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Part 4a
Later, he watched her back—her shoulderblade rising like a wall against a siege as she curled into herself on the bed—and thought.
Dee was right. He’d been selfish, treating Dean like the shadow of some platonic ideal. Clinging to him like a child might hang on to a stuffed animal, because Dean was the only security Sam had ever known, and after Stanford the only security he ever imagined he might get.
Dean deserved more than to be a symbol, whether to Sam or to Heaven. Right now they were just pawns, and they would be as long as Lilith and Castiel thought they could use the Winchesters against each other.
He had a window. He needed a door. He needed a tool strong enough to break open a wall that should have stayed closed.
“Hey,” he said, seriously enough that Dee couldn’t rightly ignore him.
Dee’s shoulders hunched briefly, then she rolled over on the bed to face him.
“I think I know how to open up the barriers between the worlds,” he said, a bit embarrassed to be using the term ‘worlds.’ “But we don’t have the juice to do it.”
“What would it take?” Dee asked, already clambering to her feet. Sam looked away so as not to get distracted by her nudity.
He shook his head. “The mercy seat. The Holy Grail. The nails used to crucify Jesus. Something big and bad, something that’s part of this whole ultimate sacrifice thing everyone seems to want to see me and Dean do.”
A wave of some unclassifiable emotion crossed her face, and then she ran her hands through her hair, looking around the room. “Where’s your phone?”
“I don’t think Domino’s delivers—”
That got him a look of such contempt that he felt himself shriveling in self-defense. “Phone, doofus.” She bent and rummaged around in his jeans until she extracted it, then hit redial without looking. “Dean? Get your ass back here.”
“What—?”
“I really think you’re gonna want to hear this from him,” she said, then looked guiltily away. Which meant, most likely, he wasn’t going to want to hear it at all.
****
“There’s a sword,” Dean said. Dee nodded grimly.
“A sword,” Sam repeated.
“It’s, uh, I guess it’s Michael’s sword.” In the past year they’d both become familiar enough with angelic lore to know that Michael’s sword would be at the forefront of the battle of the end times.
“You didn’t mention that,” Sam said mildly.
Dean scowled. “Yeah, well, you didn’t mention anything about your love affair with Ruby, so—”
“It isn’t a—” Sam stopped, struck by how Dean had said that. “Dean?”
Dean turned away, stalking towards the window so that he could brace his hands on the sill and stare out at the parking lot. His shoulders were hunched beneath his red-and-black flannel shirt.
Dee stood in place, nearly vibrating with discomfort. “Castiel’s an angel of the Lord,” she said, as if she had something to apologize to him for.
Castiel had been sent for Dean, and from what Sam had seen, he’d be willing to call what Castiel felt love. Not quite human, but then human love could be so very disappointing.
Sam didn’t know why he hadn’t connected the dots earlier and seen how some part of Dean might have been parched for Castiel’s words, his regard. Sam had never wanted to be important. He’d only ever wanted to make his own choices. Dean, though—but Dean was ready to leave his exalted place behind, too, for Sam’s safety.
Dean cleared his throat. “Anyway, there’s a sword.”
Which still didn’t explain why Dean would have hidden that knowledge, of all things. Only: “It’s for me, isn’t it.” His thoughts raced. It all made sense now. The seal wasn’t him; it was in the relationship between them. That was why there were two angels, one to guide Dean and one to watch Sam. Keeping the seal closed would require more than just a killing. It would require an offering. Dean had already demonstrated with Samhain that he was willing to give his life and Sam’s to save others. And Sam could do his part by submitting instead of fighting, because the angels’ prophecy said that the seal would break if he fought.
Dean bowed his head so that it rested against the glass of the window. “It’s not like I got saved from Hell because I was such a righteous man,” he said, the loathing thick in his voice. “Giving up your own life? That’s cake. The last battle, though—that’s gonna take more. Like killing someone you sold your soul for.”
Sam swallowed and thought about approaching Dean, hugging him close. He couldn’t imagine it happening without a struggle. Now Dean’s connection to Castiel made even more sense. Dad had told Dean pretty much the same thing, that he’d have to kill Sam for the greater good. Sam had prayed because he believed, not because he thought that God had specific marching orders for him. Dean, though, had always confused Father with God, a fault line running through him, and the earth was well and truly moving now.
“I wasn’t ever going to use it,” Dean said into the silence.
“I know,” Sam said, feeling the waters of this conversation getting high enough to drown him.
Dean spun around, face tight with fury. “Maybe you shouldn’t be so fucking confident!” he snapped, his fists raised as if he wanted Sam to start swinging. He’s an angel of the Lord, Dee’s voice echoed in Sam’s mind. Dee had retreated further, into the far corner of the room. What a nightmare this must be for her, watching it all play out and unable to act.
Sam held up his hands. “It’s okay,” he said and meant it. “We’ve got another use for that sword. Can you get it now?”
Dean nodded jerkily. “I can get it any time. I just have to ask. I have to ask.”
“Jesus,” Sam said involuntarily, stunned by the cruelty of it, barely noticing the way the word made his skin prickle.
“Not a name I’m real thrilled with right now,” Dean pointed out. Dee snorted agreement, which seemed to remind Dean of her existence. He looked over at her nervously, and relaxed a little when she smiled.
“I’ll start setting up for the ritual,” Sam said. “Once we have the sword, we can do it quick.”
Dean left without waiting for Sam to wish him luck.
****
Sam summoned Ruby. He thought about asking Dee to leave, but in the end he didn’t. Watching Ruby and Dee sneer at each other would have been amusing under other circumstances.
“We don’t have time for a catfight,” he said, which made them both scowl at him. “Dean went to go get his sword. So if you’ve got anything for me, now’s the time.”
Ruby’s eyes flickered black. “And her?”
“She’s on our side,” Sam said dismissively. “Tick-tock, Ruby.”
“Shit,” she swore, turning away from him and putting her fisted hands on her hips. “I really thought Dean’s pathetic devotion to you would keep him from flipping.”
Sam surreptitiously checked to see that Dee wasn’t going to blow her cover by reacting badly to that. Amazingly, Dee didn’t look like she was about to launch herself at Ruby, though she was snarling. Maybe being a girl gave her a better handle on her temper. “It’s hard to defy the will of God,” he pointed out.
Ruby tilted her head. “Not that fucking hard, Sam.” Which made him want to ask how she knew she wasn’t just doing what God wanted. God’s plan did seem to involve a two-sided battle. But he didn’t think that debating free will was his best strategy. Anyway, Ruby still had more to say. “I need to know if you’re ready. If we’re not going to make it through this, I don’t want to spend my last hours running stupid errands for a guy who can’t get it done.”
Sam took a deep breath. “He left me,” he told her, not having to try to get his voice to shake. “I did everything I could and he still left me. But I’m not going to stop fighting. You know me, Ruby. Do you think I’m giving up?”
She stared at him, as if she wanted to open up his skull and look directly at the contents. Try all she liked, she couldn’t read his mind, so he met her gaze and waited, ready.
At last, she nodded. “I’ll be right back.” She wheeled around and left the room, closing the door behind her as gently as if she actually cared how much noise they made.
“After she gives you whatever she’s got, can I kill her?” Dee asked matter-of-factly.
Sam blinked at her. Her hands were clenching and unclenching at her sides, twitching for a gun or a knife, and her look of disgust was too familiar. Sam felt the customary churning in his stomach, the reflected embarrassment from watching Dean’s hatred spew out. Sam had always feared that Dean’s contempt for Ruby was partly projection. “Let’s not try to do too much at once,” he suggested. “Once it’s all over, knock yourself out.”
Dee pouted, then went to watch at the window.
When Ruby returned, she was carrying a box, dark wood covered with incised designs. The wood was old and porous, rough against Sam’s fingers. The designs swirled and tangled over the surface like the clouds of a demon entering or leaving a body. Looking at them made Sam’s head ache, and the box was warm and greasy-feeling in his hands, though it left no residue.
The box had a simple toggle on one side keeping it closed. He twisted and flipped open the lid while Ruby stared at him like he was about to explode. Inside, it was lined with faded fabric that might once have been red, so old that it was stiff and shredded. Something was puddled at the bottom, black shading to gray. Sam reached in—two somethings, sliding across one another like dead fish, pricking his fingers as he pulled the top one out.
It was a glove, he realized as he held it up for inspection. Made out of confetti-sized bits of steel wired together, the metal blackened with age but glints of silver peeking through where the glove flexed and shifted. His skin buzzed from the contact, not an unpleasant feeling. He wanted very much to try it on.
“If it doesn’t fit, you must submit,” Ruby said.
Sam stared at her incredulously, his concentration broken.
She rolled her eyes. “Fine. They’re mystical weapons, all right? You put them on, they should protect you from the worst of what the other side throws at you. Try not to get hit with the sword.”
He didn’t bother to thank her. He wanted to put the gloves on, just to see what they were like. Fighting off the impulse occupied so much of his attention that he barely heard her sigh and stalk away.
Ruby stopped at the threshold of the room. “Good luck, Sam.”
He dragged his attention away from the gloves and managed to nod at her before she was gone. The gloves looked like they’d be snug. It would be pretty ridiculous if the apocalypse had to be called on account of Sam’s excessive size. Probably he should check the fit, just in case.
“Sam?” Dee asked, nervous. “Maybe you should, I dunno, put those away until we’re ready.”
He knew she was making sense, but at the same time—
She was standing beside him, reaching for him, and he ripped himself away, crumpling the glove in his hand as he hunched over the box and its precious contents.
“Okay,” she said carefully, “you’re gettin’ a little Gollum on me here.”
“Yeah,” he acknowledged. Then, as it sunk in: “Yeah.” Carefully, he uncurled his fingers from around the glove—it felt like pulling needles out of his skin, or maybe the tendrils of some fast-growing plant, embedded in him and not wanting to let go—and dropped it back into the box, slamming the lid before he could think better of it.
****
They opened the communication portal again to warn Samantha about what was coming.
Sam explained his theory and, as Dee’s attention wandered, talked with Samantha about her theories of the seals. He filled her in on Dean’s revelations about the sword, and Samantha’s betrayed expression drove Dee from the room entirely.
When he was sure she was gone, Sam turned back to Samantha. “You know they—they’re getting along well.”
She nodded.
“And you know what Lilith and Castiel are working up to.”
A muscle flickered in her cheek. “If the seal is us, our choices, then our world is already safe.” Without Dee, there was no one on Heaven’s side to come for her, and no one for Samantha to fight. “I haven’t felt a seal break since she’s been gone.”
“I have,” Sam said. It was all the confirmation he needed.
Unsurprisingly, Dee had taken all of thirty seconds to change her mind. She opened the door as Sam stared into Samantha’s face, wanting to be as fierce as she looked, and said, “So, we’re agreed.”
Samantha nodded and dismissed Sam from her attention, turning hungry-eyed to Dee. Dee approached. Sam stepped out of her way. She put her hand up to the wall, but instead of going palm-to-palm as Sam had expected, they bumped fists, or as close as possible. “See you on the flipside,” Dee said, so tenderly that Sam almost turned away.
Samantha smiled, and Sam truly hoped she was usually a better liar. But she pressed her lips together to stop the trembling and caught his eyes, warning him wordlessly to take good care of her sister as long as he could, no matter what else happened.
Sam cut the connection.
****
Then they were waiting for Dean.
“It’s been cool,” Dee said, unprompted, when Sam had finished laying out all the materials he thought he’d need. “Knowing what my Sam would be like as a guy.”
She was smiling at him, a soft, approving look that Sam hadn’t seen on Dean’s face in years. It was nice to think that maybe he just hadn’t been allowed to see it. He felt his own lips curving in answer.
Dee turned so that she was examining the ritual knives. “Just proves what I always knew: girls rule, boys drool.”
Sam snorted. He wasn’t in the mood to fight, even in jest, and he wasn’t sure he disagreed.
“Anyway,” she said, turning a blade in her hand so that her eyes flashed at him in reflection, “I figure we won’t have another chance, so I thought you should know. No matter how mad he is, he—he loves you more than anything. Through Hell and back, when Castiel kept trying to make it all about God.”
“I know,” Sam said gently, mostly because Dean wouldn’t want her to be saying this.
Dee shook her head. “He—I’m not saying he didn’t get scared, maybe think about lettin’ you go. But he still--It’s you. Even when he doesn’t get you, even when you scare the shit out of him.”
“I know, Dee,” he repeated, but it was like she was playing a recorded message.
“He chose you. He’s scared of Hell, so scared he’d rather not have been born at all if that’s where he’s headed back to, but if he does what he’s supposed to then it’s back to Hell anyway, ‘cause that’s what giving up on you would be.”
Sam went to her and wrapped her in his arms, ignoring her insincere wriggling, until she was flush against him, his chin resting on her head. She squeezed him back just a little, but seemed content to rest in his grasp.
“She knows,” he said at last. Dee sucked in a breath that was almost a gasp, then went even more liquid in his arms, warm and sweet-smelling and close to perfect.
Dean had given so much for so long. He deserved better than Heaven was offering him. Sam wasn’t going to let him make another sacrifice. It was time for Sam to be the grown-up.
When he tugged Dee over to the bed and pulled her down, she didn’t struggle long, and she was asleep almost at once.
****
Dean’s key scraping in the door woke them up and sent them scurrying to opposite sides of the bed, even though they were fully dressed and Dean wouldn’t be seeing anything he didn’t know about if they hadn’t been.
Sam forgot about it immediately when the door swung open and Dean hesitated before entering.
Dean should have looked ridiculous holding a sword. He was wearing distressed jeans and a beat-up leather jacket over a tight black T-shirt, hardly knight-in-shining-armor or even Monty Python knight material. And his grip should have been awkward. Dean could fight with pool cues, baseball bats, pipe wrenches, and, on one memorable occasion, a garden rake, but the longest blade he’d ever used was a machete. Somehow, though, his hand on the hilt looked as natural as it did holding a gun, and the brown scabbard riding on his hip could have been there for years.
The hilt of the sword wasn’t ornate. The squarish silver metal was darkened to near-black with age. Strips of something leathery were wrapped around it for a better grip, elephant-gray with a purplish sheen. Sam thought about descriptions he’d read of Leviathan and shuddered. He felt an ugly cold radiating from it, a dissonant note at the back of his head like a scream of despair. He wanted to reach out with his power and fling the thing several states away, if not into orbit.
Dee stared at the sword with open hunger, which made Sam even less happy about Dean’s calm, prepared demeanor. “Can I see it?” she asked, hushed.
Dean’s gaze flicked over to Sam. “I don’t—”
“You probably shouldn’t draw it until we’re ready,” Sam suggested, so that Dean wouldn’t have to deny her.
The sword hated him. He could feel its poison, seeping through the air. Give it a couple of hours, and Dean might be ready to fulfill his mission.
He went over to the box Ruby had left and pulled out the gloves. Gauntlets, he thought. If Dean could have a sword, why not gauntlets? As soon as they settled on his skin, he felt less threatened. The buzz-saw of the sword was still present, but muted. Then it doubled tenfold.
He turned and saw that Dean had pulled it a foot out of the sheath. The metal was as pure as water, gleaming like starlight. The whine in his head was a dentist’s drill and he had to force his hands from covering his ears.
“Dean!”
“What the fuck are those?” Dean’s aborted gesture brought the sword almost halfway free.
He held his hands up, which might not have been the smartest move, but he put his palms out reassuringly. “Please, put the sword back. Dean, it’s still me. It’s me. This is just part of what we need, okay? We need a lot of power in a small space.”
Dean’s forehead dampened with sweat. His hand shook, the sword clanking softly against the scabbard.
Dee stepped in between them, closing in on Dean until she rested her hand on his wrist. It looked like she had to push pretty hard to get him to slide the sword back into place. Then she shifted, so that she was standing at his shoulder, her eyes flicking between Dean’s face and the sword, little covetous glances that she couldn’t seem to stop.
“You told me to get it,” Dean grated out.
Sam thought it inadvisable to admit that he hadn’t understood how the sword would affect them. For that matter, he could feel rage bubbling at the edges of his consciousness, thick and red as lava. He could imagine it coating his hands, strengthening them as he reached out and crushed Dean’s throat.
He shook himself, remembering what Dee had said about Castiel’s prophecy: if the demon strikes, the seal will break. The gauntlets had to be part of this, tempting him the same way the sword was tempting Dean. “I know,” he admitted, waiting until Dean met his eyes again. “Dean, I’m feeling the same things, okay? But we’re not gonna give in.”
Dean nodded grimly.
“So what now?” Dee asked.
Sam had already drawn every protective rune and sigil he knew, plus the ones that gathered power in. The contradiction alone would be enough to make their location blaze like Las Vegas in the desert on the psychic plane.
“Now we open the door.” He’d already drawn a line down the center of the room. No more using walls—he wasn’t going to risk anybody getting embedded in a physical object.
He picked up the ritual knife. The gloves (slick and warm inside as the guts of a dying man; reassuring) fit so well that they were unnoticeable, no barrier at all. But when he imagined slicing into Dee’s arm, he had a hard time imagining himself stopping. He held the blade out to her, handle first. “I need you to bleed down this line,” he told her.
She didn’t ask why he’d given her the knife.
They watched as she dripped her blood, Winchester blood, in a solid line, nearly obscuring Sam’s chalk markings. Dean’s hand was clenched around the hilt of his sword like a boy with his teddy bear.
As she finished, the air moved, hard enough that Sam staggered back a step. His skin crawled with the increased proximity to the sword, but the important thing was that there was now a translucent white wall, as if someone had trapped the output of a smokestack in between panes of invisible glass, running down the center of the room. A few feet of the beds protruded out of the fog.
Sam exhaled.
“Don’t touch that,” he cautioned Dee, who was already stretching out her hand, like a five-year-old. The reproving look she gave him was no more mature, but she waited.
“Dean, cut a hole big enough to go through.”
Sam only just managed to dart out of the way as Dean drew the sword, cringing back against the side of the room. Dean’s arm wavered, and Sam saw how he had to wrench his attention back to the ghost wall. But when he swung, it was in an arc as perfect as a glass-cutter’s, tracing out a circle outlined in cool blue fire.
Dean stepped back and, after a long unpleasant moment, resheathed the sword. The circle glowed, blank and silent.
“Okay,” Dee said, too calmly. “Now what?”
Sam wanted to approach Dean, but with the sword and the gloves it was too dangerous. “Remember, you need to wait for Samantha. Otherwise there’s a big risk you’re sticking Dee here alone.” It was probably the only threat capable of keeping Dean from jumping right after him.
Sam stepped over to the circle and reached out with his metal-coated hands. He heard the shuffle of feet as Dee dragged Dean backwards, and was grateful she was there to keep them from getting lost. When his fingers touched the neon-blue arc, his stomach lurched violently and his head filled with daggers, but he pressed forward and his hands sunk into the barrier.
Carefully, he followed the line Dean had drawn, even as the pain intensified, cramps crawling up his hands to his arms and shoulders. He pulled as he went, loosening the material inside the circle—it was solid and air at the same time, uncanny and nauseating.
When he’d managed to get all the way around, he curled his fingers into the edge, one hand on each side, and stepped back, hanging on with every iota of strength both mental and physical.
He heard a thousand windows shattering, a cascade of glass that merged into the shriek of a single wounded voice. The substance in his hands fell to nothingness. And there was a hole in the world.
This wasn’t like the window that let them talk to Samantha. It was a full-on vortex, offering no glimpse of the reality beyond, swirling purple with crackles of lightning that seethed through the center and wriggled around the edges. As Sam watched, a bolt of energy jumped from the portal to the nearest lamp, exploding the light bulb and leaving the room illuminated only by the portal’s bruised, unnatural light.
“Hey,” Dee said, her hand catching Dean’s elbow, tugging at his jacket.
Dean turned back to her, and without another word they were kissing, kissing violently, Dee bowed back with Dean’s hand fisted in her hair. Kissing like Rick and Ilsa, knowing that it was the last time and that they’d chosen to make it that way.
Victor Laszlo had been a weakling. A real man would have done what he needed to do without destroying other lives in the process.
Sam screwed his courage to the sticking point and thrust himself through.
****
Time compressed into a single dot. Or maybe it was space, Sam folding in on himself until he was no larger than an ant’s footprint. He was rushing through black water, crushed by the gravity of it, choking with the absence of air. He was soaring through blood-blue skies, a missile with no destination, seething with nuclear fires. He was shooting out in every direction like the Big Bang, galaxies formed from every tooth and bit of bone, his blood flaring into paths made of stars.
He saw himself die in his crib, at age four when the car crashed, at six when the shtriga sucked him dry, at eighteen when a blood vessel burst in his brain, at twenty-two and twenty-three and twenty-four, a thousand deaths, a million more where he lived and lived and lived, past the end of the world, safe in his place in Hell. He saw Dean, whole and broken, fighting to the end or oblivious or years dead. He saw Dad and Jess and Mom and Sarah and Madison, and other people he didn’t recognize, all the ways it might have gone for him, but he never saw the portal. This was something new.
****
There was a shock of static electricity as Sam tumbled into regular existence, falling to his knees. He’d seen something during the journey, but it was already slipping away, lost in contrast to the undeniably real scrape of cheap carpet against his knees.
Deep down, he hadn’t really believed it would work. They didn’t just win; that wasn’t what happened to Winchesters.
He raised his head and saw the room he’d just left, except that he was facing the other way now. It was disorienting, but what was even more bizarre was the way the buzz in his head, a constant companion since just after Dean’s death when Ruby began his instruction, was just gone. It was like having a cast taken off, or a fever breaking: the strangeness of normalcy. The gauntlets were suddenly limp metal on his hands, just weird and scratchy. Dead. He peeled them off and let them drop to the floor.
Samantha stood watching him, her hands deep in her jacket. Her face was unreadable, which sounded implausible, but he really didn’t have much experience analyzing his own tells. He could see the barrel of the gun distorting the fabric of the right pocket, and he raised his hands as he sat back on his haunches. “Just me,” he said. “It worked.”
She nodded. He looked into her tilted hazel eyes and noticed that she was about the same height as Jess had been. She scrutinized him in return. He wanted very much to know exactly what Dee had been saying to her.
Sam closed his eyes for a second, readying himself. “You could go,” he suggested. It might be dangerous, putting a matched set on one side, but he thought Dean’s sword would be unlikely to work properly on Samantha, just as his gauntlets apparently had no purchase here.
Samantha had seen her sister go through the same changes. She hadn’t been a third wheel these past few days, but she could imagine just what it was like. She took a deep breath. “Like I’d let you stick me with both of them,” she said, her voice shredded but unwavering.
Sam was pathetically grateful that she wasn’t going to leave him alone. And it was smarter. Regardless of what they’d said to their siblings, segregating the black hats from the white was the most orderly way to save the worlds.
Samantha began to chant as Sam stood up. It was a standard ritual of closing, but Sam wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that she was putting a substantial complement of demonic power behind it. After a moment, the portal began to darken and speed up its swirling. The air pressure in the room continued to drop, and the window blinds clacked like the bones of a skeleton in the unnatural wind.
There was a pop, like a lightbulb breaking, and a wave of energy ran through them both like the tide as the portal vanished. Sam staggered but kept his feet.
They were alone.
Sam just breathed.
On to Part 5.
Later, he watched her back—her shoulderblade rising like a wall against a siege as she curled into herself on the bed—and thought.
Dee was right. He’d been selfish, treating Dean like the shadow of some platonic ideal. Clinging to him like a child might hang on to a stuffed animal, because Dean was the only security Sam had ever known, and after Stanford the only security he ever imagined he might get.
Dean deserved more than to be a symbol, whether to Sam or to Heaven. Right now they were just pawns, and they would be as long as Lilith and Castiel thought they could use the Winchesters against each other.
He had a window. He needed a door. He needed a tool strong enough to break open a wall that should have stayed closed.
“Hey,” he said, seriously enough that Dee couldn’t rightly ignore him.
Dee’s shoulders hunched briefly, then she rolled over on the bed to face him.
“I think I know how to open up the barriers between the worlds,” he said, a bit embarrassed to be using the term ‘worlds.’ “But we don’t have the juice to do it.”
“What would it take?” Dee asked, already clambering to her feet. Sam looked away so as not to get distracted by her nudity.
He shook his head. “The mercy seat. The Holy Grail. The nails used to crucify Jesus. Something big and bad, something that’s part of this whole ultimate sacrifice thing everyone seems to want to see me and Dean do.”
A wave of some unclassifiable emotion crossed her face, and then she ran her hands through her hair, looking around the room. “Where’s your phone?”
“I don’t think Domino’s delivers—”
That got him a look of such contempt that he felt himself shriveling in self-defense. “Phone, doofus.” She bent and rummaged around in his jeans until she extracted it, then hit redial without looking. “Dean? Get your ass back here.”
“What—?”
“I really think you’re gonna want to hear this from him,” she said, then looked guiltily away. Which meant, most likely, he wasn’t going to want to hear it at all.
****
“There’s a sword,” Dean said. Dee nodded grimly.
“A sword,” Sam repeated.
“It’s, uh, I guess it’s Michael’s sword.” In the past year they’d both become familiar enough with angelic lore to know that Michael’s sword would be at the forefront of the battle of the end times.
“You didn’t mention that,” Sam said mildly.
Dean scowled. “Yeah, well, you didn’t mention anything about your love affair with Ruby, so—”
“It isn’t a—” Sam stopped, struck by how Dean had said that. “Dean?”
Dean turned away, stalking towards the window so that he could brace his hands on the sill and stare out at the parking lot. His shoulders were hunched beneath his red-and-black flannel shirt.
Dee stood in place, nearly vibrating with discomfort. “Castiel’s an angel of the Lord,” she said, as if she had something to apologize to him for.
Castiel had been sent for Dean, and from what Sam had seen, he’d be willing to call what Castiel felt love. Not quite human, but then human love could be so very disappointing.
Sam didn’t know why he hadn’t connected the dots earlier and seen how some part of Dean might have been parched for Castiel’s words, his regard. Sam had never wanted to be important. He’d only ever wanted to make his own choices. Dean, though—but Dean was ready to leave his exalted place behind, too, for Sam’s safety.
Dean cleared his throat. “Anyway, there’s a sword.”
Which still didn’t explain why Dean would have hidden that knowledge, of all things. Only: “It’s for me, isn’t it.” His thoughts raced. It all made sense now. The seal wasn’t him; it was in the relationship between them. That was why there were two angels, one to guide Dean and one to watch Sam. Keeping the seal closed would require more than just a killing. It would require an offering. Dean had already demonstrated with Samhain that he was willing to give his life and Sam’s to save others. And Sam could do his part by submitting instead of fighting, because the angels’ prophecy said that the seal would break if he fought.
Dean bowed his head so that it rested against the glass of the window. “It’s not like I got saved from Hell because I was such a righteous man,” he said, the loathing thick in his voice. “Giving up your own life? That’s cake. The last battle, though—that’s gonna take more. Like killing someone you sold your soul for.”
Sam swallowed and thought about approaching Dean, hugging him close. He couldn’t imagine it happening without a struggle. Now Dean’s connection to Castiel made even more sense. Dad had told Dean pretty much the same thing, that he’d have to kill Sam for the greater good. Sam had prayed because he believed, not because he thought that God had specific marching orders for him. Dean, though, had always confused Father with God, a fault line running through him, and the earth was well and truly moving now.
“I wasn’t ever going to use it,” Dean said into the silence.
“I know,” Sam said, feeling the waters of this conversation getting high enough to drown him.
Dean spun around, face tight with fury. “Maybe you shouldn’t be so fucking confident!” he snapped, his fists raised as if he wanted Sam to start swinging. He’s an angel of the Lord, Dee’s voice echoed in Sam’s mind. Dee had retreated further, into the far corner of the room. What a nightmare this must be for her, watching it all play out and unable to act.
Sam held up his hands. “It’s okay,” he said and meant it. “We’ve got another use for that sword. Can you get it now?”
Dean nodded jerkily. “I can get it any time. I just have to ask. I have to ask.”
“Jesus,” Sam said involuntarily, stunned by the cruelty of it, barely noticing the way the word made his skin prickle.
“Not a name I’m real thrilled with right now,” Dean pointed out. Dee snorted agreement, which seemed to remind Dean of her existence. He looked over at her nervously, and relaxed a little when she smiled.
“I’ll start setting up for the ritual,” Sam said. “Once we have the sword, we can do it quick.”
Dean left without waiting for Sam to wish him luck.
****
Sam summoned Ruby. He thought about asking Dee to leave, but in the end he didn’t. Watching Ruby and Dee sneer at each other would have been amusing under other circumstances.
“We don’t have time for a catfight,” he said, which made them both scowl at him. “Dean went to go get his sword. So if you’ve got anything for me, now’s the time.”
Ruby’s eyes flickered black. “And her?”
“She’s on our side,” Sam said dismissively. “Tick-tock, Ruby.”
“Shit,” she swore, turning away from him and putting her fisted hands on her hips. “I really thought Dean’s pathetic devotion to you would keep him from flipping.”
Sam surreptitiously checked to see that Dee wasn’t going to blow her cover by reacting badly to that. Amazingly, Dee didn’t look like she was about to launch herself at Ruby, though she was snarling. Maybe being a girl gave her a better handle on her temper. “It’s hard to defy the will of God,” he pointed out.
Ruby tilted her head. “Not that fucking hard, Sam.” Which made him want to ask how she knew she wasn’t just doing what God wanted. God’s plan did seem to involve a two-sided battle. But he didn’t think that debating free will was his best strategy. Anyway, Ruby still had more to say. “I need to know if you’re ready. If we’re not going to make it through this, I don’t want to spend my last hours running stupid errands for a guy who can’t get it done.”
Sam took a deep breath. “He left me,” he told her, not having to try to get his voice to shake. “I did everything I could and he still left me. But I’m not going to stop fighting. You know me, Ruby. Do you think I’m giving up?”
She stared at him, as if she wanted to open up his skull and look directly at the contents. Try all she liked, she couldn’t read his mind, so he met her gaze and waited, ready.
At last, she nodded. “I’ll be right back.” She wheeled around and left the room, closing the door behind her as gently as if she actually cared how much noise they made.
“After she gives you whatever she’s got, can I kill her?” Dee asked matter-of-factly.
Sam blinked at her. Her hands were clenching and unclenching at her sides, twitching for a gun or a knife, and her look of disgust was too familiar. Sam felt the customary churning in his stomach, the reflected embarrassment from watching Dean’s hatred spew out. Sam had always feared that Dean’s contempt for Ruby was partly projection. “Let’s not try to do too much at once,” he suggested. “Once it’s all over, knock yourself out.”
Dee pouted, then went to watch at the window.
When Ruby returned, she was carrying a box, dark wood covered with incised designs. The wood was old and porous, rough against Sam’s fingers. The designs swirled and tangled over the surface like the clouds of a demon entering or leaving a body. Looking at them made Sam’s head ache, and the box was warm and greasy-feeling in his hands, though it left no residue.
The box had a simple toggle on one side keeping it closed. He twisted and flipped open the lid while Ruby stared at him like he was about to explode. Inside, it was lined with faded fabric that might once have been red, so old that it was stiff and shredded. Something was puddled at the bottom, black shading to gray. Sam reached in—two somethings, sliding across one another like dead fish, pricking his fingers as he pulled the top one out.
It was a glove, he realized as he held it up for inspection. Made out of confetti-sized bits of steel wired together, the metal blackened with age but glints of silver peeking through where the glove flexed and shifted. His skin buzzed from the contact, not an unpleasant feeling. He wanted very much to try it on.
“If it doesn’t fit, you must submit,” Ruby said.
Sam stared at her incredulously, his concentration broken.
She rolled her eyes. “Fine. They’re mystical weapons, all right? You put them on, they should protect you from the worst of what the other side throws at you. Try not to get hit with the sword.”
He didn’t bother to thank her. He wanted to put the gloves on, just to see what they were like. Fighting off the impulse occupied so much of his attention that he barely heard her sigh and stalk away.
Ruby stopped at the threshold of the room. “Good luck, Sam.”
He dragged his attention away from the gloves and managed to nod at her before she was gone. The gloves looked like they’d be snug. It would be pretty ridiculous if the apocalypse had to be called on account of Sam’s excessive size. Probably he should check the fit, just in case.
“Sam?” Dee asked, nervous. “Maybe you should, I dunno, put those away until we’re ready.”
He knew she was making sense, but at the same time—
She was standing beside him, reaching for him, and he ripped himself away, crumpling the glove in his hand as he hunched over the box and its precious contents.
“Okay,” she said carefully, “you’re gettin’ a little Gollum on me here.”
“Yeah,” he acknowledged. Then, as it sunk in: “Yeah.” Carefully, he uncurled his fingers from around the glove—it felt like pulling needles out of his skin, or maybe the tendrils of some fast-growing plant, embedded in him and not wanting to let go—and dropped it back into the box, slamming the lid before he could think better of it.
****
They opened the communication portal again to warn Samantha about what was coming.
Sam explained his theory and, as Dee’s attention wandered, talked with Samantha about her theories of the seals. He filled her in on Dean’s revelations about the sword, and Samantha’s betrayed expression drove Dee from the room entirely.
When he was sure she was gone, Sam turned back to Samantha. “You know they—they’re getting along well.”
She nodded.
“And you know what Lilith and Castiel are working up to.”
A muscle flickered in her cheek. “If the seal is us, our choices, then our world is already safe.” Without Dee, there was no one on Heaven’s side to come for her, and no one for Samantha to fight. “I haven’t felt a seal break since she’s been gone.”
“I have,” Sam said. It was all the confirmation he needed.
Unsurprisingly, Dee had taken all of thirty seconds to change her mind. She opened the door as Sam stared into Samantha’s face, wanting to be as fierce as she looked, and said, “So, we’re agreed.”
Samantha nodded and dismissed Sam from her attention, turning hungry-eyed to Dee. Dee approached. Sam stepped out of her way. She put her hand up to the wall, but instead of going palm-to-palm as Sam had expected, they bumped fists, or as close as possible. “See you on the flipside,” Dee said, so tenderly that Sam almost turned away.
Samantha smiled, and Sam truly hoped she was usually a better liar. But she pressed her lips together to stop the trembling and caught his eyes, warning him wordlessly to take good care of her sister as long as he could, no matter what else happened.
Sam cut the connection.
****
Then they were waiting for Dean.
“It’s been cool,” Dee said, unprompted, when Sam had finished laying out all the materials he thought he’d need. “Knowing what my Sam would be like as a guy.”
She was smiling at him, a soft, approving look that Sam hadn’t seen on Dean’s face in years. It was nice to think that maybe he just hadn’t been allowed to see it. He felt his own lips curving in answer.
Dee turned so that she was examining the ritual knives. “Just proves what I always knew: girls rule, boys drool.”
Sam snorted. He wasn’t in the mood to fight, even in jest, and he wasn’t sure he disagreed.
“Anyway,” she said, turning a blade in her hand so that her eyes flashed at him in reflection, “I figure we won’t have another chance, so I thought you should know. No matter how mad he is, he—he loves you more than anything. Through Hell and back, when Castiel kept trying to make it all about God.”
“I know,” Sam said gently, mostly because Dean wouldn’t want her to be saying this.
Dee shook her head. “He—I’m not saying he didn’t get scared, maybe think about lettin’ you go. But he still--It’s you. Even when he doesn’t get you, even when you scare the shit out of him.”
“I know, Dee,” he repeated, but it was like she was playing a recorded message.
“He chose you. He’s scared of Hell, so scared he’d rather not have been born at all if that’s where he’s headed back to, but if he does what he’s supposed to then it’s back to Hell anyway, ‘cause that’s what giving up on you would be.”
Sam went to her and wrapped her in his arms, ignoring her insincere wriggling, until she was flush against him, his chin resting on her head. She squeezed him back just a little, but seemed content to rest in his grasp.
“She knows,” he said at last. Dee sucked in a breath that was almost a gasp, then went even more liquid in his arms, warm and sweet-smelling and close to perfect.
Dean had given so much for so long. He deserved better than Heaven was offering him. Sam wasn’t going to let him make another sacrifice. It was time for Sam to be the grown-up.
When he tugged Dee over to the bed and pulled her down, she didn’t struggle long, and she was asleep almost at once.
****
Dean’s key scraping in the door woke them up and sent them scurrying to opposite sides of the bed, even though they were fully dressed and Dean wouldn’t be seeing anything he didn’t know about if they hadn’t been.
Sam forgot about it immediately when the door swung open and Dean hesitated before entering.
Dean should have looked ridiculous holding a sword. He was wearing distressed jeans and a beat-up leather jacket over a tight black T-shirt, hardly knight-in-shining-armor or even Monty Python knight material. And his grip should have been awkward. Dean could fight with pool cues, baseball bats, pipe wrenches, and, on one memorable occasion, a garden rake, but the longest blade he’d ever used was a machete. Somehow, though, his hand on the hilt looked as natural as it did holding a gun, and the brown scabbard riding on his hip could have been there for years.
The hilt of the sword wasn’t ornate. The squarish silver metal was darkened to near-black with age. Strips of something leathery were wrapped around it for a better grip, elephant-gray with a purplish sheen. Sam thought about descriptions he’d read of Leviathan and shuddered. He felt an ugly cold radiating from it, a dissonant note at the back of his head like a scream of despair. He wanted to reach out with his power and fling the thing several states away, if not into orbit.
Dee stared at the sword with open hunger, which made Sam even less happy about Dean’s calm, prepared demeanor. “Can I see it?” she asked, hushed.
Dean’s gaze flicked over to Sam. “I don’t—”
“You probably shouldn’t draw it until we’re ready,” Sam suggested, so that Dean wouldn’t have to deny her.
The sword hated him. He could feel its poison, seeping through the air. Give it a couple of hours, and Dean might be ready to fulfill his mission.
He went over to the box Ruby had left and pulled out the gloves. Gauntlets, he thought. If Dean could have a sword, why not gauntlets? As soon as they settled on his skin, he felt less threatened. The buzz-saw of the sword was still present, but muted. Then it doubled tenfold.
He turned and saw that Dean had pulled it a foot out of the sheath. The metal was as pure as water, gleaming like starlight. The whine in his head was a dentist’s drill and he had to force his hands from covering his ears.
“Dean!”
“What the fuck are those?” Dean’s aborted gesture brought the sword almost halfway free.
He held his hands up, which might not have been the smartest move, but he put his palms out reassuringly. “Please, put the sword back. Dean, it’s still me. It’s me. This is just part of what we need, okay? We need a lot of power in a small space.”
Dean’s forehead dampened with sweat. His hand shook, the sword clanking softly against the scabbard.
Dee stepped in between them, closing in on Dean until she rested her hand on his wrist. It looked like she had to push pretty hard to get him to slide the sword back into place. Then she shifted, so that she was standing at his shoulder, her eyes flicking between Dean’s face and the sword, little covetous glances that she couldn’t seem to stop.
“You told me to get it,” Dean grated out.
Sam thought it inadvisable to admit that he hadn’t understood how the sword would affect them. For that matter, he could feel rage bubbling at the edges of his consciousness, thick and red as lava. He could imagine it coating his hands, strengthening them as he reached out and crushed Dean’s throat.
He shook himself, remembering what Dee had said about Castiel’s prophecy: if the demon strikes, the seal will break. The gauntlets had to be part of this, tempting him the same way the sword was tempting Dean. “I know,” he admitted, waiting until Dean met his eyes again. “Dean, I’m feeling the same things, okay? But we’re not gonna give in.”
Dean nodded grimly.
“So what now?” Dee asked.
Sam had already drawn every protective rune and sigil he knew, plus the ones that gathered power in. The contradiction alone would be enough to make their location blaze like Las Vegas in the desert on the psychic plane.
“Now we open the door.” He’d already drawn a line down the center of the room. No more using walls—he wasn’t going to risk anybody getting embedded in a physical object.
He picked up the ritual knife. The gloves (slick and warm inside as the guts of a dying man; reassuring) fit so well that they were unnoticeable, no barrier at all. But when he imagined slicing into Dee’s arm, he had a hard time imagining himself stopping. He held the blade out to her, handle first. “I need you to bleed down this line,” he told her.
She didn’t ask why he’d given her the knife.
They watched as she dripped her blood, Winchester blood, in a solid line, nearly obscuring Sam’s chalk markings. Dean’s hand was clenched around the hilt of his sword like a boy with his teddy bear.
As she finished, the air moved, hard enough that Sam staggered back a step. His skin crawled with the increased proximity to the sword, but the important thing was that there was now a translucent white wall, as if someone had trapped the output of a smokestack in between panes of invisible glass, running down the center of the room. A few feet of the beds protruded out of the fog.
Sam exhaled.
“Don’t touch that,” he cautioned Dee, who was already stretching out her hand, like a five-year-old. The reproving look she gave him was no more mature, but she waited.
“Dean, cut a hole big enough to go through.”
Sam only just managed to dart out of the way as Dean drew the sword, cringing back against the side of the room. Dean’s arm wavered, and Sam saw how he had to wrench his attention back to the ghost wall. But when he swung, it was in an arc as perfect as a glass-cutter’s, tracing out a circle outlined in cool blue fire.
Dean stepped back and, after a long unpleasant moment, resheathed the sword. The circle glowed, blank and silent.
“Okay,” Dee said, too calmly. “Now what?”
Sam wanted to approach Dean, but with the sword and the gloves it was too dangerous. “Remember, you need to wait for Samantha. Otherwise there’s a big risk you’re sticking Dee here alone.” It was probably the only threat capable of keeping Dean from jumping right after him.
Sam stepped over to the circle and reached out with his metal-coated hands. He heard the shuffle of feet as Dee dragged Dean backwards, and was grateful she was there to keep them from getting lost. When his fingers touched the neon-blue arc, his stomach lurched violently and his head filled with daggers, but he pressed forward and his hands sunk into the barrier.
Carefully, he followed the line Dean had drawn, even as the pain intensified, cramps crawling up his hands to his arms and shoulders. He pulled as he went, loosening the material inside the circle—it was solid and air at the same time, uncanny and nauseating.
When he’d managed to get all the way around, he curled his fingers into the edge, one hand on each side, and stepped back, hanging on with every iota of strength both mental and physical.
He heard a thousand windows shattering, a cascade of glass that merged into the shriek of a single wounded voice. The substance in his hands fell to nothingness. And there was a hole in the world.
This wasn’t like the window that let them talk to Samantha. It was a full-on vortex, offering no glimpse of the reality beyond, swirling purple with crackles of lightning that seethed through the center and wriggled around the edges. As Sam watched, a bolt of energy jumped from the portal to the nearest lamp, exploding the light bulb and leaving the room illuminated only by the portal’s bruised, unnatural light.
“Hey,” Dee said, her hand catching Dean’s elbow, tugging at his jacket.
Dean turned back to her, and without another word they were kissing, kissing violently, Dee bowed back with Dean’s hand fisted in her hair. Kissing like Rick and Ilsa, knowing that it was the last time and that they’d chosen to make it that way.
Victor Laszlo had been a weakling. A real man would have done what he needed to do without destroying other lives in the process.
Sam screwed his courage to the sticking point and thrust himself through.
****
Time compressed into a single dot. Or maybe it was space, Sam folding in on himself until he was no larger than an ant’s footprint. He was rushing through black water, crushed by the gravity of it, choking with the absence of air. He was soaring through blood-blue skies, a missile with no destination, seething with nuclear fires. He was shooting out in every direction like the Big Bang, galaxies formed from every tooth and bit of bone, his blood flaring into paths made of stars.
He saw himself die in his crib, at age four when the car crashed, at six when the shtriga sucked him dry, at eighteen when a blood vessel burst in his brain, at twenty-two and twenty-three and twenty-four, a thousand deaths, a million more where he lived and lived and lived, past the end of the world, safe in his place in Hell. He saw Dean, whole and broken, fighting to the end or oblivious or years dead. He saw Dad and Jess and Mom and Sarah and Madison, and other people he didn’t recognize, all the ways it might have gone for him, but he never saw the portal. This was something new.
****
There was a shock of static electricity as Sam tumbled into regular existence, falling to his knees. He’d seen something during the journey, but it was already slipping away, lost in contrast to the undeniably real scrape of cheap carpet against his knees.
Deep down, he hadn’t really believed it would work. They didn’t just win; that wasn’t what happened to Winchesters.
He raised his head and saw the room he’d just left, except that he was facing the other way now. It was disorienting, but what was even more bizarre was the way the buzz in his head, a constant companion since just after Dean’s death when Ruby began his instruction, was just gone. It was like having a cast taken off, or a fever breaking: the strangeness of normalcy. The gauntlets were suddenly limp metal on his hands, just weird and scratchy. Dead. He peeled them off and let them drop to the floor.
Samantha stood watching him, her hands deep in her jacket. Her face was unreadable, which sounded implausible, but he really didn’t have much experience analyzing his own tells. He could see the barrel of the gun distorting the fabric of the right pocket, and he raised his hands as he sat back on his haunches. “Just me,” he said. “It worked.”
She nodded. He looked into her tilted hazel eyes and noticed that she was about the same height as Jess had been. She scrutinized him in return. He wanted very much to know exactly what Dee had been saying to her.
Sam closed his eyes for a second, readying himself. “You could go,” he suggested. It might be dangerous, putting a matched set on one side, but he thought Dean’s sword would be unlikely to work properly on Samantha, just as his gauntlets apparently had no purchase here.
Samantha had seen her sister go through the same changes. She hadn’t been a third wheel these past few days, but she could imagine just what it was like. She took a deep breath. “Like I’d let you stick me with both of them,” she said, her voice shredded but unwavering.
Sam was pathetically grateful that she wasn’t going to leave him alone. And it was smarter. Regardless of what they’d said to their siblings, segregating the black hats from the white was the most orderly way to save the worlds.
Samantha began to chant as Sam stood up. It was a standard ritual of closing, but Sam wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that she was putting a substantial complement of demonic power behind it. After a moment, the portal began to darken and speed up its swirling. The air pressure in the room continued to drop, and the window blinds clacked like the bones of a skeleton in the unnatural wind.
There was a pop, like a lightbulb breaking, and a wave of energy ran through them both like the tide as the portal vanished. Sam staggered but kept his feet.
They were alone.
Sam just breathed.
On to Part 5.
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