Dean will always come for Sam.
Notes: This story is inspired by, but not spoilery for, All Hell Breaks Loose Part 1. A big thank you to kkscatnip, who always rocks.
Also, not mine, never were. The end.
Were Armies of You Mine to Bear Me On
It huddled at the bottom of the world with the rest of the army, a thing of claws and spit and vicious nightmares. Its name was Mara, born from midnight and ash, and with all its kind it waited for the world to end. It waited to bring the world to an end, it and all the others like it; throbbing and writhing like one creature made of tentacles and sharpness. Poised for the commands of their general, their chosen one.
Where Mara and all the things like it were made in darkness, their general shone, blue-green eyes like a star in the shadows, empty of everything but light. His big elegant hands were always poised over maps and plans, as if the chains that clanged around his wrists didn't weigh him down at all. The greater demons walked next to him, those captains and colonels who stood up straight and would have seemed almost human in aspect if not for the darkness in their eyes.
But Mara, born in darkness, who had never seen the light of an untainted human soul before, could only stand back and watch, salivating with the need to touch. The general never looked its way at all, but Mara looked at him and nothing else.
"They'll stop you," the bright-eyed general said to the greatest of the greater demon, Azazel, the one whose eyes shone a clear yellow, like Lucifer himself. "They know you're coming."
"It's your job to keep them from stopping us," Azazel crooned. He patted the general on the back of the neck, fingers sliding over the black leather collar that stretched tight around sun stained skinned. "I have faith in you."
The general shivered and closed his beautiful blue-green eyes. When he opened them again his gaze was on the maps and nowhere else. Azazel laughed and slid his hands off him slowly before he walked away.
Mara scuttled back, not wanting to be seen watching, never wanting to attract the attention of the great ones. Too late it realized, too late when Azazel's yellow, laughing eyes fixed on it and he pursed his lips and nodded.
"Hello, little thing," Azazel said and petted Mara's shivering head. "You like to look at that?" He nodded in the direction of the general who was making notations with a thick quill pen, chains chiming with each motion.
"Yes, my lord," Mara whispered, wishing to slink away, down to the lower levels, anywhere away from those fixed staring eyes.
But Azazel just smiled. "Watch him, then. He's going to help us crack open the world. So watch." Then he turned in vanished into the shadow on the horizon in a soft swish of black robes.
On the next day the horde continued to swell in size. A pit of blackness to smoother the world, or so the greater demons said. The general walked down the rows of soldiers and officers, chewing absently on a pen and saying things about salt and silver and holy water, how to avoid the weapons of the enemy.
"We'll have the numbers," he told the ranks. His voice was clear and soft, but it carried well and everyone was silent, to listen. "But they'll be expecting us and they… they know what they're defending."
Later, Mara watched him for a corner, dry mouthed, tentacles waving anxiously.
"You can come out, you know," the general said and he smiled faintly and rubbed his eyes. Yellow light scattered over his chains. "I know you're there."
Mara slithered over, kneeling by the general's desk. "What, my lord?" it asked softly. "What are they defending?"
The general just shrugged. "Don't worry about it. You wouldn't understand."
"But, you understand, my lord?" Mara whispered.
And at that the general looked at it, really looked at it, hard and cold and for just a moment Mara thought that he might be as frightening as Azazel. Then his expression softened and he closed his eyes, pressing his palms together as if in prayer, as if prayer could be heard at all from where they were. The thick black collar around his neck stood out as his neck tilted back. "Oh, yeah. I understood. I understood and I will again soon."
After that Mara hung closer to the general and the general said nothing about it, other than sending it to fetch him pens and ink and coffee. Mara watched the sigils the general drew grow into patterns with a meaning it didn't understand, but it was never its place to ask.
On the seventh day, the army moved in the patterns the general had determined. Mara stood with the general in the back of the ranks, so at first it only watched from a distance as hell boiled out of a graveyard on a moonlit night. Somewhere, very far away, it could hear the sounds of shotguns and breaking glass and the twisted howls of demon-kind.
The general chewed his pen and waited, palms pressed still against his knees so hard that soft, ever present sound of moving chains went silent.
"You pray, my lord," Mara asked suddenly. "Why? We will have our victory soon and then there will be no one to hear it."
The general closed his eyes. "I know. That's why."
From somewhere very far away, the sound of shotgun blasts got louder. Somewhere Mara could hear the harsh, mechanized sound of wheels churning. The general's eyes snapped open and the light in them shone brighter than Mara had ever seen. Mara could only watch, mesmerized.
"My lord? What's that?" it whispered.
"Sounds like a tank," the general whispered back. Then Mara could see it, crashing silver and glowing where it crossed the boundaries of hell. Blessed silver and the hoard hissed and melted under its wheels. "They blessed a fucking tank," the general hissed and jumped to his feet. The chains clanged loudly as he moved.
Mara scuttled closer to the general when one of the greater demons ran up to them. "My lord," she said, her hands white on her sword. "My lord, your orders?"
The general sucked his lower between his teeth and curled his palm against his forehead as if to get a better look. "Right," he said softly. "All right. There's only one and it looks like an old model. Vulnerable underneath. You take the left column and--"
Mara stopped listening because it was so busy watching the general's hand where he clutched at the map and papers he'd been drawing on. The sigils, Mara realized. The sigils he'd drawn were glowing.
"What are those, my lord?" Mara asked when the greater demon had hurried away, sword clutched at her side.
The general looked over at it and smiled, bright and finally reaching his eyes. "They're a communications device. Something I can still do. You'll see."
Mara watched and it saw. It saw the tank overturned when it was close to them, too close to them, and saw a scrabbling group climb out in a hail of fire and shots. One of them stood in front, an ash-haired human man with an expression that made the ranks melt away before him. A hunter.
The general stood up straighter and then sat back down, knees sliding up to his chest, almost curled up in the chair. "Dean," he whispered. "Dean."
Mara watched, huddled in the shadows, as the hunter strode through the smoking remains of demon flesh. His shot gun emptied quickly so he used it as a bludgeon, and the lesser creatures screamed when the rune covered iron and steel slammed into their bodies.
He watched as one of the greater demons came after him. Not just any demon, but yellow eyed Azazel, when they were close enough for him to hear the hunter laugh, to see the green in his eyes.
The hunter pulled another gun, smaller and lighter from its holster and took a single shot, right through Azazel's forehead. Just one, and it shouldn't have made a difference, shouldn't have scratched a greater demon's skin. Shouldn't, but Azazel faltered and fell and the hunter just laughed. He took a wicked looking sword from a sheath at his side and sliced once and hard, and then he was holding the demon lord's head before he tossed it aside.
Mara gasped, tentacles curling and ready to recede. It waited, waited for the general to run, to hurry away, so that it could follow. It knew better than to leave, to disobey orders. The death the hunter brought was nothing compared to that. But the general didn't move at all, merely sank deeper into the hard wooden chair, chained hands stiff in his lap, and waited.
"We should go, my lord," Mara finally dared to whisper, as the hunter sliced through the last, faltering defenders. Mara could see the white and green of his eyes, see the way it was focused right on them, as if anything between him and them was utterly unimportant. That look made Mara want to flinch. Then it saw what the man still carried, slung in a bag over his shoulder.
Azazel. Or at least the demon lord's head, yellow eyes staring out, blank and wide, mouth still open. Mara made a soft, keening sound.
The general just shrugged, chains moving with his shoulders. His hands were pressed to his mouth. "You go on, Mara. If I go he'll just follow me."
Mara frowned, steam hissing from its lips. It was already poised to run, remembering there was nothing to punish it now that Azazel was destroyed. And yet, here was its general, waiting. "We can hide if we hurry. Hell is vast, my lord. He would never know where to look. Come away with me." It reached down, greatly daring, to take the general's hand.
The general frowned, but didn't resist Mara's touch. "You go on," he said, almost gently. "Go. I'll wait for him and he won't chase you."
Mara opened its hissing mouth, showing off rows of shark teeth, but the general wasn't looking and the hunter was almost there, almost on top of them. The hunter who was so very much more terrifying than Azazel after all.
Mara hesitated one moment more and then slipped away on steam and tentacles, slithering into the shadows. Having decided to flee, it knew it should hurry, but somehow found itself waiting, skulking in the dark. Ready to watch the general die.
The hunter stepped up to him, right in front of his chair and made a horrible gasping sound, like something was driving all the air from his lungs. The general could have taken the moment to pull out a weapon, to move, to act, but he didn't. Just sat perfectly still like he was carved from the same wood as his chair.
The hunter pulled the head out of the bag and tossed it, letting it roll until the general's boots stopped it. "Sam," he said. "Sammy. For you." The he reached into his sheath and pulled out that wicked looking blade again, long and curving and Mara prepared to watch the blood flow, to watch his general die until the hunter took another stumbling step forward and then stopped.
The general swallowed visibly, the motion making the tight leather of his collar creak. "How many?" he asked softly. "How many did I kill?"
"It doesn't matter, it wasn't your fault--"
"How many!" the general snapped and Mara's spine straightened as if it were the one being commanded.
"I don't know." For the first time the hunter's eyes looked soft. Green and alive, like nothing was in hell. Soft and helpless, this man that had cut right through their ranks. "Jo, I think. Others. You're really good at strategy, Sammy. If you hadn't used that spell to send us your plans, we'd have been fucked."
Then Mara knew what the sigils had been for, and thought that Azazel had been the fool all this time. Yet it couldn't be angry.
"You taught me how yourself," the general murmured. "It doesn't matter. I'm glad it's you. Finish it, Dean."
The hunter nodded tightly and raised the sword and the general tilted his head back, exposing his throat. Mara wanted to cover its eyes but the general just looked up at the hunter, smiling. Ready. "Hold still," the hunter said. Mara waited for the blood to flow and the sword snapped out, gleaming. One, twice, three times.
The collar and the chains, forged in hell and unbreakable, the very things that had bound the general to all of them, slid to the floor like a lump, as if rejected by the very nature of general's soft human skin. The general's smile faded into something like awe.
"How?" the general-- Sam-- whispered. "That's not supposed to be possible. How?"
"I know some people," the hunter-- Dean-- said and tilted his head, mouth curving into a grin. "Called in some favors." Then his smile faltered and he slid down, almost crashed down, onto his knees between Sam's long legs, kicking Azazel's head aside as he went down. "Sammy. Sammy. I came."
Sam bent his head so that his forehead was pressed right up against Dean's, hiding both their faces. But Mara could hear them clearly. "I was waiting," Sam whispered. "I knew you would. I knew you would."