Hello everyone! This is just a mulit-chapter one-shot that takes place Season 11 of Supernatural. It is rather dark and full of angst since I use writing to channel and cope with my emotions. If you find any glaring mistakes or inaccuracies, shoot me a review and I'll be glad to fix it! If not, I hope you enjoy the story and let me know what you thought of it anyway. I love hearing from you guys :) It keeps me writing.
"I already told you, you son of a bitch! I don't know!" Dean struggled and writhed against his bonds, twisting the chains that abraded his skin so they chafed uncomfortably. Red, puckered skin pinched through, hotly dripping sticky blood down his fingers from between his swollen hands.
In an instant, Dean felt himself slam backward against the unrelenting cement, a sickening crack sending a white flash to film over his eyes. He was vaguely aware of blistering breath against his neck and Sam's incessant cries for them to stop through the veil of agony. Metallic liquid filled his mouth and seeped through the cracks of his teeth that threatened to crack like porcelain. "Listen to me, you hairless ape," Lucifer spat in his face. "Cain's mark was the only thing keeping the darkness at bay. That kind of magic doesn't just disappear!"
"Brother," Michael admonished from next to the younger Winchester. "We'll need him whole once we find a way to restore the mark again." This only caused Lucifer to further encroach on Dean's personal space leaving him to think bitterly what it was about these damned angels that made them so ignorant to human behavior.
Dean gritted his teeth, baring them at the fallen angel while slamming his tongue against the roof of his mouth to expel the blood through chapped lips. He felt it dribble down his chin and mingle with the trails already forged by the stone knuckles of the celestial beings.
After the darkness had been released, it came spiraling down on them with the force of twenty hurricanes, consuming their lungs and pulsing the thick stench of sin through their veins. When the two archangels had "mojoed" them out of the eye of the storm and into the highest floor of a protected warehouse for interrogation, Dean thought first that Cas had rescued them. But the fleeting moment of relief was evanescent and replaced instead with the genesis of horror regarding what the mark had truly released: two archangels vengeful for the destroyer of their toils. He'd realized this when Sam had disappeared from his side and they'd hauled him bodily to his feet, dragging him to where he now hung limply, stripped of dignity.
"You know as well as I do that it had taken an entire army—a fleet of our brothers and sisters to contain this force at our Father's will. It will take more than just the blood of a mere mortal to assuage this burden," Lucifer's words hissed between his lips with steaming venom that curled like Hell's wrath. Dean was all too familiar with the caliber of pain that followed so he cringed away from the fallen angel in hopes of staunching the plague of memories that threatened to break the bulwark of his conscience.
The sharp jab of an angel blade pressed between his ribs and scraped precariously against the bones, threatening to break the skin that had been pulled taught at the steel. Dean was trapped.
"And we will find a way," Michael stalked forward a step. "But clearly, this isn't working." Dean's breath hitched in his throat at the notion of the paralyzing dichotomy that accompanied those words. On one hand, it was a promise to the end of this torture. But that could only mean something worse lay ahead. Although, he wasn't sure how much more they wished for them to endure. Already he'd been beaten and stabbed with same tools he had once used on souls trapped in Hell's stinking pits. And if there was one side he knew more than the dealer's, it was the victim's. There had been some immunity he'd built up from the decades of blades of whips, but this time, it was a body instead of soul. There was only so much he could physically handle and they were about to test another method, another limit of this "meat suit" as they called it.
"He isn't lying," Sam damn near begged from across the room, tugging at the wall that secured his own bonds with futile strength. "We've already told you everything we know!"
"No," Lucifer said darkly, a murderous gleam glowing behind his eyes. "He has told us everything he knows. You on the other hand—"
With a sudden anagnorisis of broiling terror, Dean snarled, "You lay one friggin finger on him and I swear to God I'll kill you myself!"
"Please do not swear by our Father's name," Michael rumbled lowly, malice coloring his eyes with a glacial blue that smoldered with the ironic power of Grace.
Lucifer ignored his brother. "Oh, but you won't, Dean," he cooed. "Because that's just the Winchester way. It takes the sacrifice of one to bring forth the desperation of the other. And that's just what I plan on finding from you. The desperation to save your brother will prove stronger than that of saving yourself. Maybe this will loosen the cinders on your tongue." In rapid succession, Michael's fist connected with Sam's stomach and sent him quailing inwardly against himself.
A feral yell tore its way viciously through Dean's vocal chords, rending at the sinews. "Sammy!" he roared as another punch uppercut his brother's mandible, snapping his jaw against his skull to send his head flying backward. Watching them hurt Sam was worse than any punishment he'd endured thus far. And he'd be damned if he let them touch his brother again. "You want the darkness back where it belongs, you bastards?!" Dean howled and thrashed, his hands burning to kill, "Find the bitch whose magic zapped it away in the first place and I'll let you tattoo the damn thing back onto my arm!"
"Dean…" Sam gurgled weakly in protest. Michael hoisted him up from his knees in preparation for another round at his brother's word.
He couldn't bring himself to meet Sam's gaze; it would be his undoing. "But you let Sam go, you hear?! This has nothing to do with him!" Dean didn't need to mark to feel the violence coursing through his body in tremors that would unleash a world of hate when he got free.
"The hell it doesn't!" Lucifer snarled with something akin to savage barbarity and wrested a handful of Dean's hair into his hand, yanking to expose his neck as wolves might do to establish dominance. "Everything that has gone to shit so far has been at the hands of you squatting, mud monkeys!" He retained his vice grip but turned back to Michael and jabbed his jaw once in a directed nod. "Again, brother."
The archangels were right about one thing: Dean's desperation drove him past the point of no return and his resolve finally shattered. With as much strength as he could muster, he sent his knee hurtling into Lucifer's gut and watched with deranged satisfaction as it made him quiver and furl like burning parchment or salted slugs. It did the job. Michael forgot about Sam and all attention and focus turned on him.
"Augh!" he shrieked in pain and Dean slipped from his grasp as Lucifer's hands scrabbled against his abdomen. In all their acclaimed righteousness, it looked as though Daddy forgot to restore their angelic immunity to pain. They were still tainted and unfit in the eyes of any God.
Sam's eyes widened in their sockets as he watched the two angels from hell descend upon his brother. He'd already taken so much. Why would he take this too?
"I'll send you back to hell when this is over!" The words had no origin. Dean didn't even register the jabs or throttles anymore. The mist was too thick and one of his eyes had swollen shut mercifully. And so, when the fog cleared momentarily, it was to Dean's horrified chagrin as the aggregated extent of his wounds came flaring into a prospective scope. But why? Why now was he so conscious?
A whirlwind of holy light and ruffle of feathers deemed worthy to answer and suddenly there was a fifth presence in the warehouse. A familiar, grave voice growled with a cadent tone Dean had never heard before, "Get your hands off my charge."
Let me know if this is worth continuing. I look forward to hearing your thoughts about this piece!
