Chapter Text
The first thing Dean noticed was that Sam caught the beer with his left hand. That wasn’t all that odd, but he was right-handed and the beer had been flying towards his right. Sam had turned specifically to catch it with his left. By itself, it was a minor oddity.
The next day, Dean caught Sam shaking his hands like they were full of pins and needles, then later, he was turning the pages of the book he was reading with a ruler. Again, all easily explainable. (Sometimes Sam wore special gloves just to touch books. Weirdo.) Dean didn’t start to wonder about any of it until they were working a case that had witchcraft written all over it. Instead of hex bags, each site they visited contained a small poppet.
Since the practitioner of the magic was dead (her insistence that she was not a witch hadn’t saved her from a bullet to the face when she’d flung a magic fireball their direction), all of the poppets were inert, so Dean didn’t hesitate to pick up the one at the last site. Knowing Sam would be curious about its contents, he handed it over.
Sam sucked a breath through his teeth and dropped it. Dean gave him a weird look. “Why didn’t you mention it was hot?” Sam accused.
Dean blinked. Then he deliberately picked up the creepy little doll again, pointedly holding it on his palm. “It’s not.”
Sam’s mouth opened, then closed. He looked down at his own hand and Dean’s eyes followed. Sam’s index and middle fingers and thumb each had a shiny new blister where he’d touched the poppet. Sam dropped his hand. “Must be some allergy,” he said quickly. Too quickly.
But they had a shit ton to torch before getting out of there, so Dean let him get away with the lame excuse. At least until they were heading back toward the bunker. “What’s going on with you, anyway?” he asked as they pulled onto the highway.
Sam hesitated, and for a second, Dean thought he was going to lie. Then Sam sort of deflated. “I don’t know. Lately, some things irritate me if I’m around them or I touch them.” He rubbed his burned fingertips together lightly.
“I get it. I feel that way about those freaky sprite on the light things. If I see too many, I get hives,” Dean said, mostly to hide his relief that Sam was talking about it openly. They didn’t hide stupid shit from each other much anymore, and Dean was glad, but sometimes old habits die hard. “What kind of stuff makes you get all blistery? Witchy things? No-face dolls that are supposed to make your junk fall off if you cheat on your girlfriend? Polyester?”
Sam rolled his eyes, playing his role, but didn’t even correct him about the elves and shelves. “Things like that book bound in skin -- Pseudomonachia Daemonum. If I touch it for more than a couple seconds, I get blisters. If I read it too long, I get a migraine. Or that twisted horseshoe on the door to the apothecary room.” Sam shook his head. “It was so minor for a long time I just figured it was, uh, the demon blood, you know.”
Even after all this time, there was shame in Sam’s voice, as if he’d had some kind of choice about drinking Azazel’s blood when he was a baby. “Sam --”
“I know it’s not that, Dean.” There wasn’t enough certainty in that statement for Dean’s taste. “Because it’s getting worse.”
Sam tapped the fingers of his left hand against his leg, a small tell that nobody but Dean would notice.
“Looking back, I think I’ve had a reaction to some stuff for a long time, but it was so minor I didn’t figure it out.” He paused. “It’s always something supernatural, but hell, other than that, I have no idea what ties it all together.”
“Always your hand? And the headache?” Dean asked, couching his concern as best he could. He was glad Sam kept talking, but the whole thing made him a little uneasy.
“No. Not always my hand.”
That was all Sam would say about it for the rest of the drive. But Dean had never been any good at letting things go, especially something-is-wrong-with-Sam things, and over the next few days pestered Sam for more details and theories (which he knew his brother had). Finally, Sam admitted the biggest issue was that he didn’t have a theory that fit. But the way his eyebrows twitched whenever Dean brought it up meant that Sam thought it was serious.
Sam was right that there was no obvious connection between the things that set off a reaction. No obvious unifying theme. The Kurdish blade caused a tiny reaction. A petrified chicken foot designed to allow witches to pass apotropaic wards without consequences made Sam puke. A stylized statuette that Sam said depicted Apep made his hands shake. A stone known as “Tooth of Morrigan” made Sam so unsettled he put it inside 3 curse boxes. He couldn’t even touch a Dybbuk box the Men of Letters had used as a creepy pen holder.
Yet a cursed dubloon did nothing. A Crying Boy print didn’t bother him. A ring they knew had caused at least a dozen people to commit suicide didn’t affect him. An ossuary that contained grave dust from 70 different holy sites and was responsible for two cases of spontaneous combustion in “the unworthy” did nothing when Sam picked it up. (And no, Dean didn’t appreciate Sam picking it up, but his brother explained that he’d handled it many times before they’d discovered what it was.)
It was all confusing and annoying but did not seem immediately life-threatening.
Dean might have eventually let everything slide to the back burner except for what happened when they tracked down a low-level demon. The demon chick was riding a Bohemian type of woman in her 20’s, complete with blonde pigtails with blue tips. She’d gotten the drop on them (on purpose – they wanted info and demons were arrogant shits who loved to gab when they thought they had the upper hand) and the brothers were tied to wooden chairs facing each other. She grabbed the back of Sam’s neck and stopped mid-monologue, pulling her hand away quickly. Dean couldn’t read her expression other than unholy interest, then she and full-on sniffed Sam like a deranged dog.
“Well, isn’t that fascinating,” she hissed right in his ear. Only the fact that he was tied to a chair kept Dean from kicking her in her stupid face. “You smell —”
Sam pulled his no-longer-tied hands from behind himself, produced an angel blade, and stabbed her right through the pit of her throat.
Surprised, Dean hurried to finish freeing himself. “What the fuck, Sam? We might’ve been able to save the possessed chick. And we need to know who that demon was working for. And it sounded like she had info on what’s up with you.”
Sam’s face didn’t change from the mild bitchface (which Dean personally thought of as DEFCON 4, low but still extant threat) that he’d worn throughout the demon’s gloating. He pushed up one of the girl’s sleeves to reveal an angry tattoo-like mark that looked like it had been branded into her skin. It depicted some kind of big cat with fire instead of eyes.
“She had the mark of Flavros,” he said tonelessly. “The possessed woman was dead as soon as this was done.” He didn’t look up even when Dean pushed his hair aside from the back of his neck and saw the red skin there. Skin that matched that on the dead girl’s palm. Sam stood and moved so his hair covered his neck again. “And I really don’t want to hear that she could smell demon in me.”
“Sam,” Dean started, but his brother just shook his head and turned away.
“We’ve got a lot to do, Dean.”
Dean did a lot of thinking while they cleaned up the scene (read: burned anything that might contain their DNA or give away evidence of the demonic). He parsed what he knew about Sam’s situation even as he called in a tip about the poor girl who’d been possessed. He studied the slight stoop of Sam’s shoulders, the tightness around his mouth, and the shifting of his eyes and knew he had to do something.
Two days later, Dean was drinking his first cup of coffee for the day when his something arrived. “Cas. Jack,” he grunted in greeting. He was glad the former had responded to his phone call and come, but he wasn’t capable of gratitude until he had some caffeine in his system.
Jack immediately began to chatter excitedly about watching grizzly bears catch fish and a skunk that walked by once and something about golf carts, all of which made Dean wonder where exactly Cas had been taking him.
But the angel in question was quiet until Jack wound down a little, his blue eyes perceptive. “Why did you call, Dean? Is something wrong?”
Jack’s forehead wrinkled – in a decidedly Sam-like manner – at the question and Dean found it amusing how quickly he was adopting the mannerisms of those he was around the most.
“Maybe,” Dean hedged, getting up and refilling his cup. “I want you to look Sam over. Just see what you see, ’kay?”
Cas’ worried-slash-constipated expression deepened. “Like what? Has something happened?”
“Not really. And I don’t want to make you see something that isn’t there by talking about it in advance, so just take a look.”
Before he could elaborate, the sound of Sam walking inside reached them. He’d been out for a morning run, the freak. His face lit up upon seeing the new arrivals. “Cas! Jack! I didn’t know you’d be here.”
Jack did that little hand-wave thing he’d picked up somewhere as Cas said, “Hello, Sam.” Then they both tilted their heads at exactly the same angle and studied him.
“There is something in your aura,” announced Cas, always the master of subtlety.
Sam put down his water bottle and reached for a coffee cup. For a health freak, he sure had a thing for caffeine. He looked amused and confused at the same time. “What --”
“It reminds of me angels, except it’s broken,” Jack spoke over him.
Sam turned so fast his elbow sent the mug crashing to the floor.
Jack was still scrutinizing him. He looked fascinated. “It feels a little like Castiel, but like others, too. It wasn’t so much before. I think it’s growing.”
“Jack,” admonished Cas at the same time as Dean snapped, “Stop.”
Sam looked distinctly green around the gills. Dean quickly added, “There’s not an angel possessing you, Sam.”
Sam nodded slowly, as if afraid that moving abruptly might break him. “I know. Just leftovers, right?”
You might have thought him calm if not for the whiteness of his fingertips against the kitchen counter.
“Excuse me, I need to go shower.” He walked out, not even taking care of the broken mug.
“Shit.” Dean wanted to go after him but knew it wouldn’t go over well. “Shit, shit, shit.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Sit down.” Dean began to explain.
** WINCHESTER ** WINCHESTER **
Sam took a very long, very hot shower. He recognized the coping technique – he’d tried to scrub himself clean of demon blood, Lucifer, and so much more. It never worked. Even the trials hadn’t worked. They would have if you’d finished them, said the small but persistent voice that was just as familiar as the ritual of trying to cleanse himself of more than just sweat.
That was his cue to turn the water all the way to cold for a few seconds then get out.
Another technique. Another piece of tape to try and hold his shredded self together. My dear boy, you’re all duct tape and safety pins. How are you still alive? It hadn’t been duct tape though, had it? It had been Gad --
Unproductive thinking, he scolded himself mentally. It was a shame he’d already gone on his run.
Running cleared his head like few other things. He decided the next best thing was to work on a difficult translation. It would take concentration, hopefully preventing him getting stuck on the idea that inside him – no, think about the translation.
Sam hesitated a second before touching the book he’d chosen. Some of them bit back lately, but Pneumata Fantasmata kai Stoicheiomata seemed to be willing to behave. It was in a type of Proto-Greek that shared common characteristics with both Mycanæn and Vedic Sanskrit such that diachronic linguistics couldn’t place it with any kind of accuracy, so they lacked cultural clues for translation. As far as Sam could find out, it was rare enough that nobody had translated it.
So...a good challenge.
Sam found one of the quiet corners of the bunker where he wasn’t quite hiding but would be challenging to find, and he actually managed to lose himself in the translation for a while. He was doing his best to translate the old text to Latin, with which it shared more of the sentence structure than English and had made no small amount of progress when he heard a distant door open. He stifled a sigh and, recognizing that the footsteps weren’t Dean’s, made sure to school his features.
It was Jack who’d found him, and he carried a tray. “Sam?” he said tentatively. “Dean put together some food for you and I asked if I could bring it.”
“Thank you.” Sam set his books and papers aside. He looked appreciatively at the spread – fruit, hummus, and other easy-to-digest options he knew his brother had chosen specifically because his stomach could be testy when he was upset. There was also ginger ale and a steaming mug of coffee.
“You didn’t have to do that, but it was nice of you. You know I’m not angry at you, right?”
Jack nodded and carefully set the tray down in front of Sam, then slowly sat as if testing his welcome.
Not for the first time, Sam thought that Jack had a good heart. “But you aren’t happy either.”
Sam wouldn’t lie to him. “No. But that has nothing to do with you. It isn’t your fault that knowing about...what’s inside me is upsetting to me. You didn’t even know it would be upsetting for me to hear about it.”
Jack absorbed that in his intense way. “Are you angry at Dean for asking Castiel here to look at you?”
“No.” Sam sat back and selected a grape from one of the bowls, rolling it between two fingers. “He worries about me. How could I be angry about that? It’s just there are a lot of very bad memories that have to do with angel grace.” With effort, he kept his voice and face calm. He wasn’t angry at his brother. He was mostly just horrified at the thought that there were still remnants inside him of Lucifer, Gadreel, and even Cas. What if there was demonic residue too, from Meg and Azael? Had he ever been fully human and fully alone in his own body?
Sam felt like a typewriter ribbon, covered in evidence of every strike he’d taken.
Jack’s eyes were as intent as they were innocent. “Dean told me that, and that I shouldn’t ask about those memories, so I won’t. But Sam, I wanted to tell you I was wrong.”
Sam shook his head quickly. “No, Jack, you didn’t do anything --”
Jack tapped the side of the coffee mug and Sam realized that it was the one he’d broken, now looking as if it had never been anything but whole. It was a favorite mug, a gift from Donna. It said: I’m not a bookworm. I’m a book dragon! and had a dragon curled atop a massive pile of books. “I mean I waswrong about the grace inside you being broken. It isn’t.” He tapped the mug again as if to say that the grace, too, was whole.
“It might be from, um, a lot of different angels leaving a little behind, but it’s not theirs anymore. It’s yours. Your soul took it when it started to grow and, uh, put it all together and made it yours. I can feel that. I think...it’s trying to protect you.”
Sam swallowed hard, tried to absorb that, figure out what it might mean. “Is that why it’s growing?” he asked, the question mostly for himself. It made sense, he supposed.
“Thank you for that,” he said. “You may be right. I’ve been involved around the supernatural, performing magic, all of it, for so many years. After everything, I suppose I could become something like an incubator for bits of grace left behind.” He stilled, nausea stirring again, an image of a glowing blue xenomorph bursting from his chest making him shake his head.
“Isn’t that good?”
Sam had to put his hands on his lap to hide their twitching. He channeled every bit of calm he could find because he never wanted Jack to bear the weight of his pain. One breath. Two. Three. Then he could speak. “Do you remember when we saw some kids inhaling from balloons to make their voices sound funny? And I told them to make sure to take breaks?”
Jack nodded. He’d been intrigued by the funny sound of the children’s voices.
“I didn’t tell them that because helium is dangerous or poisonous. It isn’t. What’s dangerous is that they inhaled it instead of the oxygen they need. It’s not bad to have helium inside your lungs unless it means there’s not enough room for the oxygen you need.”
“Oh.” It was all Jack said, but somehow Sam knew he’s understood the point. It was the only piece of the problem Sam knew how to convey to the younger man, but it seemed to be enough. Jack stayed, even taking a few things off the tray for himself, until Sam had eaten all he wanted. The silence between them was thoughtful rather than strained, and Sam finally began to relax.
“I’ll take this back to the kitchen so you can keep working,” Jack said, picking up the tray again.
“Thank you.” Sam was able to find a small smile. “And thank you for fixing my cup.”
Jack’s own smile lit his face, then he was gone.
Sam didn’t see Jack – or anyone else, for that matter – until he was eating breakfast the next morning.
Cas hurried into the kitchen looking like he’d been wearing the same clothes for days. Which, yeah, he was, but he didn’t usually look like it. Jack was on his heels. “Where is Dean?” Cas demanded.
“Where’s the fire?” Dean asked from down the hall, though he didn’t sound nearly as grumpy as his words implied.
“I don’t know exactly why the grace inside Sam is growing, but I think I have a solution to get it out.”
Sam felt nothing at the pronouncement. “Yes. We know.” He patted the box that sat on the table next to his smoothie. For all its innocuous looks, it contained an artifact that still gave Sam occasion nightmares. Extracting grace sucked rocks.
“No!” Dean slammed his hand on the box, obviously knowing what it held.
Jack jumped but Sam didn’t even flinch. Nor did he let go of the box. He’d expected that kind of reaction, but what else could they do? Let the grace grow and push aside everything that was left that was Sam?
“We shouldn’t have to use it often,” Sam said. He’d meant it to be calming but his affect was flat.
Dean didn’t let go. “Oh, good. We don’t have to do it often,” he parroted, anger and sarcasm bursting from every word. “And that’s just fine, since you almost died the last time.”
“You shouldn’t have to use it at all,” Cas interrupted before the fight could get any farther off theground.
Sam and Dean turned to him in unison. “What?” they both asked.
“Ever since Jack told me his theory that the grace is somehow Sam’s now, I’ve had an idea. I’ve been doing some research and while it’s a unique situation, I still think this might work.” Cas said ‘unique situation’ completely unironically, which Sam found impressive.
After all, Sam was the result of thousands of years of planning and manipulation by cosmic entities to produce the perfect vessel for Lucifer, if those same entities were to be believed. He’d survived drinking demon blood, falling through the veil into the deepest recess of Hell, possession then torture by Lucifer for many human lifetimes, separation from his own soul, more possession, and on, and on.
Unique indeed.
Cas was still talking. “Angels build up grace, too, especially when we spend a lot of time in Heaven. I think you, like us, need to use that grace when it gets to be too much. I think you could probably do some minor healing and be back to normal, probably for years.”
Intrigued, Sam sat back a little, and both he and Dean allowed Cas to collect the box that held that horrible syringe from between them.
“You think that’s possible?” Dean asked.
Cas nodded. “Possible, yes. I don’t think it will be easy because it isn’t natural for humans, Sam. But you have an advantage. You have a soulmate to work your healing on. It’s difficult to explain, but you and Dean are on the same...frequency, I suppose. That should make it easier for you to establish the right connection to be able to heal him.”
Sam frowned, more intrigued than ever, though still not feeling much hope. As a theoretical question, this would be right up his alley. As a long shot to save his life and/or sanity it was far less appealing.
“You think I could somehow learn how to heal?” he asked. “But not heal myself, I guess?”
Cas sat down, warming to his topic, Jack and Dean following suit. Sam looked at his brother, who had been uncharacteristically quiet since his little outburst. “No, healing yourself is just directing grace, not using it up. It wouldn’t help you even if you could figure it out. And I believe you would be much more motivated to heal Dean.”
“So, what, he should fix my cholesterol or something?” Dean asked. His eyes were cautious, which meant he was feeling strongly about the idea but didn’t want it to show.
“No, no.” Jack took up the narrative. He must have already had this conversation with the angel. “Sam will be really bad at healing, so just something really small.”
“Sam will be really inefficient at healing,” Cas corrected kindly. “Like using a campfire for light. A lot of energy goes toward heat, because while a campfire does produce light, that’s not really what it’s designed for.
“Like towing a trailer with a sports car,” Dean added. “You got the hp, but it’s really meant for speed, not power.”
Cas and Jack gave him matching blank looks and Sam smothered a smile.
“Do you have any idea how to test your theory, Cas? I don’t think I’d know where to start.”
They thought and talked and tried to research for most of the day. Cas struggled to explain how to do something that didn’t require any thought on his part. Sam couldn’t “find” or “feel” the grace inside of himself no matter how much he concentrated. And he couldn’t direct what he couldn’t find. Dean hid the grace-extracting syringe and Sam pretended not to notice. Jack generally looked in any book he could find that mentioned angels or grace or healing, which gave them a lot of unrelated and unhelpful information.
It was past dark and they were sitting down to pizza Dean and Jack had picked up from a local place when Cas laid out what he thought was their best plan.
“Choose some small pain or injury of Dean’s to focus on,” he said. “Don’t think about logistics or grace or healing, just on that hurt, what it might feel like to Dean, and how much you wish it would get better.
“Skin contact should help. Eliminate all distractions and give yourself plenty of time. Understand that you’ll probably have to try over and over and over. We may even have to extract some grace a different way before you get it.”
Dean glared at the rest of them over his bottle of beer. “Av-so-wutely not,” he argued through a mouthful of pizza. He swallowed. “Sam’ll figure it out. If he’d getting stuck, you can show him a few times.”
“Actually, I think Jack and I should leave the bunker.”
“What? Why?” Dean asked the questions, but Sam was thinking them too.
“To get rid of any kind of outside pressure.” The angel turned to Sam. “You’ll need to be completely focused, Sam. Not thinking about having to give us updates or make sure we’re eating or anything except figuring this out.”
Sam thought that unnecessary. Jack thought they could help if they stayed. Dean was with Cas, wanting whatever gave them the highest chance of success. In the end, they did leave and Sam found himself in the Dean cave (“we gotta be comfy, Sam, ’specially if it takes a while”), holding Dean’s wrist and feeling like an idiot. Dean had a swollen knuckle at the base of his middle finger that he said was interfering with his ability to “silently communicate with other drivers” that Sam was supposed to fix.
They sat. And sat. And sat. Dean fell asleep. Sam’s ass fell asleep. And still nothing happened.
“Could you teach someone with brand new lungs how to breathe?” Cas had asked when Sam had asked for any pointers. Yeah, no.
Finally, Sam woke up his brother and went to bed. He dreamt he was on fire and trying to light the lamps throughout the bunker before the fire went out and all the while Dean was yelling unhelpful car-based metaphors. He woke up hearing the echoes of “shift into low gear and don’t slip the clutch!” and a feeling of hopelessness.
Unique fucking situation, indeed.