15. The Guinea Pig

"This library is amazing," I murmur. I'm biting into a PB&J sandwich as my fingers skim the book spines. Sam left for somewhere earlier, leaving me with Castiel. I was craving food, and for some reason a classic sandwich was what I craved. I'd made Castiel one too as an afterthought. "This must be Nirvana for Sam. He's always been about the books."

"You aren't scholarly?" asks Castiel.

"Not as much. Sure, I did well in school, but we moved around a lot, so trying to change into different material from a different school was hard. Socializing wasn't so bad though. I met some nice people."

"But you never really got to know them."

I take another bite. "I never really did." I sigh, remembering just how lonely I was as a girl on the road with her family. Not that I hated my family, I'd always craved more attention than just theirs. I actually liked school, I felt normal. I didn't feel like such an outsider, having a 1967 Chevrolet Impala as my home compared to the other kids. I felt like I had a normal home, with a normal family.

Nobody really asked me about my family whenever I made friends. I was never in a school long enough to really tell anyone.

"Mm," I hear Castiel.

I purse my lips, looking at him. He doesn't look happy with the sandwich. "What? It tastes fine to me."

"Hey," Sam calls. I hear the door open and see my brother coming down the stairs.

"You're kidding, right?" I ask Castiel. "You were okay with anything I put in front of you, and now you don't even like a PB and J?"

"Tastes like...molecules," says Castiel, eyeing the sandwich.

"What?" Sam's in the room with us now. "What are you talking about?"

"When I was human, you know, I had to eat constantly. It was kind of annoying."

"Yeah, a lot of human things are pretty annoying."

"We'd know that better than anyone," I voice.

"But...I enjoyed the taste of food—particularly peanut butter with grape jelly, not jam," says Castiel. "Jam I found unsettling."

Sam sits on the table. "So, what? Now you can't taste PB and J?"

"No, I-I taste every molecule."

"Not the sum of its parts, huh?"

"It's overwhelming." Castiel looks at the sandwich longingly. "I miss you, PB and J."

"Kind of makes you miss being human just a little bit, huh?" I ask.

Castiel stands up, looking at Sam. "We need to continue your healing. We're almost done."

Right, for a few days now, since I've started staying here, Castiel has slowly been healing Sam. The progress is noticeable.

Castiel puts two fingers to Sam's forehead. I notice the change in the angel's eyes.

"What?" I ask him.

"Nothing."

"You're a terrible liar."

Sam slaps Castiel's hand away. "I'm with Jo on this one."

"That is not true," Castiel defends himself. "I once deceived and betrayed both you and your brother."

"Okay, that's not the point. Cas, what's wrong?"

"I noticed something. It's, uh...It's resonating inside you."

"What?"

"Something angelic."

"Okay, uh, what the hell does that mean?" I ask curiously.

"Maybe we should call Dean."

"No," I say adamantly. Sam moves to sit in a chair. "He wanted to go, and he's gone. We'll handle this."

"How do you suggest we go about this, then?"

"We see what we can dig up." I shrug. "Worth a shot, right?"

"Yeah, but what exactly are we looking for?"

"Anything that deals with angelic possession," Sam chimes in. "Jo's right, maybe we'll find our answer in here."

We start tearing apart the shelves in the library. We sprawl out the books onto the table. I pace slowly, eyes skimming over words that have nothing to do with my search. Castiel and Sam are at the table, reading through their own stack of books. I thumb through the pages and grab another book when I don't find anything on angelic possession.

We don't need Dean for this. We can handle this all on our own. But I can't help but feel that this would be slightly more effective if we had my older brother in the bunker with us. An extra body, more ground to cover.

My eyes feel like they've lost all moisture in them for as much as I've been looking at book pages. When I give up on books, I ask Sam for a laptop and start my research there. My search for angelic possession doesn't go very well. A lot of the sites I'm skeptical of and don't really rely on.

I groan, rubbing my eyes in frustration.

"Please tell me either one of you has better news than me," I say, sitting back in my chair, defeated.

"Nothing yet," says Sam. He doesn't even look at me, his eyes are too glued to the book in front of him.

"I've found, well, something," says Castiel. Sam picks his head up at this, and I'm more than happy to pull myself away from the laptop screen. "It's a detail about when angels leave their vessels...I think. It's, uh, Enochian, which can be a bit flowery. 'And the departed shall remain, and the remains shall be the departed.'"

I look at Sam. "Translation?"

"Okay, so, when an angel leaves a vessel, they leave behind a piece of themselves," Sam explains. "Like, uh...like an angelic footprint."

"Whatever you want to call it, this piece of the departed contains Grace," says Castiel.

"Wait, you're saying there's angelic Grace inside of him?" I ask in wonder.

"Yes. But it's fading each time I heal him."

"Okay. Is that good or bad?"

"Well, it's harmless. But the Grace itself...might be helpful." Castiel exchanges his book for a folder called On the Inner Workings of Angels. "According to this, we may be able to use the Grace that remains inside you to track Gadreel...If we can extract it."

I swallow. "How would we do that?"

"Well...painfully." Castiel holds up a picture of a huge syringe with a terrifyingly long needle. "The Men of Letters believed that you could perform a tracking spell with extracted Grace, but they were never able to test the theory."

"Well, they didn't have a guinea pig," says Sam. "But we do."

Castiel looks at Sam, confused. "You have a guinea pig? Where?"

I snort. "He means himself, Castiel. He's the guinea pig." I take the picture and look at it.

"Any idea where it is?"

"Do you have this lying around somewhere?" I ask Sam.

"Uh, probably. When Dean and I first found this place, we took inventory. We probably came across it at some point. We just need to find it."

"In this place?" I look around. "Unless you have a good memory and a good filing system, that might take a while."

"I can narrow it down for us to a room. We can search in there."

"Lead the way then, little brother."

Sam leads Castiel and me down through the halls into a room. He flicks on the light, exposing the storage room. Full boxes upon boxes. I whistle lowly. This will definitely take a while.

The three of us split up. We're looking for a box that would contain that syringe. There's no way it would just lay around exposed so that someone could poke themselves with it. My eyes roam the boxes. I find myself digging through a few.

"Here it is," Sam says. Castiel and I make sure Sam's got the right box. He does. Inside is the syringe we're looking for.

"Okay, that's step one. Now, what's step two?" I ask.

"We do the extraction."

"Where?"

"We've got a medical room."

I rub my face. "Of course we do."

I'm behind Castiel and Sam as we head for the said medical room.

"Sam, may I ask you a questions?" asks Castiel.

"You just did."

"Can I ask you another question?"

"Well, technically, you—yeah, go ahead. What's up?"

Castiel stops us in a doorway, and I come to a halt. My brows are over my eyes in question.

"Sam, the trials. You chose not to go through with them for a reason, didn't you? You chose to live rather than to sacrifice yourself. You and Dean...You chose each other."

Sam looks very uncomfortable with this conversation, a conversation which I'm only a spectator to. "Yeah, I did," he says abruptly. "We did. And then...Dean made a choice for me."

I purse my lips, watching as Sam stalks into the room I assume to be the medical room. Castiel and I exchange uneasy glances before we follow my brother in.

"What Dean did—" Castiel tries.

"—it doesn't matter," Sam cuts him off. "Look, I could have put a stop to all this, Cas. I could have closed the gates of Hell."

"Oh, Sam."

"Dean's gone, okay? This is on me now, and if I can find Gadreel...I can fix this." Sam sets the syringe box next down to a gurney in the room. He takes off the plaid button-up shirt he's got on and hands it over to me, leaving him in a thin t-shirt. "Now...being a human means settling your debts." I look on uneasily as Sam hands Castiel the syringe box and sits on the gurney. "Let's start balancing the books."

"That's one hell of a needle," I squeak. I'm peeking over Castiel's shoulder, looking into the open box in his hands.

"Way to make it sound nice, Jo."

"Do you want me to lie about it, Sam? Are we even sure—?"

"That we want to go through with this? Yes."

I look at Castiel. "Are you comfortable with sticking that into my brother?"

"I'll have to be." Castiel approaches my brother. He holds the needle at an angle, prepared to stick my brother in the neck with it. I wince as the needles goes in just under Sam's left ear. It takes good restraint on my part to not grab his hand or stop Castiel from doing this. "Now comes the part that will actually hurt. I'm gonna begin the extraction."

The plunger is pulled back only a little, and a little sliver of Grace can be seen. But Sam is doing his best to not cry out in pain.

"Is it working?" he rasps.

"Yeah."

"But?"

"I-I need to push the needle in deeper. We need more Grace in order to cast the spell."

"Okay. Do it."

"Sam," I say warningly.

"If I get too close to—" says Castiel.

"Damn it, Cas!" Sam shouts. "Just do it."

I almost cover my eyes as I see the needle go deeper into Sam's neck. As Castiel starts pulling back the plunger, Sam suddenly lurches forward. Castiel removes the needle. I help restrain Sam, but it's almost an impossible task. He may be my little brother, but he's rock solid and outweighs me.

"What the hell was that?" asks Sam once his body is calm. His eyes are wide in shock.

"Your body is regressing to the state it was in before Gadreel," explains Castiel.

"Do we have enough Grace for the summoning spell?"

"Sam."

"Do we or not, Cas?"

"No."

"Then keep going."

"Sam—" I try to cut in.

"I'm not changing my mind about this. We need more Grace."

I look at Castiel, who looks just as concerned and reluctant as me. "D-do it."

I take a step back and watch as the process starts again. It's a painfully slow process. As Castiel once again pulls Grace from Sam's body, I watch my brother's condition. His eyes are rolling back into his head. He's shaking. But he's not screaming in pain; he's holding it all in.

"Sam?" I panic. "Sam?!"

"Keep going," he rasps.

"Why?"

"We—we—we have to find Gadreel."

"No, this is going too far," I say stubbornly. "Cas, take it out."

"Why must the Winchesters run toward death?" I hear Cas mumble.

Sam grabs the syringe as Cas tries to remove it. "No, don't. Don't. Don't stop."

"Sam, when I was human, I died, and that showed me that life is precious, and it must be protected at all costs, even a life as...as pig-headed as a Winchester's."

"My life's not worth any more than anyone else's—not yours or Dean's or Jo's...or Kevin's. Please. Please, help me do one thing right. Keep going."

I'm about to walk out of the room, but instead I grab Sam's hand with an iron grip. I know this is going to get ugly really fast. Cas pushes the needle in again, and this is the time Sam finally breaks.

"I'm here, Sammy, I'm here," I whisper. "Focus on me, Sam."

Between the screams of pain, he does. He has no strength in him, because I'm crushing his hand more than he's crushing mine. I pale slightly as I see blood trickling from his nose and one of his eyes. I can't believe I'm not doing anything to stop this. I can't believe I'm letting Sam go through with this. The one thing my brother has always been is selfless, always willing to do whatever to save lives, no matter the risk.

It's one of the things I hate about my brother. He'll go too far sometimes, farther than necessary.

I feel Castiel's gaze on me, and something changes in him. He starts to take the needle out of Sam's neck.

"Hold on," he says. "This may pinch."

"Cas, what the hell?" asks Sam. Cas puts his fingers to Sam's forehead. "Cas. What the hell was that?!"

"I've healed your wounds completely."

"And the Grace?" I ask.

"Well, whatever Grace was inside him is gone now. What's left of Gadreel is in here. We'll just have to try the spell with what we have."

"Damn it," Sam hisses.

"Sam, I want Gadreel to pay as much as you do. But nothing is worth losing you. You know, being human, it didn't just change my view of food. It changed my view of you. I mean, I can relate to how you feel."

"What are you talking about?"

"The only person who has screwed things up more consistently than you...is me. And now I know what that guilt feels like. And I know what it...I know what it means to feel sorry, Sam. I am sorry."

"I know."

"You know, old me—I would have just kept going. I would've jammed that needle in deeper until you died because the ends always justified the means. But what I went through—well, that PB and J taught me that angels can change, so...who knows? Maybe Winchesters can, too."

"How do you feel, Sam?" I ask as my little brother sits up.

"Little woozy."

"But good enough to walk?"

"Yeah."

"All right, up you go. Let's get this spell underway and fry Gadreel's ass." I help Sam out of the medical room as Castiel gets the ingredients for the spell.

We're back in the main room of the bunker. It's a group effort, each putting in an ingredient for the spell. Cas adds the final touch: Gadreel's Grace. The mixture starts to boil, but then it fades. I frown.

"Was that, uh...Was that it?" I ask dishearteningly.

"I'm afraid there wasn't enough Grace. We'll have to find Gadreel another way. I'm sorry."

"It's all right, Cas," says Sam. "You, uh...You were right. You were right about everything."

I smile as Sam leans over to hug Castiel. Cas looks confused and awkward. "Now's the part where you hug back," I tell him.

"Oh. Right. Uh, sorry," says Cas.

Sam chuckles. "There you go."

"As far as I'm concerned, Metatron is the key to fixing everything that's wrong. I'm gonna find him. You know, Sam, we could use all the help we could get to find Gadreel and Metatron."

"I think we'll manage just fine on our own," I say strongly. "We got this." I put a hand on both of their shoulders. "Now, who's hungry?" Cas looks a bit crestfallen. "Poor choice of words?"

"The taste of food is the only thing I miss about being human."

I squeeze Cas's shoulder. "That's understandable. Well, you can still come along. You don't need to human to know how to make food. Sam, go on ahead, I'll get this mess here taken care of."

Sam starts for the kitchen, and I start cleaning up the failed spell ingredients.

"Are you okay?" Cas asks me.

"I...I never knew how much being human changed you," I say softly. "And...the fact that you died, and the fact that you're still here..." I shake my head. "Thank you, for not letting him die."

"I don't think you'd forgive me if I did."

I laugh. "I probably wouldn't. And I probably would've hated the old you had I met him, huh?"

"Most likely."

I tilt my head and go in to hug Cas. He's less awkward with me this time. "You know, if you ever need to talk, who better to listen than a human who knows what it feels like?"

"I don't need a therapist, Josette."

"I know, but, figured I'd throw it out there." I look back at the failed spell. "I'll clean this up, and then I'll meet you in the kitchen."

"That's if you can find it," he teases.

I nudge him. "I'll find my way. If not, you or Sam can come find me."

I push hair back behind my ears as Cas leaves for the kitchen, leaving me to clean up the failed spell. Metatron, Gadreel, we're coming for you. I haven't met you yet, Metatron, but boy are you in for a surprise. Gadreel, you and I are far from done. I want you to pay for tricking my brothers, for killing their friend.

You're messing with the wrong people.