Title: Hamburger Rolls
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Jodie talks Sam through a crisis. Set soon after 7x23 "Survival of the Fittest"; written for the inkstains challenge "A story that starts off very, very late one night, and your character has stayed up to... ?"
Pairings: None.
Warnings: Mention of canonical character death.
Word Count: 1400

There is no lore on purgatory.

Or rather, there is, but it's all Catholic. In Catholic belief, purgatory is heaven's waiting room; people go there when they are not ready for heaven but not destined for hell.

Obviously Catholic theology does not bear in mind the existence of vampires or werewolves or leviathans.

Sam stares at the ancient Latin of the summoning-Eve manual on his left, then at all the notes he's collected from Lovecraft on his right, then back at the Latin.

This is all he has. Opening purgatory in any way bears too big a risk of letting the monster souls loose—ghost monsters, just what he needs—and worse, too big a risk of letting Dick Roman loose again. And there's no guarantee he can get Dean back, Dean and Castiel.

"Sam, it's two-thirty in the morning," says a tired-sounding Jodie. "You getting a few hours' sleep won't hurt your brother any."

"Do you know what's in purgatory?" Sam demands. "Do you? Dead monsters. A fuckton of dead monsters. A few hundred of whom will not be at all pleased to see my brother. Every minute I waste not getting him back—he's been through enough, Jodie, I can't just—leave him there—"

There is something in his eye.

"You need to take care of yourself," Jodie says. "Otherwise your brother won't have anything to come back to."

"You sound like Ruby," Sam says, bitter.

"Who's Ruby?" Jodie asks.

Sam snorts. "She helped me through last time Dean was trapped somewhere I couldn't get him. And then a miracle named Castiel arrived to rescue Dean, and then Ruby sold us out and we killed her. She was a demon. She's probably in purgatory too. Along with Dean and Castiel."

Jodie seems to decide that's not worth responding to. "Here, let me get you some food," she says.

"Nothing with additives of any kind," Sam warns.

"You've said that five times," Jodie says, heading for the kitchen. "I shop at the organic co-op, remember? We're safe. What sort of food do you want?"

Sam laughs. It sounds odd. "You don't have to, you know."

"I know," Jodie says. "What do you want?"

"Uh. I'm really craving some White Castle."

"There aren't any around here, and they probably use additives," Jodie says. "But I can make you a burger. Organic free-range grass-fed ground sirloin, and give me a couple hours and my bread machine and I will make rolls."

Sam smiles, a little. "Now you sound like Jess."

"Who's Jess?"

"My girlfriend at Stanford." Sam looks away. "She died. My fault."

"Your stories are always so cheerful," Jodie says.

Sam shrugs. "I'm bad luck."

Jodie opens the freezer and pokes around, pulling out a slab of meat. "If what Bobby said is true, you're the only reason there's a world left to save," Jodie says. "You gonna tell me Bobby lied?"

"Bobby 'FBI, federal marshal, CDC, et cetera, as appropriate' Singer, tell a lie? Never."

Jodie laughs, turning to a cabinet and pulling out her bread machine.

"It might be true," Sam allows. "I'm the only reason the world was in danger in the first place—"

"Now that I'm sure is bullshit," Jodie interrupts.

"It's true," Sam says. "When Dean was in hell, I was batshit crazy. After he came back, I wasn't much better. If I'd just listened to him when he said it wasn't worth getting revenge for him dying when he wasn't actually dead, none of this would have happened. No letting Lucifer out, no war in heaven, no letting Eve out, no letting leviathans out."

"So it's all your fault and you've got to fix it all, all by yourself?" Jodie says, turning on the tap and testing the water temperature with her wrist.

"Finally she gets it," Sam says.

"No, I don't believe I do," Jodie says, measuring out water. "And I don't believe you believe that, either. If you did, you wouldn't have come to me."

Sam opens his mouth, then closes it, unsure of what he could say.

Jodie turns off the water and puts down her measuring cup. "You have a lot more people in your corner than you think you do," she says. "You've saved a lot of lives, and some of them even know it. I bet every single person who remembers you saving her life will be ready and waiting to help you, and all you've got to do is ask."

Sam nods slowly. "If I do have all these people with me—I'm not saying I do, but if—I could get them to—spread the word about organic food, I guess? Keep people as safe as I can while hunters take on the leviathans?"

"And maybe, just maybe, there's a way to put them all back in purgatory, where you said they came out of," Jodie says. She pours the water into the bread machine insert and cracks an egg into a small bowl.

"Tried that," Sam says. "Twice. The first time they didn't go. The second time Dean and Castiel went with him. I am not sacrificing a few hundred hunters to take down a few hundred leviathans unless there's absolutely no other way, and even if that is the only way, we'd have to make a few hundred more weapons—did I mention there's only one angel left alive and he's in purgatory?"

"I'm going to assume there's a logical connection there," Jodie says. She pours the beaten egg into the bread machine insert and goes into the refrigerator for a butter stick.

"We need angel blood to make the weapons that kill leviathans," Sam explains. "And demon blood. And monster blood. And human bone. Specific angel, specific demon, specific monster, fairly specific human, and neither Crowley nor the alpha vampire are likely to be all that cooperative, and Castiel is gone."

"How specific does it need to be?" Jodie asks, putting away the reduced butter stick. She starts on the sugar. "Have you tried using the blood of any angel and any demon and any monster?"

"...no," Sam admits.

"Try it," Jodie suggests. Dry milk powder follows the sugar.

"Didn't I just say all the angels are dead?" Sam says, then stops. "That's not true. I could probably figure out a way to summon Lucifer and have him possess me again—I beat him before, I can do it again. And then it'd be my blood."

Jodie says nothing; she just measures the salt.

"Dean will hate me," Sam concludes, "and there's an awfully big chance I'd fuck this up and destroy everything in the process, and I'd still be killing a hunter for every leviathan and that will fuck things up in itself because the monsters aren't all dead yet, but it might be our only chance. Unless I can bring back Castiel." Sam goes back to the summon-Eve manual.

Jodie measures the flour.

"I don't know, Jodie," Sam says. "I've taken some pretty fucking big risks before, but it was only one gamble every time. Here I'd be betting that I can get angel blood without blowing up the planet, that I can make the weapons work when they're not to specification, that I can find a few hundred people willing to die for me, that every one of those people can overpower a leviathan long enough to stab it with one of the weapons...one more die roll and we're playing Yahtzee."

He and Dean used to play Yahtzee.

Jodie measures the yeast.

"I can't tell you what to do, Sam," she says, putting the bread machine insert into the bread machine itself. "But if you need to roll a Yahtzee for us to win this, then I'm confident you can roll a Yahtzee."

"That's comforting, Jodie, thanks," Sam says on a yawn. His stomach rumbles. "Uh, how long till the burgers are ready?"

"An hour on the dough cycle, another hour to rise, another fifteen minutes to bake," she says. "Go take a nap. It'll look better in the morning."

"No it won't," Sam says. He goes to the air mattress anyway. "Jodie?" he says, lying down diagonally and kicking off his shoes. "Thanks. For everything."

"Anytime, Sam," she says. "You know that."

Sam still misses Dean, and can't bear to leave him (and Castiel) in purgatory a moment longer than necessary, but Jodie's right. There are bigger problems, and Sam's the one best equipped to deal with them.