Hexagram

by ErtheChilde

"This was never meant to happen, but seeing as how it has, we'll deal with it the same way we deal with everything else. Grit our teeth, dig in our heels and give Fate the finger."

Disclaimer:
This story utilizes characters, situations and premises that are copyright Eric Kripke and The CW. No infringement on their respective copyrights is intended by the author in any way, shape or form. This fan oriented story is written solely for the author's own amusement and the entertainment of the readers. It is not for profit. Any resemblance to real organizations, institutions, products or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All fiction, plot and Original Characters with the exception of those introduced in the books and graphic novels, are the sole creation of ErtheChilde and using them without permission is considered rude, in bad-taste and will reflect seriously on your credibility as a writer. There may or may not be a curse in your future as well, so be warned. Remembered all things come in threes, good and bad. Plagiarizing is considered bad.

Rating:
M for violence, coarse language, suggestive adult themes, blasphemy and tweaking the nose of the King of Hell. (Note: No spirits, shapeshifters, werewolves, demons or angels were harmed in the making of this fic.)

Summary:
Endings are hard, and never perfect, but that's because nothing ever really ends. Not everyone gets the apple pie at the finale, and as Sam and Dean Winchester are to learn, stopping one Apocalypse doesn't mean that the Cosmos is finished with them.

Warnings:
AU From 5x22 onward – Because Season Six and Seven have sucked, both in storyline and in what they've done to the characters.
Sam/Dean Alienation – It will be a while before they meet up again, and then it'll be a while before they get over their resentment of each other.
Pre-slash – I haven't finalized the pairings yet, but I do know there will be one definite slash pairing, but ABSOLUTELY NO WINCEST. I don't even need to say how wrong that shit is. We'll see how things develop and once this season is completed I'll decide what to categorize the fic under.
Unabashed Bending of Various Religious Mythos – Kripke's already made a mess of lots of myths, as a student of Classics and Religion I might as well have a go at it too.
Canon Season Six Onward References – Occasionally, there was an episode or two that I liked from these seasons, so I will attempt to work those in. At such times, I will be using characters, situations and canon dialogue and will disclaim that prior to each chapter.
OCs – For the sake of story lines and creature-of-the-week, there will be original characters. Some of them will be female. Some of them will hook up with one or both of the guys as is in keeping with the series. Given fan-interest, some might even become regular secondary characters.
Occasional Use of Gender Neutral Pronouns - i.e.: Ze/Zir/Zirself, etc. Because it's something I'm experimenting with.

(*)

Author's Note: This chapter is the Teaser, so it's not vital to read. But if you want the whole "episode" experience, I would highly encourage it. There is significant dialogue from the actual series in this chapter but is meant as a means of situating the reader, not for profit.

Music: "Live Wire" by AC/DC

(*)

The Road So Far:

Images flick back and forth, painful in their intensity, although whether from sensory overload or the memory of the sinister, brilliant light, Sam isn't sure. The ground beneath him – or around him or in him – shakes.

Light erupts from everywhere, prisms of colour solidifying and casting shapes into sharp relief. An ancient sigil lies before him, blood still pooled in the crevices that also shine with light. Someone clutches at him –

"Sammy, let's go."

His brother's face swims into view – bone white, green eyes wide with dread – and the pulling sensation becomes more intense, memory juxtaposed with the tug of something far stronger. Voice blends with voice, past and present blurring together.

Dean's trying to make him move, but Sam feels like he's rooted to the ground. He grips at his brother insistently, unable to look away from the light. "Dean – he's coming."

The light is brighter now, burning like a thousand suns. He's petrified.

"Come on!"

Sam is able to feel his limbs again, but even as they run, there's a sudden high-pitched noise. It's coming from the light. He squeezes his eyes shut, holding up one hand to block the glow and another to cover his ears. An ache in his knees tells him that his legs have given out.

Any minute now and the brightness will finally become too much and he'll disintegrate –

They are standing inside a ramshackle house in a poor neighbourhood. The light is gone, but there is still pain radiating around and within Sam. He winces as the picture becomes clearer, and he sees the three angels standing before them. Zachariah is among them, his cold eyes wide with excitement and his mouth twisted into a triumphant sneer.

"Lucifer is powerful in ways that defy description. We need to strike now, hard and fast – before he finds his vessel," he says. "And when he touches down, we're talking Four Horsemen, red oceans, fiery skies – the greatest hits." He narrows his eyes at Dean, who is still beside Sam and looking unimpressed. "You can stop him, Dean, but you need our help."

The scene shifts again, a whirl of colours and voices that make Sam's head spin as he tries to focus on everything but only manages to pick out bits and pieces. They are standing in a storage space that still smells like John Winchester, the sharp tang of metal and blood and gun oil.

"It's you, chucklehead," Zachariah simpers, his too-white-teeth wide in a shark's grin. "You're the Michael Sword."

There's a burning pain all around Sam, as though something is tearing him apart on a molecular level. He screams, but no sound comes out. The hurt grows even worse, like the corrosive burn of acid –

Lucifer, wearing his temporary face, regards Sam with the fondness a parent might have for a child. "You're the one, Sam. You're my vessel. My true vessel."

His refusal is cut off by a violent bout of nausea, but his stomach is empty and all he manages to do is dry heave uselessly. Flames flick at Sam, burning and melting his skin from his bones. He latches on to anything, any memory to distract him –

"Screw the angels and the demons and their crap Apocalypse," Dean utters passionately as they sit in a hospital room, trying to cheer up Bobby. Their adopted father clenches his hands on his useless legs. "Hell, they want to fight away, they can find their own planet. This one's ours, and I say they get the hell off it. We take 'em all on. We kill the Devil – hell, we even kill Michael if we have to. But we do it our own damn selves."

For a moment, emotions and sensation block out the searing agony. Pride, warmth, faith, safety – Sam clings to those feelings with desperation, savoring the milliseconds that he holds them until they are clawed away from him again.

Lucifer tears at his soul, trying to rend it like tissue paper, but Sam holds fast. It took Dean thirty years to break in Hell. It's damn well going to take that and more before Sam gives in –

"There's someone besides Michael strong enough to take on Lucifer," Castiel says, looking as intent and determined as ever, a celestial warrior squished into a frail human body, sitting in the tiny hospital room. "Strong enough to stop the Apocalypse…the one who resurrected me…the one who began everything…I'm going to find God."

Hope. It is small, tenuous, but it is there –

The angel in the slight, old gardener's body looks at them with a deep pity that Sam feels even now. It feels as imprinted into his bones as the Enochian symbols Castiel carved there to protect him once. They do very little good here in the Cage.

"God knows what the angels are doing. He knows that the Apocalypse has begun," Joshua tells them. "He just doesn't think it's his problem. God saved you already. He brought back Castiel. It's more than he's intervened in a long time. He's finished."

Waves of burning agony roll over Sam again, triumphant and exultant as his hopes are dashed by memory. He feels desolation, futility –

There is another surge, but he's ready for it, calling up more memories –

"We'll find another way," Sam insists, as though willpower alone can make it so. "We can still stop all this, Dean."

His brother looks at him, incredulous, already prepared to give up but humouring him nonetheless. "How?"

"I don't know, but we'll find it. You and me, we'll find it."

Certainty in spite of everything, because of how many times they found that elusive Door Number Three–

"The Cage you sprung Lucifer from? It's still down there. And maybe, just maybe, you can shove his ass back in," the archangel Gabriel tells them, his voice coming in slightly grainy through the laptop speakers. "Not that it'll be easy. You gotta get the Cage open, trick my bro back into it – the key to the Cage? It's out there. Actually, it's keys, plural. Four keys – well, four rings. From the Horsemen. You get 'em all, you got the Cage – "

There is a flurry of images on the backs of Sam's eyelids – an angular man whose eyes sparkle with the delight over gory strife. He's being held down, unable to move, but still smirking at them. "You can't kill War, kiddos."

"Oh, we know," Dean grunts, as Sam darts forward and slams the Horseman's right hand against a cherry red mustang. There is the smooth snikt sound of a switchblade and the harbinger's fingers are on the ground, ring clinking to the pavement.

Sound and colour blur, and Castiel's voice intones, "And then will come Famine, riding on a black steed. He will ride into the land of plenty and great will be the Horseman's hunger, for he is hunger. His hunger will seep out and poison the air."

"I'm a Horseman, Sam," a shrivelled, sunken man wheezes, his dry lips curled into a smirk. "Your power doesn't work on me."

"You're right," Sam hisses, and splotches of memory place him in a shady diner somewhere, and his entire body is pumped and he feels the demon blood singing within him, and even though the Horseman is smiling, Sam feels confident. He senses the demons residing in the shrunken form and tells him, "but it will work on them."

And he pulls, feels his strength ripping the souls out of the wizened body of Famine as the Horseman gasps in wordless pain. Black smoke vomits from every orifice of the creature and blood leaks down Sam's nose, and his vision swims but he is winning –

Until he isn't.

He writhes on the floor as disease wracks his body, devouring every spare bit of strength he has. Beside him, Dean convulses and he can't do anything to help him. Pestilence looks over at a struggling Castiel with a smirk, the doctor's meat grinning in a way that would never put a real patient at ease. "There's not one speck of angel in you, is there?"

And Castiel is moving, grabbing Sam's knife and slicing off the Horseman's ring finger with savage determination.

"Maybe just as speck," he growls, and Sam feels a warm smugness and a wave of thankfulness before the scene changes again.

"Death came for me," Bobby tells them, for all his gruffness still sounding a mite scared beneath the surface. He appears shrunken, even in the claustrophobic space of his study.

"You?" Dean demands. "Why you?"

"Because I've been helping you, you sons of bitches!" Bobby snaps, and then looks meaningfully at Sam. "I'm one of the reasons you're still saying 'no'."

Shame and regret boil to the surface –

"So, you want to cram the Devil back in the box? Cunning scheme," Crowley chuckles, the sound of the demon's laughter echoing in the corners of Sam's mind. "I want in." At Sam and Dean's confusion, he considers the Colt in his hands carelessly. "Lucifer isn't a demon, remember? He's an angel – and angel famous for his hatred of humankind. To him, you're just filthy bags of pus. If that's the way he feels about you, what can he think about us? To him we're just servants – cannon fodder. If Lucifer manages to exterminated humankind, we're next."

A wariness born of decades of hunting demons wars with self-preservation and the absolute need to succeed –

"Maybe we are each other's Achilles heel. Maybe they'll find a way to use us against each other, I don't know," Dean's words are earnest and thoughtful, but laced with the iron Sam has always known and come to rely on. "I just know we're all we've got. More than that. We keep each other human."

Thankfulness. Hope. Love –

"The way I see it, we got one shot at surviving this," Sam pronounces firmly. "Maybe I am on deck for the Devil, maybe the same for you and Michael, maybe there's no changing that – but we can stop wringing our hands over it. We gotta just grab onto whatever's in front of us, kick it's ass, and go down fighting – "

Readiness. Confidence –

"Who exactly is supposed to come along and save these people?" Dean demands. "It was supposed to be us, but we can't do it."

"You can't do this to me!" Sam shoots back, angry and hurt. "I got one thing – one thing – keeping me going. You think you're the only one white-knuckling it here, Dean? I can't count on anyone else! I can't do this alone!"

He feels wrenching desperation and a raw fear of what he knows is to come –

"If Lucifer burns this mother down, and I coulda done something about it, guess what – that's on me!" Dean shouts, trying to make him see reason, but all Sam sees is his brother trying to leave him –

Castiel appears in the midst of blowing papers and dried leaves, toting a mud-covered body. Even covered in grime, Sam recognizes who it is immediately.

"That's our brother," he whispers.

Along with disbelief, he feels a swell of something else. Something that has gone unnamed since they first found out about the younger man, something Sam didn't even voice and which died the day they cremated Adam. The ache is painful, but Sam wouldn't trade it for anything –

"These angels, they popped out of nowhere, and they tell me that I – I'm chosen," Adam explains, hesitant and wondering as though he still isn't used to the idea. "To save the world. Me and some archangel are going to kill the Devil. I'm his, uh, sword or vessel or something."

The ache turns to a sinking feeling in the pit of Sam's stomach, a sensation which grows worse when Castiel admits, "He is John Winchester's bloodline. Sam's brother. It's not perfect, but it's possible."

Frustration screams within him, because really, why can't they ever just win, once? It seems like whenever they turned around, someone is intent on screwing them over –

"How many people have we got killed, Sam?" Dean asks him, not really wanting an answer. "Mom, Dad, Jess, Jo, Ellen – should I keep going?"

"It's not like we pulled the trigger," Sam protests, knowing even as he says it that his argument is a weak one.

"We might as well have. I'm tired, man. I'm tired of fighting who I'm supposed to be," Dean sighs. "I don't believe."

"In what?"

"In you. I mean, I don't. I don't know whether it's gonna be demon blood or some other demon chick or what, but…I do know they're gonna find a way to turn you. …You're angry, you're self-righteous. Lucifer's gonna wear you to the prom, man. It's just a matter of time…and when Satan takes you over, there's got to be somebody there to fight him, and it ain't gonna be that kid. So, it's got to be me."

It's as though someone has reached into his body and pulled out his heart. Sam wants to scream, but it hurts too much to even contemplate. Betrayal. Loss. Hopelessness –

"The answer is yes," Dean bites out as Sam and Adam choke blood onto the stainless marble floor of the beautiful room and Zachariah looks on dispassionately. "Do you hear me? Call Michael down, you bastard!"

Zachariah turns away, chanting in Enochian. The world begins to shake. "He's coming."

Sam only has eyes for Dean, and pain overtakes him that has nothing to do with the invisible knives shredding his lungs to pieces. He's about to watch everything he knows and loves about his brother vanish.

And then Dean winks.

New hope rallies within him –

Dean stabs the blade of the sword into Zachariah's head, up through his chin, watching calmly as the light that was once an angel bleeds out of him. Dean falls backward, but the light doesn't disappear. An ear-splitting noise joins the shaking, and they know that Michael is still coming for them.

Dean is up, trying to get Adam and Sam out, stumbling and dragging – Sam is through, and in an instant Dean is as well – but the doors slam shut behind Sam and Dean, leaving Adam locked inside.

Dean lunges back, tries to open the door from the outside, but Sam sees him wince, burned when he touches the doorknob. They hear Adam's cries for help from inside, and white light explodes out from the crevices. Once it fades and Dean can touch the door, they open it to find an abandoned room. "Adam?"

The sense of loss returns, magnified this time because Sam knows Adam will never be at peace now –

"I saw your eyes," Sam accuses. "You were totally rocking the 'yes' back there. So what changed your mind?"

"Honestly?" Dean snorts, and if the situation weren't so serious and if the world wasn't going to hell, Sam would call it a chuckle. "The damnedest thing. I mean, the world's ending, the walls are coming down on us, and I look over to you and all I can think about is, "This stupid son of a bitch brought me here." I just didn't want to let you down."

Warmth floods his entire being the way Dean had looked at him then – like none of the betrayal and estrangement of the past year even happened. For that second, he has his brother back exactly the way he remembers

"Screw destiny, right in the face," Dean says decisively. "I say we take the fight to them, and do it our way."

Nagging suspicion, worry –

"You sold your soul?" Dean roars at Bobby.

"Oh, more like pawned it," Crowley corrects helpfully. "I fully intend to give it back."

Distrust and a lingering sense of doom hovers around them all like a cloud of smoke, but what is done is done –

"Michael has found another vessel," Castiel says, his voice the closest approximation of regret that an emotionless creature can muster. "It's your brother, Adam."

Pain, again – the pain at learning the truth. At least when they didn't know, there was the tiny, infinitesimal chance that Adam somehow got away from it all; or that he was sent back to Heaven to be at peace. Knowing is worse somehow –

"Remember that time you were possessed?" Sam asks Bobby hesitantly.

"Yeah, rings a bell."

"How'd you do it? I mean, how'd you take back the wheel?"

Bobby frowns at him knowingly, an expression that clearly says he isn't fooling anyone. "Why are you asking, Sam?"

Sam takes a swig of beer, trying to be casual even though his hands are shaking. "Say we can open the Cage. Great. But then what? W-we just lead the Devil to the edge and get him to jump in?" He steels himself. "What if you guys lead the Devil to the edge and I jump in?"

Voicing his worries in the form of a plan makes them more real, but still there is a nagging sense of him lying to himself. He's avoiding the real truth of what he was thinking –

"'Yes' to Lucifer, then jump in the hole," Castiel muses beside Sam, an odd fixture in the backseat of the car. It is the longest time they had spent any time together, only because Castiel is practically mortal now and forced to travel the human way. "It's an interesting plan."

"Go ahead and tell me it's the worst plan you've ever heard."

"But that's not what I think. You and Dean have a habit of exceeding my expectations. He resisted Michael. Maybe you could resist Lucifer," the angel says. He sobers. "Sam, if you say 'yes' to Lucifer and then fail…this fight will happen. And the collateral…it'll be immense."

Fear. The very primal sense of being afraid for his own self-preservation and having to remind himself that this is how it has to be –

"I'm in," Dean tells him heavily.

"In with…?"

"The whole 'up with Satan' thing. I'm on board," his brother says, and seems to be swallowing something painful. "If this is what you want…is this really what you want?"

"I let him out. I got to put him back in," Sam says, his voice firmer than his resolve.

Dean nods with pretended ease. "Okay. That's it then."

There is a sense of calm, a sense of accepting what is to come and relief at not having to fight it any longer. But even so, there is still something he needs to make sure of –

"This thing goes our way and I…Triple Lindy into that box…y-you know I'm not coming back," Sam murmurs gently, trying to see Dean's expression out of the corner of his eye without being too obvious about it. "You got to promise not to try to bring me back…Once the cage is shut, you can't go poking at it, Dean. It's too risky."

"As if I'm just gonna let you rot there!" Dean explodes, his former calm destroyed.

"Yeah, you are," Sam tells him, sad but resolute. "You don't have a choice."

The look in his brother's eyes tell him exactly what he thinks about that –

"Sorry, am I interrupting something?" Even behind Lucifer's psychic screen, Sam can see Dean – leaning against the door of the Impala, uncaring that he has driven into the middle of a cemetery, in the middle of the battle meant to end all battles. Sam imagines his heart leaps with dismay and hope. There's that usual quirk of Dean's lips, although the gesture doesn't reach his eyes. He nods in Sam and Lucifer's direction. "Hey. We need to talk."

"Dean, even for you, this is a whole new mountain of stupid," the Devil forces Sam to say.

"I'm not talking to you," Dean retorts dismissively. "I'm talking to Sam."

"You're no longer the vessel, Dean," Michael-in-Adam's-body growls. "You've got no right to be here."

Dean's expression softens only incrementally. "Adam, if you're in there somewhere, I am so sorry."

"Adam isn't home right now," Michael replies coldly.

"Well, then you're next on my list, Buttercup," Dean retorts. "But right now, I need five minutes with him." He inclines his head in Lucifer and Sam's direction.

The absurd temptation to laugh is there, because even in the seriousness of the moment, Dean is still Dean –

Sam feels when Castiel explodes, his grace still linked strongly enough to Heaven that it reverberates through every angel, even Lucifer. There is no time to mourn or notice the pain of the bullet striking him uselessly, and then he hears the fatal snap of Bobby's neck –

Blood and fury and anger – he experiences it all, and from behind the towering white pillar of fire that is Lucifer in his body, he can still see Dean.

"Sammy – are you in there?" his brother gasps through his ruined lips and broken face.

"Oh, he's in here, all right," Lucifer sneers through Sam's mouth. "And he's gonna feel the snap of your bones. Every single one. We're gonna take our time."

'The Hell we are - !' Sam snarls to no one, trapped in the prison of his mind, and he begins to fight in earnest.

His body is drawing back for the final blow, the one he knows will shatter Dean's skull and steal the light from his eyes forever. And Dean is still watching him, still looking at him, as though he can see right through Lucifer's wall.

As though he really can see him.

"Sam – it's okay – it's okay – I'm here. I'm here – I'm not gonna leave you – not gonna leave you – "

It's the mantra of a broken, dying man and it makes Sam scream in fury from where he is trapped. He calls up every memory, every overwhelming myriad of feelings and images and rains down a last, desperate assault against Lucifer.

Just five minutes, he just needs five minutes –

And then there is nothing but clarity and he is himself again. He feels the coolness of the wind on his skin, smells the metallic tang of blood in the air.

"It's okay, Dean," he hears himself say, smiling even though it pains him worse than any wound he has ever suffered. "It's going to be okay. I've got him."

But even as he says these words, he knows without a fraction of a doubt that nothing is okay.

Because it suddenly hits Sam that he's really going to go through with this insane plan they came up with; he's about to jump into a portal to Hell, consigning himself to an eternity of torment and suffering.

Anger. Sadness. Terror –

There are words and a chant and then the giant, sucking void that opens up right next to him. And Dean, up until the end, watching him with disbelief and sorrow and hope and every other emotion that he never liked to display because it might bring on a chick-flick moment –

"Sam!" Adam's face swims before him now, but it is Michael who speaks. "I have to fight my brother, Sam! Here and now! It's my destiny!"

"Fuck destiny," Sam wants to say, but Lucifer is clawing at his psyche, trying to get back into control, and talking right now might give the archangel the opening he needs.

And when Michael grabs them, his grip shattering Sam's humerus, Sam does the only thing he can – he holds tight and pulls the archangel in with him. Into the deep, unending black abyss that presses in on them with all the subtleness of a million flaming knives.

The light of day disappears, and Sam knows with fatalistic certainty that it will be the last time he will see it. A cold prison in the deepest circle of Hell awaits him, and the destiny that was once been written about by Prophets will turn into an eternity spent in torture, neither living nor dead.

Still, in that split second, even as the Devil rends his soul like tissue paper, he knows that he has done right.

As I said, this chapter was the teaser and there wasn't much original stuff in here except for writing the emotions of, etc. I promise the rest of the fic is pretty much mostly mine, with the aforementioned deviations.

TBC