Summary: Castiel promised that he would rescue Dean Winchester from Perdition. He failed, but that won't stop Sam from trying, even if he has to crush all of Hell under his heel to do it.
Word Count:
Characters: Sam, Castiel, Dean
Pairings: Castiel/Sam
Tags: Graphic violence/injury

( Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrante )

Sam’s fingers have always been his compass. They’ve lead him steady over folded maps, imagined mountains on the flat plains of the parchment, dreamed the yellow and blue lines of roads might take him somewhere he actually wanted to go. They’ve smoothed steady over blonde curls, left promising touches on honey-sweet skin that burned in a fire along with the rest of his life. They’ve stitched up his brother, mended flesh torn in two and set broken bones, no matter that they would never be right as they had been before.

When Sam’s fingers get disoriented in the shredded skin of his brother’s chest, get so coated in blood that he can’t discern them from the flesh around them, wrap around corded leather and bronze, they become lost. Sam is led astray by the magnetic pull of revenge.

He drowns in alcohol, swims in the screams of demons, but it’s never enough, never satisfying. He thumbs over the pages of every book he can find, tears the bindings until they’re frayed because they never have what he needs, they never have a way for him to pull his brother from hellfire.

It’s always in his dreams. The fire, the stench of Dean’s skin burning, the meaty sound of it being ripped from his bones. No matter how many demons he kills, their cries never drown out the echoes of Dean’s.

Sam dreams his fingers are wrapped around the hilt of his own knife and he’s twisting it deep in his brother’s stomach. He can feel the resistance of it, how hard he has to push, he wants to stop but he can’t, and the blood spilling out of Dean’s mouth is dripping onto his hand. He thinks he can’t take it anymore, thinks he’s screaming louder than his brother when a hand stills his.

When Sam looks up, he sees a beautiful man with a beautiful face. The man explains he isn’t a man at all, he’s an angel, and Sam can believe it, with eyes like that. He takes Sam’s hands in his own and tells him he’s going to save Sam’s brother.

Sam wakes up sweating, and for weeks he’s sure it’s wishful thinking, that that would be the easy way out. Sam knows no one’s going to save his brother but him.

Sam’s wrong about the angel. He’s real, not just a dream, because he appears behind Sam when he’s lost in the rhythmic motions of field-stripping his handgun and Sam is so startled he half-shouts. But the angel speaks, and the rumble of his voice vibrates deep inside Sam’s chest. This time, he tells Sam he failed, he couldn’t save Dean, and Sam already knows the truth of that, he already knew that nobody could.

But then he explains that Sam can do it, Sam is the one that must save his brother, and that he, Castiel, is going to guide him.

Sam’s fingers get lost again, this time in Castiel.

The touching comes with it all. Castiel presses the demon’s wrist to Sam’s lips and instructs him to drink. Castiel pushes the blade into Sam’s palm and tells him to kill. Castiel steers Sam’s fingertips over the sigil, painting it in blood on the floor. It’s all instructional, until it isn’t, until it’s Sam touching Castiel, pulling his coat off, smashing their lips together, breathing in the intoxicating smell of Castiel’s grace.

Castiel conducts Sam until he’s the perfect weapon, until he’s so full of demon blood there’s nearly none of his own left. They paint the sigil for real, mix their bloods and tangle their fingers together and draw it on the creaking floorboards.

Hell is nothing like Sam imagined. There is no fire, no scent of singed flesh. Screaming permeates everything, and there is nothing that is not covered in gore. It is a punishment Sam would wish upon few. His brother was the least deserving.

They find Dean with eyes black and heart blacker. All hope of salvation disappears, because this broken thing is not the brother Sam once knew. Sam tastes sulphur thick on his tongue, anger heavy in his hands. Sam is again consumed by the desire for revenge, a desire that slowly drains from him when Dean goes crashing to his knees.

Wherever Sam walks, with Dean and Castiel trailing behind him as his entourage, the demons fall at his feet, shuddering as he passes over them, raising their voices in praise and supplication. The further he goes, the more the screaming becomes bearable, until the wretched sound becomes closer to singing.

There are those, of course, who do not bow. Alistair tries to stop them, but Dean goes feral at the sight of him, and Sam doesn’t find it in him to stop his brother as he tears the demon apart limb from limb. He comes back to Sam with blood on his teeth, and Sam is so proud of him. Castiel kills every loyalist, everyone whose lips open to worship a name other than Sam’s.

Some who fear him hide, crawling back into the corners of brimstone from whence they came, but Lilith does not. A warrior queen until the end, she does not yield her power to Sam, not until he cuts open her ribcage and takes out her black, twisted heart, crushing it between his fingers, licking off her sulfuric blood as the light goes out in her eyes.

Castiel fashions Sam a crown from her bones. He kisses Sam and places it atop his head, and as Sam surveys his kingdom, he takes Castiel’s hand in his own. Sam thinks, at last, that he has found his true north.