Transmission from the Trickster

Chapter 58

When Sam wakes up the next morning, Gabriel is nowhere to be seen. Castiel says he disappeared not long after the humans went to bed, and Jack seems confident that he'll be back soon. Sam decides to take his word for it, if only because he lacks the ambition to go look for him again.

Instead, Sam sits down at the war room table with his laptop and starts searching for a case. He's sure there are plenty out there, and he's in desperate need of something to do. Running after a flight risk of an archangel gets annoying after a while. Dean seems to agree, though he obviously wants no part in actually looking for a case; he just wants to go hunt something.

Searching for a case is, as expected, incredibly boring, but he does eventually find one, and he and Dean agree to check it out, leaving Cas, Jack, and Mary behind to keep an eye on things (and by "things," they mostly mean Ketch, who pops in and out incredibly inconsistently and they never know when to expect to see him, nor do they want to).

Sam is just starting to gather his things when Jack asks, "What about Gabriel?"

Sam glances back at him, confused. "What about him?"

"You're just gonna leave him?" Jack asks.

Sam snorts. "He left us, Jack. If he wanted to say goodbye, he'd come out and do it, but I don't think he's really in the mood."

"But what if he comes back to see you and you're not here?" Jack asks, and Sam comes to the frustrating realization that the kid picked up his propensity for puppy dog eyes.

"I don't even know where he is," Sam reminds him. "Unless you know where I can find him...?"

"I dunno," Jack says, "but he's probably still in the bunker. Can't you go look for him before you leave?"

Sam heaves a sigh. "You're killing me, Jack." He pats the kid on the back. "I'll take a look, okay? And if I don't find him, you can tell him where Dean and I went yourself."

Jack beans. "Okay!"

"Just make it quick," Dean says. "The monster's not getting any more dead while we're here."

Sam waves that off and begins his trek around the bunker. He's not at all surprised to find Gabriel sitting in the library, his usual go-to hideout. He's tucked away into a corner between some shelves with playing cards laid out in front of him. Sam stays where he is, watching the archangel play his game in silence. He's not sure what he thought he'd find Gabriel doing but this was not it.

After a minute or two of silence, Gabriel asks, "Do you see anything else I can do here? 'Cause I think I lost again," without looking up.

Sam takes that as a sign that he's welcome here, so he walks over and takes a seat on the floor opposite him on the other side of the cards. From here he can easily see that the card game the archangel is playing is solitaire, and he's not doing particularly well with it. If he could just find the ace of hearts, he might be able to get somewhere; unfortunately, that card is nowhere to be found.

"What's in the stock pile?" Sam asks.

Gabriel gestures for him to take a look.

"Are you playing draw one or draw three?" Sam asks.

Gabriel scoffs. "Do I look like an eight-year-old? Draw three, duh."

"Of course," Sam deadpans. "I should've known."

He flips over the first three cards in the stock pile, and when he sees that the ace of hearts is the first card in the pile, now buried beneath two more in the waste pile, he knows this is game over. There's absolutely no way he can get that thing out unless he's missing one really good move somewhere else.