A/N: I started writing this before "Meta Fiction" aired. Some time in April, before the two week? hiatus. There was an image released that mentioned the Horn of Gabriel on Metatron's lil' typewriter. So, I took my idea and I ran with it. "Meta Fiction" did not follow my hopes and dreams, but who cares? That's what fan fiction is for.

The below story is canon divergent with a little tweak to the mythology. In later chapters, there is reference to acid burns, the Cage, as well as some mature sexual content. If any of these things upsets you, I suggest passing those chapters by, or even the whole fic. I'll try to remember to state in an A/N which chapter contains what.

He hadn't meant to piss off the horn. He really hadn't.

He'd just been reaching for some dusty ol' files in a box that was wedged against the wall at the back of the shelf. It wasn't his fault that his hands were a bit too big and wound up smacking something cool, metallic, and hard. Something that wasn't the shelf.

It may have been his fault that a different box stuffed with dusty ol' files found its way to the floor. Aforementioned cool, metallic, and hard thing had shocked the living daylights out of his fingers, leaving a tingly sensation that traveled all the way up to his shoulder.

He'd panicked. He'd jerked his arm back. Shit had happened. He'd clean it up later.

Right then, his attention was drawn to the culprit that had injured him.

The Men of Letters were known for collecting strange artifacts of supernatural persuasion. Sometimes, those artifacts proved deadly. The last thing Sam wanted was to have sealed his fate in some dumb storage room while trying to collect a few sheets of paper that would, hopefully, lead him down the path to figuring out how to deal with Abaddon. It would be an extremely stupid way for him to go, Sam thought. An accident. Caused by a musical instrument.

An ancient musical instrument, by the looks of it. A horn made of curving animal horn that was smooth and polished. It was adorned with silver and gold - the metal he must have touched - to contrast the brown of the horn. It was probably three feet in length. Hard to tell, as it corkscrewed along the shelf between other boxes. Sam had to admit, it was impressive.

His curiosity almost got the better of him. He felt himself reaching for it again, to pull it out and really look at it, but he stopped. No, he remembered, touching the shock-y horn was not a good idea because he still didn't know if he was going to drop dead in a minute or if static had been his assailant, instead.

Sam breathed in, opening his mouth to call for Dean. What came out, instead, was a confused wheeze.

Sam's eyebrows knitted together as he watched a part of the horn start to glow. He continued to watch, hand frozen halfway between him and the instrument, as the white light seemed to collect towards a central point. Probably the area he had touched, he realized with growing anxiety. It wasn't until the light started to intensify to an irritating level, and floatup towards his hand, that he went from slight anxiety to full-blown panic.

"Dean." He said, pulling his hand away from the horn.

The light trailed after it, now starting to make faint tinkling noises. They reminded him of whatever the hell instrument was in that Sugar Plum Fairy music. A celesta, or something. It wasn't like Sam remembered music history all that well.

"Dean!" He called out, louder this time.

The light looked awfully familiar to him. Which was strange because it was a wisp of near-sentient light. He hadn't seen many of those in his lifetime. The only thing that fit that description, and something he had encountered recently, was a soul.

Ah, that's why it looked familiar. It wasn't quite the same shape and jerky movement he remembered from a few days ago at St. Bonaventure's but… Was this a soul, though? Those others certainly had not undulated towards him with the intent this thing seemed to have.

"Dean!" Sam shouted, dodging the light as it almost reached him.

He shuffled backwards and then headed for the still-open door. The light changed its course and began to follow him. Naturally. It also seemed to be picking up speed. He didn't even bother to call out for help again. He turned on his heel and ran. Surely to God this thing couldn't keep up with flesh and blood. Hopefully. He could pray.

He had to swerve when he reached the library, almost running headlong into his brother, who leapt back with an exclamation of:

"Dude! What-?!"

Sam skidded to a stop and pointed frantically behind Dean. His brother looked over his shoulder and yelped, jerking away as the light streaked past his head.

Dean didn't even waste time to ask questions.

Sam sure as hell wasn't going to waste time to answer them. This thing was after him. It wanted him. And he sure as hell wasn't about to let it get him.

So what if he looked ridiculous? A six-foot-four man running away from a light ball roughly the size of his hand that jingled. Sometimes, in their line of work, things like pride had to be swept under the rug.

Dean wasn't doing much better than him. Dean was chasing the thing, after all. 'Round and 'round the tables the three of them went. When Sam spared a moment to look behind him, he saw how furious Dean's scowl was. He would have laughed, had he not noticed how similarly upset the light ball looked. The jingling was growing louder, more frantic, and its ever-shifting form was more jagged in appearance.

Looking behind him proved to be his downfall. Literally. Sam's hip caught the back of one of the chairs. Which hurt. With a grunt, he bounced off it, tripped over his own feet, and fell to the ground less than gracefully. All the air rushed out of him as he landed, hard, on his chest. 'Fuck,' was all that went through his head as he scrambled to push himself up.

Sam looked over his shoulder, desperate to find where the ball of light had gotten to. Was it on him, yet? Had it decided to take pity on him and wait for him to get back to his feet? The answer was neither. Not quite.

His eyes widened as Dean reared his arm back. He flinched when Dean slapped the little thing out of the air.

"Ha! Gotcha, bitch!" Dean exclaimed, triumphant grin spread across his face.

Not a second later, his grin dropped. He shook his right arm.

"Ow! What the hell is that thing? It just shocked the shit outta me!"

Sam wanted to tell Dean that it had probably shocked him because Dean'd just spiked it into the hard floor of the Bunker, like it was a damn football, but he couldn't be one-hundred percent sure that was the reason. It had, after all, shocked him when he'd touched the horn it had oozed out of.

Wary of the seemingly stunned ball of light that pulsed on the floor, Sam clambered to his feet.

"I don't know," he replied, not removing his gaze from the thing as he stepped back towards Dean. "I accidentally touched something. A-a horn."

"A horn?" Dean questioned.

"Yeah, one of them animal horn…horns. Anyway, I touched it and out popped - "

A ball of light that, apparently, had the ability to bellow at a decibel that could injure eardrums and jar the very earth.

Both he and Dean cried out, clamping their hands over their ears, as the light spazzed out on the floor. The sound of glass shattering throughout the bunker could barely be heard over the light's cries.

Only one thing, that Sam was aware of, could make glass shatter and the earth quake at the sound of its voice…and that was an angel.

It hadn't been a soul Sam'd been reminded of, it'd been Grace. A substance he'd last seen when searching for Gadreel.

Those were not happy memories. At all.

"Make it stop!" Dean yelled at him.

"How?!"

"I don't know!"

"Hey!" Sam shouted, giving a valiant effort in trying to silence the maybe-Grace. "Hey, knock it off!"

Dean gave him a look that perfectly conveyed the question, 'Is that seriously the best you could come up with?'

Surprising both of them, the light stopped screaming. They lowered their hands from their ears slowly. A feeling of relief started to work its way into Sam's system.

Said feeling was premature.

Without warning, the light shot off the ground, headed for him. He yelled and tried to bring his hands up to protect himself. Dean called out to him, fear lacing his voice.

Sam was too late.

The light deftly avoided his arms.

The thought of possession quickly crossed his mind, forcing him to clamp his lips and eyes shut extra tight. The light, or Grace, attached itself to his face, causing him to lose balance and fall against the table behind him. The hard wood dug into his back painfully as he tried to remain on his feet.

It felt like the Grace was looking for a way to get into his body. Little tendrils of what could be electricity zapped at his cheeks, chin, and forehead. However, Sam hadn't given it permission. He should be safe, right? Yet, what if Grace, itself, didn't need permission? The thought terrified him.

Sam flailed blindly for Dean, hoping his brother would pull the unwanted intruder off of him. He hoped Dean wouldn't stand by and let him be violated, again, as he'd done last time.

Much to his relief, he felt his brother's hands grasping at his waving ones. It was a muted sort of relief, though. His entire face had gone numb.

"Sam," Dean said to him, his voice cautioning. "Sam, I think you should stop flailing. I know it sounds nuts, but uh…"

The numbing tendrils began to travel up his face and into his hair.

It was moving. The Grace was crawling up his face and the best advice Dean could give him was, essentially, 'Don't panic.'

Sam squeezed Dean's hands with his own as hard as he could to illustrate just how down he was with that bit of advice. The hiss of breath Dean gave was music to his ears. Music he would have preferred to hear over the tinkling music of the Grace.

"No, I'm serious," his brother stressed. "I think it's just checking you out. OW! Well, I don't think I can swat it off your face without deckin' ya in the nose, okay?! Or pissing it off! There's no telling what it'd do to you, then!"

Dean did have a point there, Sam was loathe to admit.

The Grace slithered its way onto his head and down the back of his neck. He couldn't suppress the shudder that ran through his body. By the time it began its descent along his spine, Sam finally felt safe enough to open his eyes. Dean still had a hold of his hands, or maybe he still had a hold of Dean's, and the look his brother was giving him was one of shaky reassurance.

The Grace retraced its steps once it hit the table Sam was almost sitting on. Like a creepy caterpillar of light and energy that'd hit a wall and realized it'd gone the wrong way. He tensed once again.

"What the hell?" Dean asked, gaze flicking from Sam's face to the light that was shining behind him.

"I don't know," he breathed in reply.

"Seriously, dude: What the hell?"

"I. Don't. Know."

"Is it… Is it a soul? It kinda looks like one. Like Bobby's. Maybe touching that horn released it somehow?"

"It's Grace," Sam deadpanned, trying, and failing, to not let his discomfort show as the light clung between his shoulder blades.

"Grace?" Dean asked, disbelief evident in his tone. "As in the-juice-angels-run-on Grace? How can you be so sure?"

"Because I remember Gadreel's." He managed, somehow, not to growl that sentence.

"Oh." Dean dropped his hands after that and took a few steps back. "Right. With Cas and the - "

"Yeah."

"Um…"

"What is it doing?"

Dean stared at the jingling mass of energy that was hovering way too close to Sam's face for comfort.

"Sitting on your shoulder?"

"Of course it is."

Dean licked his lips before asking, "Why would an angel's Grace be hiding in an animal horn horn, and why would it chase you around the Bunker? Is this some more of…of You-Know-Who's bullshit, or?"

Sam hated how his brother skirted around the issue of Gadreel. Hated it. But, he wasn't going to waste his breath telling Dean that. Not again. He'd said all there was to say. Dean just didn't want to listen. Whatever. The pressing issue this time, amazingly, was not Gadreel. No, Sam had no memories of Gadreel ever having tampered with that random horn…

Oh.

Oh, fuck.

It wasn't random.

He groaned, letting his face fall into his hands. At least, he thought bitterly, he could feel most of his face again. He didn't see the concerned look that crossed Dean's face.

"What? What is it? Is it hurting you? Should I - "

"No. No. I'm fine. Other than the fact I have an Archangel's Grace sitting on my shoulder, I am fine."

"What?" Dean's voice almost demanded.

Sam dropped his hands and looked his brother square in the eye.

"Yeah, Dean. An Archangel's Grace. What other angel carries around a damn horn instead of, oh, I don't know, a harp?" He shrugged sarcastically.

A movement that felt very weird considering he couldn't feel one of his shoulders.

Dean's jaw clenched.

"You're telling me that that -" Dean pointed angrily at the Grace on his shoulder, "- piece o' shit ball of light is Gabriel?"

"Yeah. Well, what's left of him, I imagine," he frowned.

"Gabriel?"

"Yes."

"The douchiest Archangel we ever had the misfortune of coming across? And I just chased his sorry, glowing ass around some tables and chairs because he wouldn't leave you, the guy he made suffer in Broward - Y'know what? Get offa there!" Dean growled.

Sam didn't have time to react to what his brother had planned. One second, he was thinking, 'Oh, please, don't,' and the next, Dean's hand had swatted Gabriel's Grace. It was a futile attempt to knock it from Sam's shoulder. The light undulated as if it were Jell-O, shaking off the blow. Dean yelped and withdrew his hand, waving it vigorously.

Guess he hadn't learned from the last time he'd smacked it.

And, just like last time, the Grace screeched angrily at Dean. Right in Sam's ear.

He cringed, jerking his head as far right - away from the noise - as it could go. Dean swore, slapping his hands over his ears. With an annoyed, frustrated groan, Sam placed his hand over the spiking blob of energy.

"Please, just stop!" He complained.

With a trill, which was probably meant to be a growl, the Grace calmed down. Much to Sam's dismay, it turned its attention to the hand resting on it. Static tendrils reached out, tickling and shocking his palm. They wrapped around the back of his hand.

Pulling his hand away from his shoulder, he furled his nose in distaste at the sight of Gabriel's Grace clinging to it. He tried to flap it off, vigorously flailing his arm, but to no avail. The Grace merely jingled louder and remained where it was.

"How come he listens to you?" Dean grouched, rubbing at the palm of his own hand to get the tingling sensation to stop.

"Oh, I don't know, Dean," he grumbled. "Maybe because I didn't slap him into next week? Twice."

"Oh, so now you're taking his side against me, too?"

"No. I just know an exercise in futility when I see one."

They glared at each other for a long moment before Dean shrugged the whole situation off. Or, he tried to. More like he was burying it under the mountains of other arguments and issues they'd had over the past few weeks. Again: Whatever. Their squabbles came second after figuring out what the hell to do with an Archangel's Grace.

"So." He began awkwardly. "What do we do with it? Him? Whatever?"

Dean rolled his shoulders, "I don't know. Can we use him? It? Y'know what? I'm going with 'it.' Can we use it? What did you do with-with Gadreel's leftover Grace?"

"Cas and I tried to hunt him down with it. Track him. We didn't have enough to complete the spell, though. It just kinda…died, after that."

"Hmm. Maybe Cas can use Gabriel's Grace? Boost his own batteries with it?"

"I don't know, Dean," Sam replied, watching the Grace slither its way up his right arm. Ugh. "An Archangel's Grace may be too powerful for Cas. Like plugging an American appliance into a European socket."

If he was being completely honest with how he felt about Cas taking Grace that wasn't the angel's, Sam would have added that he didn't approve of the concept at all. Any Grace Cas took into his body ran the risk of being rejected. Just like an organ transplant. Not that he had any proof to back up his hypothesis. Not yet. He hoped he never would have proof. Yet, they were the Winchesters and Cas had never been known for good luck.

Sam kept his mouth shut about that, though. Despite everything, he didn't want to worry Dean about his only other friend in the world. Especially if his fears amounted to nothing.

"Well, we can't have him creepin' on us all day!" Dean snapped. "I mean, I'm glad he's - it's - favoring you instead of me. But, that whole numbing thing…."

Yeah, Sam really didn't have any desire to be Gabriel's perch for…however long Grace typically hung around for. Gadreel's - and Sam had to suppress a shudder at the thought - could have resided in him for who-knew how long if Cas hadn't gotten rid of it. And, if Gabriel's Grace had been in that horn for, hell, thousands of years probably… Yeah, no. He was pretty sure his shoulder would shrivel up and die from over stimulation of his nerve endings or something.

His mind traveled back to St. Bonaventure's and the souls that had been trapped there. The souls he had freed, allowing them to return back to their bodies.

"Get a jar," he commanded.

"What?"

"A jar. A container of some sort. We'll shove it in that."

"Yeah. Yeah, that's a good idea. Kinda like what Uriel did to Anna's Grace, sorta." Dean frowned, "Think it'll need air holes?"

"Dean."

Sam was sitting in Bobby's house, researching something about ghouls. Which was impossible because Bobby was dead, his house long burnt to the ground. This was a major hint to Sam that everything around him was merely a dream.

With that figured out, he could have easily decided he didn't want to stay in it. He could have shifted his dreamscape to something that didn't remind him of the father figure they'd lost. The old man whose soul he'd rescued from Hell and let move on to Heaven, where Bobby belonged.

Funny how rescuing souls just seemed to be his thing all of a sudden.

However, Sam didn't change his dreamscape. In fact, he was quite pleased with it. It was nice to hear, see, feel Bobby again, even if the old Hunter was just a copy his mind had created. It was refreshing to be hunting some fictional ghoul without having to worry about the real dangers that could come from such a hunt. It was refreshing not to have to think about angels and demons.

Sam enjoyed his respite. He smiled as Bobby and Dean bickered with one another over his brother's laziness when it came to research. He shook his head as Dean insulted the 'boring, smelly' books that Bobby had in his collection.

He'd missed this. He really had.

As he was turning a page in the book he was reading, Sam felt something shift. It was a tiny disturbance, one he probably wouldn't have felt if he'd been unaware he was dreaming, but it was enough to alert him to an intruder. He froze, shoulders tense, as he tried to get a feel for whatever was poking at his mind.

He didn't have to wait long. A brilliant, white light manifested itself a few feet beside him on his left. Sam slowly turned his head to face it.

It didn't appear to have much of a shape. It was just a tall, thin line of light with an amazingly bright aura.

Sam knew exactly what it was. He'd left Gabriel's Grace on the shelf in his room. He was supposed to have kept an eye on it, since Dean had groaned about not being able to sleep with that much light in his face. Apparently, keeping an Archangel's Grace near him while he slept was a bad idea.

Sam expected the Grace to do something. Something destructive. Something that would tear apart his little reprieve from reality. Or, maybe it would attack him. Give off a burst of energy brighter than the sun and blind him. It was, after all, Gabriel. They hadn't exactly treated him all that well when he'd been alive. Not that he had treated them well, either.

He was shocked when the Grace did none of those things. In a voice that sounded like a mixture of small bells, deep horns, and piercing static, it asked:

"Where am I?"

Sam's eyes widened at the effect that voice had on him, his gaze snapping away from the light of the Grace to lock on with the table littered with papers and books. Even in the dream, he could feel his bones vibrate. He didn't know if that was what an angel's true voice sounded like, or if his mind was just guesstimating, but it was intense.

And he had to answer it, didn't he? What choice did he have to refuse something that sounded like that?

"Um. In-in my head?" Sam half-asked. "Which is in a bunker. Some-somewhere in Kansas."

A burst of sound, like a roar, jolted him harshly, causing him to cover his ears. As if that would help.

"WHERE AM I?" The Grace demanded, the aura around it intensifying briefly as it stressed the last word.

It didn't take long for Sam to catch on to what the Grace had meant. I. Where am I? Where was Gabriel, the being that the Grace had once resided in before it was stuck inside the Horn of Truth? Sam didn't know how to respond. He didn't know if what he could say would upset the solid energy that had yet to move from its spot near the doorway.

Yet, he felt compelled to answer. Maybe it was the sheer power the thing's voice wielded, even for being only a fragment of Gabriel's true strength? Maybe it was a left over side-effect of the Horn of Truth? Maybe it was because Sam knew how much it sucked to not have closure? Whatever the case, Sam braced himself for any other horrendous sounds the Grace could give off. Just in case his words pissed it off more than they already had.

"You're dead."

The light flickered, as if surprised. Sam thought it was zapping out entirely for a second. It remained, however. The aura around it dimmed pitifully. He probably shouldn't have been so blunt.

"Sorry," he muttered.

Sam cringed as a piercing shriek shook the entirety of Bobby's house. With a brilliant flash, Gabriel's Grace vanished from the dream, leaving Sam trembling where he sat. Well. That could have gone better.