Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dean had gotten there as soon as he could.

After his father had called him and said he’d needed help on a hunt, he’d gunned it all the way to Michigan, and got to the hotel around noon. His father hadn’t said what was going on over the phone, just that things were behaving oddly and something was up, but his father would never ask for help on a hunt if it wasn’t a big deal.

Room 023. First right, three doors down. That was it.

Dean knocked, waited half a second, then opened the door. It was unlocked and the hotel was evacuated.

John looked up from his journal as soon as Dean entered the room.”Good, you’re here. There’s been a lot of demonic activity around here, spiking about a month ago, and then nothing until now. Something’s coming.”

Dean blinked, thrown for a moment by the transition—when John had told him to hurry, he’d envisioned something a little more immediate.

John raised an eyebrow at his son’s lack of perceptiveness.

“It’s arriving tonight, whatever it is. And it’s big enough to scare off every demon in a ten-mile radius.” He said.

“Ah.” Dean replied. That sounded bad. “So, what is it? Demon? Some kind of spirit? Should we be getting out the holy water?”

His father just shook his head. “I’m not sure. There’s nothing—anywhere—that references something like this happening. Whatever it is, it’s never come around before.”

That meant preparing for everything, then. At least there wasn’t any research involved. Dean sat on one of the two beds in the sterile, white room. “Do we know when it’s coming?”

“Should be about eight tonight, if the pattern holds. We’ll have time to stock up on everything we need to, and get some rest besides, if we’re lucky. For now, you stand guard here and I’ll restock on ammo.”

“Sir.” Dean nodded his acquiescence and leaned back on the bed, preparing for a long wait. John walked out of the hotel room.

Not five minutes had passed before Dean’s phone rang in his pocket. Pulling it out, he checked the caller I.D.

And promptly dropped his phone onto the mattress.

Sammy?

His stubborn, prideful little brother was calling him? On his own, without…well, anything?

Dean scrambled to scoop his phone up and fumbled with the talk button. He’d never thought he’d hear from him until Sammy was ready to come back home from college or Dean finally gave up on living without his brother, but if Sammy was calling now, he certainly wouldn’t waste the chance.

“Sammy?” He asked, breathless.

“Dean! Are you alright?” Sam’s voice came through the phone, tinny and worried but there.

“Sam! Did something happen? Why are you calling?” He demanded, sitting up on his bed. Sam’s tone was borderline frantic and Dean didn’t like it.

“I…no. Nothing. Tell me, are you alright? Are you hurt anywhere? Talk to me, Dean.” Sam’s voice was no less tense, but now Dean could practically feel the I shouldn’t have called, I’m just gonna go, why did I think this was a good idea? creeping in.

“I’m fine, Sammy, I haven’t been doing anything too dangerous lately. What’s going on?”

Sam sighed. “It’s nothing, I’m sure. I shouldn’t have called. It was just a feeling. Look, I’ve got to go.” And before Dean could say anything, his little brother hung up on him.

Dean frowned, thinking, even as he automatically moved to call Sam back. Sammy’s instincts were uncanny—he couldn’t remember the last time Sam had had a bad feeling about something that hadn’t turned out to be completely deserved. For Sam to be concerned enough to call, despite practically disowning his family a year ago when he finally cut ties with Dean…it didn’t bode well.

He cursed as his call was ignored and got up to pace the floor of the hotel room. He didn’t like this. Some mysterious demonic activities, Sammy calling after months of silence for a bad feeling…and that wasn’t all. Sam had sounded scared. Sam just wasn’t afraid of many things—not after being trained as a hunter. Something rattling his brother that much was almost unheard of.

Dean called Sam one more time before giving it up as a lost cause. Obviously his brother had recovered his pride enough to remember that he wasn’t talking to Dean and wanted nothing to do with supernatural anything.

He was still pacing the length of the hotel room, and still no closer to answers, when John came back in bearing weapons and ammunition of all kinds.

“Sammy just called me.” Dean blurted out the instant his father crossed the threshold.

His father nearly dropped his load of weaponry before recovering his composure.

“I thought the two of you didn’t talk anymore?” He asked.

Dean let out a frustrated huff of air. “That’s just it—we don’t. I didn’t think I’d be hearing from him for a couple more years at least, but then he calls me and says he has a bad feeling. He kept asking if I was okay. He sounded scared, dad.”

John’s brow furrowed. He’d always put credence in Sam’s instincts, sometimes even more than Dean. He knew immediately what Dean was worried about.

“You think this is related to what’s going on here? Do you think Sam knows something we don’t?”

But Dean shook his head. “He would have told me if he thought we were walking into danger and he could prevent it. He hasn’t been answering my calls, so I’d say he’s said all he’s going to.”

John’s brow furrowed and he moved to set his armful of weapons down on the far bed.

“We’ll have to be cautious about this, but we can’t just ignore it. Something could happen tonight that puts everyone in this town in danger, and we need to be here to stop it. We’ll set up salt lines and wait it out.” Dean’s father declared, checking one of the guns for ammunition.

It happened suddenly. One minute there was nothing there, the next there was a solid weight pressing into Dean’s back.

“Well, that was a pyrrhic victory,” a familiar voice remarked in Dean’s ear before he could feel a body slump over him and slide to the ground. He whipped around.

“Sammy?”

It hadn’t occurred to him that Sam’s bad feeling might not be for Dean at all—that something could happen to Sam. Sam was supposed to be safe and away at college, not slumped half-curled in a hotel room.

Dean saw blood begin spreading beneath his brother’s body and his whole world tilted just a little before he was pushed to the side by a worried father.

“Sam. Look at me, Sam, look up. Sam!” John crouched down next to his youngest, carefully turning him over, and Dean’s world went even a little more off-kilter when he registered what a bloody mess his brother was.

Sam had a deep stab wound going straight through his abdomen, and several cuts and scratched of varying depth all over him. One went straight across his lips on the left and Dean noted absently that it was going to scar before his father’s voice snapped him out of his daze.

“Dean! First aid kit, now. I’m getting these clothes off of him.”

Right. Get rid of the clothes, apply bandages, stop Sammy from bleeding out all over the hotel room. Dean scrambled to his feet—when had he stopped standing? And over to the bed where the first aid kit sat, just in case. He shoved it in his father’s face just when John got done cutting Sam’s shirt off of him. Some of the blood was old, because the shirt stuck and Sam flinched and groaned when they tore it off.

Immediately, Dean was handing his father a needle and thread while he got busy with disinfectant and bandages.

It was a tense half hour or hour or lifetime while they stitched his little brother back to life. Sammy was still too pale and not very responsive, but they got him into a bed and out of the danger zone. Dean and his father sat on the other bed, surrounded by weapons. Dean couldn’t help noticing that despite how clearly he’d been in a fight—one with both guns and blades, not to mention claws, if the cuts all over Sam were any indication—Dean’s baby brother had no weapons on him whatsoever.

A sitting duck.

Dean had let his brother get away from him and he’d been a sitting duck. Ready for anyone to half-kill him.

“He said it was a pyrrhic victory. Whatever was supposed to come here isn’t coming.” John’s voice broke into his thoughts, sounding just as exhausted as Dean is.

Dean just kept staring at his little brother.

A pyrrhic victory. A victory that wasn’t worth the price.

Dean couldn’t agree more.

“Why Sammy?” He asked the room in general. “He quit hunting. He wanted a normal life—like a civilian.”

His father just shook his head. “That’s a question Sam’ll have to answer. Maybe he figured out what was going on. Maybe he was just unlucky. We’ll know as soon as he wakes up.”

Well-intentioned as he might be, John Winchester wasn’t made for long periods of inactivity any more than Dean was. Before long, he was moving through the room, keeping some weapons out and putting some in a pile to go back to the Impala. By the time an hour had passed and Sammy hadn’t moved, he’d gone out and gotten coffee and food, along with more bandages and disinfectant to replenish the first aid kit.

Dean hadn’t moved from his post on the side of the bed, watching his brother in unconsciousness.

Two hours passed and John gave up on trying to get Dean to eat anything, moving to guard the door.

Another hour and Sam woke up with a gasp.

Immediately, he struggled to sit up, coughing blood onto the sheets in the attempt. It was old blood, but Dean wondered if they shouldn’t have brought him to the hospital.

“Sam. Sammy, it’s me. You’re safe. Calm down, there you go, Sammy. It’s me.” Dean murmured, smoothing his hands through his brother’s ridiculous hair.

Sam mumbled something incoherent, eyes focusing on Dean, as he relaxed just a little and sat back against the headboard. He looked dazed for a moment before he shook it off.

“Dean,” he murmured, “Dean, I’m sorry.”

And damned if that didn’t look like the saddest thing he’s ever seen. Sam looked down and avoided Dean’s eyes.

“What? What are you sorry for?” John asked him, crossing the room in a few short strides.

Sam jerked his head up to look at him, then seemed to reel a bit from the effort as he swayed against the headboard.

Then he broke out into a huge, painful smile. It has to be pulling on the cut across Sam’s lips, but he doesn’t seem to notice a thing.

“It worked,” he murmured, “you’re alive. You’re alive.”

John kept pressing, sitting on the side of the bed opposite Dean. “What worked, Sam? What happened there? What did you win, and how?”

Sam flinched, just a little, and Dean clamped down on the urge to defend his brother. They needed to know what was going on, and they needed Sam to tell them while he was still too out of it to avoid their questions.

“We won…I don’t think we won. No, we didn’t win. But he’s dead now. He’s dead. He’s gone. He’ll never hurt us again. We won.” Now that Sam’s words had started, they just didn’t stop. “I’m so sorry, I wanted to tell you but you would have stopped me it was too dangerous Dean I’m sorry I think Cas is dead there was an explosion Dean I’m sorry they’re dead I didn’t want anyone to die I just wanted to not hurt anyone I don’t want to be a monster he had to die Dean I-“

Just as suddenly as he’d started, Sam stopped, blinking at Dean with an eerie clarity.

“You’re not Dean.”

Dean recoiled, confused. “Yes, Sammy, I am Dean. Why wouldn’t I be Dean?”

Sam shakes his head, then stopped as it pulls at his stitches.

“Dean wasn’t at the battle. We were careful. He’s only human and it was wrong but I needed him to be safe, he wasn’t at the battle. Where am I?”

Great. So when Sam had called earlier, he’d been preparing for a battle. One that was too dangerous for Dean. Then, presumably, everything had gone to hell and Sam’s ally (allies?) had been wounded or killed, but he’d managed to kill whatever nasty had been about to come.

John piped up again. “Sam, you appeared in a hotel room. There’s been off-the-charts demonic activity around here for almost a year, and then nothing for a month. We were expecting a demon more powerful than anything we’ve ever seen, and you appeared. What was it that you fought?” He asked, leaning forward into the very edge of Sam’s personal space.

Sam shrank back, just a little. Subtly. His eyes hardened as he made a decision.

“…I can’t tell you that,” he said flatly, tasting the words. “I need to go.”

He began to move towards standing, but Dean gently put his hand on his brother’s chest. Sam jerked away like he’d been shot, cringing.

“Dude, you’re not going anywhere for another week. Someone stabbed you through. You’re lucky you didn’t die.” He had to say those words out loud. What Dean wanted was to grab his brother by his shoulders and shake some sense into him, but for now he just needed his brother to stay safe and recover.

Sam made a distressed expression, somehow conveying betrayal and upset through his eyebrows, since his mouth was probably hurting like a bitch. “He wouldn’t kill me. You may not like him—won’t like him when you meet him—wouldn’t like—whatever. He wouldn’t kill me. Not if it would save the world.”

And now Sammy’d got that stubborn look about him. They’d get no more out of him tonight, and he proved the point by carefully moving himself into a better position for sleeping and pointedly closed his eyes against his family.

Dean manages to convince John with a look and an eyebrow-tilt to let the kid sleep. He needed to heal. They’d gotten some information, enough to know if he changed his story too much, and that was all they needed for now.

John nodded silently and got up to join Dean on the other bed.

Dean shifted to make room. “Alright. We know that Sammy knew about someone, probably someone who hurt him in the past. Do you think this might be the demon that killed mom?”

John looked thoughtful. Keeping the conversation just above a whisper, he replied, “Could be. He mentioned several times that it had hurt someone and he didn’t want anyone to die. Especially if he was calling you to say goodbye, just in case he didn’t come back. If it was the demon that killed Mary, he probably wanted us to stay out of the whole thing until it was dead, if it was as powerful as it seems to have been.”

“So he found out that it was coming here, and that we were here, and ran off half-cocked to kill it? That doesn’t sound like Sam,” Dean countered.

John nodded, stroking his chin. “Could be that he had a plan. He mentioned an ally, maybe more than one. He might have walked in thinking he knew what he was doing, underestimated his enemy, and gotten his ally killed. Or it could have just been a last resort—a sort of last-ditch effort to kill or weaken it before it got to us. That seems more like your brother,” he suggested.

“So he knew he was screwed and fought the thing anyway. His ally got killed and he killed the demon, then whatever was bringing the demon here just grabbed Sam instead? Can that happen?”

John took his journal out of his coat pocket, flipping through it. “For some rituals. If Sam was directly the one to kill it, its power might have rubbed off on him enough that the ritual would activate using him instead. For some demons, they have to be killed the right way or they give you some nasty curses. Especially the older ones.”

Dean glanced over at his brother, who was asleep or doing a very good job of pretending. “He was beat up, but I don’t see any obvious curses. Hopefully this’ll be the only consequence.”

Chapter Text

Sam’s worst wounds were just deep cuts by the end of the week. He’d always been a fast healer, but that was just ridiculous. He had fading scars all over his body, of course, but he could move around without too much pain and he’d started making sense and stopped talking like a traumatized lunatic. That was good news as far as Dean was concerned.

In fact, he’d healed so well John wanted to get some answers from him that morning. They’d faked a dangerous gas leak in the hotel and stayed there to let Sam rest and heal, but they did have to get answers and get moving soon.

So it came to be that they were all sitting on the beds eating toast when John finally asked, “What really did happen, Sam? You were halfway delirious when you arrived that night.”

Clearly, it was the wrong question to ask. Sam stiffened and stopped eating immediately, and Dean’s mind automatically went into finding a way to sneakily make Sam eat his breakfast even as he listened to Sam’s answer.

“There was a fight. I won. Nothing to worry about. I’m done hunting, and I’m just going to go back to college now. I don’t want anything to do with this life, I think I’ve made that clear by now.” Sam said in a complete monotone, putting down his plate and moving to stand. Dean grabbed his arm, gently pulling him back down without wrenching any of his wounds.

“Sam.” is all he said, but it was enough.

Sam looked at him, looked deep into his eyes. Dean could feel the knife’s edge they were balancing on—Sam had always done what Dean ordered him to, because Dean never ordered him to do anything. Forcing him to stay and have this conversation upset the balance, and Sam was deciding whether his regard for his brother was enough for him to forgive this violation of their silent treaty and stay despite his misgivings.

Finally, Sam eased back into a sitting position on the bed, but Dean noticed how he moved so that he was behind Dean. Like he was asking Dean to shield him from John.

Dean straightened and gave Sam a look—two parts support and one part reproach. Instinctively he wanted to protect his brother from anything that made him unhappy, but he also didn’t want Sam to feel that he needed protection from his own father.

“There was a…demon is a bit of a misnomer, but it’ll do. He wanted to do something I couldn’t accept. I killed him. End of story.” Sam said stiffly.

John scowled at Sam’s non-answer. “How did you hear about this demon? You said you were done hunting.”

Sam glared. “I was, right up until this demon had to involve me in his psycho end-the-world plan. I wasn’t just going to sit there and do nothing.”

Dean knew this pattern. A fight would happen, Sam would throw out some insult or another distraction, and the whole conversation would be diverted from whatever it was that he didn’t want to talk about.

“Sam. Tell me what happened, start to finish.” Dean interrupted, moving to block John out of Sam’s line of sight entirely. It worked in that Sam relaxed, comfortable with Dean demanding to know what was going on with him. Dean had spent years demanding to know where Sam had gotten this scrape or that bruise, and their time apart didn’t change Sam’s familiarity with the situation.

It didn’t work in that Sam was still being stubborn. “I can’t do that.”

Dean made a frantic signal behind his back to stop John from simply demanding answers. They all knew that if Sam was going to tell someone something he didn’t want to, it would be Dean, hands down.

Dean leaned forward a little, slowly getting a little closer to his brother. “Why not? Is someone threatening you?”

This was familiar, too—Dean knew how much his brother appreciated that he was asking first if it wasn’t Sam’s fault he couldn’t tell them anything. Assuming that Sam was keeping silence out of stubbornness was the quickest way to get shut out.

Predictably, Sam relaxed a little bit further—still ready to bolt, but also ready to stay a little longer.

“I can’t tell you-“ Dean could hear John tensing behind him “-because I’m trying to keep you safe. The less involved you are, the better. You need to understand this—this is my problem, I brought it upon myself, and I’m going to be the one to deal with it. Enough other people have suffered for this already, Dean! I’m not going to watch you kill yourself trying to keep me safe!”

Sam looked ready to go on for a moment, but he caught himself.

“You’ve had this conversation before,” Dean realized. “With…Cas?”

Sam sat up a little straighter, relaxed a little more. “You know who Cas is?”

Right here. He could lie and it wouldn’t be hard to get Sam to spill everything. If this Cas meant as much to Sam as he seemed to—and that feeling in Dean’s gut wasn’t jealousy, even though it was definitely the job of Sam’s actual brother to try to interfere in his life to keep him from endangering himself and this Cas guy had no business butting in when Sam should have just come to Dean—pretending to know him would be a pretty much guaranteed way to get Sam to talk.

It would also be manipulating his brother with the memory of his dead friend into talking about what was evidently a traumatizing fight, if Sam’s nightmares were anything to go by. In front of their father who Sam suddenly didn’t feel comfortable or safe with. While Sam was still exhausted from his injuries.

It would be good for Sam to talk about it. All that girly shit was something Sam liked to do and it made him feel comfortable.

Sam would never forgive him.

“You mentioned him a couple of times when you were having nightmares.”

Dean didn’t hear any movement from John behind him, so he figured his father was making himself scarce so Dean could work his magic.

Sam’s face fell, but he nodded his acceptance. “Cas thought it was a decent plan, actually, considering the alternative. But I needed to keep everyone as far away as possible, so I didn’t end up hurting them.  There were…some fights about whose fault the whole thing was, I guess.”

Sam’s guard was slowly coming down—now that they were Talking, he automatically went into trust-mode. He wouldn’t be ready to say much yet, but he might talk about his allies, which would give them a good starting point.

“Who was Cas?” Dean asked.

Wrong question. Sam flinched, curling in on himself just a little. He opened his mouth to answer, then stopped.

He cocked his head to the side like he was listening to something no one else could hear. He kept at it for a couple seconds before he leaped to his feet like he’d been electrocuted.

“I should go. I really need to leave, I need to…I need to go.”

Before Dean could stop him, he’d backed off of the bed and up against the window. He stood there for a second, hands behind him, and the window popped open. He was gone before any of them could get in another word.

Immediately, John moved to follow him, and Dean left through the door in order to intercept him if John wasn’t fast enough. He ran through the hotel and out the lobby door, berating himself for his fumble the whole way.

Stupid! Of course you don’t ask about the dead guy, he doesn’t want to think about the dead guy! He’s grieving! Ask about the battle, or college, or something nonthreatening, do not ask about the dead friend!

Knowing his brother’s bleeding heart syndrome, Dean figured Sam would be heartbroken if he had a friend and that friend died. It was a little hard to think of his brother having friends, but if he imagined Sam treating someone like he treated Dean but with less honesty and more politeness, he could see it. He could also see how those friends would be able to rip Sam’s heart out of his chest and stomp on it.

His nerdy little brother didn’t have a suspicious bone in his body when it came to people he liked. He wasn’t good at dulling the pain with hunting and alcohol and many, many nights in strangers’ bedrooms. Why on Earth had Dean thought it was a good idea to bring up the dead friend?

By the time he’d made a full circle of the hotel with no sign of his brother, he was getting worried. John had lost him as well.

In an hour, he was frantic. Sam had even left his cell phone, his wallet—everything but the clothes on his back and some bandages.

In a day, it became a mission.

In a month, looking for Sammy was a lifestyle.

I don’t know what I was thinking, staying with Dean and Dad for so long. Gabriel warned me that demons were all about their leaders and I would be tracked down as Lucifer’s killer once he was dead. Not that it matters, since Gabriel’s dead. Sort of.

Apparently, Lucifer had some tricks up his sleeve.

The King of Hell automatically gets enormous power, blah, blah, blah. It was what allowed Lucifer to act as a counterpoint to God despite not being a God himself.

Interestingly, he’d gotten what he wanted all along, after a fashion.

It seems that Lucifer figured out how to use that power to break one of the basic rules of being an angel—sure, you can time travel, but you don’t get to change anything, since any changes you make you’ve already lived through.

Being the King of Hell apparently let him just rewrite time whenever it didn’t go how he wanted it to. It wouldn’t have worked if he hadn’t been an Archangel first, but he had been, so he could freely go back and redo whatever didn’t go his way.

Well, not if he’s dead, he can’t.

It had been a pretty good plan, really. Go fight him. Use demon powers galore. Have Cas help distract him. Drag him into my body. Gabriel stabs me with pure destructive Grace, juiced up with the same rough combination of demon and angel that made up Lucifer, demon power courtesy of yours truly. If we got the ratio right, it would hurt me but kill him. It would also drain Gabriel into oblivion if we weren’t careful, so Cas gave up what was left of his Grace, too. What was left was me, pumped up with all of Lucifer’s power, and a couple of exhausted, heavily wounded angels. They might have been dead, I didn’t know for sure, and that was the part I hated most.

I thought I’d be able to kill Lucifer and be done with it all. I didn’t expect that the bastard had been rewriting history. But his spell activated when he was about to die, and I had enough of his power still in me for it to think that I was him. I’d been dying, or close enough to it, so it brought me back to my Stanford years.

Fun fact: I got my younger body back, but I got to keep all of my wounds. I’m not sure how that even helps—wouldn’t Lucifer have been going back in time just to die every time?

But I’d landed in a hotel room. I remember the sudden knowledge of what had happened to me coming out of nowhere, and remembering the explosion that had been the spell, and then realizing that it had probably killed Cas and Gabriel if they hadn’t already died.

I think I said something, but I don’t know what or to whom, and then I was waking up in a panic.

I suddenly had all of this knowledge—I knew that Lucifer was dead in this time, had dropped dead the moment the spell activated. I knew the name of each subspecies of demon and what its habits were and the trend of favorite colors for vengeance demons.

There was just so much of it.

And then Dean and Dad wanted to know what had happened, and I set forward with the vague desire to fix things. No one had to die. Lucifer was dead, so the apocalypse didn’t have to come about. If I could keep Dean safely away from Heaven and Hell, he would never have to get hurt by anything more dangerous than a restless spirit.

Of course, then he had to pull out his honest eyes and let-big-brother-take-care-of-it-who-hurt-you routine. For a moment, I almost caved and told him everything.

Then I felt something, and all the new knowledge in my head had told me that I was going to be chased soon, and if I didn’t want to be caught, I needed to run.

A quick flick of Lucifer’s stolen powers—why do I still have those?—and the window was a perfect escape route. I felt a twinge going over the salt line, but it didn’t stop me.

I wake up in a cornfield.

Immediately, I take inventory. Limbs, still attached. Wounds, almost healed. Soul, still here. Sanity, barely even frazzled. Heart…aching. But I’m not thinking about Cas and Gabriel now.

Or ever. I don’t want to think about their bravery or determination or how they died and it’s all my fault.

New thought!

There’s still all this information I can’t possibly have spinning around in my head, and every time I think about something, everything I shouldn’t know about it spins around me for a moment before it settles into my mind—like I’m downloading something.

Even as I think about it, the process reveals itself to me.

I killed the King of Hell. I am his successor. This is the knowledge and power I inherited. And all the demons of Hell are going to be tracking down their ruler to drag me down with them. Hell needs a King.

Yeah, no. I killed Lucifer to avoid having anything to do with Hell ever again, and I don’t have a great track record with power. I choose the ‘run away’ option.

I pick myself up off the ground and look around me. Hmm, hard choice. I have nothing, nothing, and nothing around me as far as the eye can see.

I go in the direction that feels the least demonic. My ‘inheritance’ tells me that it’s roughly north by northeast, and there are about a hundred demonic hotspots in that general direction, if I want to go back to Hell.

Since I’m going with the ‘running away’ option, I need to get a quick mode of transportation that doesn’t knock me out for who knows how long afterwards.

Of course, I immediately know that I’ve become something not dissimilar from a demonic Archangel, since that’s what Lucifer was and that’s how Hell is shaped right now. Apparently, Hell is shaped after its King and the King is shaped after Hell. I just ‘flew’ somewhere, and the process would get easier the more I did it. However, it would also raise flags for everyone looking for me.

I wonder if I have wings now.

I do.

That was a rhetorical question! I protest to…myself. I am a little curious, though, and in response to my curiosity the wings manifest themselves.

Okay, I regret that curiosity now.

My wings are huge, ugly things, tattered and black. All of the feathers are in disarray or missing and I’m even more of a freak than I was before.

The wings twitch and hunch miserably around me and I just wish that I’d never survived that battle. I don’t want to have wings or rule Hell or spend the rest of my life running away from every demon in existence.

But I can save Dean.

I hold on to that idea, clutch it to my chest like a lifeline, and it feels almost worth it. Anything is worth it for the chance to save Dean.

I begin moving.

It takes me a while to figure out how to get rid of the wings, but that’s even weirder. I can feel them hanging behind me, and they hit cornstalks and brush against the ground when I’m not careful. It’s just eerie to see clearly that there’s nothing on my back and feel just as clearly that there is.

I manifest them again, eventually, since no one’s around to see what a freak I am anyway.

It must have been midafternoon when I woke up, and now the sun’s just beginning to set. My wings ache from the effort of keeping them up off the ground, tensed above my shoulder blades. I have no idea how Can and Gabriel managed this, but suddenly I feel a lot of sympathy for all the times things mysteriously got knocked over behind them when they turned.

Still not thinking about Gabriel and Castiel.

I wonder what Dean’s doing right now, and that’s even worse. I hope he’s not freaking out. I hope he just forgets this whole thing. I hope he’s safe.

I almost start praying, for the familiar comfort of it, but then I realize that the King of Hell probably doesn’t get to pray.

Besides, everyone I might pray to is gone.

Not thinking about that!

It’s a pretty sunset. I have to crane my neck around to see it, but it looks nice, at least. When my wings aren’t blocking the view.

Curious, I stretch one out to its full length. They’re huge, bigger than I am. I can’t comfortably reach them while I’m walking, although I can kind of brush my hand along the inside of it. I think I might be able to grab them if I sit down and stretch them a bit over my shoulder.

They’re in shreds and look barely functional. I don’t know if that’s a reflection of the new lows I’ve fallen to or the battle I’m still healing from, but then I know that it’s because I’ve been taking shitty care of them, idiot. If I bothered to straighten the feathers out, they could heal with me.

I will never get used to suddenly knowing things. It’s pretty annoying, too.

Still, I have to keep going. There are still demons on my tail, and I’m not sure how I’ve managed to evade them.

Ah. I’ve been subconsciously suppressing my newfound powers, so no one can sense me. They’re confused, since I should be shining like a beacon.

Well, that’s pretty convenient. Since I don’t want anything to do with these powers, all I have to do is keep suppressing them and moving around, and no one’ll be able to track me down. Well, not easily, anyway.

In theory.

I sort of pet my wing, trying to groom the feathers into order. It doesn’t really do anything, and it occurs to me that I know nothing about wings or feathers or what I’m even supposed to do with these things.

First thing’s first, find a town big enough to have a library. Or an exotic pet store. Once I’ve learned how to walk without bumping my wings into things.

My inheritance has nothing to say about that, and I take a moment to scowl at it.

Then I realize what I’m doing and shake my head. I must be going a little crazy, and I need to rest soon. I may have spent most of the day napping, but I’m starving and my wings are tired.

I don’t really know what I can do for food—I’ve been walking for hours and seen nothing but corn and soybeans, and those aren’t edible right off the plant. I think. Maybe? But I can probably stop at one of the barbed wire fences and rest, maybe try to figure out wing maintenance on my own.

I wonder idly if I can use them to boost a jump. I’m in a soybean field, so I have some space to test it out, I figure.

It takes a little bit to figure out how to flap them—moving them around is still clumsy, and flapping requires a lot more deliberate effort on my part. Eventually I manage to sort of convulse them, which is good enough to take some weight off of my feet.

I try again, a little faster and harder, and I actually get into the air for half a second. I can feel the air going straight though the gaps where feathers are missing or crooked, and I sort of try to spread them out a little more. It doesn’t sort everything out, but the next time I flap I rise a foot and a half in the air and I count it as a win. Also, my wings are working out the cramps from being held in the same position all day.

By the time I get to the edge of the field, I’m lifting into the air every third step, and staying up longer each time. It’s an exhausting effort, but something about it makes me feel better. Freer.

I’m not sure how exactly to lie down without doing even more damage, but I eventually kind of slump forward onto my stomach on the grass between the fields. My left wing almost catches on the barbed wire fence, but I snatch it back in time, folding it awkwardly on my back.

I meant to fix my wings, but I’m asleep before I can do a thing.

Chapter Text

When I wake up, I am once again not where I fell asleep. This time, though, I’m on a bed in a cheery room, wings spread above the comforter and one drooping across the floor. It occurs to me to wonder how they’re not getting caught in my shirt, but I’m warm and comfortable and I fall asleep again.

The next time I wake up, it’s to the sound of a voice.

“Mr. Angel, could you please wake up? I need to get past your wing, and I have some food for you,” an unfamiliar voice tells me. Automatically, I retract the wing taking up floor space and mumble a response, my head fuzzy from sleep.

Then I realize that I’m in an unfamiliar room with an unfamiliar person and I twist into a sitting position with a gasp.

There’s an old woman with a bowl of soup next to me.

It’s not a very threatening bowl of soup.

The inheritance—which is quieter now, almost done processing—tells me that she’s human. I smile cautiously at her.

“I’m sorry, but where am I? I fell asleep in a soybean field, I think…”

She tuts at me and pushes my wing aside gently so she can sit on the edge of the bed. “You were. You must have fallen awfully far from Heaven, to land in Iowa. It’s a good thing Harold was out early today, he found you and got you right patched up. You’re in our house now, and you can stay right here until you feel better. Do you want some soup?”

Oh. She thinks I’m an angel.

“I’m really not an angel,” I tell her. “I’m…I don’t know what I am, but I’m not an angel.”

She gives me the soup anyway and says, “That’s what you think. I think if a stranger with wings appears and needs our help, it’s because Heaven just won a battle and we can help heal it. Now, eat.”

Well, I did just fight a battle with Hell and win, so it’s not too far off, I guess. I don’t like her thinking I’m an angel, but I do need to eat, so I practically inhale the soup.

Something occurs to me. “Can you reach my wings? I can’t really get at them, and I can’t do a lot with them as messed up as they are right now.”

The old woman beams at me like the sun and reaches with painstaking gentleness to the wing she’d moved earlier. She gently combs her fingers between the feathers and I instantly decide that being the King of Hell is worth it if fixing up my wings feels that good.

It’s like tension I didn’t even know was there it being loosened up, and I immediately relax into the soothing touch. It takes me a moment to remember to eat.

We talk a little as she works on the wing, and I learn that her name is Annie and this is her farm. There’s a town not too far from here, and she thinks my tattered wings are the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen.

I tell her a little, about Cas and Gabriel and how I have a brother that I love more than anything and I made a mistake that I'm trying my hardest to make up for. She smiles whenever I tell her about some prank Gabriel played or how Castiel just hadn’t understood some human customs—Cas, I tell her, is an actual Angel of the Lord who stood up to Satan and survived once—and she really listens. She seems to actually care about what I have to tell her, even though it’s not a message from God to grow corn better or something.

Before I know it, one of my wings is looking much better and we have to decide what to do with the broken feathers. They’re still attached to me, so they hurt, but taking them out might do more harm than good. Eventually we decide to take them off, so there are fifteen minutes of pain while I feel like a plucked turkey before one of my wings is completely sorted out. It’s still missing more feathers than I’m really comfortable with, and some of the missing feathers are primaries that I really need according to my inheritance, but it’s glossy and smooth and doesn’t look evil and dead. That’s a win as far as I’m concerned.

 Suddenly I realize that Annie might have better things to do than sort out wings and consort with maybe-demons.

“Oh! I’m sorry, I’ve probably disrupted your whole day—is there anything I can help you with? Sorry, I just completely forgot that you probably need to be doing things, and thank you so much for the help but I don’t mean to—“

Annie cuts me off, laughing. “Well, it’s not every day an angel falls onto our doorstep, that’s for sure. But let’s get that other wing of yours sorted out, and then you can help me with dinner if it helps you feel better, hmm?”

It really would. I hadn’t meant to take up her whole day sorting out my wings! I smile gratefully at her and turn so she could get at my left wing, combing through the inside of my right wing while she works. This time we know a little more what we’re doing, and it goes much faster than before. In no time, both of my wings are relaxed and smooth, and we’re ready to start supper.

This is made difficult when my wings are half-folded all the time and keep knocking into things. Especially doorways.  I hate doorways. Annie guides my wings into a folded position at my back, though, and they brush the floor with every movement but feel fairly comfortable otherwise.

As it turns out, dinner means lunch. We make sandwiches and potato salad, and Annie is very kind about it when I have no idea what goes into potato salad. It’s not like Dean and I were world-class chefs or anything.

Just brothers. And now we're pobably not even that.

Harold comes in before long, the screen door squealing as he opens it. As soon as he sees me upright and wearing an apron, he beams and laughs. “Our very own angelic chef! Annie, how’d you trick him into the kitchen?”

Annie comes to the kitchen door next to me and says, “I didn’t trick him into nothing, he wanted to help all on his own. Now sit down and eat, and tell me how Mr. O’Harris is doing today.”

Her husband laughs and twirls her around him before taking a seat at the kitchen table and filling his plate.

“Jimmy’s doing well, his kid just got accepted into one of those fancy colleges. Says she wants to be a businesswoman—some kind of accountant. Crazy what those kids are doing these days.”

Annie him at the table, pulling out a chair for me as she went. “Good on her. Here, come sit and eat with us, there’s enough for three.”

Grateful to be saved from standing awkwardly in the doorway, I sat with my wings spread a little above the back of the chair. The farmhouse is small and the tips of my feathers nearly brush the walls, but there’s food in front of me and Harold is good-naturedly complaining about his neighbors and I feel a warmth in my chest that I hadn’t thought I would feel again after Jess and starting the apocalypse and killing Lucifer.

Almost without noticing it, I begin to think that I can do this. Maybe I can save Dean, and save everyone, without sacrificing every chance I have to be happy.

I relax and spend the next week with Harold and Annie. Sometimes I help out on the farm, and sometimes I help out in the house, and as my feathers begin to grow back—an evil, itchy process—they help me learn how to fly.

Flying is incredible.

I have to jump off of the roof at first to get enough lift, but I get better and better at it and I can just walk into it before long. It just feels so incredible to be in the air, wheeling and tumbling around in three dimensions, and I fly until my wings ache every day. They’re getting stronger, too. I can already stay in the air longer with each flap, and I can glide much farther than that first night. I’m getting used to walking with my wings folded, too, which is much less straining than trying to hold them above everything they might bump into.

I don't even bother with deceiphering the physics of the things.

Eventually, though, I know I have to leave. Hell is still after me, and I can’t lead them to Annie and Harold. I sit down after supper with them and take a deep breath.

“I just wanted to thank you for keeping me up this long. I should go—there are still things I need to do, and I need to protect my brother. But really, thank you for everything. I don’t know what I would have done without you.” I tell them, trying to convey my sincerity through my eyes. Dean calls it a puppy dog face, but I think whatever gets my point across is fair play.

Annie and Harold seem to understand.

“I know you have to be going back to Heaven, honey. That’s where you belong, and I hope I’ll see you there when Harold and I die. But if you’re ever back on Earth again, our house is always open to you, okay? No more sleeping in soybeans.” Annie tells me, wrapping her two hands around one of mine. Harold smacks a hand on my shoulder under my wing.

“You’re a good kid, I know you’ll do us proud. You take care of yourself out there.”

These people are incredible. I can feel my eyes get a little wet and I wonder if this is what grandparents are like. Or parents. I don’t know.

“Before you go, though, can you do just one thing for me?” Annie asks.

“Of course,” I respond immediately, hoping she won’t ask me to ask God something. That would be awkward.

“What’s your name, child?” she asks me, leaning forward just a little.

I blink, taken aback. I hadn’t even realized that I hadn’t told her.

“Sam,” I reply before I can think about it. “Sam Winchester.”

“Well—Sam. I hope you find your way home.” She pats my hand and lets go. Harold squeezes my shoulder once and smiles, and I walk out of their lives.

Dean was still looking for his brother a year later. He’d gotten a case in a small town in Oklahoma after his latest lead and asked around, but no one had seen Sammy anywhere. After a simple salt-and-burn, he was ready to drive out again, still no closer to finding out what had happened to his brother than he’d been a year ago.

It was two days after the anniversary of Sam’s disappearance, and Dean wasn’t drinking himself into a stupor or sleeping with strangers because that would mean he was grieving, and grieving would mean he’d given up on his brother.

Sammy was still alive, Dean knew it. He knew it like he knew the sun would rise in the east. He just had to find him.

There was a rustling sound in his motel room.

 Dean had a pistol in his hand in an instant, and pointed it at the man standing by the door. “What are you?”

The man looked startled. He was wearing a trench coat, with messy hair and a constant disorganized appearance that made him seem fairly helpless, but Dean didn’t trust appearances.

“Dean?” The man asked, tilting his head to the side. “Where’s Sam?”

Oh. This person knew Sammy? Taking a chance, Dean asked, “Cas?”

“You know who I am? I would have thought-“

Dean stopped him. “I have no idea who you are. Sammy mentioned something about how someone named Cas was dead before disappearing a year ago.”

The man flinched a little, looking down.

“I see. Do you know where he is now?”

Dean bristled. Why would he tell this guy even if he did know? Sammy’s location was none of his business. Instead of saying any of that, he said “Tell me who you are and what happened to my brother.”

‘Castiel’ looked a little uncomfortable. “I am…not entirely sure what I am right now. I’m an angel, but I’m not sure how long that will remain true once my loyalties are tested. Sam was in a fight with…a very powerful demon with me when he disappeared. He was alive when you saw him last? Safe? Was he behaving oddly?”

Dean nodded, deciding in a split second to trust this guy. He didn’t believe in angels, but this guy could be a very strange type of demon. Anyway, he was the first real lead Dean had seen all year, and he was getting desperate. “He was beaten half to death and stabbed through the chest. We healed him as much as we could, but he freaked and ran when I asked him about you.”

Castel didn’t look surprised. “If he thought Gabriel and I were dead, he would probably assume that it was his fault. Your brother likes to do that. Have you heard from him since then?”

“Not a word. He’s just disappeared.”

Castiel looked thoughtful. “He’s probably trying to protect you. The less you know, the safer you’ll be. However, he probably didn’t realize that you wouldn’t accept his disappearance,” he agreed.

“Do you know where he might be? I don’t care about being safe, I need to protect him if he’s running from someone.”

Castiel made a grimace that might have been an attempt at a smile. “I know,” he said. “I’ll help you look for him, if you’ll allow it.”

That was…unexpectedly sensitive of the guy. Most people just assumed that if Dean wasn’t doing something for Sammy, he needed someone else to do it for him. Asking to be allowed to help look for his brother… “You know him pretty well, don’t you?”

Chapter Text

Well, Dean may not have been entirely comfortable with the guy, but Castiel sure knew how to pick up a lead. Before long, they were at a pub where Dean had to threaten the bartender into telling them that someone by Sam’s description had worked there for a couple of days in exchange for a place to sleep and absolute silence regarding his whereabouts. He’d apparently thought he was being followed and needed to lie low for a while.

After that, it was a ranch where Sam had gotten rid of a poltergeist. A hitchhiker he’d saved from being raped. A shapeshifter had been impersonating a businessman. A wendigo. A murder. Disappearances all across the USA. Sammy had been doing the family business.

Dad had said that Sammy was dead. That it was some kind of demon trying to trick them. But Dean knew his little brother. Sammy couldn’t be dead, and a cursory glance at what he’d been doing proved it.

But all of the people he’d saved did share one disturbing trait.

They all called Sam an angel.

Castiel looked more and more bothered by it each time, before Dean finally asked a little girl Sam’d saved from a water wraith, “Why do you think he’s an angel?”

The little girl looked at Dean like he was maybe a little slow. “He has wings. Aren’t you supposed to be his brother?”

Castiel stiffened like he’d been shocked. “What do you mean, wings? What did they look like?”

The girl’s this-idiot-is-wasting-my-time look turned to Castiel. “They’re big and black and they come out when he’s mad or he doesn’t think anybody’s watching. They’re wings, and he’s an angel.”

“Did he tell you that he’s an angel?” Castiel persisted. Dean was still trying to get past the part where his baby brother had wings. Which meant he wasn’t human. What.

The little girl—Maddy, maybe?—shook her head. “He said he wasn’t an angel. He lied, though. He helps people and he has wings, so he’s an angel.” She seemed very certain about this.

Castiel seemed to think they were done with the conversation, since there was a shifting feeling in Dean’s bones (though that could be his worldview shattering and breaking because that was Sammy but Sammy’s not human how why no) before they were back in their latest motel room and Castiel was looking at Dean like he’s not sure how to make him start breathing again.

Right. Breathing.

Dean took a deep breath, held it, and let it out. Then he reexamined the problem.

Sammy’s not human.

Nope, it didn’t get any better.

“I’m sorry. I thought he told you. I didn’t know about the wings.” Castiel said, moving Dean towards the bed and encouraging him to sit down. It occurred to Dean that he might have been saying all that out loud.

Sammy’s not human. My little brother is something I have to hunt.

Now Castiel looked alarmed. “He’s mostly harmless, actually, I’m fairly certain he’s not possessed, you don’t need to try to kill him. He would be upset if you did, I think. I don’t know what he is right now, but he’s still your brother,” he offers, and Dean clutches it like a lifeline.

Right. Sam was his baby brother. Sam also had wings, but supposedly so did Cas, so it was okay. Sam was still Sammy, who Dean took care of and taught to shoot and called a bitch. He was just Sammy-with-wings as opposed to Sammy-I-want-to-be-a-real-boy. No difference. Dean just knew more about him now.

Shit. Sammy wasn’t human.

Dean really wanted to kill something.

Castiel fidgeted. He wasn’t out of the running yet.

“The newspaper mentioned a mysterious death in the next town over this morning,” Castiel suggested at long last.

Still tense—Sammy’s not human—Dean jerked his head in a nod.

They spent the rest of the month hunting (Dean had five missed calls and three drunken voicemails from his father before John let him have his time ‘to grieve’), and by the end of it Dean thought he could understand. At least, he could accept it—could accept anything if it meant getting his brother back. If Sam was willing to run from Dean to keep him from rejecting him, then Dean would accept Sam being whatever he was wholeheartedly just to get his brother back.

Suddenly, I feel the need to make my so-called ‘bitch face.’

Just this once, I guess.

 It had been almost two years since Sammy had disappeared, and Dean was dealing.

Dealing in that his father didn’t know about Castiel and still thought Dean was grieving his baby brother’s ‘death’ by demon of unknown origin. Dealing in that John was helping him track Sammy as much as he could, thinking Dean wanted revenge.

Dealing in that he was going to tan his little brother’s hide when he and Castiel caught up with him. He’d even accepted that maybe Sam wasn’t human, but that one was a little weird still. Especially since no one was quite sure what Sam was.

This would be something they’d have to Talk about.

It was just…sure, they’d had their fights, but Sam trusted Dean. He had to know that Dean wouldn’t hurt him. They were brothers, for Christ’s sake, Sam just had to know that Dean wouldn’t hunt him.

He had to, because if Sam was running away from Dean and not just from the situation, that would…no.

Sam was running away because suddenly he wasn’t human anymore and he didn’t know how to deal, and maybe a little bit because he was afraid of hurting people because Sam was afraid of hurting people when he sneezed wrong, and Sam would never, ever be afraid of Dean.

Dean clung to that truth, like if he just gripped it hard enough it would really be true and his brother would come home and let Dean sit him down at gunpoint and explain why he would never, ever hurt his baby brother, ever.

Damn it all, Sam was supposed to be the one who did all that girly shit.

But they finally, finally had a reliable and recent lead. Someone had asked to meet Castiel and Dean both together, because she was looking for Sam too and wanted to make sure they could be trusted before giving away any information. One of Sam’s old Stanford friends—apparently Sam had really been a normal student before his abrupt disappearance. Jessica or Cassandra or something. It didn’t matter, she might have info and Dean was willing to do anything to see his brother again.

When Dean and Castiel arrived at the little apartment in Palo Alto, they met a woman there—Sammy’s girlfriend, she said, before he just vanished one day. She ushered them into a house that smelled a little too strongly of lemon and vanilla.

“You must be Dean, and you are…?” She asked with a warm smile on her face, turning to Castiel.

“I am Castiel,” he replied shortly. He looked uncomfortable, like he normally did when he had to interact with humans and wasn’t quite sure he was getting it right. Jennifer just kept smiling and powered through it.

“Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Now, you two are looking for Sam, right?”

Down to business it was, then. Dean nodded. “He went missing almost two years ago, and some people have seen him near Seattle pretty recently, but you told us you had something so we decided to swing by on our way up.”

Well, it had been less ‘swinging by’ than ‘completely changing course,’ since Stanford was in the very corner of the country, but Janice had said she had something important.

She hummed and nodded. “Would you say you’re pretty dedicated to finding him? Like, you’d do anything to see him again?”

This must be something important, for her to be so careful about it. Dean nodded. “There is nothing I wouldn’t do to get my brother back. I need to find him.” He even took out his own version of the puppy eyes—not as effective as Sam’s, but they’d do in a pinch. And he was being totally honest, which should give him brownie points if nothing else.

Melissa smirked. “Oh, I never said you were getting him back.”

I’m in the middle of breaking into someone’s house—for the best of reasons, I assure you—when suddenly I’m not anymore.

It’s very disorienting is my first thought.

My second is oh shit I’m bound in a nasty-looking circle this is bad where am I did I leave my lockpicks in someone’s door.

One of these thoughts is more situationally appropriate than the other, but I really don’t have time to-

Dean!

Dean is here, and he’s not looking good. He’s gagged and bound in a corner of what might be an abandoned warehouse and has a couple of deep cuts on his arms. He’s struggling and looking at me, and then he cuts his eyes to my right and I begin to see what’s going on.

Cas is there too, surrounded by sigils that glow threateningly when he moves, and there’s a demon standing just outside of the circle that had presumably been used to summon me. It would explain the sudden travel, at least, and why she cut Dean—blood summoning rituals, nasty things.

Cas and I share a moment of eye contact while I try to convey how not possessed I am and ask how the hell he survived all at once. Our Moments of Epic Understanding aren’t a very good form of communication, but Cas is pretty talented. He and Dean practice a lot.

There’s one other thing, too.

The demon is wearing Jess’s body, and I can already tell Jess isn’t in there anywhere.

Immediately, I begin struggling to my feet, but as soon as I do the circle activates and I’m slammed to the ground again. My wings feel like lead.

Chapter Text

“What do you want?” I cough out, winded.

Not-Jess smiles down at me adoringly, and I suddenly feel very intimidated. “I want you to come home, and take your crown!” She announces eagerly, and I feel even worse.

Sure, some demons have tracked me down and tried to get me to head down to Hell. But there is no way I’m going to become the King of Hell after spending so much of my life trying to avoid exactly that—this life is my second chance, and I am staying as far away from Hell as I can. Most demons have been more subtle about it, too—it can’t be good that they’re getting more blatant in their intentions.

I do wonder how Cas is here, though. I glance over to him to see him watching me calculatingly.

Shit, he probably can’t tell if I’m Lucifer, magic eye contact or not—not if he’s bound up in that many sigils.

“I’m not him. Your King is dead, and that’s too bad for you, but I’m not him and I’m not going.” I keep eye contact with Cas the whole time, making sure he knows what I’m really saying. If you’re really Cas, I’m not Lucifer. It’s safe once I can get you out of here. Get Dean.

He nods once, and I relax. He probably got most of that, and what he didn’t he’ll be able to work out for himself.

Now to get me out, so I can get Cas out, so he can get Dean out. I have no idea how Cas came back with me, but I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. I begin trying to stretch my wings as far as they’ll go, trying to brush off some of the chalk on the circle.

The demon tuts. “I know those nasty little Hunters have filled your head with lies, but I planned for that, so it’s okay! See, if you don’t agree to a contract with me, I’ll kill your brother and his angel. Now you don’t have to feel bad about wanting to come home, so you’ll come back to us, right? Because you have to, to save your brother and your friend?” She leans forward and tilts her head, and it occurs to me that she isn’t going to do this the nice way.

“Fuck no! I’m not going there! That place is pain and insanity, and I don’t care if the entire demon population goes up in flames! Let Cas and Dean go!” I yell, perhaps a bit too ostentatiously. I just need to distract her until I can mess up the circle. I hate Hell more than anything for what it’s taken away from me, and if I don’t make it clear now that I’m not ever going with her, no matter what, she could hurt Cas and Dean.

The demon has the nerve to look a little bit hurt. “Well, if you say so, I guess I have to kill the angel firs-“

“No.”

I can’t let that happen, either.

I’d rather go to Hell than let someone else get hurt for me. Not Cas, who’s been through so much. Not anyone.

I don’t want to go back there!

We can’t always do the things we want.

“What are the terms of your contract?” I ask her, still trying to rub out the circle with my wing before I actually have to agree to anything. I just can’t quite reach, and Dean is struggling now more than ever. He’s making protesting noises behind the gag and I turn away from him. I don’t think I can do this if he asks me not to. “Terms. Let’s get this over with.”

She giggles, and in Jess’s body it looks familiar and safe and I hate her more in that moment than anything I’ve ever met.

“Come home. Let us explain all the truths about what you were always meant to be. I’ll even let you say goodbye to your human! And then you’ll come back to us, and we’ll tell you all about it and you won’t be afraid of us anymore, and we can have a King again and it’ll all be perfect and…” She trails off, apparently lost in her little dream world where I didn’t want to rip her to shreds and dance on them for even thinking about using Jess’s—

Right. Violent urges are bad.

Smiling as winningly as I can, I offer, “How about I come with you and you let my brother go?”

There. Nice and easy to get out of—come with her, kill her slowly and painfu-er, kill her, then go back to running away. If she doesn’t survive, she won’t be able to tell anyone about her brilliant idea to use my brother against me, and everything will be okay.

It occurs to me that I might be going a little insane, but I’m pretty sure I know what insanity feels like. This is more like…coping.

Yes. This is healthy coping. Making deals with demons to save the most important person in my life. Because that worked so well for Mom…and Dean…and me…and Dad.

The demon looks thoughtful for a moment, then shakes her head. Dean has gone completely still, or at least the struggling noises have stopped.

I am going to kill her.

“No. You have to come home, and then stay. Then you can leave after that, but first we have to tell you and make you see, okay? A month. You have to stay home for a month, and you have to take care of us. Then you’ll know and you won’t want to run away from us ever again. And I’ll let your brother go, and the angel.” She decides petulantly, bottom lip sticking out in a painfully familiar expression.

--Jess, you know how I feel about Halloween—

No. This is a demon.

Even so, I can’t refuse. A month, probably of torture if she thinks I won’t have the will to leave Hell after it’s done, for my brother’s and Castiel’s lives? There’s no question. I nod, finally giving up on brushing out the design with my wing—normally I think I could, but the circle must be preventing me from using my powers to their full extent, which would include my wings.

Delighted, she grins at me from Jess’s face and it just feels wrong.

“Only if you get out of that body, though. And I’m going to make you wish you were never born for using Jess like that.” I inform her. It’s only fair, after all, for her to know how she’s going to die.

She just laughs like I told her the best joke she’s ever heard and rubs out the circle with her foot—it must have been specifically made for me, then, since it doesn’t harm her.

“Ten minutes to say goodbye, and then we go! If you leave before a month is over, we get to kill your brother and keep you forever!” She reminds me, as if I needed the clarification. I’m already at Dean’s side, though, untying the ropes by hand even though I could do it with a thought. As soon as I get the gag out, he starts reaming into me.

“Sammy don’t you dare do this for me, don’t you dare, how could you be so stupid you have wings dude did you just teleport wait stop don’t make deals with demons Sammy it’s not worth it just stop get out of-“ I cut him off, looking him dead in the eye.

“I am keeping you safe. That will always be worth it. You get Cas and get out of here, and I’ll try to fix things, alright? And I’ll see you in a month. This won’t kill me, Dean, and there’s nothing they can do to me that hasn’t been done before. I have to do this, okay?” My hands come up to his arms, and I look right into his eyes to make sure he understands.

After all those times you took care of me, this is finally my chance to take care of you. I can redeem myself for everything I’ve screwed up. This is my chance, Dean.

He makes a pained sound low in his throat, and I’m tugged forward into a hug that nearly breaks my nose against the wall.

“I just got you back,” Deans rasps, holding me just a little too tightly as my wings spread around him. “I just got you back, and you’re just gonna go with the Hell bitch? You’re just gonna buckle under and do whatever she wants because she threatened you a little? That’s it?”

He sounds so much like he did when I was with Ruby.

I clutch at his jacket just a little bit tighter—with how slowly time can move in Hell, this might be the last time I see him for a decade, or even a century. Even if he spends the whole time insulting me, I’ll hold on to every word.

“Damn it, Sam,” he mutters into my ear, perhaps sensing that I’m determined to go forward with this or maybe knowing in that way that older brothers did that he couldn’t get me to change my mind.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him, because I am and because he needs me to at least pretend to regret my decision.

Eventually, I let go, because we don’t have time and there are things I need to tell him before I go. Six hundred seconds has never seemed so short.

I try to start speaking, but he cuts me off.

“I’m not letting you do this.”

And that’s my brother, the man that charges in when neither of us knows what’s going on and insists that I don’t go it alone. Even now that he can’t remember what’s really out there, with Heaven and Hell and Earth as their battleground, he’s not willing to let me go.

But he has to.

“Dean, you don’t have a choice. Now, you can-“

Let it be known that I tried to be rational, but he interrupts me again.

“No. I’m not just letting you go with this chick. I’m gonna get you out of this.” He insists. And it’s an admirable effort, really. I appreciate what he’s doing and I would do the same for him. Did do the same for him. But there’s enough demon in me now that if I violate a contract I agreed to myself…well, the consequences won’t be pretty. And maybe I deserve that. I’ve done some pretty horrible things, things I don’t even like to think about. But right now I need to keep my brother safe, so I smile at him as gently as I can, trying to convey the things I can’t say through my eyes and my hands on his arms and the spread of my wings around us both.

“It’s okay, really. It’ll just be a month, and then I’ll come back home. Just promise me you won’t do anything stupid in the meantime. Spend some time with Cas. Hunt. Buy a house and knit doilies all day. Just wait a month for me, and I’ll be back before you know it, and I’ll explain it all then, okay?” I soothe him as much as I can, holding firmly and tightly onto his upper arms and abusing the puppy dog eyes just a little.

Dean doesn’t look terribly soothed—in fact, he looks furious and hurt and a million other things I don’t even want to think about. But all he says is, “Sammy, I’m gonna get you out of this. I’ll find a way, just you wait for me. I’ll get you back where you belong, but you’ve got to tell me—why didn’t you come to me as soon as—with the…wings, I mean. Why didn’t you trust me, man?”

He’s hurt, I can see, and even though I know he can’t remember how he never accepted my psychic powers, let alone demonic, I’m startled by how sincere his eyes are.

“Dean, you’re a Hunter,” I remind him, because for some reason he seems to have forgotten years of being taught that everything I am is evil.

“And you’re my brother.”

He just keeps looking at me like he’s telling the gospel truth, and I can almost forget that this isn’t how Dean reacted at all last time we found out I’m not all human.

“Dean, I’m more demon than human right now. I am literally the King of the literal Hell. I am exactly the kind of thing you hunt—exactly. You can’t just—“

I can’t bring myself to finish it, because I want so very badly to believe that my brother really does get that this is a part of me that I can’t just dig out and destroy. If I ask the question, I know it’ll ruin everything because he’ll have to answer and he’ll tell me that he hates the part of me that’s evil and wants it to die and-

But Dean, ever my big brother, shakes his head. “You just agreed to go to Hell for me, Sam. You spent the last two years saving people. You still care about Castiel, even though you two won’t tell me how you know each other. I don’t know what you are, but I know who you are, and that’s still my little brother. I can learn the rest of what we need to know later. For now, you’re still Sammy.”

And that’s…God, that’s all I ever needed to hear. I can’t even begin to express how wonderful it is to have Dean say that for me, even though he can’t possibly believe it. He’s just trying so hard to be there for me while I’m about to go to Hell, and I can remember more clearly than ever why all of this is worth it.

For Dean.

So I launch myself back at him for one last hug and hold on tightly, because my ten minutes are almost up and I want him to know how much he means to me. I fold my wings tightly around both of us and mutter into his shoulder, “I’ll tell you everything some day—I promise. What I am, why, how…all of it. And until then, please—please—just wait for me, okay? Don’t try to save me, don’t try to get me out of the deal. Just wait for me and I’ll be home before you know it.”

I pull back before he can complain about the chick flick moment and release him in order to go scuff out the sigils at Cas’s feet. He’s looking at me with his We Have a Deep Understanding and I Know What You’re Doing look and I know we don’t need to talk about it. It’s a good thing he’s decided that I’m not possessed.

Cas and I just know, sometimes. Also, we don’t talk to each other like that because our combined existential issues would probably irreparably destroy the world.

Still, he puts a hand on my shoulder and looks me straight in the eye.

“I will watch over Dean.” He promises, and I know that he will.

The two of us will probably have to talk about what all we’re going to change, who needs to die right away and who we can save before they ever get hurt and what even happened to us and how Cas is here, but it can wait.

“Look out for yourself, too,” I tell him, and while it’s not a declaration of trust and friendship, it feels like it got the message across.

And then I’m whizzing away to Hell as dictated by the contract, hoping that I’ll get to go home sane and intact for once.

It takes me a few seconds to realize that I’ve forgotten to ask about Gabriel.

For a long time after his brother disappeared, Dean sat in complete silence, staring at the empty space next to Castiel.

But screw that.

“Sammy said not to get him back,” he said, his voice hoarse for reasons he didn’t want to explore. “Even if I do get him out, people will know. He hasn’t exactly been subtle; Dad’s already asking questions. He’ll be hunted for the rest of his life and dragged back into Hell when he dies.”

Castiel nodded, but had the sense to wait for the other half of that sentence.

It surprised him all the same. “He never said I couldn’t come with him.”

Dean stood up, using the wall as a support after having crouched in the same position for too long. Castiel took a moment to reflect and apparently found Dean’s resolve as unsurprising as Dean did after some thought, because his only response was “May I help?”

Dean grinned.

Chapter Text

I’m not really sure what to think of Hell.

It’s been a year (has it really been a year?) since I made that deal, maybe a day or maybe a week or maybe just a couple of hours topside. And since I’m not released until a month has passed on Earth, I can’t exactly perform all of my kingly duties. But I do well enough, I suppose.

I rule over the seven Rings of Hell with an iron fist. Sort of. Actually, I kind of let each district run itself under its own individual Ringleader. The Ringleaders are all older than I can imagine, and they’ve been at their jobs since some time around when Lucifer took over. Before him was Hades, and Hell wasn’t such a bad place then—not evil so much as boring. But then of course Lucifer had to take over and twist everything up—apparently he used to be a charming, relatively sane guy who just wanted equal rights for all angels and the death of all humans, but then took a bit of a dive off the deep end after too long in the Cage.

Right. All I know is I’m glad he’s gone.

Since Hell is so attached to its King, though, he dragged all the demons with him. They all changed from the ancient Greek daimons—guardian spirits with the capacity for good or evil—to the demons we know. Well, until I jumped onto the throne. That messed everything up, since I’m fairly sane and have a moral compass. Since my mind pretty much projects onto the demons’ minds, they all had to cope with the reintroduction of working souls into their psyches.

It drove a lot of them insane, made some of them defect, and what I was left with by the time I got down to Hell was a mess of alternately needy and bitter subjects who all demanded that I do something about every little problem they had. I had to bring order back into Hell before anything, and I did that with a bloodbath. Everyone who had ever hurt me or Dean died, and everyone who refused to acknowledge my authority died bloody.

Possibly I still had a little leftover anger from, you know, being screwed over my whole life. Maybe I enjoyed it a little, and that still scares me. Anyway, I was not happy, I was trapped in Hell, and I was scared. I killed a lot of people. I don’t like to think about that time.

I’ve spent a lot of time coming to terms with how bad I felt about it, though. These are demons, Sam. They hurt people. They killed your mother and Jess and countless others. They deserve to die.

But after the slaughter it was easier—almost as if I’d reassured the demon population that yes, someone’s in control, and someone’s taking care of you. There is someone out there who’s going to make sure that there are rules and that they’re followed. It makes sense, in a screwy, insane way.

I restructured most of Hell, starting with the legal system. Hell is where evil souls go to be punished, and as the King of Hell it’s my job to make sure they are. I hate the idea of torturing people, for obvious reasons—after how Dean acted fresh out of Hell, I wasn’t letting that happen to anyone else.

So I decided that rehab is really a good idea and deserves far more credit.

People who are just born crazy normally have souls that are deeply twisted, or stunted somehow. With careful work by demons who know what they’re doing, those souls can slowly be nourished and straightened out. Some people are abused or suffer a trauma that’s painful enough to make them the type to go to Hell. We pretty much…well, we send them into a soul-deep therapy with a partner who can care for them until either they ask for their memories to be erased so they can start over or they get some sort of stability. Dean would mock me for having all these psychos talk out their problems, but hey, it works.

A lot of people end up in Hell for reasons that are frankly stupid.

Sold their souls, suicides, didn’t do something right for Heaven, were ‘destined’ for Hell, nothing that should actually condemn them. In fact, some people in Hell got here for doing some of the most heroic things I’ve ever heard of.

Those people got shuffled in with the rest of the sane ones, and they lived in the Rings. After some time, they can learn to thrive in Hell and become demons, their strength and type depending on who they are and what they’re like. Until that happens, some of them help us govern and judge who needs to go to rehab and who doesn’t, and some just pass their time however they wish as disembodied souls.

It’s not Heaven, but I like to think I’m doing the best I can for them.

Demons get better treatment with me on the throne too, strangely enough. Most of them are still set in their ways, but it isn’t as hard as you’d think to have evil act as good.

We have a lot of vengeance demons and death omens hanging around, since that’s the easiest way to transition from evil to sort of neutral-ish good-ish. Vengeance is just like justice, but carried out even when justice might not be fair. It’s ruthless, but it means my demons are doing some good in the world. It’s a good compromise between the conscience I gave them and the evil left over from Lucifer, and they’re getting better every day. Some even run around doing good deeds!

Back at Hell, we sort everything in between the Rings. The Rings are basically districts that everyone lives in—one through three are rehab for the crazier human souls, and the only demons that live there are the Shoi—the demons that handle administration and day-to-day running of Hell—and the ‘therapist’ demons that volunteer to help the psychos regain a moral compass.

Rings six and seven handle the upper administration—I live in Ring seven, and so would my General, if I had one. I don’t, since I can’t imagine trusting any of my newfound subjects as my right-hand man. Ring six is filled with Shoi of all types, acting as servants, secretaries, you name it. They keep the paperwork on who’s making deals topside, who’s going to Hell, where everyone lives and when we need to expand, and especially what deals we have to live up to or check back on in a few years. They’re lifesavers, every one of them.

Heh. Demons are lifesavers. Crossroads demons are lifesavers. The irony kills me.

Four and five are by far the largest Rings in terms of population. They’re filled with human souls and Seivs, the servant demons that travel most often between Earth and Hell, and usually act as messengers when we need to tell someone something. Strangely enough, it’s actually considered a great honor to be a Seiv or a Sho, because there isn’t one Seiv or Sho in Hell that isn’t powerful and trustworthy. They do grunt work, but they’re also Hell’s soldiers when we’re invaded, ambassadors when we’re at peace, and really the lifeblood of my realm.

Finally, there are Lesser Demons—demons who don’t have the power to be running back and forth between Hell and Earth at the drop of a hat. They’re the ones who most humans see, since a lot of them gather up all their power and make a one-way trip over to Earth to learn a little more about life and being a demon, and especially what’s expected of you from humans and angels. They’re the face of Hell in front of other people, and that’s an advantage for us.

Lesser Demons are about as weak as demons get—any less power than that and you’re human. Since humans don’t know that, though, they underestimate what demons are capable of and we can protect ourselves and each other when we need to. Since angels usually only see Lessers and the occasional Ambassador Sho or Seiv, they underestimate our numbers by about eighty percent.

Everything about this system is designed for Hell’s best safety. I have good reasons for this.

There are laws in my Hell, too, and most of them revolve around not hurting innocents and what should be done in various situations, though there are several laws against hurting my human family. All my years at Stanford did me good when it came to writing laws, and even better when I’m enforcing them. Depending on what law you break and how it’s broken, you can be let go or put to death or anything in between. I’m the one who deals with most of that, though I have several Shoi writing them all down and keeping track of them for me. Seivs carry out any punishments that take longer than a few minutes, because I would never have time to do anything otherwise, and I’m still missing two integral parts of my kingdom.

I don’t have a General. There’s no one handling delegation of tasks, and if I go to war I’ll have to lead my armies myself, or with the Ringleaders if I can spare them. Which is fine, the Ringleaders all know their way around an army and I’ve even gotten them all to start training small standing armies for each Ring, but if I get killed there’s no one to take over until the next King gets situated. The previous General was Azazel, and he is very dead now.

So very dead. That’s one thing I don’t regret.

I’m also missing a Gatekeeper. The Gatekeeper is someone I sorely need right now, since he or she supervises defense. It’s the Gatekeeper’s job to make sure no one living ever gets into Hell, and especially no one from Heaven. Adam’s in Heaven now, but we need a Gatekeeper right now mostly because we need someone who can focus solely on defending Hell from our enemies.

It seems Heaven has taken note of the new management.

It seems Heaven doesn’t like the Destined Vessel of Lucifer being the King of Hell.

In fact, it seems that Heaven is so against me being the King of Hell that they’ve decided that I’ve obviously said yes to Lucifer—never mind that he isn’t in me, or in anyone, and is in fact dead in the Cage—and they need to kill me before I destroy the world with my demon rehabilitation and my Hell counseling.

Because turning Hell into something that isn’t the epitome of all evil is very threatening.

Now, since I’m such a dangerous pacifist, Heaven is maybe three months from declaring war, tops. That gives me plenty of time, since Heaven mostly runs on Earth time, but even so, we’re just not prepared for an invasion by beings literally designed to kill demons. I still have to split my attention between keeping Hell running and keeping it defended, and I can’t delegate either of those to the General or Gatekeeper like I’m supposed to, since I don’t have either of those.

I’m doing the three most difficult jobs in Hell on my own, and I haven’t slept in days (weeks?). I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing or the only thing I can do, if there’s a difference between the two. I miss my brother and Cas and even Gabriel and Earth and sometimes I just feel so overwhelmed and-

And Hell needs me.

I killed the demon that made the contract with me in the initial bloodbath—she killed Jess, she more than deserved it—but she was right. After living in Hell, after seeing what needs to be done and how much they need me, I can’t just leave them.

Besides, living with all of these demons almost makes my wings feel normal. My powers don’t feel as much like something evil, and more like a part of being the King. I’m not all human—not even mostly human—but I don’t think I’m a monster, either. It doesn’t even feel like some sort of dirty secret, like it did with Ruby. It just feels like I’m honestly doing a good thing.

This might be the first time I’ve ever felt like that. It’s…nice.

It’s nice.

Besides, the wings are only really a result of Lucifer’s influence on Hell and the old demon blood that’s still running through me, so they’ll probably disappear if I can ever purify that. I don’t get the angelic grace or magical archangel powers, but I do get these floofy things.

Right now I’m just beginning my responsibilities for the day. I just finished all the new paperwork I need to do—thank God (Satan? Me?) the Shoi can take care of most of it—and now I get to do what is really my favorite and least favorite part of being king.

It’s time for me to talk with my subjects, one on one, and help them with anything they need me to do. Mediate disputes, re-sort people into different Rings, give people permission to kidnap someone away from an abusive or dangerous situation, steal some souls out of Purgatory, you name it, I do it. I have to give people permission to do the weirdest things, too, like eat yellow M&Ms and live topside for an odd number of years.

Hey, my legal system is a work in progress.

I stand up straight and push my chair back away from my desk, making my circlet appear on my head with a moment’s concentration. It’s something I can supposedly only do in Hell, but since I haven’t been on Earth or in Purgatory since I learned how to do it, I haven’t been able to test it.

It’s not like I’ll ever get to Heaven to try it there, anyway. And hey, for the first time ever, that is more than alright with me.

I have a neat throne room in my gigantic castle—the King’s Castle is always the most impressive part of Hell, but the throne room manages to outshine everything else in it. In Lucifer’s days it was unused, but I’ve renovated the place some so I can meet up with my subjects face-to-face like this. It just doesn’t seem right to do this kind of thing through paperwork, even if it would be faster.

The throne is a gaudy thing, all black and gold with red satiny cushions, but it’s also the softest thing I’ve ever felt, so I don’t mind a bit. The whole throne room is made of elegant lines and engravings, with red marble columns leading up to the raised dais I sit on. It has plenty of subtle escape routes and hidden weaponry, and if everything goes to Hell in a handbasket—figuratively—it’s one of the most defensible places in the realm, and it connects to a series of underground tunnels capable of holding all of Hell’s population if necessary. I made sure we could keep all of my people safe in the worst-case scenario pretty much as soon as Heaven started making threatening gestures, and I haven’t regretted the decision yet.

If you don’t know about the numerous defenses, the throne room looks brilliant, with a primarily red theme and white and gold accents everywhere. There are hints of black where you least expect them, as a reminder that this is Hell and we will kill you in horrible ways if we need to, pacifist or no.

It’s possible that I took an interior design course at Stanford. It’s also possible that I was really into it.

I will confirm nothing.

Anyway, I can lounge on the throne if I want to meet up with my subjects casually, just help them with their problems and send them on their way, or I can pull out my wings and Loom at them. I’ve had ridiculous amounts of fun intimidating people who thought they could get away with pulling something right under my nose—especially since I can pretty much control what everything looks like, so I can create a suffocating darkness right around someone or I can smile at them and place a suggestion in their minds that I would very much enjoy ripping their face off.

All the same, I’m very careful about abusing my power. No one is ever afraid in my presence who doesn’t absolutely deserve to be. There will always be a large part of me that’s terrified of becoming a monster.

As I settle down on my throne, I conjure up a comfortable couch in front of me. No point in making someone stand the whole time, sometimes this can take a while. I signal the Seivs guarding the doors to go ahead and let some people through.

Immediately, a line forms inside the room, with a familiar vengeance demon at the head. It’s an afrit, a powerful Arabian demon that rises out of a murdered man’s blood to avenge him. These demons are generally pretty focused on doing their job, not that concerned with messing about with humans unless it’s the murderer, so it’s probably an internal conflict. Great.

As he approaches, the afrit kneels before me. Of course, I wave him up with a quiet “No need for formalities, what seems to be the problem?”

He sits quietly on the couch in front of me with no further protest—my subjects are beginning to understand that subservience is a waste of time, and loyalty and trust are what I expect out of them. I hope.

They might just like the couch.

“I request permission to court a human, Seiten.” He intones softly, addressing me by my formal title as King of Hell—the same title that had been misinterpreted into Satan for thousands of years.

That was not what I was expecting.

Courting a human is messy business. Humans don’t know about Hell, and they aren’t usually very accepting of us when they do learn. Heaven could use our interference on that human’s life as an excuse to go to war. The less sane demons could hurt a human or screw with their heads, kidnapping is a concern, a demon’s interest in a human could make them a target, Heaven could just decide to kill the human off…generally, it wasn’t worth the risk. Still, the afrit seems like he understands the gravity of the situation, and he looks me in the eyes seriously before dropping his gaze.

“Tell me more, and I’ll tell you what I think. You know the policy on courting humans, why don’t you want to wait until this one dies?” I tell him, leaning forward a little to be more at his height. Even in Hell, I’m taller than most everyone. The extra height of the throne helps.

“I am…concerned. This human—Maho—she could go to Heaven. I went to Earth to avenge her brother, and I found the most beautiful human I’ve ever seen. She has done no wrong, and I am certain that not even my presence has corrupted her.” He says earnestly.

Well, if she’s at risk of going to Heaven, the two of them are doomed. Once someone gets to Heaven, they’re completely brainwashed—not even people they loved matter to them anymore. They only care about what you are, demon or human or angel, no matter whether you’re the scum of the Earth or the best thing that’s ever happened to them.

Then again, bringing an untainted human to Hell, which would be the logical conclusion to courtship, would be disastrous. Heaven would be furious. They tolerate Hell stealing souls from Earth and Purgatory only because they can’t prove anything and they know it, but taking a living human destined for Heaven down into Hell—that isn’t like saving a child from an abusive situation or stealing a prostitute away from her pimp. That would be a direct assault on Heaven itself.

“We could go to war over this,” I tell him. “The angels are already picking on the living humans we take that aren’t destined for Heaven, and a demon stealing away a perfectly pure human could supply them with just the excuse they need. Are you certain you can’t find something that you can get her into Purgatory with, at least? We can argue the case for petty theft, even, and once she’s in Purgatory we can get her from there, but stealing a human with no black marks on their record is political suicide.”

I’ve gone into ‘lawyer mode,’ and once again I’m grateful for my years at Stanford. They’ve saved my kingdom from impending war more than once, even though I never got around to ‘Ruling Hell 101’.

The afrit looks troubled. “I believe that her purity can outweigh even the most heinous of sins. She will go to Heaven, I am sure. Goodness shines from her, and Heaven would be foolish not to see it.”

Wait. I think I know what’s going on here.

“If…if, maybe, she wasn’t so obviously pure and good, could we argue her down to Purgatory? If she was just an average human, being judged by her actions?” I ask him.

He looks shocked by the very idea. “Seiten, she is so good that not even the darkest of magics could taint her! There is no way that she will be overlooked.”

Great. I get to deal with a demon in love. Possibly also delusional.

“If no one else could see how obviously incredible she is, though? If that were possible?” I press, just to be sure there’s no worry about having to steal her away from Heaven.

At last, the afrit nods gravely. “She has killed and stolen. If she can be snuck past Heaven’s gaze, we may be able to save her.”

Right. He’s just starstruck. I can work with that.

I smile reassuringly at him. “Wait until she dies. I guarantee we’ll get her.”

He looks just about ready to pass out with gratitude. “Thank you, Seiten! Thank you. I will be forever in your debt.”

Someone clears their throat behind me.

“You know, when I hear there’s a new King of Hell around, I was kind of expecting someone who wasn’t secretly a fluffball.”

Immediately, I’m on my feet, because there is no way. There is just no way.

Gabriel is stepping out from behind my throne.

I frantically signal the entire room not to react, nothing to see here, but… “Christ, Gabriel, you could knock.”

He chuckles. “Sorry, I’ll keep that in mind next time you decide to ignore all of the laws that govern the universe. So, besides going to Hell, what’ve you been up to since the last time we committed fratricide together?”

Chapter Text

Having Gabriel around…it’s like a godsend, except it’s for the King of Hell.

I thought at first that he’d want to go back to Heaven or run around being Loki for a while, but he’s stuck around and I can’t say how grateful I am for that.

With him taking over the Gatekeeper job—without me even asking him to, he just zapped me asleep after another all-nighter and when I woke up he was working on the defenses and he’s been at it ever since—I have time to work on the laws of the realm, mobilize the army, at least try to get Heaven to calm the fuck down we’re not doing anything wrong…okay, it’s still too much work for one person, but with Gabriel taking care of the military defense side of things and cooing at the younger demons trying to kill each other, I get to sleep.

Sleep is good. Sleep is wonderful, actually. I love sleep.

And after I explained the wings—much neater and grayer now that Lucifer’s taint is draining out of Hell, and therefore my powers—and my new status, Gabriel stepped right up, really. I think he thinks it’s funny.

Okay, it is a little funny. But only because I make a terrible Antichrist.

He also thinks I’m a little bit stupid to expect my brother to twiddle his thumbs for a month until I can get topside, but if I send a demon up to tell him I’m okay, he’ll probably kill it.

Suicide missions are so not my style.

But apparently this is not true of everyone, because I have reports that some idiot has gotten past Gabriel’s defenses while he was busy mediating some Lesser Demons and is tearing through Hell.

Well, was tearing through Hell. Gabriel and I have plans in place for situations like this, and we didn’t even have to get directly involved once Gabriel’s regiment of specially-trained baby demons got wind of the ‘invasion,’ but now we get to find out who was there and why. My money’s on some poor angel who thinks he’s scouting out a world of torture and evil.

Heaven always does get the idiots.

Dean knew it wasn’t his best plan ever.

Actually, it wasn’t even remotely thought out and more likely to get them killed than anything, but it was the best he could do with no idea what Hell was even like or how to get in so that he could be with his brother—at least to share in whatever pain Sammy was going through until the month was over.

Castiel had said that it would probably be more than a month in Hell, since time fluctuated or whatever, and there was no way Dean was going to leave his little brother to rot alone for years or even centuries. This was his only chance to see Sam again even remotely soon, possibly his only chance to see Sam sane and unbroken, and he was going to grab it with both hands.

All the same, sneaking into Hell was probably not the brightest idea, and it had been even harder than they’d expected.

First of all, there had been the trouble of getting there. Not so much a problem, since Castiel was a magical fairy and could just go to Hell whenever, apparently. The jury was still out on whether he was a demon or some weird ‘other’ creature, though Castiel himself continually insisted that he was an Angel (of the Lord).

After they’d gotten there, they’d had to sneak past the sheer, smooth walls. There were no doors of any kind except for the place where the damned souls got in, which was ironically a river with a ferry.

Castiel, being a magical fairy, had had no problem pretending to be dead. Possibly he was already dead. At first the demon on the ferry had refused to take him, but Castiel had claimed that he had been rejected from Heaven and gotten a sympathetic shoulder-slap and a “Buck up, Heaven sucks anyways. Much more fun in Hell.”

Dean himself had been caught out as a living soul, and there had been an awkward moment before the ferryman had snorted.

“Look, if you’re here to issue a challenge to get a loved one out of Hell, just sneak into the palace and tell the King. The Gatekeeper’s run off somewhere, you might be able to make it. If you can get to him, he’ll probably listen to you. It’s no use trying to steal souls away quietly anymore, security just got upped again. There’s patrols who’ll stop you from getting to the souls. Soon we’ll need to report every time we want to talk to each other.”

Dean, unsure what to do with that, had just lain on the Winchester charm and moved on.

Once they got into Hell, it was a little more complicated. The other souls on the ferry had milled around, some of them sought out and led away by demons, some just standing and waiting.

When a demon started giving an orientation, Dean and Castiel had figured it was time to split. No one gave Dean Winchester an orientation, not even for his little brother. They did steal some of the maps handed out, though.

The maps had claimed that deals were enacted in Ring Six, so they’d decided to cut through Ring four to get there. Apparently Hell’s rings weren’t concentric—they weren’t even round, actually. If getting to Sammy hadn’t been so important, Dean might have felt cheated.

Castiel had brought up the ferryman’s warnings about the guards, but Dean hadn’t been willing to let his brother suffer because they’d lollygagged trying to rescue him.

They’d had to slip past countless sets of guards on the way to the Fourth, some of whom could see past Castiel’s mojo and tried to chase them, but Dean had been stubborn.

Once the demons had realized that someone was there that shouldn’t be, Dean began to regret that stubbornness. He and Castiel had had to run, fight, hide, and trick every kind of demon Dean had ever heard of, and more besides. They’d lasted hours before a freaking SWAT team of demons had tracked them down.

Fucking demon SWAT teams.

They’d been shut into a jail of some sort, and warned direly against escaping. Any questions about Sam had been met with laughter and taunts.

Finally, one of their SWAT-team-turned-jailors had gone to report to one of the higher-ups. It had come back grinning.

“You two should feel honored,” it said, grinning sickly. “The Seiten has some free time, so you’re going to get a visit from the King of Hell himself and his right-hand man. You’re the first people who’ve been able to breach the security since the new Gatekeeper got here, so I’m sure they’ll have some…questions for you.”

Shit. Shit shit shit.

Dean and Castiel exchanged a glance before Castiel stood up straighter and forced his eyes forward. We’ll stay strong through this.

Dean nodded. Damn straight we will. And then the demons bowed deep as two figures approached. Straining his eyes, Dean could almost hear them.

“I’m just saying, this chucklehead managed to get past my patrols. A little eternal torture might be deserved here! And maybe recruitment. We could use someone with that kind of skills on our side, if you’re right about the three-month deadline…”

“Aren’t you supposed to be the moral high ground here? Requesting eternal torture is kind of ruining your image, Gabriel. Besides, it’s probably some lost angel looking for the Cage or something.” Another voice shot back. They were both still too far away to hear well, but Dean could almost swear...

Dean shot a look at Castiel, who was busy looking stunned.

“Castiel?” Dean murmured. “This is an illusion, right? Something the demons are doing?”

Castiel just kept staring past the bars of the cell. The voices, ever closer, had moved on to bickering about who was ruining whose moral integrity without offering any answers, but one of them just sounded so much like Sammy.

“Cas,” Dean hissed. Cas blinked hard, even though he was supposedly above human things like blinking and breathing, and snapped out of it.

“I can’t feel any illusions. However, there may be wards preventing me from noticing anything unusual, or something of the like,” he offered. The voices were almost on top of them.

“Yeah, so says mister Screw-Fate-I’m-Gonna-Go-Become-King-Of-Hell. I mean, really? Morality at its finest, there.” ‘Gabriel’ teased as two figures finally appeared just outside of the door to their jail building. One of them was much taller than the other, and had wings where the other only gave the impression of wings—something about the way he walked.

Both had fairly long hair, for men, with just the slightest hint of a curl. Both carried themselves with a kind of self-righteousness Dean had only ever seen in one person. Both of them were greeted with deep bows or kneeling from all the demons in the room, and one of the SWAT demons shot a sharp glance at Dean and Cas that heavily implied that they should be kneeling, too.

Right. Good to know that these guys were pretty important, no matter who they were. But if someone had possessed Sammy…

Both of the demons froze just inside the door.

“Dean?” The Sam lookalike asked incredulously. “I thought I told you not to interfere with my deal! What are you doing here?”

“Christo.” Dean responded instantly. All the demons in the room flinched, but the two newcomers remained unperturbed. Combined with how the demon knew Sam’s last words to Dean, Cas’s inability to sense any trickery, and how he held himself just exactly like Sam…

“Did you pay any attention to my deal, Dean? I go to Hell, I rule for a little while, and then I’m free to go. I mean, I wasn’t exactly expecting the five-star treatment either, but it really is me,” Sam offered.

“Yeah, right. Sam would never go for that,” Dean snarled. It couldn’t be Sam. Sam knew better.

“What, were you expecting me to languish in torment? Been there, done that, Dean. These people need my help, they need a leader. I happened to be around. I can help people like this, Dean.” Sam protested, just the hint of pleading coming into his voice.

“The last time you walked with demons, your good intentions did not prevent your actions from having ramifications.” Castiel finally spoke up, breaking off the bizarre staring contest he had going on with the other not-demon guy.

Sam flinched, and curled inward on himself a little. The SWAT demons tensed.

“Wow, brother, harsh. Are we gonna bring up your involvement in that, too? Or maybe Dean-o breaking the first seal? We all screwed up last time, but this time the Moose’s plan isn’t half bad. Well. Not compared to our last plan.” The other guy, a pretty short guy with eyes that were definitely not natural, looked relaxed as he practically strutted right into Castiel’s face from across the cell bars. Something he said must have struck a chord, since Cas looked thoughtful.

“Are you certain, Gabriel?”

The man snorted. “We’ve already thrown our lot in with the Winchesters, Castiel. It’s not like we can stop now. Besides, ruling Hell without actually Falling in the first place? A benevolent ruler of the underworld? The irony just kills me; I have to stick around!”

Dean officially no longer cared. Castiel could sort out his identity issues later.

“You sure this is a good thing?” He asked probably-Sam, wishing his brother would meet his eyes.

Lo and behold, Sam looked up. He nodded confidently, stepping forward. “You might not believe me, but things are really changing here. Gabriel and I, we’ve…well, it’s been busy, but it’s been worth it. So much is different now from how it used to be, there’s completely new management and it’s-“

“If power has changed hands as completely as you claim, what has happened to those who used to be in power?” Castiel challenged.

Sam stopped meeting anyone’s eyes. “They. Um. I. Sorry? I didn’t—I mean, I thought I was just stuck and I kind of—well I—I killed them all. I…I don’t like to talk about it.”

“Hold up, you expect me to believe you killed everyone in Hell? All the big bads in a couple of days?” Dean protested.

Sam dug his foot into the ground. “It’s not like there was a lot of upper management when I got here,” he defended weakly.

“What, so you just killed them all and no one had issues with that? And now you can just run around doing whatever?”

Castiel intervened before they could really get going. “It’s not as unlikely as it sounds. The King of Hell is automatically very powerful where demons are concerned, so if Sam were to want to kill a demon, especially already enraged, it would not be difficult for him. Besides, the majority of Hell had already accepted him, hadn’t they?”

Sam just nodded, the little bitch. “I was kinda kidnapped, remember? Hell wanted me to stay, so everyone was pretty much willing to do anything to convince me to stick around. Not to mention the part where I can’t leave.”

“You still can’t leave, then.” Dean latched on to the only part of this insane trip that made sense.

“Welcome to Hell, we let you run away from your problems. I can’t go topside because I don’t want to be noticed by the rest of the Host; he can’t go because he said he’d stay and rule. Once the month’s up he could just drop Hell like a hot potato, but until then, no one leaves.” ‘Gabriel’ looked bored. “Are we done with the exposition yet? Dean-o still needs the grand tour.”

Sam jumped, like he’d forgotten that Dean was still in a dungeon in Hell. “Right! Rasputin, you can let them out now.”

One of the stupid SWAT demons moved forward to open the door of the cell.

“Rasputin?” Dean muttered, looking at the inhuman thing. “Really?”

It snarled and let him pass. Overcompensating bastard.

“You got any holy water, silver knives, anything? I’d use mine, but…” Sam trailed off sheepishly.

“I would be able to sense any trickery.” Castiel supplied, but Castiel was a supernatural creature of dubious origin and Dean pretended to gently shove at Sam to cover the movement of a silver knife.

“Hey! What are you testing me for?” Gabriel whined, rubbing at his arm as it quickly sealed itself up.

“That’s Sam. I’d be able to tell if it wasn’t. I’m just not sure what you are.” Well, he’s only fairly confident, but that’s how these things go sometimes. Besides, Dean was expecting Sam to be in Hell, he wasn’t expecting some other guy with him. And he didn’t like how familiar Sam was with all these nonhuman something-or-others.

“Dude. Do you even read? Gaaabriel? Ringing any bells here?” The thing mocked him, smirking.

“Behave. Dean, this is the archangel Gabriel, yes, he really is the archangel Gabriel, he’s been helping me. Gabriel, you already know Dean. We can talk more once we’re back home, shall we?” Sam introduced coolly, just on this side of pissed. Yeah, they had been wasting a little time, but that was some serious irritation for a few minutes of being united with his brother.

“Wait, wait, let me guess. Someone’s summoning you?” Gabriel asked.

Sam groaned. “Got it in one. I hate it when that happens.”

“I thought you could not resist summons.” Castiel intoned, tilting his head like he always did.

Sam sighed through his nose. “I can’t. I’ve gotten better at it, but I still end up wherever I’m summoned. I can’t leave Hell, though, so I basically get a pissing contest between the summoning and the deal. In my brain. Let me tell you, it sucks.”

He turned and walked out the door. Dean, not wanting to let his brother disappear like that, hurried after.

Chapter Text

It seemed like he walked for about thirty seconds, but somehow the surroundings changed as he was watching Sam. All of a sudden they were in a high-class living room, though Dean couldn’t have told you when the change occurred.

Sam sat on one of the tan, worn armchairs that populated the room, looking out of place next to deep green ottomans and red velvet couches. The tables were all made of blackened wood and some sort of marbled stone, and distressingly enough, every single carpet was blue. The place was huge and Sam couldn’t be bothered to mix it up a little?

“Who the hell is your interior designer, Sammy? Fire him.”

Sam scowled at me. “If you don’t mind, I imagined this room into existence. Do you know how hard it is to have all those little details? I didn’t have time to be adding color!”

This was good. Razzing Sam about his choices came easily to me. “So you had time for the biggest living room in existence but not a single leather couch?”

Sam huffed. “It doesn’t exactly end. I didn’t have to imagine it being infinite, it just came that way. It’s not my fault it filled up the rest of the space with more of the same.”

It was as good a segue as any.

“So how does this whole Hell thing work, Sammy? You owe me that much.”

Sam slumped even further into his chair, and his wings fluttered until they fit beside him.

“The last King of Hell, he…well, he was a little fixated on me. He wanted to possess me and kill everyone, basically. But he needed me to say yes first.”

“What, so this was some kind of freaky reverse ‘Say Yes to the Dress’ thing?”

Sam gave Dean the patented little brother look of exasperation. “It wasn’t quite like that, but why not. Castiel and Gabe are angels, so they helped me kill him. It took a while, though, and I thought they were dead for a long time.”

“So you’re an angel now. And you became King of Hell because this guy…liked you? Any bad touches I should know about?” He was half-serious.

“Shut up, Dean. I’m not an angel, these are leftovers from the last guy. As soon as I get rid of his influence they’ll go away. In the meantime, I hang around Hell and fix things up. It doesn’t have to be an evil place, Dean.” Clearly, Sam was trying to avoid admitting that he'd made a mistake. No can do, little brother.

“So you knew things were bad. Like, end of the world bad. And you decided to go gank the King of Hell. On your own. Without, I dunno, calling me? Sam, that’s just stupid! It’s not even stupid, it’s a suicide mission! You were barely alive when you showed up at the motel room, and you’re not telling me you got there by being careful! Didn’t you ever think—“

“Dean.”

“Don’t you ‘Dean’ me! You could have died, Sam! You could have died and I would never know!”

Abruptly, Dean’s pacing and yelling is cut off by a flailing of feathers as he’s encased in a giant bear hug. Sam looked like Dean had punched him in the gut.

"I should have told you. I'm sorry I scared you. I’m sorry, Dean. I’m sorry I scared you and I’m sorry I didn’t trust you and God, you will never know how sorry I am that I left you. I didn’t want you to be hurt. I’m sorry, Dean.” Sam murmured soothing half-words into Dean’s hair and squeezed his brother to him like Dean would run away if he let go. Like Dean could ever run away from this kid. With some difficulty, Dean wrangled past the wings to hold Sam just as desperately.

“Why didn’t you come to me, Sam? Why didn’t you tell me? I would’ve helped you, you know I would. Haven’t I always helped you before? Why did you run away from me?” Dean was ashamed to hear his voice breaking a little. Damn it, he’d practically raised the kid and Sam didn’t trust him to have his back? Would rather run off and get himself killed than believe that Dean had his back? Dean moved his hands in soothing, reassuring little patterns across Sam’s back. He was here now, and that was all that mattered.

“Group hug!” Someone called from outside Sam and Dean’s little world before they were both tackled to the floor by someone significantly shorter than either of them. “This is so sweet I’m gonna get cavities.”

“Get off, Gabriel. We were having a moment here.” Sam groaned  from somewhere under the multitude of feathers and people.

“No, you were having brotherly angst. You’ve got a kingdom to run, a war to win! Chop, chop!” Gabriel sprang up, suddenly wearing a chef outfit with an intimidating, if cartoonish, meat chopper.

Dean sat up instantly. “A war? I thought you said you stopped the bad guy.”

“Aah, the tender sound of innocence. Go on, Sammy, I’ll educate your brother in the ways of the world. Cassy’s already checking out the inner Rings, I told everyone he’s allowed.”

Sam nodded gratefully and began walking off. Before Dean could protest, Sam was just gone. He was hit with the disorienting feeling that he hadn’t noticed his brother leave.

“How the fuck does he do that?”

“Eh, you’ll be phasing around before you know it. Now, you get that this is Hell, right? Which means that there’s a Heaven…”

A long time ago, in a hotel room in Michigan, John Winchester almost dropped his careful armful of weapons. Sam had called Dean?

“I thought the two of you didn’t talk anymore?” He asked his son. There had been a whole covert argument, Dean had been off his game for weeks.

“That’s just it—we don’t. I didn’t think I’d be hearing from him for a couple more years at least, but then he calls me and says he has a bad feeling. He kept asking if I was okay. He sounded scared, dad.”

John thought for a moment. Sam had always had uncanny intuition, to the point where John had wondered sometimes…

“You think this is related to what’s going on here? Do you think Sam knows something we don’t?”

Surely Sam wouldn’t keep something important from his family. Either he was being watched and couldn’t talk safely, or he didn’t know much. Knowing Sam’s obsessive research habits, John couldn’t be certain he hadn’t already figured out what Dean and John were hunting. So he was in danger, too.

Dean didn’t draw the same conclusion. “He would have told me if he thought we were walking into danger and he could prevent it. He hasn’t been answering my calls, so I’d say he’s said all he’s going to.”

Or he’d run into trouble he couldn’t handle alone. A cryptic, short phone call that was over before John even got back and then no contact whatsoever? Sam wouldn’t do that. That wasn’t how he worked, not even at his most spiteful. John didn’t tell Dean that, though—if Dean wanted to believe his brother was perfectly safe, he’d be more focused on the fight. They could check Stanford once this demonic son of a bitch was dead, but there was nothing they could do from here.

“We’ll have to be cautious about this, but we can’t just ignore it. Something could happen tonight that puts everyone in this town in danger, and we need to be here to stop it. We’ll set up salt lines and wait it out,” He decided. Dean fell in with him, and they checked and re-checked the guns, waiting for show time.

The next time John hears his youngest son’s voice, he’s absolutely certain that Sam isn’t in there anymore.

“Well, that was a pyrrhic victory,” the thing says, leaning heavily on Dean. It has a cruel satisfaction in its eyes that announces just how much it isn’t Sam, with his gentle heart and unshakeable sense of justice.

But this thing is playing at being Sam, and John has to know why. It got past every ward they had, it appeared to be injured, it leaned into Dean just like Sam would. That level of imitation, that level of power, meant that Sam might still be alive for this thing to channel.

They were in for the long con, then. He pushed a shell-shocked Dean out of the way and worried as if it really were his son there bleeding, carefully stitching Sam’s body together with a silver needle and cleaning his wounds with Holy water.

No reaction, but ‘Sam’s’ skin was ice cold, only just beginning to warm up. He’d need to read up some more; he didn’t know of much that had this kind of firepower and burned cold, too.

But Dean couldn’t know yet. If they were to have any chance of fooling this thing, Dean had to be convinced that that was his brother. John could fake it, but Dean had a way of treating his brother that would ring false if he tried to pretend about it.

He wishes it hadn’t come to this. He wishes he had time to grieve for Sam, for his son. But he’s a hunter, now; he needs to do the right thing.

“He said it was a pyrrhic victory. Whatever was supposed to come here isn’t coming.”

Dean startles a little, lost in though and not expecting to come out of it just yet. He continued to stare blankly at ‘Sam.’

“Why Sammy? He quit hunting. He wanted a normal life—like a civilian.” John’s heart aches for his son, for both of them, but he fears that Sam would never have been able to have a normal life. We’re coming for the children, the thing that had killed Mary had said. Maybe Sam had never had a chance, could have changed anything and still ended up here. Maybe he did change everything and still ended up here.

He couldn’t tell Dean that, though. Not yet. “That’s a question Sam’ll have to answer. Maybe he figured out what was going on. Maybe he was just unlucky. We’ll know as soon as he wakes up.”

For the time being, the thing was either passed out or waiting to get Dean alone, and waiting around would only delay the inevitable. John wants to warn Dean to keep an eye out for trouble, but settles for making sure he’s surrounded by weaponry and taking away the unnecessary things. Whatever this is, if it sees too many weapons lying around, it could figure out that John’s onto its ruse.

When it still doesn’t move, he goes out for longer and longer periods of time, grabbing food and first aid supplies. There’s no change while he’s gone, though—maybe the thing really is unconscious.

Three hours pass, and John watches the thing with increasing worry. Whatever it thinks it’s doing, it can’t be good.

Suddenly, it sits up and gasps through a cough. There must be something really wrong with the body, since it’s coughing up old blood. John’s never heard of a demon going that far.

Then again, this thing passed the Holy water test. It might not be a demon, just some new brand of supernatural fugly to kill.

Dean murmured reassuring half-words at the thing masquerading as Sam while it gasped apologies. Odd choice, apologies, but it might be channeling any number of regrets Sam has concerning Dean. It’s probably nothing, John dismisses it and files it away for possible future use.

To maintain character, he walks forward and looks ‘Sam’ in the eye. “What? What are you sorry for?”

It swayed as it tried to sit up and grinned. It looked ghastly with blood running from the reopened wound through its lips.

“It worked,” it gasped, “you’re alive. You’re alive.”

Is that fear or awe? It had clearly meant to end up in this motel room, surrounded by hunters who couldn’t kill it. And here it’s congratulating itself…maybe John could get it to keep talking.

 “What worked, Sam? What happened there? What did you win, and how?”

“We won…I don’t think we won. No, we didn’t win. But he’s dead now. He’s dead. He’s gone. He’ll never hurt us again. We won.” It muttered, clearly not doing so well on the ‘sanity’ part of the human thing. Maybe it had killed a higher-up, gotten into Sam’s body, and now planned to live out the rest of Sam’s life protected by hunters? Or Sam was the one it killed, if Sam was onto it, and started hunting it…

It made sense. Sam had realized that he was in danger, started hunting it, began to suspect it was too much for him to handle alone, and made a cryptic phone call that would have made Dean come running in any other circumstances. If he was being watched, he could fake not knowing what was going on and have a ‘bad feeling’ without casting too much suspicion onto himself. This thing must have seen through it, though, killed Sam before he could kill it.

It turned to Dean. “I’m so sorry, I wanted to tell you but you would have stopped me it was too dangerous Dean I’m sorry I think Cas is dead there was an explosion Dean I’m sorry they’re dead I didn’t want anyone to die I just wanted to not hurt anyone I don’t want to be a monster he had to die Dean I-

“You’re not Dean.”

Ah. Casting suspicion onto Dean so that they wouldn’t think to suspect that it wasn’t really Sam. This thing was clearly sentient, at least.

Dean tried to reassure his ‘brother,’ as always. “Yes, Sammy, I am Dean. Why wouldn’t I be Dean?”

It continued spinning its tale. “Dean wasn’t at the battle. We were careful. He’s only human and it was wrong but I needed him to be safe, he wasn’t at the battle. Where am I?”

An admission that it wasn’t human, maybe? Not concrete, but very suspicious. Maybe it wasn’t too bright after all.

John went in for the kill. “Sam, you appeared in a hotel room. There’s been off-the-charts demonic activity around here for almost a year, and then nothing for a month. We were expecting a demon more powerful than anything we’ve ever seen, and you appeared. What was it that you fought?”

Ah, a flinch. It recognized something in there, maybe it was expecting some of it. It looked at him through his son’s face, and hardened itself as it prepared to lie.

“…I can’t tell you that.” It decided. Not enough emotion to seem real, unless it was trying to portray shock. “I need to go.” A threat. Keep pushing and lose Sam.

Dean reached out to reassure it, and it jerked back like he’d hit it. A reaction from whatever was left of Sam or was it afraid Dean would recognize it for what it was?

“Dude, you’re not going anywhere for another week. Someone stabbed you through. You’re lucky you didn’t die.” It pulled out the ‘puppy dog eyes’ Dean had never been able to resist. There might still be some little piece of Sam floating around in there, John had never before seen an imitator replicate that expression.

 “He wouldn’t kill me. You may not like him—won’t like him when you meet him—wouldn’t like—whatever. He wouldn’t kill me. Not if it would save the world.” Defending its assailant? Or more likely, defending itself. John wouldn’t be surprised to find that it had inflicted all of those wounds in the attempt to kill Sam. He wouldn’t have gone down without a fight.

It turned around as if to sleep, and Dean sent John a look. He had wanted to push further, but then again, he wouldn’t have pushed Sam further when he was clearly too exhausted to make sense, so he let it go in the interest of playing his part. He moved to the bed with the remaining weapons, to sit next to his son.

“Alright. We know that Sammy knew about someone, probably someone who hurt him in the past. Do you think this might be the demon that killed mom?” Dean suggested, whisper-quiet as if this thing actually needed to sleep.

“Could be. He mentioned several times that it had hurt someone and he didn’t want anyone to die. Especially if he was calling you to say goodbye, just in case he didn’t come back. If it was the demon that killed Mary, he probably wanted us to stay out of the whole thing until it was dead, if it was as powerful as it seems to have been.” Bullshit. Sam would have said goodbye if he meant goodbye, and Dean wouldn’t have been able to do a thing about it. But it was bullshit Dean would buy, and he needed a story Dean would believe.

“So he found out that it was coming here, and that we were here, and ran off half-cocked to kill it? That doesn’t sound like Sam,” Dean countered. Dean was smart, even when he was distracted by his brother. Maybe especially when he was distracted by his brother.

“Could be that he had a plan. He mentioned an ally, maybe more than one. He might have walked in thinking he knew what he was doing, underestimated his enemy, and gotten his ally killed. Or it could have just been a last resort—a sort of last-ditch effort to kill or weaken it before it got to us. That seems more like your brother,” he suggested half-heartedly. It did seem like Sam, if Sam were to be a far sigh more ruthless and desperate than he actually was. Or if he really hated his allies.

“So he knew he was screwed and fought the thing anyway. His ally got killed and he killed the demon, then whatever was bringing the demon here just grabbed Sam instead? Can that happen?” No, it couldn’t. A transportation spell should only affect whoever the caster wanted it to. Still, he pulled out his journal for effect.

Blatant lying time. He hated doing this to his kids. His kid. “For some rituals. If Sam was directly the one to kill it, its power might have rubbed off on him enough that the ritual would activate using him instead. For some demons, they have to be killed the right way or they give you some nasty curses. Especially the older ones.”

Dean’s face lightened a little bit, like John needed a reminder that he was a horrible person. “He was beat up, but I don’t see any obvious curses. Hopefully this’ll be the only consequence.”

He looked so hopeful, John left it alone.

“You’re right, and we’ll see soon. Once he’s recovered some, we’ll ask him for the details. In the meantime, we’ll need to rest up. I’ll take first watch.”

Chapter Text

John Winchester was a very intelligent man. He knew his way around every supernatural creature he’d ever encountered, and quite a few he hadn’t besides. He could read and react to damn near any situation, and he had an uncanny ability to tell what needed shooting wherever he was.

He found it very suspicious that ‘Sam’ had shown up so injured that his family wouldn’t push him for anything, said everything just right to keep them from being suspicious, and then bailed before any explanation could be given. It was also very suspicious that Sam had disappeared to fight an extremely powerful demon without asking for any backup. An extremely powerful demon that had apparently involved him in its ‘psycho end the world plot.’ That part John was pretty sure was true.

Once the ‘Sam’ thing was gone, the first thing he did was to call the morgue.

It didn’t take much searching to find out that his youngest son was dead.

Sam’s last living action had been to call his brother. He’d probably gotten involved with this thing, realized he was in too deep to possibly get out, and called Dean to warn him about the upcoming...apocalypse. Then the thing killed him, stole his body, and stopped by to make sure Dean and John didn’t suspect a thing.

According to the hospital report, Sam had simply dropped dead not thirty seconds after he’d hung up the phone. No medical reason for it, he’d just…poof. Dead. Heart stopped. All those wounds Sam had had when he’d gotten to Michigan? Not there when he died, apparently, and there were no weapons nearby that could have caused them. Of course not, since Sam had panicked and gotten himself out of Palo Alto and into someone’s lawn in the middle of Suburbia to die. Sam had done more extreme things to soothe his ‘bad feelings’ about something, and was usually right to do it, but John couldn’t help thinking Sam had been running from something.

Of course, there wouldn’t be a medical reason for his death. It was supernatural. Whatever was out there right now wearing his son, it had made sure Sam was good and dead first. That night it had stolen Sam’s body from the morgue, just in time to stagger in and bleed all over the hotel room.

‘Sam’s’ confused babble when he’d arrived…it made sense, now. Sam had been killed, and therefore Dean had been rendered a non-threat. John had presumably also been rendered unable to fight whatever kind of monster it was. Sam would have been able to take out at least one of whatever this thing’s allies were (Cas? What could a Cas be?), John was sure of it. His son may have been retired, but Sam was one clever sonovabitch. The rest of the talk could be planned out to make it seem like it really was Sam.

The problem was that if he intended to kill this thing walking around in his son—and oh, John intended to kill it, nothing touched his sons and got away with it—he would become a target himself. As soon as it realized he wasn’t fooled, everyone around him would be put in danger. If Dean didn’t believe this thing was really Sam, he’d become a target, and knowing how well the real Sam had done against it, it probably wouldn’t end well for Dean.

This wouldn’t be a problem, usually. Dean was always in danger. But apparently this thing was big.

Once he’d been certain it had been demon-level big, bigger even, he’d researched everything he could involving Hell. Every hint of lore regarding demons and the afterlife that seemed remotely credible and accessible passed through his hands. He’d caught a crossroads demon and tortured it for information. He’d talked to hunters he would normally never interact with, because they were just the kind of paranoid bastards that just might know something.

What he gathered was that he’d have no realistic chance of keeping Dean safe if he chased this thing.

He knew that Dean didn’t believe that his brother was dead. Dean just didn’t give up on Sam; it was one of the pillars of the Religion of Winchester. But if he pretended that he believed Dean when he said he wanted revenge, sent him on what amounted to a wild goose chase after the monster but kept him from getting too close, Dean would be safer than he’d ever been. He’d be busy enough to keep his head down, but not close enough to be a threat. It was a delicate balance to keep, but John was certain Dean would never be able to catch up if he still thought the thing was his brother. In this one case, his devotion would blind him just enough that he’d be kept out of the way.

Yes, that was one way to keep Dean safe. Backhanded enough that Dean would never realize what was happening, too. He’d be too busy trying to convince John that it was revenge he was after and not his brother, it was almost realistic. Almost realistic was possibly the best John’s plans had ever merited.

Once this thing wasn’t carting Sam’s body around, he would find the thing that killed Mary. Right now, he had two vengeance quests to go on, and he just knew Mary would want him to make sure their son was at rest. She’d never forgive him if it turned out Sam was still trapped in there somewhere, helplessly watching his body as it did whatever it was doing—apparently, climbing the ranks of Hell at an astonishing rate.

John called in every favor he was ever owed. He researched. He hunted stronger and stronger things, making sure he had the knowledge and skill to go up against the King of Hell in a one-on-one fight. His only chance was to get this thing alone and kill it. Salt and burn the body, and he could be sure that Sam was at peace, at least. It was the least he could do for his boy, his precious youngest child who had never been meant for hunting.

Daniel Elkins died, and John got the Colt.

A woman he didn’t recognize died on his doorstep, and he got a knife that could kill demons. Suspicious, very suspicious, but he was so close. He couldn’t turn away help from even the shadiest of his contacts.

John was going to track this thing down and kill it dead.

 “So. Heaven is evil and Hell is mediocre. Great.”

Sam looked up. “Thank you, Dean. Did you come to my office just to tell me that? Because I do have an intelligence service, you know. They tell me things like that too, except it’s their job.”

Dean rolled his eyes. “Very funny, Sam. Your sense of humor never fails to astound me. Any idea what we’re gonna do about the evil Heaven and mediocre Hell?”

Sam sighed. “We should probably have Cas and Gabriel here for this. You’re here now, we need to adjust some of our planning.”

“I heard my name!” Gabriel was abruptly there in the way that Castiel could sometimes be, and Dean startled. Sam didn’t seem surprised, though.

“Gabe, Cas.” Woah, Cas was behind him!

“Personal space, man, I thought we went over this,” Dean hissed. Cas nodded and ignored him.

“You are making your plans for the future?” He asked, fixing Sam with that same intense look he always had. Sam didn’t think it was a challenge, or just didn’t care, since he shifted his paperwork to the side to show a completely blank page.

“Right. Here’s Hell,” Sam said, drawing a sloppy circle with an ‘H’ in the middle. “Here’s Heaven,”—a smaller cloud-shape with a little winged stick figure in the middle—“and here’s Earth. Presumably Purgatory is out there somewhere, but we really don’t care.”

“Wow, gorgeous map.” Gabriel muttered dryly.

“Shut up, Gabriel. Everything I touch is beautiful. So Heaven’s making noises that I don’t like, and Earth is unfairly biased against us. That means the only chance we’ve got to win this war that’s coming up is to act fast and act mercilessly. The only place that gives us a huge advantage is Hell, but we don’t ever want to let the enemy in the gates. Hell is somewhere we retreat to when there’s no other option. Earth gives us a bit of advantage, since there are more available vessels for us than there are for the angels, especially if we go for the angel vessels first. Cas, can you tell who is and isn’t a potential vessel, so we can make sure they're already occupied?”

Castiel nodded a little warily. “Perhaps ordering the mass possession of hundreds of innocents would be counter-productive?”

“We’ll do what we have to, they’re only a couple of people. Better to get them possessed and not suffer massive losses because we were too slow,” Sam decided.

When he said it like that, it almost sounded logical. Still…

“Sammy, that’s hundreds of people and you know not everyone survives demon possession. Find another way.”

Sam smiled a little, like he’d been expecting that.

“There is one other way. Castiel, Gabriel, this could be the least damaging to your family ultimately, but it might be a little bit painful for you. Are you okay with hearing me out on this? I won’t do anything you don’t want me to.”

Warily, Castiel nodded, and Gabriel just kept looking at Sam, not bothering to blink.

“Heaven’s dependent on having a leader. They’ve always had God, until he disappeared, and now that he’s gone…Michael.”

“I know you’re not suggesting I kill my last sane brother. No offense, Castiel.” Gabriel cut in coolly.

Sam shook his head. “Look, we all know we aren’t gonna survive gracefully if it comes to us versus them. There will be losses on both sides, but especially on ours. We’re not ready for a full-on war, and I’m not taking the risk that there could be more Winchesters hanging around to kill us all off—you do remember the last showdown between Heaven and Hell, right? Dean’s on our side, but my dad isn’t. I’m not going to let this drag out so I can underestimate human influence and get us all killed. The fastest way to get this over with is to make the first move, kill Michael, and make it a quick takeover. It’s the only way to avoid killing everyone.”

“It nicely avoids involving humans, as well. What do you intend to do when the Host proves capable of functioning without Michael?” Castiel asked.

Sam smiled confidently, charmingly. “They won’t. If we can publicly kill Michael, they’ll fear us. They’ll be putty in our hands after that.”

Dean didn’t like the way his brother was planning, here. Sure, he was all for killing monsters, and you couldn’t win a war without casualties, but…where was the boy who wanted to know if monsters really had to be evil? Where was Sam-of-the-moral-grey-areas?

Still, the plan sounded good. Tactically, it was the best thing they could possibly do—cut the head off the giant. It didn’t have to feel right to make sense.

"Sam-" Gabriel didn't get to finish.

“This is the only way to get through it without unimaginable loss. This is the only way it can happen. Michael has to die, and he will.” Sam leaned forward. “Any questions?”

I didn’t mean to snap. I’m sorry about it, and if I could think of a way to apologize, I would do it. It’s just…can’t they see it? Killing Michael is brilliant. Get rid of the leader, strike fear into the ranks, make it clear that Hell is not to be trifled with. It takes care of Heaven without ever having a full-out war.

Besides, Michael wanted to wear Dean like a suit. Probably still does. I’m not letting that happen, and this way me and Dean don’t have to go through the betrayal and the blood because no one will be rooting for the apocalypse. Without Michael, our lives will become so much better. He can never try to control us or make us hurt each other and my brother and I will never have to fight each other, so long as Michael just dies. One life instead of the whole world? It doesn’t even compare.

Once Heaven’s taken care of, Cas can probably take over. He’s a hard worker, determined, and well-liked. He’ll take care of it, and there won’t be any worry about him attacking us. With Heaven and Hell working together, everything can be peaceful, no fighting, just peace. Heaven and Hell aren’t so different, after all. I’ve got the wings, haven’t I?

I’m going to make sure Heaven isn’t a threat. After that, hunters will have to be reassured that we aren’t a threat, to make sure none of them get any bright ideas about killing the King of Hell, and maybe after that, we can take care of the rest of humanity. I can almost imagine it…peace. At last.

Chapter Text

Castiel and Gabriel only require a little more talking before they agree with me that killing Michael is the best plan. It’s almost too easy to convince them, just look at them earnestly enough and insist it’s for the good of everyone, it’s so no one else has to die—which it is, it is—and they come around. To killing their own brother. I know I would never do that to my brother without him doing something seriously terrible to me first.

I find myself lingering around the empty Cage now, whenever I have spare time. Lucifer’s not in there any more, he died when the old Sam did, but I wonder what he would think if he knew I was about to do exactly what he wanted to from the start. It’s almost ironic; Lucifer’s vessel will kill Michael with his power, all in the name of peace. But it’s okay. I have Dean, now; don’t I? I would do anything for my brother. This is gonna help him, right? It’ll keep him safe. I’ll make everything safe and I’ll have Dean and that’s all I’ve ever needed.

As I get better at ruling Hell from the King’s Castle, I can speed our time up a little so I can get out. It gives Heaven more time to prepare, but Michael won’t agree to meet me in Hell, and I need his guard down to be able to get the drop on him. Hell gives me Lucifer’s angel blade when I will it to, and we’re almost ready.

“Seiten,” a Sho appears next to me. I’ve discovered a vague urge to make them stop calling me that. I don’t like it. I like my name better. “Michael has agreed to a meeting. It is to be on Earth, and he requests that you bring a vessel.”

Being a physical being, I’ve made Hell into a mostly physical place, so I wasn’t exactly planning on ditching my body to meet with Michael. If I even can. I feel like I could, but I’ve never had an out-of-body experience before. It’s frustrating sometimes; I’ve only been alive for a couple of decades. It’s so little time.

“Good. Tell Dean and Castiel, and then Gabriel. Tell Gabriel that he’ll stay in Hell for the meeting, in case it goes badly. Dean and Castiel will come with me.” I dismiss the Sho easily, and it disappears to do my bidding. It must be the fact that I’m a younger sibling; I like having people follow my orders with no question. Absolute respect and obedience isn’t something I’ve had a lot of in my life, but it’s nice that someone expects me to do the right thing, to know what I’m doing, to make decisions for them.

Michael’s probably on Earth already, prepared to wait until I arrive. Time isn’t really an issue for Archangels. It’ll mean the same thing to him if I show up in five minutes or five months. All the same, I walk into my throne room to meet Dean and Castiel. I want him dead already, threat eliminated, nothing to worry about.

Soon, everything’s gonna be okay.

The plan goes like this: Dean and I will meet up with him. Cas will keep tabs on us, but not interfere unless things go pretty ugly, and Gabriel will only involve himself if Cas can’t handle it. We’ll do our best to make Michael feel at ease; suck up to him and try to convince him that we really don’t want a war, because as far as Heaven is concerned we’d instantly lose. Heaven doesn’t know how strong we really are, but that’s our main advantage right now. They’ll think we’re desperate to avoid a fight, so they’ll get lax, allow us a little closer, and we’ll stab them in the gut.

Just like they did to me.

With a flutter of wings, Castiel and Dean arrive. I smile tightly at them, trying to conceal my excitement. Everything I’ve been working for culminates in this meeting. I have to look stressed, overworked, like I’m desperate to appease. Michael has to believe I’m afraid of him. I give Castiel and Dean a nod, and then Dean and I are topside for the first time in what feels like forever.

I take a deep, deep breath of air and let it out.

So much better. It’s so nice to be topside after all this time, I’d almost forgotten.

We’re in the little college town of Manhattan, Kansas, because I want this to happen in Kansas and everything always happens in Manhattan. Also, because if it didn’t happen here I would have made it happen in  Detroit.

Here I am. I’m the only one in my body, I’m going to kill Michael, and everything is going to be right. Just how it’s supposed to be.

Dean’s giving me a funny look, but he doesn’t matter right now. I can deal with him later. I have to kill Michael.

No…Dean’s supposed to matter more than anything else, isn’t he?

Right, he is, but…Michael needs to die first. For Dean.

Once Michael is dead, I’ll be able to be with Dean for the rest of eternity and everything will be okay. Everything I’ve done will be worth it, just as soon as Michael’s dead.

Michael appears in front of us, without even one other angel. Arrogant. This’ll be easier than I thought.

“Michael.” I greet pleasantly. It’s so easy, just to put on a charming smile and approach him casually, that I barely even register that I’m breaking script. I need to kill him. I don’t care about making him let his guard down, I need him dead now.

He looks at me like he knows what’s going to happen, like he’s scared, and backs off one step.

Just one? Is he really only going to give me that?

His loss. Barely registering the words, I grip my angel blade and amble forward that last step, so that we’re just barely touching.

“It’s been a while, Michael,” I murmur into his ear. He doesn’t even have time to react before light shoots out of his body as he dies.

His corpse drops to the ground, and I feel vague stirrings of regret. I wish I didn’t have to kill him.

But I do. He forced me into this. He was going to kill me.

It’s not my fault I was made for this, it’s not my fault our Father—

I come to a realization, suddenly, and I wonder how I didn’t realize it before.

I’m not Sam Winchester.

I never have been.

I am Lucifer.

Somewhere, deep inside the mind that used to belong to Sam Winchester, there are the dying, feeble shreds of a soul.

Those used to belong to Sam Winchester, too. If Sam Winchester were still in few enough pieces to exist, they would probably be Sam Winchester.

I guess I should have known better than to expect this to end well, these shreds sigh as they let go of their last clinging holds. But I started the apocalypse. Of course I can’t finish it. But you can, Dean. With dad and Gabe and Cas at your side, without me screwing things up all the time, you can do it.

Slowly, gently, the last remaining pieces of Sam Winchester dissolve into the atmosphere.

I know you can.

Second verse, same as the first. A little bit louder and a whole lot worse.