It started with Sam's worst nightmare.

Deals had become the Winchester stock in trade. His father and his brother both thoughtlessly, selflessly, selfishly throwing their souls to the dogs for family, for love.

He'd not had the same motivation when Lilith had tried to deal with him. One way or another, Dean would have died, and that just hadn't been an acceptable parlay.

This time...this time was different. This time Dean's life was on the line. This time the outcome was more acceptable.

Sam watched as Dean writhed with pain, his eyes hidden behind a milky cloud, pale mint green, and staring up at the night. With his shirt ripped open and the Queen of the Sidhe's long fingers burning at his flesh, as she looked at Sam, her lovely, vicious lips opening to speak, "Choose now, favored one," Sam's choice hadn't been all that difficult.





It had ended with a horror Sam hadn't even imagined.

Castiel had saved them. Saved Dean, but he had benefited from the falling wrath of Heaven, cowering as the Sidhe did at the magnificence presence of the angel as he walked into the mound and plucked Dean from between the tethers of vines and thorns.

The angel was shorter than the Queen, who stood some inches taller than Sam, but he stared her down, the cold authority in his voice that only the divinely commanded could execute. "They are not yours to keep, witch."

Sam had made no move to go to his brother, who stared blindly up at his saviour. He'd stepped closer to his Queen, ready to die for her, ready to defender her, even if it meant killing an angel, and damning his soul forever.

The long strands of her ebony hair tickled Sam's chest as she leaned around him, shrill and defensive in her fear. "You have no authority here, slave!" She cried. Her voice sounded like glass shattering. As beautiful as the fae were, none of them had the voices modern perception gifted them with, and Sam's ears had been bleeding for so long now.

Spurned on by his Queen's fine tremors of fear, Sam stood to his full height. The power inside him bubbled and grew, fueled by the magic of the Sidhe in ways that made the blood he had once drank nothing more potent than store bought aspirin.

"You would raise a hand to God's warrior?" Sam had always had the impression that Cas tolerated him and nothing more. Uriel had been the one to outright threaten him, but from the way Castiel's hand hovered over Dean's skull, there was no question that the angel would have doubts about wiping Sam from the map.

Sam almost wanted to dare him to try.

That was his consort the angel had his hands all over, his queen being threatened.

Sam raised his hand.

The magic that flowered through him felt warm and bright. Right and honest, unlike it did when he used it on the surface. Sam's adrenaline spiked, the rush of endorphins making him dizzy as he unleashed all the latent potential on the creature that dared challenge him here, in his court.

Behind him, his Queen cried out shrilly.

The power rebounded, hitting him instead of Castiel.

It felt like he was being burned alive.

Flames danced over his skin and in his hair as he writhed, the screams of his Queen far, far away.

"Your power cannot touch me hear, halfblood." Castiel spoke, his voice echoing through the high vaulted catacombs and dripping with authority. "They are not yours. He is not yours." Those last words were spoken to the Queen. "Release them from your enchantment."

The words that were spoken were full of bitterness and jealousy, but it was as if someone had doused Sam with water and salt, the power fizzling from his skin in bright, luridly colored bubbles.

Sam looked up to the ceiling, and the stars that shone against the glittering stone.

Castiel's grace glowed, and the light flooded every corner of the great room.

All Sam could see was white.

Dean's voice pitched in to the screams, and something in Sam tried to reach out to his consort.

Consort. Consort. Brother. Brother. Dean.

The light dimmed and Sam turned his head towards Dean.

Castiel held him against his chest as Dean trembled, naked and blind, and wearing Sam's fingerprints like warpaint.

With nausea rolling in his belly, and the blackness creeping in around him, Sam wondered if he had looked the same the last time Castiel had pulled him out of hell.





Castiel stayed long enough for Sam to check Dean into the hospital. He had no idea if anyone else could see the angel, but no one seemed to want to ask them any questions as Sam tried to gather enough scattered brain cells to fill out the insurance paperwork.

Sam took the blessings where he could.

He didn't want to recount the images that were slowly meandering their way through his mind, seeping to the darkest corners like thick, cloying syrup.

Then Castiel told him how long they had been gone, how long he had been trying to navigate the politics of waltzing into a foreign court to challenge the BoyKing and his Queen for a consort that, divine favor or not, had been the one to instigate the whole disaster to begin with.

Even angels didn't have diplomatic immunity these days.

"Four months?" Sam croaked in disbelief. His voice was roughened from lack of use. His - the Queen hadn't been all that interested in what he had to say.

Castiel stared at him unblinkingly, on the moral high ground for the first time since Dean had last been in hospital. "We received word that the sidhe had an eye on your brother shortly before you both arrived in Ipswich."

Sam tried to remember the hunt that had brought them through Boston to the small, sleepy town north of Salem. Cattle mutilations, he thought, bouts of uncharacteristic good fortune followed by disaster. They'd thought demons, cursed objects maybe, Lilith at worst.

He remembered Dean's reaction when the answers had made sense.

Fairies.

His brother had laughed his ass off.

"What did they want with Dean?"

He wasn't sure if it was guilt on the angel's face, but there was something there, lurking beneath the placid surface. "Dean has been touched by Heaven. And Hell." He added darkly, "but he retains the fragile shell of humanity that the Sidhe love."

Sam swallowed, sick.

"But then how did I end up down there?" Doing what he had done. The sharpness, the edge of distrust was back, and Sam remembered staring into the Queen's forbidding face for the first time. Her warrior had been injured by Dean. Fatally perhaps, because Sam never saw him again. Iron tended to have that effect on the Sidhe. "I made a deal."

Castiel nodded. "Your life for Dean's. You were betrayed."

Sam had figured as much.





The doctor came and went, declaring Dean to be severely dehydrated, but nothing a few days of intravenous fluids wouldn't take care of. Sam nodded and didn't take his eyes away from his brother's face. He couldn't remember Dean eating or drinking a single thing whilst with the Sidhe. He must have done, or he would never survived for so long, or else the magic that had kept Sam so addicted to the Queen's touch sustained him.

He was starving himself, and though he got a burger from the hospital cafeteria, it had tasted like ash in his mouth.

Dean woke up seventeen hours after he had been admitted.

As his eyes fluttered open, Sam had been terrified he would see the same milky green veil obscuring his vision. Castiel had said Dean had been unable to look upon the Sidhe court, not protected by the taint of demon blood as Sam had been.

Sam didn't much care why his brother had been blinded, just that he had.

Dean woke with a moan and looked up with confused, but glorious clear eyes.

Sam had to help him suck on chips of ice before he was able to cough out the question on his face. "What happened?"

Sam remembered his first time in the court, the Queen's hand in his as she proclaimed him her King, her warrior. She's promised him the world, she had promised him Lilith, she had promised Heaven, Hell, and everything in between.

But it had been Dean, kneeling at his feet and swaying with the potent charm of the Sidhe court, his arms outstretched to Sam, his thighs parting so willingly, that had led Sam to step up to the great throne and stake his claim.

He'd have given anything, everything, to not have to look Dean in the eye ever again.

"What do you remember?" He hedged.

Dean blinked, trying to grasp hold of his memories as they fluttered under a glass surface of confusion. "Boston, right?"

Sam nodded. "Fairies."

"Fairies?" There was the same comical look on his face as there had been the last time. "You're fucking kidding me? I got laid out by motherfucking Tinkerbell?"

And me, Sam thought, matching his thumbprints to the bruises that ringed Dean's emaciated wrists. He nodded. "You've been unconscious for four months."

The lie dripped from his tongue, smooth like honey, and as perfect as any Dean had ever told.

"Motherfuck." Dean breathed, almost in awe. He eyed Sam sharply. "Not a fucking word, you hear me? I don't care how many times you make me wash your underwear, we never speak about this again." He looked away, embarrassed. "Fucking fairies."

He wanted that. He wanted never to speak of it again.

Sam would forget the Queen, and the touch that had drawn him downdowndown into the darkness that had been there, seductively calling him for so long. He would forget the way Dean looked beneath him, writhing in an ecstasy that was no more real than the crown on Sam's head. He would forget it all.

"Dean-"

"Ever." Dean repeated, no shame, no horror, no submission in his bright eyes.

He nodded reluctantly, and Dean quickly changed the subject. "Now go get me a burger, bitch. I'm fucking starving. Don't they feed people in this shithole?"

It was easier to follow Dean's lead this time than it had been in almost a year. Sam nodded and left in search of food, finding Castiel there by the main door.

"He doesn't remember anything." Sam said in wonder.

Castiel nodded as if he already knew. "This wasn't his test, Sam."

Sam didn't ask if he had passed.

Like Dean, laying in the hospital bed, blissfully ignorant of his latest trip to Hell, there were somethings that were not helped by knowing.