “But we’re also more likely to survive if you don’t.”

“Spoil sport.”

Sam shook his head, smiling despite himself. Rowena wasn’t a good person, not by any metric, but those lines had become irreparably blurred in the past few years. She had a certain prickly charm. Sam figured he was probably predisposed to be partial to anyone who could get under Dean’s skin.

“What will you do with Lucifer after you steal his grace?” Rowena asked.

That made Sam finally give her his full attention. She was leaning back in her chair, by all means the picture of casual indifference.

Sam gave the question some honest thought. He knew the answer he wanted to give, the answer that burned inside him. He wanted to wipe Lucifer from the Earth. He wanted to drive an angel sword into him and watch him burn out. He wanted to rope Billy into scattering his component atoms into the far corners of the universe. “Do you still have the spell to return Lucifer to the cage?”

“Aye, but he’ll need to be separated from his vessel for the spell to work.”

“And we don’t have another hyperbolic pulse generator,” Sam noted. “So we’d need to figure something out for that.”

“Or we could just kill him.”

Sam watched warily as Rowena straightened in her chair. She drained the rest of the amber liquid from her tumbler. “Surely you’ve considered it.”

Sam looked back to his book.

She stood and made her way over to Sam’s table. He closed the Black Grimoire, but she hardly noticed. “Please don’t start with that ‘all life is sacred’ nonsense.”

“I’m not going to,” Sam admitted. He looked quickly towards Donatello, but the prophet was too absorbed in the Demon Tablet to notice anything short of a marching band stomping through. Still, he pitched his voice low and gave another glance towards the hallway that lead towards storage. “I want him dead as much as you do. But it's never that easy. I’m willing to settle for locking him up.”

She leaned across the table, voice an angry hiss. “He’ll come back, Sam. He always comes back.”

“The Cage stood for eons,” he deflected, but the words rang hollow even to him. He wasn’t sure why he was arguing. Once, before Amara and before Lucifer hitched a ride out of hell thanks-again-to Sam’s arrogance, he’d believed that the Cage was enough. He had to believe in it in those exhausting months after the mental wall came down, when the idea that Lucifer couldn’t escape, couldn’t actually be tormenting him, was the only thing keeping him even marginally sane.

He’d thought that they put him back when Lucifer had possessed President Rooney. And he had to be happy with that. But the revelation from the British Men of Letters that he was free-and returned to his old vessel, an image straight out of Sam’s nightmares-hit like a crowbar. He still carried that wound.

“I cracked the Cage,” Rowena said. “And while I would love to flatter myself, I’m not the only witch who could. When it was sealed, that was one thing. But with the seals broken it’ll never be as secure.”

Sam swallowed the guilt that threatened to choke him. “Do you know how to do it?” he asked. “To kill him?”

She straightened, again the picture of composure. “Not yet. But I have some ideas.” She smiled. It reminded Sam of her son.

A chill ran through Sam as he recalled his own words to Dean, only days ago. I hope she makes him suffer.

Footsteps and voices echoed down the hallway.

Rowena stood and strolled towards the bookshelves. “You realize,” she said, voice bright and projected loud as Dean and Cas returned laden with books. “That you may need more than a single spell.”

“What do you mean?” Cas asked.

“Few people, even among those of us steeped in the occult, knew that angels existed until very recently. Finding spells that work on them are rare. It may be necessary to cobble together the bits and pieces. You’ll need my help. Hybrid magic.”

“Like revirginizing our blood for that gypsy spell,” Dean said, dropping his pile of books onto the table with a loud thump. Still spinning from the abrupt conversational turn, it took a moment for Sam to remember what his brother was talking about. It wasn’t that long ago that him and Dean had been locked into the bunker by the British Men of Letters with Lady Bevell, though all that had happened in the meantime gave the memory some distance.

Rowena raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow and looked from Dean to Sam.

Sam opted for keeping the details vague, unwilling to give the witch any ideas. “There was a spell to reverse complex machinery.”

“The Devla, yes.” Rowena said. “Requires blood from a virgin. This country is so puritanical when it comes to sex, they’re never in short supply.”

“It wasn’t an option at the time,” Sam said. “But we had plenty of purification rituals. So we faked it.”

“You used a spell to purify your blood.” She sounded a bit skeptical.

“Yeah,” Sam said. “It almost worked.”

“’Almost’, my ass,” Dean added. “It would have worked if the damn Brits hadn’t used magical dampeners. So we know a bit about cobbling together spells.”

“I stand corrected,” she said with a magnanimous wave of her glass. Her eyes flickered to Sam before returning to Dean. “Perhaps you Winchesters aren’t as useless as I thought.”

“Thanks,” Dean drawled.

There was only so much research the mind could withstand. Sam had a higher tolerance than most, but even he had his limits. He could tell he’d reached that point when he read the same page about seraphim three times and still couldn’t remember a thing it said.

Dean had reached the same point a little while ago and had announced that he was making a food run. He’d dragged Cas along with and left Sam to babysit. Donatello was taking a nap, his sleep schedule about as screwed up as Kevin’s had been.

“Can I ask you something?” Sam said, pushing his book away.

Rowena didn’t look up from the Book of the Damned. They’d caved after several days of searching and sent her to fetch the accursed tome. Sam secretly thought that Dean had ultimately agreed just to give the witch something to do. She was squirrely when bored and had started poking around the bunker. If the hours of reading the gory text was bothering her, she didn’t show it. “Yes, it’s natural.”

“What?” Sam said. “No. Wait, what?”

The witch looked up. “My hair color.”

Sam felt his eyebrows draw together. “Why would-nevermind. No, I wanted to ask you about the spell you cast on us.”

“You’ll have to be more specific,” she said, ever-present smirk widening into something equal parts amused and malicious.

She was baiting him. Sam was a little brother, this was something he’d essentially been training for his entire life. “The one that froze our feet,” he clarified.

“Bound them,” she corrected. “To the Earth. Works better outside than in, I’m afraid. What of it?”

“It seemed pretty effective. And unlike most of your spells, we didn’t end up bleeding from our eyes.” It was something he’d been thinking about for days, imaging the potential uses for a spell like that. It could be useful when suspects ran. Or monsters.

Or Lucifer.

“Well, fortunately for you I thought you oafs may still prove useful. And you were. But I agree, it’s not nearly as fun.”

More bait. Sam rolled his eyes. “What’s it called?”

“I’m afraid you won’t find it in any of these books,” she said, not sounding the least bit sorry. “It’s a personal invention.”

“Oh.”

She nodded and returned to the Book.

Sam accepted the dismissal and turned back to his own research. He was considering putting this book in the ‘no help at all’ pile. Very few texts seemed to agree with the placement of angels in the hierarchy, and even fewer seem to align with what Sam had seen with his own eyes.

“I could teach you.”

Sam looked up to find Rowena staring at him, her face as serious as he’d ever seen. It was a calculating look, but Sam had gone toe-to-toe with some of the most powerful beings in the galaxy, so he wasn’t exactly going to wither under a look from a witch, even if she was newly powered up.

It was probably some sort of trap. Sam’s track record of working with their enemies was questionable. He knew better than to think that good intentions mattered. Knew better than to think he could go that far and then stop. Those lessons still haunted Sam. He’d like to believe that he’d learned them.

Though perhaps not.

“Sure.”

Dean came back shortly after with the food, so they didn’t get a chance to go over the spell, but that was fine. Once Sam realized that their best hope of rescuing Jack and Mom was to use the demon tablet he had accepted that this would be a marathon, not a sprint. He’d set up various alerts on the bunker’s server for any crimes that might be related to Lucifer-corpses with burnt out eyes, mass deaths, the usual-but nothing had triggered them so far. Sam supposed he should be grateful, but it was hard not to worry about Lucifer’s sudden absence. He wasn’t usually this subtle.

He had a couple of other alerts set up, but he didn’t mind their silence. There were few beings with the power to break open the walls between universes and Sam wasn’t eager to drag any of them into this mess. Whether because he feared them (Billie) or because they didn’t deserve that kind of trouble (Jesse Turner).

“I may have something,” Rowena announced.

“You found something to stop an archangel in there?” Dean asked.

“No, dear Sister Agnes probably didn’t even believe archangels existed,” Rowena said. “But spells can be adapted.”

Dean’s face pulled into a familiar sour look, so Sam cut in. “What do you got?”

Rowena ran a finger over the Book’s gruesome page as she glanced at Nadia’s codex. “This spell was meant to be used against demons. It’s a spell to negate a demon’s power. It’s Latin, but perhaps if translated into Enochian…”

“It might work against an angel.” Sam finished. “What else does it require?”

“Ah, yes, therein lies the rub,” Rowena said. “Most of the spell is simple enough. Incantation, holy oil, the blood of the caster, so on and so forth. Standard ingredients, save one.”

“Yeah? And what’s that?” Dean prompted.

“The demonic power itself.”

“How does that work?” Dean asked.

“I know you boys have had your share of being thrown around by demons. That’s what this spell uses. The incantation allows the caster to work upon that power.” She turned to Sam. “You see the problem.”

Sam nodded. “It means that for this to work against Lucifer, we’d have to let him attack first.”

“If it works,” Dean added.

“It’s risky,” Sam agreed, but it was something. With this they wouldn’t be powerless before Lucifer’s stolen grace. It was something to turn the tide, something they could use to subdue him, at least until they could extract his grace.

They, he thought, looking at Rowena. The witch met his gaze steadily. Not a hair was out of place, but Sam had already gained access to the fear that lay behind those walls. She would be the one casting the spell. She was the one who would need to allow Lucifer to attack her to even try the spell.

“Well, write it down, but we can keep looking. We’ll hold it in reserve,” Sam said, pitching his tone to match Dean’s skepticism.

Fortunately, his brother seemed to agree. Rowena carefully transcribed the spell and slid the paper over to Sam, who looked through it. It seemed simple enough, but he knew better than to think it’d be simple to execute. The translation into Enochian could also be tricky. Enochian was much more flowery than Latin, so direct translation wasn’t always possible, to say nothing of whether or not the effects of the spell itself would also translate. Off the top of his head he could think of two possible Enochian renditions.

He glanced up at Rowena, who gave him a nod of thanks in return.

The next day Dean left to pick up a rare ingredient Donatello had translated. Sam offered to run the errand, but Dean insisted that he was fine taking care of it. In reality, Sam suspected his brother was going a bit stir-crazy, stuck in research mode. He dragged Cas along with, even though Sam privately thought the angel would be more useful with research. Castiel’s language abilities came in handy with some of the more obscure bunker texts. But given their departure, someone needed to stay behind with the witch and the prophet (the word “babysit” was used, not entirely in jest).

Sam was busy making his way through the Compendium Maleficarum when he caught something moving out of the corner of his eye. He only just got a hand up in time to catch the small cloth item on reflex, brain a split second behind as he raised his gaze to find Rowena standing across the table from him. He opened his hand and felt his heart race as he recognized the purple hex bag, before realizing it was empty.

“Oh, a classic,” Rowena said, gazing down at Sam’s research.

Sam closed the book, marking his spot with a blank notecard, and turned towards her. “Do you need something?”

“That book is available on Amazon, Samuel, there’s no need to hide it from me.” Sam didn’t bother responding. He rubbed his thumb over the insignia inexpertly embroidered on the empty hex bag. The fabric itself was soft, expensive. He didn’t recognize the specific symbol, though the pentacle motif was familiar. “What’s this symbol?”

“It’s a personal crest.”

Sam let that sit for a second before he put it together. “You branded your hex bags?”

“As a businesswoman I always was ahead of my time.”

Sam couldn’t help but laugh in the face of her self-satisfaction. He could just imagine her, picking out decadent fabric and taking the time to hand stitch each one, just so her enemies might know exactly who had cursed them. Sometimes it was easy to see how Crowley had turned out the way he had.

“Now,” she said, taking the bag back from his hand. “The ingredients for this one are fairly simple. Purified earth, myrtle wax, witch’s grass burrs, vole skull.”

“Do I need to stitch my own hex bag?”

“Anything worth doing is worth doing well.” Rowena said haughtily. “And the quality of the ingredients absolutely impacts the effectiveness of the spell.”

“Okay, okay,” Sam conceded with a smile. “There was an incantation, too, right?”

“Manete.”

“‘Stay’?” Sam translated. “Are we dogs?”

“You said it, not me.”

Sam rolled his eyes and got up to gather the supplies from the Men of Letters’ supply closet. Sam made sure to keep it fairly well stocked, though many of the ingredients were leftovers from the 1950s. He made a quick detour to his room on the way back and picked up his personal hunting journal. When he got back he carefully recorded the ingredients and the rough quantity necessary, though Rowena tried to insist that spellwork was more of an art than a science.

They moved to one of the empty labs just off the library for the demonstration. Rowena started at a far corner and walked towards Sam, who threw the hex bag at her feet.

“Manete.”

With a jerk, her forward progress stalled as her feet stuck to the floor. She gave her boots a few experimental tugs. “Impressive. Good seal.” She waved a hand and the hex bag burst into flames, freeing her from the spell.

“Now that would be useful,” Sam admitted, grabbing a dustpan to clean up the remains of the hex bag.

Rowena trailed behind him as he made his way back to the library. “Come, now. You are in the presence of the greatest witch alive.”

“And the most humble.”

“Och, humility is for the weak, Samuel. Surely you’re interested in more than a simple binding curse or conjuring a little flame.”

He fiddled with his journal for a moment before something occurred to him. “There’s something.” He spared a glance for Donatello down in the map room, who still appeared to be immersed in his translation, murmuring incomprehensibly to himself. “A tracking spell.”

“A tracking spell?” Rowena echoed. “Perhaps I’ve overestimated your magical education. They’re a dime a dozen.”

“We have tracking spells, but most of them won’t work with Lucifer. There’s one…” Sam paused, shutting his eyes briefly as he fought back a wave of revulsion that accompanied thinking about Gadreel, the crawling sensation that he wasn’t alone, even in his own body. “But it needs extracted grace from an angel’s previous vessel and it hasn’t actually worked before. I was hoping you had something better.”

Rowena’s face darkened at the archangel’s name. “I’ve scried for him before. I can show you how.”

Rowena had somehow produced a large, purple candle, which she set up on one of the tables in the back of the library. She eyed up the mirror Sam had found in one of the storerooms appreciatively and directed him to lean it against the wall behind the candle. The mirror was square, just under two feet across on each side, and sat in a bronze art deco frame. “I will say, Winchester, for being chauvinist thieves and murderers, at least your forebearers had decent taste.”

“Not a Men of Letters fan?” Sam asked lightly. He stood at a nearby table, quickly jotting down notes.

“How do you think they gathered all of their occult knowledge? Hundreds of years ago they whipped the populace into a fervor against witchcraft. Burnt my kind at the stake and then plundered our secrets, shipped them off to bunkers like this one.”

“They didn’t get you,” Sam pointed out.

“No, of course not. I’ve always been more resilient than the average witch. Besides, I was in Milan when they took down the Grand Coven. Serves them right for casting me out, if you ask me.”

“Huh,” Sam said, finishing up with his journal. “I mean, I can’t say I blame them.”

“Oh, and the Men of Letters you’ve interacted with have been saints, have they?”

Sam winced, memories rushing in of a dark basement in Missouri, of panting for thin air in the bunker, of Eileen. “No. No, I guess not.”

“Witches didn’t scare the Men of Letters because they had magic; they scared the Men of Letters because witchcraft was how women took power for themselves.”

Sam cocked his head. He didn’t doubt the truth of what she said, he’d seen the hypocrisy of the Men of Letters firsthand. And it was true that witchcraft seemed to be a largely female pursuit. He’d never considered the ‘why’ of that before. But he also wasn’t buying Rowena: Feminist Hero. “And you’re any better? How many women, how many witches, have you killed for power?”

“Oh, my fair share, to be sure. But I believe in equality when it comes to murder and mayhem.”

Sam snorted and shook his head. “How about you show me this scrying spell.”

She lit the candle with a wave of her hand. Sam made a mark in his journal to remind himself to ask the witch to show him that, too. Given how often he needed to set fires-and how often spirits managed to knock lighters out of their hands-it could come in handy.

She told him the incantation, which was thankfully in Latin, one of Sam’s better languages. It was different than the one he and Dean had badgered her protégé into using to track Rowena down after they’d released The Darkness. He transcribed it carefully into his journal.

“Now, this spell, and scrying in general, works better when searching for a subject the with which the caster has a connection.” Sam fought down the rise in his gorge at the thought of his connection with Lucifer. Thankfully Rowena didn’t belabor the point. “If you’re seeking out someone else, there are a number of other powerful tracking spells.”

He nodded, steeled himself, and moved in front of the mirror. Rowena stood just behind and to the side of him, placed a guiding hand on the small of his back.

“Focus on the subject in your mind. Think of what…” she trailed off and in the silvered surface of the mirror he saw her glance up at him. “Think of what connects you.”

Sam pressed his lips into a thin line and did just that. He remembered Lucifer taking control of his body in Detroit, the sensation like being burned alive and plunged into liquid nitrogen. He remembered wrestling that unfathomable being into submission to save his brother.

With a shaky, deep breath, Sam recited the invocation.

For a long moment nothing happened and Sam slumped, but Rowena only pressed her hand in and snapped, “Focus!”

Lucifer’s grace, sheathed by Cas’s hand, reaching into Sam’s soul. Lucifer in the Cage. Lucifer as Vince Vicente, as Jefferson Rooney, as Jess in Sam’s head.

Lucifer’s true face.

The surface of the mirror warped, rippled like quicksilver. A pinpoint of light stabbed out from the center and then began to grow. Sam tried to look into the blaze, but there was nothing but brilliant, pure light. It expanded and he found his eyes straining, smarting, burning.

Someone was shouting.

He slammed his eyes shut, but the light was there behind his eyelids, too bright to be shut out.

Sharp sounds next to him, a thunderous crack, and then the light was gone. The bunker seemed quiet and still in its absence, as if the light had been bright enough to register as sound, as touch, so all-encompassing as it had been. He was panting in the silence.

“Sam?”

He turned his head, realized the sound was coming from above him, realized he was sitting on the floor. He opened his eyes, but his vision was black with the afterimage.

“What was that?” Sam registered the voice as Donatello’s. Those were probably his footsteps coming up the steps from the map room.

“Nothing you need concern yourself with, prophet,” the witch snapped back at him.

“Is he okay?”

“I’m fine,” Sam said, attempting to stand. His vision was already clearing, though it was only blurred and dark. He felt Rowena’s small hand on his elbow, offering a surprising amount of stability as he regained his feet. She guided him to a chair, which he gratefully slumped into, leaning forward to press the heels of his hands into his eyes. The burning in his eyes was familiar from a lifetime of nights spent researching into the early hours, eyes gritty from staring at small print in substandard light, except turned up to eleven.

He was aware of Rowena and Donatello moving around him. There was the clunk of a glass on the table in front of him and he grabbed at it without looking to see what it was. Surprisingly, it was water, not liquor, but he was thankful for the cool relief.

A few minutes later when he chanced opening his eyes again his vision was mostly recovered, if a little blurry and painful. He found Rowena standing next to him, Donatello several feet away, as if he was wary of coming any closer.

“If you’ll pardon the pun,” Rowena said, breaking the silence. “What the devil was that?”

“You saw it?” Sam asked.

“I saw you turn the mirror into a small supernova.”

“I think…” Sam said, glancing at the mirror. There was a long, jagged crack running across it. “I think that was heaven.”

“Heaven?!” That would be Donatello. The former atheist seemed to struggle with every new aspect of the supernatural that he encountered. Sam would normally be amused, but with a migraine building in his head it wasn’t so endearing.

Sam nodded and then winced as the pain spiked. “Angels can burn out the eyes of people not suited to be vessels. Their light is a lot like that. It felt similar.”

“Well, I suppose that answers your question,” Rowena said, but she didn’t sound happy about it at all.

“What question?” Donatello asked.

“We were looking for Lucifer,” Sam said. “And it looks like he’s in heaven.”

Given that Donatello had witnessed Sam’s inadvertent transformation of a mirror into the equivalent of a localized star, it wasn’t as if Sam and Rowena could keep their activities hidden from the rest of the team. Sam supposed he could ask Donatello to keep it secret, but learning witchcraft in Dean’s absence felt different from directly lying to his brother, so he didn’t.

Dean, predictably, wasn’t thrilled.

“I leave you alone for, what, six hours and you decide to take up with another witch? What the hell, Sam?”

“Dean,” Sam said. He was seated at the table as Dean paced its length across from him. It tripped his self-preservation instincts be in such a vulnerable position, but he wasn’t above using all the tools at his disposal to reason with his brother. He spread his hands, palms up, across the wooden surface. “We’ve spent the past week looking up spells. This isn’t that different.”

“Oh yeah?” Dean snapped back. He fists clenched. “Then why keep it a secret, huh?”

“I can’t imagine,” Rowena drawled. She was seated next to Sam, but her posture was an insouciant lean that Sam could tell would only anger his brother further. In fact, her sitting next to him wouldn’t have been his first choice, it was probably driving Dean up the wall to see them aligned so blatantly, but it was too late to tell her to move.

“You can just shut right the hell up,” Dean shot back. “I’m this close to kicking you out on your ass. Come in here and try to corrupt my brother…”

“Corrupt?” she exclaimed, before laughing. “That’s rich coming from you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The first time your brother came to me for help it was to remove the devil’s own Mark of Fratricide from your arm.”

“Yeah, and how did that go?” he replied viciously. “Trust me, I’ve seen Sam go down this road, and you wouldn’t like it. Well, maybe you would, but he won’t. He doesn’t want that.”

“No, he’d rather forever defer to you in penance!”

“Stop,” Sam ground out from between clenched teeth. He drew in a deep breath and released it noisily. “This isn’t helping anything.”

Dean made to say something but Cas, who had remained quiet thus far, grabbed his arm.

Sam turned to the witch at his side. “Rowena,” he started.

“Don’t bother,” she cut in, standing and going for her purse. “I’ll leave you cavemen to punch it out.”

Dean managed to keep himself quiet as she ascended the wrought iron staircase, until the heavy metal door slammed behind her. “We’re done accepting her help.”

Sam couldn’t help the sigh that escaped him. “We need her.”

“We can get someone else. What about the Banes twins?”

“You want to drag someone else into this?” Sam asked. “Put them on Rowena’s radar, on Lucifer’s radar? That’s your better idea?”

With clear effort on his part Dean tried to rein in his rage, calm his voice. “Sam, I don’t trust her.”

“Good! Neither do I!” It was like Dean’s calm created space for Sam’s anger, fed it like a fire until it roared up within him. “But what I do trust is that she’s going to do whatever is in her own self-interest. And right now, that’s helping us.”

Dean was skeptical. “Helping us to steal the devil’s mojo?”

“Helping us kill him!”

There was a long beat of silence. “Kill him?”

Sam’s anger drained away just as quickly as it had rushed to fill him. “The Cage… it’s not secure enough, not without the seals.”

Castiel broke in. “Can she do it?”

“I don’t know.”

“She’s playing you,” Dean said.

Sam rolled his eyes. “You know, you always say that.”

“And I’m always right!”

“No, Dean, you’re not.”

“Have you forgotten about Ruby?”

It was like a punch to the gut. Or maybe, Sam supposed, more like a punch to the jaw, another attack he’d become too familiar with his brother lobbing at him. “Do you seriously think I could ever forget about Ruby?” he asked, voice near a whisper. He was just so, so tired of this, of everything. He was so exhausted of never being able to leave his mistakes behind, no matter how hard he worked. He closed his eyes against the burning that had nothing to do with his attempt at scrying. “You’re right, Ruby manipulated me. And I have to live with that, with the fact that this, all of this, is on me thanks to that.”

“Then why won’t you listen to me now?” Only from knowing Dean his entire life could Sam detect the plea underneath the anger.

“I am listening. I am, Dean. I’m just disagreeing. Because even when Ruby was playing me, the angels were playing you. But I’m not going to tell you that you should never trust again because of it, that you shouldn’t trust Cas or Benny or… or Crowley. Why are you the only one who gets to decide?”

“Because I didn’t break the world. Twice.”

Sam’s stomach turned even as Cas let out a soft, chastising, “Dean.”

There was nothing else he could say. Sam met his brother’s eyes, but Dean’s face was a mask of anger. The only option in the face of his brother’s rage was a retreat that was more desperate than strategic. With a final half-hearted glare, he clambered down the steps out of the library.

It was only the late afternoon when Sam retreated to his bedroom, but he didn’t leave for dinner and Dean didn’t try to draw him out. Sam could hear the angry banging of pots and pans echoing down the hallway. Cas knocked politely at his door a little while later, but Sam ignored it all.

The years trailed behind Sam, the ones that were real and the ones that he felt in his soul. Sometimes Sam had no idea how to calculate his own age. He definitely couldn’t count the time-dilated years of hell. But should he count the year and a half of soullessness? Those memories seemed more like movies playing back in Sam’s head, no emotional connection at all, but he supposed it was surface time, so it counted. What about the hundreds of Tuesdays and then the subsequent lost six months from Gabriel’s prank? Sam could still remember them, but he was the only one now who did.

All of it added up to Sam feeling the weight of many more years than his thirty-four year old body could account for. That messy, angry time with Ruby after Dean’s death and then subsequent resurrection felt so long ago to him.

Sam knew that it didn’t feel so remote to his brother. Dean’s own forty years of hell came before he learned of his brother’s betrayal. There was less than a decade of distance for him. Sam tried to be considerate of that, of how immediate the treachery must be to Dean.

But everything he'd done since then he’d done to try and make up for that horrible mistake. He’d wrestled Lucifer into submission and dragged him into the Cage. But it felt like he couldn’t ever work himself out from underneath the guilt and blame before another horrible mistake with all new guilt and blame was piled on top. And yeah, he’d made lots of mistakes since then. His unknowing abandonment of his brother to purgatory and releasing The Darkness certainly ranked high on his personal list of failures.

Sometimes it felt like he was being buried alive by his mistakes.

He’d tried to fix them, to change. His single-minded determination to save his brother from his deal and then from hell had led to being deceived by Ruby, so when he found himself alone after the defeat of the Leviathans, with the assumption that his dead brother was in heaven, he’d tried his best to move on. When he found out that he’d instead abandoned Dean to purgatory he’d tried to make up for it by undertaking the trials to close the gates of hell. And when the fallout from that had turned Dean into a demon and saddled him with the Mark of Cain he’d done everything in his power to fix that, only to release another monster.

Honestly, the thing that challenged his faith the most up until he actually met God-and, if he was honest, even afterwards-was the inconsistency. If there was some sort of lesson he was supposed to be learning from his life, he hadn’t found it yet. He’d tried being compassionate and it had gotten him literally stabbed in the back. He’d tried being dispassionate and he released Lucifer. When he thought that a monster was redeemable, his brother went behind his back and killed her. When Dean brought a vampire back from purgatory, Sam was the monster for not trusting him. It was wrong for Sam to work with a demon, but fine for Dean to work with the king of hell. White witches existed and the brothers performed spells all the time, but learning from Rowena was a step too far.

He couldn’t trust himself to know what the answer was anymore, not when it came to disagreeing with his brother. Every time he’d set himself against Dean’s wishes it had come back to bite him in the ass. With Ruby. Even after Gadreel. If Sam hadn’t been so wrapped up in his own anger he wondered if Dean would’ve still ended up with the Mark of Cain.

Once upon a time, Sam used to fight with his family. He remembered it, though the memory is fuzzed by countless years of the Cage. He remembered, like a dull ache, the rage that used to burn through him. He had been so sure that leaving for Stanford had been the right choice.

Looking back, to find that even that was useless, that there was no way the demons or the angels would’ve let him have that safe, apple pie life, he wondered now why he’d even bothered. All he’d done was rain misery down on those he’d loved, like Brady. Like Jess.

Things had been better lately with Dean, their difference of opinion regarding Jack notwithstanding. Dean had trusted Sam to take down the British Men of Letters. Especially since Castiel’s return, they’d been mostly on the same page. The revelation that Mary was still alive, if trapped, had been a hurdle. But Dean had been there for Sam when he struggled. He couldn’t jeopardize that.

As the hours ticked on, he tried to convince himself that it was fine. That he’d learned a couple useful tricks from Rowena and he’d have to be content with that.

They had work to do.

Part Two