Time Travelling pt. 7 - End
Apr. 30th, 2010 02:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rahmi--Dean wakes up to Castiel leaning over him, his holy tax accountant face vaguely worried. "Wake up," he says, pretty damn redundantly, Dean thinks, because the fuck he could sleep with someone other than Sam staring at him.
He'd kind of gotten used to Sam's staring, when he came back from Down Under. And not jut, you know, regular staring, but creepy, crazy person staring. No blinking for Sammy and no moving and Dean'd lain awake his second night back and been creeped the fuck out by it.
Now it's sort of old hat.
"I'm awake," he mutters, shoving Castiel out of his face. He clears his throat a few times to work out the sleeping phlegm (what can he say, he's got a cold) and swipes at his eyes with the side of one hand. "What'd you want that couldn't wait until later?"
Castiel opens his mouth. Dean snaps a hand up at him, because the room's too damn quiet. See, Sam might be a mighty hunter and the last human on earth with demon blood in him, but he still snores and snuffles and grumbles in his sleep. He's loud.
Dean's sat around more'n once in bed, grateful for something to listen to that wasn't his remembered screams.
He jerks his head around to look at Sam's bed and , of freakin' course, Sam's not there.
The fuck of it is, though, that Dean's gotten so damn used to hearing his brother sleep, and is on such a hair trigger from being gutted in hell, that he'd have known if Sam decided to go walking. A heavy feeling curls through his gut and suddenly there's more than just the taste of morning ass breath on his tongue.
"I was about to inform you," Castiel says, "That Lilith has taken your brother. Get up. We have work to do."
Dean gets up. "Why the fuck couldn't you have…" he trails off and scrubs a hand down his face, feeling panic clawing through him. His hands are shaking. He has to concentrate on them in order to make it stop, but, fuck, fuck. The last time a demon had taken his brother, Dean'd gotten him back with a brand new hole he didn't need and.
It's been over a freakin' year and the image of Sam on that bed, cold and grey and dead still makes him wake up in a cold sweat the nights his own screams don't.
Castiel tilts his head down and slightly to the side, watching Dean from under his short eyelashes. "I wasn't aware that part of their plan was to snatch Sam until… recently."
"How recently?" Dean bites out. His guns are gonna do fuck all. He has enough holy water to choke a small horse and he's got an exorcism written, somewhere. Dammit, dammit, dammit. "If you knew about this and didn't stop it, I swear to God I'll—"
"I knew nothing," Castiel murmurs. "Hell does not exactly broadcast its plans to us, Dean. They need your brother for something."
"What the fuck do they need Sam for? And you'd better not tell me that you don't know."
Castiel looks like a kicked puppy. Dean has a world of I don't care at this exact second. "There are a… few things that Lilith would want a human with Sam's inclinations for. None of them good."
"Gimme the best and worst cases," Dean mutters. He can't find his friggin' gun, the one that he laid out on the table last night before bed and he wants to kill something. If he had the Colt right now, he'd be aiming it at Castiel because deliberately coy is not a good look on anyone.
Especially not when Dean needs to know what he's getting into.
"The best case is that they've decided to kill him," Castiel says blandly.
He doesn't react when Dean punches him in the face, but it makes Dean feel slightly better. "That is never a best case scenario, you son of a bitch." His hand has found his gun without a thought and it's up and leveled at Castiel's head.
The angel blinks at the wall a few times before he turns his head back around to face Dean. "Would you throw away the world for your brother?" Castiel asks.
Dean's petty sure neither of them actually want him to answer that question, because right about now he's thinkin' that the world can go fuck itself if that means having Sam back.
"The worst case scenario," Castiel says into the silence while Dean attempts to find his boots. "Is that they've taken Sam alive. Only a human, or something that is 'close enough' can open the gates of Hell."
He shakes out his hand and reminds himself that this is his freakin' ally, the only one he's got and he can't go around putting holes in him just because he's an asswipe. "Sam won't do that," Dean says. Dean might've, if it was a choice between the world and his brother.
Sam wouldn't.
Sometimes, he's gotta wonder what the fuck made the angels think they'd gotten the right Winchester for the job.
"Lilith has released sixty-five seals, Dean." Castiel turns to keep Dean in his line of sight as he hunches over to look for his shoes under Sam's bed. "Would you take the chance on your brother holding out and doom the world?"
"You said she needed sixty-six," Dean says. He finds his boots under his bed and stuffs his feet into them sans socks.
"There are many seals," the angel mumurs. "Lilith has only needed to break sixty six. And your brother, should he open the portal to hell again, will be breaking the last seal."
Dean perks up. "Again?" he asks. If it's again, he knows where they're going to be takin' Sam, where they're headed, the only entrance into hell he's ever heard of holed off in Colorado.
"There are specific points in the world where a gate to hell may be called into being," Castiel says. "One that is big enough and stable enough to allow Lucifer to crawl from his damnation. We don't know which one Lilith is after."
"You're a useless waste of feathers," Dean hisses out at him and rips open the door.
Ruby blinks black eyes up at him and scowls. "We have a fuckin' problem," she says. She looks like she's been beat to hell and back, her eyes half swollen shut. Her mouth is crusted at the edges, bleeding slowly from torn up corners and Dean's willing to bet she's not tucking her arms aroud herself like that because she thinks it's chilly.
"Where's Sam?" she asks while Dean's staring and then reads the answer in the murderous look Dean sends her. "Oh, you've got to be fucking kidding me!"
"Sweetheart," says Dean, "I wish I was."
"First you lose the Colt, then you lose the knife," she ignores the way Dean pointedly pulls that from his pocket and waves it menacingly at her, the bitch, "And now you lose Sam? I'm starting to think that letting you look after something is a really bad idea, Dean."
"I have a present," Castiel says from behind him.
Dean wheels around to tell him just where he can shove any present he might or might not be carrying, only to swallow his words. The gun Castiel hands him is familiar, heavy and archane and beautiful, the one goddamn weapon in the world he'd have killed just about anyone to get back.
It fits into his hand like a long lost friend. "Where'd you find it?" Dean asks softly.
"Does it truly matter?" Castiel asks.
"Okay, seriously." Ruby grabs Dean by his arm and starts pulling, her small hands dead cold on his skin. "You can cream yourself over the Colt later, Dean. We need to find Sam and we need to find him fast."
"What's the Colt?" Dean asks Michael.
He blinks at him a few times and then scowls. "Didn't I tell you that questions weren't welcome, dude? I'm pretty sure I did."
"What's the Colt?" Dean asks again. So far he's following along pretty well, even if he doesn't know who the fuck Ruby is or, you know, actually believe what Dean's said about Castiel being an angel.
"Gun," Michael says shortly. "Can kill anything. You'll find it in a few years, don't worry about it. Can I get back to the story now, man? Would that be okay with you?"
Seriously, he had no idea that he was actually this fuckin' obnoxious. He's gonna have to get Sam a medal or something for puttin' up with him all the time.
"Anyway," Michael says pointedly.
He lets Ruby ride with him in the Impala.
Castiel'd taken off with a flutter of invisble wings, left him with nothing to do but twiddle his thumbs and hope like hell whatever the fuck was gonna happen, didn't.
There's a storm brewin' on the horizon that Dean purposefully ignores, because it's not anything like a storm he's ever seen before. He's seen black clouds and white clouds and grey clouds, but fuck if he's ever seen the sky burn red like that in the middle of the goddamn day.
Contrary to every apocalyptic movie he's ever seen, the steets are actually empty around them, not a soul in sight. He doesn't now if he was expectin' looting or somethinglike that, but this strange, ghost town downtown was not it; it reminds him of Rivergrove, after the demon virus had run its course.
"She's on the last seal," Ruby says grimly even though Dean doesn't freakin' ask. "The world's gonna go straight to freakin' hell in a handbasket. Even the sheep are gonna be able to feel that it's best to stay at home and die than to do it on the road."
"Why're the clouds always red during the apocalypse?" Dean asks rhetorically. He takes the next turn too fast, even for his babybut fuck. The sky's red, his brother's missing, and Dean has a demon riding shotgun. The Impala'll forgive him.
Dean won't forgive himself if anything happens to Sam.
"I could tell you something about the blood of the innocents," Ruby says, "But I'd be pullin' that out of my ass, so." She leans her head against the window and grimaces. Dean'd be more concerned with her general health, but all his freakin' worry's tied up with Sam. Jesus.
"You still think he's alive?" he asks Ruby. He needs something to distract him, anything.
"Lilith hasn't sent something to skin you boys in months," Ruby says. She grimaces again, rolls down the window and spits a stream of blood into the wind. Dean'll kill her if that shit landed back on his paintjob. "She wants Sam. You, she just wanted you to become a demon for her. She wants your brother alive. Ish. And mostly human."
They'd figured out months ago that the whole freakin' reason Dean'd been in hell was to get at Sam. And the whole damn reason he's out of it, he's pretty damn sure, is because theangels are hoping for the same damn thing.
Guy could get a complex, except Sam was the most important damn thing in Dean's life, the one thing he'd always done freakin' right.
"Turn left here," Ruby says. She's picking at a scab when Dean darts a suspicious look her way, but her face is set and if there's one freakin' thing he knows about Ruby, it's that she, uh. Likes Sam. A lot. Like. A creepy lot.
Dean usually doesn't bother to stamp out the flare of jealous, possessive MINE he gets around Ruby. He figures that she needs to be put in her place most days anyway and if part of it's because he's genuinely grossed out that Sam fucked her, well. They don't need to think about that.
Right now, if her little big crush on Sam was gonna make her help him find his brother, he's more than willing to use it against her.
"When we get there, you're gonna have to let me do the talkin'," Ruby says. She swipes at the blood on her mouth and just succeeds in smearing it across her cheek. "He's not real fond of people. Especially not fond of people who've been touched by an angel."
"You make it sound so dirty,"Dean says on autopilot. He takes the next turn and then idles at a stoplight while Ruby pushes and prods her mostly dead body back into working order. Dean's never been more glad that she'd taken the pains to grab something dead.
He doesn't want to think about a poor, normal girl stuck in her body and watchin' the world go to hell all around her, without even the option of spending it with her family.
"What's the matter, Dean?" Ruby asks snidely. She licks the tips of her fingers and rubs at her cheek like shes actually going to get rid of it that way. Dean's never seen the lickin' thing work with anyone but a mother. "Didn't like being molested by your angel buddy?"
"First off, ew," Dean says firmly. "And second, ew. With a side of hell no."
"That's not what you said to Anna," Ruby singsongs back at him.
Dean's starting to remember, even through the haze of must find Sam, why he always has the urge to stick Ruby with her knife. Obnoxious bitch.
"Stop here," Ruby says.
She leaves smears of blood on the handle of the passenger door when she gets out. Dean sits there and stares at it, thinking that somethin' like that is what Azazel fed to Sam, when he'd been defenceless and cooing in his crib.
He leans over the back of his seat with a muttered, "shit. Shit." There's a shirt somewhere back there, from when Sam'd been slimed with that mutant hagfish snot. It's not clean, but it doesn't stink and Dean'd rather have mutant hagfish slime on his car than demon blood any day of the week.
Dean finds the shirt. By sticking his hand into a pile of something cold and viscoscious (word of the day two months ago; Dean sort of likes the way it rolls off his tongue, even if Sam'd stared the first time he wipped it out).
"Mother fucker," he hisses. He closes his hand over the shirt, one of Sam's flannels, which means it's about the size of a conservative tent, and hauls it over the back of his seat.
By the time he's wiped off his own hand and has leaned over to wipe up the blood on the passenger side door, Ruby's sliding back in and raising her eyebrows at him. "Never took you for a clean freak," she says bitingly.
There's something in her hands now. Dean peers at it while he starts his car up, trying to ignore the fact that he's been parked in the middle of the damn street for the last five minutes and nobody's honked at him for it. "What's in the box?" he finally asks.
"I snagged some of Sam's hair on the way out," Ruby says. "Well, alright, I already had some of Sam's hair--"
"Which isn't creepy at all," Dean mutters, repressing a shudder.
"--I've got some of yours too, by the way, Dean. What the hell did you think was in those hex bags, kiddie bones?" She opens the box in her hands and pulls out… something. Dean's not sure what it is, even when he takes his eyes off the empty road for longer than he should've. "I needed some other stuff, but."
She shrugs. "If you're willing to donate a little blood, I should be able to do a tracking spell on Sam. And I'll even through in a free hex bag to hide you from your angels if you want."
Dean snaps his eyes back to the road just in time to avoid hitting a pack of panicked looking deer. They're running away from where the red clouds are massing. Dean's no genuis, but he's pretty sure that's the direction they need to go in. That's where Sam is.
"Why would I wanna hide from the angels?" he asks.
Ruby gives him a flat, black look. Her eyes are already healing up, Dean notes. That's good. He's pretty sure he can count on her to look out for Sam if something happens to him (again) and if she hasn't bolted out of it by now, he's pretty sure she won't do it later.
This is worse than the jail had been, the freakin' apocalypse even, and she hasn't cut and run yet.
"Because they're going to follow you to Sam," Ruby says like he's an idiot. She picks a flaking scab off her lower lip and flicks it out of her window, so Dean doesn't have to pull the Colt out and threaten her with it. Nobody litters in his car.
Except him and Sam.
"Yeah," Dean says. "Bad idea." Castiel had said that the best case scenario for the angels would have been Sam being dead. Dean's not willin' to trust the safety of his baby brother to a group of supernatural shit starters who'd already threatened him more'n once.
"So get us somewhere safe. Somewhere I can make these bags in peace and find your idiot brother without angels breathing down my neck."
Bobby's not actually that glad to see them. Dean tries not to take it personally.
"I'm trackin' omens, boy," Bobby says. "You keep that demon out'a my way or else she's gonna screw up what I'm doin'."
"They've got Sam," Dean says by way of explaining.
Ruby shoves her way past him with a sneer.
"I've got him," she says, ten hours, two frantic weapon cleaning sprees, and six lost tempers later. "Here," she says, tossing Dean his hex bag. "Keep that with you. Don't lose it. I'm going on ahead, it'll be faster that way."
"Where?" Dean demands, filtering out everything else she's said.
"Where does anything ever happen for you boys?" she asks. Dean can think of about half a dozen places in the greater fourty eight that're no man's land for the Winchesters, Rivergrove and Palo Alto and--"Lawrence, Kansas," she says.
She turns to Bobby. "Hey, do you mind putting this body on ice for me?" she asks. "It was kinda hard finding one that was just the right shade of dead, you know? Not rotting or anything."
A moment later, the demon's funneling out through the girl's wide, generous mouth. Dean doesn't bother catching her; it's just a corpse without Ruby around to animate it and he's got more important things to worry about than whether she's got a couple new post-mortem bruises to go with when (if) she ever gets back.
"The freezer?" Bobby says incredulously.
"Don't ask," Dean says. "Just, do what she says." He's already on his way out the door, Ruby's hex bag tucked into the pocket his jacket.
"Now wait just a goddamned minute," Bobby starts.
"They've already had my brother for sixteen hours," Dean grates out. He pulls the Colt outta his pants and checks the chambers, shoves it back in and turns to look Bobby in the eye. "I'm not waitin' anymore."
Bobby scratches at his forehead, under the bill of his cap, and sighs. "I'll round up what hunters I can," he finally says. "They'll be glad to have somewhere to go."
"End of the world," Dean says. "Yeah, we'll need all the help we can get."
The closer he gets to Lawrence, the worse the entire world looks. He goes past Hiawatha and the town is friggin' empty. Not the empty like everywhere's been so far, with people peaking out of their windows when they hear his car, their faces white and terrified, but honest to God, nobody home empty.
He thinks he sees a face lookin' at him from the door of the museum, but the eyes are black. When Dean takes a second glance, he person's already far enough away that he wouldn't have been able to see eeye color anyway, going a hundred down a city street in broad daylight.
Wouldn't surprise him if it was a demon, though. He figures a good chunk of the population is gonna be meat puppets soon; demons seem to have a better chance against the angels while their wearin' a human suit then in their natural form.
Dean tries not to think about just how many people are goin' to be dead by the time this whole thing's over. The population of Hiawatha, for one, and the whole damn world for another.
And Dean would't care about any of that if Sam wasn't alive by the time he got there.
"The battle was… bad." That's sort of the understatement of the freakin' century, but what the hell else could he say? He can't say "Sam almost died," because even if it's true, that seriously cannot impart the sheer fucked up badness of it all.
Sam dying would have been devistating; Dean'd sold his soul once for his brother and, God help him, if Sam up and died tomorrow he'd do it again. If he could find a demon stupid enough to accept one slightly angelic soul.
And if he couldn't, well, he's pretty sure he could con Castiel into doing it for him. Or he'd chase Anna down, if he really had to. She stil owes him for the whole grace thing.
So, Sam dying. Hard. Sam dying and his soul going to hell? He can't even. He cannot even find the words to describe how the battle for his goddamn brother's soul had been. He'd never had a doubt about where Sam would have deserved to go if he died, but Sam holding the goddamn Hellmouth while demons and angels attemped to shove him in.
Yeah. That had been bad.
"So it really was an apocalypse?" his younger self asks. He's looking less skeptical and more on the edge of his seat. Well, the couch, at any rate.
"Yeah," Dean says, "Yeah, it was."
He keeps talking. About how he'd ended up throwing out Ruby's hex bag, how Castiel had shown up with an entire army behind him and told him to shut his eyes, now. He has to swallow a few times when he gets to Sam, o holding his brother up as he held everything in, a human corpse at his feet.
"Sam didn't open the Hellmouth," Dean says softly. "They got a little girl to do it. Possessed her mom and dad and told her what to do. She was three." The last damn human in the world, aside from Sam, with demon blood swimming around in her veins.
Sam'd curled up against Dean's back three days after it all went down. They'd hadn't slept seperately since, Sam waking screaming with nightmares more often than he actually slept, Dean unable to trust that the freakin' angels would leave them the fuck alone like Castiel had said they would.
Dean'd just muttered angrily about being woken up, squinted an eye open to check that the bandages around Sam's wrist weren't stained with any gnarly pus, and then shut the fuck up when Sam'd started talking.
"Rosie," he'd mumbled into Dean's hair, his voice thick with tears. "Lilith decided I was too much trouble so she just used Rosie."
Dean hadn't remembered who Rosie was, not until he'd flipped through the journal when he could pry himself out of the bed and away from Sam.
"Anyway," he says, clearing his throat. His younger self doesn't need to know about Rosie, not really. He'd figure it out when Dean did. "We never did figure out why the hell Lilith snagged Sam. Except that I sort of think she may have had a thing for Sam, but,whatever, take that with a grain of salt, Sam attracts demons like dogs get fleas."
His younger self looks at him like he's not sure if Dean's on crack or not.
Dean rolls his eyes. He hasn't met anybody yet who ctually believes him, but Dean's pretty damn sure that he's got it right. It's like Sam's blood is the kiss of death to female demons; Ruby trails along behind him like a lovesick puppy and Lilith'd stuck her tongue down his brother's throat while she killed him.
"What about the scars?" he finally asks.
Dean blinks a couple times at himself. "What scars?" he asks.
Sam's got a lot of scars. Big ones, little ones, claw marks on his thigh and knife marks on his arms, bullet wound in his shoulder. Dean's even got a few himself now, from when a freakin' dragon had mistaken his torso for a chew toy. He's honestly got no frickin' idea what the hell his younger self is babbling about it.
"Sam's scars," he says. Dean finds himsel sort of fascinated witht the way his younger self's fingers don't align, still. He's gotta repeat the motion a few times before Dean actually catches it. The younger Dean's tappin' his fingertips against the bare skin of his wrist.
"Oh," Dean says. "Those scars."
"Yeah, those." His younger self shifts on the couch, his legs kicking wide. "Sam says you know about them, right?"
"I was there," Dean returns.
He knows what his brother smells like burning, the flesh blistering and peeling back from his bones. He tries not to freakin' remember it most days. Sam's got the full range of motion and the scars are pale white most days, unless Sam's been usin' his demon powers for something.
Dean's had to pick his battles, even subconsciously. He could hate himself for hurtin' Sam, or he could pat himself on the back for keeping his brother alive. Most f the time, he sticks to the patting on the back.
"They fit my hand," his younger self says accusingly. Like Dean purposefully stuck his hands around Sam's wrists and burned his brother.
"Yeah," Dean returns evenly, "They do."
They stare at each other for a few moments. Dean can see his own face pulling into that dangerous expression, his mouth tight and his eyes pinched at the corners.
"Waffles!" Ryan calls.
Dean quirks a smile at himself and flicks his eyes over to take in his kid. The waffles are every bit as piled as he thought they were gonna be, whipped cream and candy on top. Ryan's liberally splattered with it himself.
"Have Sam put 'em in the fridge, Ry," he tells his son. "We'll come get it in a little while."
"Kay," Ryan says.
"Tell me," his younger self demands when Ryan's plodded carefully back into the kitchen.
"Fine," Dean says.
Whatever the fuck is goin' down is kickin' up enough dust that Dean honest to God cannot freakin' see at all. He can feel the dark push of demons and the bright mercilessness of angels in flight, Sam a not quite human presence at his side, but he can't actually see what the hell is happening.
The buzz of Lucifer spreadin' his rotting wings is settin' Dean's teeth on edge. It almost physically hurts, reminds him of what it felt like when Castiel was convinced he'd understand that high, whining angel language with his puny human skull.
Sam looks like he's keeping from falling on his face by shear force of will. Helped along by the fact that Dean's got a good enough grip on him that Sam's jacket is just... smoking, little whisps of grey lost in the kicked up debri.
"What the hell are they doing?" Ruby demands. She eases up on Sam's other side and shares a sideways glance with Dean before grabbing Sam's other arm and providing a steady counterpoint.
She's not hurting Sam to do it, which is the only reason he lets her do it. That, and the fact that Dean's feeling a little exhausted himself, if by little you mean just about ready to fall over dead. His body's achy like he's fighting off a cold or something.
No, Sam says. He manages to sound amused, sliding Dean a look from under pink-tinged lashes. You're sick from Grace, man.
He doesn't ask what Sam's sick with. Before the Hellmouth opened, Dean'd seen him struggle to hold one demon in place, and, yeah, high level, whatever, but, still. A single demon. He can't even count the amount of them hammering up against Sam's power right now.
Dean really doesn't want to know why Lucifer pullin' his way out of the Pit gave Sam a boost.
"No, seriously," Ruby says again. "What the fuck are they doing?"
"You're asking me?" Dean demands incredulously.
The demons have fallen off. Dean can feel them all like stains, out there, surrounding the biggest, darkest blob of demon; the angels are doing the same thing. "They're circling Lucifer," he says after a few seconds of just... "looking." Sensing? He can't even figure this shit out.
He's gonna kill Castiel if he sees him again. And if he's not dead already.
Sam snorts out a wet sounding laugh next to him.
"They're what?" Ruby demands.
When Dean looks over at her, she's flicking her hair out of her face with one hand, the other steady on Sam's arm. He hadn't noticed before, but the girl she's picked is wide shouldered instead of her usual petite pick, muscles bulging, and Dean has to wonder where she found a body building brunette just in time for the final battle.
"Circlin'," Dean says again. "They're freakin' circlin' Lucifer and, Jesus Christ," he wheezes out as something fires out sharp and clear to his newly online angel senses. "They're making a devil's trap."
What? Sam and Ruby manage slam into his skull at the same damn time. Not like Dean's adverse to havin' people talk to him without actually speakin' or hearing voices in his head.
Dude, he responds in kind, shifting his grip on Sam's arm, I know I didn't stutter. "I think they're makin' a giant ass devil's trap," he continues outloud. "The angels are..." yeah, he can feel it now, lines and ranks of angels closing around and around, pure straight lines that the demons are gettin' penned up in.
He doesn't think they've realized it yet. He hopes they friggin' don't, not before Heaven manages to close rank and file and holy shit, was this actually goin' to work?
"Yes," Sam wheezes out at the same time Ruby shakes her head.
"He's gotta crawl back in the way he came out," she says again. She flings one hand wide to encompass the demons still attempting to smack their way out, frantically, and shakes her head again. "That'll work for the small fries, I guess, mass exorcism, sorta like what you guys pulled in Monument.
"But Lucifer and Lilith? Not gonna happen."
"Aren't you a ray of sunshine," Dean says.
He shifts Sam again, trying to balance between him leanin' his wieght on his shaky brother and his trembling, shaky brother leaning his weight on him. It's not working to well, actually, and that, along with the question starting to burn a whole through Dean's brain, he's feeling. Well. End of the world shitty.
I don't wanna ask, Dean thinks mutinously. He's aware he's acting like a brat, thanks, but he doesn't freakin' want to ask and he won't, Sam'll tell him if there's any problems and--
Ask what? Sam says. It echoes around his head, bouncing against the walls of his skull and Dean fights back a cringe as he takes a deep breath.
"Is that exorcism gonna do anything to you?" he forces out of his throat.
"It's sweet that you care," Ruby says.
She's got her eyes turned the same way Dean's been lookin' for the last few minutes, towards the thick cloud of dust and the incessant, freakin' buzzing. He remembers the buzzing from hell. He tries not to think about it.
"Wasn't talkin' to you," he returns. Sam?
Sam twitches in his grip. Don't know, he says as the power swells, beating against Dean's skin, and Dean starts mentally counting the amount of demons winking out of existance with little soup bubble pops. Guess we'll find out.
Pop, pop, pop go a hundred other demons and Dena thinks, finally the angels have gotten their fuckin' acts together. Ruby shivers on Sam's other side, but if there's a spoken exorcism goin' on, Dean's not hearing it. Just the angels doin't there thing, aided by a devil's trap.
She'll be fine. He's more worried about Sam.
Fine, Sam gasps out at him. He rips his arm loose from Ruby's hold to press the palm of his head, hard, to his forehead, his eyes squeezed shut. In front of him, the wall of demons swells and Dean spits out a curse because, well, fuck.
There's a hole in the goddamn world, one that lets demons pull themselves back out. Exorcising them isn't going to do any fucking good because they can just waltz right the fuck back out and the only thing keeping them from doing it has been steadily bleeding out of his nose and his eyes for the last however the fuck long.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
"Let it go," Dean grinds out.
Sam gives him a startled look. Dean winces; a blood vessel has burst in Sam's left eye, sending an angry red out far enough that it almost touches his iris. "What?" he grinds out.
"They've gotta be plannin' something," Dean hisses out. The demons behind Sam's wall have more than doubled and fuck, even if the angels don't have a plan besides "send them back to hell," Dean's not sticking around and watching his brother die here.
There're nicer places. He still hasn't seen the Grand Canyon.
Hold for a moment longer, an angel says. It drifts over to them, touches down next to Dean,careful to keep a few feet between it and Sam. Dean can't even tell what sex it is. Or would be, if it were human. Sometimes, it's easy. Sometimes, it's not.
It turns its mouthless face towards them and its eyes blaze as they take him and his brother and his brother's demon friend. Hold the Mouth, it says again. The final push is near.
"Oh," Dean spits out, "Now you believe he's not evil. When you need him. You guys are freakin' unbelievable." He props Sam up a little higher on his shoulder when he slumps an drisks a glance back at the Hellmouth.
More demon black, purple lights flashing in agitation. The angel looks at it, too, its wings flaring wide. You will hold? it asks, totally ignoring what Dean feels is his justifiable bitchiness at them and talking to Sam.
Sam keeps his face turned away from the angel. Dean notices Ruby, her face burried in Sam's shoulder even as she helps to prop him up. The slight pang of MINE this invokes is kind of worrying, but, whatever. He'll deal with it when the world stops ending.
I can hold it, Sam murmurs. Dean can hear the exhaustion in Sam's mental voice, the way it's almost cracking, mental or not.
If Sam hearing angels is anything like what Dean heard when Castiel was trying to wedge his voice into Dean's skull, then Dean's surprised his brother hasn't passed out on the floor yet. Demonic powers might protect you from some shit, demon viruses and all, but Dean's pretty damn sure that it doesn't protect you from angelic voices.
The clock's tickin'.
Jesus Christ. "You'd better freakin' hurry," Dean says when the angel turns away from them. "If he dies…"
He leaves the warning out of it. He's sure, one way or another, that he'll be able to make the angels non-lives a living fuckin' nightmare if they take oo long or. If Sam dies, Dean'll take Heaven apart until one of them gives him back.
We shall hurry, the angel assures him.
(Hesediel is actually one of the few angels Dean can stand to be in contact with. He likes Sam, for one, and he's not quite as oblivious as Castiel, for another. He wouldn't say that he, you know, likes having Hesediel around, but there're worse angels to have check in on them. Leliel, for example, was a freakin' barrel of laughs. Not.)
Dean keeps Sam from splatting onto his face when the angels flies away, it's weird, light feathers clearing the dust for a second. Dean can almost see the shape of Lucifer out there; Lilith's finally stopped freakin' laughing.
The battlefield seems strangely quiet now. The demons behind Sam's barrier are hurling themselves at it, but there's no sound, no thumping noises, even if Dean thinks there should be. Lilith's giggles aren't rising above anymore and while there's still buzzing, it's dying off.
He can actually think.
Ruby peaks her head over Sam's shoulder like a frickin' prairie dog or something. "I can't tell if that's good or bad," she says. "On the oe hand, the angels seem to have pulled their thumbs out of their asses and that's good. On the other hand…"
She's staring into the Hellmouth when Dean looks over at her.
"I really don't wanna climb out of there again," she finishes.
They share a glance over Sam's bowed head (Dean's concerned, 'cause he really shouldn't be able to look over Sam's head, hasn't been able to do it for about ten years now, the freakin' giant), pale and determined. Dean's willin' to throw himself into hell again if it means keepin' Sam out.
He's pretty sure Ruby feels the same damn way, which is, you know, nice. But weird. He'd have punched himself in the damn face three years ago if he'd have known he'd be in cohoots with a demon, trying to make sure his goddamn perfect, believer of a brother doesn't go to hell.
Dean's not sure when everything changed, but he's willing to bet it started with Jess and that it ends here. Fuck.
When Sam stumbles again, weaving even if he's leaning more of his weight on Dean and Ruby than on his own feet, Dean snaps. He doesn't know what he's going to say, but he opens his mouth anyway.
Let go, he hears.
It's Castiel's voice, booming and huge, and Dean braces himself against his brother, because, Jesus. Fuck. When Sam lets go of the Hellmouth, they were going to be drowned in demons.
Sam lets go. The demons roll over them like a wave. Dean makes a grab for Sam, wrapping both of his arms around those broad shoulders and tucking his head against his brother's. Sam makes a startled noise, like it hurts and Dean tries not to think about bruning his brother through his clothes.
For once, he's glad of the fact that Sam wears so many goddamn layers.
He can feel Ruby on the other side, freakin' shielding Sam between the two of them. His brother sobs under his breath. Dean opens his mouth and tries to shush him, but it's lost in the rush of noise the demons are making.
Screaming, shrieking, elecrical tingles swing past the three of them. Dean presses his face harder into Sam's sweaty curls and tries to ignore the knowledge that, no, this is not some kind of freak elictrical storm, these are demons sweeping over and around them, attempting to pry their way in until the hit that hard knot of Castiel's borrowed power and pull away with inhuman howls.
There's nothing on the battlefield for them to possess, but that's not gonna stop them from casting farther away, until another town is as empty as Hiawatha.
Dean lifts his head when he feels the last of them whip overhead. Only to have to duck it again, because something's shoving them right back this way, a whole legion of angels bright and glowing in his mind's eye.
"Move!" Ruby hisses out into his ear. She grabs a double handful of Sam's jacket and heaves, demonic strength pulling both him and Dean along. Dean plants his feet onto the slippery ground and shoves, trying to get them as far away from the damn Hellmouth as he can, because the angels? They're not gonna care if it's friend or foe their driving back in.
The sound Sam makes actually causes Dean physical pain. He keeps shoving anyway, because the fuck they're gonna get caught in the path of freakin' Lucifer bein' driven back into hell.
I am an unfinished portion. Everyone knows I don’t like writing action scenes, right? Sorry!
Dean swears at the top of his lungs and lunges for his brother. He manages to snag one wrist and can feel it bubbling under his fingers, burning, Sam's mouth opening in a silent scream, but fuck if he's gonna let go. "Gimme your hand, Sam," he shouts.
Sam looks up at him through his hair. His eyes are dark, helpless and just this side of 'made up my mind, Dean' and fuck this shit, no.
"Don't you fucking do this to me," Dean grinds out through his teeth. Sam's wrist is still bubbling under his grip, but it's slipping too, their combined sweat making is hold too damn slippery. He might have freakin' Castiel's power pumping through him, but the body housing it is human and he's not Superman. "Give me your ther goddamn hand, Sammy, and help me or so help me God I'll go into Hell after you."
Dean opens his mouth to ask how it all ends, because, I mean, come on. Obviously, he pulled Sammy out and they're fine.
"I am sorry to interrupt," Castiel says, "But it is time for me to send you home."
Hi, I am an unfinished ending. I am significantly more obnoxious than the other unfinished portions, but, you know. Anyway! Ending was gonna be Dean’s mind getting future!wiped. He keeps some of the memories from when they were in Stanford era because I said so?
He'd kind of gotten used to Sam's staring, when he came back from Down Under. And not jut, you know, regular staring, but creepy, crazy person staring. No blinking for Sammy and no moving and Dean'd lain awake his second night back and been creeped the fuck out by it.
Now it's sort of old hat.
"I'm awake," he mutters, shoving Castiel out of his face. He clears his throat a few times to work out the sleeping phlegm (what can he say, he's got a cold) and swipes at his eyes with the side of one hand. "What'd you want that couldn't wait until later?"
Castiel opens his mouth. Dean snaps a hand up at him, because the room's too damn quiet. See, Sam might be a mighty hunter and the last human on earth with demon blood in him, but he still snores and snuffles and grumbles in his sleep. He's loud.
Dean's sat around more'n once in bed, grateful for something to listen to that wasn't his remembered screams.
He jerks his head around to look at Sam's bed and , of freakin' course, Sam's not there.
The fuck of it is, though, that Dean's gotten so damn used to hearing his brother sleep, and is on such a hair trigger from being gutted in hell, that he'd have known if Sam decided to go walking. A heavy feeling curls through his gut and suddenly there's more than just the taste of morning ass breath on his tongue.
"I was about to inform you," Castiel says, "That Lilith has taken your brother. Get up. We have work to do."
Dean gets up. "Why the fuck couldn't you have…" he trails off and scrubs a hand down his face, feeling panic clawing through him. His hands are shaking. He has to concentrate on them in order to make it stop, but, fuck, fuck. The last time a demon had taken his brother, Dean'd gotten him back with a brand new hole he didn't need and.
It's been over a freakin' year and the image of Sam on that bed, cold and grey and dead still makes him wake up in a cold sweat the nights his own screams don't.
Castiel tilts his head down and slightly to the side, watching Dean from under his short eyelashes. "I wasn't aware that part of their plan was to snatch Sam until… recently."
"How recently?" Dean bites out. His guns are gonna do fuck all. He has enough holy water to choke a small horse and he's got an exorcism written, somewhere. Dammit, dammit, dammit. "If you knew about this and didn't stop it, I swear to God I'll—"
"I knew nothing," Castiel murmurs. "Hell does not exactly broadcast its plans to us, Dean. They need your brother for something."
"What the fuck do they need Sam for? And you'd better not tell me that you don't know."
Castiel looks like a kicked puppy. Dean has a world of I don't care at this exact second. "There are a… few things that Lilith would want a human with Sam's inclinations for. None of them good."
"Gimme the best and worst cases," Dean mutters. He can't find his friggin' gun, the one that he laid out on the table last night before bed and he wants to kill something. If he had the Colt right now, he'd be aiming it at Castiel because deliberately coy is not a good look on anyone.
Especially not when Dean needs to know what he's getting into.
"The best case is that they've decided to kill him," Castiel says blandly.
He doesn't react when Dean punches him in the face, but it makes Dean feel slightly better. "That is never a best case scenario, you son of a bitch." His hand has found his gun without a thought and it's up and leveled at Castiel's head.
The angel blinks at the wall a few times before he turns his head back around to face Dean. "Would you throw away the world for your brother?" Castiel asks.
Dean's petty sure neither of them actually want him to answer that question, because right about now he's thinkin' that the world can go fuck itself if that means having Sam back.
"The worst case scenario," Castiel says into the silence while Dean attempts to find his boots. "Is that they've taken Sam alive. Only a human, or something that is 'close enough' can open the gates of Hell."
He shakes out his hand and reminds himself that this is his freakin' ally, the only one he's got and he can't go around putting holes in him just because he's an asswipe. "Sam won't do that," Dean says. Dean might've, if it was a choice between the world and his brother.
Sam wouldn't.
Sometimes, he's gotta wonder what the fuck made the angels think they'd gotten the right Winchester for the job.
"Lilith has released sixty-five seals, Dean." Castiel turns to keep Dean in his line of sight as he hunches over to look for his shoes under Sam's bed. "Would you take the chance on your brother holding out and doom the world?"
"You said she needed sixty-six," Dean says. He finds his boots under his bed and stuffs his feet into them sans socks.
"There are many seals," the angel mumurs. "Lilith has only needed to break sixty six. And your brother, should he open the portal to hell again, will be breaking the last seal."
Dean perks up. "Again?" he asks. If it's again, he knows where they're going to be takin' Sam, where they're headed, the only entrance into hell he's ever heard of holed off in Colorado.
"There are specific points in the world where a gate to hell may be called into being," Castiel says. "One that is big enough and stable enough to allow Lucifer to crawl from his damnation. We don't know which one Lilith is after."
"You're a useless waste of feathers," Dean hisses out at him and rips open the door.
Ruby blinks black eyes up at him and scowls. "We have a fuckin' problem," she says. She looks like she's been beat to hell and back, her eyes half swollen shut. Her mouth is crusted at the edges, bleeding slowly from torn up corners and Dean's willing to bet she's not tucking her arms aroud herself like that because she thinks it's chilly.
"Where's Sam?" she asks while Dean's staring and then reads the answer in the murderous look Dean sends her. "Oh, you've got to be fucking kidding me!"
"Sweetheart," says Dean, "I wish I was."
"First you lose the Colt, then you lose the knife," she ignores the way Dean pointedly pulls that from his pocket and waves it menacingly at her, the bitch, "And now you lose Sam? I'm starting to think that letting you look after something is a really bad idea, Dean."
"I have a present," Castiel says from behind him.
Dean wheels around to tell him just where he can shove any present he might or might not be carrying, only to swallow his words. The gun Castiel hands him is familiar, heavy and archane and beautiful, the one goddamn weapon in the world he'd have killed just about anyone to get back.
It fits into his hand like a long lost friend. "Where'd you find it?" Dean asks softly.
"Does it truly matter?" Castiel asks.
"Okay, seriously." Ruby grabs Dean by his arm and starts pulling, her small hands dead cold on his skin. "You can cream yourself over the Colt later, Dean. We need to find Sam and we need to find him fast."
"What's the Colt?" Dean asks Michael.
He blinks at him a few times and then scowls. "Didn't I tell you that questions weren't welcome, dude? I'm pretty sure I did."
"What's the Colt?" Dean asks again. So far he's following along pretty well, even if he doesn't know who the fuck Ruby is or, you know, actually believe what Dean's said about Castiel being an angel.
"Gun," Michael says shortly. "Can kill anything. You'll find it in a few years, don't worry about it. Can I get back to the story now, man? Would that be okay with you?"
Seriously, he had no idea that he was actually this fuckin' obnoxious. He's gonna have to get Sam a medal or something for puttin' up with him all the time.
"Anyway," Michael says pointedly.
He lets Ruby ride with him in the Impala.
Castiel'd taken off with a flutter of invisble wings, left him with nothing to do but twiddle his thumbs and hope like hell whatever the fuck was gonna happen, didn't.
There's a storm brewin' on the horizon that Dean purposefully ignores, because it's not anything like a storm he's ever seen before. He's seen black clouds and white clouds and grey clouds, but fuck if he's ever seen the sky burn red like that in the middle of the goddamn day.
Contrary to every apocalyptic movie he's ever seen, the steets are actually empty around them, not a soul in sight. He doesn't now if he was expectin' looting or somethinglike that, but this strange, ghost town downtown was not it; it reminds him of Rivergrove, after the demon virus had run its course.
"She's on the last seal," Ruby says grimly even though Dean doesn't freakin' ask. "The world's gonna go straight to freakin' hell in a handbasket. Even the sheep are gonna be able to feel that it's best to stay at home and die than to do it on the road."
"Why're the clouds always red during the apocalypse?" Dean asks rhetorically. He takes the next turn too fast, even for his babybut fuck. The sky's red, his brother's missing, and Dean has a demon riding shotgun. The Impala'll forgive him.
Dean won't forgive himself if anything happens to Sam.
"I could tell you something about the blood of the innocents," Ruby says, "But I'd be pullin' that out of my ass, so." She leans her head against the window and grimaces. Dean'd be more concerned with her general health, but all his freakin' worry's tied up with Sam. Jesus.
"You still think he's alive?" he asks Ruby. He needs something to distract him, anything.
"Lilith hasn't sent something to skin you boys in months," Ruby says. She grimaces again, rolls down the window and spits a stream of blood into the wind. Dean'll kill her if that shit landed back on his paintjob. "She wants Sam. You, she just wanted you to become a demon for her. She wants your brother alive. Ish. And mostly human."
They'd figured out months ago that the whole freakin' reason Dean'd been in hell was to get at Sam. And the whole damn reason he's out of it, he's pretty damn sure, is because theangels are hoping for the same damn thing.
Guy could get a complex, except Sam was the most important damn thing in Dean's life, the one thing he'd always done freakin' right.
"Turn left here," Ruby says. She's picking at a scab when Dean darts a suspicious look her way, but her face is set and if there's one freakin' thing he knows about Ruby, it's that she, uh. Likes Sam. A lot. Like. A creepy lot.
Dean usually doesn't bother to stamp out the flare of jealous, possessive MINE he gets around Ruby. He figures that she needs to be put in her place most days anyway and if part of it's because he's genuinely grossed out that Sam fucked her, well. They don't need to think about that.
Right now, if her little big crush on Sam was gonna make her help him find his brother, he's more than willing to use it against her.
"When we get there, you're gonna have to let me do the talkin'," Ruby says. She swipes at the blood on her mouth and just succeeds in smearing it across her cheek. "He's not real fond of people. Especially not fond of people who've been touched by an angel."
"You make it sound so dirty,"Dean says on autopilot. He takes the next turn and then idles at a stoplight while Ruby pushes and prods her mostly dead body back into working order. Dean's never been more glad that she'd taken the pains to grab something dead.
He doesn't want to think about a poor, normal girl stuck in her body and watchin' the world go to hell all around her, without even the option of spending it with her family.
"What's the matter, Dean?" Ruby asks snidely. She licks the tips of her fingers and rubs at her cheek like shes actually going to get rid of it that way. Dean's never seen the lickin' thing work with anyone but a mother. "Didn't like being molested by your angel buddy?"
"First off, ew," Dean says firmly. "And second, ew. With a side of hell no."
"That's not what you said to Anna," Ruby singsongs back at him.
Dean's starting to remember, even through the haze of must find Sam, why he always has the urge to stick Ruby with her knife. Obnoxious bitch.
"Stop here," Ruby says.
She leaves smears of blood on the handle of the passenger door when she gets out. Dean sits there and stares at it, thinking that somethin' like that is what Azazel fed to Sam, when he'd been defenceless and cooing in his crib.
He leans over the back of his seat with a muttered, "shit. Shit." There's a shirt somewhere back there, from when Sam'd been slimed with that mutant hagfish snot. It's not clean, but it doesn't stink and Dean'd rather have mutant hagfish slime on his car than demon blood any day of the week.
Dean finds the shirt. By sticking his hand into a pile of something cold and viscoscious (word of the day two months ago; Dean sort of likes the way it rolls off his tongue, even if Sam'd stared the first time he wipped it out).
"Mother fucker," he hisses. He closes his hand over the shirt, one of Sam's flannels, which means it's about the size of a conservative tent, and hauls it over the back of his seat.
By the time he's wiped off his own hand and has leaned over to wipe up the blood on the passenger side door, Ruby's sliding back in and raising her eyebrows at him. "Never took you for a clean freak," she says bitingly.
There's something in her hands now. Dean peers at it while he starts his car up, trying to ignore the fact that he's been parked in the middle of the damn street for the last five minutes and nobody's honked at him for it. "What's in the box?" he finally asks.
"I snagged some of Sam's hair on the way out," Ruby says. "Well, alright, I already had some of Sam's hair--"
"Which isn't creepy at all," Dean mutters, repressing a shudder.
"--I've got some of yours too, by the way, Dean. What the hell did you think was in those hex bags, kiddie bones?" She opens the box in her hands and pulls out… something. Dean's not sure what it is, even when he takes his eyes off the empty road for longer than he should've. "I needed some other stuff, but."
She shrugs. "If you're willing to donate a little blood, I should be able to do a tracking spell on Sam. And I'll even through in a free hex bag to hide you from your angels if you want."
Dean snaps his eyes back to the road just in time to avoid hitting a pack of panicked looking deer. They're running away from where the red clouds are massing. Dean's no genuis, but he's pretty sure that's the direction they need to go in. That's where Sam is.
"Why would I wanna hide from the angels?" he asks.
Ruby gives him a flat, black look. Her eyes are already healing up, Dean notes. That's good. He's pretty sure he can count on her to look out for Sam if something happens to him (again) and if she hasn't bolted out of it by now, he's pretty sure she won't do it later.
This is worse than the jail had been, the freakin' apocalypse even, and she hasn't cut and run yet.
"Because they're going to follow you to Sam," Ruby says like he's an idiot. She picks a flaking scab off her lower lip and flicks it out of her window, so Dean doesn't have to pull the Colt out and threaten her with it. Nobody litters in his car.
Except him and Sam.
"Yeah," Dean says. "Bad idea." Castiel had said that the best case scenario for the angels would have been Sam being dead. Dean's not willin' to trust the safety of his baby brother to a group of supernatural shit starters who'd already threatened him more'n once.
"So get us somewhere safe. Somewhere I can make these bags in peace and find your idiot brother without angels breathing down my neck."
Bobby's not actually that glad to see them. Dean tries not to take it personally.
"I'm trackin' omens, boy," Bobby says. "You keep that demon out'a my way or else she's gonna screw up what I'm doin'."
"They've got Sam," Dean says by way of explaining.
Ruby shoves her way past him with a sneer.
"I've got him," she says, ten hours, two frantic weapon cleaning sprees, and six lost tempers later. "Here," she says, tossing Dean his hex bag. "Keep that with you. Don't lose it. I'm going on ahead, it'll be faster that way."
"Where?" Dean demands, filtering out everything else she's said.
"Where does anything ever happen for you boys?" she asks. Dean can think of about half a dozen places in the greater fourty eight that're no man's land for the Winchesters, Rivergrove and Palo Alto and--"Lawrence, Kansas," she says.
She turns to Bobby. "Hey, do you mind putting this body on ice for me?" she asks. "It was kinda hard finding one that was just the right shade of dead, you know? Not rotting or anything."
A moment later, the demon's funneling out through the girl's wide, generous mouth. Dean doesn't bother catching her; it's just a corpse without Ruby around to animate it and he's got more important things to worry about than whether she's got a couple new post-mortem bruises to go with when (if) she ever gets back.
"The freezer?" Bobby says incredulously.
"Don't ask," Dean says. "Just, do what she says." He's already on his way out the door, Ruby's hex bag tucked into the pocket his jacket.
"Now wait just a goddamned minute," Bobby starts.
"They've already had my brother for sixteen hours," Dean grates out. He pulls the Colt outta his pants and checks the chambers, shoves it back in and turns to look Bobby in the eye. "I'm not waitin' anymore."
Bobby scratches at his forehead, under the bill of his cap, and sighs. "I'll round up what hunters I can," he finally says. "They'll be glad to have somewhere to go."
"End of the world," Dean says. "Yeah, we'll need all the help we can get."
The closer he gets to Lawrence, the worse the entire world looks. He goes past Hiawatha and the town is friggin' empty. Not the empty like everywhere's been so far, with people peaking out of their windows when they hear his car, their faces white and terrified, but honest to God, nobody home empty.
He thinks he sees a face lookin' at him from the door of the museum, but the eyes are black. When Dean takes a second glance, he person's already far enough away that he wouldn't have been able to see eeye color anyway, going a hundred down a city street in broad daylight.
Wouldn't surprise him if it was a demon, though. He figures a good chunk of the population is gonna be meat puppets soon; demons seem to have a better chance against the angels while their wearin' a human suit then in their natural form.
Dean tries not to think about just how many people are goin' to be dead by the time this whole thing's over. The population of Hiawatha, for one, and the whole damn world for another.
And Dean would't care about any of that if Sam wasn't alive by the time he got there.
"The battle was… bad." That's sort of the understatement of the freakin' century, but what the hell else could he say? He can't say "Sam almost died," because even if it's true, that seriously cannot impart the sheer fucked up badness of it all.
Sam dying would have been devistating; Dean'd sold his soul once for his brother and, God help him, if Sam up and died tomorrow he'd do it again. If he could find a demon stupid enough to accept one slightly angelic soul.
And if he couldn't, well, he's pretty sure he could con Castiel into doing it for him. Or he'd chase Anna down, if he really had to. She stil owes him for the whole grace thing.
So, Sam dying. Hard. Sam dying and his soul going to hell? He can't even. He cannot even find the words to describe how the battle for his goddamn brother's soul had been. He'd never had a doubt about where Sam would have deserved to go if he died, but Sam holding the goddamn Hellmouth while demons and angels attemped to shove him in.
Yeah. That had been bad.
"So it really was an apocalypse?" his younger self asks. He's looking less skeptical and more on the edge of his seat. Well, the couch, at any rate.
"Yeah," Dean says, "Yeah, it was."
He keeps talking. About how he'd ended up throwing out Ruby's hex bag, how Castiel had shown up with an entire army behind him and told him to shut his eyes, now. He has to swallow a few times when he gets to Sam, o holding his brother up as he held everything in, a human corpse at his feet.
"Sam didn't open the Hellmouth," Dean says softly. "They got a little girl to do it. Possessed her mom and dad and told her what to do. She was three." The last damn human in the world, aside from Sam, with demon blood swimming around in her veins.
Sam'd curled up against Dean's back three days after it all went down. They'd hadn't slept seperately since, Sam waking screaming with nightmares more often than he actually slept, Dean unable to trust that the freakin' angels would leave them the fuck alone like Castiel had said they would.
Dean'd just muttered angrily about being woken up, squinted an eye open to check that the bandages around Sam's wrist weren't stained with any gnarly pus, and then shut the fuck up when Sam'd started talking.
"Rosie," he'd mumbled into Dean's hair, his voice thick with tears. "Lilith decided I was too much trouble so she just used Rosie."
Dean hadn't remembered who Rosie was, not until he'd flipped through the journal when he could pry himself out of the bed and away from Sam.
"Anyway," he says, clearing his throat. His younger self doesn't need to know about Rosie, not really. He'd figure it out when Dean did. "We never did figure out why the hell Lilith snagged Sam. Except that I sort of think she may have had a thing for Sam, but,whatever, take that with a grain of salt, Sam attracts demons like dogs get fleas."
His younger self looks at him like he's not sure if Dean's on crack or not.
Dean rolls his eyes. He hasn't met anybody yet who ctually believes him, but Dean's pretty damn sure that he's got it right. It's like Sam's blood is the kiss of death to female demons; Ruby trails along behind him like a lovesick puppy and Lilith'd stuck her tongue down his brother's throat while she killed him.
"What about the scars?" he finally asks.
Dean blinks a couple times at himself. "What scars?" he asks.
Sam's got a lot of scars. Big ones, little ones, claw marks on his thigh and knife marks on his arms, bullet wound in his shoulder. Dean's even got a few himself now, from when a freakin' dragon had mistaken his torso for a chew toy. He's honestly got no frickin' idea what the hell his younger self is babbling about it.
"Sam's scars," he says. Dean finds himsel sort of fascinated witht the way his younger self's fingers don't align, still. He's gotta repeat the motion a few times before Dean actually catches it. The younger Dean's tappin' his fingertips against the bare skin of his wrist.
"Oh," Dean says. "Those scars."
"Yeah, those." His younger self shifts on the couch, his legs kicking wide. "Sam says you know about them, right?"
"I was there," Dean returns.
He knows what his brother smells like burning, the flesh blistering and peeling back from his bones. He tries not to freakin' remember it most days. Sam's got the full range of motion and the scars are pale white most days, unless Sam's been usin' his demon powers for something.
Dean's had to pick his battles, even subconsciously. He could hate himself for hurtin' Sam, or he could pat himself on the back for keeping his brother alive. Most f the time, he sticks to the patting on the back.
"They fit my hand," his younger self says accusingly. Like Dean purposefully stuck his hands around Sam's wrists and burned his brother.
"Yeah," Dean returns evenly, "They do."
They stare at each other for a few moments. Dean can see his own face pulling into that dangerous expression, his mouth tight and his eyes pinched at the corners.
"Waffles!" Ryan calls.
Dean quirks a smile at himself and flicks his eyes over to take in his kid. The waffles are every bit as piled as he thought they were gonna be, whipped cream and candy on top. Ryan's liberally splattered with it himself.
"Have Sam put 'em in the fridge, Ry," he tells his son. "We'll come get it in a little while."
"Kay," Ryan says.
"Tell me," his younger self demands when Ryan's plodded carefully back into the kitchen.
"Fine," Dean says.
Whatever the fuck is goin' down is kickin' up enough dust that Dean honest to God cannot freakin' see at all. He can feel the dark push of demons and the bright mercilessness of angels in flight, Sam a not quite human presence at his side, but he can't actually see what the hell is happening.
The buzz of Lucifer spreadin' his rotting wings is settin' Dean's teeth on edge. It almost physically hurts, reminds him of what it felt like when Castiel was convinced he'd understand that high, whining angel language with his puny human skull.
Sam looks like he's keeping from falling on his face by shear force of will. Helped along by the fact that Dean's got a good enough grip on him that Sam's jacket is just... smoking, little whisps of grey lost in the kicked up debri.
"What the hell are they doing?" Ruby demands. She eases up on Sam's other side and shares a sideways glance with Dean before grabbing Sam's other arm and providing a steady counterpoint.
She's not hurting Sam to do it, which is the only reason he lets her do it. That, and the fact that Dean's feeling a little exhausted himself, if by little you mean just about ready to fall over dead. His body's achy like he's fighting off a cold or something.
No, Sam says. He manages to sound amused, sliding Dean a look from under pink-tinged lashes. You're sick from Grace, man.
He doesn't ask what Sam's sick with. Before the Hellmouth opened, Dean'd seen him struggle to hold one demon in place, and, yeah, high level, whatever, but, still. A single demon. He can't even count the amount of them hammering up against Sam's power right now.
Dean really doesn't want to know why Lucifer pullin' his way out of the Pit gave Sam a boost.
"No, seriously," Ruby says again. "What the fuck are they doing?"
"You're asking me?" Dean demands incredulously.
The demons have fallen off. Dean can feel them all like stains, out there, surrounding the biggest, darkest blob of demon; the angels are doing the same thing. "They're circling Lucifer," he says after a few seconds of just... "looking." Sensing? He can't even figure this shit out.
He's gonna kill Castiel if he sees him again. And if he's not dead already.
Sam snorts out a wet sounding laugh next to him.
"They're what?" Ruby demands.
When Dean looks over at her, she's flicking her hair out of her face with one hand, the other steady on Sam's arm. He hadn't noticed before, but the girl she's picked is wide shouldered instead of her usual petite pick, muscles bulging, and Dean has to wonder where she found a body building brunette just in time for the final battle.
"Circlin'," Dean says again. "They're freakin' circlin' Lucifer and, Jesus Christ," he wheezes out as something fires out sharp and clear to his newly online angel senses. "They're making a devil's trap."
What? Sam and Ruby manage slam into his skull at the same damn time. Not like Dean's adverse to havin' people talk to him without actually speakin' or hearing voices in his head.
Dude, he responds in kind, shifting his grip on Sam's arm, I know I didn't stutter. "I think they're makin' a giant ass devil's trap," he continues outloud. "The angels are..." yeah, he can feel it now, lines and ranks of angels closing around and around, pure straight lines that the demons are gettin' penned up in.
He doesn't think they've realized it yet. He hopes they friggin' don't, not before Heaven manages to close rank and file and holy shit, was this actually goin' to work?
"Yes," Sam wheezes out at the same time Ruby shakes her head.
"He's gotta crawl back in the way he came out," she says again. She flings one hand wide to encompass the demons still attempting to smack their way out, frantically, and shakes her head again. "That'll work for the small fries, I guess, mass exorcism, sorta like what you guys pulled in Monument.
"But Lucifer and Lilith? Not gonna happen."
"Aren't you a ray of sunshine," Dean says.
He shifts Sam again, trying to balance between him leanin' his wieght on his shaky brother and his trembling, shaky brother leaning his weight on him. It's not working to well, actually, and that, along with the question starting to burn a whole through Dean's brain, he's feeling. Well. End of the world shitty.
I don't wanna ask, Dean thinks mutinously. He's aware he's acting like a brat, thanks, but he doesn't freakin' want to ask and he won't, Sam'll tell him if there's any problems and--
Ask what? Sam says. It echoes around his head, bouncing against the walls of his skull and Dean fights back a cringe as he takes a deep breath.
"Is that exorcism gonna do anything to you?" he forces out of his throat.
"It's sweet that you care," Ruby says.
She's got her eyes turned the same way Dean's been lookin' for the last few minutes, towards the thick cloud of dust and the incessant, freakin' buzzing. He remembers the buzzing from hell. He tries not to think about it.
"Wasn't talkin' to you," he returns. Sam?
Sam twitches in his grip. Don't know, he says as the power swells, beating against Dean's skin, and Dean starts mentally counting the amount of demons winking out of existance with little soup bubble pops. Guess we'll find out.
Pop, pop, pop go a hundred other demons and Dena thinks, finally the angels have gotten their fuckin' acts together. Ruby shivers on Sam's other side, but if there's a spoken exorcism goin' on, Dean's not hearing it. Just the angels doin't there thing, aided by a devil's trap.
She'll be fine. He's more worried about Sam.
Fine, Sam gasps out at him. He rips his arm loose from Ruby's hold to press the palm of his head, hard, to his forehead, his eyes squeezed shut. In front of him, the wall of demons swells and Dean spits out a curse because, well, fuck.
There's a hole in the goddamn world, one that lets demons pull themselves back out. Exorcising them isn't going to do any fucking good because they can just waltz right the fuck back out and the only thing keeping them from doing it has been steadily bleeding out of his nose and his eyes for the last however the fuck long.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
"Let it go," Dean grinds out.
Sam gives him a startled look. Dean winces; a blood vessel has burst in Sam's left eye, sending an angry red out far enough that it almost touches his iris. "What?" he grinds out.
"They've gotta be plannin' something," Dean hisses out. The demons behind Sam's wall have more than doubled and fuck, even if the angels don't have a plan besides "send them back to hell," Dean's not sticking around and watching his brother die here.
There're nicer places. He still hasn't seen the Grand Canyon.
Hold for a moment longer, an angel says. It drifts over to them, touches down next to Dean,careful to keep a few feet between it and Sam. Dean can't even tell what sex it is. Or would be, if it were human. Sometimes, it's easy. Sometimes, it's not.
It turns its mouthless face towards them and its eyes blaze as they take him and his brother and his brother's demon friend. Hold the Mouth, it says again. The final push is near.
"Oh," Dean spits out, "Now you believe he's not evil. When you need him. You guys are freakin' unbelievable." He props Sam up a little higher on his shoulder when he slumps an drisks a glance back at the Hellmouth.
More demon black, purple lights flashing in agitation. The angel looks at it, too, its wings flaring wide. You will hold? it asks, totally ignoring what Dean feels is his justifiable bitchiness at them and talking to Sam.
Sam keeps his face turned away from the angel. Dean notices Ruby, her face burried in Sam's shoulder even as she helps to prop him up. The slight pang of MINE this invokes is kind of worrying, but, whatever. He'll deal with it when the world stops ending.
I can hold it, Sam murmurs. Dean can hear the exhaustion in Sam's mental voice, the way it's almost cracking, mental or not.
If Sam hearing angels is anything like what Dean heard when Castiel was trying to wedge his voice into Dean's skull, then Dean's surprised his brother hasn't passed out on the floor yet. Demonic powers might protect you from some shit, demon viruses and all, but Dean's pretty damn sure that it doesn't protect you from angelic voices.
The clock's tickin'.
Jesus Christ. "You'd better freakin' hurry," Dean says when the angel turns away from them. "If he dies…"
He leaves the warning out of it. He's sure, one way or another, that he'll be able to make the angels non-lives a living fuckin' nightmare if they take oo long or. If Sam dies, Dean'll take Heaven apart until one of them gives him back.
We shall hurry, the angel assures him.
(Hesediel is actually one of the few angels Dean can stand to be in contact with. He likes Sam, for one, and he's not quite as oblivious as Castiel, for another. He wouldn't say that he, you know, likes having Hesediel around, but there're worse angels to have check in on them. Leliel, for example, was a freakin' barrel of laughs. Not.)
Dean keeps Sam from splatting onto his face when the angels flies away, it's weird, light feathers clearing the dust for a second. Dean can almost see the shape of Lucifer out there; Lilith's finally stopped freakin' laughing.
The battlefield seems strangely quiet now. The demons behind Sam's barrier are hurling themselves at it, but there's no sound, no thumping noises, even if Dean thinks there should be. Lilith's giggles aren't rising above anymore and while there's still buzzing, it's dying off.
He can actually think.
Ruby peaks her head over Sam's shoulder like a frickin' prairie dog or something. "I can't tell if that's good or bad," she says. "On the oe hand, the angels seem to have pulled their thumbs out of their asses and that's good. On the other hand…"
She's staring into the Hellmouth when Dean looks over at her.
"I really don't wanna climb out of there again," she finishes.
They share a glance over Sam's bowed head (Dean's concerned, 'cause he really shouldn't be able to look over Sam's head, hasn't been able to do it for about ten years now, the freakin' giant), pale and determined. Dean's willin' to throw himself into hell again if it means keepin' Sam out.
He's pretty sure Ruby feels the same damn way, which is, you know, nice. But weird. He'd have punched himself in the damn face three years ago if he'd have known he'd be in cohoots with a demon, trying to make sure his goddamn perfect, believer of a brother doesn't go to hell.
Dean's not sure when everything changed, but he's willing to bet it started with Jess and that it ends here. Fuck.
When Sam stumbles again, weaving even if he's leaning more of his weight on Dean and Ruby than on his own feet, Dean snaps. He doesn't know what he's going to say, but he opens his mouth anyway.
Let go, he hears.
It's Castiel's voice, booming and huge, and Dean braces himself against his brother, because, Jesus. Fuck. When Sam lets go of the Hellmouth, they were going to be drowned in demons.
Sam lets go. The demons roll over them like a wave. Dean makes a grab for Sam, wrapping both of his arms around those broad shoulders and tucking his head against his brother's. Sam makes a startled noise, like it hurts and Dean tries not to think about bruning his brother through his clothes.
For once, he's glad of the fact that Sam wears so many goddamn layers.
He can feel Ruby on the other side, freakin' shielding Sam between the two of them. His brother sobs under his breath. Dean opens his mouth and tries to shush him, but it's lost in the rush of noise the demons are making.
Screaming, shrieking, elecrical tingles swing past the three of them. Dean presses his face harder into Sam's sweaty curls and tries to ignore the knowledge that, no, this is not some kind of freak elictrical storm, these are demons sweeping over and around them, attempting to pry their way in until the hit that hard knot of Castiel's borrowed power and pull away with inhuman howls.
There's nothing on the battlefield for them to possess, but that's not gonna stop them from casting farther away, until another town is as empty as Hiawatha.
Dean lifts his head when he feels the last of them whip overhead. Only to have to duck it again, because something's shoving them right back this way, a whole legion of angels bright and glowing in his mind's eye.
"Move!" Ruby hisses out into his ear. She grabs a double handful of Sam's jacket and heaves, demonic strength pulling both him and Dean along. Dean plants his feet onto the slippery ground and shoves, trying to get them as far away from the damn Hellmouth as he can, because the angels? They're not gonna care if it's friend or foe their driving back in.
The sound Sam makes actually causes Dean physical pain. He keeps shoving anyway, because the fuck they're gonna get caught in the path of freakin' Lucifer bein' driven back into hell.
I am an unfinished portion. Everyone knows I don’t like writing action scenes, right? Sorry!
Dean swears at the top of his lungs and lunges for his brother. He manages to snag one wrist and can feel it bubbling under his fingers, burning, Sam's mouth opening in a silent scream, but fuck if he's gonna let go. "Gimme your hand, Sam," he shouts.
Sam looks up at him through his hair. His eyes are dark, helpless and just this side of 'made up my mind, Dean' and fuck this shit, no.
"Don't you fucking do this to me," Dean grinds out through his teeth. Sam's wrist is still bubbling under his grip, but it's slipping too, their combined sweat making is hold too damn slippery. He might have freakin' Castiel's power pumping through him, but the body housing it is human and he's not Superman. "Give me your ther goddamn hand, Sammy, and help me or so help me God I'll go into Hell after you."
Dean opens his mouth to ask how it all ends, because, I mean, come on. Obviously, he pulled Sammy out and they're fine.
"I am sorry to interrupt," Castiel says, "But it is time for me to send you home."
Hi, I am an unfinished ending. I am significantly more obnoxious than the other unfinished portions, but, you know. Anyway! Ending was gonna be Dean’s mind getting future!wiped. He keeps some of the memories from when they were in Stanford era because I said so?
