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Sometimes Sam remembers his brother. Green eyes, a strong chin, Mom's fair skin on a face that could be Dad's. Sam remembers his name as well: Dean. He remembers the way Dean says things like "Sasquatch" and the big-brother affection in his voice when he calls him "Sammy."
Sam remembers his other brother too. Adam. The one Dad fathered in secret and treated as his first-and-only born. Adam. First man; first son.
"It fits, doesn't it?" Adam smirks at Sam from across the card table, his elbows planted firmly on the top. Dad's eyes stare at the hand Adam was dealt. The smile on his face, Sam knows, isn't a break in his poker face; it's a victorious, smug grin that says he enjoys insulting Sam.
"Isn't it a bit cliché to play poker in Hell?" Sam retorts.
Adam's expression fades, his face now a stone-cold blank slate. "If I'm going to be here for a while, I might as well make the most of it."
The game is called. Sam puts down his cards — since when was I holding cards? — and realizes that their faces are just as blank as Adam's.
Lucifer, represented by that vessel that was never meant to be his, lays out his cards. "Full house," he smirks. Blue eyes focus on the hands set down by the other players.
Adam sighs. He too has a full house, but his cards are lower in rank. "Damn," he says. "Beat me again, brother."
"Funny how we both keep having the same hand," Lucifer notes, his head slowly turning to a corner in their small, smoke-filled, red room. His gaze falls upon Adam, the real Adam, who is clutching his knees tightly, trembling. The skin on his hands is blistered, burning, yet all he keeps muttering about is the chilling cold, while the angel wearing his skin sits comfortably at the card table.
Sam looks at his own hands then and remembers that his skin is burning too. An icy pain shoots through his bones, crystalizing his marrow as if preserving it for some monster to suck out thousands of years from now. As he remembers this torment, he forgets. He forgets — what's his name? — just as he forgets the boy in the corner. Forgets himself. All he knows is Lucifer and Michael, Michael and Lucifer.
Now he's in a house. A gorgeous mansion, lavish and modern, with fleur-de-lis on the throw pillows and curtains. Lucifer and Michael drink coffee at the granite-topped island in the grand kitchen, an ornate lamp with more fleur-de-lis emblems in the hardware hanging over their heads and a vase with purple irises sprouting out of it.
Sam can see them from the dining room, where the black curtains are closed. The lightbulbs in the chandelier above him are dying, flickering just like the memories of what's-his-name. The hard wooden chair is cold and ages away from the table. Every time he goes to rest his elbows upon its surface, it seems to move. And then the boy beside him mutters something.
"I'm sorry," the boy says. His voice is actually deeper than a child's, but Sam somehow knows he's younger; he can't help but think of him as a boy. "I was supposed to see my mom." He looks up at Sam with familiar, tear-filled eyes. "Is she home yet? I thought I heard her car pull up the driveway."
Sam shakes his head. "I don't know."
He hears laughter floating out from the kitchen with the pretty flowers. He doesn't know why the two angels get along. He's aware of their squabbles over that little thing called the Apocalypse — though Sam can't remember what an Apocalypse is — and how they're supposed to be fighting. But they're bonding. Happy to be together again.
The boy beside Sam sighs again. He lays his head on the table in a pillow made of his own arms. A white lily, strangled by the boy's grip, wilts.
Sam wonders how the boy can rest his head if the table is so far away.
"You just have to reach for it," the boy says.
But Sam wants the baseball bat on the table. He reaches, and it rolls away from him, falling with a hard thud on the floor. It grabs the attention of Lucifer and Michael.
Lucifer's eyes narrow with concern, his head turning slightly as if he were gazing upon a sweet, adorable puppy. "You want the bat, Sam?"
Sam just blinks at him and nods his head. A smile forms on his face as he sees the bat rise up from the floor and hover back to him.
"No!" Michael scolds, and the bat explodes into splinters that pierce Sam's eyes.
"Give him a break, brother," Lucifer says calmly. "He said yes. He deserves to be rewarded once in a while. Stop being such a righteous bastard."
"This is Hell, brother. And are you forgetting what he's done to us?" Michael's voice booms.
Lucifer lets out a huff. "No, just like I'm not forgetting that you were going to do this to me anyway. You could be a little more forgiving. It's been ages since we've spent some quality time together."
Through the splinters, Sam can see Michael judging the house around them. "Our definitions of quality seem to be different," Michael says.
Lucifer rolls his eyes in a juvenile fashion. "Oh please. What're you so worried about? That old balancing act up there?" He laughs. "You do realize that I'm a job creator — your job creator, right? Imagine if I hadn't rebelled. Where would you send your wicked? My children may be filthy scum, but they get the task done."
"Our Father would have—"
"Oh, here we go, ‘our Father' again..."
The archangels' bickering dissolves into a high-pitched squeal. Sam can't cover his hears because he's busy picking at his face; he can't seem to remove the splinters fast enough. Warm blood pours from the wounds in his eyes, mixing with the blood oozing from his cheeks. The room turns red again. He looks to the boy for help.
There's something off about him now. Sam can't feel the heat from the boy's body anymore or hear his breath. They were sitting next to each other, but now the boy is looming over him, the white lily in his hand back to life.
"Your arm," the boy says, with an otherworldly vehemence.
Sam reluctantly holds out his arm, rolling up the sleeve almost obediently. Has this happened before?
The boy — the ghoul — grins with delight as he presses the lily's stem to Sam's skin. It slices like a razor blade. "So hungry," the ghoul says as his mouth plunges down to lap up the blood, and his teeth—
—Sam lets out a shout and opens his eyes. He's not in that weird place, not in the Cage. There's no Lucifer or Michael or Adam. It's just Bobby's house, with its stacks of books and booze bottles and shotguns. Sam can see Dean scouring the yard from where he sits. He knows his brother is just looking for spare parts for the broken Impala.
I should be down there fixing it with him.
It's strange, Sam thinks, the way Lucifer and Michael talked to each other so openly, despite knowing their eternal fate. If Heaven's most powerful angels can speak so freely — even while at opposite ends of the spectrum — then why can't he and Dean do the same? This whole thing with Cas is obviously eating at his brother. He can tell by the way Dean clamps up, the way his body tightens and his lips curl into those fake smiles. Sam knows he can't fix it, and he knows Dean won't let him. But why can't they try? They always say that the one thing they can hold onto is family, but will it kill them to talk about it?
Sam looks at the empty liquor bottle across the room.
No, it won't kill us. It'll save us.
"Ground control to Major Sam," Bobby says.
Sam looks away from the window toward Bobby, who's wearing his usual old flannel and beaten cap, with jeans that have oil stains that are probably older than Dean. "Hey."
Bobby wants to say something important, something concerning and father-like, but his moustache twitches; he's holding back a few words. "Can ya put on some coffee?" It's more of a demand than a question, but the tone is somewhat polite.
Of course, Sam has no idea why the guy just doesn't do it himself. Not that Sam won't do it anyway, but usually Bobby doesn't ask him to do little things like this. "Sure," Sam replies. He catches sight of what he was doing pre-Hell-vision. His laptop is on; the star-field screensaver playing on an endless loop.
"Thanks," Bobby says as he pulls out his cellphone. His eyes go beady and paranoid then, as if he doesn't want Sam knowing what he's staring at his phone for, but he keeps it in his palm anyway and reaches for the keys to his truck. "Need to head out and get that kid some grub." His head nods in the direction of the salvage yard.
Sam's not entirely sure he believes Bobby, because for all he knows, Bobby is just trying to distract him so that he and Dean can plan some sort of intervention. Besides, everyone feels entitled to talk to Sam, but Sam talking to anyone is a mortal sin. He shoots Bobby a skeptical look as he heads into the kitchen. "Take out?" he asks, eyeing Bobby's phone.
Bobby quickly puts the phone back in his pocket. "Nah, just checkin' for messages. Gonna close the yard early." He huffs a disgruntled breath. "Not that I see much business these days anyhow. I'm gonna hafta start chargin' Dean out there if I keep this place closed much longer."
Sam can understand that. He wonders if the god in Castiel can work on drumming up some business for Bobby while he's out and about abusing those terrifying powers. The guy could at least do that.
Bobby nods a goodbye as Sam dumps out the old grinds in the coffee maker and rinses the basket. Dean used to make fun of him for doing that, he muses. His brother likes his coffee, but he didn't always care if the old coffee grinds were still there, so long as they were Winchester or Singer grinds, not the grinds of a previous motel tenant. Rinsing the basket was something that happened once it was too full to dump fresh coffee on top of the old. After Lisa? Dean changed that habit. Sam doesn't know what it was, but figures that at the very least, Lisa didn't like recycled coffee. He likes to believe that when Dean was with her, he was happier, that their relationship was picture perfect. Dean cares about his coffee more because he cares about life more. Sam has often wondered if they ever had a fight. But he knows better than to ask since the mind wipe. All he knows is that Dean renewed his bad habit after Castiel betrayed them anyway.
Sam looks at the empty basket in his hand. How long has he been standing there? Did he miss his chance to spy on Bobby through the window? "Coulda been done brewing by now..." he mutters as he twists the faucet. There's a second when he bates his breath, expects the water to run red and the scent of copper to waft up at him. But cold water runs over the curved edge of the basket, up and over the ridges on the bottom. He gives it a quick shake before returning it the coffee maker.
Sam strolls outside to check on Dean after clicking the appliance on. His brother looks busy, hard at work. Bobby's gone, and the gate at the front of the yard has its sign flipped to "closed," so Sam's in the clear. No conspiracy there.
Back inside, he taps his laptop awake to see what he was doing before he leapt into Hell. Those few seconds before the slip are fuzzy at best, non-existent at worst, so maybe something on the computer will trigger his pre-flight memory.
Or trigger the wrong memory and send me straight back there.
To his surprise, he wasn't doing research at all. No lore about Purgatory, no websites about recent miracles, nothing. He'd been playing solitaire.
That explains the poker game, he thinks. He closes out the game and pops open the internet, checks his history. A long list of self-help sites pops up. Sam spots one for a support group consisting of people with alcoholics in the family. He freaks, quickly deletes the history, then rummages around the computer to make sure he rids it of any other traces of the site. It scares him that Dean might see it and get pissed at him, that it might make everything worse.
There's a knock at the door.
Sam's hesitant to answer. What visitor wouldn't approach the guy already in the yard, who looks like the resident mechanic? A demon. An insane angel. Bobby wouldn't knock on his own door. Sam doesn't remember locking the door on Dean either, plus he figures Dean would've spouted something pissy by now. Unless, of course, they're planning on ambushing him and locking him up in the panic room again.
Sam looks out the window. An old yellow car with a rusty, red door and a hefty dent in its hood is parked outside. He doesn't recognize the vehicle. He picks up a gun and a nearby bottle of holy water before cautiously answering the door.
"Can I help you?" he asks the two guys on the other side. He keeps the door open only enough to make eye contact. He keeps his heart shielded from their view.
The guys are the rough and tumble sorts, defined mainly by the stubble on their faces and the stains on their clothes. "Yeah, we're lookin' for parts," one says.
"Sorry man, we're closed."
"Dang," says the other. "What time y'open tomorrow?"
Sam shrugs. "Not sure. Owner's doing some, uh, revamping."
The guys look confused and rightfully so. Sam's not sure how someone revamps a salvage yard.
"Alright," the first says. "We'll just call next time. Thanks, man."
Sam bids them a farewell nod. "Thanks for stopping by." He looks up at the ceiling as he closes the door. "Very funny, Cas," he remarks, before plopping back down with his laptop. The coffee gurgles to the end of its brew cycle as the visitors' junk of a vehicle revs up and out of the lot.
Minutes pass, but it seems like mere seconds between the first visitor and this one. The knocks are a bit different, made with more authority, but lack the urgency of someone in need. Sam lets out a sigh, curses Castiel's timing for miracles, and answers the door again, gun and holy water in hand. He can't spot the visitor's car this time.
"Hey Sam," Sheriff Mills says with a smile. She's off-duty, dressed very simply in a form-fitting knit top and a nice pair of jeans. Her smile is bright, like she never met Bobby or the Winchesters, never knew about the things that go bump in the night, never lost her son. "Can I come in?"
Sam figures this is part of Bobby's nefarious plan, because she'd look much more grim if the visit were about a job or something worse. "Hey." Before he knows it, he's offering her the coffee Bobby asked him to brew. Sneaky old bastard.
"Sure," she says, waiting patiently to initiate whatever conversation Bobby asked her to.
"Uh, great!" Sam says, with enthusiasm and a bit of a stammer. "You can, uh, sit down, and I'll bring it over."
She grins at him, knowing the unexpected visit has him for a bit of a spin, then sits on the couch in the other room.
She opens up the moment Sam hands her the coffee. "Been a while, Sam."
Sam wishes his mug were big enough to hide behind. Perhaps this whole talking about it thing is a terrible idea. He regrets sipping the hot beverage so quickly; the liquid burns on the way down. "Uh, yeah, not since..." He gestures out with his hand, literally passing the invisible ball over to her. He feels like an idiot for bringing up the trauma, that moment when her son went zombie and killed the last remaining love of her life.
Her hands cradle the mug, savoring the heat. "It's fine, Sam. Since Owen." A subtle laugh escapes through her nose. "Things have gotten better since then."
"Good," Sam says nervously, taking a seat next to her. It occurs to him that he hasn't heard Dean working in a while. He wonders if Dean saw the car and is on his way to interrupt their conversation. "So I take it you're not here about a job, Sheriff."
"I'm off-duty. It's Jodie."
Sam makes every effort to delete the word "Sheriff" from his mind. He takes a much more careful sip of his coffee, then says, "Right. Jodie. Well you can't be here for the coffee."
"I've had worse," she smirks.
His answering smile feels unexpected and genuine. "That's what everyone says when they're drinking the worst."
She laughs. "I'm here for you, Sam."
"How much do you know?" Sam asks her. Why punish her with more tales of terror if she's already living one of her own?
"I know you were gone for a bit," she says, setting the mug down. "That you came back and helped stop another terrible thing from happening."
"Didn't stop it."
"You stopped something."
"More like enabled something."
"Like?"
Sam is almost swept up in this whole thing, the fast-talking, the smiles, the headshrink tactics. The planted fib so he'll reveal the truth by accident, because he'll jump in to correct her. These are things he learned on the road and learned even more about at Stanford. Lawyers have similar courtroom tactics. He almost forgets that he doesn't want to burden her with more than she needs to know. He stops himself from letting the full extent of the truth come out.
Maybe that's how Dean feels.
"It's nothing," he says. "You know, you think you're doing the right thing, and then you're not, and then by the time you try to make up for it, it's too late."
"Sounds familiar," she remarks. "You didn't happen to run into an old friend, find out he was undead, house him for a bit, and then let him eat your brother, did you?"
Should I laugh at that? Sam thinks. He clears his throat. "Uh…not exactly."
"Didn't think so. Saw Dean outside."
Sam goes back to assuming Dean had something to do with this too. "So he knows you're here."
Jodie shakes her head. "No. Not sure he even saw me. He was miles away, talking to himself in fact. Looked like he was about to call someone when I pulled up. Didn't wanna bug him. Besides…" She paused to smile again. "I'm not here for him."
Sam beams back at her. Plot or not, he enjoys her company. For once, someone who gets him actually wants to talk about the things-that-are-never-talked-about. Maybe Bobby and/or Dean had the right idea after all. "Well, you're right. I did go away for a bit."
"Bobby said you were away when he called me."
Sam blinks at her. "He called you when I was spaced out?" Had his flashback been that intense?
"You don't remember?"
"Well, if I was spaced out..."
"I heard you shout a name, actually."
Heat flushes to Sam's cheeks. "Uh, through the phone? That loud?"
"It was Adam," she recalls.
Sam gapes at her for a moment too long. Adam. The one not important enough to make it. The one they left behind. The one he left behind. He doesn't want to think about it, but Jodie's brows raise higher and higher, urging him to speak.
"I, um..." The uncertainty inside creeps again; he doesn't want her know the horrific details, but it's inevitable. If he has to share this with someone, he needs to just share it.
"It's fine, Sam." Her hand rests upon his, an instant comfort. The touch is a rare gift; Bobby and Dean aren't exactly huggers — well, neither is Sam — but Sam recognizes the importance of it in moments like this.
"It gets pretty intense," he says, hoping to gauge her boundaries.
"Honestly, it might be nice to get all that intensity out there," Jodie tells him. Sam knows that Dean would catch a double-meaning there. "I mean, I have my bad days, I do. But I can take it. Knowing I'm not the only one who..." Her voice trails to a whisper.
Sam was there too. He remembers. "Yeah, I know."
"So you went somewhere, and now you keep going back, is that it?"
Leading the witness. Sam nods, cards his fingers through the hair behind his ears. "That's it."
"Well I can't help you with that. Maybe if I had a prescription pad, but I don't, and I wouldn't recommend swimming in the meds alone if I did." She leans forward, elbows on her knees, neck craned, and eyes aimed straight at Sam's. "Who's Adam?"
The answer rolls readily from his tongue. "My brother."
"Oh," Jodie remarks, surprise in her eyes and in the brevity of her speech. "Why is Adam with you?"
"Because I brought him with me. And I couldn't get him out...I never even tried." A sudden memory plays on repeat, like an image he's watching from outside of himself, Sam Winchester holding his arm up to Adam's salivating mouth.
"Sam?"
He returns to Jodie again. The threat of the flashback is averted, and he's thankful he didn't go in so deep that he lost awareness. He knows where the conversation was. "You know, I never really listened to my father."
Her lips form a wry grin. "That's not unheard of."
"I mean, it bugged me sometimes," he continues. "Most of the time I didn't care, but sometimes I did."
She nods. "What was different with Adam?"
"Adam was...well Adam was me. The me I couldn't be." He laughs. The me I couldn't be? Nice one.
But Jodie doesn't smirk like Dean would. "He wasn't a hunter," she deduces.
"No. And if he wanted to be one? Fine, I was all for that, but because it would help protect him, you know?"
Jodie doesn't do much more than nod and blink and show interest, so Sam keeps going. He tells her about the brother he never knew, the brother he still doesn't know. Then comes the story with all the hows and none of the whys. How the ghoul stole Adam's face, and the face of his mother, and damn well nearly bled Sam dry. How in that moment, he felt like Dean, unable to protect his baby brother. He tops the tale off with a heaping slab of irony — how Adam, a Winchester at heart, sacrificed himself for the sake of family. How Adam never saw that reward. How Adam, in the end, was a freak just like Sam, because he let that archangel wear him even after the torment that Zachariah put him through.
He half-expects Jodie to question the whole existence of archangels and literal trips to Hell, despite the zombies and everything else Bobby said she saw. But her face is calm, accepting everything Sam says as fact. "You think you and Adam are freaks. How come Dean is exempt?"
That's a why, and that's part of Sam's problem to begin with. He doesn't know why. Even when it was destiny, there wasn't really a rational why to it all. There was a what, a when, a where, and a how.
"I don't know," he says, voice low and reserved. Dean had all the same crap thrown in his direction, yet somehow never fell into freakdom. Or maybe he did. Maybe that's her point.
"We've all got emotions, Sam," she says, seemingly out of the blue.
Sam tries not to laugh too hard at that; he remembers all too clearly just how little emotion he had without a soul. "You believe that?"
"Hey, even the bad guys are prone to anger. So if you wanna know why any of this happens, you start there."
Sam sighs. "And where does that leave destiny?"
"If that's your thing, then someone still made it so," Jodie explains. "And that someone did it for a reason — to satisfy some emotion."
Sam wonders if she realizes just how on-topic her statement is. "And what about stuff that just happens? Where's the reason in that?"
She clasps her hands together and gives him a stern look. "You know, when Owen was just starting to talk — I mean really talk — you know what he would constantly ask me?"
Sam lets out a deep breath. He knows where this is going. "He kept asking ‘why,' didn't he?"
A fond memory flickers in her eyes. "Yep, and you know what would happen as he continued to deconstruct everything?"
"You told him that it just is."
She nods. "I told him it just is."
Okay, so it just is, he thinks, and he doesn't want that answer. But how can it be better? Will he ever heal, ever be happy again? How can he go from faking it to being it? And there's the whole destiny thing. Did he dive into Hell for nothing? In the grand scheme of things, is the big joke that there is no grand scheme at all?
It just is. That's the hand they're dealt. Sometimes people get a full house, and sometimes they get the joker. Sometimes their cards are blank, and sometimes they don't get any cards at all. Does that make Hell harder or easier to deal with? If he has a reason to suffer, then the pain can be justified. Then again, if what he did was right, how come Hell was the reward and not Heaven?
But if Sam's situation just is, then Hell wasn't a reward. It was a result of that free-will concept Dean kept talking about — maybe that's why I don't think he's a freak — and Castiel used his free will to bust Sam out. Maybe Sam's block is that he still isn't entirely on board with the whole free-will thing. He doesn't understand it as he should. But what about Adam? I forced my will on him; he didn't want to go into the Cage.
Jodie's hand is atop his again. "Sam, did you leave on me?"
Sam shakes his head. "No, just thinking. Can't tell if we're on the verge of a breakthrough or a breakdown."
"Didn't like that story, huh?"
"No, it was fine."
She chuckles lightly. "If you think we can make a breakthrough on your whole life in a matter of minutes, you need to give me a sec to call the guys in the white coats." She takes a long, calculated drink from the dreadfully bitter beverage in her cup, giving them a moment of pause. "You know what I told Owen when he didn't like that answer?" she asks, returning to her story.
"What?"
"That if he didn't like it, he should find the answers for himself. He should fix it."
"I'm trying to fix it," Sam defends.
"Seems to me like you're not."
Anger surges then quickly fades. Sam knows she's right, but he doesn't know why. "Not to be annoying or anything..."
Jodie cuts him off, knowing what he's going to ask. "You're waiting on someone else's action. You want Dean to talk to you about it first before you deal with it yourself."
Revelation. Oh, goddamn it...
She raises a brow. "That's what you were planning on doing, wasn't it."
Sam casts shy eyes to the floor. "I uh..."
"You were gonna tell him that someone all official told you it'd be good to talk about it."
Sam laughs. Usually he feared getting busted, but Jodie makes him feel at ease. There are no threats of violence or silence with her, just straight-talk with a cup of empathy and a dash of ball-busting, no candy coating. She gets that there's no flowers aside from the ones placed on the casket. She's a bit like Dean in that sense. It's refreshing to know that someone so tough, so rooted in reality, can be this way. It gives him hope for Dean.
Bobby's truck rolls in slightly quieter than the Impala would; Sam recognizes the sound, so he knows he doesn't have to curse at Castiel again for sending more customers. He and Jodie listen, waiting for Bobby to come inside, but he doesn't.
"You wanna go out there and say hi?" Sam asks her, his thumb checked behind him even though he figures Bobby's no longer there and is already heading for Dean.
"Nah, already talked to him today. Besides, I came here for you, Sam."
"Right." He offers her more coffee, but she declines and pushes up to stand with a gentle stretch.
"I think today's session is just about done. Where do I send the bill?" she jokes.
"To Bobby Singer," Sam jests, but in reality, he isn't done yet. He spent all that time on Adam. Why Adam? He really needs to talk more about Dean. About Cas. Or maybe more on the recurring flashbacks. Why did he focus on who starred in them? Why didn't he focus on how he felt — the loss of control, the confusion, the searing heat, the sub-zero chill, the missing time? What is he supposed to do when he slips into one of those moments, just silently hope that someone else is there to notice and pull him out?
Her soft expression reminds him that this wasn't all for naught. It does feel pretty good to get by at least one hurdle. Damn good. His joy overrides the anxiety as he thinks about it, and a relieved smile crosses his face.
Jodie politely passes her coffee cup back to Sam as they slowly walk toward the door. He thanks her and gets back to his laptop, reflecting upon their dialogue while he stares at the keyboard.
Where to start? The list is long, but he figures he needs to begin with the obvious item: the Cage. Dean is too big to tackle. Castiel is...a whole different issue entirely. Dean plus Castiel is something Sam isn't allowed to look at yet. But Hell? Well, he has a plan for it. He knows now it won't ever go away — because it just is — but maybe he can work on managing the flashbacks, squashing the triggers, reducing their frequency.
He makes a decision, googles PTSD flashbacks. Who cares if Dean grills him on it? Does Dean even check that stuff anyway? Sam shrugs, and relaxes his shoulders. Maybe it won't be the worst thing in the world if he's caught.
As it turns out, Dean is having revelations too.
Sam initially feels betrayed when Dean lets slip that he's been communicating with Castiel via the temptations of a more perfect alternate universe. Sam feels like Dean could have said something right after it happened. Not that Sam isn't worried.
But when Dean's eyes light up as he recalls the moment, says the name, Michael, the betrayal falls away. It's like someone — Castiel — lit a fire in his brother. What Sam can do now is support his brother, even if that revelation comes in the form of...
Sam will have to face it now. Talk about it openly. Dredge up the thing he dreads dredging up. Dean needs him and Sam can't run. The irony isn't lost on him.
Funny how I've been waiting for him to be the one to say something all this time, and now he actually says something when I don't need him to.
Dean's revelations keep coming. "But Cas — God, whatever — he said I was important because I was the Righteous Man, because I was Michael."
Sam remembers what Jodie asked him, about Dean's exemption from being a freak. There is no uncertainty in Sam's heart anymore. Dean is a freak. They both are. It's not as worrisome as it should be, in fact; it's a huge relief. Hell, everyone's a freak.
"And then today he spouted some Chuck Heston-Ben Hur-type crap about me weighing up souls and delivering them to him," Dean relays.
Sam knows where to take the revelation next, and it has nothing to do with this chapter on the water serpents of Purgatory. "Michael weighed the souls of the dead..." he says. "He was there when souls passed."
Deduction after deduction tumbles between the three hunters. It's like a terrible, dense fog is lifting; sunshine will light up the land again. Though they will still have to navigate an obstacle course of rocks and hard places, at least said course will be illuminated. Everything seems so simple now. Michael. Michael is the lead.
Sure, Dean doesn't look too happy about it when Sam subtly suggests they beam down and snatch Michael's grace along with their baby brother, but Sam hunkers down and faces Dad's downcast green eyes and the worried creases of Mom's fair skin head-on. It hurts a lot and it doesn't extinguish the blazing heat or the tense chill, but something about it feels good.
Sam doesn't protest as Bobby whisks by him and returns with a whole new stack of books to read. He happily shuts the one in front of him and takes the first hefty volume off the pile. Dean, on a mission, heads to the kitchen. Sam watches with renewed hope as his brother makes a fresh pot of coffee, new grinds, clean basket and all.
Sam takes the victory. Now it's time to prepare for the second baby step.
A/N:
• The last section of this fiction contains contains dialogue from Episode 4: "Lead Us Not" written by 
electricskeptic and zatnikatel.
• Irises/fleur-de-lis are are often interpreted as symbols of royalty. White lilies (Calla Lilies) are often used in weddings, but are also used in funerals. I even found a source here that suggests this: "In this capacity [funerals], they have been placed on the graves of youth who have suffered untimely deaths."