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Getting out of Hell by some applied metaphysics isn't worth much if you wind up in Niflheim in nothing more substantial than a flannel shirt.
They stumbled through the great doors, and Sam almost knocked himself silly on the carved faces. Gabriel just collapsed, as if his legs completely stopped working. Given that he was propping himself up on elbows and wing joints (Sam wasn't sure what that joint was called -- bird anatomy wasn't something he ever thought he'd need to know, the more fool him), maybe they had...
The locals looked appalled, shocked at the two dripping scarecrows that just barged through their door. Sam tried a conciliatory smile, but didn't think it worked. Not when Gabriel started yelling in some language that was all yowls and consonants.
Sam just shrugged and slid down the door until he was sitting up only because he'd have to move his legs to actually fall over properly.
The next few minutes were a blur of yelling and people tugging Sam, and finally someone pouring hot water over his head, which at woke him up enough to protest the extra soaking that he didn't need, seeing as how they'd walked through ice caves to get here in the first place.
He wasn't in the same room -- this wasn't the long hall they'd come into. He shoved away the hands that were plucking at him -- they'd gotten his jacket already, but he still had his shirts and pants, which was kind of a mixed blessing, considering he was soaked through no matter what.
"Gabriel?!" he called out, trying to shove past the mass of grey-gowned women that surrounded him and were clucking at him in that yowling tongue.
"Wh-hat?" the archangel stammered.
Sam tried to stand up and get to Gabriel, but his legs didn't cooperate, so he had to slither across the floor until he reached the angel. The women kept getting in the way, which didn't help.
They'd stripped Gabriel of everything, shirt, jacket, jeans, shoes, everything. He was huddled under his own mantling wings. He was dripping everywhere -- his feathers were wet and bedraggled, his hair was soaked and plastered down, and he was hugging himself as he shivered.
"Shit," Sam gasped. "Why are you even cold?"
Gabriel pulled his face away from he'd buried his nose in his arms against the cold and glared at Sam. "Because you can't imagine not being cold when you're wet and in an ice palace, muttonhead. I have to suffer through *your* conception of reality!"
"Fuck, I'm sorry."
One of the women snapped something that made Gabriel look up at her. She continued on, and pushed Sam back enough until she could crouch down between them. She gave Sam an annoyed look, then rattled off a few sentences that had Gabriel nodding in the end.
"What?"
"Rota wants your clothes," Gabriel said, and his lips quirked. "You're dripping over her clean floors."
"I don't want to be naked!"
"Soaked and hypothermic is better?" Gabriel asked, right before another woman came up behind him and dropped a blanket on his head -- or maybe it was a towel, given the way she rubbed it briskly over his hair. He smiled at her when she pulled it off enough that he could see, and she smiled back, almost chuckling.
"Towels? I can get behind towels," Sam said, and pulled off his shirts. He didn't take off his pants until he'd gotten one of the women to hand him a blanket-or-towel. Gabriel might have no sense of shame or modesty, but Sam didn't want to be buck naked in a room that was entirely women except for the two of them. He *did* have a sense of modesty.
They snatched Sam's clothes away as soon as he pulled the sodden garments off, but he got a stack of towels in exchange, and if they weren't fluffy terrycloth, they were at least large and fairly soft pieces of cloth. He secured one around his waist, draped another over his shoulders, and then looked at Gabriel.
The women had moved on to trying to blot dry Gabriel's wings, and the archangel was obliging them by spreading all four feathery limbs to the corners of the room. Sam could see how different his inner, lower set – small and graceful and curving to pointed ends – were from the outer wings, which were huge, and almost blunt, and looked like they would be unbelievably fluffy if not soaked through. There were even slightly different colors, with the inner pair being sleek white on one side and glossy brown on the other, and the outer pair a mottled brown and white all over.
There was a hissing, and the room began to fill with steam -- one of the women was dropping hot rocks from the fireplace, which Sam hadn't noticed until then, into buckets of water. The steam was actually kind of nice, warm and soothing on his lungs; it probably wasn't a great hypothermia treatment, though.
Gabriel snapped something in the other language, and got what must have been an acceptable response, because he nodded, and then lurched toward Sam. He half-dragged his wings as he crossed the floor, and let them sprawl when he flopped down.
Sam wasn't thrilled to have a naked archangel fetched up beside him. That was easily solved -- Sam tossed one of the towels at Gabriel. Admittedly, he hit him in the head with it, but the archangel got the hint and pushed it down over his own body.
"So... what now?"
Gabriel turned his head to look a doorway on the far side of the small room. "Food, I think."
"Food?" Sam asked, but then the door opened to reveal a woman pushing it open with her back as she carried in a tray. There were several bowls on it, and Sam could smell something wonderful.
The woman nodded to the other women in the room, who were now assembling something before the fire, though Sam wasn't quite sure what it was. There were boards, and ropes, and maybe a quilt.
The woman with the tray came over to where Sam and Gabriel were sitting, and knelt down to put her tray on the floor. She picked up a bowl, and held it out to Gabriel. He took it, sniffed once, and passed it to Sam.
Sam found himself with a bowl of warm liquid that smelled like pine trees.
"What is this?"
"Hot spruce beer. Drink up," Gabriel said as he accepted a second bowl from the woman.
"Seriously?" Sam asked, dubious. It smelled like *pine* -- maybe even *turpentine*.
"Seriously. Drink it." The archangel nodded to the woman and sipped at the liquid.
Sam shrugged and tried it -- it was *foul*.
"This taste likes pine trees!"
"Then chug it," Gabriel snapped. He reached out, and accepted a second bowl from the woman, and a spoon. Whatever the food was, it was creamy white and dotted with yellow fruit, and Gabriel ate it with every sign of enjoyment. Of course, Gabriel had just happily drank a bowl of *turpentine beer*...
Sam grimaced, and drank half his bowl of foul beer before setting it aside. The woman frowned at him, but handed over the second bowl of the white stuff when he motioned for it.
It turned out to be something like yogurt, if sharper and more runny. The yellow fruit looked like raspberries, though they were dried and didn't taste exactly the same. But almost yogurt and not quite raspberries was a lot better than hot pine sap beer.
Sam was really happy to get a third bowl, this one with oatmeal and a dollop of honey. The warmth was really nice after the miserable trip from the border of Hell to this place.
When he was down to scraping the spoon around the inside of the bowl, he looked up to see most of the women filing out of the room, and that they'd been assembling a low bed right in front of the fire.
"There's only one bed," Sam said.
"No one sleeps alone." Gabriel shrugged, "It's too cold to."
"I'm not sharing a bed with you until we both have pants."
"Chicken," the archangel snorted, and staggered to his feet. He reeled the few yards to the bed, and collapsed face-down on it. He didn't even have the decency to make sure his towel stayed in place, so of course it wound up on the floor -- there was a naked archangel hogging the only piece of furniture in the entire room. Typical.
Sam grumbled, and tried to get to his feet. He needed help from the woman who had brought the food. She escorted Sam to the bed, and tried to tuck him in. He fended her off, which didn't make her happy, but she gave up after a few moments.
Sam really wanted pants. But the bed was fairly comfy for something that had just been put together while he ate, and Gabriel was pretty much rooted just inches away. At least the archangel was on top of the covers, Sam thought, and closed his eyes.
He was asleep before he noticed.
Sam woke up to scratching of a pen over parchment. Since this wasn't a normal sound to start the day with, he woke up tense and all at once. His eyes snapped open, and his hand went under his pillow, looking for a weapon that wasn't there. He rolled, hit a warm body, and recoiled in confusion.
Which is when he fell off the bed -- it was a lot more narrow than he was used to, even in the cheap motels that made up most of his life.
"Are you normally so easy to startle?" a woman asked, her voice low and throaty, like an amused cat.
Sam looked across the room to where a small lightweight desk and chair were, and the woman who sat at them.
She was tall and willowy, with glossy black hair and pale eyes. Sam stared at her in shock, and then realized she was eying him in amusement because he was absolutely stark naked on the floor, with not even a sheet to cover him.
He flushed and looked around for his pants.
"There are clothes in the press that should fit you." The woman nodded her head at the bed, more specifically at the box at the end of it that hadn't been there last night. Of course, there hadn't been a desk or a chair in the room last night either, or the woman, who was entirely too amused by Sam's predicament.
Sam turned around -- if she wanted to look at his butt, fine, but he'd rather not have his junk on display for a stranger -- and frowned down at the bed. Gabriel was a blanket thief, of all things. Either that, or wings just made getting tangling in the sheets twice as likely. Sam grabbed at the covers, but a careful tug didn't make the archangel budge, and Sam didn't want to risk tearing the blankets. Now that he was awake, they felt really nice, which meant they were expensive, probably. And it wasn't like he had money right now.
So he edged to the foot of the bed, and the chest that had appeared there in the night. It didn't have a lock, just a rope latch, so he flipped it open. There were clothes neatly folded inside in two piles. Sam rummaged through them, and decided that that one pile was in his size, more or less. Of course, the pile didn't have anything as convenient as boxers and jeans, but after a moment he figured out the knee-length drawstring pants were probably meant to be underwear. They were the only pants that weren't itchy wool, so he pulled those on, and then sat down to sort out the rest of the clothes. There were several shirts -- two of the soft cloth like the underpants, so maybe they were undershirts, and three that were wool, in red, dark blue, and off-white with embroidered knotwork. He pulled on one of the undershirts, and then the dark blue wool shirt -- it was a little tight in the shoulders, and actually too long in the arms, and it hung down to his thighs so he felt like he was wearing pajamas, but given how cold this place seemed, loose and warm was a pretty nice idea for clothes.
He would have liked socks, or at least his boots back, but he didn't see either.
"My shoes?" he asked.
"Being repaired," the woman replied. "You walked through the Inferno, and much of Niflheim. You're lucky you still have your feet."
Sam looked down at his feet. They did look chapped and reddened -- had he gotten frostbite walking here?
"I... did we meet last night? I don't remember you..."
The woman raised her eyebrows at him. "No, we didn't. I was dealing with a different crisis when you and my father fell through the doors. However, my servants took you in, because Loki Laufeyarson is unmistakable no matter what shape he takes, at least to ones who have no more illusions."
Sam jerked his head up at her words. "Your... Father? Gabriel?"
"Oh, yes," the woman said, and came over to the bed to run a fond hand over Gabriel's tangled hair. "I am Hel Lokasdottir Laufeyar. The Mist Hall is mine, and all of Niflheim as well."
She looked up as Sam and smiled. "I owe you a boon, Sam Winchester, for bringing my father out of the Pit. Shattered as he is, I would never have managed it. I would have been driven out by the Kinslayer's demons before I could have retrieved even a tenth as much as you have done."
"So I thank you, and offer you all the hospitality that my home can offer." She held out a hand.
Sam looked at her in confusion. "Uhm..."
"Say 'thank you', you blockhead," Gabriel grumbled weakly from the bed.
"Father!" Hel said, and sat down beside him happily.
Gabriel groaned, and tried to curl further into the bed, but was caught in the sheets tangling around his wings.
Hel laughed, and pushed at Gabriel's shoulder, rolling him onto his back. His wings flopped and twitched, and he struggled to sit up. The blankets were tangled all around him, wrapping and trapping him in the bed.
"Get up, old man," Hel said. "You're not entirely dead yet, and I mean to keep it that way."
Sam stepped back as Gabriel groaned, and tried to pull the blankets off himself, but the archangel just seemed to get himself more tangled up. After a few moments of watching, Sam sighed, rolled his eyes, and stepped forward to help Hel untangle Gabriel from the bedding.
Putting his hands down on Gabriel's wings as Hel tugged the blankets away seemed like the obvious thing to do, but Sam was startled but how warm and alive the wings were. Somehow, he'd been expecting them to be cool and artificial -- like stage props -- not warm and with muscle that contracted when Sam's fingers went through the layer of feathers to touch the skin beneath.
"Whoa," Sam said, and jerked his hand away. Gabriel tilted his head sideways to peer uncertainly at Sam.
"What?"
"Your wings are warm. I wasn't expecting that."
Gabriel's eyebrows rose. "You're the one who imagined me up this body. Why give me wings if you didn't expect them to be part of me?"
"Angels have wings," Sam mumbled. "I just didn't expect you to have, you know, *wings*."
Gabriel gave him a look that said Gabriel thought Sam was crazy, or stupid, or probably both.
Hel, though, laughed, a bright bell peal. "Oh, father. This is too amusing. You would be trapped by your own cleverness."
Gabriel turned to look at her, and judging by the way Hel laughed again, he'd tried to glare her into submission. Sam was kind of glad that she seemed immune to Gabriel's freaky angel glares. God knows, they tended to unsettle Sam enough to make him twitch.
"Get dressed," Hel said, tossing a stack of clothes she'd pulled from the chest at Gabriel. "I'll see you in the hall for breakfast," she told him, as he stared at her, and sauntered through the door, her long dress swinging as she went.
"So...you have a daughter..." Sam said, as he pulled the last bit of blanket off Gabriel's wings, and risked running a finger over the feathered curve of one. Seriously, the archangel's outer wings were soft and fluffy and just *nice* to touch.
"A product of my misspent youth," Gabriel grumbled as he pulled on his own set of knee-length underware. Apparently, he was familiar with how things were supposed to go, because he had no problem sorting it out and pulling on the wool pants. He paused at the shirts, and suddenly threw his wings wide, startling Sam into ducking and retreating into the corner as the four feathered limbs beat at the air.
The wings stretched out for a long moment, then snapped into folds, the smaller lower pair nestled under the huge upper pair. Gabriel pulled his shirts on, one after the other, and somehow, the wings went through the backs of the shirts, like superpositioning was entirely normal.
"Is there a belt in there?" Gabriel asked, peering at the chest at the foot of the bed.
Sam rolled his eyes. "I'm not your maid. And you have a kid. How is that even possible?"
Gabriel got off the bed, and came round to dig into the chest. "It's called sex, Sam. You should try it sometime. It's fun."
"Hey!" Sam snapped, then shook his head, "No, seriously. You're an angel--"
"I'm also a pagan god. They're allowed to have families."
Sam frowned, "But angels--"
"Aren't equipped. Yeah. Like I haven't wriggled out of ..." Gabriel paused, and sat down abruptly. He stopped rummaging in the chest, and put his hands over his eyes.
"Gabriel?" Sam asked, suddenly concerned. The archangel has turned ashen.
"I think something is..." whatever the archangel thought remained unsaid, as he slumped sideways, gasping, even as light welled up from his open mouth and his tight clenched eyes.
"Gabriel!" Sam yelled, throwing himself to the floor to grab at the archangel. Gabriel's eyes opened to roll crazily for a moment, then focused on Sam and the shining light retreated and faded.
"Gabriel?"
"Let's not do that again," Gabriel croaked, and wiped at his mouth with one hand. "Not fun."
"What happened?" Sam asked, and pulled his hands away when Gabriel's raised eyebrows made him realize he'd been automatically patting the archangel for wounds, as if he were Dean or Dad.
"Don't know. I just ... everything felt shaky, all of a sudden."
"Can you stand?" Sam asked. "I should get someone. There's got to be someone here who knows what to do."
"With a broken archangel?" Gabriel laughed. "Because there's not exactly a repair manual you can look up online."
"Niflheim has internet?" Sam asked, as he hauled Gabriel to unsteady feet. That was totally the reason Sam kept his hand on Gabriel's elbow -- to keep him from staggering into walls.
"Could be. Hel still gets human souls -- there are still a few people who believe in the Norse gods enough to come here when they die. I'd bet Hel has them working on modern conveniences. She was always interested in technology to make her life more interesting."
Sam thought that was probably understandable. If you were condemned to be the ruler of the dead in a land of ice and snow, you'd want something to pass the time. Television and the internet were great time-wasters.
I'm not quite sure where this is going, though Sam is going to spend at least a few days in the Mist Hall, and they have to discover just how shaky Gabriel's continued existence is, considering he's kind of a figment of Sam's imagination and his own shattered Grace at the moment.
They stumbled through the great doors, and Sam almost knocked himself silly on the carved faces. Gabriel just collapsed, as if his legs completely stopped working. Given that he was propping himself up on elbows and wing joints (Sam wasn't sure what that joint was called -- bird anatomy wasn't something he ever thought he'd need to know, the more fool him), maybe they had...
The locals looked appalled, shocked at the two dripping scarecrows that just barged through their door. Sam tried a conciliatory smile, but didn't think it worked. Not when Gabriel started yelling in some language that was all yowls and consonants.
Sam just shrugged and slid down the door until he was sitting up only because he'd have to move his legs to actually fall over properly.
The next few minutes were a blur of yelling and people tugging Sam, and finally someone pouring hot water over his head, which at woke him up enough to protest the extra soaking that he didn't need, seeing as how they'd walked through ice caves to get here in the first place.
He wasn't in the same room -- this wasn't the long hall they'd come into. He shoved away the hands that were plucking at him -- they'd gotten his jacket already, but he still had his shirts and pants, which was kind of a mixed blessing, considering he was soaked through no matter what.
"Gabriel?!" he called out, trying to shove past the mass of grey-gowned women that surrounded him and were clucking at him in that yowling tongue.
"Wh-hat?" the archangel stammered.
Sam tried to stand up and get to Gabriel, but his legs didn't cooperate, so he had to slither across the floor until he reached the angel. The women kept getting in the way, which didn't help.
They'd stripped Gabriel of everything, shirt, jacket, jeans, shoes, everything. He was huddled under his own mantling wings. He was dripping everywhere -- his feathers were wet and bedraggled, his hair was soaked and plastered down, and he was hugging himself as he shivered.
"Shit," Sam gasped. "Why are you even cold?"
Gabriel pulled his face away from he'd buried his nose in his arms against the cold and glared at Sam. "Because you can't imagine not being cold when you're wet and in an ice palace, muttonhead. I have to suffer through *your* conception of reality!"
"Fuck, I'm sorry."
One of the women snapped something that made Gabriel look up at her. She continued on, and pushed Sam back enough until she could crouch down between them. She gave Sam an annoyed look, then rattled off a few sentences that had Gabriel nodding in the end.
"What?"
"Rota wants your clothes," Gabriel said, and his lips quirked. "You're dripping over her clean floors."
"I don't want to be naked!"
"Soaked and hypothermic is better?" Gabriel asked, right before another woman came up behind him and dropped a blanket on his head -- or maybe it was a towel, given the way she rubbed it briskly over his hair. He smiled at her when she pulled it off enough that he could see, and she smiled back, almost chuckling.
"Towels? I can get behind towels," Sam said, and pulled off his shirts. He didn't take off his pants until he'd gotten one of the women to hand him a blanket-or-towel. Gabriel might have no sense of shame or modesty, but Sam didn't want to be buck naked in a room that was entirely women except for the two of them. He *did* have a sense of modesty.
They snatched Sam's clothes away as soon as he pulled the sodden garments off, but he got a stack of towels in exchange, and if they weren't fluffy terrycloth, they were at least large and fairly soft pieces of cloth. He secured one around his waist, draped another over his shoulders, and then looked at Gabriel.
The women had moved on to trying to blot dry Gabriel's wings, and the archangel was obliging them by spreading all four feathery limbs to the corners of the room. Sam could see how different his inner, lower set – small and graceful and curving to pointed ends – were from the outer wings, which were huge, and almost blunt, and looked like they would be unbelievably fluffy if not soaked through. There were even slightly different colors, with the inner pair being sleek white on one side and glossy brown on the other, and the outer pair a mottled brown and white all over.
There was a hissing, and the room began to fill with steam -- one of the women was dropping hot rocks from the fireplace, which Sam hadn't noticed until then, into buckets of water. The steam was actually kind of nice, warm and soothing on his lungs; it probably wasn't a great hypothermia treatment, though.
Gabriel snapped something in the other language, and got what must have been an acceptable response, because he nodded, and then lurched toward Sam. He half-dragged his wings as he crossed the floor, and let them sprawl when he flopped down.
Sam wasn't thrilled to have a naked archangel fetched up beside him. That was easily solved -- Sam tossed one of the towels at Gabriel. Admittedly, he hit him in the head with it, but the archangel got the hint and pushed it down over his own body.
"So... what now?"
Gabriel turned his head to look a doorway on the far side of the small room. "Food, I think."
"Food?" Sam asked, but then the door opened to reveal a woman pushing it open with her back as she carried in a tray. There were several bowls on it, and Sam could smell something wonderful.
The woman nodded to the other women in the room, who were now assembling something before the fire, though Sam wasn't quite sure what it was. There were boards, and ropes, and maybe a quilt.
The woman with the tray came over to where Sam and Gabriel were sitting, and knelt down to put her tray on the floor. She picked up a bowl, and held it out to Gabriel. He took it, sniffed once, and passed it to Sam.
Sam found himself with a bowl of warm liquid that smelled like pine trees.
"What is this?"
"Hot spruce beer. Drink up," Gabriel said as he accepted a second bowl from the woman.
"Seriously?" Sam asked, dubious. It smelled like *pine* -- maybe even *turpentine*.
"Seriously. Drink it." The archangel nodded to the woman and sipped at the liquid.
Sam shrugged and tried it -- it was *foul*.
"This taste likes pine trees!"
"Then chug it," Gabriel snapped. He reached out, and accepted a second bowl from the woman, and a spoon. Whatever the food was, it was creamy white and dotted with yellow fruit, and Gabriel ate it with every sign of enjoyment. Of course, Gabriel had just happily drank a bowl of *turpentine beer*...
Sam grimaced, and drank half his bowl of foul beer before setting it aside. The woman frowned at him, but handed over the second bowl of the white stuff when he motioned for it.
It turned out to be something like yogurt, if sharper and more runny. The yellow fruit looked like raspberries, though they were dried and didn't taste exactly the same. But almost yogurt and not quite raspberries was a lot better than hot pine sap beer.
Sam was really happy to get a third bowl, this one with oatmeal and a dollop of honey. The warmth was really nice after the miserable trip from the border of Hell to this place.
When he was down to scraping the spoon around the inside of the bowl, he looked up to see most of the women filing out of the room, and that they'd been assembling a low bed right in front of the fire.
"There's only one bed," Sam said.
"No one sleeps alone." Gabriel shrugged, "It's too cold to."
"I'm not sharing a bed with you until we both have pants."
"Chicken," the archangel snorted, and staggered to his feet. He reeled the few yards to the bed, and collapsed face-down on it. He didn't even have the decency to make sure his towel stayed in place, so of course it wound up on the floor -- there was a naked archangel hogging the only piece of furniture in the entire room. Typical.
Sam grumbled, and tried to get to his feet. He needed help from the woman who had brought the food. She escorted Sam to the bed, and tried to tuck him in. He fended her off, which didn't make her happy, but she gave up after a few moments.
Sam really wanted pants. But the bed was fairly comfy for something that had just been put together while he ate, and Gabriel was pretty much rooted just inches away. At least the archangel was on top of the covers, Sam thought, and closed his eyes.
He was asleep before he noticed.
Sam woke up to scratching of a pen over parchment. Since this wasn't a normal sound to start the day with, he woke up tense and all at once. His eyes snapped open, and his hand went under his pillow, looking for a weapon that wasn't there. He rolled, hit a warm body, and recoiled in confusion.
Which is when he fell off the bed -- it was a lot more narrow than he was used to, even in the cheap motels that made up most of his life.
"Are you normally so easy to startle?" a woman asked, her voice low and throaty, like an amused cat.
Sam looked across the room to where a small lightweight desk and chair were, and the woman who sat at them.
She was tall and willowy, with glossy black hair and pale eyes. Sam stared at her in shock, and then realized she was eying him in amusement because he was absolutely stark naked on the floor, with not even a sheet to cover him.
He flushed and looked around for his pants.
"There are clothes in the press that should fit you." The woman nodded her head at the bed, more specifically at the box at the end of it that hadn't been there last night. Of course, there hadn't been a desk or a chair in the room last night either, or the woman, who was entirely too amused by Sam's predicament.
Sam turned around -- if she wanted to look at his butt, fine, but he'd rather not have his junk on display for a stranger -- and frowned down at the bed. Gabriel was a blanket thief, of all things. Either that, or wings just made getting tangling in the sheets twice as likely. Sam grabbed at the covers, but a careful tug didn't make the archangel budge, and Sam didn't want to risk tearing the blankets. Now that he was awake, they felt really nice, which meant they were expensive, probably. And it wasn't like he had money right now.
So he edged to the foot of the bed, and the chest that had appeared there in the night. It didn't have a lock, just a rope latch, so he flipped it open. There were clothes neatly folded inside in two piles. Sam rummaged through them, and decided that that one pile was in his size, more or less. Of course, the pile didn't have anything as convenient as boxers and jeans, but after a moment he figured out the knee-length drawstring pants were probably meant to be underwear. They were the only pants that weren't itchy wool, so he pulled those on, and then sat down to sort out the rest of the clothes. There were several shirts -- two of the soft cloth like the underpants, so maybe they were undershirts, and three that were wool, in red, dark blue, and off-white with embroidered knotwork. He pulled on one of the undershirts, and then the dark blue wool shirt -- it was a little tight in the shoulders, and actually too long in the arms, and it hung down to his thighs so he felt like he was wearing pajamas, but given how cold this place seemed, loose and warm was a pretty nice idea for clothes.
He would have liked socks, or at least his boots back, but he didn't see either.
"My shoes?" he asked.
"Being repaired," the woman replied. "You walked through the Inferno, and much of Niflheim. You're lucky you still have your feet."
Sam looked down at his feet. They did look chapped and reddened -- had he gotten frostbite walking here?
"I... did we meet last night? I don't remember you..."
The woman raised her eyebrows at him. "No, we didn't. I was dealing with a different crisis when you and my father fell through the doors. However, my servants took you in, because Loki Laufeyarson is unmistakable no matter what shape he takes, at least to ones who have no more illusions."
Sam jerked his head up at her words. "Your... Father? Gabriel?"
"Oh, yes," the woman said, and came over to the bed to run a fond hand over Gabriel's tangled hair. "I am Hel Lokasdottir Laufeyar. The Mist Hall is mine, and all of Niflheim as well."
She looked up as Sam and smiled. "I owe you a boon, Sam Winchester, for bringing my father out of the Pit. Shattered as he is, I would never have managed it. I would have been driven out by the Kinslayer's demons before I could have retrieved even a tenth as much as you have done."
"So I thank you, and offer you all the hospitality that my home can offer." She held out a hand.
Sam looked at her in confusion. "Uhm..."
"Say 'thank you', you blockhead," Gabriel grumbled weakly from the bed.
"Father!" Hel said, and sat down beside him happily.
Gabriel groaned, and tried to curl further into the bed, but was caught in the sheets tangling around his wings.
Hel laughed, and pushed at Gabriel's shoulder, rolling him onto his back. His wings flopped and twitched, and he struggled to sit up. The blankets were tangled all around him, wrapping and trapping him in the bed.
"Get up, old man," Hel said. "You're not entirely dead yet, and I mean to keep it that way."
Sam stepped back as Gabriel groaned, and tried to pull the blankets off himself, but the archangel just seemed to get himself more tangled up. After a few moments of watching, Sam sighed, rolled his eyes, and stepped forward to help Hel untangle Gabriel from the bedding.
Putting his hands down on Gabriel's wings as Hel tugged the blankets away seemed like the obvious thing to do, but Sam was startled but how warm and alive the wings were. Somehow, he'd been expecting them to be cool and artificial -- like stage props -- not warm and with muscle that contracted when Sam's fingers went through the layer of feathers to touch the skin beneath.
"Whoa," Sam said, and jerked his hand away. Gabriel tilted his head sideways to peer uncertainly at Sam.
"What?"
"Your wings are warm. I wasn't expecting that."
Gabriel's eyebrows rose. "You're the one who imagined me up this body. Why give me wings if you didn't expect them to be part of me?"
"Angels have wings," Sam mumbled. "I just didn't expect you to have, you know, *wings*."
Gabriel gave him a look that said Gabriel thought Sam was crazy, or stupid, or probably both.
Hel, though, laughed, a bright bell peal. "Oh, father. This is too amusing. You would be trapped by your own cleverness."
Gabriel turned to look at her, and judging by the way Hel laughed again, he'd tried to glare her into submission. Sam was kind of glad that she seemed immune to Gabriel's freaky angel glares. God knows, they tended to unsettle Sam enough to make him twitch.
"Get dressed," Hel said, tossing a stack of clothes she'd pulled from the chest at Gabriel. "I'll see you in the hall for breakfast," she told him, as he stared at her, and sauntered through the door, her long dress swinging as she went.
"So...you have a daughter..." Sam said, as he pulled the last bit of blanket off Gabriel's wings, and risked running a finger over the feathered curve of one. Seriously, the archangel's outer wings were soft and fluffy and just *nice* to touch.
"A product of my misspent youth," Gabriel grumbled as he pulled on his own set of knee-length underware. Apparently, he was familiar with how things were supposed to go, because he had no problem sorting it out and pulling on the wool pants. He paused at the shirts, and suddenly threw his wings wide, startling Sam into ducking and retreating into the corner as the four feathered limbs beat at the air.
The wings stretched out for a long moment, then snapped into folds, the smaller lower pair nestled under the huge upper pair. Gabriel pulled his shirts on, one after the other, and somehow, the wings went through the backs of the shirts, like superpositioning was entirely normal.
"Is there a belt in there?" Gabriel asked, peering at the chest at the foot of the bed.
Sam rolled his eyes. "I'm not your maid. And you have a kid. How is that even possible?"
Gabriel got off the bed, and came round to dig into the chest. "It's called sex, Sam. You should try it sometime. It's fun."
"Hey!" Sam snapped, then shook his head, "No, seriously. You're an angel--"
"I'm also a pagan god. They're allowed to have families."
Sam frowned, "But angels--"
"Aren't equipped. Yeah. Like I haven't wriggled out of ..." Gabriel paused, and sat down abruptly. He stopped rummaging in the chest, and put his hands over his eyes.
"Gabriel?" Sam asked, suddenly concerned. The archangel has turned ashen.
"I think something is..." whatever the archangel thought remained unsaid, as he slumped sideways, gasping, even as light welled up from his open mouth and his tight clenched eyes.
"Gabriel!" Sam yelled, throwing himself to the floor to grab at the archangel. Gabriel's eyes opened to roll crazily for a moment, then focused on Sam and the shining light retreated and faded.
"Gabriel?"
"Let's not do that again," Gabriel croaked, and wiped at his mouth with one hand. "Not fun."
"What happened?" Sam asked, and pulled his hands away when Gabriel's raised eyebrows made him realize he'd been automatically patting the archangel for wounds, as if he were Dean or Dad.
"Don't know. I just ... everything felt shaky, all of a sudden."
"Can you stand?" Sam asked. "I should get someone. There's got to be someone here who knows what to do."
"With a broken archangel?" Gabriel laughed. "Because there's not exactly a repair manual you can look up online."
"Niflheim has internet?" Sam asked, as he hauled Gabriel to unsteady feet. That was totally the reason Sam kept his hand on Gabriel's elbow -- to keep him from staggering into walls.
"Could be. Hel still gets human souls -- there are still a few people who believe in the Norse gods enough to come here when they die. I'd bet Hel has them working on modern conveniences. She was always interested in technology to make her life more interesting."
Sam thought that was probably understandable. If you were condemned to be the ruler of the dead in a land of ice and snow, you'd want something to pass the time. Television and the internet were great time-wasters.
I'm not quite sure where this is going, though Sam is going to spend at least a few days in the Mist Hall, and they have to discover just how shaky Gabriel's continued existence is, considering he's kind of a figment of Sam's imagination and his own shattered Grace at the moment.
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I take it Gabriel's seizure was because Sam got confused about how he could be both an angel and a god?
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Gabriel's seizure is the first indication that even though he and Sam crawled out of Hell, he's still not okay. I'm not sure if it was because Sam was confused, or that Sam was distracted by curiosity, or just that Gabriel was running on fumes at that point and didn't know it.