Crossing The Inferno: For A Thousand More

Over time, Sam lost track of the days, the months, the years. There was no sun to mark the passage of days, no stars to chart out the years slipping away by. When he asked how long he'd slept every time he dozed off Gabriel merely smiled in reply. Sam wished, more than anything, that the archangel's unwavering smile wouldn't seem so strained.

He thought about counting things to figure out how far they'd come, but at the end of every day he lost track of those numbers too. How many footsteps they left in the sand behind them, how many times Gabriel cracked a bad joke that still made Sam laugh anyways, how many seconds they held their breath as a demon stalked past their hiding place.

"Look at your hair, kiddo," Gabriel said as they crossed into the sixth circle. He threaded his fingers through Sam's hair and back, the smallest of frowns on his face. "You're about to cross into hippie territory."

Sam tilted his head back and laughed. "It's not quite that long yet, Gabe. Don't be ridiculous."

"I have scrunchies in blue, pink, and yellow whenever you come to your senses."

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"You look like a Disney princess in training," Dean laughed, hands on his knees to keep himself upright as he fought to breath properly.

Sam punched him in the arm. "I hope that hurts when you wake up."

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They're sitting on the bank of the River Styx the first time Sam lets Gabriel braid his hair.

"I could cut it, you know, it would probably look better." Gabriel tentatively held up two fingers and made a scissoring motion towards the back of Sam's neck and Sam chuckled.

"Thanks, but I'll keep it as is. It helps me keep track of time."

Something in Gabriel's eyes darkened at these words and before Sam could say anything more the archangel had wrapped his arms around him, forehead resting in the space between Sam's shoulder blades. "Ask me," He whispered and Sam shuddered at how broken the words sounded. "Ask me how long it's been."

He almost didn't dare to.

"How long?"

Silence settled in the air when he finally voiced the question that had been nagging him since he fell into the pit and Bela looked up from where she'd been seemingly asleep a few feet away. Gabriel shifted his hold on the hunter so that he could meet her gaze over Sam's shoulder, holding it before he drew in a breath to reply.

"Seventeen years."

At first, Sam didn't believe him. He tried to count up the days in his head, or at least how many he'd estimated had passed, and fell far short. It couldn't have been seventeen. Seventeen.

"What?"

Gabriel tightened his hold on him, "Every three days on earth is one year here, Sam. How many times have you dreamed of your brother?"

Sam tried to count, tried to add it up. "At least . . . Thirty?"

"You don't dream of him every time you sleep, correct?"

"No."

"You dream of him every time he sleeps. Or at least every time he's not haunted by his own nightmares."

The archangel pulled away and Sam slumped a bit without the support. He sat there for a few minutes, too shocked to do much else, and he lifted a hand when Bela padded over and lay her head down on his thigh, his fingers tangling in her fur. Seventeen years.

"Dean was down here for something like sixty, wasn't he?" From where he was standing a few feet away, wings folded against his back and his posture stiff, Gabriel nodded. Sam forced a smile and continued, "Well then, seventeen isn't so bad."

Gabriel stopped trying to keep Sam in the dark after that.

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"I miss you," Dean whispered when he thought Sam couldn't hear him, the younger Winchester's back to him as they skipped rocks out across the unbroken surface of the lake.

Sam smiled and turned to him, wanting to say something, anything in return about how Dean had only had weeks to miss him whereas Sam had had years. But Dean was already gone.

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"Why do they call it the 'River' Styx?" Sam asked. He was sitting on the set of stairs leading from the upper deck to the lower of the ship, his gaze on the never ending horizon of water. It's been twenty six years since he fell into the pit and nine since he'd seen land.

Bela has her paws up on the railing on the port side and she dropped down to all fours again as she bound across the swaying deck to his side. "It's called a river because it flows," she explained. "An ocean has tides, but it does not have a current, like a river. The current is what keeps the souls here from escaping." She tilted her head towards the side of the ship and Sam closed his eyes to keep from following her gaze. He already knew what lay in the water, the hundreds of thousands of people who flailed and clawed at the side of the ship every day before turning on each other once more.

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"I don't know how long I can take it," he told Dean as they sat on the pier looking out over the sun washed lake.

"You're only halfway there," Dean reminded and Sam covered his eyes with his palms as reality slipped back into focus.

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"Don't look at them, Sam," Gabriel said as he tugged Sam away from the cabin's window. The river swelled and dipped beneath them, carrying their little ship onwards through the fifth circle. Sam didn't shift his eyes away from the red stained water and the bodies roiling within it until the archangel forcibly pulled him back.

Sam gritted his teeth, "Why can't I look at them?" Gabriel started, mouth dropping open to voice an answer that never came. "Why can't I?" Sam went on, "They're just like me, aren't they? They're human, or they used to be. And if I died, here and now, I'd end up down here too." He grabbed Gabriel by the arms, fingers digging into skin. "Tell me the truth!"

Gabriel's eyes flickered to the river just outside the windows, "No, Sam. You wouldn't."

The hunter snarled and shoved the archangel back, tripping him onto the single bed in the cabin. "You're so full of shit, Gabriel! How many lies is this? A hundred? A thousand?" Gabriel didn't resist when Sam pinned his wings down, pressed him belly down against the mattress, green eyes blazing with fury. "I can't take it anymore!"

"I know," was all Gabriel said before bit down warningly against his spine.

The archangel didn't cry out when Sam took him, forced his way inside and held him down. He twisted his fingers into the sheets and said nothing.

He stayed silent when Sam bent him over the small desk, pressed him against the wall, the door, the cold wood of the floor. It wasn't until Sam dumped him onto the bed again, the archangel falling onto his back before the hunter was on him again that any words passed between them at all.

"Oh . . . God," Sam whispered. And that was all Gabriel needed to hear.

He smiled, a wavering, broken little thing that barely made it's way past his cut lip and didn't quiet reach his eyes. "Shhh, Sammy. It's okay." Sam closed his eyes as Gabriel framed his face with his hands, fingers threading through the hunter's hair. "It's okay. I've got you. It's okay."

Sam choked, throat closing around an apology that wouldn't come. Gabriel brushed away his tears and kissed him, swallowing down the sob that threatened to escape him. "It's not okay," Sam said finally and Gabriel didn't have anything to say in return.

Their ship continued across the Circle of Anger.

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"I fucked up," Sam said with the heels of his palms digging into his eyes. He can't even look at Dean to say it, can't bear to see the disappointment in his brother's eyes. "I was just so angry and I . . . I don't know what happened."

All Dean says is, "Everyone fucks up," and Sam can't bring himself to admit that he's right.

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"I hurt you."

They were on year thirty four when Sam said it and they'd spent two entire years dancing around each other on the deck of the ship. Gabriel's body didn't scar unless marked by an angel blade or death, but it took far too long for the bruises of Sam's hands to fade from his skin.

Gabriel looks up from where he'd been leaning against the mast, one eyebrow raised, "Yeah. I already told you it was fine, Sam." His words were calm, but forcibly so, and Sam didn't miss the dismissive tone to them.

"It's not fine," Sam snapped, and there they were again, breathing down each other's necks and seconds away from another fight. Gabriel didn't budge from where he stood with his back against the mast, defiance in his honey gold eyes, and Sam sucked in a shaking breath before turning away, arms crossed over his chest.

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"Did you and Cas . . . Did you guys ever fight?"

Dean raised an eyebrow before he went back to kicking rocks into the water, the question hanging ignored between them.

"Dean."

"Yes, we fought. It was . . . When I left and tried to go to Michael, that one wasn't the first time but it definitely was the worst one." He shrugged as if it was nothing but Sam didn't miss the stiffness in the motion.

"What did you do? How did you . . . Fix things?"

"I didn't."

The small, barely audible crack in Dean's voice saod more than those two words alone ever could.

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Gabriel's hands were firm when he pushed Sam backwards onto the bed and Sam let himself fall with a faint huff of surprise.

"You're human," Gabriel said as he tugged his clothes off piece by piece. "You're mortal. You're easily influenced by events and emotions around you." He shakes a hand towards the window and Sam doesn't follow the movement, already knows what lays beyond it, the river and the souls within it, eternally locked in anger. "You're human," Gabriel repeated and Sam watched apprehensively as the archangel kneeled on the edge of the bed, "And I don't blame you for what happened."

Sam swallowed, "What if I blame myself?"

"Then I don't care." The Trickster leaned down and pressed a kiss to the corner of Sam's mouth, smiling as Sam's eyebrows furrowed together in confusion. "Now lay back, shut up, and enjoy my ride."

"Your ri-what?" Sam sputtered and Gabriel smirked.

They made up the same way they'd fought, with bodies rather than words. Sam's fingers glided over Gabriel's hips as the archangel rocked against him, around him, over him, the hunter's breath coming out in short, uneven gasps. Gabriel's hands rested across Sam's chest, over the print seared into skin, and he growled out a protest when Sam tried to roll them.

"Oh, no, big boy, I'm in charge here." He muttered, nails digging into skin when Sam rolled his hips upward on instinct. Gabriel swore and reached back to grip Sam's knees to steady himself, chest heaving. "For the love of, hold still. I said I was in charge."

Sam cracked open an eye and chuckled, "You always say that." He rolled his hips again, once, twice, his hands on Gabriel's hips keeping the archangel in place. Gabriel groaned, his chin falling to rest against his collarbone as his whole body shuddered.

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"When I get back . . ." Sam stopped as Dean closed his eyes, a forced and twisted smile on his face. He never finished the sentence, too caught between the realization that Dean didn't believe he would return and the shock that he suddenly felt like he never would either.

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They spend an entire year on the shore between the fifth and fourth circles. Sam built sandcastles that could rival Michelangelo's statues in their intricacy and Gabriel just lay back and enjoyed the steady, secure feeling of land under his body with Bela at his side.

"When are you going to tell him?" Bela asked one day, her head tilted to the side and wind rolling off the river ruffling her fur.

Gabriel narrowed his eyes, "Tell him what?" She bared her teeth and Gabriel simply met her gaze head on, unafraid of her threats. "There is nothing left to tell."

Bela snarled, "He thinks you'll be leaving this place together, angel. Not correcting him is as good as lying."

"You don't know that we won't," Gabriel hissed. "For all any of us know we could all walk out of here very much alive."

Bela snapped her jaws and snorted, a sound that would have been a laugh if she'd still been human enough. "And how alive will the angel, who's slowly giving what little life he has left to a mortal, be at the end of a hundred years?"

He doesn't answer.

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"We'll be tied for years soon."

"That's not an achievement you should be striving for, Sammy."

"I know."

RANDOM AUTHOR RAMBLE

I would say I'm sorry for the inexcusable delay, but I'm really not. It's hard to write when the actual show you're writing for is tearing your hopes and dreams up into itty bitty pieces before your eyes.

This chapter is broken up into short little sections for a REASON. We're going over a time in Hell when Sam's finally aware of how long he's been down there, and it's starting to affect him.

Two more chapters left, I think. I'm trying to wrap this one up before I sign up for the Suerpwholock big bang, so expect more a lot quicker. Yep.