A/N: Hello everybody! This story contains swearing, some canon-typical blood, violence and gore, references to alcohol abuse, and canonical character death (some of those characters canonically get brought back, and this is a canon-compliant work, but the bringing-back happens offscreen, so I thought I'd warn you). Hope you enjoy!
This is how the world ends—
There's a man standing in the road.
If you looked at him, you might notice the defeated way he's carrying himself, the emptiness in his eyes. Or you might not. He's good at keeping it in.
You probably wouldn't know the truth—he's hemorrhaging. No, that's not right. He's already bled out. The man in the road is a walking corpse.
Standing across from him is—let's call her a woman. They speak, and an agreement is reached. They seal it with a kiss.
The man barely feels the shiver of revulsion that runs through him. He has something far more important on his mind. He gets in his car and races back to the closest thing he has to a home, preoccupied only with what he's just made happen. Despite everything he knows about the inviolability of pacts like the one he's just made, the man still doesn't quite believe it until he's seen the results with his own eyes. Once he has, he finally takes a real breath. The bleeding wound inside him closes. He's alive again.
For a little while. It's only a matter of time, now.
...
This is how the world ends—
There's—let's call her a woman, sitting on a bed in a motel room. A man has a gun that can kill almost anything pointed at her.
She's not afraid, because she's in control.
She is excited, though. She knows this man, has learned everything the grapevine will tell her about him, so she's confident she's right, but if she's wrong about this—she's about to vanish into nothingness.
Nothingness. The prospect would terrify her if the odds weren't so remote. As it is, it has her on the edge of her seat.
None of that shows on her face, though. She looks almost bored. She has to play this exactly right.
She appeals to the one thing everyone knows about the members of this man's family—their stupidity with regards to each other.
So she pretends she can save his brother from the certain doom they both know is coming for him—the one he brought on himself—and she sees the pain and... guilt? flicker across the man's face, mixed with something that might be hope, all overlaid with disgust and seething hatred, and he lowers the gun.
The woman would laugh, but that might give the game away. So she just says, that's my boy.
...
This is how the world ends—
There is—you know what? Let's not call him a man. There is an angel, in a place no human could understand, ready for his greatest assignment in centuries. Maybe millennia.
Retrieve the Righteous Man.
Save him.
This is what the angel likes to do. He's always been fond of rescue missions, missions of healing, of protection. Likes them much better than the missions where they must display the wrath of their Father.
(Those missions are necessary too. He must not complain. Be a good soldier.)
The angel is speaking with his superior. We are to fly into Hell? he asks, just to be sure, because that's not an order you hear very often.
You are to fly into Hell, says the angel's superior. Your garrison will cover you. First, we must make a way in.
Do we know where he is? the angel asks.
No, says his superior, who knows perfectly well. We'll have you start at the top and work your way down.
The angel gives off a wave of confused energy. If angels in their celestial forms could frown, he would be doing so. Don't you think it probable that, if Hell is so invested in keeping the Righteous Man in their grasp, he'll be near the bottom?
Are you questioning my orders? asks the angel's superior.
The angel doesn't know why, but at those words, his perfect, emotionless calm is unbalanced, and he feels a prickle of something almost like fear. No.
...
This is how the world ends—
There's a man on a rack, in a place no one should ever be but so many people are.
Standing over him is—let's call him a man, holding a knife and smiling lazily. He's asking a question.
The man on the rack has heard this question every day for the last thirty years.
At first, he responded with spirited invectives—fuck off or no way in Hell, literally or you can take that knife and shove it up your ass, 'cause I got no use for it.
Later, he just said, no.
By now, he's stopped saying even that. He doesn't have the strength anymore. He wants so badly for it all to stop and he can't help wanting his only way out, even if it's horrible.
They're going to have him forever. He knows he's not that strong.
It's only a matter of time, now.
He's stopped trying to keep himself from begging. He's decided it doesn't matter what he says, as long as it isn't yes.
The man with the knife is getting impatient.
One little word, he says. That's all I need. If you don't say it, I'll start up again in three...
He raises the knife.
The man on the rack shuts his eyes and bites his lip.
Two...
The man on the rack's lip is bleeding.
One...
The man with the knife rests the blade on the other man's eyelid, and the man on the rack doesn't mean to say it, it just...
Okay! he shouts, tears running down his face. Okay okay okay okay okay I'll do it. Fuck you, I'll do it.
The man with the knife undoes the other man's restraints, whispering try anything and you're right back on, and the man who is no longer on the rack knows he should fight, knows he should try, but he just. He can't. He's tired and afraid and he can't. He's already lost.
The man with the knife sets his knife down, sits next to the man who is now sitting up on the rack, and pulls him into a sideways embrace. It's gonna be alright now, he whispers. You'll see.
And the man from the rack freezes, too horrified even to shudder, but after a moment the pull of physical contact that isn't meant to hurt or humiliate is just too strong and he leans into it, still crying.
The man from the rack takes a moment to be fervently grateful his father and brother aren't here to see him like this.
The moment ends.
Come on now, says the man with the knife, picking it back up, time to hold up your end of the bargain.
And the man from the rack is handed a knife, and the man who is now without a knife whistles. Two demons come in, carrying a woman who is slumped over. She is strapped to the rack. She doesn't fight.
Go on now, says the man who is now without a knife, or you go right back on that rack. It's you or her.
And when he was alive, the man who now has a knife would've agreed to be tortured in a stranger's place in a heartbeat, but now he's hit the limit of what he can endure, and gone some beyond it.
He raises the knife and looks away.
No. Look, says the man without a knife.
The man with a knife looks.
Which means he sees the long red curve his knife makes in the woman's skin.
A drop of her blood hits the floor, and he shudders, and then keeps going.
...
This is how the world ends—
There's a man in an abandoned house.
If you saw him, you'd know something was wrong. He's clearly drunk, and his eyes are red from too little sleep.
Inside, he's one big wound that never seems to stop bleeding, no matter how much alcohol he puts on it.
There's—let's call her a woman, standing in front of him. She's asking for a little patience, and sobriety and promising to teach him everything she knows.
Let's get started, the man says. Right now. What do I have to do?
By way of reply, the woman takes her knife, slices open her arm, and holds it out to him. Drink.
Okay wars with are you insane?! in the man's mind. What comes out is um...
The woman rolls her eyes. The blood you were fed as a baby is what gave you your powers in the first place. This is how you make them stronger. You need to be stronger.
The man really can't argue with that, but he feels something prickling in the back of his mind. A promise made. And he's ready, he's so far beyond ready to break that promise if it means taking down the bitch who killed his brother but this, this is something else.
He knows if he does this, there's no going back.
But he really can't find it in himself to care.
...
This is how the world ends—
There's an angel in a hunter's house.
He is on orders to release the boy with the demon blood.
He doesn't know why.
He does it anyway.
...
This is how the world ends—
There are two men in a hotel room.
They exchange words that turn to blows. The words hurt more.
Everything in the room that can break does.
By the time the younger of the two is choking the older, something else has broken as well.
The younger does what he's always done, when he's too overwhelmed to process what he's feeling. He runs.
This time, though, something stops him in the doorway. He doesn't want to leave like this.
You walk out that door, don't you ever come back, says the older.
It's not an unfamiliar phrase. Their father said it, right before the younger left for college.
It's the final push.
He's gone.
...
This is how the world ends—
There's a man standing in the road.
He's next to a road sign. St. Mary's Convent—2 Miles. Two miles to make up his mind.
Save the world and sell his soul, or turn around and give up on everything he's thrown away so much for.
He doesn't matter, he tells himself. Compared to the whole world, he doesn't matter.
And neither does the woman in the trunk.
The one he's about to kill.
A litany of excuses that sound an awful lot like the let's-call-her-a-woman who is currently pacing and urging him to think fast fill his mind, but they're stilled by a voice saying what the fuck are you doing? that sounds an awful lot like his brother.
Yeah. The one who just told him to never come back.
But was he wrong?
The man in the road sighs and opens his cellphone. One new message.
He thinks this is the right thing, but he knows he's in so deep he's not in a position to judge. So he leaves it up to his brother and God. If he needs to be stopped, he reasons, they'll stop him.
His brother tries.
God is busy.
Unfortunately, someone else isn't.
...
Or maybe God isn't busy.
Two brothers find themselves on a plane above the end of the beginning of the end of the world.
They have a lot to talk about.
It'll be hard.
They'll manage.
This is how—
...
There are two men and some angels in a storage unit.
One of the men is standing, the other is on the ground—his legs are broken.
Beyond one shout of God! the man with the broken legs is trying very hard not to make any sound, despite the way his broken legs folded at a horrible angle underneath him when he went down, just in case his brother (who said he was done trying to save him, but the way he flinched just then...) has any protective instincts left to be sent into overdrive.
The standing man has far, far more protective instincts than the man with the broken legs knows.
The standing man looks down at his brother, then up at the angel torturing them, and asks him how many humans die in the crossfire of the angel's plan.
When that number is way too high, he says, eat me.
This is how—
...
There's a man in a bar.
Two other men caught him off balance, and there's a woman handcuffed to a pool table, and he's been told that if he doesn't cooperate she dies.
Which is how he's currently backed against the table with a mouthful of something he never thought he'd taste again.
He wants it. God help him, after everything he still wants it. He feels so helpless right now and he remembers how it made him a better fighter. It didn't just help him drive out demons, it made him stronger. He needs to be strong, right now.
Would it really be so bad? It was forced into his mouth, after all. If he'd fought, they'd have killed the woman handcuffed to the pool table. Today he was just outnumbered, two against one, outmatched—(If he drank it, he could show them just how outmatched they were).
Then a thought pops into his head.
Thirty years.
Because there's more than demon blood running through the man's veins. There's an awful lot of stubborn as fuck in there as well.
And if his brother can do that, then dammit he can do this.
He needs to be strong, right now.
He stops focusing on the tantalizing substance in his mouth and starts thinking.
Yeah. He can win this fight, even without the blood. He just needs to get them to let their guard down...
The man goes limp as though defeated. He shifts the blood around in his mouth so it doesn't look like he has a mouthful of anything. He's still fighting the desire to swallow it, but he understands now. He just needs to be strong. Stronger than the blood could ever make him.
When the other men loosen their grip, he spits the blood right into their faces and quickly takes them down. Leave, he tells them.
They do.
This is how—
...
There's a woman sitting in a convenience store.
Her guts are being held in with an Ace bandage, and she's holding the detonator of a bomb built by her friends.
Yes, this is how the world ends.
Next to her, another woman. Her mother.
There's something else.
The bandaged woman is dead.
Her mother pulls her close, murmuring affection, and holds the detonator as the Hellhounds that have their friends' scents draw closer.
You can go straight back to Hell, you ugly bitch! the dead woman's mother shouts as she presses the button.
This is how—
...
There's an angel outside an abandoned warehouse.
Standing next to him is the man he's come to care for more than any other being in Creation. The one he rebelled for.
The one who betrayed him.
There are five angels in the warehouse. The angel plans to take them on.
Isn't that suicide? says the man.
And the angel knows this man, mind, body and soul. He remade him from dust and broken pieces of spirit. He knows the man is at the end of his strength.
He also knows the man is more stubborn than any being has any right to be, and that, unless you're his father, sometimes the best way to get him to do something is to tell him he's going to do the opposite.
Maybe it is, the angel says. But then I won't have to watch you fail.
It's cruel. Deliberately so. But it's nothing compared to what will happen if the man says yes.
He prays to a Father he's no longer sure is watching that the man comes through, and pulls a box cutter out of his pocket.
As he begins carving the sigil to banish the angels (including himself) into his skin, all he can think of is, I hope you're better than I think you are.
It's unlikely. He knows the man so well. But the man has surprised him before.
This is how—
...
There's a man in a room in Van Nuys, California (and nowhere, and everywhere. But mostly in Van Nuys).
His brother and half-brother are coughing up blood on the floor, and he just. Can't. Do it anymore.
Stop it, please, I'll do it, he says.
(Apparently, breaking someone is much easier the second time around.)
And the bastard says I'm sorry, what was that? and makes him say it again.
Okay, yes. The answer is yes.
Dimly, the man hears his brother shout for him.
He ignores the cry and convinces the angel to call down the archangel who is to possess him.
He knows this is it for him, so he glances back at his brother. One last time. Partly to memorize his face (as if he hadn't already), because he knows that if he's alive after all this is over, his brother won't be.
But partly because he knows he deserves the look he's sure to find there. The pain. The accusation. His brother trusted him, brought him here, and is now being betrayed.
Instead, he finds—confusion? It's not the look of someone facing a sudden but inevitable betrayal. It's the look the man's brother gives him when he does something unexpected when they're improv-ing with civilians—what are you doing? Not in an accusatory way, just a simple request for information.
After everything, the man's brother still trusts him. Enough to believe that there could be a plan when the man just said yes, loud and clear.
The man has never had that kind of faith. In anyone.
Maybe it's time he did.
He looks his brother dead in the eye, and winks.
Later, when the bastard angel is dead and the man's brother asks him why he didn't say yes, he says, I just didn't want to let you down.
This is how—
...
There's an archangel talking to his brother.
He knows there's a good chance he won't survive this. He left instructions for the two humans who seem most likely to finish this thing on a porn DVD (he read his costar's mind as he was monologuing, just for kicks. She was thinking, whatever, as long as this whackjob pays me well).
The archangel has gotten pretty good at monologuing, over the millennia. Damn right they're flawed, he says when his brother calls humans broken, flawed abortions.
But a lot of them try. To do better. To forgive.
Rather, he makes the puppet of himself standing in front of his brother say all that. He sneaks up behind his brother, angel blade in hand—
He's good at monologuing.
He's not quite good enough.
But the information he held doesn't die with him.
This is how—
...
There are two men leaning against a car.
The younger has a plan that will never work, certainly doom the world if it fails, and certainly doom him if it succeeds.
The world is doomed anyway.
I'm in, says the older.
This is how—
...
There's a man arguing with an angel.
I ain't gonna let him die alone, he says.
He gets in his car and drives to Stull Cemetery.
When he arrives, he puts in some music, cranks it up, and cruises in as casually as he can manage, with none of the terror he feels visible on his face.
Howdy, boys, he says. Sorry. Am I interrupting something?
This is how—
...
There's an angel standing in a cemetery.
The man he once knew as the Righteous Man—the one he raised from the Pit, the one for whom he has come to care more than any other being in Creation (although the man's brother is a close second)—is asking for five minutes to talk to his brother.
His brother. Who is currently possessed by an archangel.
If the man is successful, it will be an occurrence almost beyond belief. The angel does not believe the man capable of working true miracles, but he has seen what he once heard the man sardonically call "the power of love" do incredible things. He had thought the man broken beyond repair, and still he resisted his designated archangel. Perhaps the man's brother will be able to do the same, given the proper motivation.
All he needs is time.
The angel can provide it.
While the archangels are distracted, the angel prepares a device the man taught him how to construct—a "Molotov cocktail"—and lights it with holy fire. He knows what will happen when he throws it, so he tries to think of last words that would make the man proud.
Hey, he shouts. Assbutt!
He throws the cocktail at the archangel possessing the man's half-brother, and said archangel goes up in flames.
The man gives him a funny look, and he knows he got it wrong, but he doesn't care. He's given the man his five minutes. Now it's up to the man and his brother.
The last thing he sees is the remaining archangel raising his hand to obliterate him.
The last thing he feels is—a kind of defiant contentment.
This is how—
...
There's a man—and an archangel—and an archangel—and a man—in a cemetery.
The man is so tired.
As per the instructions of the man who might as well be his father, he's been fighting tooth and nail since he was possessed. He's mentally slamming himself against the walls separating his mind from his body, and it's doing nothing. He's tried everything. He's tried using the demon blood flowing through him (he can feel it, and he's glad of it. It's always made him stronger, and he needs to be strong, now) to exorcise the archangel like a demon. He's tried channeling his anger against the archangel into a white-hot point to melt the ice that surrounds him. He's tried focusing on moving one finger at a time. He's tried doing things he has muscle memory for. He's tried doing absurd things that no one would do.
Point is, he's tried a lot of things.
And he is fucking exhausted.
But he knows he has to keep fighting. He can't stop until this is over, one way or another.
The man is in a cemetery, he knows, and his brother is here. His stupid, wonderful brother is here, and he's talking about how he needs five minutes and please, let him know how to help me, because I don't.
The archangel knows all his thoughts, and he's laughing at that.
You know, I tried to be nice, the man hears the archangel say with his voice, but you are such a pain in my ass.
His arms throw his brother onto their car.
He feels a bullet enter his back. It hurts but he can't even flinch, can't even shout. He turns, slowly, and another bullet hits him.
And he feels the neck of the man who might as well be his father snap.
No, his brother is screaming, and his thoughts are a perfect echo of what he hears, but his mouth says, yes.
And his fist starts slamming into his brother's face.
He feels bones crack.
It's okay, it's okay, the man hears his brother mutter through his ruined face. I'm here, I'm not gonna leave you.
Then, through the car window, he sees it.
The little green army man he crammed into the ashtray when he was tiny.
The one his brother kept when he was rebuilding the car from the ground up.
He doesn't know why, but that day comes flooding back. He was whining and bored in the car, on the verge of tears, when his brother brought out the army men and started to play with him. In moments, the boredom was forgotten and they were lost in their imaginary world.
I'm gonna put one in here, he'd said, so we'll always have him.
Okay, his brother had said, and from then on their army man set had been short one trooper. His brother had never minded.
As he thinks about it, the man realizes his next punch hasn't fallen.
And that's when he gets it.
He was an idiot for thinking his anger could fight the archangel. The archangel burns cold, and so does the man's anger. It always has. Most people think the man runs hot, but they just don't know what it feels like to be frozen inside, wanting to yell at the whole world to get out of your way, not caring who or what you run over to make your point.
You can't fight ice with more ice.
You need warmth.
He focuses on his memories. The good ones he shares with his brother. Just those moments, riding in the car, when everything was okay for a little while.
He feels the wall around his mind begin to melt.
And he still feels the demon blood, but he can push it away. He doesn't need it. It doesn't make him stronger, he knows now. It never did.
He needs to be strong, now. Stronger than demon blood could ever make him.
And sometimes strength is standing still.
So he throws the rings down, speaks the incantation, walks to the edge. When the ground opens, he doesn't run. His fear threatens to give the archangel the opportunity to throw a wall up around his mind again, but he takes a deep breath and forces himself to be calm.
When the other archangel tries to pull him back, he simply grabs his arm.
The ground crumbles beneath them, and they fall together.
This is how—
...
There's a man standing in a doorway.
If you looked at him, you'd know right away. He's bleeding out inside, despite the fact that his external wounds have been healed.
This time, there will be no reprieve, no way to fix the gaping wound inside him. Because this time, he made a promise.
The door swings open.
Oh, thank God, says the woman who opened the door. Are you all right?
Yeah, the man lies. Uh... if it's not too late, I think I'd like to take you up on that beer.
It's never too late, says the woman, embracing the man, and they walk into the house together.
A boy appears, and smiles up at the man.
Slowly, he smiles back.
This is how the world keeps going.
A/N: Hello again! Hope you enjoyed! Leave me a review if you liked it?