"Don't look anywhere else. There will be demons tempting you." Gabriel told him, eyes anxious, "Follow your amulet blindly, you're very lucky to have something he's been wearing so long. I'll be with you. You'll probably hear your brother cry out for you or something."

"But it won't be him, I get it, Gabriel," Sam said impatiently.

"You don't," Gabriel said flatly, "It'll be unbelievably realistic, and you won't be able to distinguish the difference and if you step away from the path I won't be able to see to stop you. You have to get this into your head right now or we'll all be in a mess."

Sam stopped short, "You won't be able to see?"

Gabriel looked uncomfortable as he said, "You have demon blood. That protects you. I can't go in there without a blindfold. I'd go blind."

Sam didn't know how he managed to say, "Then you should stay back," but he did, even with fear gripping at him.

Gabriel quirked a smile and said, simply, "No."

Sam opened his mouth to argue and Gabriel waved it off and told him to hurry up with making himself all pretty, it was getting late and they should have been with the Council ten minutes ago. Sam got so heated up in arguing, while running down to the underground chambers, whose fault it was that they were late that he couldn't pick up the threads of the other argument until they were in the chamber.

Sam made one last attempt when the blond girl was dragging away Gabriel to put a blindfold on him. The girl shoved him back with a delicate flick of two fingers. Gabriel glanced back at him, and Sam was the last thing he saw before the blindfold went on.

Sam didn't know precisely what happened. With Gabriel coming along, the process was different and the council had firmly said that they would send both of them with protections, there was no way was Sam allowed to do the magic with Gabriel's life in the balance. There were several chilly glances that told Sam that no one was pleased with the business.

Raphael and Israfel stepped up suddenly. Israfel said, "Anael thinks it would be wise if…" he glanced at his twin who was scrutinizing Sam. She took out a vial and handed it to Sam.

"We didn't have time to make very much. Be careful," she said, brusquely.

Sam nodded.

The humming stopped and Sam stepped out into Hell. It was worse than he had imagined, at every step he saw ten people he knew begging him to save them and a hundred people he didn't know screaming and pleading. His father, Jess, even some half-remembered sense of his mother's voice haunted him. And Dean. With every step he saw Dean- on meat hooks, being burned, reminding him that he had done this for Sam.

Gabriel was beside him, holding his hand and walking steadily and Sam let that trusting touch comfort him and moved as the amulet warmed.

Then a chasm came up in front of them- as suddenly as if it had just been formed- and Sam stopped and looked down, it seemed measureless and there was smoke rising up and they would have to climb down into it to find Dean. He took an even tighter hold on Gabriel's hand and led him down, the other hand finding handholds wherever he could event though the walls of Hell burned his hand from the inside out; Sam felt like his hand had fallen off but he could see that the skin was whole.

Then Gabriel let go with a jerk, Sam tried to grab on to him but the smoke rose up like a living creature and curled up around Gabriel and into Sam's eyes, blinding him for a crucial moment.

Then Sam saw Gabriel, lying several feet below him on an outgrowth of the walls of the chasm and calling weakly for help. His voice was fading away and Sam knew with frightening certainty that if he didn't get that vial to Gabriel right then, Gabriel would die.

He rushed down as fast as he could, calling to Gabriel to hold on, just hold on until Sam could get there. Gabriel was breathing so shallowly that Sam wasn't sure he was breathing at all. Sam dropped heavily to his knees and reached out a hand, and had it wildly knocked away.

Gabriel was on one knee in front of him, waving him away blindly with the other Gabriel- the one that had been lying down- held back with one hand and then the other Gabriel dissolved partly into smoke and the blindfold dissolved and black eyes stared out at them and Sam grabbed at Gabriel, the real Gabriel, and pulled him away. The demon snarled at him but had to stay where it was, if it couldn't tempt Sam to go to it- it failed.

"I'm sorry I couldn't get to you sooner. I couldn't see, this blindfold won't come off," Gabriel said, waving his hands weakly.

Then Sam saw Gabriel's hand- it was withering away wherever it had touched the demon. He pushed Gabriel down, and was vaguely surprised when he got out the vial and his hands were steady. He poured it out over the hand and saw the bone grow back but there wasn't enough for the skin, in a panic he called up the vestiges of his power and drove it into Gabriel's hand. His sight blurred and when he came to, Gabriel was holding him with both hands, one was a normal hand and the other felt rough to the touch. But at least it was there.

Sam recovered further and realized that Gabriel was shouting at someone to keep away, that Sam wasn't approaching.

Sam struggled up to stand guarding Gabriel and saw the blonde girl from the council. Her eyes were black.

"You're a demon," Sam said.

"Thanks, I hadn't noticed," she said.

Sam tried to bring up his power but couldn't, he swayed in place with the effort.

"I'm the one who fixed his blindfold so it wouldn't come off, I just saved him from burning up. Be grateful and come with me," she said, impatiently, shaking her hair back.

"Ruby?" Gabriel said, from behind Sam.

"Yes. And I just saved your backside, risking mine! So can we please get on with it? I know a shortcut to where his brother is." Ruby said.

"Alright," Gabriel said. "But if you're lying, I will rip you apart myself." His voice had deepened by the end of the sentence and Sam felt a frisson from the power he had put in it.

Ruby snorted but Sam could see that she looked wary. They ran through rooms of red and black and dark green ooze and then they reached a room that seemed to be exactly the same as all the others but Sam could feel the amulet burning into him and he looked around wildly. He couldn't recognize Dean from the other raw, flayed souls there at first but then he did.

He tugged at Dean's chains and couldn't get it off, then Gabriel's power seeped into his hands and strengthened them and the chains splintered into pieces then crumbled into dust. Sam grabbed Dean as he fell down and held him as tightly as he could.

Dean said, in a rough voice that broke away into coughs at points, "You're another one of them aren't you? I'm not doing it, I'm not going to be a demon's student; I know Sammy's not here." Sam just held on and wept silently.

There was a humming around them and then they were back in the castle.

Sam wandered over to the room where Gabriel was recovering leaving Dean with three healers and Raphael and Israfel supervising. To be precise, they threw him out the door with magic and told him flatly that his magic was interfering with theirs and making a new body practically from scratch was difficult.

That hand of Gabriel's was never going to be the same; Sam curled his hands around it and massaged it gently and tried to figure out how to apologize.

"Not your fault," Gabriel told him, "Feel free to go on with that," he waggled his eyebrows down at their joined hands, "But what I did, I chose it. It's not your fault I got hurt."

"I shouldn't have let you come," Sam said.

Gabriel raised an eyebrow, as if to say, 'could you have stopped me?' and Sam looked down at the hand that would probably always hurt Gabriel a little and wished he could have.

Gabriel raised his other hand and gently flicked Sam's cheek, "Worry about yourself and your brother, I am…" he looked away and said it so softly that Sam had to strain to hear him, "I would have given a lot more to keep you safe."

Sam kissed Gabriel's hand, as gently as he could because he didn't know how to say I love you.