March 2010
Blue Earth, Minnesota

Dean was used to barely escaping death. Or sometimes not escaping it. But he didn't like death, and he really didn't like those things that brought him close to it.

He especially didn't like it when those things hurt his car.

So he was more than just pantingly relieved when the demons who had smashed his car window and started to drag him and Sam out got doused with holy water from a fire truck and then a guy with a bull horn exorcised the skuzzy things back to hell. Dean was downright delighted.

"Well, that's something you don't see every day," he said to his brother. Sam nodded, but his face was still pale, and his arm was still bleeding. He was also a little wild-eyed. They'd never seen that many demons, not all at once, and the running battles that lasted all afternoon and into the night had been close.

Too damn close.

When Dean got out of the car, the guy who'd used the bullhorn came over, shotgun in hand, and asked him, "You two all right?"

Usually, Dean was the one to ask that. "Peachy," Dean bit out.

"Be careful, it's dangerous around here."

Usually he was the one to say that, too. "Who—" The guy was already walking away. "Wait!" Dean called.

"No need to thank us!" the guy said with a wave as he went back to his truck, its headlights like beacons of safety from a lighthouse on a dark and rainy night.

"Wait, hold up a sec!" Dean caught up the guy and asked, "Who are you?"

"We're the Sacrament Lutheran Militia."

"I'm sorry," Dean said, because he couldn't have heard that right. "The what?"

"Hate to tell you, but those were demons, and this is the Apocalypse. So buckle up!"

Damn it, this guy stole all of Dean's lines.

The Sacrament Lutheran Militia were hunters, if with a weird name, and Sam and Dean joined forces with them. Rob, the guy with the bullhorn, took them to his house for dinner. His wife, Jane, stitched up Sam's shoulder. "We've got demons all over the place," Rob said as they sat around the kitchen table over coffee and pie. "We've barricaded about half the town; we're safe in here. But outside…" He shook his head.

"How did you learn Enochian?" Sam asked.

Dylan, their eighteen-year-old son, began, "We—"

"Hush," his mother said immediately, laying her hand on his arm, and then she and Rob exchanged a look. "Tomorrow morning," she said, "you can come to church, and Pastor Gideon will explain." She added, "Our Sunday service starts at ten."

"That's nice," Dean said, plastering a smile on his face and letting the whole "invitation for church on Sunday" slide by. "We would like to talk to your pastor. Right now, though, I think we need some sleep."

"Of course," Rob said, after thank-yous and good-byes, Sam and Dean settled into the Green Valley motel at the edge of the safe part of town.

"I'm calling Bobby to let him know we're not getting there tonight," Sam announced as Dean fell backwards onto the bed, his arms stretched wide.

Hours later, he woke in the darkness to find that Sam had tossed a blanket over him and pulled off his shoes. "Good old Sammy," Dean mumbled as he made his way to the bathroom to take a leak and scrape his teeth mostly clean. Then he peeled off his clothes and went back to bed, under the covers this time.

When he woke up again, it was a gray and misty morning. Sam was coming out of the bathroom, freshly shaven and ready to start the day. "If you hurry," Sam said, "we can get to the church on time for Sunday service."

"Then I am definitely going back to sleep," Dean said, and he pulled a pillow over his head. When he finally did get out of bed, he took his time getting dressed.

"Bobby said this corner of the state was rife with demon sign," Sam told him.

"A little warning would have been nice," Dean groused.

"Yeah, I, uh, mentioned that. He said next time we should send him our itinerary and he'd hook us up with Triple A. Besides, lots of places have demons these days."

"Right." Like Dean needed reminding.

They followed Rob to the church at eleven, only to find a different kind of service going on. "A wedding?" Sam asked. "Seriously?"

"There've been eight so far this week," replied a dark-haired man who introduced himself as Paul.

After the happy couple left the church, Pastor Gideon gave Sam and Dean a tour. In the basement, town residents were assembling salt rounds and bottling holy water. The pastor himself had a gun strapped to his thigh. The pastor's cute daughter, Leah, turned out to be source of the Enochian know-how. She greeted Sam and Dean by name and said the angels spoke to her. "She's very special," said her father in awed pride. Another prophet of the Lord.

"You think Chuck knows about Leah?" Sam asked as they left the basement of the church and headed for the town bar to join the wedding celebration.

"He does now," Dean replied. "Maybe they'll have a prophet convention."

"I'm going to call Cas," Sam said, but he had to leave a message since Cas wasn't answering his phone. Paul turned out to be the bartender, and he gave them a round on the house. Sam pulled up a chair, beer in hand, and asked Dean, "What's your theory?"

Dean hadn't thought about it much. Demons showed up; you killed them. Or they killed you. He shrugged. "We're all going to die in like a month, maybe two. I mean it. This is the end of the world."

"Who says they're all going to die?" Sam challenged. "Whatever happened to us saving them?"

Life happened. Death happened. Shit happened. Every damn day. And nobody seemed to care except them.

Then the church bell started ringing, and everyone went to hear the latest news from Leah: a demon nest, five miles outside of town. Sam and Dean joined the team and enjoyed some righteous smiting. Everybody got a turn blasting away and exorcising demons back to hell, and Sam and Dean put the knife to good use. This was how it was supposed to be: gank the bad guys, plain and simple.

When it was over, the townsfolk piled into their demon-spray-mobile, but Dylan called, "Dean, Sam! Is it cool if I get a ride back with you guys?"

"You saved my ass twice already," Dean told him. "One more time, and you can drive." As the parents drove out of sight, Dean tossed the kid a beer over the roof of the Impala. "You earned it. Don't tell your mom."

"Oh, believe me," Dylan said, opening the beer with enthusiasm. "I will not."

Dean clinked beers cans with Sam, their usual we-survived-again toast, and closed his eyes to better enjoy that first swallow. So he heard, real clear, the yelp of surprise, the metallic chink of a beer can hitting gravel, and the thud of a body hitting the ground. By the time Dean opened his eyes, Dylan was gone.

And as Dean rushed around to the other side of the car, he could hear the strangled gurgle of blood as Dylan tried to breath. Sam yanked then ganked the demon, while Dean pulled Dylan out from underneath the car.

He didn't make it in time. Dylan's throat was slashed from ear to ear.

"No," Dean said, kneeling on the side of a road, holding a dead kid in his lap, feeling the warm blood on his hands. "No!"

"You know," Dylan's mother said to him that afternoon at the funeral, "this is your fault."

Dean knew.

So when Leah spoke of how if they all followed the angels' rules they could be reunited with the people they loved, of how the planet would be peaceful after the apocalypse had come, of how the there would be no monsters or disease or death for the chosen, Dean couldn't take comfort in that. He wasn't chosen; he was cursed.

"It must be hard," Leah said softly, "to be the vessel of heaven and have no hope."

Hope in what?

The next morning, Dean put a new window in his car door. That, at least, he could fix.

That afternoon, Jane shot Paul the bartender, just because he wasn't following the rules Leah said the angels had laid down, and Jane wanted to be reunited with her dead son. Once again, Dean had blood on his hands.

Then Castiel showed up, drunk off his ass, but still sober enough to tell them it was all a lie. Leah wasn't a prophet of the Lord; she was the whore of Babylon. She didn't talk to angels; she ordered demons around. She was making the townspeople murder each other in the Lord's name, a fast track to Hell, and Jane wasn't ever going to be reunited with Dylan again.

Castiel showed them the weapon du jour, a stake made from an ancient cypress of Babylon, then warned, "She can be killed only by a true servant of heaven."

Dean wasn't a true servant, not when he kept telling Michael no. Sam couldn't do it; Lucifer had dibs on him. Castiel was an angel who had rebelled.

So they asked Pastor Gideon. Eventually, he said yes, once he realized he'd be killing the demon who'd killed his real daughter months ago. They found her in the sacristry, and Castiel grabbed her from behind while Pastor Gideon came at her with the stake. But she called him Daddy, so he hesitated and wasted his chance; then she took out Castiel and threw Pastor Gideon and Sam and Dean against the wall.

She ran into the church basement and called upon the townspeople for help. "He's a demon!' she cried, pointing to Pastor Gideon, yet another lie. In the middle of the fight, Dean found himself facing that sweet-faced girl who wore a pink button-down sweater and kept her hair in a ponytail. She smiled and slammed him to the floor.

He reached for the stake, only inches away, and she laughed at him, even as she tightened her hands around his throat. She knew. "Please," she sneered. "Like you're a servant of Heaven? This is why my team is going to win. You're the great vessel? You're pathetic, self-hating, faithless…"

That was true. Joshua had seen it weeks ago. "You're losing faith," he'd said to Dean in the Garden of Heaven, "in yourself, your brother, and now this. God was your last hope."

God was gone.

"It's the end of the world," she said with glee, her thumbs digging painfully into his Adam's apple while her fingers squeezed and Dean choked and gasped for air, "and you're just going to sit back and watch it happen."

God was the one watching it happen. God was the one who had walked off the job, just another deadbeat Dad. Dean was not—would not be—that kind of guy.

Dean stretched out his hand and just managed to get hold of the stake. It worked like a club, too, and he smacked her across the face with it before plunging it up into her heart. "Don't be so sure, whore," he snarled as she gasped in pain and her eyes widened in shock. He rolled her off him then twisted the stake and pushed down. Her ribs cracked and spread beneath the pressure as its tip reached the floor. The stake smoked and burned, and he stood to watch her die, writhing like a worm on a hook, her demon face oozing out of her as blood sizzled and flesh burned, like a barbecue gone wrong. Finally, the whore was gone, and only the body of a sweet-faced girl wearing a pink sweater lay on the floor.

All the while, Sam was watching him. "Are you going to do something stupid?" Sam demanded across the roof of the car after they'd helped Castiel and Pastor Gideon into the back seat.

"Like what?"

"Like: Michael stupid."

"Come on, Sam" Dean half-snarled in exasperation. "Give me a break." He wasn't giving into Michael, but he was definitely going to stop Hell.

In their hotel room, they let Castiel sit on the couch and bandaged up the padre, who'd gotten knocked around pretty hard by the good people of the town. "How's the head?" Dean asked him.

"I'm seeing double," Pastor Gideon said, trying for a smile, "but that may be the painkillers."

"You'll be ok," Dean told him.

The smile disappeared. "No," he said softly, with a shake of his head.

No. His daughter was dead. His town was in ruins. It was his job to lead his people to heaven, and instead he'd helped lead them to hell. He'd killed people he'd thought were demons, and their blood was on his hands. God hadn't been listening to any of his prayers.

Dean knew just how the padre felt. But he hadn't lost his faith on his own; God had taken it away. So screw God. Screw the angels. Screw Lucifer and all the demons of hell. Dean Winchester did have faith in one thing: he wasn't going to let the bad guys win, no matter what it took.

He would be dead and he would be damned, but he would pay that price, because he was the one who owed the debt. He was the one who had broken the first seal and started the apocalypse. And he was the one who would have to take care of this mess, because he couldn't trust Sam.

It wasn't Sam's fault; Dean knew Sam tried. But Lucifer and the demons had gotten their hooks in too deep, long ago. Dad had seen it. He had known. Just before he died, he'd told Dean: "You may have to kill Sam."

That happened sometimes. Good people got taken over, and then they had to die. Sam had killed Madison when she'd become a werewolf. Bobby had killed his wife when a demon had taken her. Pastor Gideon had been ready to kill his daughter.

So in the battle between Michael and Lucifer, Dean would have to kill Sam.

They'd both die, Dean knew. But dying for a good cause was a risk all Hunters accepted, and what could be a better cause than defeating Hell? Yes, a lot of people would die in the battle, but as Pamela had said, then they would go to Heaven, and that was a hell of lot better than Hell.

And people were dying already. People were going to Hell. Dylan's mom had killed an innocent man, and she wasn't getting into Paradise now.

If Dean had said yes to Michael months ago, that wouldn't have happened. If he'd said yes to Michael, Dylan—and Paul and Ellen and Jo and countless others—wouldn't have died.

If Dean said yes to Michael, he could stop it now. If he said yes to Michael, the blood wouldn't be on his hands anymore. If he said yes, maybe everybody would get into Heaven.

And wasn't that how people really got saved?