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vail_kagamiFandom: Supernatural
Beta:
minviendhaCharacters (overall): Dean, Castiel, Sam, plus a number of angels and demons
Rating (overall): NC-17
Warnings (overall): violence, torture, drug use, insanity, mentions of rape
Spoilers: Going AU during episode 5.18: Point of No Return. No spoilers for season six.
Words (this chapter): 7,999
Summary: A man wakes up in a ruined wasteland, without memories, without a name, without knowing the strange guy who claims he used to be an angel, or that he once had a little brother. All he knows is that the world is dying, everyone is lying to him and that somehow, somewhere, something went terribly wrong. Because someone said Yes when they should have said No, and someone else paid the price.
Note: My thanks to all who stuck with this through the hiatus! I will now go back to posting every other Friday.
Masterpost
Awareness returns suddenly and without warning. Dean gasps and sits up, all senses alert and looking for a danger he knows is there, even if he can’t remember what it is.
Then the memory comes: Lucifer. Lucifer coming and killing Castiel.
Lucifer taking the soul.
Lucifer, who is very clearly not around anymore. Dean notices it though the all-consuming wave of loss that threatens to drown him. His lips form words he isn’t aware of. It doesn’t even seem worth noticing that he was dead a second ago and now he isn’t.
Numbly, he runs his hands over his body. There’s not a scratch on him, and no blood at all. He halfway expects to look up and see Michael before him, demanding to get back into his body, but then he does look up and only sees the ruined town, pieces of the wall he was thrown through and the wall against which Castiel died.
Dean gets to his feet. He’s shaking, but not in pain. Ridiculously, he’s hungry.
The dark shape of wings has been burned into the wall, letting Dean know that Cas is really dead. Seems like he had a bit of grace left, after all.
He’s also gone. Dean stares at the spot where his corpse should be lying and wonders if this is something angels do – some kind of Jedi thing that disintegrates their bodies after they die. Somehow he doesn’t think so.
Somehow, he also thinks that he should be covered in blood even if his wounds have been healed. Slowly, Dean’s mind starts working again. He looks around in growing confusion, sees nothing but dust and rubble, and when he turns back to the wall, the shadows of wings are gone.
“What the fuck?” he says.
“That was exactly my thought right now,” Jena answers. “I admit, I’ve been missing Lucy every now and then, but this was not quite the kind of family meeting I was hoping for.”
Dean turns around so quickly he nearly falls over and finds her standing right behind him, staring at the wall as if there was still something to see on it. “Where the heck have you been?”
She graces him with a brief glance. “I didn’t feel like meeting Satan in one of his more murderous moods, so I decided to wait this one out.”
“You let him kill Cas!” Dean yells. “You let him take my brother’s soul!”
“No, Dean, you did that.” Jena doesn’t say it with venom. In fact, she sounds slightly bored. “And Cas is standing right behind me.”
Surprised, Dean looks up, half-expecting to actually find Cas standing there and half-disappointed that he isn’t.
“This isn’t remotely funny!”
“I agree,” Cas says. He’s standing behind Dean, actually, and Dean is getting increasingly confused and increasingly angry.
But that is still better than mind-numbing desperation.
“What the Hell is going on here?” he asks.
“Well.” Jena unwraps something that Dean would have been sure was a lollipop if those hadn’t gone out of production centuries ago. She throws the wrapping carelessly to the ground and it is blown away by a gust of wind, a tiny, brightly coloured spot completely out of place in this sepia-shaded world. “Being one of the most powerful angels in creation has its merits.”
“What?” Dean asks because he’s not quite following. He looks at Cas for help but the angel stares right past both of them and looks so heartbreakingly crushed Dean almost feels like giving him a hug.
The feeling fades and is replaced by ice-cold horror when it sinks in what that look might mean.
“From a certain power level upwards it’s easy to bend reality left and right.” Jena explains, unconcerned. “Has always been a hobby of mine – though I have to admit some people develop disconcerting personality traits and go after you with stakes if stuck in a time loop for a few months. Anyway, long story short, what just happened wasn’t, strictly speaking, real. At least not all of it.”
“So Lucifer was never really here?” That can’t be – because it doesn’t make sense. Jena shakes her head and destroys any hope Dean might have had.
“He was. But he didn’t kill any of you – not really. I just made it for all of you that he did. And then I undid it.”
Dean thinks she must look proud of herself, but when he glances at her face to check, she’s unexpectedly, uncharacteristically sombre.
“What about the soul?” he asks but closes his eyes in defeat before she can answer because one look at Cas’ face is answer enough.
It’s Cas himself who confirms it. “It’s gone.”
Dean opens his eyes and fights the urge to wrap his hands around Jena’s scrawny neck. “If you’re so all powerful, why didn’t you save it?”
“Maybe you should think twice before speaking and be grateful I saved you!” Jena replies coolly.
“I don’t care if you saved me! But protecting that soul was what this was all about! Where’s the fucking point? You want us to be able to sit by and watch as Lucifer tears the rest of this world apart?”
“Yes,” Castiel says flatly. Dean turns and finds him staring unblinkingly at Jena, looking entirely defeated.
Jena sighs. “No,” she denies. “I couldn’t have protected it if I tried.”
“Why not?” Dean asks.
“Because Lucifer would have noticed. Believe it or not, but he’s better at these tricks than I am. The only reason it escaped him that he didn’t truly kill the two of you is because he was distracted by finally getting his hands on poor Sammy. If I had tricked him there as well he would have known at once. And then he would have seen through all of it and killed the two of you for real and taken the soul anyway.”
It seems to make sense. Dean still wants to punch her. Or maybe he just wants to punch something.
“All is lost,” Castiel says in the same dull voice as before and Jena sighs.
“I know.”
“Hold on a minute,” Dean protests. “Are you actually giving up here?”
They stare at him now, as if that was a very stupid and not at all obvious question.
“There’s nothing we can do,” Jena points out.
“Of course there is! We’re gonna get my brother back.” Dean turns to Cas. “You saved him from Lucifer before, all alone. Why are you so sure the three of us can’t do that now?”
“Lucifer left him alone back then,” Cas explains. “He won’t do it now. And Sam is already broken.”
“No, he isn’t. He would have said yes before if he was.”
“I was there to prevent it.” There’s finally some life back in Cas voice, but it’s only desperation and growing anger. “I was when you weren’t! But now I’m not! Sam will come back to life and he’ll know that can only mean I’m dead and there is no hope. He can’t hold on any longer, he can’t!” The last words he’s yelling in Dean’s face in the most emotional display he has ever shown.
“Cas is right,” Jena says. “You probably won’t believe me when I say I’m sorry, but I am. The resilience Sam has shown was remarkable, but even he can only bear so much. Actually, I expected him to give up the last time I saw him.”
“The last time you did nothing to save him either,” Cas mutters bitterly, at the same time that Dean says, “But he didn’t. How can you know he will now?”
“Because Lucifer will make sure of it.” A hint of impatience is creeping into Jena’s voice, as if she just can’t understand why Dean doesn’t get it. “He’s not going to let him go this time and Sam has nothing to hold on to.”
“Well, maybe you’re not giving him enough credit.”
The punch comes out of nowhere, though maybe Dean should have expected it. He stumbles a step backwards and when he looks up, clutching his cheek, it is Castiel’s furious face he sees.
“Don’t you say that!” the fallen angel yells. “You, of all people, have no right to say that!”
“While I have a hard time disagreeing, I think you should calm down a bit, little brother,” Jena says sternly, putting a hand on Castiel’s shoulder that is shaken off immediately.
“It’s your fault!”Cas keeps screaming into Dean’s face. “I promised to protect Sam and you… you…” His voice finally breaks, but the tears in his eyes remind Dean of the look on his face just before Lucifer “killed” him. The betrayal. Lucifer’s words.
And suddenly it all falls into place. Why Cas could sense demons and Lucifer but no other angel. Michael’s sudden retreat after seeing into Dean’s head. After he connected the dots Dean couldn’t make sense of. Why Lucifer said Dean had betrayed them.
“I didn’t know,” he defends himself. “I swear, I didn’t. Michael… he appeared in my dreams and, and he was in my head. But I didn’t know… I didn’t even know where the soul was, and if I’d known I wouldn’t have told him!”
The anger on Castiel’s face mixes with desperation. “Why didn’t you tell me about Michael?”
All the explanation Dean can give him is a pathetic and tragically ironic, “I didn’t trust you.”
Jena snorts. “That’s actually almost funny. It could be, anyway, if it hadn’t effectively destroyed everything Cas and Sam have fought and suffered for. Congratulations.”
The words are not needed to make Dean feel miserable. But now Cas turns on his fellow angel.
“Dean didn’t know,” he snaps. “You did. You knew everything and you could have helped all the time, but you didn’t!”
This got Dean’s attention. “What?”
Jena looks entirely unimpressed. “You give yourself too much credit. So could I have helped? Maybe. But why would I? Everything was simply following Father’s plan. Remember that from destiny’s point of view, you are the bad guys.”
“And yet, you keep aiding us,” Cas points out. “I believe it is time you chose a side and did what you think is right.”
Jena throws a brief glance at Dean. “You know, someone told me that before. But somehow, that someone failed to set a good example.”
“Maybe Dean didn’t,” Cas says, as if there had been any doubt who she was talking about. “But Sam did. He never gave in, and yet you sat back and watched because someone else let you down.”
Jena sighs. “It doesn’t matter now, does it? Lucifer has Sam’s soul and it’s only a matter of time until he also gets his consent.”
“If he hasn’t already,” Dean mutters.
“He hasn’t,” Jena says. “I’d know.”
Dean lifts his head, an unexpected and painful wave of ridiculous hope running through him. “How so?”
“I’m an archangel,” she says as if that explained everything, which he supposes it does. Cas doesn’t react to the revelation – the archangel thing is probably another thing he knew and never mentioned to Dean. Right now, Dean doesn’t have it in him to feel bitter about that.
“So we can still save him,” he realises. “You’re a friggin’ archangel! You can just fly to wherever they are hiding and get him out.”
Jena’s face darkens. “Don’t be ridiculous. Even if Lucifer hadn’t protected the place from outside influence, he’d kill me before I got near Sam.”
“So you value your life above the world?”
“Yes, if you don’t mind, I do. Maybe it would be better to finally get this thing over with anyway. I just grew tired of waiting.”
“If that was the case, you wouldn’t be here at all,” Dean insists, though he can’t be sure of that, not in the least. “Or do you really want to sit back and let one of your brothers be killed?”
“Who are you to judge that?” Jena sneers, and she’s right, of course, but it still stings.
“No,” Cas suddenly says. “Dean is right. We should try. We have to!”
“It’s hopeless,” Jena snaps impatiently.
“Even if it is, what do we have to lose?” Cas voice turns pleading, but there’s a hard edge to it that says he won’t accept No for an answer. “You wouldn’t have come if Sam hadn’t impressed you. He fought for us for so long. We owe it to him to return the favour.”
“You fought for him long enough,” Jena points out. “Let it go, little brother.”
Something inside Dean twists painfully. “I’ll do it alone if I have to,” he informs them. “Just tell me where to go.”
“Well, in that case, I hope you kept your horse,” Jena says dryly. “Lucifer’s in Detroit, and I’m pretty sure that’s where you’ll find your Sammy as well.”
The words resonate something within Dean, but he can’t grasp it before it sinks back into the black pool of nothing that swallowed his memory. Beside him, Castiel flinches.
“You only have to get us near there,” the fallen angel says coldly. “If you would rather return to passivity, we will go on our own.”
Jena looks at each of them for a long time. Finally, she sighs. “There is no cure for stupidity, I guess. But you’re right. What have we got to lose?”
-
When Jena transports them to Michigan in the blink of an eye, Dean is not only overcome by an unpleasant feeling of déjà-vu, he also curses the fact that they didn’t have her on their side sooner. The transport leaves him disoriented and slightly unwell for a moment, but it sure beats walking.
Or riding, as it is.
Michigan looks a lot like Minnesota, except the weather is worse. A fine rain greets them that would not bother Dean if it wasn’t accompanied by a soft, cold wind that wouldn’t bother him either if not for the rain.
There’s actually grass on the ground they land on, but it’s dry and dead and doesn’t improve the landscape at all.
“This is as close as I can get us without Lucifer sensing it,” Jena explains. Her face is set in an uncharacteristic frown as she looks over the bleak plain they have landed on.
The ground rises to the east, to the west there are small groups of bare threes in front of the darkening sky. In no direction Dean can make out the silhouettes of what once was a big city and he feels his heart sink. Lucifer will have so much time to break his brother until they get there.
Well, better get started then. Refusing to waste any time with desperation, he asks, “Which way to Detroit?”
Castiel points south. “It’s about sixty miles.”
Sixty miles. Dean tries to do the math but he doesn’t know what obstacles the landscape will have to offer until they reach the city. “Better get started, then,” he says and starts moving.
“Take these,” Jena’s voice sounds behind him not ten seconds later, and when he turns he sees her holding the reins of the horses they left behind in Blue Earth. The animals look confused and slightly pissed off, but don’t seem to have any noteworthy complaints about their sudden relocation.
As he swings into the saddle, Dean lets go of the last bit of hope he had that Jena might accompany them. He doesn’t like or trust her, but she’s pretty powerful and they are going to a city full of demons to face off the Devil. Some help would have been nice.
It occurs to Dean that they could probably do with a plan.
Well, they’ll have a while to come up with one, at least. He, for his part, doesn’t feel like delaying their departure so they can have a general discussion about what they’ll do when they get there.
As they ride on, leaving Jena behind, Dean has to restrain himself from making the horse go as fast as it can, knowing well enough that it won’t keep up a high speed for long. Still it’s hard; every minute they need could be one minute too long.
“You know, the problem with you is that whenever your brother is involved, you magically lose the ability to think,” Jena says as she rides up to their side on her own horse, which she either randomly stole from some stable or pulled out of her ass. Before Dean can say anything in his defence, she turns to Castiel. “But you! You’re supposed to be the rational one in this mix up. If only because somebody has to be. Just going in there won’t get you far.”
Castiel glares at her. “We will need to know what we are dealing with before we can make any plans.”
“Well, I can tell you what you are dealing with. Lucifer’s sitting in his den right in the middle of the city, playing with his favourite toy. And every part of the city that’s not his den is swarming with demons. And the moment they see you they will either kill you, or take you to Lucifer so he can kill you. And if you through a miracle or two make it to Lucy after all, he will still kill you – but slowly, so Sammy can enjoy the show.”
“Thank you,” Dean snapped. “That’s really helpful.”
Jena sighed. “In other words, you’re going to die.”
“That’s better than doing nothing.”
“Your opinion.” Jena shrugs. “However, I do have a better idea. You could kindly ask for my help.”
“I thought this was as helpful as you could be.”
“No, this was as far as I can take you. However, if you go and get yourself caught, Lucy will know he was tricked and it won’t take him long to figure out who tricked him. So if a confrontation with my big brother can’t be avoided anyway, I might as well confront him head on.”
“Okay. Great.” Somehow, it always seems to come down to conflicts among siblings. “But what can you do?”
“I can, for instance, get you to Sam, distract Lucifer, give you a chance to grab Sam and get all of you out of there.”
Well. That sounds like a plan at least.
-
As Jena helpfully reveals far past the appropriate moment, Lucifer’s powers have formed a shield around his hideout that no angel or demon can pass through in flight, or teleportation, or by beaming or however demons call what they do. They can, however, walk through without hindrance – and as soon as they are inside, they can jump around within the parameter. Of course the moment they do, Lucifer will know. So the element of surprise is a somewhat important factor.
Then there is the issue of getting away. Once they have Lucifer’s vessel, Jena has to transport them outside as far as she can, they’ll once more have to run past the barrier which to Dean’s considerable worry is about a two hundred yards wide instead of the line on the ground he expected, and then, finally, Jena can transport them to safety – except a real safe place does not exist as long as Lucifer is after them.
That, however, is something they’ll only have to worry about if Jena’s still alive after they grabbed their target – and they are, too.
The weather gets worse as they are nearing Detroit. The wind picks up strength, as does the rain. The dry ground and everything plant-like that managed to survive in it are probably having a party, but for the three of them it means a long and miserable trip. Only Jena looks like the rain doesn’t even touch her.
Which, upon closer observation, it doesn’t.
Dean’s doing his best to nourish optimistic thoughts. At least on the way back they won’t need to concern themselves with stealth anymore. At least with so many demons around those will probably tear them apart between them before delivering them to Lucifer. (His mind actively ignores the fact that him, at least, Lucifer could simply bring back.) At least they don’t need to walk.
At least the awful weather distracts him from the sores he’s getting from riding.
He concentrates on that because it keeps him from thinking about his brother. About what’s happening to him right now. And how Dean is soon going to meet him.
Even on a mission to rescue the kid from the Devil’s clutches, Dean finds he can’t bear thinking about him. He also can’t stop thinking about him. Without the wind and the rain as a bother it would be driving him crazy.
Maybe it still is. He might arrive in Detroit cold, wet, and insane.
They arrive in the city at dusk, except that the sky, permanently covered anyway, is cloudy to the point that they can hardly tell when the night ends and the day begins. Considering how rarely it happened that the weather changed at all in the time since Dean’s return, he wonders if this rain is going to last for years.
As seen in other places, the outer parts of the city are empty. The three of them leave their horses behind when they reach the first buildings. Getting to the centre will take hours on foot, but the horses offer too great a risk of discovery.
In any other place, Jena could shield them from the demons’ attention. Not here. Lucifer would notice any use of angelic power within his territory.
The one good thing about the shield he erected to hide himself and keep out all other angels is that it also shields any nearing angel on the other side of the barrier from him. Otherwise, Jena wouldn’t even have come this close without him noticing.
He’s relying on his demons to warn him. Dean and the others won’t give them the chance.
Actually, it’s mainly the others who won’t give them the chance while Dean watches, because Cas and Jena have demon killing swords and he doesn’t. They hold their weapons tightly in their hands when they hear the first voices over the sound of rain and Dean stands behind them, feeling useless and grim.
The demons they finally see don’t seem particularly alert. There are three of them, sitting inside a windowless building. The weather is actually helping the intruders here, keeping everyone off the street. Even demons in stolen bodies don’t like being cold and wet – especially since new bodies are so hard to come by these days so they can’t simply go and change if they get soaked.
It doesn’t, in any case, look like Lucifer expects anyone to come and bother him and his newly rediscovered vessel. Otherwise the demons would pay better attention, the fear of their lord stronger that their distaste for the weather.
Castiel and Jena are in and out of the building almost too fast for Dean to see it happen, leaving bloodied, burned out shells behind. If the demons even had time to realise what was going on, no one had time to react, let alone send out a warning.
There are few more encounters along the way. In an empty building they find large, moth-bitten curtains which they wrap around themselves to keep off the rain and hide their faces. Someone seeing them in passing won’t know who they are and if a demon got close enough to recognize them, they would also get close enough to get a blade between their rips.
It happens once, an hour into their trip down the main street. It’s a pair of two that meets them, walking on the other side of the road and in the opposite direction. One of them suddenly lets out a surprised sound, and the next moment he’s dead, his companion in the body of a young girl following in less than a second. Jena and Cas are, if nothing else, an effective pair of killers.
-
Since they have to be careful, it takes them almost until evening to reach the magical line – which is absolutely invisible to the human eye, through Jena and Castiel can obviously see it. Once they crossed it Lucifer will know they are here. Everything has to happen very quickly after that.
“If we’re lucky, my aura will overlay yours and he’ll never even know you’re there until it’s too late,” Jena said when laying out the plan. The plan says she’ll have to distract Satan while Dean and Cas sneak around and hope not to run into too many demons, and then, after they found Sam, she’ll have to surprise her brother with a quick retreat that gets everyone out. They’ll then run through the barrier, carrying Dean’s brother between them because he likely can’t walk on his own and hope none of the surrounding and very alert demons is running faster than them. It’s no problem at all.
Dean can’t wait to start.
Naturally, he did consider the possibility that this is a trap and Jena is merely delivering Lucifer’s party entertainment. But in that case he couldn’t come up with a reason why she saved them in the first place – unless that wasn’t really her doing and she just showed up in time to get the praise. The thought won’t leave Dean alone but there’s nothing he can do but risk it.
Without Jena they wouldn’t even have found this place, let alone come this far, that much is certain.
Now there’s only this stretch of town right before them separating them from the guy who killed Dean and Cas the day before. And from Dean’s brother and everything he doesn’t want to face.
Dean looks down the street – empty, blurred by rain. Surrounded by buildings, one of which looks like it might have been a bank once. He’ll have no way of telling when they reach the other side of the barrier, except that once they do, Jena will grab him and spirit them away.
Beside him, Castiel stops as well, his face grim. He has said barely two words since they reached the city and Dean realises that of all of them, he has the most to lose. Lucifer hates him, after all. And he has no archangel whose vessel he is to bring him back to life or hand in a formal complaint if he’s being tortured for too long.
And yet Dean knows Cas would rather die horribly than turn back. He can see it in his face.
“Thank you,” he says.
Castiel throws him the briefest of glances. “I’m doing this for Sam.”
“I know. Thank you.”
They haven’t seen another demon in half an hour. A part of Dean constantly expects being jumped from behind because this is running much too smoothly, all things considered. He keeps thinking that the bodies they didn’t have time to really hide well must have been discovered by now, or that they’ve been watched from the beginning and the demons are just waiting for the right moment. Certainly Lucifer must know that they are coming? Maybe Michael was able to home in on Dean and has warned the brother he’s only helping in order to kill him properly.
The urge to turn around and look behind him every ten seconds stays with Dean all the way as they walk over the empty, open street towards their invisible goal, but he doesn’t give in. There’s no turning back anyway.
Dean’s heart is pounding wildly in his chest. He’s tense and the only reason he’s moving at a steady, level place is because his body can’t decide if it wants to bolt or rush onwards abandoning all caution.
The part of the city they enter now feels even more deserted than the one they just crossed. Dean wonders if the demons have order not to get too close to their master and his toy or if they just don’t want to, but has no time to really think about it before a small hand touches his arm and he’s somewhere else.
He knows he’s moved because one second ago there was washed out, weakening daylight and now there’s not. His confidence in their plan is fading because obviously Jena has materialized them in a closet. There is a brief, fluttering sound that leaves the space right beside him empty in its wake.
A little further away, there’s movement. Castiel, shuffling quietly in the dark. Jena left the moment they arrived to face Lucifer and distract him, as according to the plan.
Now Dean and Cas can only hope that this place isn’t too big and too swarming with demons and fallen angels.
And that Jena had even the vaguest idea what she was doing when she dropped them. The fact that she managed to land them in this confined space as opposed to, say, a wall, makes Dean feel only vaguely optimistic.
Right before him, at his feet, there’s a glimmer of light falling through the gab between door and ground. Dean pushes carefully and finds to his delight that the door doesn’t creak. He also finds that there is no startled yell and immediate attack, so he cautiously steps out into the dimly lit corridor.
For the first time he becomes aware how warm it is in here. Not overly so, but after months spend in the chilly air outside and hours of walking through the rain it feels almost unnatural – even though it’s not warm enough to drive the chill out of Dean’s bones and only makes the wet clothes clinging to his skin even more unpleasant.
The corridor is empty and everything silent. If there are any beings here but Lucifer, it’s not a great number. Remembering his first, non-fatal meeting with the Devil, Dean suspects that he likes his solitude.
Or maybe he just doesn’t like to share his vessel. Except that, of course, he did, and often. Dean feels a rush of hatred run through him that hits him without warning and makes his hand tighten around a weapon that will, against everything they might find here, be completely useless. In fact, it’s just there to give his hand something to hold on to.
His feet scrap over a wooden floor. There is wallpaper on the walls and the corridor is lit by regularly placed lamps. With the power of a fallen archangel it can’t be too hard to power a building with no power being produced and no intact power lines either, but that doesn’t make it any less creepy.
The corridor with its multitude of doors reminds Dean of a hotel. Looking back to where he emerged from, he finds that Jena really did drop them off in a closet, albeit a giant one integrated in the wall. Castiel comes out of it right behind him, clutching his sword.
The two men share a look; Dean’s questioning glance is answered with a slight nod to the right. How Cas knows where they have to go, Dean can only guess at.
There are picture frames on the walls. Dean sees the pictures they display out of the corner of his eyes, but when he actually looks at them there’s only darkness.
They walk carefully, silently, but not slowly. Dean feels utterly exposed in the long, well lit corridor, but no one happens to run into them and all the doors remain closed. After half a minute he notices voices, just at the edge of his hearing range, coming from a room ahead of them. They are too quiet yet to make out the words, but he’s able to identify one of the voices as Jena’s.
Maybe Cas has heard them all along. His hearing is better than a human’s, after all.
They follow the sound around a corner and down another, shorter corridor that ends in a large door. The voices are louder now but Dean still can’t make out the words due to them being in a language he doesn’t understand.
They are accompanied, just for a second, by a third voice letting out a low, cut-off groan. The sound is barely audible over the others, but it makes Dean’s blood boil none the less.
It sounds further away that the other voices and to the right when the others come from the left. Dean is well aware that opening this door might lead to him finding himself facing the Devil before dying a dreadful death, but he’d be damned if he’d let that stop him!
What he finds when he opens the door is an almost unrealistically large room. It’s divided into smaller parts by half-walls and heavy curtains but no doors. There are large windows on the opposite wall and the room is richly furnished. Dean wonders if all of this was created by bending reality like Jena did, and if it matters.
Though he can hear the voices of Jena and who can only be Lucifer very clearly now, the angels remain unseen behind several layers of heavy cloths which subsequently serve to hide the two intruders from view. Another groan turns Dean’s attention to the right and it’s like an unseen force is driving him onwards, around a corner and –
Another voice, saying just a few quiet words, stops him just in time. There’s someone else in there, and he very nearly walked into them, ruining everything.
If he needed any proof that without the soul of Lucifer’s vessel riding shotgun in his own Castiel’s not a handy demon-detector anymore, this is it.
Dean risks a careful peek around the corner. There’s a king-sized, impossibly comfortable looking bed a good bit away from him. The soft blankets and pillows are soiled with blood, though – not much of it, but enough to turn what would have been an elegant sight into a disturbing one.
A man is lying on the bed, and another man is sitting beside him, obscuring the view on the lying man’s face. Dean identifies him anyway as the guy whose body he saw when he met the Devil in Georgia, recognizing the clothes. Or what is left of them.
The other man is sitting with his back to the intruders and doesn’t seem to notice them. He has one hand pressed to the other’s forehead while the other is lifting an emaciated hand that is lying limply in his grip. He suddenly speaks, but it’s directed at the vessel and Dean doesn’t understand the words.
The answering whimper is the only indication that the man on the sheets is even awake. Dean’s knuckles are white from gripping the knife so hard. The useless, fucking knife – he’ll have to let Castiel go first and make all the kills, hoping he’ll be able to do so quietly.
Even so, Lucifer will probably sense it. Their mission was pretty hopeless to begin with, and for a second Dean feels overwhelming despair. It’ll all have been in vain. They will die, Lucifer’s vessel will give in and nothing of it would have happened if Dean hadn’t given in first.
But there’s no point in wallowing in guilt right now, and no time for it, because Cas is already springing to action.
He tugs at Dean’s arm as he sneaks past him – just a brief touch, but the message is clear. Dean is supposed to follow, and even though he only sees higher risk of discovery and no point, he does so.
The demon on the bed turns in the very last moment but has no time to react. The movement only leads to Cas’s blade, already striking down, to hit him in the neck instead of the back.
He has no time to scream, but there is no way anyone, let alone Lucifer, could miss the blinding white light that busts out of his body and forces Dean to avert his eyes or lose them. So this was an angel, not a demon. Dean gets no time to marvel on it very much. He knows now why Cas wanted him to come along, knows that every second matters. Still seeing dark spots dance in front of his eyes he lunges forward, towards the bed, knowing only that he has to reach it, right now.
He doesn’t. There’s an angry voice yelling, then something explodes. Castiel has abandoned his sword in order to lift his friend off the bed but the force of the explosion knocks them down. Dean only narrowly avoids getting hit by a piece of closet and he sees Cas lose his hold on his fragile burden as they are thrown through the room, lading hard on a wooden floor that catches fire like bone-dry straw and rolling a few feet before lying still.
Dean is with his brother in a second. He doesn’t notice the ringing in his ears, the singed skin of his hands, or Castiel trying to get back to his feet. He doesn’t even notice himself moving. One moment he’s trying not to fall on his face, the next he’s pulling a skeletal body into his arms.
“Sammy,” he says, or maybe he screams it. He can’t even hear himself think over the feelings that rush through him and the fact that Sam’s body is jerking in his arms and then goes limp, his eyes fluttering shut after meeting Dean’s for less than a second.
“Sam!” Dean tries to gently shake him and pull him closer to his own body, and this time he’s sure he’s screaming. Then something rushes into him from behind and there is only darkness.
-
Eventually, Dean wakes up and he’s not dead. He isn’t even in much pain and realises that it must have been another of Jena’s reality-warping illusions. But where did it start? Did the first one ever end? And what about…
The moment he thinks of Sam, his body shoots upright and pain shoots through him. Confused, he looks down at his hands and finds them wrapped in remotely clean bandages; only his fingers are visible, showing first degree burns. Then he looks up and finds he’s sitting on a makeshift bed made of blankets and a thin mattress. Around him are intact, if bare, walls and above him a ceiling.
He’s alone.
And then he isn’t. Dean tries to climb to his feet, driven by the urgent need to move despite the pain piercing through his right leg and his feet get tangled in the blanket, causing him to fall over and shake them off in near-panic, as if the room were on fire or there was someone he needed to save. The door opens just when he gets free, revealing Castiel with a bandage around his head and his left arm in a sling. He stands in the door and watches passively as Dean struggles to get upright.
“What happened?” Dean asks. He remembers an explosion and pain, maybe a bleeding wounds on Cas’ forehead but he wasn’t paying attention and he remembers so much more.
Leaning over he nearly throws up. But he doesn’t. He’s breathing hard, though, barely hearing and at the same time hyperaware of Castiel’s words.
“Jena got us out. Lucifer tried to stop her.” The fallen angel’s voice is dull. He sounds defeated, as if it all didn’t matter anymore. Dean remembers Sam going still in his arms.
Gall splatters to the ground at his feet. He’s not wearing shoes, he absurdly notices. His feet are bare.
His blindly reaching hands find a wall and he leans against it, slowly regaining his balance. “Where’s Sam?” he asks, then closes his eyes in anticipation of the answer.
“Down the hall. With Jena.”
Dean’s eyes fly open. The information that walking really fucking hurts and he can’t breathe only reaches his brain when he’s halfway down the hall, and his brain doesn’t care. There’s a carpet under his naked feet now, old and faded, and more doors to the sides, but Dean walks past them until he reaches the last one, pushing it open before he has a chance to brace himself for what he might find.
What he does find is Sam lying flat on a bed with Jena sitting beside him, one hand on his forehead and one holding his wrist. She touches Sam like the other angel, the one hurting him has done, but Dean only stares at Sam’s chest until he can make out the barely notable rise and fall.
Dean’s brother is white as a sheet and obviously deeply unconscious. His cheeks are sunken in and his eyes surrounded by dark rings. His face is covered in small cuts and bruises. Probably the result of the explosion – they look random, unintentional.
His torso is wrapped in bandages that are soiled with blood. The hand Jena is holding is also bandaged, the other arm fixed in a makeshift splint. Dean is almost glad the rest of Sam’s body is covered by the blanket.
Wobbly legs carry him over to the bed, but he stops just short of touching Sam - even before Jena sharply says “Don’t touch him!”
Dean looks up, suddenly filled with desperation. Now he is forbidden to do so, he wants nothing more than wrap his arms around his brother and hold him close, even though Sam looks emaciated and so fragile Dean thinks he might break at the slightest touch.
Just like Castiel’s and Sam’s, Jena’s eyes are bloodshot and the easy confidence she displayed earlier is all but gone. Slowly, she pulls her hands off Sam’s forehead but keeps her hold of his wrist.
“He’s badly hurt,” she explains.
Dean sits down on the edge of the bed, careful not to touch the broken body under the sheets. He is unable to stand any longer and feels like throwing up again. Or maybe passing out.
Or shooting himself in the head.
“What happened?” he asks hoarsely.
Out of the corner of his eye he sees Cas standing in the doorway, his arms folded across his chest and leaning against the doorframe, looking weary. Watching the scene without participating in it.
Jena leans back, her small hand still clutching Sam’s wrist. Dean wonders, distantly, if there’s a meaning to that.
“When you killed the angel and I flew over to you, Lucifer knew he wouldn’t be fast enough to stop us from getting to Sam before him. That’s when he decided to blow the place up and kill Sam – and us as a bonus. Well, the two of you, at least.”
“So even if we managed to take away his body, he would have held on to Sam’s soul and kept it in Hell until he gave in,” Castiel completes the explanation.
Dean looks back at his brother. If they’re very quite he can hear the soft rattle of breath in his lungs. “Is he dying?”
“That remains to be seen,” Jena says.
Dean closes his eyes. If Sam dies, Lucifer will never let him go again. Everything will have been in vain.
Tentatively, he reaches out and touches the splinted hand after all; just a brush of skin against skin. The explosion didn’t happen that close – obviously, Lucifer’s aim was off, or he didn’t manage to get done before they made it out. Much of Sam’s injuries have been there before.
His brother’s skin is hot and dry. “He’ll make it,” Dean mutters.
“That’s not a given.”
“Yes, it is.” It’s Sam. He can’t have held on for so long only to give up once Dean is back. He wouldn’t do that to his brother. Dean knows that now.
He leans forward and retches dryly, but there’s nothing left for him to bring up.
“I would appreciate it if you didn’t vomit in here,” Jena says sourly. “We’re gonna be stuck here for a while.”
Her words make Dean look up and for the first time take in his surroundings. The room has bare walls and someone’s had the brilliant idea of hanging a carpet where he suspects it covers a window. There are cupboards, but they are all empty. The room he woke up in (where he did throw up), if he recalls correctly, doesn’t have any window at all, and while the doors in the corridor are all closed, none of them seems to lead outside.
The place smells old, like something used for a long time and then abandoned for just as long.
“Where are we?” he finally asks.
“In a safe place,” is all Jena says. “On stretch of land you probably never set foot on before.”
“How is this safe?”
“I’m protecting it, for instance. And it’s covered in arcane symbols that protect me from being discovered while shielding it. Awesome, isn’t it?” Her smirk comes across as something of a sneer. “Anyway, it’s pretty important that you don’t open any doors or windows.”
“There’s no food.” It’s not the first thing that’s on Dean’s mind but the first thing he hears himself say. “How’s this helping Sammy, if he’s going to starve here?”
“I’m taking care of that,” Jena assures him vaguely. Not a satisfying answer, but Dean’s curiosity only goes so far when his head threatens to explode any moment.
“Why aren’t you healing him?” he asks quietly. “Because Lucifer would detect it?”
“No. I’m doing what I can. But it’s not much.”
“Why now?” Dean feels bitterness and anger rise through the haze of guilt and desperation. All the feelings inside him need an outlet, but he’s too worn out to summon even the energy to snap at her. Therefore he sounds just tired when he says, “You’re the fucking archangel Gabriel. You can wrap reality around your finger – why is it so hard to heal a few cuts and bruises?”
“And broken bones, internal bleeding and life-threatening infections,” Jena completes the list. “I saved him from the worst, meaning his death is no longer inevitable. But that’s all I can do. Much of his wounds aren’t even new. They’ve been carved into his body through the work of decades. By the Devil. There’s only so much I can do. Lucifer decided not to heal him completely until he says yes, and he is the only one who could.”
Dean feels like he’s falling. Right now, he just wants the two angels to go and leave him alone with his little brother.
“So,” Jena says, her voice softer than before. “You remember then.”
It’s not a question and there’s no point in replying. Dean only looks down and tightens his hold on Sam’s limp hand. He doesn’t even remember everything, but now that’s only because he actively refuses to think about it, too aware that the moment he does it will crush him.
There’s a thud coming from the door that has Dean look up and find Castiel lying on the floor. He doesn’t move.
“Aw, damn,” Jena curses. It’s a pretty tame expression for what Dean would be feeling if that was his brother.
As it is, his brother might by dying and his concern for his friend pales considerably in comparison. He doesn’t even have it in him to feel bad about it.
Maybe later. When he’s done feeling bad about everything else.
Right now he barely understands what’s happening as Jena leaves her place at Sam’s bedside to kneel beside her own brother and touch his forehead.
“He’ll be fine,” she says after a second. “He just needs rest.”
“Do take care of your brother, then,” Dean mutters as Jena gathers the much taller man in her arms and carries him off without any effort. “I’ll take care of mine.” Now he knows there’s nothing terribly wrong with Cas he feels almost grateful for his collapse, as it effectively gets rid of the two angels.
He does feel a little bad about that. But only for a second. Then he turns back to Sam, runs a hand through his hair and tries his hardest not to think.
NEXT
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Date: 2012-01-20 10:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-21 07:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-24 11:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-26 11:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 11:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-21 07:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-21 03:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-21 07:59 pm (UTC)Things will get better - if only because they can hardly get worse.
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Date: 2012-01-21 05:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-21 08:01 pm (UTC)In the wink of an eye
Date: 2012-01-21 08:47 pm (UTC)I started reacting when I read this:
Jena throws a brief glance at Dean. “You know, someone told me that before. But somehow, that someone failed to set a good example.”
And I thought, dear Lord, of course that's why Gabriel did it, in our canon. That's why Hammer of the Gods immediately follows Point of No Return, and not just because PoNR gives us a glimmer of optimism, so it must be followed by something depressing. Because that's when Dean's example follows Sam's, and Gabriel hasn't got Dean's indecision as an excuse to wait and see anymore.
That was extremely cool. Of course it's been clear from the beginning that this went AU when Dean didn't wink at Sam. But somehow I didn't connect that to Jena's unwillingness to commit. Gabriel's a chancy creature, like all Tricksters and many Messengers, and it wasn't improbable that he was still on the fence in this 'verse. But you tied it all together (and made it all Dean's fault, or at least he'd see it that way, poor jerk), and that's awesome.
Re: In the wink of an eye
Date: 2012-01-24 03:35 pm (UTC)The timeline is pretty important when it comes to Gabriel. Of course, for him the break with canon is especially important since it saved his life, but it also matteres for the reasons you named. Like this, he needed a lot logner to make an executive desicion.
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Date: 2012-01-22 05:13 pm (UTC)Again I applaud your immense talent in creating this convincing AU world, you do it so brilliantly. The characters are easily recognizable from the show, even Cas when he had limited power and didn't returned to the self-entitled mass murdering moron of season 4/6 (can you tell I don't like Cas? Again it's a testimony to your writing talent that I can like Cas in Great Blue World but you're making it hard not to hate Dean!)
no subject
Date: 2012-01-24 04:42 pm (UTC)Dean is a little difficult. I tried to make his actions - not forgivable, but at least understandable. It's hard, though, with everything being from his point of view and Dean being the way he is. He and Sam have a lot to work through, that much s sure.
Thank you so much for your comment!