Full Summary:

CANON-BASED FIC SET IN EARLY SEASON FOUR: Dean is still struggling to deal with the aftermath of his recent trip to Hell, hiding his pain as best he can from his younger brother. Sam is keeping a dangerous secret of his own, terrified of what the ugly truth could do to their already-strained relationship. The brothers take on what appears to be a routine hunt and things take a turn for the worse, pitting them against a supernatural being unlike any they have faced before. Now, their grim perseverance and undying loyalty to each other may be the only things that keep them alive. Male OC & female OC introduced in this story but this is still a Sam and Dean story (sorry, not a romance).

Author's Note:

This is a repost of a multi-chap story that was written during the summer between seasons 3 & 4, while Dean was in Hell. I took down a while ago but instantly regretted it - can't explain why - so I am re-posting. I have added a couple of mentions of Cas and how Dean got out of Hell but most of it is left pretty vague since that hadn't yet happened when I wrote this.

Disclaimer: I own nothing to do with Supernatural except my obsession :-)

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CHAPTER 1 - PROLOGUE

July 2001

"It'll work. Trust me, Lexie; we can do this."

The young man clasped the teenage girl's shoulders firmly, turning her to face him and locking his blue eyes on her frightened ones. His voice was steady but she wasn't sure which one of them he was trying to convince more. He brought his forehead down to rest lightly against hers and took one slow, deep breath before letting go and walking to the center of the room. He stepped carefully into a large circle of salt that had been placed where the living room carpet had been rolled up. Turning back, he held his hand out to her.

"You ready?" he asked, an encouraging smile spreading across his face.

Lexie felt anything but ready for this. She was more than a little tense where she stood leaning against the wall clutching an old hardcover book, but she nodded bravely and pushed forward. She took his hand and stepped inside the salt circle with him.

"Okay," he directed, taking the well-worn book from her hands and opening it to a bookmarked page. "I start reading and you let me know the second he gets here, got it?"

She could feel him studying her, searching for some reassurance that she was up for this but all she could manage a weak smile.

Taking her hand once more, he grinned down at her. "You know I love you right?"

His statement had the desired effect. She rolled her eyes and took a playful swat at his shoulder. "Jesus Josh, you are such a girl sometimes," she scoffed. "Let's send this demon to Hell before you start singing love songs," she added, summoning every scrap of courage and determination she could find within herself.

Josh winked at her and let go of her hand before proceeding to recite Latin from the book. He read loudly, as if to an imaginary audience in the empty room. After only a couple of minutes, Lexie could sense a familiar presence, one with a distinctly dark and sinister aura.

"He's here," she announced in a barely audible whisper. She couldn't actually see it yet, but she knew from experience that the shadowy creature they had recently been informed was a demon would make an appearance very soon. "I feel him."

She gasped when she felt a cold, light breeze brush her cheek and the pressure within her skull increased. Josh looked up warily at the sound and his eyes darted back and forth as if searching for something to no avail, but he never stopped reading the Latin text.

Lexie was breathing heavily and she took a step closer to Josh, pressing her shoulder against his arm for comfort. "He's here; he's closer," she whispered urgently. "Are you sure he can't get in the circle?"

"He can't," Josh assured her, though the slight waver in his voice hinted he was having more than a few doubts himself. "Look, the summoning part's working, isn't it? He's coming, even though I'm here. He's never done that before."

This much was true. So far, the demon had only fully shown itself a couple of times when she hadn't been alone and those had been… different circumstances. It had never bothered her when she was with Josh.

"You can sense him so any minute now you'll see him," he added, rationalizing their plan so far. "We'll get him." He cleared his throat nervously and went back to reading from the book in his hands. "Exorior quod ostendo vestri verus vultus..."

"He's by the kitchen door!" she whispered suddenly, panic in her voice.

She saw Josh glance warily toward the kitchen, but his eyes scanned right past the dark figure, clearly unable to see it. Lexie tightened her grip on his arm, her heart pounding in her chest.

"On to the second part to exorcise him then," Josh said quietly as he flipped to another page in the book and began reading a different Latin verse. "Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus..."

Five words into the new verse, Lexie screamed as the familiar, shadowy form charged towards them. It moved fast and, completely unhindered by the salt circle, it slammed both fists into Josh's chest. The young man was sent flying through the air towards the heavy, oak front door of the house.

The deep whispery voice of the dark creature now standing beside the girl exploded into a loud and malevolent laugh, almost drowning out the dull, sickening thud of Josh's head hitting the door. Almost.

Then it was upon her. She felt a cold hand of steel wrap its fingers around her neck, lifting her feet off the ground. It was shaking her now, seeming to take a disturbing amount of pleasure in her inability to scream.

"You should not have done that, dearie," it whispered calmly, a sinister grin spreading across its gnarled face and its red eyes narrowing. It pulled her face right up to its own, red eyes glaring into hers. "I am very angry with you."

From nowhere, a strong wind suddenly began blowing, like a mini tornado inside the room. It got stronger and stronger, lifting books from the shelves and ornaments from the mantle and sending them spinning around in the air. Just as Lexie's vision started to blur from lack of oxygen, it loosened the choking grip on her throat, lowering her so her feet touched the ground.

She struggled to simultaneously suck in a breath, break free of its grip, and find enough strength in her legs to run but the creature still had complete control. It spun her around, wrapping an incredibly strong arm around her throat from behind and bringing its face right up to her ear.

"Now what should I do for punishment, I wonder?" it asked, menacingly, as it tightened its grip, cutting off her oxygen supply again.

Suddenly she heard a voice and a noise at the front door. Josh? Lexie thought, desperately. He's alive! Please let him be alive!

But it wasn't Josh; it was her parents. They had come home early. A new wave of panic swept through her as she heard her father's voice and the key sliding into the door lock. The shadowy figure behind her looked up sharply, a slow grin spreading across its face. "Perfect," it purred.

Lexie couldn't scream, couldn't warn them, couldn't even breathe. She was pinned helplessly, her face held towards the door, the shadow figure of her nightmares breathing its foul breath in her ear. The last thing she saw before the world went black was the front door opening, Josh lying deathly still on the floor before it. The last thing she heard was the familiar sound of her mother's infectious laugh singing in time with the wind chimes on the front porch.

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October 2008

"How about this one?" Sam called out to his brother, who had just returned from the bar to the motel room they shared on the outskirts of Grant, Nebraska and was filling his glass from the bathroom sink.

"An elderly lady was seen climbing the steps to the roof of her retirement home near Tulsa where she jumped off, killing herself." Ignoring Dean's dismissive snort, he continued. "Turns out she had been in a wheelchair for over twenty years."

Dean snorted again, gulping his water down before flopping on his bed. It was his magical, foolproof method for avoiding a hangover, one he had been putting to good use in the last four weeks.

Sam was desperate to find a hunt, anything to keep his brother occupied and out of the bar for a couple of days. They had finished up the previous hunt that afternoon and Sam cursed himself for not having another already lined up. Dean was better than he had been when he had first come back from Hell, but he was still nowhere near his old self. Glimpses of the pre-Hell Dean popped up here and there but Sam was fairly certain most of them were forced, part of Dean's skillfully built façade that was being repaired faster than the tortured soul it was meant to cover-up.

The younger Winchester kept trying. "No, seriously Dean, listen. One week before that, an eighty-seven year old bedridden man in the same home drowned in the pool."

Dean sighed tiredly. "Sammy," he groaned, shaking his head. "We're not going to Hotel White-Hair because someone threw an old geyser in the pool!"

"Why not?" Sam pouted, getting exasperated. "It sounds like our type of gig."

Dean rolled over, turning away from his brother who had been sitting at the table at his laptop for three hours now, leaving Dean alone in the bar hustling pool.

"'Cause it's a job for amateurs, Sam," he said. "And we ain't amateurs."

Sam huffed in frustration but persisted. He had wanted to find a job that didn't involve demons but had run out of suggestions. His big brother had definitely had enough of demons. Dean needed a break, at least until that angel, Castiel, showed back up with another apocalypse-related job for them. Sam couldn't pretend he didn't know about the recent nightmares that he suspected were flashbacks of Hell. Dean had woken up screaming on more than one occasion. Sam had experienced his share of nightmares after Jess died but Dean's were on a whole new scale. But every time Sam tried to talk to him about it, Dean would just make some witty remark and change the subject.

At least some things hadn't changed.

Lillith's trail had gone cold, at least for the time being. Sam was actually relieved for this fact, thankful for the small respite from the madness of the 'big war' and his drive for revenge, however brief it would turn out to be. But Dean didn't fare well unless he was being kept busy, anything to keep his mind off where he had been and what he had been through. Sam couldn't begrudge him that.

"Okay, this next one is definitely in our league," he conceded, flipping his notebook to the last of the possible hunts he had been researching. "Three strange murders in a small town in Indiana called Borne."

"Mm-hmm" was Dean's mumbled reply, indicating that he was listening, but barely, and had no real interest in what Sam was saying.

"The first was a man, Blake Lunden, who was found stripped naked and pinned to a wall with a fire poker through the, uhh, the groin." Sam shifted in his seat, pressing his thighs together, the universally instinctive reaction of all men to hearing of any groin-related injury.

Dean rolled his head to look at his brother, a disgusted look on his face. "Ouch," he snickered.

Encouraged, Sam kept reading from his notes. "Uh, within a few days, a Patricia Waldor was found on the highway after crashing her BMW and, get this, cause of death was asphyxiation from hundred dollar bills that were stuffed down her throat."

Dean was now leaning up with his hands behind his head, elbows on his pillows. "And the third?"

"That one's the kicker. A high school kid, Milton Redgrove, was found dead at his school. He'd been beaten and skewered on the top of the school flagpole with his pants around his ankles."

Sam looked up at his brother, who winced. "What do you think? Worth checking out? I know there's some disturbed people in the world, but this sounds too twisted to be anything non-supernatural."

"Yep, sounds like demon sense of humour to me," Dean conceded. "We'll leave in the morning."

The decision made, Dean rolled over and switched his bedside light off, breathing out a ragged sigh that Sam couldn't help deciphering as a silent prayer to whatever powers that be that enough alcohol had been consumed to ward off the terrors his big brother was too often finding waiting for him on the flip side of his consciousness.

"G'night Dean," he murmured under his breath, hoping for the same.

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