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Sam prays, every day. He keeps it secret, sort of, although it's less that he's hiding and more that he just doesn't know how to talk about it, and so he doesn't. He picked it up when they were really little, staying with Pastor Jim up in Blue Earth, and he was staying up past his bedtime and saw Jim go down to his knees on the dusty floorboards through a crack in the door, and watched, amazed, while he talked quietly to someone who wasn't there. An imaginary friend, is how Sam thought of it when he was small. When he got bigger he thought of it as… he doesn't know. It's hard to articulate.
It's harder to pray, some days. People die and worlds end. He watches a wife crouched by the broken body of her husband, gripping his ripped bloody shirt and making these awful, awful sounds into his sagging neck, and that night while he lies sleepless in bed he looks up at the ceiling, his hands locked together over his stomach, and he thinks—things he can't say. Questions that don't have an answer. Intellectually, he knows that half of this is just talking to himself—reflection, indecision. Justification. There's never an answer, and for a long time he thinks there never will be. Then, he meets an angel.
It was a bad year. He thought before that he'd been through bad. He had no idea what bad was until Dean's timer was ticking down, the days slipping away from them both like a paper blown on the wind, always just out of reach. Dean acted casual and it was a lie and Sam hated it more than he hated anything. Then, Dean wasn't lying anymore, and Sam thought, bleakly ironic, maybe he should've been happy with the fake smiling and the devil-may-care, because Dean hollow-eyed and afraid was—worse. It was worse.
He prayed then, too. Asking, in an incoherent way. He didn't often get on his knees for it, but he did those last months, in random places—by his bed like a little kid when Dean was sleeping troubled; in the bathroom under fluorescent light, the shower running to provide the excuse for privacy; on the cold ground, on the side of the road or in the woods, his hands clasped so tight they hurt, just asking, asking, saying please. Of course there was never a response. One day, when there were just weeks left on Dean's deal and Dean was waking out of panting desperate nightmares every morning and Sam could hardly eat, could barely sleep, all his focus locked onto finding some way, getting out of it somehow, he was on his knees by the car, his shoulder leaned against the cold side-panel and his lips moving in something furtive, desperate, saying I'd do anything, I swear I would, I'd give up whatever it took, if only—and then he opened his eyes, and Ruby was standing there, watching him.
There's a story he always liked. Sort of a joke, sort of not. A man's house is flooding and he prays to God for help. The waters rise, inevitably. A neighbor comes by with a rowboat, and the neighbor says, come on, there's a flood!, but the man says that no, he'll stay, because he's a faithful man and he knows that God will save him. The waters keep rising and the man has to go to the second floor of his house. A police boat comes by, and the police say, sir, sir, come out of your house, there's a flood!, but the man is faithful, and he says no, he will stay, because God loves him, and will save him. The waters rise. The man climbs up to the roof. A rescue helicopter comes, and a rope hangs down, and the flood surges dangerous all around, cracking trees and threatening foundations, and from the helicopter comes a voice that says, sir, the town is gone, you must come with us to be safe. The man sits alone, on the roof, and ignores the rope, and looks to the sky, and the helicopter leaves, and the man is content because he knows that God will save him. When the house shatters—when the man drowns, brackish water filling his lungs—he goes to heaven, and is met by God, and he says Heavenly Father, I prayed, and I believed in you, and I thought you loved me, and you didn't save me. God says, I sent a rowboat, and the police, and a damn helicopter. What else do I gotta do, you idiot?
Dean died. Sam—didn't. He tried to for a while but it didn't stick. He got very, very drunk, and he went to his knees mainly because he was struggling to stand, and he braced his hands on the ground and thought he was going to puke, his shoulders hunched against the pain of it, and he said, or thought he said, I would've done anything, I promised you, I said—I said I would save him and I couldn't save him, and that's the meat of it, in the end. That he had made Dean a promise and he'd seen how Dean tried to believe him, and then he broke it. He didn't do the only thing that mattered. He hunched there, on the ground, and it was only when Ruby came and touched his shoulder, lifted him up, that he realized that he hadn't really been praying the whole time—that he'd been begging—and Ruby said, then, her little hands hard on his wrist and on his jaw, You can't fix it, Sam. You can't. No one can. The only thing we can do now is get revenge. If you let me help you, we can kill her. You and me. He swayed on his feet but she held him up, her eyes dark and steady. He thought of water, rising. Tell me how, he said, and she did.
He'd already broken one promise. It didn't seem that much worse to break another. He drank her blood and he cleared his mind of anything but one goal. Lilith had to die, and the world would be better for her dying. It seemed—not fair, nothing was fair, but it seemed—right. She'd taken something from him. The most important thing. He'd take something from her. When he prayed, for the rest of that year, he prayed not for mercy or for clarity or for wisdom, but for focus. He had one thing he needed to do. He just needed to be able to do it.
Ruby had told him that no one could fix it, and she was right. Dean comes back and Sam can hardly believe it. He holds Dean in his arms and Dean grips his hair, his shoulder, vivid and breathing and real. Dean's alive and he's here, with Sam, and that should resettle the world. It should make things—okay, again. It doesn't. Dean says he doesn't remember hell but his eyes are still haunted, as raw and fearful as he was in the months that led up to his dying. Dean says things are okay, that he wants to make it work, but he's harsher, his voice wrecked and low, the way he watches Sam strange and mistrustful. They meet—and Sam can hardly bear it—an angel, and Sam's whole body feels strange, resonant. Proof, if he ever needed it, when faith had always been enough. The angel looks at him and is an answer—God's warrior, solid on the earth—and he says to Sam that he is an abomination, and he says to Sam that what he's doing, his work, the only thing that had made sense out of Sam's life for the broken time when Dean was gone—he says that it's wrong, and he has to stop, and that the angels will take care of it.
Of course, they won't. Sam knows that. Angels are miracles, God's intervening hand, but Sam has to do this himself. That's been clear for a long time, now.
He prays still but it's to something distant. He doesn't know if it's God, anymore. He sits on his bed, watching Dean sleeping (troubled, frowning), and he folds his hands between his knees and thinks, what can he do? How can he make it right, make it better?
There's a fight. An alley, a hard fast scrum. They're looking for one of these stupid seals, at the behest of the angels, but apparently the angels can't be trusted to watch their backs. In the alley they're all normal-looking guys except for how their eyes go black, when Sam comes around the corner and finds them with Dean, and Dean's bleeding. Dean's bleeding, from his nose and his lips, a cut on his temple like someone bashed his head into the wall, and even if Sam's had the impulse to do the same a few times in his life, other people aren't allowed to hurt him. What has it all been for, if not for that?
"Sam," Dean says, warning—warning, like there's not a demon's hand around his throat.
One of them squares up. Four, in the alley, two on Dean, one watching, one making like he thinks he's going to take Sam down. Last night Sam prayed and Ruby came, telling him that they were close to Lilith, that they were going to make it right, and she nicked her wrist and he drank deep and it's still there, crackling under his skin, filling his bones with light. He holds out a hand and the demon going for a haymaker stops in his tracks, flinches. There's a rustle. Leaves blowing, underfoot.
Sam concentrates but it turns out that it's not all that hard to concentrate, anymore. He's focused. He has clarity of purpose, and all the belief he needs, because it's easy to believe when the proof's right there in front of you. The demons surge at him and he stops them all, two hands out and his eyes half-lidded, the light in him roiling up, yoked to his needs. The one holding Dean lets go and Dean sags, his legs unsteady after that head wound, but Sam doesn't have time for him right this second—it's more important to make sure that the one who was touching Dean dies, and—he dies. The smoke in him gutters out, his spark crackling and then snuffed, like a fire without oxygen. The others go—more slowly, all three at once, and Sam breathes and feels them ebb, their soured souls trapped inside their mouths, the pain flaring and the light in Sam white-hot, bright, scorching them away until the bodies drop, empty, broken in the scattered leaves and trash of the alleyway. None of them stand up. The meatsuits must have been destroyed, too. Sam breathes out, rolling one shoulder, and feels—righteous. It'll be like that, he thinks. It'll be this way, when he finally kills Lilith.
Dean's still crouched by the wall of the bar. Sam steps over the bodies, crouches too. Dean flinches back a few inches but Sam shushes him, touches his jaw. "It's okay," he says, "it's over," and Dean sucks in air and looks at him with big worried eyes, but it is okay. Sam made it okay.
He runs his hands over Dean's shoulders and then gets his forearms, helps him up to his feet. No broken bones, that Sam can tell, and he gently presses Dean back against the bricks and tilts his face toward the neon light. In the blinking blue-red-white the blood looks bad, but it's been worse, and Sam applies a crumpled bandana from his pocket to the spot by Dean's temple where it's still seeping. Dean's eyes are closed, his face turned a little away. Sam touches his throat and feels his heartbeat, racing. They haven't been this close in weeks—Sam's heart is racing a little, too.
"I know you don't like them," Sam says, quietly. "My powers, I mean. But—if there's a way to save you, I'm gonna take it. If there's a way to fix things, to make it better—take out Lilith, stop all these seals from falling—then I'm gonna do it. I can do it, Dean."
Dean shifts against the wall but Sam holds him in place. Dean goes still. "The angels don't like it, Sam," he says. His voice sounds wrecked, like he's been yelling. Was he yelling, during the fight? Sam can't remember. "They say it's—wrong."
"Well, they're wrong," Sam says, and Dean opens his eyes, and Sam smiles at him, and shrugs. "I mean, how can it be wrong? Look," he says, and Dean looks, at the alleyway with the bodies filling it. His eyes are hooded a little but when the neon sign flashes white, Sam can see the green. He takes the bandana away and cups his hands around Dean's jaw, instead, turning his head back, and Dean's eyes are still lowered, fixed on Sam's chest, his breathing heavy. That's okay. Everything's okay.
"No one's going to touch you, again," Sam says. He's broken two promises, already. This third one, he can keep. "I swear. I'm gonna keep you safe, okay? And there's nothing any of the angels or any of the demons can do about it."
"You swear?" Dean says.
Sam frames Dean's face with his hands, the light still churning inside him. He leans in, and Dean's head tips back against the brick wall, and he looks Sam in the eyes finally, and his lips part, a breath heaving in. Sam could answer, but he thinks this is answer enough—he bends his head and kisses Dean, carefully, like they haven't in—god, months and months and months, with things so strange between them. He moves his mouth very softly, aware of how Dean's bleeding with that cut inside his lip, and Dean shudders under his hands, grips Sam's jacket, but then—slowly, tentatively, he kisses back. His tongue tastes like dark iron, like copper's tang. Sam pulls him in, closer, and Dean makes a small deep sound and presses close, just like Sam wanted, and Sam thinks, giddy, that all his faith was worth it. All those prayers, all those works. He did what he had to, and in reward he has—this. Dean, safe and his. Above them, it starts to rain.
