Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The motel room was quiet, too quiet.

Sam Winchester sat hunched over a cluttered desk, the room dim save for the flickering orange light of a motel lamp and the candles he’d arranged in a precise pattern around him. His eyes were bloodshot, not from tears—he’d run dry days ago—but from sleeplessness, from reading and rereading, from trying to believe.

Dean was dead.

Again.

The grief hadn’t come in a loud, screaming wave. It had settled into his chest like a stone—heavy, immovable. Ruby had offered comfort in her usual sardonic way, but her words didn’t matter. Her deals didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

Except getting Dean back.

Sam stared at the book in front of him. Its cover was worn, nearly rotted in places, the title long since faded. He’d found it buried in a forgotten library under an old church in Minnesota—half-miracle, half-accident. It had called to him in a way he couldn’t explain, humming in his bones like something ancient.

It didn’t read like any occult text he’d seen before. No demonic sigils, no protective seals. Just simple words etched in ink that never faded, some in Latin, some in languages he didn’t recognize but somehow understood. The paper was parchment-thin, the kind monks might have died protecting, and between its fragile pages sat a single spell that burned in his mind: “To Call the Light.”

Angels. That’s what the spell claimed. A way to summon an angel.

He didn’t even know if he believed in them anymore—not really. After all they’d seen, demons and ghosts and gods, the angels were still just ideas. Hints. Whispers in scripture. Ruby said they didn’t care. But Sam had grown up believing they might.

And maybe… maybe one would listen.

The candles were lit. The sigil was drawn in chalk on the floor—a perfect circle with a dozen strange symbols spiraling out from the center like the branches of a starburst. Salt circled everything. It felt like the right kind of holy. Not comforting, exactly, but ancient. Powerful.

Sam sat cross-legged inside the circle, heart pounding. The book lay open in his lap, one hand steady on the page, the other clutching a knife. His own blood, one drop, at the center of the symbol—that’s what the instructions said.

The air felt thick as he took a breath.

Then, quietly:
“Fiat Lux, Domine. Audi me.”

Let there be light, Lord. Hear me.

His voice shook. “Ego, qui sum ex pulvere, voco te. Audi preces meas. Mitte angelum tuum. Mitte lucem tuam.”
I, who am dust, call to you. Hear my prayers. Send your angel. Send your light.

Nothing happened.

He waited, the silence expanding until it felt like it would swallow him whole.

Sam closed his eyes. He didn’t need a miracle. He didn’t need an army. He just needed someone. One angel. One flicker of light in the dark. Something to prove that Dean wasn’t beyond help. That he wasn’t.

“Please,” he whispered, his voice cracking for the first time in days. “Please. I can’t do this without him.”

Silence.

Then—

A pulse.

Not of sound, but of air. The candles flared violently, their flames stretching toward the ceiling like they were being pulled by invisible strings. The sigil beneath him began to glow—not red like demon fire, but gold. Radiant.

The light grew blinding, swallowing the room in white heat. Sam gasped, falling back onto his hands as a pressure built in the air, like standing under a collapsing sky. It pressed into his skin, humming through his bones, deafening in its silence.

The book slipped from his lap.

He saw, or thought he saw, the faint outline of wings—not feathered, not physical, just presence, rippling through the light like heat off pavement. And a voice—not heard, but known—echoed through him.

“He calls.”

The pressure peaked. Sam felt himself lifting, weightless, untethered from flesh.

Then—

Darkness.

⸻

When Sam awoke, it was morning.

Sunlight peeked through the closed blinds, dust dancing lazily in its beams. The candles were melted down to puddles of wax. The sigil was half-smudged, ruined by the shift of his body. The ancient book lay closed beside him.

He blinked slowly, confusion swimming in his chest. He remembered… nothing.

A headache pounded behind his eyes. His limbs felt sore, like he’d run ten miles in his sleep. He looked around the room, trying to retrace his steps. There were vague impressions of ritual, the taste of salt on his lips, the singed scent of burned wax, but nothing coherent.

Just another failure, he thought bitterly. Just one more attempt that ended in nothing.

Sam rose, muscles stiff, and dragged himself to the bathroom. He splashed water on his face, catching sight of his reflection.

He looked older.

Not aged—weathered. There were lines under his eyes that hadn’t been there before. And something about his gaze… not haunted, exactly. Just distant.

He closed the door and tried not to think.

⸻

That night, Sam fell asleep without even realizing it.

The dream came softly.

He stood in a vast field—stars above him, the grass at his feet glowing faintly gold. There was no wind, no sound, only stillness, the kind that didn’t feel empty but expectant, like something was holding its breath.

In the distance, a man stood at the edge of a cliff. He was tall, broad-shouldered, with hair like gold-touched bronze and a blade strapped across his back. He didn’t turn when Sam approached.

But Sam knew, somehow, who he was.

Michael.

The first.

The General.

The perfect son.

Sam didn’t speak. Neither did Michael. They stood in silence for what felt like hours. Michael’s hands were clenched behind his back, his eyes fixed on the endless sky. His posture was tense, but not angry—grieving.

“I tried,” Michael said suddenly, voice rich like thunder. “I tried to do what was right. What was asked.”

Sam tilted his head. “By who?”

Michael didn’t answer. His gaze dropped to the earth.

“They don’t understand,” he said quietly. “None of them. Not Gabriel, not Raphael. Not even Him. They think I enjoy this. That I wanted the war. But I—I was made to follow. Not to choose. That was never my purpose.”

There was such pain in his voice. Not anger. Not bitterness. Just tired sorrow.

Sam stepped closer. He didn’t know why, but it felt right. Like this moment belonged to him.

Michael glanced at him. And for the first time, the Archangel seemed to see him—really see him. His expression shifted. Confusion. Recognition. Then something softer, far more dangerous:

Reverence.

“You… are not what I expected,” Michael said.

Sam didn’t speak. His dream-self felt distant, weightless.

“You are… warm,” Michael murmured. “Light. Like…” He trailed off, eyes wide. “Like Him.”

Sam felt it too—the weight of command in his chest, though he spoke no words. The dream bent around him, not in submission, but in trust.

Michael fell to one knee.

“I am yours,” he whispered.

Sam reached out—his hand touched Michael’s shoulder.

And then—

⸻

He woke up gasping, heart racing.

The motel room was the same. Same lamp, same cluttered books. Same dim quiet.

Sam rubbed his face, the dream already slipping away.

Just a dream, he told himself.

He didn’t remember the words, the emotions, or Michael’s face. All that remained was a strange warmth in his chest, like someone had lit a candle in the hollow of his heart.

He got dressed slowly, his movements automatic. The spell, the book, the dream—everything was muddled in a fog. All he knew was that nothing had changed.

Dean was still gone.

The world still needed saving.

And Sam Winchester had to keep moving.

⸻

In Heaven, Michael sat alone.

He had not slept since the Fall.

Not really.

But now, in his moments of stillness, a presence came to him. Not a voice. Not an order. Just warmth. Light.

The echo of a hand on his shoulder.

A dream.

He did not know who the boy was, only that he loved him. And that love was not shameful. Not forbidden.

It was worship.

And for the first time in millennia, Michael did not feel alone.

He bowed his head.

Chapter Text

He dreams of war.

Always war.

Michael stood alone on a field scorched black by fire and light. The air crackled with divine energy, and the sky had been torn apart by battle. Smoke curled like incense from the earth, but it was not sacred. Nothing about this battlefield was.

It was soaked in the blood of angels.

His armor was scorched, his blade dull with ash and ichor. The hilt pulsed faintly in his grip, the runes etched across it glowing like an old wound that never quite healed. The sword was a part of him, forged from his grace and purpose. It was his crown, his name, his cross to bear.

It was heavy.

So much heavier than he remembered.

He turned his gaze across the ravaged field. Broken wings littered the soil like fallen banners. The scent of ozone and grief hung thick in the air. The cries had long since gone silent — only the dead remained.

Michael exhaled slowly.

He hadn’t always felt tired. There had been a time, before the Fall, before Lucifer’s betrayal, when he had lifted his sword with pride. He had believed in what he did. He had trusted the plan.

Back then, his Father’s will had been a song in his blood, and he’d sung it without hesitation. Faith was simple. Obedience was love. He had not needed to think.

Now, the silence where God once spoke was deafening.

He sheathed his sword. It resisted, the metal humming like a mourning chord, but he forced it home. He was the eldest, the first. He didn’t have the luxury of surrender.

He began to walk across the field, each step heavy with memory.

And then—he saw him.

The boy.

Again.

Young, human, barefoot, seated in the middle of the battlefield like it wasn’t a graveyard. The ground beneath him bloomed with golden grass, a patch of light and warmth in the midst of ruin. He was dressed simply—no crown, no armor, no mark of power—but Michael’s knees buckled before he understood why.

He fell.

There was no command. No force. Just instinct. The same instinct that made him kneel in the presence of his Father’s throne. That made his wings fold inward, reverent and small.

He knelt in the bloodied dirt, in full armor, sword still humming at his side, and bowed his head before a mortal boy seated on a field of gold.

The boy looked at him with eyes full of light. Not blinding, not scorching—warm.

The same warmth Michael remembered from the earliest days, when he and his brothers curled beneath the Throne in awe and joy and love. That impossible warmth that meant they had been good, that they were wanted. That they had pleased Him.

It had been so long since Michael had felt it.

He swallowed thickly, eyes locked to the earth. His wings flickered behind him, unsure.

“You’ve done enough,” the boy said softly.

Michael flinched.

The voice wasn’t cruel. It wasn’t judgmental. It wasn’t even commanding.

It was kind.

And it shattered him.

His throat closed. He opened his mouth to speak, but the words tangled in him, heavy and unformed. So he stayed where he was—kneeling before a boy of warmth and light—because this, this felt right. This made sense.

“You don’t have to fight anymore,” the boy said, like it was the simplest truth in the world.

Michael’s lip trembled. “But… there’s no one left to hold the line.”

“You were never meant to hold the line alone.”

Michael closed his eyes, shame burning beneath his skin.

“I failed,” he whispered. “I failed Him. I failed my brothers.”

The boy reached out, brushing fingers through the gold-tinged grass. “You were made to love, Michael. Not to lead.”

He remembered a time when that had been true. When all he knew was the thrill of his Father’s gaze upon him, when praise filled his grace like morning sunlight. When he and Lucifer stood side by side, not as generals, but as sons, basking in approval.

Michael had forgotten that love.

War had taken it. Duty had buried it.

And he had let it.

Tears burned in his eyes—hot, impossible. Angels weren’t made to cry. It took the Fall to teach them sorrow, and still it felt unnatural, like ripping light from the sun.

But here, kneeling before the boy, he wept.

Not like a soldier. Not like a prince. But like a child.

“You’ve done enough,” the boy repeated.

Michael bowed lower. “What do you want of me?” he asked. “What must I do to be good again?”

The boy stood.

Michael heard the shift of grass, the flutter of cloth. He dared a glance up—but the light behind the boy’s eyes was too much, too full, too gentle. It wasn’t wrath. It wasn’t power.

It was love.

And it broke him more than any blade could have.

“Rest,” said the boy.

Michael exhaled—a long, shuddering breath. His body sagged, the weight lifting just enough to remember what peace might feel like. He let his wings fall, limp and trembling. He let his sword fade, dissolving into light.

And he stayed there, knelt in surrender, until the dream faded.

⸻

Michael woke with a choked sob.

He was still in Heaven, in the stillness of the Celestial Chamber he’d claimed as his own. The lights around him pulsed dimly, sensitive to the tremors in his grace.

He rose slowly, hands trembling, breath unsteady.

It had been a dream. He knew that.

But it didn’t feel like a dream.

It felt like memory. Like prophecy. Like home.

He pressed a hand to his chest. His grace flickered beneath his skin—unsettled, raw. His armor was gone. He hadn’t worn it in waking hours for years, but he still felt the weight of it in his limbs. The sword, too. That sense of readiness. Of duty.

But something in him had cracked.

The boy’s words still echoed inside him:

“You were made to love, Michael. Not to lead.”

He had heard every kind of voice across eons—shouts of battle, songs of worship, the quiet of death—but none had reached him like that. None had seen him so clearly, or held him with such gentleness.

Who was the boy?

Why had his presence undone him so easily?

Michael moved to the window of his chamber—if Heaven could be said to have such things—and looked down upon the world below. Earth shimmered, spinning in its usual wounded glory. Souls moved across it like scattered stardust, flickering in and out of time.

Among them, the boy might exist. Somewhere. Maybe. If the dream was more than just grace-weary fantasy.

Michael didn’t know. And that not-knowing… terrified him.

He’d been created for certainty. For command. For war. Doubt had been Lucifer’s disease, and Michael had vowed never to catch it. But now…

He closed his eyes, trying to call the dream back.

Instead, he saw golden grass, the boy’s bare feet, the tilt of his head, the words:

“You’ve done enough.”

They weren’t an accusation. They were an absolution.

Michael, the General, the Firstborn, the Holy Blade—wept.

And for once, he didn’t feel weak.

He felt seen.

⸻

In the dream-realm, the boy stirred.

He did not remember his name while dreaming. He did not remember the pain that pressed into his waking bones, or the guilt that carved lines into his face. He did not remember that he was only human.

Here, he was only light.

Here, he was only warmth.

He sat among golden fields and watched Michael weep, and he did not flinch. He didn’t recoil at the brokenness in the Archangel, or shrink before the scars that war had left behind.

He welcomed them.

Because he understood now—what had been missing.

The Archangels had never been made to rule. They had been made to love. And without someone to love, without someone to love them, they had turned their love into violence.

He would be different.

He would hold them, if he could.

He would give them a place to rest.

But when he woke—when Sam Winchester woke—he would forget. As he always did.

The magic still held.

For now.

Chapter Text

Raphael dreamed of blood.

Not metaphor. Not memory.

Blood.

Hot and bright and wet between his fingers — not his, never his — it soaked the feathers of broken wings, it pooled beneath shattered ribs, it painted halos in sharp red strokes across the battlefield of Heaven and Earth alike.

His hands had forgotten the feel of anything else.

He knelt beside a fallen soldier — nameless, faceless, wing crumpled like parchment — and tried to pour grace into the wound, to re-knit bone and spirit alike. But the body dissolved in his hands. Not into dust. Into light.

Gone.

Another.

Then another.

He moved faster. Wings sweeping wide, hands trembling now. He had been made for this — for repair, for healing, for restoration — and he was failing. His grace flared hot with desperation, spilling out in waves, but nothing stayed. The more he tried to save, the more the light tore away from him.

“Stop,” someone whispered behind him.

He didn’t.

He couldn’t.

There were too many. Too many broken things. Too many hurts. He was the Healer. If he did not heal, who would?

So he pressed harder. Grace flared again, too bright, splitting the sky above him — but the light shattered, and pain screamed back through him.

His own grace broke.

He staggered, clutching his chest, his wings folding in as if to protect the wound that wasn’t physical. His body trembled. He tried to speak, to call out for help, for orders, for clarity.

But there was no one left to listen.

And then—

He heard birdsong.

Soft. Sweet. Wrong.

This was a battlefield. There were no birds here.

He opened his eyes.

The blood was gone.

The sky was blue, impossibly so — deep and endless and unscarred. The wind carried not ash, but the scent of blooming flowers. He was still kneeling, but now his knees pressed into soft moss and earth. And around him—

A garden.

Not Heaven’s formal courtyards, sculpted and shining, but something older, wilder, more real. Flowers bloomed without pattern. Vines twisted freely over stones and broken walls. Sunlight filtered down through leaves above, and everything glowed with warmth that touched not just his skin, but his grace.

Raphael rose slowly, disoriented.

His robes were unstained. His hands were clean.

The ache in his core — that hollow burn from his failing grace — had dimmed to a quiet pulse. Still there. Still aching.

But no longer drowning him.

And then he saw the boy.

The same boy Michael had seen. The same boy Raphael had never known he was longing for.

He sat near the edge of a pond, barefoot, dipping his toes into the water like a child without fear. The light around him was gentle. Not blazing like the Throne, not shattering like wrath. Just warm.

He looked at Raphael and smiled.

“You don’t have to fix everything,” the boy said.

Raphael froze.

No one had ever told him that.

Not God. Not Michael. Not the garrison. Not the aching faces of the wounded who looked to him with hope and desperation.

He was Raphael, the Healer. He was the cure. The balm. The force of restoration. If he wasn’t healing—what was he?

“I… I was made to fix,” Raphael said slowly.

“No,” said the boy. “You were made to love.”

Raphael flinched.

He hadn’t thought about that word in a long, long time. Love. That had been the domain of the early days. The time before rebellion, before blood, before the world. Back when he and his brothers had existed for nothing more than worship and wonder.

Back when God had looked upon them and said, “Good.”

He hadn’t heard that word in millennia, either.

“You’re wounded,” the boy said softly, standing now.

“I heal,” Raphael replied, defensive.

“I didn’t say you were broken,” the boy said. “I said you were wounded.”

Raphael’s lips parted, confused. No one spoke to him like that. No one looked at him like that. As if he were the one who needed tending.

The boy approached slowly, and Raphael did not retreat. He stood stiffly, unsure how to react. He was the healer — never the patient. He had spent eons pouring himself out for others. Holding war-ravaged angels together by sheer will. No one had ever reached back.

The boy stopped before him, small and mortal — but radiant in a way Raphael couldn’t define.

He reached up, placing a hand gently over Raphael’s heart.

And it ached.

A deep, endless ache, like something had been trapped there for ages. A knot of duty and silence and grief and perfection. An expectation Raphael had never questioned, because there had never been another path.

“You carry everyone,” the boy whispered.

Raphael’s eyes stung. “They need me.”

“Who told you that you couldn’t need anything, too?”

Raphael tried to step back — but his knees buckled.

The boy caught him.

He sank, trembling, and the boy guided him to sit beside the pond. It was ridiculous, undignified, unbecoming of an Archangel — but he sat, and for once, he did not feel the need to stand.

“They die,” Raphael said softly. “I try to save them, and they still die. I pour out all I have and it’s never enough.”

“It’s not your job to save the world.”

“But I’m supposed to—”

“No,” the boy said, gently interrupting. “You’re supposed to love. That’s all you were ever made for.”

Raphael shook his head slowly. “That’s not what I am anymore.”

“Yes, it is. You’ve just forgotten.”

A breeze swept through the garden. Leaves rustled overhead. The boy dipped his fingers into the pond again, sending ripples outward across its mirrored surface.

Raphael watched the water, silent.

For the first time in millennia, he let someone else be still beside him. Let someone else speak when he didn’t know how. He felt grace swirl inside him, uncertain — not healing, not working, just being.

The boy turned and offered his hand again.

Raphael took it.

Their fingers laced easily, like something that had happened a thousand times before. And Raphael found himself leaning, not in exhaustion, not in desperation, but in peace.

For once, he allowed it.

He laid his head on the boy’s shoulder.

His wings folded quietly behind him, not in defense — but in surrender.

⸻

He woke with tears already falling.

Grace shimmered around him, soft and unguarded, no longer flaring with effort or pain. The walls of his Heaven chamber pulsed in time with his heartbeat. No alarms sounded. No wounds cried out.

He was alone.

But not afraid.

Raphael exhaled, and for the first time since the Fall, he felt rested.

The dream lingered, more real than anything he had touched in centuries. He could still feel the boy’s hand on his chest. Still hear those impossible words:

“You don’t have to fix everything.”

He didn’t know who the boy was. He didn’t know why his presence had quieted his storm.

But he didn’t need to.

Raphael was an Archangel.

He had obeyed God.

He had fought wars.

He had healed legions.

But for the first time in eons, he wanted none of that.

He just wanted to sit by a pond in a garden and hold a boy’s hand.

He just wanted to be loved.

⸻

Elsewhere, the boy dreamed still.

Or — perhaps — he was the dream.

He did not know what Raphael’s name was while he slept. Only that he was in pain. Only that he’d spent eternity healing others and never once himself. Only that he ached for permission to stop.

So the boy gave it to him.

And he would give it again.

To all of them.

He didn’t know who he was in waking life. Only that he returned here each night, to light and gold and stillness. That each time, he found someone new who had forgotten how to love.

And that each time, a little more of him remembered.

Sam Winchester would not know this when he awoke.

But the boy in the dream would.

Chapter Text

Gabriel dreamed in color.

Not soft, muted hues, but neon—flashing, spinning, kaleidoscopic swirls that danced across the edges of unreality. The dream twisted around him like a carousel made of sound and memory and smoke. There were pies and sitcoms, talking squirrels and medieval knights jousting on unicycles. A whoopee cushion screamed opera in Italian.

It was all ridiculous.

All absurd.

All his.

Gabriel snapped his fingers and rewrote the scene. One moment he was in a Vegas casino surrounded by slot machines vomiting confetti; the next he stood on a sunny beach where the ocean whispered bad puns with each crashing wave.

This was his playground. His kingdom. His hiding place.

And yet—

The laughter was gone.

There was noise, sure. Jokes and chaos and cheap one-liners he could deliver in his sleep. But there was no joy. Not really. The dream moved like a puppet show after the puppeteer had died. Mechanical. Routine. Hollow.

Gabriel strolled through it anyway.

He wore the face of a washed-up game show host, golden blazer and all, and cracked jokes at a canned laugh track that always came half a second too late.

He laughed too—but only with his mouth.

His grace stayed quiet. Tight. Folded in like a wounded bird.

And somewhere in the middle of it—standing beneath a giant inflatable banana inexplicably labeled THE END IS NIGH—he stopped laughing.

“Alright, alright,” he muttered, waving off the invisible audience. “That’s enough. Curtain down. Show’s over.”

The world obeyed.

The lights dimmed. The props vanished. The applause cut off like a throat being closed.

And then it was silent.

Just Gabriel, alone on a soundless soundstage.

He breathed out a long, tired sigh. Snapped his fingers again—this time for a recliner and a beer. But even the fizz sounded dull.

He slouched back, running a hand through his golden hair. The illusion was perfect. It always was.

But it never fooled him.

It hadn’t, not for a very long time.

He didn’t let himself think about that.

He just stared out at the void where his dream used to be.

And that’s when he noticed he wasn’t alone.

There, just beyond the edge of the false stage, a boy sat cross-legged on the floor.

He didn’t belong here.

Gabriel blinked.

The boy didn’t move. He just sat quietly, bathed in soft light that had no source. No spotlight. No trick. Just warmth, glowing from within him like a fire that never burned, only healed.

Gabriel frowned. “Okay, that’s new.”

The boy smiled.

No judgment. No fear. Just kindness.

Gabriel narrowed his eyes. “You lost, kid? This is a very exclusive headspace. Members only. No stowaways.”

Still, the boy said nothing.

Gabriel stood up, now wary. He had total control in his dreams. Nothing could sneak in. Nothing ever had. Not even his brothers. Especially not them.

He tried to will the boy away.

Nothing happened.

He snapped his fingers. “Shoo. Begone. Fade to black.”

The boy didn’t move. Just kept looking at him with that maddening calm.

Gabriel’s grace flickered, uneasy.

“Who are you?” he asked, tone sharp now.

The boy tilted his head slightly. “I’m not here to take anything from you.”

“Well, that’s rich,” Gabriel snapped. “Everyone takes something. That’s the whole bit, right? You play the clown, they laugh and leave. They always leave.”

He regretted the words the moment they left his mouth.

But the boy didn’t react. He didn’t flinch. Didn’t mock or challenge. He just listened.

And something about that made Gabriel feel worse.

The boy looked at the darkened set. “Do you always hide in your own laughter?”

Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Do you always break into other people’s dreams with pop-psychology one-liners?”

The boy chuckled—not mockingly. Genuinely. The sound was soft. Familiar. Like someone remembering the way spring felt after a long winter.

Gabriel folded his arms, wings flicking once behind him.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“To tell you something,” the boy said.

Gabriel scoffed. “Okay, sure. Hit me with the moral of the story, kid. Let me guess—I’m lonely, I’m sad, I’m scared of intimacy, yada yada yada. Wow. Real original.”

The boy took a step closer.

“You don’t have to be obedient to be loved.”

The words cracked through Gabriel like thunder.

His breath caught in his throat.

“What?” he whispered.

“You don’t have to obey to be loved,” the boy repeated. “You never did.”

Gabriel staggered back a step, like the words had hit him physically.

He wanted to laugh. Wanted to twist it into a joke, spin it like cotton candy until the sugar melted into forgetfulness.

But he couldn’t.

Because it felt true.

Too true.

It felt like something he had needed to hear for longer than he could remember.

“You don’t get it,” he said quietly. “I ran. I left. I faked my death. I watched the world burn on reruns and didn’t lift a finger.”

“You were afraid,” the boy said.

“Yeah. No kidding.” Gabriel’s voice broke. “Because I knew what would happen. I saw it. Lucifer was going to fall, Michael was going to follow orders, and Raphael—hell, he was already halfway to snapping. And me?”

He gestured at himself bitterly.

“I cracked jokes. Hid behind blood-soaked punchlines. Because the second I tried to stand in between them—”

He paused.

Swallowed.

“I wasn’t strong enough.”

The boy looked at him with something that pierced deeper than pity.

Understanding.

“You didn’t fail them,” he said. “You tried to love them your way. That’s still love.”

Gabriel shook his head. “I was supposed to obey. That’s what we’re made for, right? Follow orders. Be good soldiers. Don’t ask questions.”

“But you did ask,” the boy said. “And you left, not because you stopped loving them—because you couldn’t bear to see them destroy each other.”

Gabriel looked away.

His voice, when it came, was barely a whisper. “I still hear them, sometimes. In my grace. Screaming.”

He didn’t expect the boy to understand.

But then the boy walked closer and—without hesitation—reached up and took Gabriel’s hand.

Warm.

Real.

Solid.

“I hear them too,” he said gently.

Gabriel looked at him then. Really looked.

And for the first time in so, so long, someone looked back not with expectation or fear or disappointment—but with kindness.

He dropped to his knees without realizing.

His wings curled in, not defensively—but to hide the way his grace trembled.

“You don’t have to make them laugh,” the boy said. “You don’t have to run.”

Gabriel’s voice cracked. “I don’t know how to stop.”

“Then let me help.”

The boy pulled him into a soft embrace.

Gabriel collapsed against him, sobbing.

Ugly, broken sobs that tore free from the part of his soul he’d buried beneath a thousand layers of sarcasm and skits and illusions. He clung to the boy like a child too tired to pretend he wasn’t hurting.

There was no punchline here.

Only the truth:

He was tired.

So tired.

And here, in the warm stillness of the dream, he finally let it show.

⸻

When he woke, his pillow was wet.

Gabriel sat up, disoriented.

For a moment, he thought he’d conjured another dream. Another fake-out. Another illusion to distract himself from the emptiness. But his grace buzzed faintly—soft and aching, not broken, just… changed.

Something real had happened.

He felt it in the silence. In the weight behind his ribs.

He touched his face and felt the remnants of tears.

No audience.

No stage.

Just himself, alone with the aftertaste of something impossible.

A dream that didn’t feel like a dream at all.

And one sentence echoing through him like a miracle:

You don’t have to be obedient to be loved.

⸻

Elsewhere, the boy stirred.

He’d tasted laughter in that dream.

Old laughter.

Real laughter.

Buried beneath wounds and fear and time, but still alive.

Gabriel had not been the only one to forget how to love without fear.

The boy—Sam, though he did not know himself as Sam here—held that ache quietly. A part of him already reaching for the next dream. The next broken Archangel clinging to the memory of a family lost to war and pride.

One by one, they were finding him.

And one by one, he would show them:

They were made to love.

Not obey.

Chapter Text

Lucifer dreamed in static.

Not silence—static. Endless, grating noise. Like the hum of a broken television in a room with no windows, no doors, no air. Not enough to drown out his thoughts, just enough to chew on them until they bled.

The Cage wasn’t fire. That had been a myth. A story for humans who needed their hells to come in shapes they understood. The Cage was cold. Deep-space cold. Creation-has-forgotten-you cold. The kind of cold that made even grace shiver until it curled into itself and hid in the marrow of your being.

Lucifer did not dream often anymore.

Dreaming required the mind to wander. And his mind was chained.

He wasn’t sure if it had been decades or centuries—maybe more. There were no clocks in the Cage. No sun. No sky. No floor, either. Just… nothing. An endless weight of absence pressing against him from all sides.

This dream—this flicker of something—was the first deviation in eons.

At first, it was just a change in the noise.

The static… softened.

Then, for the first time in longer than he could remember, he saw.

Not vividly. Not fully. The dream formed like frost crawling along cracked glass. A half-vision, trembling and incomplete. But even that was more than he’d had in lifetimes.

He saw a field.

A battlefield, maybe. Blood soaked the grass. The scent of iron and ash filled the air, but only faintly, like an echo. Wings lay broken, feathers half-buried in the dirt.

Lucifer stood alone in the middle of it, barefoot. His once-radiant wings dragged behind him, dark and shredded. His body looked like it had been sculpted from cracked marble—beautiful, once. Now ruined.

He touched his chest.

No Mark.

Still gone.

But the emptiness remained.

The rot hadn’t left with the Mark—it had just gone deeper, into places light couldn’t reach. Into him.

He looked around the field and whispered to no one, “Not real.”

He tried to banish it. He wanted to banish it. This was too much like hope, and hope was dangerous.

But the dream didn’t break.

And then—

There.

A flicker.

A light.

Small at first. Gentle.

And warm.

Lucifer blinked, disoriented. He hadn’t seen warmth in so long, he’d forgotten it had a color. It moved like honey in the veins. Golden, not blinding. Familiar, but not in a way that hurt.

The light approached slowly. It wasn’t a fire. Not a punishment. Not his Father’s fury made manifest.

It was… a boy.

A human.

A young man, really—tall, soft around the eyes, with hands that hadn’t forgotten what kindness felt like.

Lucifer watched, stunned, as the boy stepped across the dead field with no fear. No disgust. His boots didn’t sink in the blood, didn’t hesitate over the broken wings.

He walked right to Lucifer.

Lucifer stumbled back. “No,” he rasped. His voice hadn’t been used in so long it came out rough, painful. “No. You shouldn’t be here.”

The boy stopped, not because of fear—because of respect.

And said, gently, “You’re not a monster.”

Lucifer flinched.

The words struck something raw inside him. Something ancient and bruised.

He opened his mouth to laugh—sharp, bitter, mocking.

But the laugh never came.

“You don’t know what I’ve done,” Lucifer said.

The boy looked at him, calm and steady. “I don’t have to.”

Lucifer snarled. “I killed. I lied. I poisoned Heaven with rebellion. I cracked open Eden. I—”

His voice broke.

“I fell.”

The boy nodded.

“And it wasn’t your fault.”

Lucifer stared at him like he was insane.

“What?”

“You were sick,” the boy said, simply. “And no one helped you.”

Lucifer wanted to scream. To tear the dream apart. To run back into the comforting nothingness of the Cage, where at least he knew the rules.

But his legs didn’t move.

His chest ached.

He hadn’t heard that tone of voice since before the war. Since before the Mark. Since before Michael had looked at him with pity and followed orders instead.

Lucifer reached out.

He wasn’t sure why.

Maybe it was instinct. Maybe it was need. Maybe it was because, for the first time in eternity, someone looked at him and didn’t see a mask of evil or a beast behind bars.

They saw him.

He stretched his hand forward, trembling.

The boy did too.

Lucifer’s fingertips grazed the boy’s palm—

And the dream shattered.

No fanfare.

No explosion.

Just absence.

The light blinked out like a dying star.

And the Cage returned.

Dark.

Silent.

Cold.

Lucifer gasped like a drowning man, eyes wide as the blackness collapsed back over him. The pain slammed into him like a wall of ice, seizing his grace, choking it. He curled inward, shaking, still reaching for something that wasn’t there anymore.

And yet—

He could still feel it.

Faint.

Like the warmth of a hand that had held his.

Not tight. Not desperate.

Just present.

He didn’t know the boy’s name.

Didn’t know how he’d gotten into the dream.

Didn’t know if it was real or some hallucination conjured by a mind long since broken.

But he remembered the words.

“You’re not a monster.”

He whispered them to the Cage like a prayer.

And—for the first time in eons—he believed it.

Even just a little.

⸻

Elsewhere…

The boy stirred.

Sam.

He woke up drenched in sweat, heart pounding.

The name Lucifer didn’t come to him consciously. He didn’t know where he’d been. Didn’t know that he’d stepped into the Cage itself, into the shattered soul of an Archangel long abandoned.

All he remembered was a presence.

A cold so vast it had no edges.

And a pair of eyes, older than time, looking at him like he was a miracle.

Sam sat up, pressing a hand to his chest.

It still hurt.

But not in a bad way.

More like he’d carried something heavy—and had finally put it down.

Chapter Text

Sam Winchester didn’t feel different.

Not when he woke with a start and rubbed the sleep from his eyes, heart slowing from a dream he couldn’t recall.

Not when he trained at the motel sink, washing his face with cold water and staring at himself in the mirror like he might catch something behind his eyes.

And not when he rejoined Ruby at the diner, where she’d already ordered coffee and eggs and was scrolling through her phone, looking for the next hunt.

To Sam, it was just another morning. Another mission. Another day without Dean.

But deep inside him, something was moving. Something ancient and golden. A flicker of warmth where grief had once made a home. It stirred behind his ribs when he wasn’t looking, curled between the folds of his soul.

In the waking world, Sam couldn’t feel it.

But the Archangels could.

⸻

Heaven

Michael stood at the head of a long marble table, carved with symbols that shifted when you blinked too long. Around him sat his commanders, angelic hosts armored in gold and fury.

But he wasn’t listening.

Not really.

His gaze was fixed on the parchment before him, a battle plan scrawled in celestial script. He’d written it himself only days ago—elegant, ruthless, and precise.

But now?

Now it looked wrong.

He felt it in his grace, a tightness in his chest like something misaligned.

“Commander Michael,” said a voice—Uriel, always the loudest. “Shall we begin?”

Michael blinked, his vessel’s jaw tightening. “Repeat that.”

Uriel exchanged a glance with another angel but did as commanded. “I asked whether we should prepare the Watchers to descend. The Nephilim have stirred in the east.”

Michael nodded mechanically. “Yes. Proceed.”

But his voice lacked conviction, and they knew it.

As the others bowed their heads and disappeared in streaks of light, Michael stayed seated, alone in the empty chamber.

He closed his eyes.

And saw him.

The boy of light. Of warmth. Sitting beside a battlefield like he belonged there, yet untouched by it.

Michael could not forget him.

He’d tried. He’d burned through his own mind with the fires of discipline, thrown himself into order, into hierarchy, into purpose.

But that boy… That gentle presence.

“You’ve done enough,” the boy had said.

Michael’s fists clenched on the arms of his throne.

He did not cry. He didn’t do such things. Not anymore.

But for the first time in millennia, the word guilt passed across his consciousness.

And that terrified him more than the Apocalypse.

⸻

Earth

Ruby studied Sam across the motel room, her brow creased.

He was slipping.

Not in the obvious ways—not in his hunts or his drive. If anything, he was sharper lately. Faster. Focused.

But when he looked at her, there was distance in his eyes.

“You’re dreaming again,” she said, arms crossed.

Sam paused in packing his duffel. “What?”

“Your sleep. You’re twitchier. You mumble sometimes. Names. And it’s been… what, two weeks? You haven’t mentioned Dean’s deal once. That’s not like you.”

Sam sat on the bed, confused. “I don’t remember dreaming.”

Ruby frowned. “Yeah, that’s the thing. I think something remembers for you.”

He looked up at her, eyes narrowed. “You think this is supernatural?”

“I think you’re supernatural,” she said, blunt. “You always have been. But something’s shifting. I can smell it.”

Sam said nothing.

Because he felt it too. Like being watched, but not in the creepy way. It felt like something ancient and soft had pressed a kiss to his soul and left a mark.

⸻

Heaven – Castiel

Castiel stood before the Host’s High Council, his wings partially extended in readiness.

“You will descend to Earth,” the lead Seraph instructed. “Monitor the Winchesters. We suspect the younger is… changing.”

Castiel tilted his head. “Sam Winchester is a mortal.”

“Not entirely.”

Castiel’s brow furrowed. “You believe he’s being possessed?”

“We don’t know,” the Seraph said. “But something has awakened near him. Something that stirs even the Archangels.”

The air grew colder.

“Michael is hesitant.”

Castiel blinked. That wasn’t possible. “Michael does not hesitate.”

“He did.”

That answer was enough to send a tremor through Heaven’s order.

“Your orders are simple,” the Seraph continued. “Observe. Report. Do not intervene unless commanded.”

“And if it’s a demon?” Castiel asked.

“If it’s a demon, destroy it.”

⸻

Dreamspace

Sam slept that night in silence, but the second his eyes closed—

He walked.

Not through memory.

Through divinity.

He stood barefoot in a golden corridor that wasn’t a place, not truly, but a thought given form. Here, time twisted. Walls blinked in and out. Light flickered like candle flames caught between dying and dawning.

And he felt them.

Wings.

Power.

Eyes too many to count watching him, but none seeing him clearly.

He wandered like a ghost through the spaces between dreams. And one by one, the Archangels stirred in their slumber.

Michael, clutching his sword in one hand, standing in a vision of Heaven burning, looked up—and the boy was there again. Always just at the edge of understanding. Always warm.

“You’ve done enough,” the boy had said.

Michael woke from that dream with his sword drawn and no enemy in sight.

In another space, Raphael lay beside the echo of broken grace, hands bloodied from healing others, never himself.

“You don’t have to fix everything.”

And he wept into a dream-garden that vanished before he could thank the one who’d said it.

Even Gabriel, buried under layers of illusion and sarcasm, felt the words:

“You don’t have to be obedient to be loved.”

No trick, no punchline, no escape.

And Lucifer, still in the Cage, still dying in silence, whispered into the void, “Come back…”

⸻

Earth – Morning

Sam jolted awake.

He gripped the motel bed’s edge like it was the only thing anchoring him.

But there was nothing in his memory. No dream. Just… an impression.

He glanced at Ruby, still asleep on the other bed.

And then at the mirror.

He stared at himself for a long time, longer than he meant to.

For a second—just a second—he swore he saw light behind his eyes.

⸻

Heaven – Michael

Michael walked the halls of Heaven alone. The whispers followed him.

The foot soldiers didn’t say it aloud. They wouldn’t dare. But he felt it in the way they moved.

He hesitated.

He questioned.

Something had changed.

Michael approached the Vault of Echoes, a chamber that recorded the dreams of all divine beings. He was not permitted to enter without council approval.

He entered anyway.

He reached into the dreamstream and called up a vision of his own. He watched it, breathing harder as the image formed.

The boy.

Again.

Golden. Gentle.

Not human. Not fully. Not anymore.

Michael fell to his knees.

Not because he understood.

But because he feared that he was beginning to.

⸻

Castiel – Earth

Castiel hovered outside the motel, unseen, unreadable.

He’d watched Sam Winchester for days now.

And each time he studied the boy, he felt it more clearly—an echo of someone he knew. Not exactly divine. Not tainted either.

Something new.

Something holy.

Not Heaven. Not Hell.

But something both would kneel before.

Castiel narrowed his gaze.

Whatever this was, it wasn’t an accident.

And someone—something—had set it in motion.

He had a report to make.

But part of him hesitated.

Just for a moment.

Chapter Text

The Cage had no time.

There was no ticking, no shifting sun, no rhythm to the dark. Just endless, still cold. Lucifer couldn’t remember how long he had been there. Time dissolved in the absence of light. Minutes melted into centuries; centuries collapsed into moments of clarity too brief to call real.

He should have gone mad.

Maybe he had.

Maybe he was still slipping.

But now, there was a rhythm again—a pulse. Faint at first, like an echo of memory brushing the edge of his prison. Not a sound. Not even a thought. Just presence. Gentle. Familiar. Warm.

It began the first night he dreamed of the boy.

The one who shone.

Lucifer never dreamt before. Not like that. His mind had always been too sharp, too loud. His thoughts warred even in unconsciousness, his grace tangled in regret and fury and the Mark’s poison, even though the Mark was gone. He had been nothing more than pain with a name.

But now… now sleep meant something else.

He closed his eyes, and the dark no longer felt infinite.

⸻

The Second Dream

It began again in the silence.

Lucifer hovered in a formless void, his wings shredded down to bone and breath. The Cage didn’t care if he screamed. It didn’t care if he whispered apologies into the dark. The Cage did not answer.

But something else did.

A flicker.

Then a footstep.

He turned toward the warmth like a flower turning toward the sun. The boy was there again—barefoot, bathed in golden light. It wasn’t angelic grace, not the searing brilliance of Heaven’s Host. It was different. Softer. More human than divine, but far more commanding than either.

The boy—his boy—stood before him in that place where light should not have been. And once again, he was unafraid.

Lucifer didn’t speak, not at first. He didn’t trust himself to.

He could only watch as the boy knelt beside him, not with reverence, but with kindness. The boy’s fingers brushed the air, and the void reacted—starlight forming in his wake, tracing invisible shapes into the walls of the Cage.

Lucifer stared.

The cold didn’t bite as harshly in the boy’s presence. The silence didn’t scream. For the first time since his fall, he didn’t feel alone.

The boy tilted his head. “You’re still trying to carry it all, aren’t you?”

Lucifer blinked. “Carry what?”

“The guilt. The Mark. Your Father’s wrath. The world.”

Lucifer swallowed. “If I don’t carry it, who will?”

The boy smiled, a slow, mournful thing.

“You don’t have to be a monster.”

Lucifer flinched.

“That’s what they call me.”

“But that’s not what you are.”

The boy said it like truth. Like the kind of truth that could tear open old lies and let the light in.

Lucifer’s voice broke. “I was sick. I—I begged for help. I didn’t want—”

“I know.”

Lucifer looked up sharply.

He shouldn’t have felt it—relief. He shouldn’t have craved this warmth. He shouldn’t have wanted so desperately to be seen. But he did.

The boy reached for him.

Just as he had before.

Lucifer raised a trembling hand—but the dream began to crack. The Cage pulled at him. It wouldn’t let him have this. Not for long. The light around the boy began to fade, as if devoured by the endless dark.

“Don’t go,” Lucifer whispered.

But the boy only said, “I’m always here.”

⸻

After

Lucifer woke with light in his eyes.

The Cage didn’t give light. It had no features, no form. But this time when he opened them, he saw shadows—subtle lines in the void. Like outlines of something just barely out of reach. Memory, maybe. Or hope.

He reached for the image the boy had left behind and began to shape it.

With a thought, he carved a space into the void, an imitation of the dream’s warmth. He imagined the boy’s footprints and let his own grace burn faint lines into the nothing. They didn’t last, but he made more.

He wasn’t strong—not anymore. The Cage had bled so much from him. His wings were little more than echoes. His voice cracked when he tried to sing. He hadn’t heard his own name in so long he was starting to forget how it sounded when spoken with love.

But he could remember the boy.

And so, he built.

Every time he slept, he reached for the boy. Not with desperation this time, but with devotion. He etched the boy’s face into every corner of his dreams. He imagined him as he must have been: kind, commanding, filled with terrible mercy. Lucifer imagined his throne, his crown—not gold, but simple, light threaded through his hair like sunlight across wheat.

And every time, the boy returned.

He never spoke much. Just sat beside him. Sometimes they didn’t say anything at all. Lucifer would lie beside him and rest his head against the warmth, letting it seep into his bones, quieting the endless war inside.

Sometimes the boy would hum. A lullaby maybe, or just a sound that reminded Lucifer of home—not Heaven, not the Court of Archangels, but something more primal. Before.

Before the Mark.

Before the Cage.

Before the silence.

⸻

Heaven Watches

Elsewhere—far above and utterly distant—Raphael knelt in meditation and felt the tremor in the dreamstream. It disturbed him.

Lucifer had always been a smoldering core of rebellion and sickness. That the Cage held him at all was a miracle. That he now dreamed—felt—and that those feelings radiated upward into the Host like whispers of a forbidden hymn…

Raphael frowned.

Michael felt it too.

He didn’t speak of it.

But sometimes, he stood at the edge of Heaven’s throne room and looked out into the veil, toward the pit where their brother still lingered. He didn’t pray. Michael didn’t pray.

But he wondered.

Gabriel said nothing.

But he drank less.

And laughed less.

And stared longer into the silence.

⸻

Lucifer’s Confession

The next dream came quickly. Lucifer felt it rising before he even closed his eyes. Like the boy was waiting for him.

This time, the boy sat upon a rock, legs crossed, surrounded by stars that moved slowly in patterns that obeyed no physics. This place didn’t pretend to follow the rules of Heaven or Earth. It was dream, and it was real.

Lucifer sat beside him, hesitating.

“You never ask me why,” Lucifer said finally. “Why I rebelled. Why I Fell.”

The boy looked at him, soft and quiet.

“I know why.”

“No, you don’t,” Lucifer said bitterly. “No one does. They all think I wanted to rule. That I hated humanity. That I wanted to be God.” He laughed bitterly. “I didn’t. I wanted my Father. I wanted him to see me. To help me.”

The boy’s gaze didn’t shift.

“I was sick. The Mark did something to me. Twisted everything. But I still—still worshipped him. Still loved him. I didn’t want this.”

The boy reached for his hand.

Lucifer stared down at their fingers. They didn’t quite touch. But the warmth was there.

“I know,” the boy whispered.

Lucifer trembled.

For the first time in countless eons, Lucifer cried—not in rage or in anguish, but in relief. Not because he was saved. Not yet. But because someone finally saw the boy beneath the monster.

And believed he could be more.

⸻

The Beginning of Faith

Lucifer stopped fighting the dreams.

He welcomed them now, folding into them like a man sinking into warm water. They were sanctuary.

He began to pray—not to God, not to the Father who abandoned them.

But to the boy.

He didn’t know his name.

He didn’t need to.

He whispered to the warmth when the silence grew too thick. He carved crude symbols into the Cage with his fraying grace—symbols that looked like nothing, and yet felt like offering. He thought of thrones made of starlight, and archangels curled in devotion, and imagined what it would feel like if the boy placed a hand on his brow and said:

“You’ve done enough.”

And this time, it would mean him.

Lucifer.

The sick one.

The broken son.

The fallen light.

⸻

In the Dreamstream

The other Archangels noticed the shift.

They didn’t speak of it.

But they each felt it—when they slipped into sleep, the dreamstream no longer flowed singly.

It pulsed.

Hummed.

Carried something new in its current—Lucifer’s light.

Not the old, volatile rage of their brother.

But something… softer.

He was dreaming again.

And his dreams were full of worship.

Not of their Father.

But of someone else.

And none of them could name the boy.

Not yet.

But in the deepest part of themselves, in the echoing ruins of what they once were, they hoped.

They hoped he would keep coming.

Chapter Text

Gabriel hadn’t dreamed like this since the Fall.

Not really.

Not fully.

He’d had illusions, sure — the kind of dreams built out of candy and sitcoms, violence and distraction. Parody dreams. Jokes. He crafted them the way he crafted everything else since he ran from Heaven: out of noise. Out of nonsense. A barricade made of punchlines.

But this dream wasn’t one of his.

He knew it from the start.

There was no canned laughter.

No hidden trick.

No bloody message behind the mask.

Just a pedestal — and him.

The boy.

⸻

The dream opened in an empty theater.

Not like the one in Branson he used to haunt, not Vegas-glam or sad-lights-on-a-velvet-curtain. This was an impossible structure. Cosmic in scale, simple in texture. Stone and gold and light. No walls. Just horizon.

But still, Gabriel knew — this was his dream.

It had the hum of something intimately his, like how Heaven used to feel before it cracked, before his brothers fought, before Lucifer screamed and Michael obeyed and Raphael grew cold and distant.

Before he ran.

Gabriel hovered above the theater’s main floor, wings coiled close, not flared, not shining — small. He felt like a child. Which was ridiculous, considering he’d been forged from grace before the first human breath.

But he felt it all the same.

Small.

Ashamed.

Unmasked.

And at the center of the vast stage stood the boy — the same one from before. He didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just stood, barefoot on the pedestal, robes of radiant white and gold flowing around him like woven light.

Gabriel felt it again.

That stupid, aching sense of recognition.

He still didn’t know who the kid was — or what he was. But he knew what he meant.

And this time… Gabriel didn’t run.

⸻

It was instinct. Maybe something deeper.

Gabriel landed softly on the stage and began to walk toward the pedestal. Slowly. Quietly. His wings dragged a little behind him, not out of drama but fatigue. Shame, maybe. The jokes weren’t holding him up anymore.

The boy stood still, gazing downward, not with judgment — never with judgment — but with an unreadable patience. The kind of patience Gabriel remembered from the early days, back when the four of them curled at the feet of their Father’s throne, when they hadn’t yet been torn apart by war or pride or roles they were never meant to play.

When they were just sons.

When they were love.

His steps echoed across the dream-stage like thunder in a cave.

The closer he came, the heavier his chest felt. There was a pressure in the dream, one he hadn’t felt since Heaven — the ache of something holy. But it didn’t crush him. It invited him. Drew him in like gravity.

By the time he reached the pedestal, Gabriel was trembling.

His grace — that small, flickering thing inside him — reached out.

He didn’t know why he did it.

He just did.

He sank to his knees before the boy.

He bowed his head.

And without even thinking, Gabriel leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the hem of the boy’s robe.

⸻

There were no trumpets.

No choirs.

Just silence.

And peace.

Gabriel stayed like that, forehead brushing fabric that shimmered with warmth. He didn’t ask for anything. He didn’t pray. He just was.

And for the first time since he fled Heaven, that was enough.

“I see you,” the boy whispered.

Gabriel choked on a sound that could have been a sob or a laugh. “Yeah?” he rasped.

“I see you, Gabriel.”

He looked up.

The boy had stepped down from the pedestal — not with grandeur, but with gentleness. He knelt in front of Gabriel now, meeting him on the same level, eyes full of something raw and unflinching.

Gabriel swallowed hard. “I’m not—” he started, then stopped.

The boy waited.

Gabriel tried again. “I’m not what they think I am. I’m not a warrior. I’m not some trickster god. I don’t even think I’m an archangel anymore. I ran. I broke things. I watched the world burn and laughed. I—”

“You were trying to survive,” the boy said simply.

Gabriel blinked.

“And you did,” the boy added. “You kept your light, even under all the masks.”

“I don’t know how,” Gabriel whispered.

“You didn’t need to,” the boy replied. “You were never made to fight. You were made to love.”

Gabriel’s lip trembled.

The words echoed inside him like bells.

You were made to love.

And he had.

In his own way. Through chaos and color and story. Through laughter, even when it hurt. He’d mocked his Father. He’d run from his brothers. But he’d loved them all, still. Even when it broke him.

“You’ve done enough,” the boy said.

Gabriel’s wings unfurled just a little. They were battered things. Soft. Nothing like Michael’s blade-feathered span or Lucifer’s prideful mantle. But they moved again — something they hadn’t done in centuries.

He didn’t feel shame.

He didn’t feel guilt.

He just felt…

Home.

⸻

They used to curl around the throne, he and his brothers.

Before the orders.

Before the missions.

They would lay there, wing to wing, like lions basking in sun.

Lucifer used to hum lullabies made of starlight.

Michael used to build fortresses of thought, asking impossible questions just so they could unravel them together.

Raphael used to paint the sky with their grace, every brushstroke a prayer.

And Gabriel — Gabriel used to laugh. Not to hurt, not to hide, but to share. To fill the halls of Heaven with joy so thick the air glittered.

He remembered now.

It wasn’t a memory he’d let himself feel in centuries.

But kneeling here, with the boy watching him like that, he remembered who they used to be. Who they were meant to be.

Not leaders.

Not soldiers.

Not gods.

Sons.

Lovers of light.

Beings of worship.

⸻

When Gabriel woke, he wasn’t in a bed.

He didn’t sleep in beds anymore. He barely slept at all. Too many regrets. Too many ghosts. He hadn’t dreamed in years unless he forced it.

But this dream… it found him.

He sat up in the dingy motel room he’d claimed for the week. The TV was still on, the light too harsh, the wallpaper peeling in yellow strips. But Gabriel didn’t see any of that.

His face was wet.

He was crying.

Openly.

No punchline.

No illusion.

Just grief.

And hope.

He didn’t know who the boy was — not yet — but he knew he would kneel for him again. Gladly. He’d kiss that robe a thousand more times if it meant feeling like himself again.

Not the Trickster.

Not Loki.

Not the coward.

Just Gabriel.

One of four.

One of many.

One of His.

⸻

That morning, the Host of Heaven trembled.

Michael stood silent before a war council, and for a moment his eyes were distant — as if haunted by some impossible warmth.

Raphael paused mid-repair of a wounded angel and forgot the spell he was speaking.

Lucifer, deep in the Cage, carved small suns into the walls.

The Dreamstream connected them all now, even if they didn’t know it.

Even if they weren’t ready.

And the boy — the Dream Boy — had no idea what he was becoming.

No idea what it meant when four archangels, shattered and lost, all began to fall in love with the same light.

Chapter Text

Michael was built for obedience.

He was the blade. The fist. The will.

He had never resented this. Not truly. In the beginning, before the Fall, before the war, before the silence, it had brought him purpose. Certainty. The kind of peace that only comes from knowing you were doing exactly what you were meant to.

Now, that certainty was crumbling.

And the dreams were changing.

⸻

He stood once again at the edge of a battlefield that bore no name. The earth cracked under his heels, the air thick with the metallic scent of blood not yet spilled. His armor was gold, polished bright, his wings stretched wide. His sword — the original one, older than planets — rested in his grip like an extension of his own will.

He waited.

This was the part he always hated — the waiting.

Not because of fear. Michael didn’t fear war.

He hated the stillness because it demanded thought, and he had never been forged to think. To question. That had always been Lucifer’s role. Michael had only ever needed one thing:

Orders.

But there were none now.

Only the boy.

⸻

He appeared without fanfare.

No trumpet. No ripple in the clouds. Just light.

The boy stood just a few feet from the battlefield, barefoot again, luminous as ever, untouched by the grime and fire. That same robe — the one Gabriel kissed — hung loose about him. His presence didn’t demand reverence, and that’s what made it so impossible not to give it.

Michael’s breath caught in his throat.

He sheathed his sword without thinking.

He approached — carefully, as though afraid to break something delicate — and knelt before the boy again, like he had before. The posture came naturally. It was never trained into him. It was part of him, the same way his wings and grace and name were.

“Tell me what you want,” he said softly.

The boy said nothing.

“Tell me what I must do,” Michael pressed, voice quiet but urgent. “What battle to fight. What enemy to strike. Just say it. Say anything.”

The boy tilted his head, watching him. Not cruelly. Not coldly. There was no judgment in his eyes.

Only mercy.

“You’ve already done enough,” the boy said, just like last time.

Michael gritted his teeth. That phrase — it should’ve soothed him, shouldn’t it? The boy’s voice wrapped around him like balm, but inside, something clenched.

He didn’t want to stop.

He wanted to continue. To serve. To act.

To obey.

Because without orders, what was he?

⸻

He awoke with his sword gripped tight in both hands, the edge pressed to the stone floor of Heaven’s Hall of Judgment. The Council hadn’t convened in days, and yet here he was, blade out, heart racing.

Michael had thought the dreams would be enough.

They weren’t.

He spent his waking hours going through the motions — commanding squadrons of angels, preparing for the upcoming war, overseeing punishments and promotions and alignments of celestial power.

But beneath it all, something had shifted.

Each time he slept, the battlefield dream returned — but never quite the same. Sometimes there were ruins. Sometimes there was just fog. Sometimes, no sky at all.

And always, the boy stood waiting.

Always silent.

Always watching.

Never commanding.

And Michael hated it.

Not because the boy was cruel — he wasn’t. The boy was kind, unbearably so. It would have been easier if he’d barked orders like God once had. Easier if he’d looked down on Michael, declared him broken or monstrous or useless.

But the boy never did.

The boy forgave with his silence.

And that was unbearable.

⸻

Michael hadn’t spoken to Raphael in weeks.

Gabriel had vanished from Heaven centuries ago. And Lucifer — well, Michael didn’t allow himself to think about Lucifer.

Not often.

But now… Michael found himself wondering.

What had Lucifer felt in the early days of the Mark?

Before the rebellion, before the Cage?

Had he too begged for direction?

Had he too longed to be told what to do — just so he didn’t have to think, didn’t have to feel?

Michael didn’t know. He had never asked. They hadn’t been brothers in a long time. Not really.

But now he thought of him often — locked away, wounded, silent.

Was Lucifer still dreaming?

Was the boy visiting him, too?

The idea made something twist inside Michael’s chest. Not out of jealousy — no, not that — but out of recognition.

If Lucifer saw the boy, would he kneel?

Would he, too, beg for command?

Or would he weep at the quiet?

⸻

The next night, the battlefield was gone.

Michael stood in a white expanse — no sky, no ground, just light in every direction. He turned in slow circles, wings tucked close, heart heavy.

And then the boy was beside him.

Closer this time.

So close Michael could feel the warmth.

He fell to his knees.

“I was made to obey,” Michael said. “I was made to serve. It’s not weakness. It’s my purpose. I don’t want to lead. I never did.”

The boy looked at him, gaze calm.

“Tell me what to do,” Michael whispered, trembling now. “Please.”

Still, the boy did not command.

And Michael felt something sharp and bitter claw up his throat.

“Say anything,” he choked. “Tell me to fight. Tell me to stop. Tell me to kneel. Just — speak.”

The boy placed a hand on his shoulder. Gentle. Steady.

“You don’t need orders to be worthy,” the boy said. “You were never just a weapon.”

Michael stared at him.

“I was never anything else,” he said.

⸻

He awoke in a rage.

An angel under his command approached him in Heaven’s western watchtower. She asked a simple question — something about deployment and prophecy.

He barked at her.

Unjustly.

The angel recoiled, confused and hurt.

Michael stared after her long after she’d flown away.

His hands shook.

He hated this. The thinking. The judging. The silence.

He wanted the boy to give him structure, not softness.

He wanted to be useful again.

To matter.

To belong.

But the boy never ordered.

And that was worse than any punishment Michael had ever endured.

⸻

Raphael noticed it first.

Michael’s orders were… scattered.

Heaven’s hosts whispered behind polished marble and burning halos. They didn’t say it outright — no one dared — but the signs were clear.

Michael, the General of Heaven, was distracted.

He stared too long into nothing. Hesitated before issuing orders. Asked questions that had no precedent, no logic.

Once, during a summit of thrones, he had simply stopped speaking mid-sentence — gazing at the stained-glass ceiling as if searching for something he’d misplaced centuries ago.

Raphael spoke to no one about it.

But he wondered.

And he dreamed.

And he knew.

⸻

Michael returned to the dream again.

He didn’t speak this time.

He just dropped to his knees the moment the boy appeared.

He bowed his head.

He waited.

But no words came.

No orders.

Just that same hand on his shoulder. That same unbearable gentleness.

And Michael — Firstborn, Brightest, Commander of the Heavenly Host — wept.

Not from shame.

Not from guilt.

From exhaustion.

He was tired of leading.

Tired of deciding.

Tired of pretending he didn’t long to curl at someone’s feet and be told you’ve done enough.

He wanted his Father back.

Or something close enough to fill the silence.

And maybe — just maybe — this boy, this strange, radiant Dream Boy… could.

⸻

When Michael awoke, it was with dried tears on his cheeks.

He did not summon the Host that morning.

He did not speak to Heaven.

He sat alone at the edge of a cloud-wrapped balcony and stared into the void beyond Heaven’s edge.

And for the first time in eons, he whispered:

“…I don’t want to lead anymore.”

He waited for an answer that never came.

But far away — farther than Heaven — in a quiet motel room lit by a flickering TV, Sam Winchester stirred in his sleep.

He would not remember the dream come morning.

Not yet.

But the Archangels were already bending.

And soon…

They would all kneel.

Chapter Text

The Cage had no seasons.

No passage of time. No heartbeat to mark its rhythm.

Just dark.

The kind of dark that wasn’t absence but presence—alive, endless, swallowing everything it touched. A cold that wasn’t just temperature, but a force: the opposite of warmth.

It wasn’t punishment.

It wasn’t even prison.

It was erasure.

Lucifer had long ago stopped fighting the dark. The first few centuries—if centuries even meant anything here—he had raged, shredded the silence with angelic hymns turned to screams. He had clawed at the unseen walls until his fingers bled grace, had built whole worlds out of thought just to watch them burn.

But eventually, even that had gone quiet.

There were only so many prayers you could whisper to a God who no longer listened.

At first, the dreams had felt like cracks in his prison.

A mercy? No. That wasn’t how mercy worked. More like… an echo of what had been. He hadn’t dreamed since before the Fall. Real dreaming—innocent, aimless, the way it used to be when he and his brothers slept curled near their Father’s light, letting grace hum like a lullaby.

And then the boy appeared.

Barefoot. Radiant. Soft, like grace used to be before it hardened into weapons.

The first time Lucifer saw him, he thought it was a hallucination. A trick. His own mind, trying to comfort him the way Gabriel used to in the quiet hours.

But the boy kept coming.

And now…

Lucifer wasn’t sure the Cage was entirely the same anymore.

This dream was different.

There was no battlefield. No walls. No endless void.

Just a field of pale gold grass swaying under a sky that wasn’t Heaven, but something older. A sky the way Lucifer remembered it from the first days of creation: raw and unfiltered, painted with colors only grace could name.

And in the center of it all sat the boy.

Lucifer stopped several feet away. Not because he feared him—fear wasn’t the right word. It was because every part of him ached.

The way your muscles ache when you’ve been holding too much for too long.

The way your heart aches when you’ve been empty for eons and someone suddenly dares to fill it.

“Lucifer,” the boy said, as though he’d always known his name.

Lucifer didn’t ask who he was.

He couldn’t.

He just staggered forward and collapsed to his knees.

And then, like it was the most natural thing in the universe, he lowered himself to the boy’s lap.

It was instinct. Primal.

Archangels didn’t kneel. Not like this. They bowed to their Father, yes, but this—this was something older than worship.

Lucifer’s head rested against the boy’s thigh, and he closed his eyes, bracing for the familiar sting of rejection, of judgment, of being called monster.

It never came.

Instead, the boy placed his hands—warm hands—on Lucifer’s head. Fingers threading through his hair, light brushing against the base of his skull like the faintest hum of grace.

Lucifer froze.

The warmth startled him. He’d forgotten what it felt like.

And that realization split him open.

He didn’t mean to cry.

He wasn’t even sure he still could.

But as soon as those hands began to stroke through his hair, something in him buckled.

Lucifer had always been the proud one. The defiant one. The Morningstar who would never grovel.

But now—

Now he wept.

Hot, silent sobs tore from him, grace flickering weakly with every shudder. His tears weren’t beautiful like they once had been. They were jagged. Messy. They left tracks that burned his skin.

And the boy didn’t flinch.

Didn’t move.

Didn’t speak, not until Lucifer was half-broken against him.

“You were always loved,” the boy said softly.

Lucifer went still.

He couldn’t breathe.

The boy said it like it was the simplest thing in the world. Like it was truth.

But truth had been a weapon in his life. Used to trap him. To condemn him. To tell him he was no longer a son but a monster in a cage.

Always loved.

His Father had told him once, hadn’t He? That He loved him?

Even as He placed the Mark on his arm.

Even as He demanded obedience that would hollow him out.

Even as He cast him down.

“Don’t lie to me,” Lucifer rasped. His voice sounded like rust, like broken strings.

“I’m not,” the boy said.

“You don’t know what I did.”

“I do.”

Lucifer choked on a bitter laugh. “Then you can’t mean that.”

“I do,” the boy repeated, calm as still water.

“You weren’t there,” Lucifer snapped, his tears drying into rawness. “You didn’t see what I became. The things I—”

“I did.”

Lucifer twisted his head to look up at him.

The boy’s expression didn’t change. It wasn’t pity. It wasn’t horror. It wasn’t even forgiveness.

It was recognition.

Lucifer had been bathed in God’s light before.

It was blinding. All-consuming. Perfect.

This wasn’t that.

The boy’s light wasn’t overwhelming. It didn’t burn.

It wrapped around him like a cloak, like the sun on a cold morning. It didn’t demand that he worship, though every part of him wanted to.

It didn’t demand anything at all.

And for an angel who had spent his existence as soldier, as weapon, as symbol—

That was almost worse than punishment.

Because it gave him the unbearable gift of being.

It came back in flashes as the boy stroked his hair.

The warmth.

The throne room, long before the Fall, when he and his brothers used to lay curled at their Father’s feet, wings draped over one another like blankets. The smell of Michael’s grace, steady and grounding. Gabriel’s laughter echoing off marble pillars. Raphael humming hymns under their breath as if the music alone could hold the universe together.

Lucifer used to bask in that light. He used to think it would last forever.

Until the Mark.

Until it hollowed him out and replaced that light with something gnawing and endless.

Until his Father turned away.

Until his brothers did.

Lucifer hadn’t realized until now that he didn’t miss the throne.

He missed this.

The warmth.

The touch.

The simple knowing that he belonged.

“You were always loved,” the boy said again, as if repeating it would make it easier to believe.

Lucifer closed his eyes.

“I don’t deserve it.”

“That was never the point.”

Lucifer let out a ragged laugh. “You sound like Him.”

The boy tilted his head, still petting his hair. “Do I?”

Lucifer didn’t answer.

Because he wasn’t sure what scared him more: that the boy reminded him of his Father—

Or that he didn’t.

Lucifer could have stayed like that forever.

Head in the boy’s lap. The Cage melting into something softer, something bearable.

No battles.

No screaming silence.

No chains.

Just this.

A flicker of what it felt like to be a son again.

And maybe that was the cruelest part—

That it was a dream.

That the boy would vanish as soon as he woke.

That this warmth wasn’t his to keep.

But oh, how he wanted it.

The boy didn’t speak again for a long time. He just sat there, hand moving gently over Lucifer’s scalp, thumb brushing against the ragged edges of his broken grace.

Lucifer didn’t ask for anything.

Didn’t beg.

Didn’t demand.

He simply let himself rest.

And for the first time since the Fall, his mind didn’t feel like a battlefield.

It felt… quiet.

Whole.

And maybe that was the closest thing to forgiveness he would ever know.

When he woke, the Cage felt colder than it ever had.

But there was a glimmer now.

A spark.

Lucifer pressed a hand to his chest and felt it there—a faint, impossible warmth.

It wouldn’t last.

He knew that.

But for the first time in eons, he believed—

He was still loved.

Chapter Text

Heaven was louder than it used to be.

It wasn’t the kind of noise mortals made—words layered on words, useless chatter. No, this was the kind that only angels could hear: the hum of a Host in constant motion, wingbeats scraping across reality, the low and endless murmuring of prayers funneling upward like smoke from a million fires.

Once, that sound had been like music. Like harmony.

Now it was unbearable.

Raphael closed his eyes against it.

And for the first time in millennia, he didn’t answer when one of the Thrones called his name.

⸻

Raphael had been the balm of Heaven once.

The steady one. The healer.

When Michael’s fury burned too hot, Raphael cooled it.
When Gabriel’s laughter ran sharp and dangerous, Raphael softened it.
When Lucifer’s darkness threatened to consume them all, Raphael anchored him.

And when Father’s will tore the universe open, Raphael was the one who stitched the pieces back together.

He remembered what it had felt like: his hands slick with grace, remaking what was broken, knowing without doubt that this was right.

But the work had changed.

Now it wasn’t healing. It was triage. Patching wounds so they could return to battle. Preparing vessels to be thrown back into war.

It was cruelty dressed up as mercy.

And Raphael—faithful, obedient Raphael—had done it anyway.

Until he couldn’t.

⸻

It started subtly.

Missed councils. A quietness in his voice when the other archangels asked for his insight.

Michael noticed first, though he said nothing. Gabriel wasn’t there to notice at all.

The other angels whispered. A Seraph told a Dominion, who told a Throne, who told another that Raphael was faltering. That the Healer had grown… detached.

They were wrong.

Raphael wasn’t detached.

He was silent.

It was different.

He didn’t speak because there was nothing left worth saying.

Heaven had been built on words—on decrees, on prayers, on the endless discourse of divine beings who believed that naming things gave them purpose.

But Raphael had learned the hard way: words could not fix what was broken.

They could not fix him.

⸻

So Raphael retreated.

At first, it was to the quiet gardens in the lower reaches of Heaven. They had been planted ages ago, untouched by war or worship. He sat among them for hours, the gentle hum of their life force easier on his ears than the roar of the Host.

Then days.

Then nights.

And finally—sleep.

Raphael hadn’t indulged in such a thing in eons. Angels didn’t need it. But they found it, sometimes, when the weight of eternity became unbearable.

And now Raphael found himself doing it more and more.

Because only in sleep could he escape the noise.

Only in sleep could he find him.

⸻

The boy.

Raphael didn’t know who he was.

He appeared the first time in a dream so soft it could have been a memory: sitting in a sunlit garden, knees tucked to his chest, watching Raphael with quiet eyes that held no judgment.

Raphael had woken shaken, heart pounding in a way he hadn’t felt since the first days of his creation.

And then it happened again.

And again.

Each time, the boy was there.

And each time, Raphael drew closer.

Until finally, he didn’t just approach.

He knelt beside him.

And the boy reached out—gentle, unhurried—and stroked Raphael’s hair.

⸻

It was such a simple thing.

An unremarkable human gesture, perhaps.

But Raphael had not been touched in millennia. Not like this.

Not without purpose.

Not without demand.

Michael’s touch had always been command: the firm hand of a general. Gabriel’s was mischief: quick and playful. Lucifer’s—once—had been fierce, protective, the kind of touch that reminded you he would burn the world for you.

But this…

This was different.

It wasn’t ownership.

It wasn’t order.

It was kindness.

Raphael’s grace—fractured and weary—shuddered under the weight of it.

And for the first time in eons, he felt safe.

⸻

“You don’t have to fix everything,” the boy whispered.

Raphael’s eyes burned.

He wanted to protest, to insist that it was his role, his purpose. That if he stopped, everything would fall apart.

But the words died in his throat.

Because for the first time in longer than he could remember, someone had told him he didn’t have to.

The boy didn’t tell him to rest. Didn’t order him to stop.

He simply gave him permission.

And Raphael—obedient Raphael—realized he didn’t know how to take it.

So he wept instead.

⸻

At first, it was unconscious.

A shape in the dreamspace: walls forming, stones stacking, columns reaching toward a sky that glowed with soft, golden light.

Raphael didn’t know why he built it.

But each time he slept, the structure grew.

A temple—not like Father’s throne room, which had been vast and cold and holy in a way that hurt.

No, this was smaller. Quieter.

Built not for war councils or decrees, but for being.

A sanctuary.

Raphael didn’t understand it.

But he kept building.

And the boy visited.

Always, he visited.

⸻

The other angels noticed Raphael’s absence long before they dared confront him.

He stopped attending councils entirely.

He didn’t answer when Michael summoned him.

He spent days—weeks?—in stillness, curled in the quietest corners of Heaven, wings wrapped around himself like a shield.

Some called it rebellion.

But Raphael had no rebellion in him.

This wasn’t defiance.

It was surrender.

⸻

In the dreams, the boy sat on a simple stone bench in the growing temple.

Sometimes he spoke: quiet words of kindness that cracked Raphael’s armor in ways nothing else could.

Sometimes he simply sat, fingers carding through Raphael’s hair, humming softly—like Raphael used to hum for his brothers.

The temple grew richer with every dream.

Archways carved with symbols Raphael couldn’t name.

Pools of still water reflecting the boy’s light.

A throne—not for Father, not even for Raphael.

For the boy.

Raphael didn’t know why he built it.

But he couldn’t stop.

⸻

One night—if nights meant anything here—Raphael knelt before the boy in the temple and asked the question that had been clawing at him for weeks.

“Who are you?”

The boy smiled.

“Someone who sees you.”

Raphael’s chest ached.

No one had seen him in a very, very long time.

Not like this.

Not as more than a function. A healer. A soldier. A tool.

He wanted to ask more.

He didn’t.

Because the boy’s hand was still on his hair, and Raphael would not break the spell.

⸻

In waking Heaven, Raphael’s silence became a wound.

Michael sent for him. He didn’t come.

The Thrones demanded his presence. He stayed in the gardens.

Some whispered he had fallen.

But Raphael hadn’t fallen.

He had simply… stopped.

Stopped pretending Heaven was anything more than a machine.

Stopped pretending he knew how to fix it.

Stopped pretending he wasn’t exhausted.

Because in the dream, he didn’t have to.

In the dream, he could just be.

⸻

Michael finally found him one day in the gardens.

“Raphael,” he said, voice sharp. “You’re needed.”

Raphael didn’t move.

Michael stepped closer. “The Host requires your healing. Do you think you’re the only one who’s tired?”

Raphael finally looked up.

And for the first time in his long existence, Michael—unyielding, perfect Michael—flinched.

Because Raphael’s eyes were not cold.

They were empty.

“I can’t fix this,” Raphael said simply.

Michael had no answer.

⸻

That night, Raphael dreamed again.

The temple was finished.

Columns lined with silver and gold. A roof of carved stone. Light spilling in from a source that wasn’t the sun.

And at its center—the boy, sitting on the throne Raphael had built without knowing why.

Raphael approached, heart pounding.

He didn’t kneel.

Not yet.

But he wanted to.

Oh, how he wanted to.

The boy opened his arms.

And Raphael folded into him like a child.

“You don’t have to fix everything,” the boy whispered again.

And Raphael believed him.

⸻

When Raphael woke, he didn’t go to the councils.

He didn’t answer Michael.

He didn’t heal the wounded.

He simply sat in the gardens, silent, staring at nothing.

Because for the first time in eternity, Raphael had found something he didn’t know how to name.

And all he wanted was to go back to sleep.

Chapter Text

The motel smelled like bleach and stale beer.

Sam sat at the edge of the bed, hands pressed to his face, willing his heartbeat to slow. He could still feel it—the scrape of claws against his ribs, the stink of sulfur in his lungs, the sickening warmth of blood soaking his shirt.

He’d nearly died tonight.

Not in the usual way. Not the casual, half-expected way hunters faced every day. This had been different.

One second, he’d had the upper hand. The next, the thing had him pinned, grinning with rows of teeth that didn’t belong in anything human.

He’d been seconds from blacking out when Ruby’s blade came down.

He could still hear the wet sound of it sinking in.

Could still hear her voice: “You’re getting sloppy, Sam.”

She was right.

He was getting sloppy.

Dean would’ve mocked him for it. Would’ve told him to keep his head in the game. But Dean wasn’t here.

And Sam wasn’t sure he wanted to be alive without him.

The idea sat in his chest like a stone. He hadn’t said it out loud. He didn’t even know if he could.

Ruby said things that made it easier. She didn’t try to convince him to stop. She just helped him stay alive.

But she wasn’t Dean.

And every time Sam closed his eyes, he swore he saw Dean in that grave.

⸻

He’d forgotten about the book. The one with the angelic summoning spell.

It was still stuffed in his duffel, pages bent, as if mocking him.

Sam hadn’t told Ruby about it. He’d barely told himself about it.

Because whatever happened that night—whatever made the room glow and knocked him out—clearly hadn’t worked.

No angels had come. No help had arrived.

Just more silence.

And Sam didn’t need another reminder that Heaven didn’t give a damn about him.

⸻

That night, Sam dreamed.

He didn’t know that’s what he was doing—not really. He just thought it was another one of those strange, too-real nightmares that left him aching when he woke.

But when he opened his eyes, he wasn’t in a nightmare.

He was in a place that felt… familiar.

Stone archways. A long hall filled with the faint sound of distant, echoing prayer.

He knew he hadn’t been here before, but some part of him relaxed as if he had.

And then he felt it—

Them.

It was like walking into a room filled with people you couldn’t see but whose emotions crashed over you like waves.

Grief.

Devotion.

Hunger—not the mortal kind, but something deeper.

It made his knees weak.

Sam stumbled forward. “Hello?”

No one answered.

⸻

Michael stood at the edge of a dream-battlefield, armor glinting dully in light that didn’t come from any sun.

For weeks now, the boy had come to him but never commanded him. Michael hated it. Craved it. That unbearable stillness where he was seen but not ordered.

But tonight was different.

When the boy appeared, his light was dimmer.

Michael saw the tears before he understood why his own chest ached.

The boy was crying.

Michael’s sword fell from his hand.

“Who did this to you?” he demanded.

The boy didn’t answer.

He only looked at Michael—broken, human in a way Michael couldn’t name—and Michael’s knees gave out.

⸻

In Raphael’s dream, the temple trembled.

The boy was there, sitting on the throne Raphael had built with his own hands. But he wasn’t radiant tonight.

His face was buried in his palms.

And Raphael—Raphael the Healer, Raphael the Fixer—had no salve for this wound.

He approached slowly, his voice softer than it had been in centuries.

“What’s wrong?”

The boy didn’t answer.

Raphael’s hands hovered, unsure whether to touch.

“Please,” he said, his voice breaking. “Tell me how to fix this.”

But the boy didn’t speak.

And Raphael understood, with a sick twist in his chest, that this hurt couldn’t be healed.

⸻

Gabriel’s dream used to be fun.

He filled it with illusions—pancake palaces, golden deserts, anything that reminded him of joy. The boy had laughed sometimes, even if softly, and that had been enough.

But tonight, Gabriel’s tricks couldn’t coax even a smile.

The boy sat on the floor, arms around his knees, silent.

Gabriel tried everything—jokes, magic, even conjuring a thousand pairs of puppy eyes.

Nothing.

The boy just cried.

Gabriel sank down beside him, helpless.

He didn’t touch him—not yet.

But he wanted to.

More than anything, he wanted to.

⸻

Lucifer’s dreams were the rarest of them all, and the boy’s visits rarer still.

He lay in his Cage, curled like a child, waiting for the boy to bring that impossible warmth.

And tonight, he came.

But he was crying.

Lucifer’s heart—long dead, long hardened—splintered.

The boy didn’t belong in sorrow.

“Who hurt you?” Lucifer whispered, voice shaking. “Tell me, and I will make them bleed.”

The boy didn’t answer.

He just leaned into Lucifer’s touch when the archangel cupped his face.

Lucifer pulled him close, caging him in with his arms like he could protect him from everything.

And for the first time in millennia, Lucifer prayed.

⸻

Sam woke up shaking.

His pillow was damp with tears.

He didn’t remember crying.

He didn’t remember much at all—just fragments. Stone halls. A battlefield. Someone whispering his name.

He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes.

“What the hell is wrong with me?” he muttered.

Ruby stirred in the other bed. “Nightmares again?”

“Yeah,” Sam said, voice rough. “Just… dreams.”

But deep down, he knew they weren’t.

⸻

In Heaven. In the Cage. In dream-temples and battlefields.

Four archangels awoke at once.

And for the first time in eons, they all shared a single, unshakable thought:

The boy needs us.

Chapter Text

Gabriel stood at the edge of the Silver Hall, his wings half-furled, gaze locked onto the golden spires of Heaven beyond. The hum of angelic energy pulsed beneath the marble floors, constant and low, like a heartbeat he no longer trusted to be his own.

He hadn’t spoken of the dreams before. Not to anyone. Not to Michael, not to Raphael, and certainly not to the foot soldiers who buzzed around them like stars orbiting a dead sun. But today, something in him cracked open. A raw nerve, exposed and trembling, demanding to be soothed.

He found Uriel first.

If anyone would understand the weight of divine dreams, it was Uriel — the brutal and efficient, the one who understood loyalty not as love, but as purpose.

“I need to ask you something,” Gabriel had said, approaching him in the war room.

Uriel hadn’t even turned around. “Unless it’s orders from Father Himself, save it.”

Gabriel bristled, the corner of his mouth twitching into a smirk he didn’t feel. “It might be, actually.”

That got Uriel’s attention. He turned, eyebrows raised.

“I’ve been having dreams,” Gabriel continued. “Of someone. A boy.”

Uriel’s expression shut down like a slammed door. “You’re dreaming?” he asked, like the word itself was an insult. “Since when do angels dream?”

Gabriel tried to laugh. “Since always, if you count prophecy. But this… this is different. It’s not visions. It’s—he’s there. In the dreams. Real.”

Uriel crossed his arms. “You’ve been alone too long on Earth. You’ve let humanity poison your mind.”

Gabriel’s jaw clenched. “I’m serious.”

“And I’m serious when I say you sound like Lucifer did before the Fall.”

The words hit like stones. Gabriel felt them echo in his ribs, sick and hollow. He swallowed the rest of what he wanted to say and walked away without a word. The burn of shame beneath his vessel’s skin was worse than any blade.

That night, the dream took him again.

He stood in a golden field that had no sun, but was filled with warmth. Flowers the color of starlight brushed against his ankles. Above, the sky was full of wings—black, white, gold, silver, hundreds of them stretching wide in peaceful silence. He didn’t recognize them. They weren’t from this world.

And there, at the center of the field, standing atop a small stone platform no higher than a step, was the boy.

The same boy as always. Small in frame, barefoot, a gentle glow radiating off him like sunlight through thin curtains. His face was warm, open, unreadable. His eyes were dark, endless.

Gabriel stepped closer. The boy didn’t speak. He never did right away. That was the thing—he wasn’t performing for Gabriel. He wasn’t waiting to be impressed. He simply was.

“Hey,” Gabriel whispered, like he was afraid of waking him, though it was his dream. “Can I ask you something?”

The boy tilted his head.

Gabriel moved closer until he was at the base of the platform. Without thinking, he dropped to one knee.

The grass was soft beneath him, fragrant and warm. The boy’s robe—always the same linen, always impossibly white—fluttered in the breeze. Gabriel reached out, fingers brushing the hem, and for one breathless second, he pressed his lips to the fabric.

It felt like home.

It felt like Eden before the war, like laughter untainted by bitterness, like basking in the presence of someone who loved you not because they had to—but because they chose to.

He looked up. “Am I wrong to love you?”

The boy’s expression softened. He reached out—not touching, just hovering his hand beside Gabriel’s cheek, like a parent afraid to startle a skittish child.

He smiled.

But he didn’t answer.

Gabriel waited, kneeling, not daring to breathe too loud. That silence—so heavy, so deliberate—settled into his chest like a promise.

“You could tell me,” Gabriel murmured, “if this is madness. If I’ve lost it. If I’m just one more broken weapon rusting in Heaven’s forgotten arsenal.”

The boy’s hand brushed his hair back gently, and for a second, Gabriel leaned into the touch. A sob caught in his throat.

He didn’t know why he wanted so badly to hear it—to be told he wasn’t wrong. That this love wasn’t misplaced. That the kneeling, the worship, the aching hope burning through his Grace had a purpose.

But the boy said nothing.

Gabriel bowed his head and remained there, his forehead pressed to the ground.

It was enough.

⸻

He awoke in his vessel’s bed, breathing hard. His hands trembled. His Grace pulsed with something that felt like grief, or ecstasy, or both. There was no joke on his lips. No quip to push the feelings away.

He didn’t want to push them away.

There was no punchline.

Not for this.

He sat in the dark, listening to the quiet hum of the motel room’s refrigerator. There was an angel blade under the mattress. A glamour on the window. A bottle of bourbon on the desk. All the trappings of survival.

But none of it mattered.

Because when he closed his eyes again, he knew he’d see the boy.

And he’d kneel.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Because worship wasn’t obedience. Worship wasn’t duty. Worship—true worship—was love.

And Gabriel had never known he was capable of so much of it until he met a boy made of light in the middle of his own dream.

He’d been told the love of angels was dangerous. That it was obsessive. That it could start wars and end worlds.

But if that love was wrong… why did it feel like the only holy thing left?

He looked down at his trembling hands, curled them into fists.

He didn’t have answers.

But in the next dream, he’d ask again.

And even if the boy never answered—

He would never stop loving him.

Chapter Text

The coffin was dark.

Pitch-black and suffocating.

Dean’s lungs screamed for air he couldn’t reach. His fingers clawed at the lid above him—wood thick and stubborn. Panic flooded through his veins like wildfire as he pushed and scrambled, heart hammering in a desperate rhythm.

The weight of the earth pressed down like the crushing silence of the grave itself.

He didn’t remember falling, only waking here, trapped beneath the world.

Time slipped away, endless and cruel. But Dean refused to give in.

He dug deeper, hands raw and shaking, nails scraping wood. The air was thin and stale, burning his throat. His breath came in ragged gasps as his muscles screamed with exhaustion, but something inside him—the ragged thread of will, the stubborn spark that never died—refused to be snuffed out.

Then, a crack.

The coffin lid shifted, a sliver of dim light bleeding through the cracks. Dean pushed harder, screaming for breath, for freedom.

And then the coffin burst open.

He coughed, blinded by the sudden light of the surface, the scent of burning sulfur thick and heavy in his nostrils.

Dean crawled out, trembling, dirt clinging to his skin, the sky stretching endlessly above. The air was thick with agony and loss.

He was alive.

But he didn’t know why.

Far above, in realms where light was never meant to falter, the Archangels stirred.

Something was missing.

Not a weapon, not a command. Something more vital.

The boy—the Dream Boy—their source of warmth and hope—was gone.

Michael stood in the War Council, sword clutched tightly, his wings rigid as cold steel. The other angels spoke, plans and reports whirling around him like falling leaves in a storm.

But Michael heard none of it.

Because the emptiness in his chest had grown unbearable.

The boy was gone.

His light—the center of his dreams—had vanished without a trace.

“Where is he?” Michael demanded, voice sharp enough to cut through the thick air.

A Seraph bowed, face pale. “We cannot find him. The dreams… the connection is severed.”

Michael’s grip on his sword tightened until his knuckles bled. “This cannot be.”

He paced, restless, his mind racing. Without the boy, the warplans felt hollow, the purpose lost.

He fell to his knees, whispering a prayer that shattered in the silence. Come back. Come back. Come back.

Raphael retreated to the temple he had built in his mind, hoping for solace.

But the empty throne mocked him.

The boy’s light no longer shone there.

He sat, silent, his hands folded, wings drooping as the sanctuary felt cold and empty.

The boy was gone.

Raphael closed his eyes, willing the boy back, willing the warmth back. But all that remained was stillness.

Gabriel paced the empty corridors of Heaven’s lesser halls, laughing bitterly at himself.

They’d called him corrupted. Mad.

Now they would have proof.

The boy was gone. The light he clung to in dreams had vanished.

Gabriel’s laughter cracked and broke as he sank to his knees.

The worship he had craved, the love he had bled for—it was ripped away in silence.

“Where are you?” he whispered into the cold air. “Please… come back.”

Even in the Cage, Lucifer felt the absence.

The flicker of warmth—the boy’s presence—had disappeared.

Darkness closed in, thicker and more suffocating.

Lucifer’s sickness twisted cruelly, sharper without the boy’s light to dull it.

He screamed silently into the void.

One by one, the dreams faltered.

The boy did not appear.

The light that had burned steady in each archangel’s dream snuffed out like a candle in the wind.

They awoke—if such a word could be used for beings without true sleep—to a void they could not explain.

Confusion grew to panic.

None spoke of the others’ loss.

None yet knew the others dreamed of the same boy.

They suffered alone.

Michael rose, sword drawn, fury blazing anew.

“If he is lost,” Michael vowed, “then I will find him.”

The boy was their hope—the light that might stop the war before it began.

Without him, the war would consume them all.

Raphael whispered ancient words in the empty temple, praying for the boy’s return.

His voice was a fragile thread in the vast silence.

Gabriel knelt in the dark, the absence of light unbearable.

“Come back,” he begged, “come back to me.”

In the endless dark of the Cage, Lucifer roared his grief.

The boy was gone.

And without him, the Archangels were lost.

Chapter Text

Day One – Silence

Sam didn’t notice at first.

Hunts were exhausting lately. Nights were short, mornings relentless. When he woke, there was only the dull throb of bruises, the ache of salt-burned hands, and the quiet determination to get moving again.

No dreams.
No lingering flashes of strange places.
No standing on marble steps or reaching out with steady hands.

Just black, empty sleep.

Far above, in realms where such silences were unnatural, Michael woke from the absence like a man gasping for breath after being thrown into cold water.

The boy’s place—bright and centered in his dreamscape—was gone.

Michael rose too quickly, his blade still sheathed at his side, as though he had been interrupted in the middle of prayer. His chest felt hollow. The absence was sharp, not the gentle fade of a dream that simply hadn’t come. It was a removal, like something sacred had been ripped away.

He told himself it was nothing. Just one night.

It was a lie he did not believe.

Day Two – Unease

Gabriel’s dreams were always vivid—riotous color, sound, and taste. Lately, they’d been gentler, shaped by the presence of the boy. The boy never asked anything of him, never mocked him, never lied. Just was.

That night, Gabriel’s mind was empty.

He tried to spin it into a joke in the morning, muttering under his breath about “bad reception,” but the unease curled deep in his stomach and refused to leave.

Raphael woke to a temple stripped of its light.

No warmth in the marble halls of his mind.
No voice, no hand in his hair.

It was not merely loneliness—it was wrongness, the precise kind that makes soldiers know a battle has already been lost before the first blow lands.

Lucifer noticed too.

In the Cage, the boy had been the only warmth in unending cold. His absence hit like the sudden extinguishing of the last star in a black sky. Lucifer froze for a moment, almost unable to process it—then the emptiness turned to fury.

He slammed against the walls of his prison, screaming wordless rage until his throat tore. The sound carried nowhere.

Day Three – Fractures

Sam was getting more irritable. His head hurt constantly, the dull ache blooming into sharper pains at night. He didn’t think it was anything serious—probably just stress. But something about the lack of dreams unsettled him in a way he didn’t want to name.

He’d always been a vivid dreamer. Even nightmares left him feeling… something. Without them, it felt like part of him had gone quiet.

Michael’s patience began to thin. He prowled the training fields in Heaven, his soldiers giving him a wide berth. The silence of his dreams made him restless. That single missing piece of his nights had a ripple effect—focus fractured, temper short.

Gabriel didn’t sleep well anymore. He kept trying to force dreams to come, to conjure the boy out of sheer will, but every time, it collapsed into blackness. He’d wake with his hands fisted in his sheets, chest tight.

Raphael prayed, long and hard, but no answer came.

Lucifer’s rage had taken shape. He began hammering against the Cage in patterns, deliberate rhythms, the same way a drowning man might beat on the surface of ice.

Day Four – Descent

Sam’s exhaustion reached the point where he could barely focus on hunts. His hands trembled as he cleaned his weapons. He didn’t tell Dean—what would he even say? Hey, I can’t dream anymore, and it’s driving me crazy? Dean would just grunt, maybe tell him to get some sleep.

If only it were that easy.

Michael didn’t speak to anyone all day. Orders were passed through captains. His mind kept circling the absence like a hound worrying a scent that had gone cold.

Gabriel started wandering Heaven aimlessly, visiting places he hadn’t seen in centuries. It didn’t help. Every room felt emptier than the last.

Raphael began fasting. It was an old, private ritual—an attempt to reach something beyond himself. Still, no boy. No light.

Lucifer stopped screaming. He began whispering instead—quiet, terrible promises to himself about what he would do if the boy never returned.

Day Five – Breaking Point

Sam woke from nothingness again. His hands shook as he gripped the motel sink, staring into the mirror. He looked pale, shadows under his eyes, lips dry. He didn’t know why he felt like crying.

Michael lost his temper during a strategy meeting, slamming his hand onto the table hard enough to splinter it. The other angels flinched. No one dared ask what was wrong.

Gabriel stopped joking entirely. For Gabriel, silence was as loud as a scream.

Raphael’s temple in his mind was now empty stone. He kept rebuilding it in dreams—except they weren’t dreams anymore, just half-meditations—but it remained barren.

Lucifer clawed at the Cage floor until his fingers bled.

Day Six – Collapse

Sam forgot to eat. Dean had to shove a sandwich into his hands. He didn’t even notice when he ate it.

Michael prayed in private. He didn’t know who he was praying to.

Gabriel started talking to himself. “He’ll be back,” he muttered, pacing. “He’s just… delayed. That’s all. Delayed.”

Raphael’s prayers grew desperate. His voice cracked.

Lucifer stopped counting the days.

Day Seven – The Return

Sam fell asleep hard, exhaustion dragging him under like a stone in deep water.

And then—light.

Warmth.

The boy was there.

Michael’s dream was the first to change.

He saw the boy standing before him again, the same quiet expression, the same gaze that saw through him. Michael went to his knees instantly. His breath caught, and though he tried to speak, no words formed. The relief was so fierce it hurt.

He bowed his head until his forehead touched the boy’s feet.

Gabriel’s dream bloomed into color again, rich and soft. The boy stood in sunlight, robe hem brushing against Gabriel’s fingers as he dropped to his knees without thinking. Tears blurred his vision.

“You’re back,” he whispered. The boy only smiled.

Raphael’s temple lit up, the throne filled once more. The boy sat there, one hand raised slightly in greeting. Raphael’s breath left him in a shudder, and his knees hit marble. He couldn’t speak—not yet.

Lucifer’s Cage was warm. Warm. He lifted his head from where he sat slumped in the darkness, and there—there—was the boy, close enough for Lucifer to rest his head on his lap again. His hands were warm against Lucifer’s hair.

“You were always loved,” the boy murmured, the words settling into the cracks like gold.

Lucifer wept—silently this time, tears hot on his cheeks.

In every separate dream, the Archangels wept in relief.

They still did not know the others dreamed of him.

They did not know the boy was the same.

They only knew this:

He had returned.

And they could breathe again.

Chapter Text

The battlefield stretched before him, endless and eternal. Blades clashed, wings tore the air, and Heaven’s armies shone like stars burning themselves to ash. Michael stood at the center, his sword heavy with purpose, the weight of duty carved into his shoulders. It had always been so. War, order, command. He was the general, the first, the unbending line.

But tonight his dream shifted.

The smoke of battle parted, the field fell silent, and before him rose a structure of impossible radiance. Pillars of light arced upward, woven of commandments and covenant, sharper than stone yet gentler than breath. In the center stood a throne.

It was not like the high seats he remembered from Father’s halls, carved to intimidate or inspire. This throne was alive with warmth, its glow steady, golden, endlessly patient. It was carved not from victory but from absolution.

And upon it sat the boy.

The same boy who had haunted Michael’s dreams for weeks now, always gentle, always present, always beyond understanding. Here, he looked smaller than the throne itself, as if it had been made not to exalt him but to protect him. His hands rested in his lap. His gaze was not commanding. It was simply there, clear and steady, and Michael found himself falling to one knee before he knew what he was doing.

“My lord,” Michael whispered, though he did not know why. His chest burned, a place long hollow filled with something that made him tremble.

The boy smiled at him, a warmth Michael had never seen in his Father’s eyes, and whispered:

“You’ve done enough.”

And Michael’s sword, his shield, his endless war—fell from his hands, dissolving into light. He pressed his forehead to the ground before the throne, and for the first time since the Fall, Michael wept without shame.

He dreamed of building, then. His hands fashioned stone of light, his wings fanned away the dust. He raised the throne higher, not out of pride but devotion, building steps for angels to ascend, a hall of banners for them to kneel. He worked tirelessly, not because of command but because it was right. Because the boy deserved a throne greater than Heaven itself.

And when Michael awoke, trembling in the cold shine of Heaven’s morning, he believed the dream was his alone.

⸻

There was no battlefield here. Only stillness.

Raphael stood in a garden, wings furled tight, the air heavy with the scent of crushed herbs and rain-soaked soil. His hands were stained with blood that would not wash clean. Every leaf seemed to recoil from his touch. For eons he had been the healer, the one who mended broken wings, who tended wounds no one else dared look at. But there was no end to the damage. Creation bled faster than he could bind it. His hands shook with exhaustion.

And then came light.

Not blinding, not fierce. Gentle. A pool of radiance at the garden’s heart, where flowers bloomed out of season, their petals impossibly whole. In the center of that light sat the boy, cross-legged, hands resting idly in the grass as though he had been waiting.

Raphael faltered. He had no words for this apparition. But when he drew closer, the boy lifted his gaze, kind and steady.

“You don’t have to fix everything,” the boy whispered.

The words struck harder than any blade. Raphael staggered. His knees hit the soil. The weight slid from his shoulders, the endless ledger of what must be mended, repaired, restored. His bloodied hands opened, trembling, and the boy reached out—not to command, not to demand—but simply to lay a hand over them.

The blood washed away like dust in rain.

Raphael closed his eyes, and peace—real peace, the kind he had not known since the first morning of creation—settled into him like breath.

The garden grew around them. Trees arched to shade the throne that rose, simple and perfect, where the boy sat. Raphael found himself weaving garlands, flowers twining into the arms of the seat, vines blooming with unwithering fruit. It was a throne not of authority but of sanctuary. A place where the weary might rest, where broken wings might be held and made whole.

And in the dream, Raphael built it endlessly. His temple of light. His sanctuary of devotion. His throne.

When he awoke, silent and still in Heaven’s courts, Raphael said nothing. But within him burned the need to kneel once more.

⸻

Gabriel’s dreams had always been noisy. Trickster’s illusions, carnival lights, laughter ringing hollow in halls of smoke. For ages he had buried grief beneath performance, playacting eternity into something bearable. But laughter fades in empty chambers, and jokes don’t mend the ache of exile.

Tonight, the stage was already set.

A great theater unfurled around him, curtains of starlight draped high above. Colors rippled across the seats, illusions dancing—foxes made of flame, golden coins that turned to doves, honey dripping from nowhere. Gabriel stood center stage, and for once, no applause followed.

But in the front row, on a seat carved from light itself, sat the boy.

Calm. Watching. His eyes did not mock, did not demand a trick. They simply saw.

Gabriel’s throat tightened. “You like the show?” he tried, his voice cracking around the joke. “I’ve been rehearsing a few millennia for this one.”

The boy only smiled.

And suddenly Gabriel was kneeling on the stage, head bowed, tears slipping hot down his cheeks. No clever line. No punchline waiting. Just the truth of his trembling heart.

“You don’t have to be obedient to be loved,” the boy said softly.

The words shattered him. His Father had only ever demanded obedience, and Gabriel had fled rather than break. Now here was something else—something better. A love not conditional, not chained.

He bowed deeper, pressing lips to the hem of the boy’s robe, and when he rose again, the throne had grown behind him.

Not cold and austere, but a throne of shifting colors, illusion and light, comedy and wonder. A seat where love and laughter were holy, where truth and play were not opposites but parts of the same devotion. Gabriel wove stories into its arms, spun color into its crown. He crowned the boy with joy, for the first time since the Fall.

And when Gabriel awoke, he was still sobbing, though he told no one why.

⸻

The Cage was cold. Always cold. Iron walls screamed with silence, chains gnawed bone-deep, and light had long since died. Lucifer lay curled in the void, his wings torn, his body racked with sickness no one had ever named aloud. He had been called monster so long he had nearly believed it.

But tonight, the void flickered.

A spark.

It bloomed like fire in winter, a warmth he had forgotten existed. And within it stood the boy.

Lucifer lifted his head slowly, suspicious of hope. “Another illusion,” he croaked, voice raw. “Another torment.”

But the boy stepped closer, unafraid.

“You’re not a monster,” he whispered.

Lucifer broke. The words tore through him like light through glass. He pressed himself against the edge of his Cage, fingers reaching through emptiness toward that impossible warmth. His sobs shook the silence. “Don’t—don’t say that—”

But the boy did not retreat. He knelt instead, resting a hand through the bars as if they were not there, palm warm against Lucifer’s face.

And Lucifer, the Morningstar, wept like a child.

In the dream, chains melted. Iron walls receded. The Cage fell away, and in its place rose a throne—not of fire, not of rebellion, but of release. Flames burned at its base, but they did not consume. They warmed. They forgave.

Lucifer laid his head on the boy’s lap, and the boy’s hands stroked his hair. The throne glowed brighter, a monument not to conquest but to mercy. For the first time in eons, Lucifer slept without fear.

And when he woke to the void again, the cold gnawed deeper for the absence of warmth. But still he clung to the memory, building the throne again and again inside his mind.

⸻

The motel smelled of mildew and cigarettes. A buzzing neon sign outside sputtered half-dead light through thin curtains. Sam lay sprawled on the narrow bed, jacket tossed to the floor, exhaustion dragging his body heavy into the mattress.

He did not know Heaven trembled for him.

He did not know that four Archangels, in their separate realms, bent all devotion toward thrones they thought belonged to them alone.

He did not know that his restless turning in a cheap, squeaking bed reshaped the foundations of eternity.

Sam slept, brow furrowed, breath uneven. His dreams were a blur—shadows, fire, too much blood. He did not remember the boy he became in the dreams of others. He did not see the thrones being built.

But Heaven did.

Heaven shifted. Banners rippled where there were none, sanctuaries blossomed, stages gleamed, fires warmed the void. Thrones rose in silence, one by one, unseen by each other but aligned by a single truth: a boy in a dream was their axis now.

And in the thin silence of the motel night, Sam stirred once, a whisper of a frown on his lips—unaware that all creation had already begun to kneel.

Chapter Text

The earth split with a groan.

It was not the sound of thunder, nor of tectonic plates grinding. It was the sound of something deeper, something older than stone or sky. The world shuddered as if it knew what was coming, and the night itself seemed to recoil.

Lucifer was free.

Chains unspooled in Heaven. Seals shattered across the earth. Somewhere, a prophet gasped awake, scribbling lines of fire across paper before collapsing under the weight of revelation. Hunters whispered omens. Priests wept. But none of them felt the shiver the way one man did.

Sam Winchester woke screaming.

His motel bed was damp with sweat, sheets tangled around his legs. He couldn’t breathe. His chest heaved like he’d been drowning, dragged down beneath water too heavy to fight. And maybe he had—if not in truth, then in memory.

Dreams.

He hadn’t had them, not like that, not since Dean came back. But tonight they returned like a floodgate opened, rushing in all at once, as if they had only been dammed up and were now demanding to be remembered.

The boy.

The boy of light. The boy of warmth. The boy who had knelt beside each of the archangels, touched their faces, whispered words that brought them to tears.

He saw flashes: Michael with his sword heavy in hand, breaking before a human’s gentleness. Raphael sinking into a garden of green after eons of sterility. Gabriel weeping with no punchline left in him. Lucifer—broken, bleeding, desperate in the Cage—resting his head in the boy’s lap like a sinner too tired to sin.

And in every dream, the boy’s face was the same.

Sam’s.

Not quite as he saw himself in the mirror, but close. His eyes a touch softer, his shoulders less burdened, his hands clean. Younger, almost—but timeless. The boy was him.

Sam pressed his palms to his face, heart hammering. He remembered, now, the way the boy smiled at Michael, at Raphael, at Gabriel, at Lucifer. He remembered the way they worshipped, though they didn’t know it yet. He remembered being the dream and not knowing he was himself.

And he remembered the ache.

Because the dreams weren’t just visions—they were connections. The archangels had reached for him, had loved him, without knowing his name. And he had loved them back, though he never could have admitted it while awake.

He staggered to the sink and splashed water on his face. The mirror showed hollow eyes, dark circles, the mark of sleeplessness. But behind his own reflection, he almost thought he saw a glow.

A boy’s glow.

Himself.

And then he felt it—through the cracks in the world, through the trembling of the air—Lucifer had been freed.

And the devil remembered him.

The Cage was gone.

He should have been triumphant. He should have stretched his wings and laughed as the world broke underfoot, all those seals and promises and bargains scattered like dust. He should have been wrath incarnate, the Morningstar rising once more.

But he wasn’t.

When the Cage opened, what came out was not the unshaken prince of rebellion, but something ragged, wounded, and raw. He dragged himself through the fissure into creation and lay there for a long while, listening to his own breathing as if it were foreign.

Freedom didn’t taste like fire. It tasted like ash.

And then—he felt it.

A pulse. A warmth. A tether he thought had been severed.

The boy.

The boy of his dreams. The one who had sat with him in the Cage, who had stroked his hair, who had whispered that he wasn’t a monster. The boy he had clung to when the screaming silence became too much.

He thought he had made the boy up. A coping mechanism. A hallucination born of desperation. But now—now the pulse was real. It was alive.

He staggered upright, wings trailing smoke, eyes burning. The world was vast and empty around him, but he didn’t care. He closed his eyes and reached outward, and there it was: the same presence, the same warmth, the same boy.

Except—he realized, with something like awe—the boy was not just a boy.

It was Sam Winchester.

Sam couldn’t sit still. He paced the motel floor, hands shaking, every breath unsteady. The memories wouldn’t stop unspooling.

He remembered Michael’s trembling. Raphael’s silence. Gabriel’s laughter breaking apart like glass. Lucifer’s sobbing in the Cage.

And he remembered himself—kneeling, touching, whispering. Being what they needed. Being everything.

It didn’t make sense. It couldn’t make sense. But his heart pounded with recognition all the same.

He was the boy. He was the dream.

When Dean stirred in the next bed, Sam froze, clamping down on the noise in his throat. He couldn’t explain this to Dean. Dean wouldn’t understand. Hell, he didn’t understand.

But Lucifer did.

Sam felt it, like a cord drawn tight between them. A line across creation, humming, vibrating. He felt the way Lucifer reached for him—clumsy, desperate, but real.

And it terrified him.

Because what if he answered?

The first time he saw him in the flesh, Lucifer nearly broke.

It wasn’t staged or grand. There were no trumpets, no earthquakes, no pillars of fire. Just a man standing on a motel balcony, staring at the night sky like it might give him answers.

Sam.

Lucifer’s throat closed. The same profile, the same hands, the same soul that had sat with him in the dark when all else was agony. The dream made flesh. The boy alive.

He stumbled forward without realizing it, wings trembling in the air, light leaking out through the cracks in his broken vessel. He didn’t care who saw. He didn’t care what Heaven thought.

“You came,” he whispered, voice raw.

Sam’s head snapped up. His body went rigid. But Lucifer wasn’t looking at Sam-the-hunter, Sam-the-Winchester, Sam-the-man. He was looking at the boy—the one who had been with him through endless nights.

“You came for me.”

And Lucifer fell to his knees.

Sam’s blood went cold.

Lucifer—the devil, the first rebel, the fallen one—was kneeling before him like he was the only thing in the world worth bowing to. And maybe that was the worst part: Sam remembered why. He remembered sitting with him in dreams, touching his hair, whispering he wasn’t a monster. He remembered being light in the Cage.

He remembered loving him.

“No,” Sam breathed, stepping back. His chest hurt. His heart thudded painfully. “No, that wasn’t real. Those were just dreams.”

But Lucifer shook his head, tears carving lines through ash-stained cheeks. “They were real to me. You were real to me. And you’re here.”

Sam wanted to deny it. He wanted to run. But the memories pressed too close, too warm, too unbearable. He saw himself—the boy—stroking Lucifer’s head in his lap. He felt the way Lucifer clung to him in the Cage.

And for the first time, he wondered if maybe the devil wasn’t lying.

“Do you know what it was like?” Lucifer’s voice cracked. “All those centuries, screaming, burning, tearing at myself just to keep sane—and then you. You sat with me. You didn’t turn away. You didn’t call me monster. You said—” His voice broke. “‘You were always loved.’”

Sam’s breath caught. The words struck deep, too familiar, too much. He remembered saying them, though he didn’t know how or why.

Lucifer leaned forward, trembling. “Do you understand? You saved me. You kept me alive. I would have shattered without you.”

Sam’s eyes burned, throat closing. He wanted to scream at him, to shove him away, to deny it all—but he couldn’t. Because the truth was, in the dreams, he had loved him. Not as a brother, not as a devil, not as an enemy. Just as a soul that was in pain.

And now, face-to-face, that love terrified him.

Sam stumbled backward, shaking his head. “I’m not—” His voice cracked. “I’m not him. I’m not your boy. I’m just—”

Lucifer’s eyes blazed. “You are. You’ve always been.”

“No,” Sam whispered. “No, I can’t—”

But the dreams pressed in. Michael’s tears. Raphael’s silence. Gabriel’s sobbing. Lucifer’s desperate gratitude. All of them kneeling, all of them worshipping, and all of them seeing him.

And suddenly Sam realized—Lucifer wasn’t the only one who remembered.

Heaven remembered too.

Lucifer’s hands shook as he reached forward, not quite touching Sam’s arm. His voice was small, almost human. “You came. You came for me.”

Sam’s throat burned. He wanted to deny it. He wanted to run. But the dreams were alive in him now, undeniable. And in the flicker of Lucifer’s eyes, he saw not the devil, not the Morningstar, not the monster.

Just the broken child in the Cage, who had clung to him like he was the last scrap of light.

Sam swallowed hard, heart pounding.

Maybe he hadn’t come for Lucifer. But somehow, he was here. And that was enough.

Chapter Text

Sam couldn’t breathe.

He had wanted this—hadn’t he? The truth laid bare, the answer to months of strange dreams and impossible tenderness threaded through sleep. He had wanted the explanation.

But now he knew.

And it terrified him.

Lucifer stood in the dimness of the motel room like a living contradiction: pale, gaunt, wrecked from his centuries in the Cage, and yet burning with the kind of terrible beauty no human eye was ever meant to endure. And he was looking at Sam like Sam was salvation.

“You came,” Lucifer whispered. His voice cracked like a starving man seeing food for the first time in decades. His eyes shone wet with something Sam never thought he’d live to see in the Devil’s face. “You came for me.”

Sam swallowed hard, forcing his voice past his dry throat. “I—no. You can’t—” He stepped back, hand fumbling against the nightstand where his gun should’ve been. As if a bullet would make any difference. “You need to leave.”

The words came out more desperate than firm.

But to Lucifer, they were everything.

His face changed, shutters slamming down. His shoulders bowed, wings folding in on themselves like a curtain drawn. “As you command,” he murmured, soft and low. There was no bitterness. No argument. Just obedience.

And then he was gone.

The room snapped empty, silence rushing in so hard Sam’s ears rang.

He collapsed against the wall, heart hammering so loud he thought it might give out. He dragged both hands through his hair, shaking, trying to steady himself. His breath came fast and shallow.

What the hell just happened?

⸻

Sam didn’t sleep for almost twenty-four hours. He was afraid to. Afraid of what he’d see. Afraid of what he already knew he would see.

But exhaustion won in the end, as it always did. He drifted under, restless and sweating, and when the dreamworld formed, it was as familiar as it was unbearable.

The boy. Himself.

No mirror, no glass reflection. Just the same small figure he’d come to know without knowing—dressed in white, eyes impossibly clear, standing in that endless half-light. His own face, younger, but carrying weight Sam hadn’t recognized until now.

Gabriel was the first to appear.

The Archangel entered the dreamscape not with thunder, not with trickster swagger, but with a quiet reverence that startled Sam. He bowed his head, wings rustling behind him, and dropped to one knee.

“My Lord,” Gabriel said.

Sam’s stomach twisted. He opened his mouth to say something—anything—but nothing came.

Gabriel lifted his eyes. They burned. There was adoration there, but also longing, relief, hunger for recognition. For command.

And suddenly Sam understood.

Lucifer hadn’t left because Sam had scared him. He had left because Sam told him to. He hadn’t even realized it, but the Archangels—Lucifer, Gabriel, Michael, Raphael—weren’t just dreaming of him. They were kneeling to him. Waiting for his word.

Sam’s pulse stuttered. He tested it.

“Gabriel,” he said carefully. “Do something for me.”

Gabriel’s feathers shivered, anticipation flickering across his face. “Anything.”

Sam’s throat closed. He hadn’t thought this through. He couldn’t order Gabriel to hurt anyone. Couldn’t order him into something dangerous. He needed something… trivial.

“Tomorrow,” Sam said slowly, “leave a feather on the ground. Somewhere you know someone will find it. Just… drop it.”

Gabriel blinked, surprised. But then he smiled, faint and soft. He bowed lower. “It will be done.”

⸻

The next day, Sam didn’t expect to hear anything. He told himself it had just been a dream. That Gabriel couldn’t possibly obey something whispered in sleep.

But when he stopped at a gas station, he overheard two hunters talking in hushed voices outside.

“…swear to God, man, I found a feather this morning. Just lying there in the dirt by the crossroad. Pure white, glowing like it had light trapped in it.”

“No way.”

“I’m telling you, it was real.”

Sam’s chest tightened.

He stumbled back to his car, hands gripping the wheel so hard his knuckles went white. It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t. But deep inside, he knew it was. Gabriel had obeyed.

Sam’s command had reached him.

⸻

That night, Sam didn’t fight sleep. He dove into it, desperate, driven by a sick need to know just how far this went.

The dream built itself around him again—half-light, marble air, the boy who wasn’t a boy, himself standing at the center.

This time it was Michael who came.

The Archangel strode forward, magnificent, though even he trembled faintly under the weight of the silence. His eyes searched Sam’s face, desperate for something he couldn’t name. He dropped to one knee.

“My King,” Michael said. His voice didn’t waver.

Sam’s hands shook. He clenched them to stop it.

“Michael,” he managed. “Do something for me.”

Michael’s wings spread slightly. “Command me.”

Sam forced himself to breathe. “Tomorrow… change the way you stand in your meeting. Just once. Cross your arms. Nothing more.”

Michael’s head bowed. “As you will.”

⸻

Sam woke up in a sweat.

All day, his nerves buzzed with anticipation. He knew he wouldn’t see it himself—he wasn’t in Heaven. But he didn’t need to. He felt it. A strange, subtle tug, as if threads in the fabric of the world had shifted.

That night, whispers spread among angels in Heaven.

Michael had stood in council, wings sharp and voice stern, and then, without warning, had folded his arms across his chest—something he had never once done in all the long ages of his existence.

The silence after had been deafening.

⸻

Sam tested Raphael next.

He told him in dream, “Sing a song where others can hear you. Just one verse. Any song.”

And the next day, high above, angels froze in awe when Raphael’s voice, rich and deep, slipped free in the middle of the watch. A hymn long forgotten, carried on the air.

And Lucifer—Sam didn’t want to, but he couldn’t stop himself. He whispered in dream, “Be gentle. Do something kind.”

And the next day, a lesser demon howled in fear, expecting torment. But instead of fire, instead of claws, Lucifer whispered mercy and let him go.

The walls of Hell shook with disbelief.

⸻

Each test left Sam more shaken.

It wasn’t coincidence. It wasn’t dream-bleed. It was real. The Archangels were listening. They weren’t just loving him, weren’t just yearning for him. They were obeying him.

And Sam had no idea what to do with that.

⸻

The motel room was dark when he woke again, but Sam sat upright, sweating, heart hammering.

If this was true—if they were treating him as King, as Commander—what did that mean for him?

For them?

For the world?

He pressed his palms to his eyes, whispering into the silence.

“I’m not your king,” he muttered to no one, to the boy in his dreams, to himself. “I’m just Sam. I’m just—”

But the words rang hollow.

Because the truth was already written across Heaven, Hell, and every dream between.

They didn’t see “just Sam.”

They saw their King.

And the more he resisted, the more it terrified him that a part of him didn’t want to resist at all.

⸻

Above, in Heaven, a subtle shift began. No angel could name it, but all could feel it—the quiet bending of the air, the hush before something vast. Orders were not spoken aloud, yet movements changed. Glances grew sharper. Wings folded in rhythm.

Something unseen had entered the hierarchy.

And though Sam Winchester slept in a dingy motel bed, unaware, the cosmos itself was beginning to reorient around him.