Galilee
Title: Benedictio
Rating: R
Pairings: Wincest
Warnings: None (as of yet)
Word Count: 3,033 (so far)
Summary: After the failed Trials, Sam Winchester becomes the Modern Messiah. Though he revels in his newfound powers and eventual fame, Dean hates it. He knows how this is going to end and he will do anything to save his brother from that fate.
The voices were soft, at first, barely noticeable, a hallucination maybe, more likely a desperate wish, a hopeless dream. Then they grew in number and volume, until one morning, three days after the failed Trials, three days after the world had come crashing down around them, Sam Winchester woke up and pressed his palms against his ears, struggling to shut out the noise, struggling to fall back to sleep. He was tired. He wanted to rest. He was still weak, still exhausted from what had happened in that abandoned church. He needed more sleep, just a few more hours. But then he realized what the voices were saying. For the first time in three days, Sam Winchester didn’t dismiss the voices, didn’t push them away, didn’t force them into the back of his mind where the rest of his hopes and dreams lay. He listened to them and he heard what they were saying.
Sam Winchester is forgiven.
Sam Winchester is saved.
Sam pushed the blankets off of his frail body and swung his legs over the side of the bed, pressing his feet to the cold, concrete floor as he stared at the ground, his hands no longer pressed against the sides of his head. As he sat there, he realized that the angels were somehow speaking in his mind. Vaguely, he remembered when he’d first met Anna Milton and she’d had the same problem. They’d later learned she was a fallen angel and that was the reason she could hear the other angels in her head, but Sam knew he wasn’t an angel and even if he was, he couldn’t be hearing the others. Three days ago, they’d all fallen to Earth. So why could he hear them now? And why had he been hearing them for the past three days?
It was the sound of the door creaking open behind him that made Sam start and fall both out of his bed and his reverie. A voice as startled as Sam had been sounded and when he regained his composure and the stars stopped swimming in front of his eyes, he realized it’d only been Dean coming in to check up on him.
“You okay, Sammy?” Dean asked. He was leaning over him, a hand hovering above his brother’s heaving bare chest. Sam thought about lifting his own to reassure Dean he was alright, but, in the end, decided against it.
Instead, he pushed himself up into a sitting position, nodded in response to his brother’s question, and said, “Yeah. I’m fine.”
The voices had faded again.
Dean let out a small breath as he straightened from the crouch he’d been in. It was obvious he didn’t believe him and after what the Trials and the aftereffects of said Trials had been doing to him, Sam couldn’t say he was altogether surprised. He’d spent the last three days almost exclusively in bed, attempting to recover. However, it seemed that all he’d gained were the voices of the angels in his head.
“Sam, you can’t keep lying to me like this,” Dean said, half to himself. Sam said nothing. Not only because he wasn’t sure if Dean wanted him to respond, but also because he wasn’t sure what to say. He’d been lying to Dean about how he was feeling his entire life. He wasn’t sure he could simply stop now.
There was a short silence where Sam pushed himself back up onto the edge of the bed and Dean stood by the doorway, his back to his brother, almost as though he were giving him just enough time to make himself look like he was okay again, before he turned around once more and said, “Get dressed. I’ve found a job for us a couple miles from here. Three girls went missing a week ago, but they were all found yesterday, strung up in a church with their hearts cut out. The cops are saying it’s a serial killer.”
“What do you think it is?” Sam asked automatically, though he wasn’t entirely sure what Dean had just described wasn’t the act of some regular human psychopath.
His brother shrugged. “I don’t know,” he replied. “But I think it’d be good for you to get out of this room for a couple of hours. You’re going to end up suffocating in here.”
Sam let out a small laugh. He had a feeling there was more to this than Dean was letting on - the last thing Dean ever did was suggest Sam leave his room when he was sick - but he wasn’t going to argue. He waited until Dean left to both get dressed and contemplate what their venture out into the world after the angels had fallen could really be about. He supposed that Dean wanted to look for Cas. According to his brother, he’d vanished once Dean had arrived at the church to stop him from finishing the third Trial and purifying Crowley - whose location they also were unsure of. Apparently, Naomi had come down to Earth long enough to inform Dean that he, Sam, would die if he finished the third Trial and that what Metatron had really been doing was creating a spell to make all of the angels fall from Heaven to Earth.
He wondered vaguely if the angels’ descent to Earth was covered by the news. He wondered what people were calling it. They couldn’t be dumb enough to classify it as a meteor shower, especially when the meteors turned out to be people. Would they blame aliens? Though, it turned out that what people typically thought were aliens were actually fairies as he and Dean had learned a couple of years ago.
It doesn’t really matter what they think they are, a voice in his head reminded him. You just have to find a way to get all of their graces back and send them back to Heaven before they damage Earth and the people on it.
-
It took Sam longer than it might have normally for him to get dressed. He was certain this was due to his weakness from not only the toll the Trials had taken on his body, but also from having spent the days since in bed. He suspected that the repetitive voices of the angels had something to do with his slowness as well. That is, they even were the angels. He still wasn’t sure that’s what they were, but what else could they be? And what did their words mean?
Sam Winchester is forgiven.
Sam Winchester is saved.
How could he possibly be forgiven - or saved - after all he had done in his life? Especially by the angels? Dean had told him he was forgiven by him the night he nearly died purifying Crowley, but a part of Sam was beginning to wonder if his brother hadn’t just said that so he wouldn’t kill himself to save the rest of the world.
More than once since that day, Sam had wondered if it wouldn’t have been better if he had died. There would be no more demons in the world, no more need to perform exorcisms or use holy water or devil’s traps. The body count in the war between hunters and the creatures of Hell would have gone down significantly, but, instead, Sam had survived, so the world would simply continue going on as it always had: with the evil that came from nightmares still lurking in the shadows.
“Please,” Sam said desperately and to no one in particular. He turned his gaze to the ceiling. “Please let me be able to do something…anything…to save the world…please let me do something so that I deserve to be forgiven…”
Once Sam finished his prayer, he blinked a few times and scoffed, realizing how ridiculous he was being for praying when there was no one left in Heaven. His prayers wouldn’t be heard, let alone answered, and why would they be anyway? The voices he was hearing were probably just some hallucination, an aftereffect of the damage the Trials had done to his body.
He checked himself in the full length mirror attached to his wall near the door before he left his room.
He was wearing a suit, one of the ones Dean had bought him, but, because he’d lost so much weight, the jacket hung loosely on his shoulders, he had to pull his belt to almost the last hole to keep his pants up. If he took off his jacket, the nice white button-up underneath looked ten times too big for him. And that was just his body. His face revealed a tiredness that not many had known. There were dark circles under his eyes and his cheeks were hollowed out. He sighed heavily at his reflection. There wasn’t much he could do. He and Dean didn’t own makeup. They were guys and didn’t often wear disguises that needed much more than a fake ID and a change of clothes. He would just have to go out looking like this whether he liked it or not.
Sam turned off the light behind him and let out a huff. He knew Dean wouldn’t make fun of him for his appearance, especially since it came from him being sick, but he almost wished he would. That way he could feel as if at least something was going back to normal, but as he left his room and headed up the stairs that led to the door out of the bunker, he had a feeling that his definition of normal wasn’t going to come around for a long, long time.
-
The drive the church was surprisingly short, but it was enough time for Sam to take in the state of the world after the Cleansing of Heaven, as Dean had called it.
Damage had been done to more than a couple buildings. Where the angels had fallen, there were scorch marks, as though they’d still been on fire when they’d hit the ground, but it had only burned for a few moments before snuffing itself out. Where the graces had fallen, the ground seemed to glitter, as though it had been touched by fairy dust. Everywhere Sam looked, people seemed to be cleaning up fallen tree branches, debris from damaged buildings, or repairing the road where an angel-shaped hole was. It didn’t look like the apocalypse, not by a long shot. More like a bad storm had gone through the area, and maybe that’s what people would have been thinking it had been, if it wasn’t for the fact that the entire world had experienced it.
“What are they calling it?” Sam asked, tearing his gaze from the window for a moment to look at his brother. “What happened with the angels?”
“They started out saying it was a meteor shower,” Dean said, turning into the parking lot of the church. “But after they saw people walking around and acting funny - i.e. the angels - they’re thinking it was that and something else. Of course, some have been saying they saw people falling out of the sky, but no one really believes that.”
Sam didn’t have to ask why. If he didn’t live the life he did, he would be wondering why people were saying people had been falling from the sky as well. He would question it, even if he saw it himself, he would question it. Up until four years ago, he didn’t even know angels existed. Now they were falling from the sky. What was going on? Why had Metatron emptied Heaven?
As he got out of the car, he shook his head and examined himself in the car window. He still looked exhausted and his palms were hurting. He let out a heavy sigh. He hadn’t fully healed after all. He shook his head again before he followed Dean into the church.
-
“And this is where you found them?” Dean asked Father Simmons as they walked down the aisle between the pews of the church. Sam was distracted by the stained glass windows and the huge cross at the front of the congregation to really be paying attention. There was something about all of this that made him feel peaceful, at home. He’d always liked churches, but these feelings were different, new. He smiled. He liked it. Maybe he should start coming to church on Sundays. Dean would make fun of him for it, but the world was going to Hell and a little extra praying couldn’t hurt anybody, especially not someone who prayed every day as it was.
There’s no one in Heaven anymore, Sam, remember? A voice whispered in his mind, but, this time, he ignored it. Did it really matter that there weren’t any angels in Heaven? What about God? And Jesus? Did they suddenly mean nothing? Didn’t they listen to prayers, too?
The angels haven’t seen God in centuries, the voice reminded him. And no one’s ever really talked about Jesus. Again, Sam ignored the voice and continued admiring the architecture.
“I found them over here,” Father Simmons was saying, gesturing to the giant cross. “They were tied to each section of the cross, as though whoever had killed them was trying to recreate the cross, but with human bodies.” The pastor paused as he stared at the wooden sculpture. If Sam looked close enough, he could see bloodstains on the polished wood. “They had holes in their hands and feet as well,” the pastor added. “The wounds of Christ…”
“Do you think the killer put them there?” Dean asked. He was supposed to be writing all of this down in the notebook he had flipped open, but when Sam glanced over at it, he noticed that Dean was doodling the angels fall to Earth. He’d also drawn a picture of Cas in the corner and put question marks over his head. Sam drew his brows together, wondering, not for the first time, where their angel-no-more was.
“Yes,” Father Simmons replied, making Sam look up from the notebook. “I don’t know who else could have done it.”
“Father Simmons did these girls have any enemies by chance?” Dean asked, lowering the notebook and crossing his hands in front of him. Sam noted this as one of his brother’s nervous habits. He wondered if he was even really focusing on the job or if he was more concerned with what was happening outside.
“No,” the pastor said. “Emily, Lindsey, and Martha were the town’s angels.” Dean choked back a laugh at the wording. “They never got into trouble. We were all very sorry when each one of them disappeared. They were dedicated to the church and the word of God.”
“Did their parents ever…get into trouble?” Dean asked. He’d opened up his notebook again and was continuing his doodle.
Again, the pastor shook his head and said, “No. Their parents were just as good as their children. They were all very devout people. I feel terribly sorry for them and to have to see their daughters…crucified like that…how horrible…”
Dean was saying something else, probably asking about the parents’ friends, trying to find someone who could’ve possibly thought that killing three seemingly innocent girls was alright. He’d ask about the girls’ friends next and then their friends. He’d ask about everyone and everything he possibly could, trying to narrow it down, trying to get some sort of hint as to who or what could have done this. Sam knew that he should probably be contributing, asking a few of the questions so Dean didn’t have to, but there was something about the cross that was distracting him and it wasn’t the few reaming bloodstains that the cleaning crew hadn’t gotten out, it wasn’t the magnificent stained glass window of Jesus’ crucifixion behind it, and it wasn’t the names that had been carved into the wood at the bottom. It was something else, something else entirely, something Sam couldn’t even name.
It was around this time that Sam noticed a ringing in his head, one akin to what he’d heard when he was near Metatron. He pressed one hand to his ear, but the ringing increased. He struggled to keep himself from moan in pain as his eardrums reverberated, but this didn’t seem to work. Suddenly, he was on his knees. He felt a hand on his shoulder. He let out a gasp and looked up. Dean was hovering over him, looking worried. He said something, but Sam couldn’t hear him.
“Dean?” he asked, struggling to speak over the ringing. “What’s going on?”
And that was when it happened, that was when everything changed.
Without warning, there was a searing pain in Sam’s palms, worse than anything he’d ever felt before in his life. He screamed in pain clenching his hands into fists, trying to lessen the agony by putting pressure on the place where the most pain was, but this didn’t seem to do anything. In fact, he seemed to be digging his nails so deeply into his palms he was drawing blood. He could feel it on the tips of his fingers. But that was a lot of blood. That was too much blood. More blood than his fingernails could ever make. He was certain Dean was saying something, he could just barely hear it over the ringing and that was when Sam opened his eyes.
Carved into his palms were two matching circular wounds and, in an instant, he knew what they were, knew what this meant, knew what was happening to him, though he wouldn’t remember later. But in that moment, he looked up, he stared at the cross and the stained glass window behind it that now seemed to be glowing. He was grinning from ear to ear, knowing what the voices in his head had meant, knowing the definition of their words. Tears of joy coursed down his cheeks, the smell of flowers wafted up into his nose as Dean took his palms and began wrapping them with a part of his shirt that he’d torn off.
“Thank you,” Sam gasped out. “Thank you, so much.”
It was only a moment later he lost consciousness.
( Nazareth)
Rating: R
Pairings: Wincest
Warnings: None (as of yet)
Word Count: 3,033 (so far)
Summary: After the failed Trials, Sam Winchester becomes the Modern Messiah. Though he revels in his newfound powers and eventual fame, Dean hates it. He knows how this is going to end and he will do anything to save his brother from that fate.
The voices were soft, at first, barely noticeable, a hallucination maybe, more likely a desperate wish, a hopeless dream. Then they grew in number and volume, until one morning, three days after the failed Trials, three days after the world had come crashing down around them, Sam Winchester woke up and pressed his palms against his ears, struggling to shut out the noise, struggling to fall back to sleep. He was tired. He wanted to rest. He was still weak, still exhausted from what had happened in that abandoned church. He needed more sleep, just a few more hours. But then he realized what the voices were saying. For the first time in three days, Sam Winchester didn’t dismiss the voices, didn’t push them away, didn’t force them into the back of his mind where the rest of his hopes and dreams lay. He listened to them and he heard what they were saying.
Sam Winchester is forgiven.
Sam Winchester is saved.
Sam pushed the blankets off of his frail body and swung his legs over the side of the bed, pressing his feet to the cold, concrete floor as he stared at the ground, his hands no longer pressed against the sides of his head. As he sat there, he realized that the angels were somehow speaking in his mind. Vaguely, he remembered when he’d first met Anna Milton and she’d had the same problem. They’d later learned she was a fallen angel and that was the reason she could hear the other angels in her head, but Sam knew he wasn’t an angel and even if he was, he couldn’t be hearing the others. Three days ago, they’d all fallen to Earth. So why could he hear them now? And why had he been hearing them for the past three days?
It was the sound of the door creaking open behind him that made Sam start and fall both out of his bed and his reverie. A voice as startled as Sam had been sounded and when he regained his composure and the stars stopped swimming in front of his eyes, he realized it’d only been Dean coming in to check up on him.
“You okay, Sammy?” Dean asked. He was leaning over him, a hand hovering above his brother’s heaving bare chest. Sam thought about lifting his own to reassure Dean he was alright, but, in the end, decided against it.
Instead, he pushed himself up into a sitting position, nodded in response to his brother’s question, and said, “Yeah. I’m fine.”
The voices had faded again.
Dean let out a small breath as he straightened from the crouch he’d been in. It was obvious he didn’t believe him and after what the Trials and the aftereffects of said Trials had been doing to him, Sam couldn’t say he was altogether surprised. He’d spent the last three days almost exclusively in bed, attempting to recover. However, it seemed that all he’d gained were the voices of the angels in his head.
“Sam, you can’t keep lying to me like this,” Dean said, half to himself. Sam said nothing. Not only because he wasn’t sure if Dean wanted him to respond, but also because he wasn’t sure what to say. He’d been lying to Dean about how he was feeling his entire life. He wasn’t sure he could simply stop now.
There was a short silence where Sam pushed himself back up onto the edge of the bed and Dean stood by the doorway, his back to his brother, almost as though he were giving him just enough time to make himself look like he was okay again, before he turned around once more and said, “Get dressed. I’ve found a job for us a couple miles from here. Three girls went missing a week ago, but they were all found yesterday, strung up in a church with their hearts cut out. The cops are saying it’s a serial killer.”
“What do you think it is?” Sam asked automatically, though he wasn’t entirely sure what Dean had just described wasn’t the act of some regular human psychopath.
His brother shrugged. “I don’t know,” he replied. “But I think it’d be good for you to get out of this room for a couple of hours. You’re going to end up suffocating in here.”
Sam let out a small laugh. He had a feeling there was more to this than Dean was letting on - the last thing Dean ever did was suggest Sam leave his room when he was sick - but he wasn’t going to argue. He waited until Dean left to both get dressed and contemplate what their venture out into the world after the angels had fallen could really be about. He supposed that Dean wanted to look for Cas. According to his brother, he’d vanished once Dean had arrived at the church to stop him from finishing the third Trial and purifying Crowley - whose location they also were unsure of. Apparently, Naomi had come down to Earth long enough to inform Dean that he, Sam, would die if he finished the third Trial and that what Metatron had really been doing was creating a spell to make all of the angels fall from Heaven to Earth.
He wondered vaguely if the angels’ descent to Earth was covered by the news. He wondered what people were calling it. They couldn’t be dumb enough to classify it as a meteor shower, especially when the meteors turned out to be people. Would they blame aliens? Though, it turned out that what people typically thought were aliens were actually fairies as he and Dean had learned a couple of years ago.
It doesn’t really matter what they think they are, a voice in his head reminded him. You just have to find a way to get all of their graces back and send them back to Heaven before they damage Earth and the people on it.
-
It took Sam longer than it might have normally for him to get dressed. He was certain this was due to his weakness from not only the toll the Trials had taken on his body, but also from having spent the days since in bed. He suspected that the repetitive voices of the angels had something to do with his slowness as well. That is, they even were the angels. He still wasn’t sure that’s what they were, but what else could they be? And what did their words mean?
Sam Winchester is forgiven.
Sam Winchester is saved.
How could he possibly be forgiven - or saved - after all he had done in his life? Especially by the angels? Dean had told him he was forgiven by him the night he nearly died purifying Crowley, but a part of Sam was beginning to wonder if his brother hadn’t just said that so he wouldn’t kill himself to save the rest of the world.
More than once since that day, Sam had wondered if it wouldn’t have been better if he had died. There would be no more demons in the world, no more need to perform exorcisms or use holy water or devil’s traps. The body count in the war between hunters and the creatures of Hell would have gone down significantly, but, instead, Sam had survived, so the world would simply continue going on as it always had: with the evil that came from nightmares still lurking in the shadows.
“Please,” Sam said desperately and to no one in particular. He turned his gaze to the ceiling. “Please let me be able to do something…anything…to save the world…please let me do something so that I deserve to be forgiven…”
Once Sam finished his prayer, he blinked a few times and scoffed, realizing how ridiculous he was being for praying when there was no one left in Heaven. His prayers wouldn’t be heard, let alone answered, and why would they be anyway? The voices he was hearing were probably just some hallucination, an aftereffect of the damage the Trials had done to his body.
He checked himself in the full length mirror attached to his wall near the door before he left his room.
He was wearing a suit, one of the ones Dean had bought him, but, because he’d lost so much weight, the jacket hung loosely on his shoulders, he had to pull his belt to almost the last hole to keep his pants up. If he took off his jacket, the nice white button-up underneath looked ten times too big for him. And that was just his body. His face revealed a tiredness that not many had known. There were dark circles under his eyes and his cheeks were hollowed out. He sighed heavily at his reflection. There wasn’t much he could do. He and Dean didn’t own makeup. They were guys and didn’t often wear disguises that needed much more than a fake ID and a change of clothes. He would just have to go out looking like this whether he liked it or not.
Sam turned off the light behind him and let out a huff. He knew Dean wouldn’t make fun of him for his appearance, especially since it came from him being sick, but he almost wished he would. That way he could feel as if at least something was going back to normal, but as he left his room and headed up the stairs that led to the door out of the bunker, he had a feeling that his definition of normal wasn’t going to come around for a long, long time.
-
The drive the church was surprisingly short, but it was enough time for Sam to take in the state of the world after the Cleansing of Heaven, as Dean had called it.
Damage had been done to more than a couple buildings. Where the angels had fallen, there were scorch marks, as though they’d still been on fire when they’d hit the ground, but it had only burned for a few moments before snuffing itself out. Where the graces had fallen, the ground seemed to glitter, as though it had been touched by fairy dust. Everywhere Sam looked, people seemed to be cleaning up fallen tree branches, debris from damaged buildings, or repairing the road where an angel-shaped hole was. It didn’t look like the apocalypse, not by a long shot. More like a bad storm had gone through the area, and maybe that’s what people would have been thinking it had been, if it wasn’t for the fact that the entire world had experienced it.
“What are they calling it?” Sam asked, tearing his gaze from the window for a moment to look at his brother. “What happened with the angels?”
“They started out saying it was a meteor shower,” Dean said, turning into the parking lot of the church. “But after they saw people walking around and acting funny - i.e. the angels - they’re thinking it was that and something else. Of course, some have been saying they saw people falling out of the sky, but no one really believes that.”
Sam didn’t have to ask why. If he didn’t live the life he did, he would be wondering why people were saying people had been falling from the sky as well. He would question it, even if he saw it himself, he would question it. Up until four years ago, he didn’t even know angels existed. Now they were falling from the sky. What was going on? Why had Metatron emptied Heaven?
As he got out of the car, he shook his head and examined himself in the car window. He still looked exhausted and his palms were hurting. He let out a heavy sigh. He hadn’t fully healed after all. He shook his head again before he followed Dean into the church.
-
“And this is where you found them?” Dean asked Father Simmons as they walked down the aisle between the pews of the church. Sam was distracted by the stained glass windows and the huge cross at the front of the congregation to really be paying attention. There was something about all of this that made him feel peaceful, at home. He’d always liked churches, but these feelings were different, new. He smiled. He liked it. Maybe he should start coming to church on Sundays. Dean would make fun of him for it, but the world was going to Hell and a little extra praying couldn’t hurt anybody, especially not someone who prayed every day as it was.
There’s no one in Heaven anymore, Sam, remember? A voice whispered in his mind, but, this time, he ignored it. Did it really matter that there weren’t any angels in Heaven? What about God? And Jesus? Did they suddenly mean nothing? Didn’t they listen to prayers, too?
The angels haven’t seen God in centuries, the voice reminded him. And no one’s ever really talked about Jesus. Again, Sam ignored the voice and continued admiring the architecture.
“I found them over here,” Father Simmons was saying, gesturing to the giant cross. “They were tied to each section of the cross, as though whoever had killed them was trying to recreate the cross, but with human bodies.” The pastor paused as he stared at the wooden sculpture. If Sam looked close enough, he could see bloodstains on the polished wood. “They had holes in their hands and feet as well,” the pastor added. “The wounds of Christ…”
“Do you think the killer put them there?” Dean asked. He was supposed to be writing all of this down in the notebook he had flipped open, but when Sam glanced over at it, he noticed that Dean was doodling the angels fall to Earth. He’d also drawn a picture of Cas in the corner and put question marks over his head. Sam drew his brows together, wondering, not for the first time, where their angel-no-more was.
“Yes,” Father Simmons replied, making Sam look up from the notebook. “I don’t know who else could have done it.”
“Father Simmons did these girls have any enemies by chance?” Dean asked, lowering the notebook and crossing his hands in front of him. Sam noted this as one of his brother’s nervous habits. He wondered if he was even really focusing on the job or if he was more concerned with what was happening outside.
“No,” the pastor said. “Emily, Lindsey, and Martha were the town’s angels.” Dean choked back a laugh at the wording. “They never got into trouble. We were all very sorry when each one of them disappeared. They were dedicated to the church and the word of God.”
“Did their parents ever…get into trouble?” Dean asked. He’d opened up his notebook again and was continuing his doodle.
Again, the pastor shook his head and said, “No. Their parents were just as good as their children. They were all very devout people. I feel terribly sorry for them and to have to see their daughters…crucified like that…how horrible…”
Dean was saying something else, probably asking about the parents’ friends, trying to find someone who could’ve possibly thought that killing three seemingly innocent girls was alright. He’d ask about the girls’ friends next and then their friends. He’d ask about everyone and everything he possibly could, trying to narrow it down, trying to get some sort of hint as to who or what could have done this. Sam knew that he should probably be contributing, asking a few of the questions so Dean didn’t have to, but there was something about the cross that was distracting him and it wasn’t the few reaming bloodstains that the cleaning crew hadn’t gotten out, it wasn’t the magnificent stained glass window of Jesus’ crucifixion behind it, and it wasn’t the names that had been carved into the wood at the bottom. It was something else, something else entirely, something Sam couldn’t even name.
It was around this time that Sam noticed a ringing in his head, one akin to what he’d heard when he was near Metatron. He pressed one hand to his ear, but the ringing increased. He struggled to keep himself from moan in pain as his eardrums reverberated, but this didn’t seem to work. Suddenly, he was on his knees. He felt a hand on his shoulder. He let out a gasp and looked up. Dean was hovering over him, looking worried. He said something, but Sam couldn’t hear him.
“Dean?” he asked, struggling to speak over the ringing. “What’s going on?”
And that was when it happened, that was when everything changed.
Without warning, there was a searing pain in Sam’s palms, worse than anything he’d ever felt before in his life. He screamed in pain clenching his hands into fists, trying to lessen the agony by putting pressure on the place where the most pain was, but this didn’t seem to do anything. In fact, he seemed to be digging his nails so deeply into his palms he was drawing blood. He could feel it on the tips of his fingers. But that was a lot of blood. That was too much blood. More blood than his fingernails could ever make. He was certain Dean was saying something, he could just barely hear it over the ringing and that was when Sam opened his eyes.
Carved into his palms were two matching circular wounds and, in an instant, he knew what they were, knew what this meant, knew what was happening to him, though he wouldn’t remember later. But in that moment, he looked up, he stared at the cross and the stained glass window behind it that now seemed to be glowing. He was grinning from ear to ear, knowing what the voices in his head had meant, knowing the definition of their words. Tears of joy coursed down his cheeks, the smell of flowers wafted up into his nose as Dean took his palms and began wrapping them with a part of his shirt that he’d torn off.
“Thank you,” Sam gasped out. “Thank you, so much.”
It was only a moment later he lost consciousness.
( Nazareth)