In the Dark
"Life isn't easy from the singular side
Down in the hole, some emotions are hard to hide
It's your decision, it's a chance that you take
It's on your head, it's a habit that's hard to break" - Billy Squier, In the Dark
His knees were aching, circulation in his legs almost gone from what felt like hours, crouched on the cold stone floor. After reading the incantation for the third time, Sam rose stiffly to his feet, his anger smoldering like the dying embers in the chalice before him. With a furious kick, he sent the bowl and its repugnant contents flying across the room.
"Where the hell are you, Crowley?"
He paced, back and forth, from wall to wall, smoking remnants of ingredients he preferred not to think about scattered like dust under his feet. Tears of frustration burned his eyes as Sam stopped at the doorway that would take him down the shadowed hallway to that room. The room where the battered, bloody body of his brother lay, silent and cold. The room he could not bring himself to enter again, once he had sat and stared and cried and raged and pleaded with any entity that would listen, to no avail.
So, he had dragged himself to the library, pouring one drink after another, until he realized he was drinking from Dean's favorite glass. Then the alcohol had surged back through his system like liquid fire, and Sam had spent the next twenty minutes puking his guts out and crying like the girl Dean would obviously accuse him of being.
The decision to summon Crowley was an easy one. The hard choice would be whether Sam would kill him on sight, or bargain...once again...for a deal to bring his brother back. But, like so many events in the younger Winchester's life, this decision was out of his hands as well, as no amount of chanting and casting of spells would bring the King of Hell to the Batcave.
Out of options and dangerously close to losing his composure once again, Sam clenched his fist and threw a wild roundhouse swing at the stone wall. Inches from impact, an iron grip grasped his arm and swung him around. Crowley stepped back as Sam turned on him, fire in his eyes and steel in his voice.
"Where...have you been?" Sam advanced on him, but Crowley stood his ground.
"I'm not your personal assistant, Moose. I do have other things to do besides being at your beck and call." Crowley glanced around the room, eyebrows lifted at the disarray scattered across the floor. "What, no devil's trap this time? No enchanted handcuffs?"
"No."
Crowley studied him through narrowed eyes, then nodded to himself as he strolled leisurely across the room. As he reached the doorway, he stopped, glancing down the hall before turning back again.
"You know, you really should get better writers. You can't just keep recycling the same old script over and over. The fans will turn on you, you know."
"What the hell are you babbling on about, you son of a bitch?"
"No need to get nasty," Crowley said as he kicked a blackened bone fragment out of his path; it clattered against the upended spell chalice and rolled away. "I just think you Winchesters need some fresh material, that's all. I mean, you die for him, he dies for you. It all gets rather boring after a while."
"You think I want to make a deal." Sam released a strangled laugh that turned Crowley in his tracks. The demon looked genuinely puzzled as he returned Sam's unblinking stare.
"Well, of course you want to deal. That's what you two do...consistently. I could make more money betting on the Winchesters than I did on the Kentucky Derby. And believe me, I made a killing on that."
"That's where you're wrong." Sam's voice was steady, his eyes clear and cold as he advanced on the demon, who involuntarily took a step back. "This time, you're gonna deal with me."
"And why would I? You...humans...make the deals. That's how it works." Crowley turned away with a smile that turned Sam's stomach and tempted the grieving brother to retrieve the smoking chalice from the floor and crush the smirking demon's skull.
"Because if you don't fix what you did, I will spend the rest of my life tracking you, until the day I finally put you down. And that's not an idle threat."
"What I did?" Crowley chuckled and shook his head. "I gave your testosterone driven brother what he asked for. He wanted the First Blade; I told him how to get it. Not my fault he wasn't up to the task."
"You son of a bitch..." Sam took a step toward Crowley, fists clenched and voice shaking. "You knew what the Blade and the Mark would do to him. You should have told me...you should have told him."
"I did. Maybe not soon enough, but I did." Crowley paused, then tilted his head as he continued:
"Just a few minutes ago, in fact."
Sam stared, speechless, for a long moment as the demon's words sank in. "What? What did you s-say?" Sam barely recognized the voice as his own, as the words tumbled out in little more than a whisper.
"You thought I didn't come when you called." Crowley strolled over to a shelf and casually examined a brass paperweight, lifting it and turning it in his hand. "I came. I just paid your brother a visit first."
"Why? To gloat? To..." Sam felt the anger rising inside him again. "To celebrate?"
Crowley ducked his head and when he looked up, Sam could have sworn he saw...something...sympathy, perhaps...in the demon's eyes. Then it was gone as Crowley slowly shook his head.
"Actually, no. Believe it or not, Moose, I was rooting for your brother. Always did like to see an underdog come out on top. But you're not paying attention here." He stepped closer and fixed Sam with an unblinking stare. "I spoke to him. Not to the corpse you dragged in here. I spoke to him. Just a few minutes ago, in fact."
Sam felt his knees go weak and for a moment, he thought the demon was about to reach out to steady him. "He's...alive? You brought him back?"
"No."
"Then what..."
"it was the Blade." The demon said. "How do you think it has survived all these millenia? It finds a host and it doesn't let go. A Biblical parasite, you might say."
"But..." Sam hesitated, not sure he wanted to hear the answer to his next question. "Dean's alive?"
"In a manner of speaking," Crowley said.
Sam moved toward the doorway, only to have Crowley block his way. "You do understand that what you're going to find in that room is not your brother."
"Get out of my way," Sam growled, but the demon stood fast.
"Before you go down there," Crowley said, "Think this through. Think about what you're going to see. Remember what happened to Cain when he surrendered to the power of that blade. Think about what he became."
"A demon." The words slipped out before Sam could stop them. He took a deep breath, looked over Crowley's shoulder to the hallway beyond, and then slipped past him to the door.
"He's my brother." Sam said. "He's alive and right now, that's enough for me."
He stopped in the doorway and glanced down the hallway, taking another deep breath before glancing back at the demon. "By the way, once I see that you're not lying to me, I'll be back, and you will fix this. Because I did lie to you about something."
"Oh, really?"Crowley's smug expression had returned as he crossed his arms and returned the younger Winchester's stare.
"I said no devil's trap, but actually..." Sam pointed to a faint line just outside the door. "That whole room is a devil's trap. So make yourself at home, 'cause you aren't going anywhere."
In any other situation, the anger that suffused Crowley's face as he cursed and turned away would have been a satisfying source of satisfaction for Sam. But, as he walked slowly down the hallway toward his brother's room, Sam had already dismissed the demon's plight from his mind.
He had a brother to save.
To be continued...