Work Text:
Is there anybody home
Who won’t believe me, won’t deceive me, won’t try to change me
Is there anybody home
Who wants to have me, just to love me
Stuck in the middle
I look at you, you look at me we bite each other
And with your bitter words you kick me in the gutter
But my troops are bigger than yours; you’ll never fight my fight
Ours is a family that’s based upon tradition
But with my careless words I tread upon your vision
Are five kids better than one? Who doesn’t lie to become…
-Stuck in the Middle, Mika
It was the fury that did it.
The plan they’d come up with was insane, Sam readily admitted that. Saying yes to Lucifer? Even a month ago, if someone had told Sam that he’d do it to try and save the world, Sam would have said they were deranged (and maybe punched them in the face). But they were desperate and planless, and if it helped put Lucifer back in the box…
Gabriel had lost it at the idea, screaming in a supersonic screech that made Sam and Dean collapse in agony until Gabriel realised what he was doing to them and brought his voice back into a more normal register, while Castiel frowned at him.
But Sam had managed to talk him into it, hating the way that Gabriel’s eyes became pits of black despair when he finally agreed to allow Sam to say yes.
Now, here he was, powerless to do anything but watch helplessly as Lucifer and Michael did their best to end each other.
Sam had never really seen Lucifer at less than urbane, even when he’d killed a motel full of pagan gods, but he and Michael were screaming bitter, angry things at each other, and Sam could feel the fallen archangel’s Grace burning with hurt and poisonous rage: the kind of terrible emotion that could only develop after beaten to within a inch of your life by your brother and shoved into a box while he locked the lid down above you to leave you alone in the dark.
Sam tried to do something, anything, but he’d handed the controls for his body over to Lucifer, who didn’t even seem to notice Sam’s fruitless attempts to wrestle back control.
“Brothers! Please!” a desperate voice shrilled, and Lucifer swung Sam’s gaze a round to land on Gabriel, alone and despairing, with his wings spread out behind him, four healthy and strong and two crippled.
With Lucifer’s Grace running through him, Sam saw Gabriel clearly for the first time in his life.
The archangel glowed with piety and heavenly purpose, even embittered and damaged as he was, even with two wings hanging uselessly in a broken manifestation of Grace.
“Michael! Lucifer!” Gabriel shrieked, his true voice high-pitched and fluting like a bird’s, now that Sam’s ears were tuned to hear it. “Please! Don’t do this!”
A thread of Lucifer’s compassion ran through Sam, as the archangel prepared to gently sweep Gabriel aside; but Michael simply lifted one huge wing and smacked Gabriel sideways, like a bug to be swatted.
At the sight of Gabriel being battered from one side of the battlefield to the other, Sam felt a surge, of utter, absolute fury unlike anything he’d ever felt before.
It jolted through his nervous system and down his limbs like an electric shock, and just for a moment, the flow of Lucifer’s Grace stuttered, impeded by the force of Sam’s focused rage.
Sam snatched at the Horsemen’s rings and opened the Cage, letting it swing open and dark into the ground just beside him – and then he turned and reached for Michael.
Lucifer’s Grace roared over and around him, but at the last moment, astonishingly, joined with Sam’s intent instead of tearing his control away, as Lucifer saw what Sam meant to do.
They’ve hurt so many people. They’ve done so much damage, Michael as much as Lucifer. They have to be stopped. Both of them.
Sam saw the stunned look as he pulled Michael close, felt the archangel freeze in shock as they both toppled into the Cage.
Sam threw the rings wide at the last moment, as he fell with Michael and Lucifer, and the cold dark earth rose up and swallowed them as the Cage clanged shut.