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Just when Sam was about to crack and start breaking things, Castiel brought an angel to the Bunker’s entrance and requested that Sam let her in. “Shamshiel is a mender of broken things. She was able to retard my deterioration. And Dean still needs physical healing. If he becomes human like this, he’ll die just as quickly as he did before. I am no longer capable of interventions of this magnitude.”
Sam wasn’t thrilled, but he scratched an exception for Shamshiel and led her down to the dungeon. The angel didn’t seem any happier to be there than he was to have her. “Castiel,” she said before Sam opened the bespelled door. “Are you sure? He’s a demon, and not just any demon.”
“It’s in the service of redeeming him,” Castiel said, his eyes on her intense. He was watching her like she was a lion that might decide that it was lamb season at any moment. Sam was moderately concerned but willing to let this play out, since even if she was concealing an angel blade Dean would survive. Not that he wanted Dean to have another hole in need of fixing. But the downside didn’t seem that great.
In a lot of ways, it was so much easier to go from crisis to crisis, not noticing how much damage was being covered up. Fighting evil was an addiction of its own, at least in Winchester hands. He really needed to do something about that, but not now.
The angry glances Shamshiel favored him with reminded him that he wasn’t much higher up on Heaven’s list when it came to smiteworthiness. While she bent over Dean and ignored his suggestive remarks, Sam grabbed Castiel’s elbow. “Thanks,” he said, to make sure he did say it before the next disaster. “I know you’re using all the pull you have. It can’t be easy.”
Castiel’s eyebrows rose. “It’s Dean.”
“Yeah,” Sam agreed. There were things he could’ve asked Castiel about that response, but they didn’t seem all that important at the moment.
Dean cursed, but in that showy way that meant he wasn’t really hurt. Sam turned towards him anyway.
“He is whole, insofar as a demon can be whole,” Shamshiel said. Her mouth was still twisted with disgust.
“Thank you,” Sam said, fervent to compensate for Dean’s sneer.
Castiel left the dungeon to see Shamshiel out. Sam didn’t know whether he was getting sucked back in to the politics of Heaven, and couldn’t afford to care at the moment. As long as Castiel remembered to reset the wards to keep her out in the future, that would be good enough.
“That was the last thing I was worried about before the final stages,” he told Dean. “I’m going to double your dose.”
Dean didn’t do nearly as well as he thought he did at covering up fear. Sam knew that being a demon wasn’t what Dean wanted; he loved his own guilt too much for that. Dean just didn’t want to give it his all and fail anyway. Sam got it, though honestly both of them ought to be used to that scenario by now.
Sam rolled up his sleeve—he looked more like a junkie than he ever had when he was drinking Ruby’s blood, more bruises on his arms than moles—wrapped the tubing around his forearm to make the vein pop, and drew a fresh syringe. Dean watched with fascinated dread, and gritted his teeth when Sam approached.
****
You’d think they shared enough blood that injections of Sam’s wouldn’t be painful. But he’d have chosen to be sanded with broken glass over this. How Crowley could’ve gotten addicted to this shit was a mystery Dean didn’t care to solve.
The jagged pain wasn’t the worst part. Sam’s blood had feelings in it, threading through his veins and into all the awful parts of his brain that had only quieted down when he’d become the thing that he was now. Sam was asking him to return to carrying this ten-ton weight he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding before. Dad, Jo, Ellen, Bobby, Kevin—they were curiosities, stories told by someone else, and then as the blood and prayers hit him they were fresh and real and all his fault. Sam was scraping away the black armor and uncovering the wriggling grub underneath.
Cas—when had he returned?—murmured something; Dean was too busy trying not to bite off his own tongue to pay attention.
Sam’s thumb on his jaw was so gentle that Dean cringed. “I’m gonna do another dose right away, Dean. I think we’re close.”
“Fuck you, Sam!”
Sam snorted.
Dean could feel it coming, rushing like a train with no one on the brakes. He was going to be torn apart. His heels thrummed against the chair as he thrashed without coordination or hope at the chains. Of course he was breaking. That’s what he did. “This is punishment, right?” His face was wet, tears slipping down to wet his collar, little kisses of cold. He wanted to scream. He wanted to turn this place into dust. His lips curled back from his teeth. “You can blow me!”
Another wave of pain hit, and his back bowed. When he could breathe again he spoke without thinking. “Or let me go, I’ll do you, I’ll be better than that bitch Ruby ever was, you don’t even know, the things I could do for you.” Right then, it seemed like the best idea ever.
He could feel Sam’s hesitation. Not because he’d take the offer but because—well, they had issues.
“This will all be over soon,” Sam decided, and moved forward.
“No,” he moaned, but he knew Sam was done listening to demons. Coming so soon on top of the last injection, it was like being set on by a nest of razor-winged wasps. Random memories surged to the top of his consciousness and burst, like fireworks. Watching Sam fall in Cold Oak. Loading Sam’s shorts with itching powder and snickering madly as Sam squirmed. Watching Sam fall at Stull. Sitting on the Impala with a beer, Sam, and the sunset. Watching Sam watch him get vamped. Standing shoulder to shoulder with Sam against the Leviathans. Finding Kevin’s body. Watching Sam eat the meal Dean had made for them, in their very own kitchen.
“Come back to us, Dean,” Sam coaxed, not for the first time.
“I can’t,” Dean said, tears slipping down his face. He could feel his eyes switching back and forth, like a heart’s erratic beat.
“You can,” Sam insisted. “You’re almost there, Dean. Come back to me. Just fight it one more time.”
The only way to have Sam was to pick it all back up. And his rotten heart didn’t know how to want anything else.
Every muscle in his body clenched, ugly and snotty and snarling. He jerked against his restraints once, twice. The world fell on him, every weakness and failure and moment of rest avalanching down on him until he should’ve been scoured skeleton-clean.
He couldn’t see. Everything was blooms of light and darkness, noises shuffling—Sam cursing as he crashed into something. “Sam? Sammy?”
“’sokay,” Sam said, from somewhere below Dean’s ear level, which meant he’d hit the floor for some reason. But he didn’t sound like Sam bleeding sounded. Dean blinked and began to make out shapes. Sam was picking himself up, while Cas looked like he’d been bracing himself against a hurricane. Every random scrap of paper and chalk-end in the room was up against the walls, slowly sliding downwards.
“Christo,” Sam said, and Dean didn’t feel much of anything except the pain of the ropes rubbing against his wrists and ankles.
Cas’s blank angelic stare washed over him like a searchlight. “The demonic essence is dying away,” Cas confirmed. “Sam—”
Cas wasn’t the type to hesitate. Dean turned his head towards his brother and saw Sam pull his shoulders back. When Sam opened his mouth, what came out wasn’t the prayers he’d used before. It was Enochian. It was the spell to close Hell.
Dean howled his refusal. He tore into his own head, trying to find that endless black pit inside him, and clutch it tight to himself so that Sam couldn’t continue.
Sam continued.
Dean thrashed against the ropes that bound him, too great for his human strength. All the clarity, all the lust, was wisping away. Dying like smoke blown away by a windstorm. He was just Dean Winchester, a weak and trembling idiot, no better than Alastair had found him. “Sammy!” It came out garbled, through the tears, and it was too late.
Sam was on the floor, unmoving.
Somewhere, someone was promising that he was going to kill Cas for letting this happen. He was bargaining, begging. The lights in the room were dimming. The ocean roared in his ears. He let himself drown.
****
“Congratulations on not dying,” Castiel said, deadpan.
Sam answered that by rolling onto his side and horking pretty spectacularly, considering that he didn’t remember the last time he ate more than a protein bar at one sitting. Castiel neither came closer nor stepped back.
When he was sure he was done, he pushed himself away from the mess and managed to sit up. He was still in the dungeon, but Dean wasn’t.
“Dean is sleeping,” Castiel said immediately. It was a little creepy how the only human interactions Castiel seemed to understand centered around Dean.
“Did it work?” Sam struggled to his feet.
“He’s human,” Castiel confirmed, speaking now to Sam’s back because Sam was staggering to the door. “The Mark is still on his arm, however.”
Sam stopped in his tracks, but only for a moment. Okay. Okay, that could be dealt with next. On to the next problem: Castiel had agreed that there was simply no way to tell whether the Trials could be completed so far apart (and with Sam no longer dying) without making an attempt; he’d also expressed uncertainty about whether all the damage to Sam’s body would return if he finished the third. If the ritual did require him to sacrifice his life, he’d failed.
Without being asked, Castiel had come to support him, which was good because Sam’s left leg was dragging a little, and also there seemed to be about three too many corridors in front of him.
As they shuffled towards Dean’s room, Sam braced himself and asked. “What about the doors of Hell?”
Castiel gave him a look that said quite plainly: I’ve just been carrying Dean’s unconscious body to his bedroom and watching you to make sure you don’t aspirate on your own vomit, and since Heaven’s radio station is under new management, I really have no idea.
“Yeah,” Sam said. “Would you mind making a call?”
“I live to serve the Winchesters,” he said. Sam thought that was slightly unfair, since this had been a joint project, but then again it meant that he let Sam go just in time for Sam to stumble into, then brace himself against, Dean’s door. He closed his eyes for a moment, enjoying the surge of triumph.
Then he went to sit by his brother and wait for him to wake up.
****
He was warm. His back hurt the way it did when he slept on it instead of on his stomach. The lights were on. Sam was in the room.
Dean opened his eyes and rose, or tried to. He’d forgotten how fucked-up his body had been. That lady angel had fixed the stab wound in his gut, but left behind the twinge in his leg and the spike that hit his shoulder if he stayed in place too long. He made it onto his elbows, but now Sam knew he was awake. “Come here so I can punch you,” he croaked.
“Hell is boarded over,” Sam said. “Castiel says that all the demons aboveground when it happened are still here, and that includes Crowley, but they’re cut off. If we take them out, they’re done. I’m betting his self-preservation instinct will keep him far away from here, especially if the alphas stay on his ass. You’re welcome, by the way.”
Dean swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Sam had completed the Trials, and Sam wasn’t dead. So much for his big fucking hurry to get it done with last year. Dean was sort of responsible for drawing the Trials out long enough for Sam to recover in between, but really that hadn’t been his plan and the collateral damage was on him, so he wasn’t going to rub it in. “I guess you got most of what you wanted.”
Sam unfolded from his chair and plunked himself down next to Dean. “I don’t actually have a death wish, you know. Ready to die isn’t the same as wanting to.” Their shoulders brushed. Sam radiated warmth, like he’d done most of his life, instead of the sickly chill from the first Trials. Dean couldn’t resist closing his eyes and leaning into the pressure of Sam’s presence.
“I meant what I said,” Sam told him. “You gotta let me make my own decisions, here on out.”
Dean let himself hope, just for a second, that ‘here on out’ was going to involve Sam being perfectly safe, sitting in the Bunker cataloging rare books. Shit, together they’d taken such big bites out of the supernatural most wanted list that even hunting was going to get marginally safer. But he knew them: they’d find some way to get neck deep again, whether it was angel wars or something completely new, like the Jefferson Starships had been.
“I know,” he said, finally. “Just—you can’t ask me not to follow you. I won’t do it again. You go, I go.” Selfish, of course. His stomach cramped. He managed to hide the wince, mostly because Sam was staring at his own hands.
“Yeah,” Sam said, surprising him out of the pain. Before he could say anything, Sam reached over and laced their fingers together, like they were fifth-grade sweethearts. “I’m not saying I like it. But that’s not my call.” The heaviness in his words was unmistakable: he was demanding the same of Dean. If Sam wanted to throw his life away, Dean had to let him.
“Okay,” he said, barely breathing it out. It was so hard not to squeeze Sam’s hand until the bones ground together. Keeping him close by hurting him. But that had to stop. He was alive and human again right now, and he was going to let Sam be Sam. “You know, you’re the best of all of us,” he said, his thumb rubbing over the back of Sam’s hand. Just enjoying the feel of Sam being there.
Sam made a choked sound, denying, but didn’t say anything Dean would have to refute. When it became clear that Dean wasn’t going to let go of his hand first, he cleared his throat. “Traditionally we hug now.”
“Aw, you ruined the moment,” Dean said, but he rose to his feet and opened his arms. With his face buried in Sam’s shoulder, he didn’t have to think about the meaning of the itch already crawling over his skin.
“Okay,” Sam said, breathing a little fast, when they pulled back. “You’re not a demon, and most of the rest are locked up. I say we celebrate. I’ll run to the store if you’ll make the burgers.”
“Win-win,” Dean said, and smiled. Sam deserved to enjoy his victory.
On his arm, the Mark burned, worse the second time around, erasing the hope that he’d stupidly allowed Sam to inspire in him.
****
Sam needed to consult with Dean to find out if a bit of medieval Cain lore had any connection to his experiences with the Mark. Dean wasn’t in the kitchen, and of course he wasn’t in the library; he wasn’t in the garage and he wasn’t in the dungeon. At last, Sam checked Dean’s bedroom. He’d left it for last because of all the places in the Bunker it reminded him most of their divide—not that he wanted to share a room again, but Dean having his own space had a new and unwelcome meaning for him now.
Dean wasn’t in his bedroom.
He was in his bathroom instead. Sam heard faint distressed sounds, not like Dean jerking off, and on instinct he flung open the door rather than knocking.
When Dean turned his head from the toilet, Sam saw blood all over his mouth. Sam stepped onto the tile, almost next to Dean. There were little red strings seeping up from the bottom of the toilet to the surface of the water. Sam couldn’t tell how much of what Dean had spewed up was food and how much parts of Dean. “Dean!”
Dean’s expression said he’d known this was coming, and that he thought the problem was that he was letting Sam down. “Turns out the human body can’t stand the Mark,” he said. He forced himself to his feet and turned to the sink, splashing water on his face. Now the blood was on his hands, too.
No. Dean did not get to do this to him. “You were fine before!”
Dean swiveled to face Sam head-on. “No, you were so pissed you didn’t see before. As long as I was killing, that helped some. But I needed to kill a lot, not some once-a-week thing. If it hadn’t’ve been Metatron, it’d’ve happened anyway.”
Sam ran his hands through his hair so he wouldn’t start punching and kicking. “So, what, you’re dying again? You’re going to die and turn back into a demon and this will start all over again?” Sam knew he was yelling. He didn’t care. Dean had done this, and somehow he’d found a way to make it worse, and even though he hadn’t meant to do it intent had never been their problem.
Dean shrugged. “I kinda hoped one time would be enough. Thought maybe the Mark would go with the cure.” His face in the mirror was just as self-deprecatingly ashamed, like a puppy who’d made a mess. Pretending that there was anything small about this.
“The gate to Hell is closed,” Sam thought out loud. “Shouldn’t that make a difference?”
Dean busied himself flushing the toilet and washing his hands. “This ain’t possession, Sammy. Don’t need a demon out of Hell when it was already inside me.”
****
Dean got why Sam was furious with him. Like all Winchester plans, this one hadn’t quite gotten the job done, because Dean had gone and taken the Mark without reading the manual first. And Dean hadn’t thought far enough beyond being cured to wonder how far into humanity it would take him.
At least this time he knew where he was headed. And if Sam would sit down for a minute and listen, maybe they’d get to say goodbye for real.
Of course, that depended on Dean being able to keep his cool through a whole conversation. The bloodlust thing wasn’t exactly making that easy. He’d forgotten, as a demon, just how uncontrolled being a human was. At random intervals, the need to make something bleed would seize him entirely, stopping him in his tracks, and he had to crawl to some dark corner while he shook it out. It was like being turned into ice and vaporized, all at once; it was like having his hands in his own guts and twisting. He knew that picking up the Blade and going hunting would make things easier, at least for a while. But he also knew where that led now, so instead he banged his head against a wall until the spasm passed. He didn’t even want to think about what would happen if Cas or Sam found him one of those times.
Sam was tearing through the library again, looking for Cain-related stuff he might’ve missed when they were trying to handle Abbadon and Metatron at the same time. It was easier to be with Cas, who didn’t look at him like Dean was strangling an adorable dog he’d hand-raised after rescuing from drowning.
“So,” he said, plunking himself down next to Cas, who’d decided that the stairs down from the Bunker entrance were a good place to sit. “How’re you doing?” The details were fuzzy, but he thought that Cas might be in trouble of his own. The angel always got that pinched look when he was hiding something from them—or maybe it was that he looked relaxed on the very rare occasions he wasn’t.
Cas contemplated his bottle—it was fucking ginger ale, of course it was—dangling from his fingers. “My grace is fading,” he said. “Technically it’s not my grace. It’s not a proper fit, and the temporary treatments I’ve received from Shamshiel are no longer effective.”
Dean nodded like he understood. Cas had the wrong engine inside; that was a recipe for breakdown. “When it goes, you’ll be human.” It wasn’t a guess; he’d seen the future Cas. That future was now in the past, he realized: angelic time travel was mindfuckery and a half.
“If the detaching grace doesn’t kill me first,” Cas agreed. Dean examined him more closely. He always looked about a pint of blood and forty hours of sleep down, but now his hands shook minutely, and his hair wasn’t just rumpled but greasy.
“What can we do?” he asked. “You want me to grab you another angel?” Hell, he might’ve done that for Cas even without the Mark making it sound like fun.
Cas turned his head with that birdlike swiftness, evidently trying to figure out just how serious Dean was. “Don’t,” he said, with finality. “If there is a solution, it’s not that, and it’s not here. But perhaps it’s my time. I’ve been … through many states in the past few years, enough to make the millennia beforehand seem insignificant. I’m not even sure I want to be an angel any more. I’ve seen too much of what we’ve become, without God to direct us.”
Dean sure as shit knew what it was like to want it all to be over. He was selfish enough to want Cas to stick around, but—Sam wasn’t wrong about Dean making those decisions for someone else, no matter how much Dean didn’t want to be left behind. He could give Cas the permission he’d never given Sammy. “Okay. But you let me know the second you get an idea. Don’t ever think we don’t want you around any way we can have you. Human, angel, whatever.”
They sat in silence for a minute. “Thank you, Dean,” Cas said, heavy and quiet.
Dean cleared his throat and sniffed away the heaviness in his sinuses. “Uh, in case I don’t get the chance again—thanks for helping Sam with all this. He—I know he’s all grown up and everything, but he still needs someone watching his back. If it couldn’t be me, I’m real glad it was you.”
Cas considered that. “When we met, I saw you only as the righteous man, and Sam as a curiosity—an abomination struggling mightily to do good. I regret many things that have happened since, but I don’t regret learning that it wasn’t as simple as Heaven told us. I don’t regret standing with you.”
Dean rubbed at the dust in his eye. “Yeah. Me too.” And if Cas understood what Dean was really trying to say, he didn’t call Dean on it.
****
Sam had been forwarding any potential hunts he came across to Garth, even after Garth stopped replying. He’d been too much of a coward to ask Dean for the details that had led Garth to avoid Winchester contact, but he had a good guess at the general outline. Dean was going to have to grovel when he was human again. Or, more realistically, Dean would mumble and not meet Garth’s eyes and Garth would forgive him anyway, because people let Dean get away with murder, and that wasn’t a metaphor.
But Garth couldn’t handle everything, and right after Sam had sent another message about another angry ghost he came across a story that was almost happening next door. Along the Niobrara River in Nebraska, the picked-over corpses of bison and elk had been appearing for several weeks, which freaked out Fish & Wildlife but didn’t get much attention. It was when hikers started to vanish that other people started to notice. A little hacking revealed that there’d been a witness to one of the disappearances, now being held for psychiatric observation. After all, whatever the survivor had seen, it couldn’t have possibly been a giant man-bat scooping up his brother in its talons.
When Sam told Dean about it, Dean perked right up. “Batman, Sammy,” he said, then made na-na-na-na noises until Sam threw his hands up and stalked out.
If Sam went on this hunt alone, Dean would break out; he’d already proven as much. It was a four-hour drive from the Bunker. Taking Dean along was marginally less dangerous than leaving him, Sam concluded.
Dean’s glee when Sam gave him his anti-Crowley charms back wasn’t at all reassuring. Sam also hadn’t factored in the annoyance of Dean’s infinite supply of man-bat and bat-man jokes.
There would be no pretending to be feds on this trip. The very least troubling thing Dean was likely to do was Hulk out on a local cop, and Hell only knew what he’d do to a witness.
Fortunately the doctor’s notes from the survivor were quite detailed, once Sam hacked the hospital records. He described a larger-than-human attacker, with a bat’s smushed-in face, gray skin and huge wings, along with powerful mammalian arms and legs. He’d fired his hunting rifle point-blank into its back when it was getting away with his brother, to no effect other than black powder marks. The doctor interpreted the claw marks on the survivor’s arm as self-inflicted wounds supporting the delusional narrative, but to Sam they looked to be about the right size for the kind of monster he’d seen.
Based on the description, Sam was guessing gargoyle. They weren’t common in the US, which was a good thing since their skin was apparently like stone and they outmassed the average grizzly bear. Also, and in blatant defiance of the laws of physics, they could fly.
Dean was just excited to go out into the woods. And to use the explosive rounds Sam loaded up on, as if Sam was going to put a firearm in Dean’s hands.
They drove out near to where the latest attack had occurred. If Dean had been in his right mind, he never would have entrusted the car to the open lots run by the National Park Service, but he busied himself smirking and complaining about the length of the hike to the river. Sam gritted his teeth and let the weight of his pack distract him.
When they reached the river, it was bounded on both sides by fences, and the occasional ‘no trespassing’ sign, some with cutesy variations about how eager the owner was to use his shotgun.
Dean gestured at one of the signs. “Isn’t this public land?”
“No, just the river,” Sam told him. “Most of the land on either side is privately owned.”
“Fuckers,” Dean mused. “Ain’t that just like people, chopping up the world and keeping it for themselves. I swear, half the time you can’t tell the demons from the humans without an exorcism.”
The river looked like a miniature ocean, standing waves rising and curling over on themselves. It was beautiful, and they’d never seen anything like it before even after decades criss-crossing the country. Humans had preserved and could see the beauty in this river. Dean couldn’t get why that mattered now. But he would. Sam was going to make sure of that.
“Gargoyles,” Dean said to himself, clearly relishing the thought of something new to kill. “Next you’re gonna tell me the Last Unicorn is really out there.”
“I’m a little afraid of what you’d do to it,” Sam told him.
Dean flipped him off and they continued down the riverbank.
****
Walk long enough and you’ll find something that wants to kill you. If you’re a Winchester, anyway. Dean sensed them before he saw them—the Mark was very eager to find new things to kill—and grabbed Sam’s shoulder, shoving them both up against a rock outcropping to protect their backs.
The gargoyles’ wings were huge, which was a bonus because it meant that only two could converge on them at once. The lead two landed simultaneously, with a rustling-wing sound that almost made Dean look around to see if Cas had arrived.
“He said to kill the bigger one,” the slightly less ugly gargoyle said, “but you both look tiny to me.” Its voice was like rocks grinding against each other.
Crowley must’ve turned the gargoyles, promised them something if they went against the other monsters. That little fucker could sell dead man’s blood to vampires.
“Whatever Crowley promised you, there’s no way he’ll deliver,” Sam said, completely sincere as he braced himself and readied his shotgun.
“Our lawyers say different.”
Gargoyles had freaking lawyers? Even Sam squinched up his face in amazement at that. “There’s one thing I bet he didn’t tell you,” Dean said.
“Yeah?” the gargoyle said, chest puffed up. Dean knew he was a hypocrite about the macho posturing, but honestly it was kind of ridiculous on guys who weren’t him.
“Yeah,” Dean said, and called the Blade to himself. Then he lost track for a while. Black blood; the sound of Sam’s shotgun, the grenade rounds exploding and peppering him with stony bits of gargoyle; getting hit on the shoulder with what felt like a ton of solid granite; the Blade, soaking it all up and asking for more; claws on his back and thigh; the gargle they made as they died, better than a girl groaning the fake name he’d given her while she came.
Sam’s yell brought him back into real time—Sam’s voice disappearing into the sky, yanked by one of the flying bastards. Dean leapt over three crumpled bodies and grabbed one whose only injury was a spurting wound in the leg. It cringed as he mounted it and put the Blade to its throat. “Get me up there if you want to live,” he suggested.
The gargoyle beat its wings against the ground a few times and they rose. Turned out, Dean hated flying even worse without anything between him and the air but a few feet of monster. Felt like his head was going in a different direction from the rest of him, a dizzy, stretched-rubber feeling. He could hear Sam giving his captor a hard time, tangling in its arms so it couldn’t drop him yet.
“Up,” he ordered. “Get me over it.” His ride, breathing so hard he half expected it to faint, groaned and flapped harder. The air whooshed by, until every part of Dean’s exposed skin felt like ice, and the gargoyle’s body shuddered like it was about to come apart like balsa wood, but they climbed further.
The other one was busy trying to peel Sam off, not trying to gain height.
“Please,” his gargoyle whined. He looked down: they were probably twelve feet above Sam, who was at least seventy feet over the ground.
“Yeah,” he said, and slit the gargoyle’s throat. Promises to monsters didn’t count.
Shoving it away as it fell, he twisted in the air. The Blade’s hunger might’ve helped, because he landed just right to drag the edge down the side of Sam’s gargoyle’s neck, slicing vertically until the Blade caught for a second on the gargoyle’s collarbone.
The gargoyle’s wings stilled and started to fold. Dean’s stomach dropped, along with the rest of him.
“Grab onto the wings—pull them out!” Sam yelled from below him.
Dean let the Blade take care of itself and obeyed, wrenching the big muscles that connected the gargoyle’s wings to its back up until the wings were nearly extended, floppy in death but still catching the air some. They were moving way too fast, but not dropping like a stone, gliding towards whatever was underneath them.
Which turned out to be a bunch of trees. When they hit the first one, the glide ended and they all went tumbling ass over elbows in a ball of Sam, Dean, and dead bleeding gargoyle, collecting leaves and sticks as they went. Dean’s back struck a branch that would’ve been big enough to sit on, but instead it broke under their combined weight and they kept falling, slowed by every collision.
The sudden silence when they reached the ground made Dean wonder whether he’d gone deaf.
“… ow,” Sam said from beneath him, with the corpse in between.
Dean rolled off, groaning, and shoved the gargoyle off of his brother.
He dropped to his knees. “Sam?” He poked at Sam’s ribs and got the you-asshole groan instead of the yes-they’re-cracked groan, and Sam didn’t seem to be bleeding anywhere that required stitches. Dean himself felt like the tree bark had taken off half his face, but nothing seemed to be flapping loose, so he held his hand out to help Sam to his feet.
Sam was panting like he’d just—well, just killed a bunch of monsters and fallen out of the sky. “Next time,” Sam suggested, “maybe wait until we’re on the ground before you kill the monster holding us up.”
“Everyone’s a critic,” Dean shot back, but his heart wasn’t in it. Flying pieces of shit. He’d known how stupid that second in-air kill was, but he hadn’t been able to help himself. There was a joke Bobby used to tell about a scorpion who hitched a ride on a turtle; it wasn’t anything he hadn’t done to people he loved too. He was sliding back into the Pit, and Sam couldn’t stop it. And Crowley was ready to take them as soon as they were weak.
****
In the end, there wasn’t any information about Cain Sam hadn’t already found. There was only Cain.
Dean coughed up the location with a minimum of fuss. The fuss occurred when Sam proposed to go alone. Dean put the Blade halfway through a wall in the ensuing discussion. In Sam’s mind, that was an argument against letting Dean come along. But, do unto others, or at least do unto Dean; he wasn’t going to lock Dean up to stop him while Dean was still nominally human. Not to mention that he doubted that they could hold Dean without Dean’s at least passive consent.
The bucolic setting probably would’ve been a mindfuck if Sam hadn’t already been used to horrors lurking in every golden field and purple mountain majesty. As it was, he drove up the gravel path to Cain’s house feeling a twitch in his shoulderblades, expecting an attack at any moment.
Dean stood on the porch next to Sam like a truant being dragged to detention, conscious that he’d made this mess and too ashamed to admit it. Cain must’ve known about their approach, but he waited until Sam knocked on his door to answer.
“My name is Sam Winchester,” Sam said, not letting Cain begin. “And we’re here to ask you to take the Mark from my brother.”
Cain stared at him for a moment, then gestured them inside. Sam had to sidle around him to enter. He was a big man, but not as big as Sam. He had a sense of calm around him, a vibe that would dull Sam’s edge if he let it. Dean followed Sam. When Sam looked back he could see Dean’s hands trembling.
“So, Sam and Dean Winchester,” Cain said, leading them further inside, towards the kitchen, “why would I take my favor back?”
As a general rule, Dean was good with kids and people directly in the middle of supernatural shit; Sam was good with witnesses and, occasionally, monsters. They’d decided that Cain counted as the latter, so Sam had rehearsed his pitch throughout the long drive. In the end there were only a few things to say, here in this cheerful, outdated little kitchen with the sunshine coming through the curtains and the clock ticking heedlessly on the wall. “Because it’s making him something he doesn’t want to be.”
Cain merely looked at him, waiting for more. “Please,” Sam said. “Please.” He had nothing to bargain with.
Cain sat down in a too-small wooden chair. Sam recognized the dominance move and stayed put. Cain scratched at his beard, looking at the fruit bowl on his kitchen table instead of at Sam. “You love him still,” Cain said at last. “After all he’s done to you?” Beside him, Dean winced.
Maybe Cain had followed demon gossip and knew exactly what he was asking. Or maybe Cain was asking on his own behalf. That was all right. Sam could give him what he wanted. “You don’t have to stop loving someone when they hurt you.” He felt Dean shift, uneasy, not ready to believe.
Cain met his eyes. It wasn’t anything like looking into the mirrored slick of an ordinary demon. Cain had lived thousands of years in pain and rage, and then possibly thousands more clamping down on the desire to hurt. It was like being face to face with Niagara Falls, or with a tornado. But a man who’d renounced the Knights of Hell had to have some scraps of compassion left.
****
[Time to make a choice: Track 1 (the cure succeeds) or Track 2 (the cure doesn’t succeed)]
Sam wasn’t thrilled, but he scratched an exception for Shamshiel and led her down to the dungeon. The angel didn’t seem any happier to be there than he was to have her. “Castiel,” she said before Sam opened the bespelled door. “Are you sure? He’s a demon, and not just any demon.”
“It’s in the service of redeeming him,” Castiel said, his eyes on her intense. He was watching her like she was a lion that might decide that it was lamb season at any moment. Sam was moderately concerned but willing to let this play out, since even if she was concealing an angel blade Dean would survive. Not that he wanted Dean to have another hole in need of fixing. But the downside didn’t seem that great.
In a lot of ways, it was so much easier to go from crisis to crisis, not noticing how much damage was being covered up. Fighting evil was an addiction of its own, at least in Winchester hands. He really needed to do something about that, but not now.
The angry glances Shamshiel favored him with reminded him that he wasn’t much higher up on Heaven’s list when it came to smiteworthiness. While she bent over Dean and ignored his suggestive remarks, Sam grabbed Castiel’s elbow. “Thanks,” he said, to make sure he did say it before the next disaster. “I know you’re using all the pull you have. It can’t be easy.”
Castiel’s eyebrows rose. “It’s Dean.”
“Yeah,” Sam agreed. There were things he could’ve asked Castiel about that response, but they didn’t seem all that important at the moment.
Dean cursed, but in that showy way that meant he wasn’t really hurt. Sam turned towards him anyway.
“He is whole, insofar as a demon can be whole,” Shamshiel said. Her mouth was still twisted with disgust.
“Thank you,” Sam said, fervent to compensate for Dean’s sneer.
Castiel left the dungeon to see Shamshiel out. Sam didn’t know whether he was getting sucked back in to the politics of Heaven, and couldn’t afford to care at the moment. As long as Castiel remembered to reset the wards to keep her out in the future, that would be good enough.
“That was the last thing I was worried about before the final stages,” he told Dean. “I’m going to double your dose.”
Dean didn’t do nearly as well as he thought he did at covering up fear. Sam knew that being a demon wasn’t what Dean wanted; he loved his own guilt too much for that. Dean just didn’t want to give it his all and fail anyway. Sam got it, though honestly both of them ought to be used to that scenario by now.
Sam rolled up his sleeve—he looked more like a junkie than he ever had when he was drinking Ruby’s blood, more bruises on his arms than moles—wrapped the tubing around his forearm to make the vein pop, and drew a fresh syringe. Dean watched with fascinated dread, and gritted his teeth when Sam approached.
****
You’d think they shared enough blood that injections of Sam’s wouldn’t be painful. But he’d have chosen to be sanded with broken glass over this. How Crowley could’ve gotten addicted to this shit was a mystery Dean didn’t care to solve.
The jagged pain wasn’t the worst part. Sam’s blood had feelings in it, threading through his veins and into all the awful parts of his brain that had only quieted down when he’d become the thing that he was now. Sam was asking him to return to carrying this ten-ton weight he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding before. Dad, Jo, Ellen, Bobby, Kevin—they were curiosities, stories told by someone else, and then as the blood and prayers hit him they were fresh and real and all his fault. Sam was scraping away the black armor and uncovering the wriggling grub underneath.
Cas—when had he returned?—murmured something; Dean was too busy trying not to bite off his own tongue to pay attention.
Sam’s thumb on his jaw was so gentle that Dean cringed. “I’m gonna do another dose right away, Dean. I think we’re close.”
“Fuck you, Sam!”
Sam snorted.
Dean could feel it coming, rushing like a train with no one on the brakes. He was going to be torn apart. His heels thrummed against the chair as he thrashed without coordination or hope at the chains. Of course he was breaking. That’s what he did. “This is punishment, right?” His face was wet, tears slipping down to wet his collar, little kisses of cold. He wanted to scream. He wanted to turn this place into dust. His lips curled back from his teeth. “You can blow me!”
Another wave of pain hit, and his back bowed. When he could breathe again he spoke without thinking. “Or let me go, I’ll do you, I’ll be better than that bitch Ruby ever was, you don’t even know, the things I could do for you.” Right then, it seemed like the best idea ever.
He could feel Sam’s hesitation. Not because he’d take the offer but because—well, they had issues.
“This will all be over soon,” Sam decided, and moved forward.
“No,” he moaned, but he knew Sam was done listening to demons. Coming so soon on top of the last injection, it was like being set on by a nest of razor-winged wasps. Random memories surged to the top of his consciousness and burst, like fireworks. Watching Sam fall in Cold Oak. Loading Sam’s shorts with itching powder and snickering madly as Sam squirmed. Watching Sam fall at Stull. Sitting on the Impala with a beer, Sam, and the sunset. Watching Sam watch him get vamped. Standing shoulder to shoulder with Sam against the Leviathans. Finding Kevin’s body. Watching Sam eat the meal Dean had made for them, in their very own kitchen.
“Come back to us, Dean,” Sam coaxed, not for the first time.
“I can’t,” Dean said, tears slipping down his face. He could feel his eyes switching back and forth, like a heart’s erratic beat.
“You can,” Sam insisted. “You’re almost there, Dean. Come back to me. Just fight it one more time.”
The only way to have Sam was to pick it all back up. And his rotten heart didn’t know how to want anything else.
Every muscle in his body clenched, ugly and snotty and snarling. He jerked against his restraints once, twice. The world fell on him, every weakness and failure and moment of rest avalanching down on him until he should’ve been scoured skeleton-clean.
He couldn’t see. Everything was blooms of light and darkness, noises shuffling—Sam cursing as he crashed into something. “Sam? Sammy?”
“’sokay,” Sam said, from somewhere below Dean’s ear level, which meant he’d hit the floor for some reason. But he didn’t sound like Sam bleeding sounded. Dean blinked and began to make out shapes. Sam was picking himself up, while Cas looked like he’d been bracing himself against a hurricane. Every random scrap of paper and chalk-end in the room was up against the walls, slowly sliding downwards.
“Christo,” Sam said, and Dean didn’t feel much of anything except the pain of the ropes rubbing against his wrists and ankles.
Cas’s blank angelic stare washed over him like a searchlight. “The demonic essence is dying away,” Cas confirmed. “Sam—”
Cas wasn’t the type to hesitate. Dean turned his head towards his brother and saw Sam pull his shoulders back. When Sam opened his mouth, what came out wasn’t the prayers he’d used before. It was Enochian. It was the spell to close Hell.
Dean howled his refusal. He tore into his own head, trying to find that endless black pit inside him, and clutch it tight to himself so that Sam couldn’t continue.
Sam continued.
Dean thrashed against the ropes that bound him, too great for his human strength. All the clarity, all the lust, was wisping away. Dying like smoke blown away by a windstorm. He was just Dean Winchester, a weak and trembling idiot, no better than Alastair had found him. “Sammy!” It came out garbled, through the tears, and it was too late.
Sam was on the floor, unmoving.
Somewhere, someone was promising that he was going to kill Cas for letting this happen. He was bargaining, begging. The lights in the room were dimming. The ocean roared in his ears. He let himself drown.
****
“Congratulations on not dying,” Castiel said, deadpan.
Sam answered that by rolling onto his side and horking pretty spectacularly, considering that he didn’t remember the last time he ate more than a protein bar at one sitting. Castiel neither came closer nor stepped back.
When he was sure he was done, he pushed himself away from the mess and managed to sit up. He was still in the dungeon, but Dean wasn’t.
“Dean is sleeping,” Castiel said immediately. It was a little creepy how the only human interactions Castiel seemed to understand centered around Dean.
“Did it work?” Sam struggled to his feet.
“He’s human,” Castiel confirmed, speaking now to Sam’s back because Sam was staggering to the door. “The Mark is still on his arm, however.”
Sam stopped in his tracks, but only for a moment. Okay. Okay, that could be dealt with next. On to the next problem: Castiel had agreed that there was simply no way to tell whether the Trials could be completed so far apart (and with Sam no longer dying) without making an attempt; he’d also expressed uncertainty about whether all the damage to Sam’s body would return if he finished the third. If the ritual did require him to sacrifice his life, he’d failed.
Without being asked, Castiel had come to support him, which was good because Sam’s left leg was dragging a little, and also there seemed to be about three too many corridors in front of him.
As they shuffled towards Dean’s room, Sam braced himself and asked. “What about the doors of Hell?”
Castiel gave him a look that said quite plainly: I’ve just been carrying Dean’s unconscious body to his bedroom and watching you to make sure you don’t aspirate on your own vomit, and since Heaven’s radio station is under new management, I really have no idea.
“Yeah,” Sam said. “Would you mind making a call?”
“I live to serve the Winchesters,” he said. Sam thought that was slightly unfair, since this had been a joint project, but then again it meant that he let Sam go just in time for Sam to stumble into, then brace himself against, Dean’s door. He closed his eyes for a moment, enjoying the surge of triumph.
Then he went to sit by his brother and wait for him to wake up.
****
He was warm. His back hurt the way it did when he slept on it instead of on his stomach. The lights were on. Sam was in the room.
Dean opened his eyes and rose, or tried to. He’d forgotten how fucked-up his body had been. That lady angel had fixed the stab wound in his gut, but left behind the twinge in his leg and the spike that hit his shoulder if he stayed in place too long. He made it onto his elbows, but now Sam knew he was awake. “Come here so I can punch you,” he croaked.
“Hell is boarded over,” Sam said. “Castiel says that all the demons aboveground when it happened are still here, and that includes Crowley, but they’re cut off. If we take them out, they’re done. I’m betting his self-preservation instinct will keep him far away from here, especially if the alphas stay on his ass. You’re welcome, by the way.”
Dean swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Sam had completed the Trials, and Sam wasn’t dead. So much for his big fucking hurry to get it done with last year. Dean was sort of responsible for drawing the Trials out long enough for Sam to recover in between, but really that hadn’t been his plan and the collateral damage was on him, so he wasn’t going to rub it in. “I guess you got most of what you wanted.”
Sam unfolded from his chair and plunked himself down next to Dean. “I don’t actually have a death wish, you know. Ready to die isn’t the same as wanting to.” Their shoulders brushed. Sam radiated warmth, like he’d done most of his life, instead of the sickly chill from the first Trials. Dean couldn’t resist closing his eyes and leaning into the pressure of Sam’s presence.
“I meant what I said,” Sam told him. “You gotta let me make my own decisions, here on out.”
Dean let himself hope, just for a second, that ‘here on out’ was going to involve Sam being perfectly safe, sitting in the Bunker cataloging rare books. Shit, together they’d taken such big bites out of the supernatural most wanted list that even hunting was going to get marginally safer. But he knew them: they’d find some way to get neck deep again, whether it was angel wars or something completely new, like the Jefferson Starships had been.
“I know,” he said, finally. “Just—you can’t ask me not to follow you. I won’t do it again. You go, I go.” Selfish, of course. His stomach cramped. He managed to hide the wince, mostly because Sam was staring at his own hands.
“Yeah,” Sam said, surprising him out of the pain. Before he could say anything, Sam reached over and laced their fingers together, like they were fifth-grade sweethearts. “I’m not saying I like it. But that’s not my call.” The heaviness in his words was unmistakable: he was demanding the same of Dean. If Sam wanted to throw his life away, Dean had to let him.
“Okay,” he said, barely breathing it out. It was so hard not to squeeze Sam’s hand until the bones ground together. Keeping him close by hurting him. But that had to stop. He was alive and human again right now, and he was going to let Sam be Sam. “You know, you’re the best of all of us,” he said, his thumb rubbing over the back of Sam’s hand. Just enjoying the feel of Sam being there.
Sam made a choked sound, denying, but didn’t say anything Dean would have to refute. When it became clear that Dean wasn’t going to let go of his hand first, he cleared his throat. “Traditionally we hug now.”
“Aw, you ruined the moment,” Dean said, but he rose to his feet and opened his arms. With his face buried in Sam’s shoulder, he didn’t have to think about the meaning of the itch already crawling over his skin.
“Okay,” Sam said, breathing a little fast, when they pulled back. “You’re not a demon, and most of the rest are locked up. I say we celebrate. I’ll run to the store if you’ll make the burgers.”
“Win-win,” Dean said, and smiled. Sam deserved to enjoy his victory.
On his arm, the Mark burned, worse the second time around, erasing the hope that he’d stupidly allowed Sam to inspire in him.
****
Sam needed to consult with Dean to find out if a bit of medieval Cain lore had any connection to his experiences with the Mark. Dean wasn’t in the kitchen, and of course he wasn’t in the library; he wasn’t in the garage and he wasn’t in the dungeon. At last, Sam checked Dean’s bedroom. He’d left it for last because of all the places in the Bunker it reminded him most of their divide—not that he wanted to share a room again, but Dean having his own space had a new and unwelcome meaning for him now.
Dean wasn’t in his bedroom.
He was in his bathroom instead. Sam heard faint distressed sounds, not like Dean jerking off, and on instinct he flung open the door rather than knocking.
When Dean turned his head from the toilet, Sam saw blood all over his mouth. Sam stepped onto the tile, almost next to Dean. There were little red strings seeping up from the bottom of the toilet to the surface of the water. Sam couldn’t tell how much of what Dean had spewed up was food and how much parts of Dean. “Dean!”
Dean’s expression said he’d known this was coming, and that he thought the problem was that he was letting Sam down. “Turns out the human body can’t stand the Mark,” he said. He forced himself to his feet and turned to the sink, splashing water on his face. Now the blood was on his hands, too.
No. Dean did not get to do this to him. “You were fine before!”
Dean swiveled to face Sam head-on. “No, you were so pissed you didn’t see before. As long as I was killing, that helped some. But I needed to kill a lot, not some once-a-week thing. If it hadn’t’ve been Metatron, it’d’ve happened anyway.”
Sam ran his hands through his hair so he wouldn’t start punching and kicking. “So, what, you’re dying again? You’re going to die and turn back into a demon and this will start all over again?” Sam knew he was yelling. He didn’t care. Dean had done this, and somehow he’d found a way to make it worse, and even though he hadn’t meant to do it intent had never been their problem.
Dean shrugged. “I kinda hoped one time would be enough. Thought maybe the Mark would go with the cure.” His face in the mirror was just as self-deprecatingly ashamed, like a puppy who’d made a mess. Pretending that there was anything small about this.
“The gate to Hell is closed,” Sam thought out loud. “Shouldn’t that make a difference?”
Dean busied himself flushing the toilet and washing his hands. “This ain’t possession, Sammy. Don’t need a demon out of Hell when it was already inside me.”
****
Dean got why Sam was furious with him. Like all Winchester plans, this one hadn’t quite gotten the job done, because Dean had gone and taken the Mark without reading the manual first. And Dean hadn’t thought far enough beyond being cured to wonder how far into humanity it would take him.
At least this time he knew where he was headed. And if Sam would sit down for a minute and listen, maybe they’d get to say goodbye for real.
Of course, that depended on Dean being able to keep his cool through a whole conversation. The bloodlust thing wasn’t exactly making that easy. He’d forgotten, as a demon, just how uncontrolled being a human was. At random intervals, the need to make something bleed would seize him entirely, stopping him in his tracks, and he had to crawl to some dark corner while he shook it out. It was like being turned into ice and vaporized, all at once; it was like having his hands in his own guts and twisting. He knew that picking up the Blade and going hunting would make things easier, at least for a while. But he also knew where that led now, so instead he banged his head against a wall until the spasm passed. He didn’t even want to think about what would happen if Cas or Sam found him one of those times.
Sam was tearing through the library again, looking for Cain-related stuff he might’ve missed when they were trying to handle Abbadon and Metatron at the same time. It was easier to be with Cas, who didn’t look at him like Dean was strangling an adorable dog he’d hand-raised after rescuing from drowning.
“So,” he said, plunking himself down next to Cas, who’d decided that the stairs down from the Bunker entrance were a good place to sit. “How’re you doing?” The details were fuzzy, but he thought that Cas might be in trouble of his own. The angel always got that pinched look when he was hiding something from them—or maybe it was that he looked relaxed on the very rare occasions he wasn’t.
Cas contemplated his bottle—it was fucking ginger ale, of course it was—dangling from his fingers. “My grace is fading,” he said. “Technically it’s not my grace. It’s not a proper fit, and the temporary treatments I’ve received from Shamshiel are no longer effective.”
Dean nodded like he understood. Cas had the wrong engine inside; that was a recipe for breakdown. “When it goes, you’ll be human.” It wasn’t a guess; he’d seen the future Cas. That future was now in the past, he realized: angelic time travel was mindfuckery and a half.
“If the detaching grace doesn’t kill me first,” Cas agreed. Dean examined him more closely. He always looked about a pint of blood and forty hours of sleep down, but now his hands shook minutely, and his hair wasn’t just rumpled but greasy.
“What can we do?” he asked. “You want me to grab you another angel?” Hell, he might’ve done that for Cas even without the Mark making it sound like fun.
Cas turned his head with that birdlike swiftness, evidently trying to figure out just how serious Dean was. “Don’t,” he said, with finality. “If there is a solution, it’s not that, and it’s not here. But perhaps it’s my time. I’ve been … through many states in the past few years, enough to make the millennia beforehand seem insignificant. I’m not even sure I want to be an angel any more. I’ve seen too much of what we’ve become, without God to direct us.”
Dean sure as shit knew what it was like to want it all to be over. He was selfish enough to want Cas to stick around, but—Sam wasn’t wrong about Dean making those decisions for someone else, no matter how much Dean didn’t want to be left behind. He could give Cas the permission he’d never given Sammy. “Okay. But you let me know the second you get an idea. Don’t ever think we don’t want you around any way we can have you. Human, angel, whatever.”
They sat in silence for a minute. “Thank you, Dean,” Cas said, heavy and quiet.
Dean cleared his throat and sniffed away the heaviness in his sinuses. “Uh, in case I don’t get the chance again—thanks for helping Sam with all this. He—I know he’s all grown up and everything, but he still needs someone watching his back. If it couldn’t be me, I’m real glad it was you.”
Cas considered that. “When we met, I saw you only as the righteous man, and Sam as a curiosity—an abomination struggling mightily to do good. I regret many things that have happened since, but I don’t regret learning that it wasn’t as simple as Heaven told us. I don’t regret standing with you.”
Dean rubbed at the dust in his eye. “Yeah. Me too.” And if Cas understood what Dean was really trying to say, he didn’t call Dean on it.
****
Sam had been forwarding any potential hunts he came across to Garth, even after Garth stopped replying. He’d been too much of a coward to ask Dean for the details that had led Garth to avoid Winchester contact, but he had a good guess at the general outline. Dean was going to have to grovel when he was human again. Or, more realistically, Dean would mumble and not meet Garth’s eyes and Garth would forgive him anyway, because people let Dean get away with murder, and that wasn’t a metaphor.
But Garth couldn’t handle everything, and right after Sam had sent another message about another angry ghost he came across a story that was almost happening next door. Along the Niobrara River in Nebraska, the picked-over corpses of bison and elk had been appearing for several weeks, which freaked out Fish & Wildlife but didn’t get much attention. It was when hikers started to vanish that other people started to notice. A little hacking revealed that there’d been a witness to one of the disappearances, now being held for psychiatric observation. After all, whatever the survivor had seen, it couldn’t have possibly been a giant man-bat scooping up his brother in its talons.
When Sam told Dean about it, Dean perked right up. “Batman, Sammy,” he said, then made na-na-na-na noises until Sam threw his hands up and stalked out.
If Sam went on this hunt alone, Dean would break out; he’d already proven as much. It was a four-hour drive from the Bunker. Taking Dean along was marginally less dangerous than leaving him, Sam concluded.
Dean’s glee when Sam gave him his anti-Crowley charms back wasn’t at all reassuring. Sam also hadn’t factored in the annoyance of Dean’s infinite supply of man-bat and bat-man jokes.
There would be no pretending to be feds on this trip. The very least troubling thing Dean was likely to do was Hulk out on a local cop, and Hell only knew what he’d do to a witness.
Fortunately the doctor’s notes from the survivor were quite detailed, once Sam hacked the hospital records. He described a larger-than-human attacker, with a bat’s smushed-in face, gray skin and huge wings, along with powerful mammalian arms and legs. He’d fired his hunting rifle point-blank into its back when it was getting away with his brother, to no effect other than black powder marks. The doctor interpreted the claw marks on the survivor’s arm as self-inflicted wounds supporting the delusional narrative, but to Sam they looked to be about the right size for the kind of monster he’d seen.
Based on the description, Sam was guessing gargoyle. They weren’t common in the US, which was a good thing since their skin was apparently like stone and they outmassed the average grizzly bear. Also, and in blatant defiance of the laws of physics, they could fly.
Dean was just excited to go out into the woods. And to use the explosive rounds Sam loaded up on, as if Sam was going to put a firearm in Dean’s hands.
They drove out near to where the latest attack had occurred. If Dean had been in his right mind, he never would have entrusted the car to the open lots run by the National Park Service, but he busied himself smirking and complaining about the length of the hike to the river. Sam gritted his teeth and let the weight of his pack distract him.
When they reached the river, it was bounded on both sides by fences, and the occasional ‘no trespassing’ sign, some with cutesy variations about how eager the owner was to use his shotgun.
Dean gestured at one of the signs. “Isn’t this public land?”
“No, just the river,” Sam told him. “Most of the land on either side is privately owned.”
“Fuckers,” Dean mused. “Ain’t that just like people, chopping up the world and keeping it for themselves. I swear, half the time you can’t tell the demons from the humans without an exorcism.”
The river looked like a miniature ocean, standing waves rising and curling over on themselves. It was beautiful, and they’d never seen anything like it before even after decades criss-crossing the country. Humans had preserved and could see the beauty in this river. Dean couldn’t get why that mattered now. But he would. Sam was going to make sure of that.
“Gargoyles,” Dean said to himself, clearly relishing the thought of something new to kill. “Next you’re gonna tell me the Last Unicorn is really out there.”
“I’m a little afraid of what you’d do to it,” Sam told him.
Dean flipped him off and they continued down the riverbank.
****
Walk long enough and you’ll find something that wants to kill you. If you’re a Winchester, anyway. Dean sensed them before he saw them—the Mark was very eager to find new things to kill—and grabbed Sam’s shoulder, shoving them both up against a rock outcropping to protect their backs.
The gargoyles’ wings were huge, which was a bonus because it meant that only two could converge on them at once. The lead two landed simultaneously, with a rustling-wing sound that almost made Dean look around to see if Cas had arrived.
“He said to kill the bigger one,” the slightly less ugly gargoyle said, “but you both look tiny to me.” Its voice was like rocks grinding against each other.
Crowley must’ve turned the gargoyles, promised them something if they went against the other monsters. That little fucker could sell dead man’s blood to vampires.
“Whatever Crowley promised you, there’s no way he’ll deliver,” Sam said, completely sincere as he braced himself and readied his shotgun.
“Our lawyers say different.”
Gargoyles had freaking lawyers? Even Sam squinched up his face in amazement at that. “There’s one thing I bet he didn’t tell you,” Dean said.
“Yeah?” the gargoyle said, chest puffed up. Dean knew he was a hypocrite about the macho posturing, but honestly it was kind of ridiculous on guys who weren’t him.
“Yeah,” Dean said, and called the Blade to himself. Then he lost track for a while. Black blood; the sound of Sam’s shotgun, the grenade rounds exploding and peppering him with stony bits of gargoyle; getting hit on the shoulder with what felt like a ton of solid granite; the Blade, soaking it all up and asking for more; claws on his back and thigh; the gargle they made as they died, better than a girl groaning the fake name he’d given her while she came.
Sam’s yell brought him back into real time—Sam’s voice disappearing into the sky, yanked by one of the flying bastards. Dean leapt over three crumpled bodies and grabbed one whose only injury was a spurting wound in the leg. It cringed as he mounted it and put the Blade to its throat. “Get me up there if you want to live,” he suggested.
The gargoyle beat its wings against the ground a few times and they rose. Turned out, Dean hated flying even worse without anything between him and the air but a few feet of monster. Felt like his head was going in a different direction from the rest of him, a dizzy, stretched-rubber feeling. He could hear Sam giving his captor a hard time, tangling in its arms so it couldn’t drop him yet.
“Up,” he ordered. “Get me over it.” His ride, breathing so hard he half expected it to faint, groaned and flapped harder. The air whooshed by, until every part of Dean’s exposed skin felt like ice, and the gargoyle’s body shuddered like it was about to come apart like balsa wood, but they climbed further.
The other one was busy trying to peel Sam off, not trying to gain height.
“Please,” his gargoyle whined. He looked down: they were probably twelve feet above Sam, who was at least seventy feet over the ground.
“Yeah,” he said, and slit the gargoyle’s throat. Promises to monsters didn’t count.
Shoving it away as it fell, he twisted in the air. The Blade’s hunger might’ve helped, because he landed just right to drag the edge down the side of Sam’s gargoyle’s neck, slicing vertically until the Blade caught for a second on the gargoyle’s collarbone.
The gargoyle’s wings stilled and started to fold. Dean’s stomach dropped, along with the rest of him.
“Grab onto the wings—pull them out!” Sam yelled from below him.
Dean let the Blade take care of itself and obeyed, wrenching the big muscles that connected the gargoyle’s wings to its back up until the wings were nearly extended, floppy in death but still catching the air some. They were moving way too fast, but not dropping like a stone, gliding towards whatever was underneath them.
Which turned out to be a bunch of trees. When they hit the first one, the glide ended and they all went tumbling ass over elbows in a ball of Sam, Dean, and dead bleeding gargoyle, collecting leaves and sticks as they went. Dean’s back struck a branch that would’ve been big enough to sit on, but instead it broke under their combined weight and they kept falling, slowed by every collision.
The sudden silence when they reached the ground made Dean wonder whether he’d gone deaf.
“… ow,” Sam said from beneath him, with the corpse in between.
Dean rolled off, groaning, and shoved the gargoyle off of his brother.
He dropped to his knees. “Sam?” He poked at Sam’s ribs and got the you-asshole groan instead of the yes-they’re-cracked groan, and Sam didn’t seem to be bleeding anywhere that required stitches. Dean himself felt like the tree bark had taken off half his face, but nothing seemed to be flapping loose, so he held his hand out to help Sam to his feet.
Sam was panting like he’d just—well, just killed a bunch of monsters and fallen out of the sky. “Next time,” Sam suggested, “maybe wait until we’re on the ground before you kill the monster holding us up.”
“Everyone’s a critic,” Dean shot back, but his heart wasn’t in it. Flying pieces of shit. He’d known how stupid that second in-air kill was, but he hadn’t been able to help himself. There was a joke Bobby used to tell about a scorpion who hitched a ride on a turtle; it wasn’t anything he hadn’t done to people he loved too. He was sliding back into the Pit, and Sam couldn’t stop it. And Crowley was ready to take them as soon as they were weak.
****
In the end, there wasn’t any information about Cain Sam hadn’t already found. There was only Cain.
Dean coughed up the location with a minimum of fuss. The fuss occurred when Sam proposed to go alone. Dean put the Blade halfway through a wall in the ensuing discussion. In Sam’s mind, that was an argument against letting Dean come along. But, do unto others, or at least do unto Dean; he wasn’t going to lock Dean up to stop him while Dean was still nominally human. Not to mention that he doubted that they could hold Dean without Dean’s at least passive consent.
The bucolic setting probably would’ve been a mindfuck if Sam hadn’t already been used to horrors lurking in every golden field and purple mountain majesty. As it was, he drove up the gravel path to Cain’s house feeling a twitch in his shoulderblades, expecting an attack at any moment.
Dean stood on the porch next to Sam like a truant being dragged to detention, conscious that he’d made this mess and too ashamed to admit it. Cain must’ve known about their approach, but he waited until Sam knocked on his door to answer.
“My name is Sam Winchester,” Sam said, not letting Cain begin. “And we’re here to ask you to take the Mark from my brother.”
Cain stared at him for a moment, then gestured them inside. Sam had to sidle around him to enter. He was a big man, but not as big as Sam. He had a sense of calm around him, a vibe that would dull Sam’s edge if he let it. Dean followed Sam. When Sam looked back he could see Dean’s hands trembling.
“So, Sam and Dean Winchester,” Cain said, leading them further inside, towards the kitchen, “why would I take my favor back?”
As a general rule, Dean was good with kids and people directly in the middle of supernatural shit; Sam was good with witnesses and, occasionally, monsters. They’d decided that Cain counted as the latter, so Sam had rehearsed his pitch throughout the long drive. In the end there were only a few things to say, here in this cheerful, outdated little kitchen with the sunshine coming through the curtains and the clock ticking heedlessly on the wall. “Because it’s making him something he doesn’t want to be.”
Cain merely looked at him, waiting for more. “Please,” Sam said. “Please.” He had nothing to bargain with.
Cain sat down in a too-small wooden chair. Sam recognized the dominance move and stayed put. Cain scratched at his beard, looking at the fruit bowl on his kitchen table instead of at Sam. “You love him still,” Cain said at last. “After all he’s done to you?” Beside him, Dean winced.
Maybe Cain had followed demon gossip and knew exactly what he was asking. Or maybe Cain was asking on his own behalf. That was all right. Sam could give him what he wanted. “You don’t have to stop loving someone when they hurt you.” He felt Dean shift, uneasy, not ready to believe.
Cain met his eyes. It wasn’t anything like looking into the mirrored slick of an ordinary demon. Cain had lived thousands of years in pain and rage, and then possibly thousands more clamping down on the desire to hurt. It was like being face to face with Niagara Falls, or with a tornado. But a man who’d renounced the Knights of Hell had to have some scraps of compassion left.
****
[Time to make a choice: Track 1 (the cure succeeds) or Track 2 (the cure doesn’t succeed)]
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