Tell me where we go from here 12/?
Chapter 12
"Claire Novak?" The way Dean asked the question expressed Sam's own feelings towards this idea quite well.
"I have used her as a vessel in the past." Cas explained the idea to Dean. "There should be traces of my grace left in her. With that we might be able to locate the rest of it."
He said it in neutral tone but Sam was pretty sure that he didn't like the idea either. He had been the one extracting grace from Sam before and knew what that meant.
"Hold on a second." Dean raised his hand, turning to Sam. "Didn't you almost die when Cas did that to you?"
Sam bit his lip. He never wanted to let Dean know but Cas had told him later. Why Sam had no idea but the way Dean had said "Thanks for not killing my brother.", so full off bitterness, had wrenched his heart but Cas had opened his damn mouth and now Dean knew that Sam had once again suffered from the hands of his best friend.
Bringing that back up now wasn't a good idea either in Sam's opinion but if they would save Cas that way ... he sighed.
"Sam was weakened by the trails." Cas reminded them, as if that was something either of them could forget. "He needed the grace to stay alive. With Claire that won't be the case. We should be able to extract the grace without much discomfort from her."
"Without much discomfort?" Dean spat the words back at him and Sam didn't blame him. They were talking about a young girl here. How old was she by now? Eighteen? Nineteen? She had already lost her father in a traumatic way and now the thing that had taken away her dad, still wearing his face, was about to come back into her life and ask this from her. Yeah, that was a great idea.
However, it was the only plan they had. And looking for her couldn't hurt, right? What they did once they'd found her, they would figure out later.
They agreed on that, looking for her, just in case, but Sam knew, if they did find her, they would go through with the plan. Because that was what they always did. However, for now they could pretend that they were only gathering information.
Finding Claire turned out to be a tough one. They didn't even know where to start looking for her.
"Before all this it would have been easy to locate her." Cas said out of the blue. Sam looked up from the screen just in time to see the wistfulness on Cas face before it got replaced with his usual blank expression.
"But now?" He shook his head.
"Could you ask one of the other angels?" Sam suggested. A angel might be able to find her in a heartbeat. "What about Hannah?"
He hadn't heard about her since Cas had sent her away and he wasn't sure about their relationship in the first place. Would she even be willing to help Cas?
"We all took damage in the fall." Cas answered. "We have to find Claire the hard way."
That wasn't quite an answer and Sam remembered the tattoo Cas got to hide from the other angels but it was Cas' decision. And maybe he was right that Hannah couldn't help.
Sam searched the internet for a trace of Claire for two days and wasn't a step closer to finding her.
Even Dean joined them in their research, mainly to be close to Cas, Sam guessed, not that his brother would ever admit that he wanted to be close to the man he loved. And that they loved each other was more obvious now than it had been ever before.
Like teenagers, Sam thought and stifled a laugh when he noticed how Dean's face softened when he accidentally brushed his hand against Cas'. Accidentally, sure.
However, there was something between them that wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. Sam thought it was because of Cas' condition but he had the nagging feeling that there was something else on Dean's mind. It probably was related to the bedroom so Sam didn't ask and just hoped that they would get over whatever it was.
Cas slept in Dean's bed now and that told Sam that whatever was bothering Dean hadn't driven them apart again so it couldn't be too bad. And they had learned to be more discreet because Sam didn't hear inappropriate noises coming from their room anymore.
He was thinking way too much about Dean's sex life lately, Sam realized but it was right here under his nose and with him being the third wheel all the time he had nothing else to do than to watch them.
On the third day without even a hint to Claire's whereabouts, for all they knew she could be dead by now, Sam got a call from somebody Bobby had helped once with a ghost problem. The ghost hadn't come back but now she'd noticed something else going on and she didn't know who to call.
The next morning they left towards Indiana. They weren't in a rush, there had been no deaths so far and it didn't look like anybody was in immediate danger, so they stopped in a small town for the night. Like the last time Sam got a room for his own, a few doors down from where Dean and Cas stayed at. After a quick shower Sam went back outside to meet the others for dinner. They weren't back in the lot and the last thing Sam wanted to do was to disturb them now. He could just find one of them freshly showered, waiting for the other one to come out of the bathroom or he could interrupted a hardcore sex session with one of them bent over the table. Which brought the top or bottom question back to mind and that was so not his business. It was just the masochistic part of his brain that always came back to that kind of stuff.
At the word masochistic his brain jumped to the video Cas had been watching. With a groan Sam closed his eyes but that only gave his imagination more freedom to come up with disturbing pictures.
Leaning against the car, eyes fixed on the door to their room Sam tried to will them outside. The longer they took with whatever they were doing, the more ideas of what they were doing were forming in his mind.
"Sam?" Suddenly a female voice spoke up behind him. Sam spun around, hand already on the demon knife in his waistband but one look at the woman standing on the other side of the car told him that the knife wouldn't do him any good.
"Hannah?" She was the last person he would have expected here but she was one of the few angels Cas' trusted and that meant Sam could trust her as well. To a degree. "What are you doing here?"
"How is he?" She asked instead of an answer, her gaze going past Sam towards the door Sam had been looking at only seconds ago. Sam thought about shouting for Dean and Cas but he didn't get the impression that Hannah was here to harm him or one of the others.
"Cas?" He asked back. "He's fine."
She nodded with a smile as if those words had a hidden meaning to her.
"You want to talk to him?" Sam continued when she didn't say anything for a moment. The only reason he could think of for her coming here was that there was trouble in paradise and she needed Cas' help. Not that Cas was in any condition to help, at lest not physical, but the angels had been willing to follow him before. They listened to him.
"No." She even took a step back at that suggestion. "It's better if he doesn't know I'm here."
Sam raised an eyebrow to that but focused on the more important question. "What do you want?"
Finally she looked at him directly and for a second she looked almost embarrassed.
"I just want to know if he's okay." She said. "He was dying." The words came out as a toneless whisper. "He didn't want the grace Crowley was offering him, he had to force it on him." Her eyes were too bright now. "He would rather die than to take another angel's grace. Or beg Metatron to tell him where to find his."
The begging Metatron part was new to Sam, Cas had only said that his grace was out there somewhere, not that Metatron knew where to find it. A fact to keep in mind, he decided.
"We think we have found a way to get his grace back." Sam said because he felt like he owed her at least that bit of information. It was probably not the best idea to tell her the whole plan.
"You have?" That got her interest.
"We need to find a former vessel of his." Sam explained. With Hannah right here he could at least ask. If she didn't want to help or maybe couldn't that would be fine but he had to ask.
"Claire Novak. But she is hard to find." He spread his hands in a helpless manner.
"The fall has damaged all of us." She answered. "I wished I could help but I can't."
Sam nodded to that, it was the answer he had expected.
"We don't know if she's even alive." A new idea was forming in his mind. "Could you find out if she's in heaven?" If she had died before the lock-down her soul might be in heaven. At least then they would know.
"I can do that."
"Thank you." Sam smiled at her, for an angel she wasn't half bad.
"Castiel is my friend." She clarified. "My brother. After all he's been though, what he's done for us, I owe him this much."
Sam wanted to say something but behind him the door opened. He glanced over his shoulder to see Dean and Cas coming towards him and when he looked back at Hannah, she was gone. She didn't want Cas to see her and she hadn't revealed any information so Sam saw no need in telling them that he had a visitor.
"Man, I'm starving." Dean rubbed his hands in anticipation. "Saw that bar'n'grill on the way into town ..." He looked from one to the other to see what they thought of the idea.
An evening in a bar would be nice, Sam could go with a beer or two, and by now he could show is face in public again so he was in.
Cas agreed with a nod as well. So far he'd been good with trailing behind the Winchesters but Sam made a mental note to prompt him more to make his own choices. He was the new one in the team and they needed to find their rhythm again but that didn't mean that Cas had to just go along with whatever the brothers came up with. Not that Cas had ever been somebody who played by the rules. If he really wanted to do something different, to go somewhere else than the brothers he would just do so, Sam knew that. His new relationship with Dean wouldn't just change that.
They walked the short distance to the place Dean had seen, this way they could have a few beers without bothering with the car.
All three of them enjoyed their meal and then they went over to the pool tables. For onces they had enough cash in their pockets and didn't need to hustle for money so they could just play a few games.
It was the first time Cas had a cue in hand. He eyed it doubtfully but at least he held it with the right end up.
The first game Sam and Dean played against each other. It was a tight one but in the end Dean won. He'd always been the better player so Sam didn't mind. Then they tried to explain the game to Cas, who grasped the rules rather quickly but when it came to actually playing ... they were lucky he didn't ruin the table.
Cas didn't seem to mind, though. He could laugh about his shots going wide and in the end they all had a blast. Sam only wished this could last for a while. Just them, in a bar, on their way to a case. Their version of an easy life.
Chapter 13
Masterpost