vail_kagami | SPN Big Bang: All the Streets Are Empty (and the Cars on Fire)

See masterpost for story information and art.

There were seven hunters fighting the Croatoan-victims when they arrived. Originally, there had been eleven. Sam had been worried it would be hard to convince them that there was no cure and killing the infected was the only way to keep them from spreading the virus, but the hunters were already killing everything that moved. When the fighting was over, there were four hunters left. They knew, through rumours, that the rapid destruction of their world was Sam’s fault and turned on him as soon as the last infected had been taken out. Castiel had to save his life and drive them back before anyone could steal their car or their gas.

“You needn’t have bothered,” Sam gasped from the backseat, pressing a hand to the wound in his side. “He would have brought me back anyway.”

They ran out of gas about thirty minutes before Sioux Falls and left he car behind. Sam wasn’t doing well. He was sweating, obviously in pain, but kept on walking, carrying the bag with the ammunition, the salt and the holy water until he collapsed by the side of the road.

“Let me see the wound,” Castiel demanded, but Sam shook his head, insisting he would be fine.

So Castiel sat beside him, waiting for the ragged breathing to calm down. When it did, it was very quiet. There were no other cars on this road, hardly any cars around anymore, at all. No more gas was delivered to the stations, what had been left had run out days ago.

Birds were singing in the trees at the other side of the road. A soft wind was blowing and the sun was warm on their faces. Two hours ago, men and women who’d fought for the same goals as them had tried to kill Sam Winchester for allowing the Devil to walk free, and now he was lying in the grass, staring up at the sky.

“Bobby hates being left behind,” he whispered, unprompted. “He hates it. He never says so but he feels useless. He wanted to come with us. He’s looking for a way to get Dean back and when he finds it, he will want to be there when we do it.”

“Let me see your wound,” Castiel said again, and this time Sam let him peel away the blood soaked fabric of his shirt, his limp hand offering no resistance. The knife wound underneath was deep and jagged, the blood almost black. Castiel could tell that organs had been penetrated. Sam was dying.

“I wish we could take Bobby,” he whispered. “Dean… I don’t know what to say to Dean when he comes back.”

Castiel leaned back, closing his eyes against the brightness of the sun. “Neither do I.”

Death took its time claiming Sam. The sun was slowly sinking and they were utterly exposed where his body had given out, so he took out his knife with weak and trembling hands and slip his own throat. He didn’t ask Castiel for help.

Afterwards it was only eleven minutes before he woke with a gasp. The time stretched oddly and uncomfortably in as way Castiel was not used to as he waited beside Sam’s cooling corpse for his wounds to heal.

When Sam came back to life, his back arched off the ground, and then he curled on his side and spent a minute struggling for air.

“Are you well?” Castiel asked when it became apparent that the boy had gotten over his resurrection. Sam nodded shakily and accepted Castiel’s hand to pull him back to his feet.

“You could have gone on without me,” Sam said as they resumed their walk and Castiel nodded.

“I could have.” He could have. It simply had never occurred to him. “Anything could have happened to you if I’d left you alone,” he pointed out, though that was also not something he had considered.

Sam shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. But what would that matter?”

Bobby was home when they reached his house just before noon the next day. Castiel had expected nothing else. The weathered hunter was sitting at his desk, reading in the light streaming in through the window, just like he had done every day before they had left. The only difference was the shotgun leaning in easy reach against the desk, half concealed though Castiel spotted it at once.

Bobby did not reach for it when they entered but the expression on his face spoke of relief. “How’d it go?”

“Some of the hunters were still alive when we got there. Then together we killed everyone.” Sam’s voice was dull, lacking emotion. It did not suit him; Sam was never lacking emotion. “I can give you the names of the hunters who died.”

He did not mention that the surviving hunters had killed him as well, so Castiel didn’t either.

“Anything new?” Bobby asked with a wary sigh. He seemed to have aged since they last met, or perhaps Castiel had been too distracted before to see the shadows beneath his eyes, the gauntness of his face. He had not shaved in days.

“Nothing. This outbreak was… contained. Others weren’t. You?” Sam nodded towards the book Bobby was reading, written in Japanese.

Bobby slammed it shut without marking the page. “Nothing.”

They hadn’t eaten anything in over a day. Castiel felt hunger gnawing at him, but he had eaten the day before and could easily ignore it. Sam, on the other hand, had to be starving. While the others spoke, Castiel entered the kitchen to see if there was anything edible to be found for the two humans.

To his surprise, no more than one small can of beans had been taken from the supply closet. Castiel quickly made a simple sandwich, cut it in half, and as he carried it back to the others, he asked, “Did you not eat while we were gone?”

“I ate some,” Bobby said gruffly. “But I think it might not be a bad idea to go easy on the food for a while. Who knows when we will get more?”

He had a point. A week ago, there was already hardly anything left in the stores.

“Is there nothing being delivered to the cities at all?” Sam asked. He looked worried but Castiel could tell that he already knew the answer.

“’Coarse not. Not to this place, anyway. Those who have anything at all do their level best to keep it. Times of sharing are over, and the people are beginning to get that money is worthless if there’s nothing to buy. Looting has already started in the area. To be honest, I’m surprised it took so long.”

It explained the shotgun. Bobby’s house was remote, but Castiel feared that would make it a more attractive target rather than protect it.

“Did anyone come here?” Sam asked, proving he was thinking along the same lines.

Bobby snorted. “Got a reputation and a large number of guns. They aren’t that desperate yet.”

“How do you even know about the looting? Did you find batteries after all?” The radio had died just before they left.

“I wish. Jodie Mills came to check on me. Told me what’s happing in town. I gave her the report you wrote on the virus.”

“Ah.” The hint of a smile was seen on Sam’s face. “Is she okay?”

“As okay as she can be with everything going to hell. She’ll come back tomorrow, bring some batteries and maybe some food.”

“That’s great.”

“Isn’t it? So at least you don’t have to worry about me while you go out there saving the world.” Bobby did not even attempt to keep the bitterness out of his voice, and the barely-there smile vanished off Sam’s face.

“It’s not like there’s a lot we can do right now. We need some kind of plan. We need to find out where Michael is. And for that we need you.”

Bobby scoffed, not convinced, no happier than he’d been before. Sam didn’t look happy either. All in all, there was little to be happy about.

Castiel still did not know how to free Dean.

Dean did not want to be freed. Dean had chosen this.

Dean had chosen Michael over Castiel, over Sam. He had given up.

Outside the house the world was ending and Dean had chosen that too.

Sam did not sleep again that night. He sat and read and translated. He did not eat any more of the food Bobby would need to survive until this was over.

Until Sam and Castiel found a way to stop this.

Perhaps there would be nothing left of the world by that time, Castiel thought around midnight as he watched Sam read by the light of a candle from his place on the couch.

The next morning, he was sure of it. At five to three in the morning, the house shook and an infernal noise woke Castiel from his sleep. He could see lights dancing in front of the windows, and the house shook again. It was as if the sky was screaming.

In the morning, the sun did not rise. Castiel was the first to notice, since his internal clock worked as well as it had before his fall (only time had a different meaning). The others had agreed not to go out before daylight, and they must have realized not long after Castiel that daylight had not come. But neither said anything.

In the afternoon, Sam went outside after all, and Castiel followed without being asked. Neither of them made it further than the yard. Dust filled the air, so thick that they could hardly breathe even with cloths wrapped around their faces. The dust completely blocked out the sun, had them feel blindly for their way, and if Castiel had not known that one of the key components was still missing, he would have thought that the final battle had already happened.

It was not the first cataclysmic event Castiel had witnessed, not by far. But all the ones before had been further away. They had not concerned him. He had not been mortal then, and he had cared for no one who was mortal.

Night fell and made no difference. Castiel could tell Sam and Bobby were both itching to go outside and assess the damage to the town, but the dust and the darkness forced them to stay inside. He pointed out that if the air did not clear very soon, all life on this planet would die, but could tell that they did not consider his remark helpful.

Neither spoke for the rest of the night. Bobby, who had not slept since he had been woken by the noise the night before, remained awake, staring at the darkness behind the window as if willing it to disappear. Sam, who had been awake for days, attempted to remain so but drifted off sitting on the couch, while Castiel watched out for signs of nightmares but could not bring himself to act when they appeared.

This time, Sam did not scream, or struggle against something unseen. He merely twitched, and an expression of pain appeared on his face, and at one point he whimpered, but apart from that he was almost unnaturally still. He woke on his own, five and a half hours later, his face pale. He did not speak, or move much. Bobby watched him, frowning, from where he was sitting, but it was Castiel who posed the question.

“What did he say?”

“That this is my fault,” Sam whispered. “He said that I could have stopped this, that it was Michael who did this.”

“He lied,” Bobby declared, tightening the grip around his shotgun.

Castiel shook his head. “He didn’t.”

Another half day passed by before the first light was seen through windows half-blind with dust. Sam and Castiel made their way outside in the evening; it was still bad, but they were able to breathe without chocking if they wrapped scarves around their faces and Bobby gave them goggles to wear so the dust would not get into their eyes. He stayed behind, unhappy and holding his shotgun like it was a lifeline. Sam and Castiel each had a gun stuck in their waistband. It was disconcerting to depend on such tiny, imprecise weapons, but Castiel had learned that for a mortal they had their merits.

But they had their dangers, too. The dust was still so thick that when Sam walked six feet ahead of Castiel, he became little more than a moving shadow, the mere idea of a human shape. Should anyone attack them, Castiel would not know which shape to aim for.

But no one attacked them. Not on the long way into town and not once they got there. The houses left and right were little more than outlines, if they were even that. There was no one else trying to find their way through the dust. Nothing moved. If was as if they were the last people left on the planet.

Sam tried knocking on the doors. There was life in this town yet: at the first house they inspected, a hysterical sounding voice told them to go away, else they would be shot. So they went. In the second house no one answered, so they broke in under the cover of the dust and found it empty. In the third house they also broke in and found a family of four lying in the living room with gunshot wounds in their heads. The corpses weren’t a day old.

At the next house once again no one answered, but when Sam opened the door, someone shot at them from the next room. They escaped unharmed and decided to turn back. There was little they could do for these people except leave most of the food they found in the empty houses in plastic bags at their doorsteps. The rest, they took back to Bobby’s.

Sam had wanted to go to the police station and check for news there, maybe even find sheriff Mills, but it was too far away to walk in these conditions. Already, what little light they had was disappearing, and breathing became harder with every minute they spend outside.

They didn’t make it back before dark, and when they did, Sam leaned against the wall for a minute, coughing and breathing hard even though they hadn’t run. Even Castiel’s throat felt tight after breathing in dusty air for so long, albeit filtered through a scarf..

Bobby came rolling over to them before they caught their breath, looking tired and worn, a thin line etched deep into the skin around his mouth. “So, how’d it go? Anything left?”

“There was no destruction that we could see,” Castiel told him because Sam was still fighting for breath. “The people have locked themselves in. They are very scared.”

“Well, no surprise there.”

“It’ll be hard to find out more before the dust has lifted some,” Sam told his old friend. “The sheriff still had a working car, though, right? Maybe we’ll be lucky and she’ll come tomorrow and tell us more.”

Sheriff Mills did not come the next day, or the day after. After two days, the air was clear enough to allow for an extended walk, even though the sky was still covered in clouds and dust that cast the world in lasting twilight and gave the light that made it through an orange hue. Sam and Castiel returned to the town and found it as deserted as before. No one was on the streets. They thought they saw someone standing on a porch a good bit ahead of them, but the visibility was still bad and when they came closer there was no one there.

They didn’t make it to the police station this time either. Two blocks away from it the street ended. All of a sudden, the asphalt just broke off and the ground fell away before them. Dust and smoke rose from the crater even now, but through it they could make out the ruins of buildings in a great pile of rubble, surprisingly far below them. The smoke did not allow them to see how big the crater was, so they tried to walk around it, looking for a way to get down and look for survivors. In the evening they gave up and returned to the salvage yard.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Sam said later, when they were sitting at Bobby’s kitchen table. He ran a hand over his face, looking incredibly tired and worn. “A blast like that would have kicked out every windowpane in this house, at the very least. The destruction shouldn’t be so… locally contained.”

“Remember that this was not a bomb of human design,” Castiel warned him. “It was Michael’s doing. Considering how near it happened to this place, I would think he is playing around.”

Bobby didn’t reply. He hadn’t said anything at all after they told him about the destruction they had seen. Now Sam fell silent as well, and Castiel had nothing more to say.

They were eating cereal, the first more-or-less seated meal they’d had in days, and they only indulged like this because the milk was threatening to go sour and they couldn’t let it go to waste. None of them really tasted it. They were all lost in their own thoughts.

When he was done, Bobby wordlessly wheeled away and Sam stood to take care of the dishes.

Halfway through cleaning them, the water stopped running.

The subject of leaving for good came up, but there was no guarantee that it would be any better anywhere else. Without a working radio they were cut off from the rest of the world, but since no help of any kind was coming, they had to assume that Sioux Falls was not the only city destroyed. At the very least, there was no place unaffected enough to send help.

Eventually, they were going to run out of food, and water was going to become a problem much sooner. Almost worse than that was the feeling of uselessness. They couldn’t do anything, not right now. Not as long as they couldn’t abandon Bobby and they couldn’t take him along, and their research was going nowhere.

They worked on a plan. Secure supplies. Get gas. They could take the Impala and try their luck somewhere else, but they didn’t know where to go and with a man who couldn’t walk they would be vulnerable wherever they got stranded. At the same time, Sam would not leave Bobby alone.

Five days after the incident that destroyed Sioux Falls, Bobby developed a plan of his own to make it easier for them to leave. It involved a shotgun and his mouth. Sam walked in on him; there was some yelling that Castiel heard from the living room, but ultimately no shot. The shadows inside the house seemed to become even deeper after that.

“We can’t stay put here forever,” Sam told Castiel later that day, after Bobby was asleep. He looked very, very tired, thin, and maybe a little sick. “Even if we could, we’re not doing anything here. We need to find Dean. And people out there need our help.”

“What could we do to help them?” Castiel asked, although he had a feeling that Sam was talking mostly to himself. “As long as they aren’t attacked by monsters or demons, there is nothing we can do for them.”

Sam stared at him, then his shoulders slumped and he sat down on a kitchen chair, his head hanging low and his hair obscuring his face.

Castiel watched for a minute and a half before he said, “It’s not your fault.”

Sam replied with a surprised, hollow sounding little laugh. “You don’t believe that.”

He had heard what Castiel told Bobby on his first day here, of course. The angel had never attempted to hide his resentment, but he had never truly deluded himself that it was fair, and now it no longer helped him deal. “It was Michael who did this. Dean who gave him the means. None of this was your doing.”

“Except for the fact that I opened the cage in the first place, and that I pushed Dean into giving up.”

Castiel closed his eyes for a second and steeled himself for what he was about to say. “No one pushed Dean into anything. The decision was his. You tried to help him; he would not take your help. I did my best to support him in his fight, I sacrificed everything for him to succeed, and yet he gave up as if it meant nothing.”

Sam still wasn’t looking at him. “You said it: Dean’s fight. He was fighting all this on his own and after everything I did, how could he possibly trust me enough to share the burden?”

“It wasn’t only Dean’s fight. He just felt that way, and it was his choice to push you away. It was his choice to ignore the fact that you were tricked into opening the cage when you were willing to die in order to prevent just that. You have been used and betrayed by Heaven, and Dean knew it. He chose to discard that knowledge. He chose to feel alone and betrayed by you when he didn’t have to and he chose to let you be as alone as he was. You are by no means free of blame, but none of this can be pinned solely on you.”

Speaking the words did not make Castiel feel better, but he would never take them back. Sam finally looked up, gave him a very small, very sad smile, and Castiel knew he did not believe in the truth that had been spelled out for him. He probably never would.

Perhaps there would have been a way of convincing him it wasn’t all his fault if anyone had ever told him otherwise before.

“You should try to sleep,” Sam said. Castiel was tired, but Sam looked like he needed the rest more and one of them should stay awake, in case anyone or anything unwelcome came to this house.

“I will sleep after you. Should you have a bad dream, I will wake you.”

Sam’s gaze lingered on him a little longer, then he sighed and nodded. “Guess I can’t avoid it forever. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

This time Castiel did wake Sam when he saw the signs of distress. They started only an hour after he fell asleep on the couch and after Castiel inflicted a shallow cut on Sam’s arm to pull him from sleep, the boy looked worse than before. Yet he refused to go back to sleep and Castiel did not press him.

Castiel himself slept for five hours. When he woke Bobby was just rolling past him and Sam still sat in the armchair, his head in his hands, a book lying open but ignored beside him. It was morning, but there was barely enough light to read by, even right beside the windows.

“Is your head hurting?”

Sam looked up and gave Castiel a shaky smile. “I just wish I could have a cup of coffee.”

There was coffee left, but the water was a problem. At the moment, Bobby had two and a half bottles of soda, some beer, and half a carton of apple juice left. A lot of the hard liquor he’d had left he had consumed the night before, between fighting with Sam over his planned suicide and passing out on his bed, but Sam and Castiel wouldn’t have touched that anyway. It would not have helped the situation.

They rationed food and drink where they could and Sam was probably dehydrated on top of his exhaustion.

Sitting inside the house would only make things worse in the long run, so Sam and Castiel decided to return to the city once again, see if they would find liquids and something edible somewhere and try to get in contact with the people still alive. Perhaps they could help each other. They had to, because no one else would.

Perhaps one of them had a working radio.

For all that they did not go out purposefully to fight, going unarmed would have been more than unwise. Fortunately, guns and ammunition were the one things they were not about to run out of anytime soon. It was Castiel who grabbed all they needed, and while he was in the basement, Sam fell asleep on the couch. His screams called Castiel back upstairs ten minutes later.

Bobby had already woken Sam up and was now awkwardly patting the boy’s hair while Sam curled into a ball and buried his face in a sofa pillow. When Castiel came in, a glance and a shaking of Bobby’s head send him down into the basement again, where he continued to inspect the hunter’s knife collection, taking his time.

Bobby brewed some coffee after all, using stale sparking water and a lot of crushed beans, making it strong. It wouldn’t get Sam through the day, but hopefully it would keep him alert enough for an afternoon in a possibly hostile environment.

“If I get shot or eaten, that’s okay,” he said when Bobby tried to convince him not to go. “I pop right back up.” Bobby’s face only got darker after that, but Sam did have a point.

Nothing, however, tried to eat them on their way into town. No one shot at them, either, although it was close at one point. By now, people had dared to leave their houses. Black smoke rising from the direction of the street they had visited before alarmed Castiel and Sam long before they got there, but what they found, in the end, was only the surviving members of this community burning their dead on a large pyre at the side of the road. They were startled by the new arrivals and guns were pointed at Sam’s and Castiel’s faces, but ultimately not fired. Altogether, everyone was rather glad to see that someone other than them was still alive.

Sam asked them if any of them had a working radio. One answered in the affirmative, but told them that the last station he got went off the air two days ago. “They warned of a breakout of that virus in Toronto,” the man told them. “Don’t know about you, but I don’t give a flying fuck about Toronto. I want to know what happened here, but all the guy had on that was that Chicago and Sioux Falls are gone. I fucking knew that! You see that crater over there? That’s were Sioux Falls is supposed to be!” In the end he sounded slightly hysterical and Sam turned to someone else when he asked them if there had been any trouble with people behaving strangely at all.

The answer was no. Castiel was glad; apparently the Croatoan virus had not reached this city, and if it had, all infected were killed in the blast.

“Do you have any idea what happened?” an anxious looking woman asked them, prompting Castiel to nod solemnly.

“It was the wrath of the archangel Michael that destroyed this city.”

In the resulting silence, Sam threw him a tired look. Then the first man laughed, soon joined by another one. A second later a third snapped at them and asked them what else could have done such harm if not the wrath of an angry God?

“It was not God,” Castiel corrected him. “God prefers not to get involved in this. He will not harm you and he will not help you. This is the doing of his angels, and them alone.”

His words were followed by a long discussion in which Castiel was not able to make all of them believe him, and those who did believe him kept misinterpreting his words. Sam kept out of it all. He sat down on a rock and looked ready to pass out.

Eventually, Castiel became aware that the people around him no longer needed his contribution to keep up their discussion, which was just as well since no one was listening to him anyway. Some of the people brought up all the strange, unnatural things that had been happening even before the first city was destroyed and spoke, correctly, of the apocalypse and, incorrectly, of judgement day. Others called them religious fanatics, and some were looking for scientific explanations, while one actually blamed everything on the Russians, but he was ignored by everyone.

Castiel gave up trying to explain anything and went to sit beside Sam, only to find that spot already taken.

A young woman had sat down beside the boy, her arm around Sam’s shoulder and both her hands buried in his hair, gently massaging his scalp. Sam’s head was leaned back against her shoulder and he looked half-unconscious; clearly too exhausted to even care what was going on around him. A jolt of alarm went through Castiel at the sight, the surprise making him want to reach for this weapon.

It was irrational, however. The woman was not hurting Sam. Perhaps it was only the fact that someone had gotten this close to Dean’s brother without Castiel noticing that made him react so negatively. Anything could have happened.

The woman paid no attention to Castiel as he came to stand just a few feet away. Her long, black hair was partially obscuring her face, but Castiel could see the smile playing around her lips. She completely ignored the heated discussion going on around her, as if she couldn’t care less about it.

“Whatever it is you want from him,” Castiel warned, “he cannot give it to you.”

“Oh, you’re an expert there, huh?” She didn’t look up. “He looks like a healthy young man to me.”

In that case, she had a peculiar understanding of what a healthy man looked like. “He doesn’t have time, or need, to indulge you.”

The woman pulled Sam even closer to her; he let it happen without resistance, probably not even aware of what was happening. For the first time, the stranger looked at Castiel, and though she was only a normal human, her eyes and her smile made him uneasy. “What is it that’s so important right now? This is the end of the world. We might as well enjoy it.”

“You should stop this at once.”

“Don’t be so touchy. I don’t see how this is any of your business.” She was still smiling and maybe there was something wrong with Castiel that he thought the smile indicated there something being wrong with her. Before he was able to do something about her or at least explain why everything to do with Sam was indeed his business, Sam stirred and opened his eyes with obvious effort.

He tried to sit up, and when he realized he was being held, he came fully awake with a start and threw himself forward to get away. His reaction confirmed to Castiel that he was right in not wanting this woman to engage with Sam. He stepped over to catch his friend before he could tumble to the ground and the woman stood with one fluid movement, straightened her blouse and walked back to the others to join their ongoing discussion as if she’d never been gone.

“Who was that?” Sam asked, confused, as he watched her walk away.

“I was hoping you could tell me,” Castiel replied. “She seemed quite insistent to become intimate with you, but I do not think she was a danger to you. She is only human.”

“Humans can be quite dangerous,” Sam pointed out. He shuddered, then shook his head to clear it. “Sorry, shouldn’t have fallen asleep.”

“You needed it.” He still needed it. Sam couldn’t have gotten any more than five minutes of rest.

“Yeah, I guess. I just…” Sam trailed off, suddenly looking slightly disturbed.

“What is it?” Castiel asked, alarmed.

“Nothing. It’s just, I slept well. Lucifer didn’t…” Sam snorted softly. “Hardly a reason to complain. It’s nothing.”

But he never slept well, even for a few minutes. And when his searching gaze found the woman who’d held him in the small crowd, she met his eyes and winked.

The woman kept trying to seduce Sam, and while Sam did not get involved with her in any intimate fashion, he kept close to her. To Castiel he explained that he knew there was something off about her, and he needed to figure out what.

Castiel tried to keep one eye on them all the time while he spoke to the townspeople. On the woman, they had nothing useful. Her name was Ella, she was a school teacher and generally considered nice, if somewhat obnoxious. She was human, and Castiel did not think she was a which.

Maybe they were wrong about her.

But they weren’t. There was something very, very wrong with Ella, but Castiel was too blind to see it and Sam so tired that more than an hour passed before it occurred to him to look her in the eyes and say “Christo.”

Ella was possessed. “So what?” she said after they found out; after all the others had shied away from her back eyes and Castiel had drawn his gun. “I’m not here to harm you, Sam. I’ve come to help.”

Sam, of course, wouldn’t have any of it. He began speaking an exorcism, but was interrupted after a few words by a hard blow in the back. One of the other people had showed him over and now clamped a hand over his mouth, effectively silencing him as he flashed his own black eyes at everyone around.

Castiel fired a few shots at him, but missed with most and the one that hit the man’s arm did nothing but make him laugh. For the first time the angel truly felt the loss of his sword. It would have killed these demons quickly. Like this, he was helpless. All he had was an exorcism, but before he could even start, a tick arm wrapped around his throat from behind, cutting off his air and his voice.

The person holding him was unnaturally strong – so strong that even Castiel with his inhuman strength could not shake him off. Three demons. There were at least three demons here, and he had sensed nothing.

“Don’t struggle,” the man holding Sam told his charge. “We’re just here to take you to Lucifer. If you come willingly, we won’t even have to hurt any of these people.”

And the demon wearing the woman called Ella cooed, “I can see you are suffering, Sam. You’re so tired. You’re hurting, and your brother betrayed you. And you’re worried about that friend of yours, that old guy, right? Just say yes to Lucifer, and he will help you. No more pain, no more suffering. We’ll take care of your friends, Sam. They won’t come to harm – not like they will if you continue this senseless defiance. Our lord can be so generous if he wants to be, and there is nothing he wouldn’t do for you.”

She was leaning forward, her long hair brushing Sam’s face, forcing him to close his eyes. “But he can explain it all so much better than me. You know, of course, that we will take you now and there is nothing you can do about it. Be nice, though, and we won’t kill everyone around here. Marge,” She looked up to smile at a deadly pale, elderly woman holding a little boy to her chest. “You would like Sam to go with us willingly, right? Why don’t you tell the nice boy?”

The woman’s lips moved, but no voice was heard. And yet, the demon looked very satisfied. “There you go, Sam. Everyone wants you to leave. Why not come where you are wanted? It’s not like big brother is still around to be disappointed. Only that fallen chicken over there, and that problem can easily solved.” She nodded at the demon behind Castiel. “Kill him.”

Castiel was not worried. No average demon had the power needed to kill him. It was only after a moment, when he felt the effort of the demon behind him to snap his neck, that he remembered that he no longer was an angel. Not human, never that, but not an angel either. He was nothing.

But he was still strong. The demon had a hard time fighting him as he struggled, but Castiel was still not able to shake him off. And a broken neck could kill him now. Even if he managed to get free, he could simply be shot.

Other than Sam, he would not return.

A surprised sounding yelp from the demon holding Sam attracted his attention and nearly made him lose his struggle in the distraction. The demon let go of Sam’s mouth and stumbled back, his hand pressed against his side. Sam stumbled to his knees, lifting the bloody knife in his hands in a gesture of warning, but the demon merely chuckled. “For real, now? You know that can’t kill me.”

Sam drew in breath, as if to speak. He probably wanted to continue the exorcism, but Castiel knew he’d never finish it in time. Not in time to keep them from killing anyone, and not in time to keep them from taking him to Lucifer.

“This is getting ridiculous,” the woman, apparently their leader, said impatiently. “Garry, just kill him already. Bena can shoot him if he’s giving you such a hard time.”

“No,” the demon behind Castiel grunted into his ear. “I got him. Just give me–”

He never got to finish his sentence. A shot rang through the air, making Castiel jump in shock. Up until that very moment, the possibility of his death had been abstract and theoretical. Strangely, even after an existence that had lasted since the creation of this planet from the materials of a newborn star, he did not regret his end. But he did regret that after failing Dean and throwing everything away in vain, he had also failed to protect Sam and with him the world.

The lack of pain did not surprise him until after he saw Ella stagger. Someone had shot her, instead of Castiel. It had not harmed her, of course, but it made her angry. Her eyes searched for and found her attacker somewhere in the group of frightened people surrounding them, and her face darkened.

Before she could do anything, Sam swiped the blood off the blade he was holding with his finger and stuck it in his mouth. One second later, Ella flew backwards, and so did the demon holding Castiel. Before anyone could react, Sam was on Ella, cut her neck and pressed his mouth to the wound. She shrieked, but for all her inhuman strength was suddenly unable to throw him off.

Altogether only seventeen seconds passed from the moment the shot was fired to the moment Sam looked up with blood smeared around his mouth and pulled the demon out of the man holding Castiel. The one who had held down Sam before tried to get away but did not manage to smoke out completely before Sam’s powers got a hold of him and send him straight to Hell. The host collapsed to the ground, groaning in pain and curling around the stab wound in his stomach.

Ella was last. For her, Sam used the exorcism after all, perhaps unable to summon enough power to pull her out of the woman with his mind. There was enough left to hold her down and keep her from getting away, in any case.

When it was over, silence surrounded them like a wall. Castiel looked up and saw that everyone was staring at them.

No, not at them. At Sam and the blood on his face. Of course.

Castiel waited for the inevitable panic to break out and wondered if they would be killed after all. Somewhere behind him, someone was hyperventilating.

Sam was still kneeling on the ground. He looked dazed and even worse off than he had been before. After a moment he wiped the blood off his face with the sleeve of his jacket but he didn’t get everything. Castiel went over to him and knelt to support him as he swayed.

“What the fuck just happened?” a voice asked. Castiel turned around and saw an elderly man holding a shotgun standing in front of the group. He looked shaken, but not yet determined to shoot. Shoot again – Castiel was pretty sure that he was the one who had shot Ella less than a minute ago.

“These people were possessed by demons,” Castiel informed him. He nodded towards the man who had been holding him and was now holding his own head while everyone else shied away from him. “They are gone now.”

“This man needs medical attention,” Sam muttered. He was looking at the host of the demon he had stabbed.

And that, for the moment at least, was it. The attention of the others was drawn to the man on the ground; two stepped forward to help him, and Sam made use of the opportunity to pass out. He sunk into Castiel’s arms with a soft sigh, his body giving in to the stress and exhaustion, and the one guy still insecurely pointing his shotgun in their general direction accepted the lack of threat and let it drop.

Two hours later, Castiel and Sam still had not been killed or chased away. Instead, Sam was sleeping on a bed in one of the houses, having not so much as twitched as Castiel carried him there, and Castiel himself was sitting in the living room, explaining the demons to everyone willing to listen.

Sam was harder to explain, especially since some of the more suspicious people initially thought he had to be some kind of vampire. Others told them that they were stupid because vampires didn’t exist, which resulted in another discussion based on the fact that until an hour ago, none of them had known demons existed either. Castiel feared informing them that vampires were indeed real would not help the situation, so he didn’t.

Instead he explained that Sam had magic powers that helped him fight demons, that this was the reason why Lucifer wanted him, and that was good enough for them. Castiel was quite surprised, but first and foremost everyone seemed concerned with the fact the demons could possess people without anyone noticing. They were more worried about their friends and neighbours than about the two strangers.

One of the men they had freed from possession had not spoken a word since the demon left him. The other was badly hurt, having little hope of survival without proper medical attention, and there were voices, though not spoken to Castiel’s face, that blamed him and Sam for it. Castiel pretended not to hear, too tired to discuss it.

Sam began to stir in the afternoon; Castiel watched through the open door to the bedroom. His friend’s way back to consciousness looked slow and difficult – Sam had not gotten nearly the rest he needed and sleep had to be weighing him down, but he pushed himself up anyway and joined them in the living room. Soon after, he could put to rest the minds of the townspeople who worried about more demons in their midst. He could sense demon, now he had drunken their blood, he explained, and assured them that there were no more nearby.

“You said something to Ella and her eyes turned black,” the man with the shotgun recalled.

Sam nodded. “I said ‘Christo’. It forces demons to reveal themselves, but it doesn’t work for powerful demons.”

“But how can we find out when you’re not here?” a woman asked. “We don’t have your abilities.”

“And how do we kill them when guns won’t?”

It was a valid concern. Demons could come again, and they were not the only danger of supernatural kind they were facing. Castiel was about to explain to them about devil’s traps and exorcisms when Sam quickly said, “There is a man living nearby who knows all about this sort of thing. His name is Bobby Singer, he runs the salvage yard. He can teach you all you need to know.”

The man Sam had stabbed was called Jim. He died half an hour after Sam woke up and was buried in the garden of his house beside his wife and daughter. (He had told the others that his wife had taken her life after killing the girl on the first day without sun, but now they know he was possessed they no longer believe that is what happened.) When it was done, Sam and Castiel lead five of the people to the salvage yard. Some of them knew of Bobby Singer the town drunk who never socialized with any of them, but they were willing to come anyway and believed any story Sam told them of Bobby the Hunter. This was a good time to believe in things formerly unbelievable.

Bobby awaited them with narrowed eyes and his gun at the ready but let everyone in when Sam explained what had happened.

Within an hour, Bobby had convinced the townspeople that he really was the expert Sam had made him out to be. Within two hours it was decided that everyone left from their community (just nineteen people; the ones Castiel and Sam had met really were all there were) would relocate to Bobby’s house for the moment, until they were able to set up traps for demons and had all learned the basics of protecting themselves. They would return to their houses with protective charms that would ward off the weaker demons and could come back to Bobby whenever they needed help.

Castiel understood what Sam was doing. Not only was he helping these people, he also made sure they knew they needed Bobby and would take care that he didn’t starve or freeze, or shoot himself in the head for feeling useless.

Bobby understood this as well. At the end of the day, when two of the others had left to collect the rest and the other three where preparing the rooms upstairs for a lot of guests, he confronted Sam and Castiel in the kitchen and said, “So. You’re gonna leave, then.”

“We have to,” Sam replied. “You know there’s not much we can do here. We have to find Dean, and then we have to find a way to free him.”

“Also, for all that it is hopeless, we will try to send Lucifer back to Hell and save those of your kind still alive at that point.”

Bobby sent Castiel a sour look that reminded him an honest assessment of the situation was not always appreciated, but Sam only sighed and nodded. “Cas is right,” he said. “For all it is hopeless, we have to try.”

That night, Sam lay down to sleep on the cot inside the panic room, ordering Castiel to close the door so he would not disturb Bobby’s guests if he screamed. “Don’t wake me,” he said. “I have to get some rest before we leave. My body won’t hold up without some hours of uninterrupted sleep and once you’ve woken me I won’t dare to lie back down.” It was a very pragmatic approach to the problem, something Castiel had learned was typical for Sam. Under the circumstances, no matter what horrors awaited Sam in his dreams, it was what he needed to do. So Castiel nodded and closed the door with himself inside the room.

When the screaming started, he did not wake Sam. At around four in the morning his body gave in to its own need for rest and together they slept until dawn.