I think it might actually be more accurate to say I belong to them.

AN: Cussing, gore, and similar unsuitable subject-matter later on.

Title from Zeppelin's "What Is And What Should Never Be".

The story of Azazel is basically true. So is the date of Samuel Colt's voyage to England and return to Connecticut. But I fiddled a bit, ignored some things, and generally didn't research too much in case it contradicted my plans for the story. Nothing is allowed to do that! Nothing, I tell you!

Heh. Um. Enjoy.

What's to be they say will be

Abraham Rosenbaum lived, somewhat to John's surprise, in an apartment bang in the middle of Minneapolis. He'd been expecting something smaller, out of the way, and probably old.

The penthouse he was currently standing in was none of those things.

It was spacious, brightly lit, clearly expensive and almost fanatically clean. Abe Rosenbaum himself was in his sixties, clean-shaven, wearing a suit for God's sake. Caroline Stendahl-Winchester herself would have welcomed this man to one of her functions with open arms, and John's mother could spot 'strange' people at two hundred yards, and cut them dead at 195.

"Well," Abe said. "I'm embarrassed for you, Daniel. First you let two vampires get the drop on you, and then you have to be rescued by a couple of kids. One of whom happens to be Ned and Lisa Roberts' daughter. Call yourself a hunter?"

Dan Elkins didn't bother answering – in words.

Mary was perched on one of the bar stools at the kitchen counter, one leg swinging in absent circles, a cup of coffee in her hand. "Abe," she said, and John wondered if the other man could hear the bite of impatience in her voice, "Abe, not that this isn't entertaining" – Dan shot her a baleful glare – "but could it possibly wait? John and I have a couple questions, and then we'll be out of your hair."

Abe didn't look convinced.

"No, you won't," he said. "Mostly because answering your 'couple questions' is going to take much longer than a few minutes. Not to mention the fact that your uncle is going out of his mind with worry over you, young lady, and the least you could do is call him personally."

Mary glared at him. "No. Not yet. I want to know what's going on, dammit! I'm sick of blundering around in the dark researching legends that no one really remembers and hoping to God my new-found ability to make anyone in the world do what I want them to isn't going to kill me! I'm sick of living in limbo, Abe. I want answers."

Abe sighed. "I see patience still hasn't made it into your collection of virtues, Marianna."

"Jesus, Abe. What next, you'll middle-name me too? Not even Uncle Ben stoops to that."

"If you can't manage to be civil, it can all wait till morning," Abe said calmly. "By the way, how many of the spare bedrooms am I going to need aired?"

Mary spluttered. John jumped. "Well – we –"

"We'll be –"

"Just two then," Abe said.

Mary actually blushed. John was pretty sure Abe had only asked the question to distract her, and filed away the technique for later use. That made three ways to deal with Mary when angry: start a fight, make her laugh, or blindside her.

Abe sauntered off in the direction of the spare bedrooms; Dan was fiddling around in the kitchen. Mary caught John's eye and shrugged slightly. Did she look embarrassed?

"Listen, uh..."

"I can sleep on the couch," he offered. She rolled her eyes at him. "Only if I ever hear you repeating that name."

"What, Marianna?"

She flinched.

"What's your middle one?"

"Victoria."

"Marianna Victoria... ouch."

"Discontinued at the age of three, much to my mother's despair. Couldn't pronounce it."

He choked with suppressed mirth.

"What about yours, Johnny?"

"Edward, if you must know. After my mother's father."

"Very distinguished."

"But not as pretentious as yours."

"Couch is over there."

"I thought we already had this argument?"

"When you're done flirting with each other," Abe said. Didn't the man have any other setting but calm and controlled? "Go bring your stuff in. First door on the left." He pointed along the corridor in question.

Thank God there was an elevator.

When they got back, dragging their bags with them, Abe was piling books on the kitchen counter – presumably ones they were going to need. The spare bedroom turned out to be as spacious and obsessively neat as the rest of the penthouse. Mary made to toss her bag onto the bed and then stopped.

"Which side do you want?"

John had dropped his bag on a chair against the wall, and looked up at her in surprise. "Oh. Uh... the door?"

"I'm not picky."

And then, after a beat, "Look. I've never really had... this isn't exactly something I..."

"Me either," he said. Which wasn't entirely true, because there had been a girl, once, but on the other hand, six months at the end of high school wasn't much in the way of experience of real, grown-up relationships. He suspected Mary had never even made it that far, though.

"Really?" She didn't believe him.

"Really," he said. Trust. That was inherent to a relationship, right? And you'd think he'd done enough, even in barely a month, to prove to her that she could trust him.

Mary pushed her hands through her hair, and smiled. "OK then. I warn you, though. I've been making an effort to be tidy, but from now on, you're going to have to put up with a minimum of bathroom space."

"I think I can manage," John said.

There was a rap on the door. "Hurry up, you two. The sooner we start, the better."

"Doesn't he ever get annoyed, or anything?" John asked as soon as Abe had moved away. Mary scrunched her nose adorably and laughed. "Not that I've ever seen. Come on."

She laced her fingers through his and tugged him out of the room.

"First things first," Abe said once the four of them were settled in the living room. "What do these two know about your family, Mary?"

"You've gotta be kidding me," Mary groaned. "You can't seriously think that has anything to do with this!"

"How can you not?" Abe demanded.

"Because it's just a story! It's not real, Abe!"

"For a hunter, you're far too rational, my girl," Abe said sharply. "Some things need to be taken on faith. You think any of those exorcisms you know would work if you didn't believe they did? A Demon is planning to take over the world, or destroy humanity, or something similar, you're bang in the middle of it and you can still say it's just a story with a perfectly straight face?"

"Uncle Ben never found anything to prove it," Mary said harshly. "And Mom – Mom never said a word to me. Never even hinted that it was anything more than a bedtime story."

"You were still a child when she died," Abe pointed out more gently.

Mary sighed, turned away, caught John's eye. He realised she was being stubborn about this because she didn't want to believe it, whatever it was, not because she really thought it improbable.

"Can't be that bad," he said.

Mary pushed her hands through her hair again. When she spoke she spoke to John alone, as though they were sitting in the Impala rumbling down some anonymous highway, ignoring Abe and Dan.

"If any of this were true, it would probably make this whole mess my fault," she admitted quietly.

"Remember what I told you in Wisconsin?" he asked. "You should, it was only four days ago."

He meant their fight, about choices and acceptance and leaving each other. Why wouldn't she believe him?

But then he remembered the mess he'd been when he got home from 'Nam. They really weren't so different, he and Mary.

She was smiling at him wistfully.

"OK then. My mother's maiden name was Colt."

"As in..."

"The Samuel Colt. Yes. I'm his last living descendant."

"Wow. But what does Colt have to do with demons?"

"Well. According to my mother's stories, when Sam Colt was a boy, he lived, and worked, for a time in Glastonbury, Connecticut. While he was there, he met a man one day by the river who made friends with the boy, and eventually told him that he had the power to grant him anything he wanted – for a price. When Colt asked what the price was, the stranger replied that that depended on what he asked for.

By now Colt was pretty sure the meeting was a set-up, a prank arranged by his friends. And so he told the man without hesitation that he wanted to be the greatest, the best gun-maker that ever lived."

John was fascinated. "And the price?" he asked.

"The man asked only one thing of him. The first functioning gun Colt would build."

"Like in the fairy tales, when they trade their firstborn," Dan said. "I never knew any of this! I thought the guy was just a hunter."

"I've never exactly gone around shouting it off all the rooftops," Mary said drily.

"The story," John said. "What happened next?"

Mary took up the tale again. The three men couldn't help but notice that she told it as though she'd memorised the precise wording of the story – as if the very phrases themselves were important.

"Well. When Colt had agreed to the price asked, they shook on their agreement. And as the man turned away, Colt thought he saw his eyes shine yellow. But he was still a boy, and he thought it all a prank, and so he accepted the instructions the man left him for building this gun, and thought no more of it." She paused and took a sip of now lukewarm coffee.

"And then his friends put him straight about the prank?" Dan wanted to know.

"They did. And the older Colt got, the more he began to suspect he had made a terrible mistake that day. The instructions he had been given worried him in particular, scared him, even, for they held a meaning he soon came to realise he could not understand, scientist and inventor that he was."

"I'm gonna take a wild guess and say they were magic of some sort," John said.

"Exactly. How Colt found out exactly what they were and became a hunter isn't known. Likely he'd discovered what he needed in England. He returned to Connecticut in 1835 to uphold his side of the deal he'd made over a decade ago... or so the Demon thought. But then the night came, the night it had determined would be the one Sam Colt would have to fulfil their bargain, and when the Demon came to Colt to retrieve his weapon, Colt trapped him, and exorcised him, and laid wards to prevent him from ever escaping Hell."

Mary paused for more coffee. "But he had broken a deal, reneged on a contract. And so, the Demon cursed him. Swore that one day, one of Samuel Colt's blood would fulfil the bargain their ancestor had struck, undo his work, and release him from his imprisonment. Colt, in return, was determined that all of his descendants would be hunters, would guard against the bargain ever being fulfilled. And so we have been."

John drew a breath. He sat watching her watch him, rather anxiously, and thought, for the first time in a month, of home. Of the big old house in Kansas City with the messy, overgrown garden; of his little sister, at college now and undoubtedly frantic about him; of his stepmother who loved them both like her own children; of his Dad, larger than life and always in control. Nothing could go wrong while the General was there, he'd thought as a child.

But the General had been there, and everything had still gone wrong. Vietnam had been the start of it, weeks spent crawling through the jungle always a scant inch away from death, with the worst of what humanity was in his face every day.

Dad had encouraged him to go, to start at the bottom and work his way up, to make his own career and not be Harry Winchester's boy forever.

Dad hadn't been able to prevent Cold Oak. Any more than going home, turning his back on this world – on Mary – would make the telekinesis stop.

Or take away the knowledge of what was really out there in the dark. For the rest of his life, home would always be tainted by that shadow, lurking in the corners of the room.

Mary had spent her life in those corners, and to him, new to them as he was, she shone in the dark. Demonic curses or no, that light drew him. He didn't want to leave her.

Besides. Go home now, and he would always feel he'd lost somehow. Winchesters did not lose, the General would say.

"So if Mary is the one it wants, why the rest of us? Not counting the bodies, there were three other kids in Cold Oak."

Mary had a smile he could gaze at forever.

Dan didn't seem to have heard John's question. "The stories I heard about Colt say he made a gun that can kill anything, and gave it to another hunter," he said, frowning.

Mary shrugged. "Mom never told me that story. I've only heard it since I started looking into my gifts." She put sarcastic emphasis on the last words. John agreed; they were more like a curse. "What do you know about the Chosen?"

Dan jerked his head at Abe. "What he's told me. That there are people out there, kids, who have been marked by a powerful demon who means for them to destroy humankind. They're still human, so they don't suffer the restrictions placed upon demons. And the most powerful of these kids is to become the demon's host, a body it could never be exorcised from. Cold Oak is meant to be the place where it all starts."

"As if that weren't complicated enough," Abe spoke up for the first time since Mary had told them Colt's story, "there are also stories that speak of a war in which these Chosen are meant to play a part."

"I see what you mean about speculation," John said to Mary. She grinned. "Yeah. There's bits and pieces of the truth in hundreds of stories, and no two are the same."

Abe leaned forward, fixing an intense look on John. "There are ways to eliminate possibilities. For example, you're sure you were meant to kill one another? That would pretty much cancel the soldiers-in-a-demon-army idea."

"No one is going to risk destroying their army by having them kill each other," John agreed. "I didn't see any set of instructions. But Justin sure as hell believed it."

This is our destiny, you fool! he'd screamed, and then John had had the knife in his hand and twisted, lightning-fast, even as the demon broke free of Mary's control, and slashed it up and across Justin's throat unthinkingly, and then all that had been left was to scramble to his feet, fling out a hand for the iron poker to jump into and toss it to Mary, who'd stabbed it into the demon without a moment's hesitation.

"So maybe he got instructions," Dan suggested, hauling John back into the present.

"Maybe," Abe said. "He was there the longest, I'm guessing. But one other thing. Mary mentioned bindings?"

She pushed her hands through her hair. Again. Getting more unsettled by the minute. John wondered if she could read his tells like this. "John asked about exorcisms, ways to stop the Demon. I told him there were legends about objects that could be used to bind demons – you know, like the story of Azazel in the Book of... Enoch, wasn't it?"

"He was the first to be bound," Abe agreed. "There have been many others, some greater, some lesser. And there are certain things about Azazel, by the way, that are especially interesting. Did you know he was supposed to have taught humans the art of making weapons?"

"It was cosmetics," Mary said.

"It was both," John said. They all turned to stare at him. "What? My mother's Jewish. Also the Antichrist. She thought that sort of story was educational. Azazel was one of the chief Grigori, the fallen angels who took human women to wife, right? He taught men the secrets of weaponry, and women cosmetics, so they could entice men from the paths of righteousness. From him humans learned to sin. But eventually the arch angels were sent to overthrow the Grigori, and one of them – I forget which – bound him, and buried him in the desert for eternity."

"Mary," Abe said, getting to his feet and making his way into the kitchen. "Make sure you keep this man. He's the first one I've ever seen you with that I actually like."

"I'm flattered," John quipped.

"You make me sound like an awful skank," Mary protested.

"Skank, no. But you weren't exactly... selective, shall we say... as a teenager."

Mary huffed. Dan grinned. The two of them had struck up a comfortable friendly rivalry over the last two days. John just slid a hand into Mary's, fingers twining together, and gave it the slightest of squeezes. She squeezed back.

Abe had been clattering about in the kitchen as they talked, but now he paused, one hand resting on the coffee machine, frowning at something they couldn't see. Mary got up and walked over to him, taking all their empty mugs with her.

"Abe?" she asked, touching his arm. "You still with us?"

He swung to face her. "Not anymore," he said, and then he shoved her back brutally so she was sliding across the wooden floor to hit the opposite wall, the mugs falling with a clatter of broken china, and suddenly John couldn't move a muscle.

"The hell!" Dan exclaimed, starting forwards, but Abe's head turned to him, and he froze like John.

"I really shouldn't bother with you," Abe told him conversationally, sauntering towards them. "But on the other hand, killing people is so much effort. Wouldn't you agree, Johnny?"

When Abe finally met John's gaze head-on, his eyes were yellow.

"You're a demon," John rasped. Difficult to talk when you're being held in a vice-like grip by an invisible force.

It chuckled. "Johnny Boy. I am The Demon."

"Full of yourself, too," John said, and then the only thing in his world was red-hot pain that exploded in his gut and seeped into every cell in his body, lighting his nerves and destroying his ability to think, to be, to know anything but agony –

When it receded, he was on his knees, and his throat felt scratchy. Had he been screaming? He couldn't remember.

"Respect," the demon said (John refused it the capitalisation, even in his head). "That's all I'm asking, John. After all, I am the only reason you're still alive today. Not to mention – you did call me."

"Call you?" Mary grated out. She sounded hoarse, too, as if she'd been yelling. When had she been yelling? She was sitting on the floor, back pressed against the wall, legs stretched in front of her, caught in the same grip as John and Dan.

The demon twisted Abe's face into a smirk. "You spoke my name, my dear girl. Three times, no less. And as I was looking for you anyway..." It shrugged. "I admit it was a little unconventional. I usually ask for a bit more ceremony. And blood, of course."

Mary's eyes widened. "Azazel? You're Azazel?"

"My reputation precedes me," it observed, preening.

"Not really. But I always wondered what it must be like to be damned to spend eternity buried under a cliff," Mary said, pouring all the sarcasm and anger and defiance she could into the words. It barely even narrowed its eyes at her that John could see, but suddenly she was twisting in the same agony that had consumed him not a moment ago, her screams the most terrible thing he'd ever heard.

"Stop it!" he yelled at it. "Stop –"

Abe's head snapped back round to look at him, and the demon heaved a sigh as Mary collapsed, trembling.

"Johnny, Johnny. I have to say, I'm disappointed in you. In both of you, actually. You were supposed to fight each other, not fuck."

"Sorry about that," John rasped. It was an effort to take his eyes off Mary's still-trembling form to look back at the thing in front of him.

"No, you're not," Azazel said, and now it sounded amused. "You've made it your mission in life to disappoint, haven't you? Never good enough for Mommy, not strong enough to do what Daddy expects. You couldn't even save Alex – only yourself."

The words made John flinch. Not a day went by when he didn't feel guilty for Alex' death, for the way he'd just lain there and stared in shock after the soldier he'd just flung into a river while his friend was about to be butchered not twenty feet away. But as for the rest...

"Fuck you. I make my own choices, and my parents have nothing to do with it."

Azazel still seemed amused. "Tell the truth, I would expect nothing less of one of my kids. Some really have been disappointments, of course – most, actually. You humans are so fragile, so breakable. The smallest of things can twist you beyond recognition. Pathetic. Here I am, one of the most powerful beings to walk this Earth, born of fire and air and infinity, and I'm expected to bow to you?"

"The other way round isn't happening any time soon," Mary rasped.

"No? We'll see. The two of you – ah. I was so pleased when I saw what you'd become. Delighted, even. Don't glare, John, it won't kill me. I promise you that. You could have been a general, my boy, the leader and lord of all my armies, my heir, my son. And Marianna here, well."

It left the living room for the first time, wandering over to Mary, Abe's body but not his movements, the stride, the set of the shoulders all wrong. Stood there looking down at her lying helpless on her back, and smiled lasciviously, eyes burning through her clothes. "Your knowledge was what I wanted from you," it told her. "Your knowledge, and your bloodline. Priestess, consort, queen, mother of the new world. All those things, and more."

She couldn't move, and didn't speak, but the answer was there, plain as day, on her face.

Azazel turned back to John, still smiling a little. "But actually, I think I like this idea even more," it said. "Join me, both of you. Join me, and I will raise you above all others. Join me, and I will give you anything you desire. Join me. You will have power beyond anything that you can imagine, be king and queen of a world that is yours to do with as you will. Hades and Persephone, eternal rulers of the underworld. Join me."

John stared at it, shocked. Why didn't it just kill them? "No," he said, anger colouring his voice. "No, never. I've seen what you are – what you do. I won't be a part of it."

Again, Azazel didn't move, but John hit the wall and collapsed next to Mary with a force that knocked him out for a few seconds. When he came back to himself, Mary was talking.

"We're the last ones," she said, sounding as if she'd only just figured it all out. "You can't kill us, because we're your last chance. I'm right, aren't I? You can't afford for us to die. But... but you can't force us to be what you want, either. We're human. We have free will. You can coerce, and seduce, and tempt, and lure, but you can't force us. And if we reject you, there's nothing you can do about it."

She drew a breath, harsh, gasping, pain-filled. "I reject you. We both do, you heard John. Now leave us alone!"

Azazel drew back from her, pulled itself up to its – Abe's – full height, face twisting in fury. "You will never be free of me," it promised. "You are mine, both of you. I Chose you, and I marked you, and you will never be free of that."

And then it threw Abe's head back and left him. Not in a billow of demon smoke from his mouth as Mary had described it to John, but out of his chest, exploding out of Abe's body in a shower of blood and guts and a scream of agony.

"Abe, no!"

The old man's body collapsed in a bloody, shattered heap in front of them, and suddenly they could move again, but John wasn't sure he could even if he was free, and then hands on his shoulders and Dan's voice, urging him to his feet, encouraging, steadying him. Mary clung to him; they all slipped in Abe's blood, drenching his perfect wooden floor, drenching them, but Dan pushed and propelled and herded the two of them out of the front door. People shouting, a scream or two, flashlights moving up the stairwell, the cops?

Back inside, across the living room, past Abe's body, his chest burst open as if a wild animal had clawed its way out of his ribcage. Mary whimpered in horror. I've seen worse, a small detached voice whispered in John's mind, and suddenly everything snapped back into focus.

"Our bags," he said. "The cops mustn't get them."

Dan looked at him sharply, and then nodded. "Go. Fire escape's over there, in the kitchen. We'll wait in the Impala."

John barely made it out of the window before the police broke into the penthouse, a bullet zinged off the frame by his head, and then he was gone, down, down, down, a never-ending spiral, the stairs clattering under his boots, bags heavy and awkward, across the alley, a policeman shouting at him as he ran, and then the back of the car, Dan driving, Mary crouched in the passenger seat, silent and horrified, and they were gone.

Dan checked them into a motel on the outskirts of the city, two rooms side-by-side. Mary didn't wait to fetch any protection out of the car, just disappeared into their room, already pulling her clothes off, still trembling. John followed her in, shut and locked the door, hands shaking as he peeled his blood-drenched shirt off.

It hit the floor with a sickening wet slap. Mary's sobbing could be heard even over the hiss of the shower. John stripped off and joined her, water swirling blood-red across the floor of the shower stall. She was scrubbing angrily at her arms, at the bloodstains still etched on her pale skin, and her head jerked up when John pulled the shower curtain back.

"Get out," she hissed at him. "Leave me alone – don't-"

Even when dry, he would have had a hard time holding onto her. Naked and soaking was twice as hard, but somehow he did it, pinning her arms to her sides and holding her close as the water washed Abe's blood away and she started, finally, to sob.

He sank to the floor of the shower stall, holding her on his lap, and there they sat, every muscle in their bodies shaking, until the water ran cold and she raised her tear-stained face off his chest and gave him a shaky, uncertain smile of thanks through the sobs that still shook her slender body.