Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It started—like so many of their disasters—with a news broadcast.

Dean had been elbow-deep in the Impala’s engine, cursing the carburetor, when Sam came sprinting out of Bobby’s house, tablet in hand.

“Dean,” he called, voice sharp. “You need to see this.”

Dean wiped grease off his palms and squinted at the screen.

A press conference flickered in high definition: a handsome man in a suit, white smile fixed in place as he announced the acquisition of yet another conglomerate.

Dick Roman.

Dean didn’t even have to look at Sam to feel the tension radiating off him.

“You’re sure it’s them?” Dean asked.

Sam nodded grimly. “Leviathans. All of them.”

The image on the screen cut to footage of black goo seeping from a dead executive’s mouth.

Dean felt bile rise in his throat.

“Well, that’s just awesome,” he muttered. “Can’t ever get a break.”

Sam closed the tablet with a sigh. “We need a plan.”

⸻

They didn’t get one.

Not right away.

Because barely two hours later, the air in the salvage yard rippled—like heat haze in midwinter—and a familiar, impossible presence slid into the world.

Sam’s heart stuttered.

He turned, already bracing for the worst.

Raphael stood there in a swirl of white light, her expression cool and impassive.

Her true form pressed against the edges of reality, a vast and terrible thing.

Dean reached for his gun on instinct, even though it wouldn’t do a damn bit of good.

“Put that down,” Raphael said calmly. “If I meant you harm, you’d already be dead.”

“Yeah?” Dean snapped. “Well, forgive me if I don’t trust you.”

Sam swallowed hard. “Why are you here?”

Raphael regarded them both, eyes as ancient as creation.

“To make an offer.”

Dean barked out a laugh. “Oh, that’s rich. The last time you made an offer, it was join Team Apocalypse or die.”

Raphael inclined her head. “Nothing has changed in that regard. The Apocalypse is inevitable.”

Dean stiffened. “Then you can go straight to hell.”

Sam put a hand on Dean’s shoulder, feeling the barely contained rage thrumming beneath his brother’s skin.

“Just…listen,” he murmured. “Please.”

Dean glared at him. “Sam—”

But Sam only turned back to Raphael.

“Why now?” he asked quietly.

Raphael folded her hands. For a moment, her mask of perfect composure slipped, and something raw and tired flickered across her face.

“Because Leviathans are an abomination,” she said. “Older than angels, older than humanity. They devour everything.”

She looked past them, gaze fixed on some unseen horizon.

“If they succeed,” she continued, “there will be no Earth left to fight over. No souls left to redeem or condemn. Nothing.”

Dean opened his mouth to retort, but Sam spoke first.

“You want our help to kill them.”

Raphael inclined her head.

“And after?” Sam pressed, voice low. “After you wipe them out?”

Raphael met his eyes.

“Then,” she said simply, “the Apocalypse resumes.”

Dean made a strangled noise. “You—you can’t be serious!”

“I am always serious,” Raphael replied. “I will not pretend my goals have changed. But I am not so blind as to ignore the greater threat.”

For a long moment, the yard was silent except for the wind scraping through the weeds.

Dean looked at Sam, betrayal written clear across his face.

“Don’t even think about it,” he growled.

Sam swallowed.

Father.

The word drifted unbidden through his thoughts, though he couldn’t remember why it haunted him.

He didn’t know what Raphael had been to him in whatever life his missing memories hid—but he couldn’t shake the sense that she was something more complicated than an enemy.

Maybe even something almost like family.

He cleared his throat.

“If we help you,” he said, carefully keeping his voice steady, “we do it on our terms. No collateral damage. No innocent deaths.”

Raphael studied him.

Something unreadable passed through her gaze.

“Agreed,” she said at last.

Dean gaped at him.

“Are you out of your damn mind?”

Sam didn’t look away from Raphael.

“Why us?” he asked softly. “Why not gather other angels?”

Raphael’s mouth curved in a wry, tired smile.

“Because,” she said, “you two have a talent for surviving the impossible.”

Dean rubbed both hands over his face, exhaling shakily.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered. “I swear, Sam—if you trust her, I—”

“I don’t trust her,” Sam said quietly. “But I believe her.”

Dean turned away, kicking the side of a rusted-out pickup so hard the fender dented.

“Fine,” he snarled. “Fine. But when this goes sideways—and it will—it’s on you.”

Sam nodded. He couldn’t blame Dean for the anger.

But something in him—some echo of that dream-door—knew this was the only path left.

Raphael inclined her head again.

“I will be in contact,” she said, voice softening just enough that Sam wondered if she was trying to reassure him.

Then she vanished.

A faint ripple in the air, and she was gone.

Sam was left staring at empty space, his heart thudding like a war drum.

⸻

In the Cage, centuries passed.

Lucifer sat in the same chair he always did, a long blade of celestial steel in his hand.

He carved slow, meticulous tally marks into the cottage wall.

Thousands upon thousands of them.

He didn’t count days anymore.

Days had no meaning here.

But centuries…centuries were something to measure.

The scratching of the blade was the only sound.

Michael stood by the doorway, watching the darkness press against their fragile sanctuary.

“He’s not coming back,” he said quietly.

Lucifer’s hand stilled.

For a moment, he didn’t answer.

Then he set the blade aside, resting his palm against the marked wall.

His voice was hoarse.

“I know.”

Adam sat cross-legged on the floor, folding a length of cloth that had once been part of Sam’s shirt.

He smoothed it flat over and over, as if he could will it into something whole again.

“We have to let him go,” Adam whispered.

Lucifer didn’t look at him.

Didn’t look at Michael.

Just closed his eyes and pressed his forehead to the wood.

A thousand tally marks beneath his skin.

“I can’t,” he breathed.

The silence that followed was almost a kindness.

⸻

Outside the cottage, the Cage stretched on forever—an ocean of darkness that had once been their prison.

And their only home.

Lucifer opened his eyes and stared out into it, jaw set.

Somewhere far above—so far he could barely feel it anymore—Sam Winchester was alive.

That was the truth he clung to.

He didn’t care how many centuries he would wait.

One day, the door would open.

One day, the promise would be kept.

⸻

Above them, Sam stood with Dean in the salvage yard as the sun set.

He felt the old scar on his palm throb, as if something were calling through the darkness.

He pressed his hand to his heart, swallowing hard.

“I’ll find you,” he whispered to no one.

And though he couldn’t remember why, the words tasted like a vow.

Chapter Text

Kansas, 3 A.M.

Sam had always thought that hunting monsters felt a little like playing at war.
But this—this was something else entirely.

The abandoned meatpacking plant reeked of blood and ammonia. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead, buzzing like dying insects.

Somewhere beyond the maze of metal tables and dangling hooks, a Leviathan shrieked.

Dean raised his machete. “You ready?”

Sam checked the borax canisters strapped to his belt. “Yeah.”

Castiel stood between them, dark eyes distant. He hadn’t spoken much since the souls of Purgatory had been ripped from him, leaving only ragged scraps of grace and guilt.

Raphael, by contrast, looked almost radiant. Her vessel—a statuesque woman in an immaculate white suit—glowed faintly at the edges, as if she were holding back a hurricane of celestial power by sheer force of will.

“This way,” she said, voice as calm as if she were leading a tour group.

Dean grumbled under his breath, but he followed.

They found the first nest in a refrigeration chamber the size of a basketball court.

At least a dozen Leviathans clustered around a body on a steel slab, tearing into it with their black, slithering jaws.

For one frozen heartbeat, the world was perfectly silent.

Then Raphael lifted a hand.

And the air caught fire.

Light exploded in every direction—white and searing, like the heart of a dying star.

The Leviathans turned, jaws stretching in unholy snarls.

Too late.

Raphael stepped forward, her voice resonant with a power that made Sam’s bones vibrate.

“I am the Word,” she intoned. “And you are unclean.”

She opened her hand.

Grace poured out of her in a torrent—burning arcs that crashed over the monsters. They writhed and screamed as their flesh liquefied, pooling on the concrete floor.

In seconds, they were nothing but ash and charred bone.

Dean let out a low whistle.

“Okay,” he said grudgingly. “That was…pretty badass.”

Raphael didn’t look at him. She simply lowered her hand and closed her eyes, breathing as if the act had cost her something.

Castiel inclined his head in solemn acknowledgment.

“You were always the most relentless,” he murmured.

She opened her eyes and gave him a look that might almost have been weary affection.

“Someone has to be,” she said.

⸻

They cleared three more nests before dawn.

Each time, Raphael unleashed that blinding fury. Each time, the Leviathans dissolved without so much as a chance to retaliate.

Sam could see Dean’s walls cracking—just a little.

Every time Raphael strode into battle, there was a flicker of reluctant respect in his brother’s eyes.

He wondered if she noticed it, too.

⸻

They regrouped in the parking lot as the sun began to rise.

Dean leaned against the Impala, scrubbing a hand over his stubble.

“Alright,” he admitted, voice gruff. “Credit where it’s due. You’re good in a fight.”

Raphael inclined her head. “That is what I was made for.”

Her gaze drifted to Sam, resting there a fraction longer than necessary.

Sam shifted under the weight of it.

There was something almost wistful in her expression—like she was trying to see someone else in his face.

“Is there something you need to say?” he asked quietly.

She blinked, and the softness vanished behind the familiar glacial calm.

“No,” she said. “Only that we are not finished.”

Dean snorted. “Yeah, no kidding.”

He gestured with the machete, splattered black up to the hilt.

“Whole damn country’s crawling with them.”

Raphael’s mouth tightened.

“Then we will continue,” she said simply.

Castiel spoke up at last, voice low.

“And after?”

They all looked at him.

“After,” Castiel repeated. “When this is over—will you return to your old designs?”

Raphael didn’t answer immediately.

The wind picked up, tugging at her white sleeves.

“I will do what must be done,” she said finally. “But not until this world is free of them.”

Dean looked like he wanted to argue.

Instead, he just sighed and rubbed his eyes.

“Let’s finish cleaning this up,” he muttered.

Sam watched Raphael a moment longer, wondering why her eyes seemed so tired.

⸻

In the Cage

The cottage had never been silent—not truly.

For centuries, it had been filled with the quiet, comforting sounds of four souls trying to survive.

Michael’s low voice reading aloud from books Sam had conjured.
Lucifer’s endless humming when he thought no one noticed.
Adam’s laughter when Lucifer made ridiculous faces to cheer him up.
Sam’s soft words in the dark.

Now, there were only three.

And it was worse than any scream.

⸻

Michael stood in the doorway, watching the darkness press against the edge of their sanctuary.

It wasn’t the Cage that felt like a prison anymore.

It was the emptiness.

The fourth chair at their table had remained in place for centuries, an unspoken shrine to the one who had given them this fragile peace.

But tonight, Michael couldn’t stand the sight of it.

He crossed the room in three strides, every movement deliberate.

Lucifer looked up from where he sat on the floor, carving another tally mark into the wood.

“Michael,” he said softly. “Don’t.”

Michael didn’t stop.

He laid one hand on the back of the chair.

“I can’t look at it anymore,” he whispered.

Adam rose uncertainly, his gaze flicking between them.

“What are you doing?”

Michael didn’t answer.

He lifted his hand.

White fire sparked across his palm—bright enough to throw long, leaping shadows across the walls.

Lucifer stood slowly.

“Please,” he said, voice breaking. “Don’t.”

Michael closed his eyes.

And the chair burst into flame.

For a moment, no one moved.

The fire ate through the wood in silence.

Ash drifted to the floor like snow.

Adam pressed a hand over his mouth, tears tracking down his cheeks.

Lucifer turned away, shoulders trembling.

Michael stood there until the chair was nothing but charred remains.

He bent, gathered a handful of ash, and held it in his cupped palm.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I can’t keep pretending.”

Then he let the ashes fall.

⸻

Topside

Sam loaded the last of the borax canisters into the trunk, trying not to think too hard about the dreams that still haunted him—dreams of a garden, of white wings, of voices calling him Father.

He didn’t know why Raphael watched him the way she did.

Didn’t know why something in her gaze felt so painfully familiar.

Dean came up beside him and clapped a hand on his shoulder.

“You okay?”

Sam nodded automatically, though he wasn’t sure it was true.

“Yeah,” he lied. “Just tired.”

Dean studied him, skeptical, but didn’t press.

They climbed into the car.

As the Impala rumbled to life, Sam looked out the window.

Raphael stood in the road, watching them drive away.

Her expression was unreadable.

But for a fleeting second, Sam thought he saw grief in her eyes.

⸻

And in the Cage, Michael turned away from the burned space at the table.

No one spoke.

No one knew what to say.

And for the first time in countless centuries, the little house in Hell felt truly empty.

Chapter Text

The dream began the same way it always did:

With the hush of leaves in a place that couldn’t exist.

Sam stood at the edge of a garden that seemed to stretch forever—a lush green oasis lit by a warm, unreal light. Soft wind stirred the branches overhead. Blossoms he couldn’t name glowed with color too vivid for waking eyes.

It felt…safe. Familiar.

And yet every time he came here, the knowledge of why was just beyond his reach, like a word on the tip of his tongue.

He walked forward along a stone path winding between tall hedges. Somewhere deeper inside, voices were murmuring—two distinct tones, one deep and almost amused, the other quieter, solemn.

He knew those voices.

But he couldn’t remember how.

At the heart of the garden, he found them.

Two figures stood beneath a flowering tree.

One was clad in white, the other in black. Their faces were a blur, as if the dream refused to let him see.

He tried to speak, but the words caught in his throat.

The figure in white turned toward him. Though he couldn’t see their eyes, he felt the weight of their regard, heavy with impossible tenderness.

“We were never meant to be soldiers,” the voice said—low and resonant, threaded with regret.

Sam’s chest tightened. He felt tears rising, though he didn’t understand why.

He took a step forward, reaching out.

But the figure in black raised a hand, palm out.

“Don’t,” the voice rasped—hoarse with grief. “If you come closer, you’ll remember.”

Remember what?

Sam swallowed hard. His heart was beating too fast, a panicked flutter.

“Who are you?” he whispered.

Neither answered.

Instead, the two figures turned to face each other.

Their blurred faces drew close—foreheads touching in an intimacy that made his breath catch.

The hush of the leaves deepened.

Something about this moment felt more honest and more real than anything he’d felt in years.

And it terrified him.

He stumbled back.

The garden dissolved in a rush of darkness and wind.

He fell—
—through leaves and smoke and memories—
—down into waking.

Sam jolted upright in his motel bed, gasping.

The room was dark except for the neon glow of the diner sign outside.

His heart hammered so hard it hurt.

Tears tracked cold over his cheeks.

For a few dazed seconds, he pressed a shaking hand over his chest, as if to hold something in place that was threatening to shatter.

He didn’t know why the dream left him so hollow.

Didn’t know why he woke feeling as if he’d lost something precious—something he’d promised never to forget.

But he did know one thing.

The ache in his heart was real.

Dean was still asleep, sprawled across the other bed in a tangle of limbs and blankets.

Sam swung his legs over the side of the mattress and sat there in the dark, trying to catch his breath.

In the quiet, he could almost hear the wind moving through leaves again. Almost feel the warmth of that impossible sun.

He pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes until colors sparked behind them.

Get it together.

But no matter how many times he told himself to shake it off, the emptiness didn’t ease.

He could still hear that voice—soft and sorrowful.

We were never meant to be soldiers.

⸻

In the Cage

Lucifer stood in the wreckage of what used to be Sam’s chair.

Ash clung to the folds of his robe. Tiny embers still glowed, winking out one by one as he watched.

For centuries—thousands of years in their warped sense of time—the chair had been a symbol. A promise that this place could be more than a prison.

That maybe, in the end, they could be a family.

Now it was gone.

Michael had retreated into the corner of the cottage, sitting with his back to the wall, face buried in his hands.

Adam was on the opposite side of the room, arms wrapped tight around his ribs as if he could hold himself together by sheer force.

Lucifer didn’t look at either of them.

His gaze stayed fixed on the blackened wood.

“This was all a lie,” he whispered.

Adam flinched.

“No,” he said, voice ragged. “It wasn’t.”

Lucifer’s jaw clenched.

“Then where is he?”

Adam pressed his lips together, but tears slipped free anyway.

Lucifer turned, finally meeting Michael’s hollow stare.

“He’s never coming back,” he said, almost gently. “And you know it.”

Michael didn’t answer.

Lucifer looked away.

“I thought if we could pretend long enough,” he murmured, “we’d believe it ourselves.”

Adam shook his head, wiping his eyes on his sleeve.

“It wasn’t pretend,” he whispered. “He—he loved us.”

For a long time, no one spoke.

Then Lucifer stepped closer to the burned remains and knelt.

He reached out, brushing his fingers through the cold ash.

“He made us believe we could be better,” he said. “But it wasn’t real.”

Adam turned away, shoulders shaking.

Lucifer closed his eyes.

The darkness beyond the walls pressed closer.

⸻

Topside

Sam splashed water on his face, watching the rivulets track through the stubble on his cheeks.

In the cracked mirror, he looked older than he felt—worn, frayed at the edges.

Like whatever held him together was coming loose.

He dried his face with a motel towel that smelled like bleach.

When he looked up again, for just an instant—
—he thought he saw a figure standing behind him in the mirror.

White and black.

Two blurred faces turned toward him.

Sam sucked in a breath.

But when he spun around, there was no one there.

Just the shadows and the hush of Dean’s snoring.

He pressed a hand to his chest.

What are you trying to tell me?

But the darkness offered no answers.

⸻

In the Cage

Lucifer finally stood.

The ashes sifted from his hands in a slow rain.

He crossed the small room to Michael and knelt beside him.

“Brother,” he said softly.

Michael didn’t look up.

Lucifer rested a tentative hand on his shoulder.

“I’m tired,” Michael whispered.

Lucifer closed his eyes.

“So am I.”

Adam turned back to look at them.

And for the first time in centuries, no one reached for the candle on the mantle.

No one tried to relight the fire.

The house stayed dark.

⸻

Topside

Sam lay back down but didn’t sleep.

The dream clung to him, leaving his skin prickling as if from phantom heat.

Somewhere deep in his mind, he felt it again—two pairs of hands resting on his shoulders.

A wordless promise.

And an ache that felt like love.

Chapter Text

The late afternoon sun slanted low over the Kansas wheat fields, turning everything a dusky gold. Sam crouched in the brittle stalks, watching the dilapidated barn a hundred yards ahead. According to Bobby’s intel, the Leviathan had been using it as a makeshift nest, slipping out at night to feed on travelers along the back roads.

Raphael knelt silently beside him.

Despite her vessel’s small frame and unassuming posture, the air around her thrummed with grace—an electric pressure that made the fine hairs on Sam’s arms lift.

Dean, a few paces behind them, scanned the treeline with his shotgun loaded with borax rounds.

“You sure about this?” Dean asked, voice low. “You and her playing buddy-cop?”

Sam gave a tired sigh. “She saved my life, Dean.”

“Yeah. Because she wants to end the world herself,” Dean muttered.

Sam didn’t answer. He glanced sideways at Raphael. Her expression, as usual, was unreadable—eyes fixed on the barn door, hands folded neatly in her lap. But beneath that icy calm, he thought he caught something almost…nervous.

“Do you sense it?” Sam asked.

She inclined her head. “Yes. It’s alone.”

“Good.” He shifted his grip on the machete. “We go in on three.”

Dean looked from Sam to Raphael, clearly struggling to swallow his dislike. “Fine. But if she tries anything—”

“She won’t.”

Raphael finally turned her gaze to Dean, her voice quiet but implacable. “I have given my word. And contrary to your suspicions, Winchester, my word still means something.”

Dean opened his mouth to retort, but Sam held up a hand. “Later. We have work to do.”

They moved as one—Sam on the left, Dean on the right, Raphael a pace behind.

Sam kicked in the door.

The stench hit them immediately: rotting meat, decay, something black and chemical that made his stomach clench.

A figure turned in the shadows—gray skin rippling, mouth splitting into a shark’s grin.

“Dinner,” it rasped.

Before it could take a step, Raphael lifted her hand.

Grace flared—brilliant, blinding.

The Leviathan convulsed in mid-motion. It let out a gurgling scream as it began to burn from the inside out, black ichor bubbling from its eyes and mouth.

A moment later, it collapsed into a smoking ruin.

Sam exhaled, heart thumping. “That was…efficient.”

Raphael lowered her hand, watching the remains with an inscrutable expression. “They were never meant to exist in this realm.”

Dean edged closer, giving her a suspicious look. “And you were?”

She didn’t look away from the corpse. “No,” she said quietly. “Perhaps none of us were.”

They searched the barn, but found nothing more than discarded bones and a scattering of shredded clothes.

When it was over, Dean stepped out to call Bobby.

Sam stayed behind, watching Raphael trace her fingers lightly over the charred beams where the Leviathan’s final thrash had scorched the wood.

There was a strange tension in her shoulders—something he wouldn’t have noticed once, back when he thought of angels as only soldiers or monsters.

“You all right?” he asked softly.

She didn’t look at him.

For a moment, he thought she wasn’t going to answer.

Then she said, almost inaudible, “I am…unsure.”

He took a step closer. “About what?”

Raphael lowered her hand and stared at her palm as if she expected it to reveal some hidden truth.

“I have existed since before your species took its first breath,” she murmured. “I have done only what I was created to do: fight, obey, punish.”

Her voice turned brittle. “And now…I do not know what that makes me.”

Sam swallowed, remembering how he had once woken in the panic room, unsure who he was, not even certain he deserved to be alive.

“I get that,” he said quietly. “Not knowing how to be anything else.”

She finally turned her gaze on him.

The moment stretched between them—two creatures born of different orders of existence, but for once, neither feeling quite certain they belonged.

Sam cleared his throat. “You could…try. To be something else.”

Her eyes searched his face.

“And what would that look like?”

He hesitated, then said honestly, “I don’t know. But maybe it starts with deciding what you care about. What you want to protect.”

Raphael looked down. Her fingers curled into her palm.

“I was created for war,” she whispered.

“Maybe,” Sam said, “but that doesn’t mean you have to stay in it forever.”

She was silent a long time.

Then, in a voice so small he almost missed it:

“Will you…teach me?”

Sam felt something catch in his chest.

He nodded. “Yeah. I can try.”

Dean chose that exact moment to reappear in the doorway.

He stopped dead, taking in the tableau—Raphael standing close to Sam, her face uncharacteristically open, Sam’s expression gentle.

Dean sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Oh, great,” he muttered. “He’s befriending monsters again.”

Sam shot him a look. “She’s not a monster.”

“Sure,” Dean drawled. “Next thing you know, you’ll be braiding her hair and telling bedtime stories.”

Raphael’s brows drew together. “I…do not understand this idiom.”

Dean just walked past them, muttering curses under his breath.

Sam rubbed his temple, fighting a smile. “Ignore him. He’ll come around.”

“I doubt it,” she said mildly.

“You’d be surprised.”

They left the barn in silence.

The wheat fields had turned from gold to shadow as the sun disappeared below the horizon.

As they walked back to the Impala, Raphael slowed her steps until she matched Sam’s pace.

After a moment, she spoke.

“When I was created, my Father told me I was the embodiment of His wrath. That I would be His left hand, cleansing creation when it failed.”

Her voice was almost soft. “But no one ever told me if there was anything else I could be.”

Sam glanced over at her.

“Maybe you get to decide that for yourself now.”

She studied him, her expression unreadable.

Then she nodded—once, slow and deliberate.

Dean was already leaning against the car, arms folded, jaw working.

He didn’t say anything when they approached.

Sam knew he wanted to.

But as they climbed into the Impala, Raphael quietly taking the back seat, he kept his peace.

For once, that was enough.

⸻

In the Cage

Michael stood alone in the garden’s burned clearing.

Lucifer had withdrawn to the far end of the cottage, silent.

Adam hadn’t come outside in centuries.

Michael reached down and picked up a fragment of blackened wood.

He turned it over in his hands, remembering how Sam had once rested there in the evenings, his human warmth filling this empty place with something almost like hope.

He closed his eyes.

“He will come back,” he murmured to no one.

The darkness didn’t answer.

⸻

Topside

Sam stared out the window as Dean drove.

In the reflection of the glass, he thought he saw a blurred figure in white, watching him with sad, patient eyes.

When he blinked, it was gone.

But the ache remained.

Chapter Text

The nest was tucked inside an old shipping depot outside Tulsa—rusted metal siding, half-collapsed offices, and the stench of chemical rot wafting from every cracked window. Dean muttered curses under his breath as he unslung his shotgun, glancing at the oily tracks snaking into the building’s bowels.

“You sure this is the place?” he asked.

“Leviathan signature’s all over it,” Castiel replied quietly. He looked drained, his grace still fragile from the ordeal of opening Purgatory.

Raphael stood at the edge of the perimeter, her gaze fixed on the flickering shadows inside the depot. Sam stood beside her, machete gripped tightly in his hand, eyes scanning the doorway. He felt jumpy today. There was a strange pressure behind his eyes—like something old and heavy trying to press forward into his waking thoughts.

The feeling had come and gone since the last fight. Since the dream of the garden. Since—

“Focus,” he told himself under his breath.

Dean tapped him on the shoulder. “You and our angelic mascot on the left. Cas and I’ll take the right.”

Sam nodded. He turned to Raphael, who gave a single inclined nod. She didn’t draw a weapon—she didn’t need one.

They moved.

Inside the depot, it was pitch black. Sam’s boots crunched on broken glass and scorched concrete. He could hear the low, wet slither of something moving between walls.

Then a roar.

The Leviathan exploded from the shadows—teeth bared, arms like clubs. It lunged directly for Sam.

He raised his blade—but too slow. Far too slow.

The thing was nearly on him when a bolt of incandescent light slammed into its side. Grace burned it like acid, black flesh peeling in furious shrieks.

Sam hit the ground, breath knocked from his lungs, as the Leviathan reared in pain.

Raphael moved like lightning. She stepped between Sam and the creature, her eyes like twin stars, her hand raised and alight.

“No,” she whispered, and the Leviathan froze—body convulsing mid-lunge, before it shattered like brittle glass. Splinters of dark flesh scattered around them, then turned to smoke.

Silence.

Only Sam’s ragged breathing filled the space.

He blinked against the dust, realized he was on his back, and then Raphael was kneeling over him, one hand glowing faintly where it hovered over his chest.

“You’re not injured,” she said quietly.

Sam swallowed hard, blinking up at her.

“I—thanks,” he breathed, pushing himself up. His hand rose instinctively to steady himself—resting lightly on her shoulder.

The touch made her flinch, just slightly. But she didn’t pull away.

And then she said it.

Soft as breath, almost to herself.

“Of course…Father.”

The word hung in the air like thunder after a storm.

Sam froze.

So did Raphael.

A beat of silence passed.

“…What?” Dean asked from across the room, voice strangled. “What did she just say?”

He walked into the open space, soaked in Leviathan smoke, gripping his shotgun loosely at his side.

Raphael straightened quickly, her face tightening. She opened her mouth to speak—but said nothing.

Sam stood slowly, eyes fixed on her, heart pounding in his throat.

“I—” Raphael finally said, then stopped. She looked disoriented, unsettled in a way that deeply disturbed Sam. “I…don’t know why I said that.”

Dean made a noise like he was choking on his own spit. “You don’t know why you called my brother ‘Father’?”

Sam shot Dean a glare. “Take it easy.”

Raphael, face pale, was now staring at Sam—not with fear, not with reverence, but confusion.

“I don’t understand,” she said again. “It came out unbidden. Reflexive.”

“Yeah, that’s not weird at all,” Dean muttered, wiping a hand down his face.

Before either brother could say anything more, a gruff voice cut in from behind them.

“Well,” Bobby drawled, emerging from a side door with his shotgun slung over his shoulder. “That’s new.”

Sam blinked. “Bobby?”

“Been tracking this one since Missouri. Figured I’d wait until the kids blew the damn thing up before I said howdy.” He gave the Leviathan remains a pointed look, then turned to Raphael. “So. You havin’ some kind of heavenly identity crisis, or did I miss the memo where Sam got promoted to the Almighty?”

Raphael looked away.

Castiel appeared quietly at Sam’s side. He said nothing, only placed a gentle hand on Raphael’s arm.

She didn’t pull away. Her vessel’s hands trembled faintly.

“No, he didn’t,” she said again, almost desperate. “But when I saw him fall, and thought he would die, the word… it just came.”

Sam felt a jolt go through him. The pressure in his chest expanded. Something wanted to surface—something warm and radiant, something old—but he couldn’t grasp it.

Instead, he said gently, “It’s okay. You don’t have to explain it.”

“No,” she said sharply, and turned to face him, eyes glowing faintly with inner fire. “It is not okay. I do not speak without reason. My words have purpose.”

“But not this time,” Castiel said softly.

Dean rolled his eyes. “Okay, yeah, great. Let’s just all pretend we didn’t just witness a being older than time accidentally call Sam her dad. Totally normal Thursday.”

“No one’s saying it’s normal,” Bobby said, though he looked vaguely amused. “Just not the weirdest thing that’s happened this week either.”

Sam rubbed at the scar on his palm. The burning itch had returned. He looked down at it thoughtfully.

⸻

Meanwhile… in the Cage

Lucifer stood on the edge of the garden, his wings—ashen and frayed—tucked tightly to his back.

Michael was still silent, seated where the burned chair used to be.

The garden had withered. Flowers gone. Sky dimmed.

But Adam kept lighting candles every night. He set them in the windows, soft flickers in the void.

“You don’t have to do that,” Lucifer murmured.

Adam shrugged. “Maybe not. But what if he’s trying to find his way back?”

Michael lifted his head.

“He’s forgotten,” he said quietly. “We have to accept that.”

Adam didn’t reply.

Lucifer turned his eyes upward, where there was no sky. No stars.

Only endless dark.

He clenched his fists.

And whispered, “Not yet. I still believe.”

⸻

Topside

Sam lay in his motel bed, staring at the ceiling.

He could still feel the heat of the Leviathan’s breath. The rush of wind from Raphael’s grace. The way her voice had cracked when she’d said the word.

Father.

It didn’t make sense.

And yet—it did.

He closed his eyes.

In the darkness, he saw a garden.

He saw a wing—white as frost—curving around his shoulder.

And someone laughing, calling his name.

Then waking, always waking, heart pounding and eyes wet.

Chapter Text

The wind was sharp across the Nebraska fields, and the sky was low, heavy with storm. The abandoned grain silo loomed in the distance, its rusting bulk silhouetted against the horizon. It was there, according to the intel Raphael had pulled from the wreckage of a Leviathan nest in Omaha, that Dick Roman’s lieutenants were gathering.

Sam adjusted his coat and glanced behind him. Dean and Bobby were arguing over shotgun loadouts—Dean insisting on double rounds, Bobby rolling his eyes. But Sam wasn’t listening.

He was watching Raphael and Castiel.

They stood a little apart from the others. Quiet. Tense.

Sam had never seen the two of them truly alone together before. Not without supervision. Not without a fight waiting to break out.

Raphael’s posture was all rigid discipline, arms crossed tightly across her chest. Her grace shimmered faintly beneath the surface of her vessel, betraying the tension she worked so hard to suppress. Beside her, Castiel was stillness incarnate—his gaze focused, but distant, like he was listening to something far away.

They hadn’t spoken since Omaha. Since the last nest, when a Leviathan nearly got the drop on Raphael—and Castiel had intervened, shielding her with a sweep of his wings.

The battle had ended, but something new had begun in its wake.

Now, Castiel glanced sideways at her.

“You’re humming,” he said softly.

“I am not,” Raphael replied, offended.

“You are,” he said again, then added, “The third tone of the celestial triad. It was the lullaby Michael used to sing in the early vaults.”

Raphael blinked, and the surprise on her face softened something brittle in her expression.

“I didn’t realize,” she said. Then, “I thought I’d forgotten it.”

“You haven’t,” Castiel said. “Not entirely.”

A beat passed.

“Neither have I.”

They stood there, silence stretching comfortably for the first time. Sam watched them through the corner of his eye, pretending to be focused on his blade. The sight hit something in him, like a gong sounding in the deep.

Two angels, standing with heads slightly bowed.

Not arguing. Not threatening.

Not soldiers, for once.

Just siblings.

Just kin.

The image lodged in his chest like a thorn. He remembered—though he shouldn’t have—the warmth of wings curling around him. Gentle laughter. A cup being passed hand to hand. He didn’t know where the memory came from, but he held onto it like breath.

“Time to move,” Dean called, slamming the trunk shut.

The moment broke.

⸻

The mission was simple: surveillance. Observe, report, and, if possible, disrupt any Leviathan movement. They split into pairs. Sam and Dean took the east flank. Bobby went up the ridge with a sniper rifle. That left Castiel and Raphael together—unarmed, by mutual choice.

Sam expected fireworks.

He got silence.

The two of them moved like shadows across the gravel, wings tucked away, voices low. He watched through the binoculars from a distance. They moved in sync—not perfectly, but with the instinct of those who had once known each other’s rhythm.

Still, he could sense the hesitance. Like dancers returning to a familiar step after years of absence.

At one point, Raphael stopped. She placed a hand on the twisted railing of the silo stairs. The wind tugged at her coat. She didn’t look at Castiel, but she spoke:

“I never wanted to be alone.”

Castiel’s face was unreadable. “I know.”

Raphael turned to him, eyes narrowed. “Do you?”

“I do,” he said gently. “Because I was. For a long time.”

They looked at each other—not as enemies, not as strangers—but as something slowly shifting into recognition.

“You were always the strongest,” Castiel said, not as flattery, but as fact.

“And you,” Raphael replied, almost with awe, “were always the bravest.”

That made Castiel blink. For a moment, he looked impossibly young.

They turned back to the silo, a silent truce forming between them.

Sam’s breath caught in his throat.

He remembered another dream—this one vivid, too vivid. A table in a cottage. Two figures, one in white, one in silver-gray, sitting beside him. Their heads bowed. One of them laughing quietly. The other murmuring a prayer of thanks.

He had fed them, hadn’t he?

He had held their hands?

He pressed a hand to his chest, to the ache blooming there. His heartbeat thudded loud in his ears.

⸻

That night, after the successful sabotage of the silo’s underground storage tanks and the escape of their team without a scratch, they returned to the motel in exhausted silence.

Dean flopped on the bed with a groan. Bobby disappeared into the bathroom.

Sam wandered outside.

The stars were dim, the motel sign flickering overhead. He sat on the curb, turning a flask of holy oil over in his hands.

Footsteps behind him.

He didn’t turn.

“You’re troubled,” Raphael said.

“Just thinking,” Sam replied.

She sat beside him, surprisingly close. She didn’t smell like grace or ozone. She smelled faintly of cold air and cedar. Earthy.

“I… remember things,” he said after a pause. “But not like memories. More like impressions. Shapes of feelings. People I should know.”

She didn’t interrupt.

“I had a dream. Of two angels. Sitting beside me. I think I used to…teach them. Or maybe just…listen.”

Raphael was quiet a long moment.

“I have no memory of you before this,” she admitted. “But I keep calling you that word.”

Sam nodded. “Father.”

She closed her eyes. “I don’t know what it means. But when you speak, it…calms something in me.”

He looked at her, surprised. “Why?”

“I don’t know.” She turned her face toward the sky. “But I want to find out.”

Sam stared at her profile—hard and beautiful and lonely.

“You’re not alone anymore,” he said.

She turned to him. “Neither are you.”

⸻

In the Cage

The garden was little more than ash now. The winds stirred gray dust across blackened roots and crumbled walls.

Lucifer stood at the edge of what had once been the sitting room.

He stared at the place where the chair used to be.

Michael had burned it. Said it hurt too much to look at. Said it was easier not to pretend anymore.

But Lucifer hadn’t stopped pretending.

He still spoke to the empty space.

Still offered food at every meal.

Still carved a mark for every year Sam didn’t return.

Adam stood behind him, silent. Watching.

Then, quietly, he said, “We have to let him go.”

Lucifer didn’t look at him. “You can. I won’t.”

Adam’s voice trembled. “We don’t even know if he remembers.”

Lucifer finally turned. His eyes were wild. Desperate. “He has to. He promised.”

Michael appeared behind them both, weary and silent.

“He’s forgetting,” Michael said. “We can feel it.”

“But I can still feel him,” Lucifer whispered, hand over his heart. “He’s not gone. Just lost.”

No one replied.

Only the dust stirred.

And the stars beyond the Cage refused to shine.

⸻

Back topside…

Castiel and Raphael stood outside the motel as the wind picked up. Lightning flickered in the distance.

“You were wrong, you know,” Castiel said.

Raphael raised an eyebrow. “About?”

“You’re not a soldier,” he said simply. “Not anymore.”

She didn’t answer right away.

Then she said, very quietly, “Then what am I?”

Castiel smiled, a small thing, but true.

“My sister.”

Raphael looked startled. Her eyes shimmered faintly.

She didn’t speak again.

But she did stand closer to him.

They stayed that way until the thunder rolled overhead.

Chapter Text

The sound was sharp, shattering—too loud for that cold stretch of woods in South Dakota. One gunshot, then another. Screaming.

Then silence.

“Bobby!” Dean’s voice tore through the trees like a knife.

Sam was already running, heart in his throat, breath burning. He ducked under a low-hanging branch, boots slamming into wet earth. The Leviathan nest had scattered faster than they’d expected, and Edgar—the meanest son of a bitch of the bunch—had stayed behind. Trapped, maybe. Or waiting.

Bobby had gone after him, of course.

Alone.

“Bobby!” Sam shouted.

And then he saw him.

Crushed against the roots of an old elm, Bobby Singer lay slumped, a red-black stain spreading across his flannel shirt. He was breathing, barely.

Dean skidded into the clearing just behind Sam. “No, no, no—”

“I’ve got him!” Sam dropped to his knees, hands reaching instinctively. “Bobby? Can you hear me?”

Bobby’s eyes fluttered open. “Idjits,” he croaked, a weak smile at the corners of his mouth. “Told you not to—”

His breath hitched.

“Stop talking,” Dean ordered, panicked. “You’re gonna be fine.”

“Shot in the damn gut,” Bobby muttered. “Ain’t like I’m dying.”

But Sam could feel the warmth of the blood soaking his jeans. Bobby’s pulse stuttered beneath his fingers.

Dean looked up wildly. “Where the hell is Raphael?!”

There was a whumph of displaced air.

She landed behind them in a flare of white-blue light, her eyes glowed, fierce and electric.

“Step back,” she said, voice clipped.

Dean hesitated.

“Now!”

He obeyed.

Raphael knelt. Her hand hovered over Bobby’s wound. She didn’t speak, didn’t chant—just closed her eyes. Her grace spilled from her fingers in slow, trembling light, weaving into the torn flesh like golden thread.

Bobby gasped.

Sam grabbed his shoulder. “It’s okay. It’s okay. She’s healing you.”

The light grew brighter, then dimmed. Raphael sat back, breathing hard. The blood was gone. The wound closed. Only a pink scar remained.

Bobby blinked.

Then sat up.

“Well,” he muttered, flexing his fingers. “Ain’t that something.”

Dean was staring, wide-eyed. “You… healed him.”

Raphael turned to Sam. Her expression wasn’t pride, or even satisfaction. It was almost—fear.

“I…” She looked at her hands. “I did not want you to grieve.”

Sam blinked. “Me?”

“I know what he means to you,” she said. “And… I think I understand now. What family means.”

There was a silence.

Then Dean cleared his throat. “Maybe,” he said slowly, “you’re not such a pain in the ass after all.”

Raphael tilted her head, puzzled. “Is that praise?”

“Yeah,” Bobby muttered. “That’s practically poetry, comin’ from him.”

Sam laughed, breathless with relief.

Bobby looked at them all—his boys, his strays, his wrecked, bloodstained family—and sighed. “Well,” he said, pushing himself to his feet, “looks like I got myself another stray.”

He patted Raphael’s shoulder with a familiar, fatherly grunt, as if she’d always been there.

And something in her grace trembled like a child who hadn’t known what it was to be touched gently.

⸻

Later, back at the safehouse, the fire crackled low. Rain tapped softly against the windows.

Bobby sat on the couch, nursing a mug of whiskey. His shirt was torn, but the skin underneath looked new. Like nothing had ever happened.

Sam sat across from him, still watching. Still shaken.

“Thought we lost you,” he said.

“Yeah,” Bobby muttered. “Me too.”

“You scared us.”

Bobby took a sip. “Don’t mean to. Just… instinct, I guess. You see something you know’ll come after your kids, you jump in front of it.”

Sam blinked. “Kids?”

Bobby frowned. “Don’t look at me like that. You and your brother been driving me gray since you barely came up to my knee.”

A beat.

Then Sam said, “You never wanted to be a father.”

Bobby sighed and leaned back in the chair, eyes distant. “No. No, I didn’t.”

He stared into the fire.

“My old man was a mean son of a bitch. Drunk half the time, angry the rest. Swore I’d never be like him. Never have kids. Never raise a hand to anybody that didn’t deserve it.”

Sam didn’t speak.

“But then your dad showed up with you two in tow, needing help every other damn week. Dean wouldn’t sit still, and you were always asking questions—big ones, ones I couldn’t answer. And somewhere along the way…”

He trailed off.

“…you became mine.”

Sam looked down, throat tight.

“I didn’t know what I was doing,” Bobby said softly. “Didn’t know how to love right. Not without breaking something. But I tried. Lord knows I tried.”

“You did good, Bobby.”

Bobby gave a wet snort. “Well. Ain’t exactly the Hallmark type. But I figured, if I could give you boys just one thing your daddy never did… maybe it’d be worth it.”

“You gave us a home.”

They sat in silence for a while.

Then Bobby added, quieter still, “And now this damn war’s brought me angels. Go figure.”

“You okay with that?” Sam asked.

Bobby chuckled. “Hell, son. One of ‘em saved my life. And Castiel’s practically my boy. Raphael…”

He paused.

“…she’s somethin’ else. Like a bomb that hasn’t decided if it wants to go off or not.”

“She’s trying,” Sam said. “She doesn’t know how to be anything but a weapon. But she wants to learn.”

“Like you did.”

Sam glanced up. “What?”

“When you got your soul back. You were all nerves. Jumping at shadows. But you learned again. Learned how to be human. Maybe she can too.”

There was a long pause.

Then Bobby added, “Anyway. I’ll be damned if I’m not at least granddad to one of them celestial troublemakers now.”

Sam laughed. “You’re not getting out of it, Bobby.”

“I wasn’t trying to.” He took another long sip. “Don’t tell Dean. He’ll make me babysit.”

⸻

In the other room, Raphael stood at the window. Her reflection blurred in the glass, wings faint behind her, half-manifested from nerves. Castiel stood nearby, arms crossed, watching the storm outside.

“You hesitated,” Castiel said gently.

She nodded.

“I was afraid. Afraid it would hurt to heal him. That I wouldn’t know how.”

“It didn’t?”

She turned to him. “No. It was… peace. Like pouring light into a cracked vessel.”

Castiel smiled. “You’re learning.”

She tilted her head. “Do you think Father would approve?”

Castiel blinked, startled. “Which one?”

She hesitated. “Sam. That is what I called him… once.”

He said nothing.

“I don’t know why,” she added quickly. “Only that… when I saw him weep, something in me—something very old—rose up and said, ‘Protect him.’”

Castiel moved closer. “Maybe… that’s love.”

She looked down at her hands. “I’m not sure I deserve it.”

“None of us do,” Castiel said. “That’s why it matters.”

⸻

In the Cage…

Lucifer sat at the edge of the burned table, one foot dangling, the other foot braced against the cold stone. His hands were empty.

He missed the cup Sam used.

Missed the weight of a book in his lap.

Missed the sound of Sam’s voice calling them in from the garden like lost children.

Michael walked past, silent.

“Do you think he knows?” Lucifer asked.

Michael stopped. “Knows what?”

“How much it mattered.”

Michael’s expression flickered. “He remembers less every day.”

Lucifer looked down at his hands.

“I don’t,” he whispered.

⸻

Back on Earth, the fire dimmed. Sam stood behind Bobby’s chair and rested a hand on the old hunter’s shoulder.

Raphael sat near the hearth, silent, watching them.

Family wasn’t born. It wasn’t inherited. It was built. Earned. Forged in blood and choice and mercy.

And tonight, Bobby Singer—who never wanted to be a father—had become one again.

Maybe not by blood.

But by love.

And that was enough.

Chapter Text

They didn’t talk about it at first—the slow thaw, the subtle shifts. Dean didn’t sit Raphael down and say, “You’re part of the family now.” Bobby didn’t start calling her kiddo overnight. Castiel didn’t drag her into family dinners.

But it started happening anyway.

A hunt in Ohio, two Leviathans in a meatpacking plant. Blood, acid, smoke. Sam got his shoulder sliced open. Raphael smote the creature before Dean could even blink.

Later, cleaning weapons in the motel room, Dean glanced over and saw Raphael carefully wrapping Sam’s bandage, brow furrowed in concentration. She’d healed bigger wounds before with a blink—but this time, she didn’t use her grace. Just gauze and saline and silence.

Dean said nothing. Just leaned back on the bed, watching.

And maybe that’s when something changed.

⸻

Two days later, they were packing up the Impala. Raphael offered to help carry the gear. Dean tossed her a duffel.

“You get the backseat, baby niece.”

Raphael blinked. “I am vastly older than you.”

Dean snorted. “Yeah, and Bobby still calls Cas ‘Kid’ half the time. Get used to it.”

She narrowed her eyes, genuinely perplexed. “Why would you refer to me as your sibling’s daughter?”

Sam, strapping his bag to the roof, tried not to laugh.

Dean just grinned. “It’s a nickname. You’re family now. Congratulations. It’s hazing time.”

“I do not consent to this… familial hazing.”

“Tough,” Dean said, tossing her a bottle of holy oil. “That’s how it works.”

⸻

At first, Raphael didn’t know what to make of Bobby Singer.

He was loud. Stubborn. Surly. His house was cluttered and smelled of grease and aged books. And yet—there was something about him.

He reminded her of old angels. Not in power, but in the steadiness of him. Unshakable. Certain. He was not one for speeches, but his presence filled a room.

She didn’t expect to find herself in the kitchen with him one morning, watching him scramble eggs in silence.

“You eat?” he asked without looking up.

“I do not require food,” she said carefully.

He grunted. “That wasn’t the question.”

She frowned. “No. But I enjoy… the smell.”

“Huh.” He slid her a plate anyway. “Suit yourself.”

She sat. Watched. Picked up a fork and mimicked what the others did. She didn’t need food, but… it felt like something normal people did. Something Sam and Dean did. Something Castiel tried and still didn’t quite grasp.

Bobby poured her a cup of coffee, set it down, then stared at her plate.

“I keep wonderin’,” he muttered.

“About what?”

“If you’ll get hurt out there.”

Raphael blinked. “I am a high-ranking archangel.”

“Yeah, well,” Bobby grumbled, “so was Gabriel.”

That made her pause. Gabriel, dead in the field. Cut down by his own brother, by Lucifer. She remembered the way Heaven shook when he fell.

“I never knew Gabriel, but I saw how torn up Sam was when he died and after what happened to Castiel, I never wanna see one of you kids harmed again,” Bobby said softly.

Raphael looked at him then—really looked. And something in her chest cracked, just a little.

“I… thank you,” she said, awkwardly.

Bobby shrugged. “Don’t mention it. Ever. Especially not in front of Dean.”

“I understand.”

⸻

That night, in Bobby’s kitchen, Castiel found Raphael sitting at the table, staring at a mug of coffee she’d let go cold.

“You’re unsettled,” he said gently.

She didn’t look at him. “They care.”

“They do.”

“It’s strange.”

“It was for me too,” Castiel said. “At first. Then it stopped being strange and started being… mine.”

Raphael folded her hands. “Do you ever feel undeserving?”

“Every day.”

Silence passed between them like smoke.

“I remember when I thought myself above them,” Raphael whispered. “Above all this. I was so certain. And now…”

“And now?”

“I find myself wondering if this is what it means to be holy,” she said. “Not power. Not order. But belonging.”

Castiel smiled. “Then perhaps, sister, you’re finally beginning.”

⸻

Dean caught her outside later that week, sitting on the porch of Bobby’s salvage yard, watching the sun go down.

He passed her a beer.

“I do not consume alcohol.”

“Just hold it,” Dean said, cracking his own open. “You’ll look more human.”

Raphael eyed it warily. Then held it.

They sat in silence for a while.

“You hated me,” she said at last.

Dean took a sip. “Still kinda do. On instinct.”

She nodded. “Reasonable.”

“But,” he added, “I hated Cas too for a while. That didn’t last either.”

She looked at him. “Why?”

Dean shrugged. “Because he kept showing up. Because he chose us. Again and again.”

Raphael stared out across the salvage yard. “I don’t know if I’m choosing you. Or if I’m choosing… him.”

“Sam?”

She nodded.

Dean glanced at her sidelong. “You don’t have to pick. That’s the trick with family. We fight, and we mess up, and we fix it. We pick each other even when we don’t deserve it.”

Raphael hesitated. “Even me?”

Dean smiled. “Even you, baby niece.”

⸻

In the Cage.

Lucifer stared at the wall where the tally marks had started to fade, dusted by ash and forgotten prayers.

The chair Michael burned was gone. The table was worn smooth by centuries of waiting.

“I almost can’t remember his face,” Lucifer whispered, voice cracking in the empty stillness.

Michael didn’t answer.

But Adam did.

He sat in the corner, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around them. His voice was soft.

“I can. Every day.”

Lucifer turned to him.

“I remember the way he smiled when he read to us,” Adam said. “I remember the way he put a hand on your shoulder when you got angry, and how you calmed down like a storm ending.”

Lucifer swallowed.

“I remember the garden,” Adam whispered. “And the sound of his voice saying, ‘I’m proud of you.’”

Michael’s wings fluttered softly.

Lucifer closed his eyes.

“I wish I could hear it again.”

⸻

Back on Earth, Raphael walked through the hallway, a worn flannel draped around her shoulders. Bobby’s, though he hadn’t mentioned it missing.

She passed a mirror and stopped.

Looked at herself.

Not the blazing creature of Heaven’s wrath. Not the archangel. Not the executioner. Just a woman now, in borrowed clothes, carrying borrowed warmth.

She touched her own cheek.

Then turned—and kept walking.

Toward the kitchen.

Where family waited.

Chapter Text

It started in smoke and blood.

The Leviathan nest was buried deep beneath the shell of a pharmaceutical conglomerate’s headquarters—slick steel towers polished with false promises and glass that reflected nothing of the monsters inside.

They’d planned for weeks. Sam tracked the movements. Raphael deciphered the sigils. Castiel quietly gathered knowledge, while Dean sharpened blades and readied bullets. Bobby held it all together like the rusted frame of a beloved car—grumbling, growling, and more steadfast than any of them deserved.

Now, it was time.

The sun dipped low over the horizon. Orange lit the windows of Dick Roman’s empire. And the hunters came to burn it all down.

⸻

They entered through a back corridor—Sam hotwiring the electronic locks like he’d done a thousand times, Raphael shielding them from security cameras with an elegant gesture of her hand. Dean muttered under his breath about “stupid techy monsters” as Castiel flickered just slightly, his vessel’s edges humming with contained power.

The first Leviathan fell silently—its head severed in one slice by Raphael’s burning blade.

The second got a warning growl from Dean before Sam filled its mouth with borax and bullets.

They moved like water: Castiel appearing behind guards and snapping necks, Dean swinging with a fury born from years of vengeance, Sam holding back not from lack of strength—but from restraint.

He was remembering.

He didn’t know why he hesitated before killing. Just that something in his heart whispered, mercy is strength too.

“Keep moving!” Dean called. “Main hall’s up ahead!”

They burst through the inner sanctum, where Dick Roman waited behind a curved desk carved from fossilized bone. He smiled, wide and too human.

“Winchesters,” he drawled. “You’re late.”

Raphael stepped forward, eyes white-hot. “No more games, abomination.”

Dick raised an eyebrow. “Oh, you brought the sparkly one. What is she, a cosplay archangel?”

Dean fired. The bullet went wide—but the warning was clear.

Dick clicked his tongue. “Manners.”

The air thickened. The Leviathans flooded in from the hallways, all snarls and black ichor. Dozens of them.

“Fall back to the atrium!” Castiel shouted. “It’s a kill zone!”

They ran. Sam pulled Dean behind a pillar. Raphael shielded them with her wings, her grace hissing against the oily corruption pressing in.

Dean spat blood. “We’re outnumbered.”

“Then we even the odds,” Raphael said.

⸻

The battle exploded.

Leviathans tore into stone and metal. Castiel vanished and reappeared across the field like lightning, striking with blades of celestial steel. Dean dual-wielded machetes soaked in borax and rage, cursing every time one of the creatures laughed as it fell.

Sam hurled purifying salt into the air, watched the monsters scream.

And Raphael—

Raphael burned.

Her wings stretched wide, incandescent and furious. She moved through the Leviathans like vengeance incarnate, carving a path of light and fire.

Dick Roman stood at the center of it all, unaffected. Watching.

Smiling.

Then he turned and walked toward the shimmering portal behind his desk.

“End of the road, boys,” he called. “I’ve got bigger fish to fry. Purgatory’s wide open, and I’ve got a front-row seat to godhood.”

“No!” Castiel flew toward him—grace like thunder in the sky.

But Dick reached the portal first, stretching one hand toward the churning maw of Purgatory.

Castiel caught him.

And the Leviathan caught Castiel.

Black tendrils snapped around the angel’s arms, legs, wings—dragging him toward the portal with horrible inevitability.

“Cas!” Dean screamed, running forward.

“Don’t—!” Sam caught him. “You’ll be pulled in!”

“I’m not leaving him!”

Dean ran anyway.

And in that moment, as Castiel slipped halfway through the veil and Dean leapt forward—

Raphael moved.

She roared.

Wings ablaze, her grace ignited the air. She flung herself into the storm, caught Dean’s wrist with one hand and Castiel’s ankle with the other.

She strained, her vessel trembling under the force of the Leviathan portal’s pull. Black tendrils screamed, snapping around her arms.

Sam surged forward. “Raph!”

“I’ve got them,” she snarled, light blazing from her eyes. “But I cannot hold forever!”

“You don’t have to!” Sam pulled a blade from his belt—angel-forged steel—and drove it into the Leviathan nearest the portal.

It screamed. The portal shimmered.

Raphael pulled.

With a thunderous crack, the portal exploded outward, light and shadow ripping in every direction.

Castiel tumbled back, breath ragged. Dean fell into Sam’s arms.

And Raphael collapsed to her knees, wings flickering with exhaustion.

The silence afterward was suffocating.

Dick Roman stumbled back from the wreckage, ichor leaking from his eyes.

“Well,” he croaked, “that was unpleasant.”

Raphael rose. “You do not understand what you’ve awakened.”

“I understand perfectly,” Dick said, smiling wide. “You’re scared.”

“No,” she said. “I am furious.”

She lifted her hand—and for a moment, her grace unfolded into something vast and ancient. Not a warrior. Not an executioner.

But a sister.

A daughter.

A woman who had chosen love.

And she unleashed everything.

Sam and Dean turned away as the light burned white-hot.

When they looked back, nothing remained of Dick Roman but ash and silence.

⸻

They stood in the ruins, panting, bloodied, still alive.

Castiel looked at Raphael. “You… saved me.”

She blinked. “Of course.”

Dean coughed, wiping blood from his face. “Not that I’m ungrateful, but you’re really starting to make the rest of us look bad.”

Raphael gave him a crooked smile—almost human.

Bobby’s voice crackled through the comm Dean still had in his pocket.

“You boys still breathing?”

Dean clicked it. “More or less. Dick’s toast.”

“I’ll put on the good whiskey,” Bobby replied. “Get your asses home.”

Sam watched Raphael carefully. Her wings flickered once more before fading into her vessel. She turned toward him.

“I did not want you to grieve,” she said softly.

Sam stared at her—this archangel who had once been a bringer of wrath. Now, shaking with the weight of mercy.

“I don’t know what we are,” he said. “But I’m glad you’re here.”

“I am… glad too.”

Dean shook his head. “So. Do we win? Is it over?”

“For now,” Castiel said.

“But there’s always another endgame,” Sam added, voice distant. “Always another reckoning.”

They walked from the smoking building side by side.

⸻

In the Cage.

The garden was dark. Wilted. The light that once shimmered on the trees was gone.

Michael sat at the table—now repaired, but empty.

Lucifer was nowhere to be seen.

Adam walked barefoot through the remains of what once was Eden. His fingers brushed the vines. The ash.

Then he heard a sound.

Carving.

He turned.

Lucifer sat beneath the cottage’s outer wall, tallying another mark into the stone.

“What are you doing?” Adam asked.

“Counting,” Lucifer replied.

“We don’t need to count anymore.”

Lucifer didn’t look at him. “He’s not coming back.”

Adam crouched beside him.

“Maybe not today,” he said. “Maybe not for another hundred years.”

He reached out and placed his hand on the tally.

“But we’re still here.”

Lucifer finally looked up. “Why?”

“Because we believe.”

Michael stepped into the doorway then, holding a single candle.

“We believe,” he echoed.

Lucifer stared at the mark one more moment, then dropped the blade.

He stood.

And the three of them lit the candle together.

⸻

Above.

The house was quiet that night.

Sam sat in the Bobby’s library, fingers tracing an old book he wasn’t really reading.

He closed his eyes.

In the silence, he thought he could almost hear it—a voice like thunder, and one like laughter.

A whisper:

Father.

He blinked.

The sound faded.

But he placed his hand over his chest.

And smiled.