Dean was reluctant at first. It took Rowena quite a while to convince him
she meant no harm. That she truly wanted to help Sam, and she needed him close
to her to help him get through the curse he was put under. He really didn’t
want to let Sam go, he wanted him right by him, to help him through this. But
somehow Rowena convinced him.
What she didn’t tell Dean, of course, was that she was lying.
She knew that Sam wasn’t in fact, cursed. It was much worse than that.
Rowena knew Dean wouldn’t understand the truth. He wouldn’t be able to let Sam
go if he knew. So she did what she knew would work. Sometimes lies have to be
told, she thought.
***
“Rowena, where are we going?” Sam was confused. He didn’t know why he
was leaving the bunker with Rowena, and why Dean wasn’t coming with them. They
walked out the bunker door, with Dean watching until they had passed through
the bunker door.
“It’s alright dearie, I’ll explain everything soon, I promise.” Rowena
patted his arm.
They walked together to the road and got into a waiting taxi. Sam knew
something was wrong, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Something
was confusing him. He couldn’t keep his thoughts straight. Rowena watched him
the entire ride back to her hotel, waiting to see what Sam might do next.
But nothing surfaced. Sam was mostly quiet during the short ride,
staring out the window, but his mind was thinking hard.
“Rowena, what’s going on?” he asked quietly. Rowena sighed and touched
Sam’s cheek, turning it towards her. She knew he needed patience. And calm
words.
“Samuel, do you remember working with me? Practicing magic?”
Sam smiled, his eyes now staring at Rowena. “of course I do.”
“Do you remember when you started feeling the fear?”
Sam’s eyes went dark, his smile fading. “Yes, I remember that too.”
“Samuel, do you remember how that happened?” Sam turned away from
Rowena to look out the window at the passing traffic.
“No,” was his short, pained reply.
“It’s ok, you know. That’s why we’re leaving. So I can help
you.” Sam nodded, but did not verbally respond.
“Alright dearie, just trust me, ok? I’ll explain the lot as soon as we
get back to my hotel, ok?” Sam nodded again, resting his head on the cool
glass, staring out into the city.
Rowena’s brow crinkled. This is how it started the first time, with Sam
becoming distant. But soon they arrived at the hotel, and Rowena was able to get
Sam inside without difficulty.
It was inside when the trouble began.
Rowena sat him down on the bed and began explaining the situation to Sam. “I
still don’t know what happened, Samuel, but somehow you unleashed this upon
yourself – accidentally, of course.”
Sam frowned and nodded. “ok, “ he answered. He was looking past Rowena when
he spoke to her. He started breathing heavily and his arms wrapped around
himself, shaking.
“Samuel, are you doing alright?” Rowena bent forward to look into his eyes.
He was not alright. Rowena knew if
she didn’t find a counter spell soon, Sam’s situation would likely turn
permanent. She knew the lie she told Dean about the hex bag would become
unraveled soon, and Dean would never trust her again. She needed to fix this
before the truth was revealed. She cast one more spell and watched as Sam
froze, eyes staring at nothing.
She was running out of time.
Squees’ Supporter’s below the cut – let me know if you want to be added or removed!
“Samuel, stop!” Rowena managed to pull back on Sam’s
arm and he turned to look at her, his smile fading. She chanted a few words and
Sam blinked. He seemed to come out of a haze. He shook his head and noticed his
brother lying face down on the floor.
“Dean!”
Dean was not moving. Sam knelt down beside him and
gently turned him over. He sighed with relief when he saw his brother was
breathing.
“Rowena, what happened? What’s wrong with Dean?” His
brows were furrowed in concern. He tried gently shaking him.
“You don’t remember?” Rowena asked cautiously. She
didn’t seem fazed by the fact that Dean was lying unresponsive in front of her.
“No, I…actually, I don’t even remember how I got here. Wait. How did you get here?” Sam sat down again,
putting his head in his hands, not moving from his brother’s side. “I’m so
confused. I don’t feel well. I don’t…” He looked over at Dean, who was still
unconscious on the floor. He started to panic. Rowena reached over and put her
hand on his back, rubbing it softly.
“Samuel, you’ve been through a lot. You –“ but before she could continue, Dean
stirred on the floor. Sam looked up quickly and moved closer to his brother,
reaching out to help him up.
“Dean, are you ok? What’s going on? What happened?”
But Dean just looked at Sam. He got up slowly, hesitating on his knees as he
struggled to get his balance back. He didn’t reach out to him, didn’t speak to
him. In fact, he backed up.
“Dean?” Sam’s voice was almost a whisper. He didn’t understand
why his brother would do this.
But Dean turned to Rowena instead.
“Rowena, what the hell! What did he do to me? What’s
actually happening here?” He stood up all the way and took another step back. He
rubbed the back of his head, still recovering from whatever spell Sam cast on
him.
Sam was sitting on the floor. He looked from Dean to
Rowena, his eyes scrunched with worry. He was very confused.
Rowena stood up, straightening her dress as she stood.
She patted Sam on the head as she stepped away from him, reassuring him.
“I don’t rightly know Dean. That hex bag may have some
residual effects, as you can see. I don’t even know what kind of a spell he hit
you with, to be honest. May I?” She reached out to Dean, wanting to touch him.
She raised her eyebrows and waited for his approval.
He hesitated for a moment, but decided she really did
just want to help. Something was going on between his brother and this witch.
He didn’t like it, but he was willing to see what she could do to help.
Dean slowly nodded.
Rowena touched Dean on his arm, closing her eyes.
“Oh my.”
“Oh my what?” asked Dean, annoyed. He looked at Sam,
who was still sitting on the floor, looking even more confused than ever. He
hadn’t said a word since Dean backed away from him.
“Just a minute, dearie.” She took her hands off of
Dean and moved over to Sam, who just looked at her with sad eyes. Rowena gently
placed her fingertips on Sam’s neck. He flinched slightly when she touched him.
Dean noticed, but didn’t say anything. She took a deep breath and turned back
to Dean, dropping her hands by her sides.
“Dean, I’m going to need to take him away for a while.
He’s capable of…well, quite a bit more than I expected. And the hex bag? Even
though I destroyed it, Sam’s likely going to deal with some serious issues for a while.”
“Issues? What issues? What do you mean, take him away?”
Dean’s voice rose in anger, but he didn’t move towards Rowena.
“Dean, I’m afraid Sam’s been cursed.”
Squee’s Supporters below the cut – My Forevers! Let me know if you’d like to added or removed!
THERE WERE NUANCES to an angel’s Grace that were rarely spoken of or explained to humans, and went largely unremarked upon by angels because they already knew and what did it matter? It wasn’t as if angels were going around leaving huge chunks of their Grace in random humans, after all. Sure, there were the occasional Vessels who retained a little more than the usual fading imprint on their souls from having housed an angel for a brief time, but it had been a very long time since the angels had walked freely among humans and many had dismissed it as a quirk of stronger bloodlines before putting it out of mind.
And then Sam Winchester said Yes to Lucifer, wrestled control away from the Archangel inhabiting his body, and flung himself down into the Cage with Lucifer and Michael along for the ride to be trapped there until a recently promoted to seraph Castiel retrieved his body and Dean Winchester bargained with Death for the return of Sam’s soul. That soul, battered and shredded and patched over as it was, retained more than a fleeting imprint of Grace, not just from Lucifer but from Michael as well. When the Wall inside his head broke, the Grace was no longer held back and fused more fully with the soul it was attached to before Castiel came and took upon himself the pain inherent to Sam’s flayed soul, allowing the human to rest, to sleep, and to finally heal… and to fully absorb the Grace.
The Trials to close Hell took their own toll on Sam, ripping new furrows into his soul, burning away the toxins of lingering demon blood from months of addiction and use that had been heaped upon the deeply embedded traces introduced in infancy. With the Trials left incomplete, those furrows were left open and raw, and into that ragged and tattered internal structure came Gadreel, calling himself Ezekiel and pouring much of his own essence into Sam in effort to heal him from within even as he bolstered his own ragged and tortured Grace with the light of Sam’s soul. When Sam was finally made aware of his body-hijacking passenger and forced Gadreel out, the separation was less neat than might have been the case had Gadreel left more willingly, and so a greater portion of Grace was left behind than usual once more. Castiel assisted Sam in the removal of as much of the Grace as he dared, but in the end he could not remove the parts already fused into Sam without risking Sam’s death– something Castiel would not even consider to be an option, not even when the meager syringe of Grace they had extracted was not enough to track the disgraced former Sentry of Eden.
There were problems. There were challenges. The angels warred and made peace, rose and fell. The Darkness was released, Lucifer escaped the Cage, God showed himself for the first time in the form of the prophet Chuck, Amara and Chuck made peace and left, Lucifer of all angels sired a Nephilim, Castiel was killed… and through it all the Grace in Sam’s soul became so deeply fused to his being that it was nearly impossible to tell that there was any Grace at all within the soul’s light. When Jack was born, he Imprinted on Castiel as his father, but the first bond he formed was with Sam, soul-Grace to soul-Grace. And then, miracle of miracles, Castiel was resurrected (or perhaps resurrected himself after Jack Reached out to him and woke him up), and in their own careful, private moment he finally had the courage to seize the moment and ask Sam to bond with him as his mate. And so Sam gained a piece of Castiel’s Grace to twine around his soul, and that was the tipping point for all the rest.
Grace, by and large, appeared on the visual spectrum to be a bluish white. On the greater sensory spectrum, Grace carried the imprint of the angel from which it came, which included the resonant frequency of the angel’s class, their hierarchy, and their Aspect. Lucifer’s Aspect had been Water, which had turned to Ice as the Darkness corrupted him from within, and his wings reflected that in their appearance, turning wings that were once a match to Michael’s scarlet into the pink and white seen in a flamingo. Michael’s wings, too, changed, going from scarlet to copper and rose as the two were pulled further and further apart by a destiny neither of them wanted but could not find the will to fight. Jack’s own wings were pale yellow, reflecting his sire’s Aspect in the paleness of their color, but most clearly showing his Imprint on Castiel, whose wings before his harrowing trips through Hell had stained them black once shone like burnished gold, nearly as bright and beautiful as the Archangel under whom he had first served before Gabriel had fled from Heaven.
With so much Grace fused to his soul, it only stood to reason that the morning after bonding with Castiel (and consummating that bond for several hours after) when Sam woke up to feel his back aching, it wasn’t just from the physical aspect of their bonding. Nor were the wings he could see stretched out over his and Castiel’s naked bodies just the single, somewhat damaged pair of blackened wings he had become used to seeing just over Castiel’s shoulders. He could even be forgiven the initial alarm upon seeing that second pair of wings that caused him to fall out of the bed with a yelp as arms and wings both flailed about in an awkward and mostly futile attempt to catch himself. Even if the sudden absence of his mate against his side had not awakened Castiel, the noise Sam made would have done it, and a tousled head of dark hair appeared over the side of the bed with wide blue eyes staring down at his sprawled out mate, hard muscle and scarred skin a direct and entirely too enticing contrast to the pristine, newly sprouted sunset orange wings half curled around Sam’s prone form.
“Are you okay?” Castiel asked, although he knew the answer. Years of living among humans, and the Winchesters in particular, had given Castiel some insight into why humans would ask these seemingly foolish questions with obvious answers. Lacking the natural telepathy common among angels, the verbal inquiry was as much to alert the person being asked that the one asking cared enough to express concern. As bonded mates, he and Sam shared a mental bond as well as a spiritual bond between Sam’s soul and Castiel’s Grace, but Castiel was familiar with the contentious history surrounding Sam’s psychic powers – contention that Castiel was ashamed to admit he had contributed to under Heaven’s orders – and so had decided the night before to utilize the more human manner of communication while Sam became accustomed to their connection.
Now, however, it seemed that he and Sam both would need to become accustomed to more than either of them had previously supposed or even expected, and Castiel was more than a little concerned for how Sam would react. The startlement was probably to be expected, and the lack of screaming or profanity was cautiously reassuring. Then again, considering the way Sam was blinking up at him, it was entirely possible that his beloved was in shock.
“I have wings,” Sam said after a long moment, his words slow and precise as if he were testing the fit of them on his tongue. The corners of his mouth twitched down and his lips thinned as his eyebrows drew together in confusion, which seemed to indicate that the words were not making sense to Sam’s mind regardless of their accuracy. He tilted his head back a little bit further to meet Castiel’s eyes. “I have wings?”
“It would appear so, yes,” Castiel confirmed, giving a cautious nod. Sam mimicked him, nodding slowly as he stared up at the sweeping curtains of orange feathers curling around him.
“Well, fuck me,” he said at length.
It was a statement of resignation and dismay. Castiel knew that, knew perfectly well that it was not actually an invitation. However, staring down at the glorious expanse of bare skin of the body he had spent several hours worshipping as only one can when worshipping a mate, framed and unintentionally displayed by the curves of healthy, full-plumed wings as glorious as could have been found on any angel before the Apocalypse and all the troubles thereafter, Castiel found himself responding with a raised eyebrow and a deliberately even-toned, “Again? Well, if you insist….”
Sam’s resulting blush was just as attractive as the rest of him.
Since my Sam spam has apparently turned off some followers enough to leave, I say unto them:
Why were you even here?
Did people actually unfollowed you?! …. they were crazy weren’t they?!
Nobody in their right mind would unfollow someone as nice as you!
No, they were normal. That’s why they left.
Good riddance in that case. Only the perfectly insane fit in here 😀
(You’re too sweet for your own good, my love 😘)
During your Sam spam I just kept looking at my dash with heart eyes. So it was a nice spam and good riddance to them.
A LITTLE LOUDER FOR THE HATERS IN THE BACK, BABY!!!
I’m sorry am I getting this right? They left because you kept posting pics and gifs of the beautiful and delicious Sam/Jared?
Like I said. They’re normal pleebz who don’t appreciate art 🤷🏻♀️😏😂
I may throw a few tantrums when there’s a lot of Sam spam… but that’s only because I’m trying really hard to stay a Dean!girl… Jared’s face is making that hard, though…
My intention to my spams is to share what I love. And that is Sam Winchester. To me, in order to convert Dean/Cas/etc girls into Sam girls, I’d have to care that much. But I don’t. Love what you love ❤
Alright!! This Sam Spam that’s going on on my dashboard right now is not good for this Dean Girl! My legs have become jello and my everything is swaying!! Thank goodness for Dean keeping me upright!!
AHH!! I have never seen so much sam fill my dashboard before. So beautiful with his long hair and puppy eyes and that cute stupid smile of his.
Dean!! I NEED HALP! SEND HALP!!
Wait, did you say you wanted MORE Moose spam? Cause that’s what I heard… :):):)
Karate, SPN Demonic Octopus Guardian 