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Shit.
That was all Sam could think as he found himself cornered by a Trickster – totally alone and unarmed. An actual Trickster, he hoped in earnest.
“Now, now – you know the games we Tricksters play. Learn the lesson.”
With a snap of his fingers, the dark-haired Irishman sent Sam spiraling into another dimension.
Thud.
He groaned as he hit the floor of a badly carpeted motel room and his whole body tensed when he felt the barrel of a shotgun against his back.
“Who are you?”
That voice sounded awfully familiar –
“I-”
“Are you a shifter? Skinwalker? What are you?”
Sam groaned, trying to sit up but remaining pinned down by the steel barrel jabbing his vertebrae. “I’m human! I’m-” He managed to roll over, looking up to see – “you?”
No, no – this couldn’t be right. It was like looking in a mirror.
The shotgun-wielding doppelgänger cocked the hammer back, “Who are you?”
Sam frowned, holding his hands out, “I’m Sa- Sam Winchester. I’m human, I can prove it.”
The barrel lowered as a silver knife was pulled out of his back pocket and chucked down into the carpet at Sam’s side. “Prove it, then.”
He reached for the knife and pressed it to the outside of his forearm. “See? Not a shifter. Christo. Not a demon either.”
His trigger-happy twin narrowed his eyes and set the shotgun down. “I still don’t trust you – but I know someone who can help.”
He pulled out his cellphone and dialed. “Hey, Gabriel? I think I have something for you to take a look at.”
Sam turned an inhuman grey. Did he hear his lookalike correctly? Gabriel? There was another resounding thump as he dropped back against the carpet.
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When Sam came to, he nearly died of shock.
Next to other-him was Gabriel. The Archangel who’d died fighting off Lucifer for the Winchesters.
Sam swallowed hard and looked up with big eyes.
“Hey bucko! Glad to see you’ve rejoined the land of the living.”
Other-Sam rolled his eyes, “C’mon, I called you here so you could tell me what the hell this is – not so you could play with it.”
Gabriel scoffed, turning back to give an unimpressed look to other-Sam, “I’d be careful if I were you, Sam – you know I’m not something to fuck around with.”
Sam felt uncomfortable and queasy with the fluttering feeling in his stomach, “I- I have to go.”
He ran towards the bathroom of the shitty little motel and dry-heaved into the toilet bowl.
The Archangel tilted his head a little, looking from the Sam doubled over in the bathroom to the Sam he was accustomed to, “Well – he’s human, if that’s what you were wondering. An alternate you from an alternate universe or whatever. Like Stargate. Kinda interesting actually.”
Other-Sam sighed, “Well – you deal with him. I don’t want any part of it.”
With a flush of the toilet, the nauseated man stumbled out into the room, wiping his mouth. “I- How is he even here?”
The other men looked at him in confusion.
“Gabriel. H-how are you-?”
The Archangel raised an eyebrow with an amused smirk. “Well in the beginning, God created the Universe…”
Other-Sam rolled his eyes and stomped off like some moody oversized teenager, huffing in annoyance at the both of them as he slammed the door behind him.
But the other man just looked at Gabriel as though he were preaching the Word of God, a sad little smile on his lips, “I- It’s just… Where I come from, you’re-”
The smaller man pursed his lips in understanding, “Dead.”
Sam’s face got tight and his jaw tensed a moment, “Y-yeah. Lucifer killed you the night you made us save Kali at that Motel Hell.”
Gabriel’s eyes flickered a little with interest, “Kali? You guys rescued Kali?”
He gave a little nod, pushing his hair out of his eyes, “It – You and m-Sam… it’s not the same here, is it? Between you guys, I mean.”
“Not following you, pal.”
Sam sighed, shaking his head and waving his hand to dismiss it, “Just – It’s not important.”
Gabriel put a hand on his forearm, holding him there – though he didn’t know why he cared so much. “Tell me.”
He looked the angel in the eyes with tears in his own, “Where I come from… You and I – we were – well…”
The smaller man’s golden eyes went wide, “You were boning? No offense, bud, but you’re not really my type.”
Sam nodded, “Yeah – Yeah, I understand. Different universe or dimension or whatever.”
A gentle sock to the arm segued into Gabriel’s smirking face, “Besides I know this Sam has tried to kill me before. A bit of a 180, eh?”
Wiping his eyes, Sam let out a half-hearted chuckle. “Yeah. I guess.”
There was a twinge of emotion that flashed across Gabriel’s face – what it was, Sam couldn’t decipher. “Well – it’s probably best if you stayed here, no need for another Sam Winchester to be out in this mess.”
Sam nodded, pushing more hair out of his face, “What about Dean? How is Sam going to explain this to–”
Gabriel sighed, “Dean’s not- he isn’t around anymore.”
It felt like a Mack truck hitting him at 80 miles an hour.
“What?”
The door shut and Sam and Gabriel both snapped their heads up in attention, seeing other-Sam in the doorway. “Dean’s been gone for a few years now.”
Sam let his eyes drift down, avoiding his doppelgänger’s cold gaze as other-Sam walked into the room – sloughing off his jacket and letting it drop to the floor.
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Gabriel was staring down at Sam when he opened his eyes again. “You fainted again.”
Sitting up a little, Sam rubbed his temple and scowled, “You try being told your brother died a few years ago.”
The Archangel pursed his lips, “I wasn’t told – I actually offed the bastard myself.”
Wide-eyed, the disoriented hunter looked up at him, “You really helped us beat the Devil?”
With an unimpressed roll of his eyes, Gabriel snapped up some really ancient looking book, leafing through it casually. “Didn’t do it as any favor to you, pal. That guy was a pain in my ass and needed to be dealt with. Now enough asking about this – we should be working on getting you back to your own universe. What were you doing before you showed up here?”
Sam thought back to the Trickster.
“Now, now – you know the games we Tricksters play. Learn the lesson.”
“A Trickster – a real one, I think. H- He said I needed to learn the lesson.”
The Archangel’s brows furrowed, “What kind of lesson? Like Broward County Mystery Spot?”
Sam shook his head, “No, I- I don’t think so. I-”
Gabriel gave him a disturbingly gentle pat on the back, “We’ll figure something out.”
Other-Sam sighed, obviously irked by the sympathy with which Gabriel treated Sam, “Look, we need to figure out what this stupid Trickster wanted him to learn because – frankly – I’m getting a little creeped out by Hayley Mills over there.”
Gabriel rolled his eyes, “I’m trying to do that, Sam – you were the one who called me over to help, remember?”
The doppelgänger snapped, “Yeah, to make him go away, not to play Sigmund Freud with him!”
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Both men were sitting at the edge of the bed in the dumpy little motel room, looking down at their hands and staying silent as other-Sam paced the room like a caged lion.
“We- we weren’t together, you know. Not really.”
Gabriel looked over at the moping hunter, “Huh?”
Sam shrugged, “Me and … other-you. We weren’t really together. I mean, we were but we weren’t screwing around like you thought.”
The Archangel nodded, “Oh. So were you, I don’t know, dating or anything?”
“N-no. I mean… I like to think he must’ve felt something – that’s gotta be why he was always butting in our business.”
There was a long silence, cold and tense.
Gabriel sighed, “So you don’t know anything about the lesson you’re supposed to learn?”
Sam shook his head, “No. I don’t – I don’t understand what I –”
He frowned, rubbing his temple and thinking about Gabriel – about his Gabriel. About how much he wished things had gone different. About how much he loved and hated this parallel universe – the one that gave him a skewed version of Gabriel, but robbed him of Dean.
Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw a bright flash of light and it shook him from his thoughts.
When he looked up, he noticed both the Archangel and his doppelgänger staring at the swirling other-worldly light.
“What the hell is that?”
Gabriel smirked, “I think that’s your ticket home, buddy. A little Quantum Leap – you’ll be our own Sam Beckett.”
The spirally vortex portal to his own dimension looked intimidating at first glance.
He stared into the light, flinching at its brightness. “What is this?”
The Archangel cupped his hands around his mouth like a megaphone, calling out to him, “Just jump in already, pansy!”
Sam frowned, looking back over his shoulder at the Archangel and this reality’s version of himself. “But I don’t know what lesson I’m supposed to have learned!”
Shaking his head in disbelief at Sam, Gabriel said, “You’re really going to possibly miss out on a chance to go home to humor some punk-ass demi-god?”
His massive fists grabbed the shorter man's well-worn plaid shirt and pulled him close, kissing him so hard he pulled back breathless.
The cocky Archangel gave him a smug smirk, winking a little, “Was it everything you dreamt of and more?”
Sam sighed, obviously disappointed, “Y-you’re not him.”
With a little shrug, the shorter man smiled, “Go home, Sam.”
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This time, when Sam came to, he was in that dumpy little warehouse with that Irish Trickster.
“What lesson was I supposed to get from that? What was I supposed to learn?” he spat, angry tears burning the corners of his eyes.
The Trickster smiled sadly, almost taking pity on the hunter before him, “He’s gone, Sam. You can’t mourn him forever – it’s not what he would’ve wanted.”
With that, the Trickster disappeared into thin air, leaving Sam alone to dwell on his words.