Chapter Text
The cave was dark and wet, the smell of blood thick in the air, mixing with the cold damp stone. Sam’s last scream echoed sharply through the shadowed chamber.
“Dean!”
It was the last thing anyone heard before the vampires swarmed him. Sharp teeth, claws, dragging him beneath the ground with brutal efficiency... Dean lunged forward, desperate, but Cas caught him, holding him back with a strength born of both love and pain.
“Dean, no!” Cas pleaded, eyes wide with grief. Dean struggled, tried to break free, tried to chase the monsters who had taken his brother away. But Cas held him firm, knowing it was hopeless.
Gabriel stood frozen a few steps away. The moment was seared into his mind: Sam’s scream, Dean’s broken attempt, the gleam of death in the vampires’ eyes. Yet, he could do nothing. The archangels’ grace within him was dimming, almost gone, and for all his power, he was powerless now.
The others didn’t linger. Dean, Cas, Gabriel, and Maggie fled that cave without looking back. The fight was lost. The light was out.
Hours later, Gabriel sat in the dim corner of the resistance camp – the hidden fortress of survivors and fighters nestled deep in the ruins of the Apocalypse world. Jack was nearby, pacing anxiously, trying to make sense of the chaos.
“Why didn’t you bring him back?”
Jack’s voice was sharp, almost accusing, his young face creased with worry.
Cas was silent, eyes cast downward. Gabriel alone managed to answer, his voice raw, a whisper heavier than stone.
“I couldn’t.”
He had repeated those words over and over inside his head, the bitter taste refusing to fade.
His grace was drained. His strength had been used up trying to save others, trying to hold the line. And Sam… Sam was gone.
The hours crawled by. The camp buzzed with quiet voices and suppressed fear. But then — out of the gloom, Sam appeared.
Alive.
For a moment, Gabriel’s heart skipped, hope flooding like wildfire. The weight in his chest lightened, breath catching painfully in his throat.
But then Lucifer stepped into the circle of light behind Sam — his pale, smirking, infuriating presence casting a shadow over everything.
Sam looked smaller than ever, guilt etched deep into his features. His eyes flicked to Gabriel briefly, then dropped away.
Gabriel’s first instinct was to rush forward, to hold Sam in his arms, to promise he would never let go. But Dean beat him to it.
Dean’s arms wrapped tightly around Sam, pulling him close in a fierce embrace.
Gabriel stood back, his throat tight, watching the two brothers cling to each other.
He knew, deep down, how much it must have hurt Sam to be touched by Lucifer’s hands again, to have that darkness brushing against his soul and stitching up the wounds that Gabriel couldn’t.
Gabriel had failed Sam. Failed him so completely it ached.
The weight of that failure settled like a stone in Gabriel’s chest, and for the first time in millennia, the archangel felt utterly broken, powerless, and lost.