A/N: Howdy Folks. I hope you enjoy this. Thank you Led Zeppelin and The Doors for the great quotes. The title of this fic comes from a Zeppelin song called "No Quarter"
Don't own the characters, I just volunteer to play with them. Enjoy!
The Devil Mocks Their Every Step
…
The last thing Dean sees before his eyes shut against his will is Sam covered in crimson. The comforting thought being none of it is Sam's. The first thing Dean sees when his eyes are pried open with scorching fingers is a horizon of blue fire that does not have an end. He learns quickly he can never close his eyes, no matter how much he wants to. No matter how heavy the desire is to shut out the shadows playing, screaming in the fire.
Time does not exist in the pit. Dean stops trying to figure that out after the seventieth time he has his heart burned out of his chest. It's better to lose count of the appendages he's lost but hasn't, than count. Other wise, he will lose his mind for good. He knows he needs that.
Sam keeps moving. He never stops.
Twenty years pass before Dean escapes to a church. The soles of his feet scream as he walks down the aisle toward the crucifix. The red carpet which hides spilt communion from Sunday Mass very well, burns under Dean's feet, smoke wisps upward.
Multi colored glass of the gospel is illuminated dark, and a thought almost forgotten brushes Dean's mind. It's nighttime. He cocks his head to the side to study the massive cross of his Lord and Savior, smells sulfur, smiles and turns to greet his company with an almost cordial grace. Black eyes sizing Dean up; his own eyes intense green, illuminate the darkness around him.
"You shouldn't be here, kid."
Dean continues to smile, stock still.
"Well I'll be damned. Didn't take you long, did it, kid?"
Dean could almost swear he saw of glint of pride in the eyes of the demon before he tears it apart, black smoke dissipating into the pews. Almost, if he weren't too busy watching the blood drip off his hands. Blood that isn't his; it's been too long.
He's not naked; Dean realizes, when he goes to wipe the blood away, smearing blood on a black suit with a white collar. He finds water in the back of the church and when he goes to clean his hands in it, he feels the water begin to bubble and steam clouds his face. Dean grits his teeth, pulling his hands out from the damned water.
More nearly forgotten memory pushes Dean farther back into the church until he's in new rooms, outside the main chapel of the church. He finds a wardrobe and a full length mirror in a dressing room, choir robes hung up in a neat little row. He discards the suit jacket he's wearing and replaces it with another, very clean and crisp, from the wardrobe. Then he studies the suit in the mirror, twenty years without a body and now it's not the one he remembers. This one's younger than the one he lost, only by a few years though. He can feel his chest contract and expand, life. He remembers that. Air tickling his windpipe, moving past his nose and mouth; it's not for him, but the host.
That's when he hears it, the gentle hum of words, a mantra inside his head. The host knows what Dean is, fighting against his guest. Dean whispers back his own harsh words, shutting down the almost frantic repetition of His Holy Name. The voice, solid, but weak and shadowed by Dean's own presence becomes an echo. He smoothes out the suit jacket across his body, turning to get a better view of his profile, it's taller and more slender than he's used to, and if the voice just outside Dean's head is any indication, his voice will be miles deeper than his own used to be.
He feels them moving out, spiraling across the map in his head. Dean knows the sun is rising in a few hours, he needs to get moving.
…
He loves the taste of lungs. That's what he took from the first hunter he finds.
The second one, he takes the heart.
Third, he takes the eyes, then the liver.
The seventh, he takes nothing, but decorates the hunter's cabin with everything that was hidden by the flesh of his victim.
He paints designs of carnage with blood and bone.
…
Three weeks from the first headline in Washington about a horrid murder and a missing priest, Sam has the demon, wearing a priest, cornered; caught behind lines of salt the Priest paces as a wolf does when it's making plans, Sam watches with cold eyes lit with fire. They're in South Dakota.
"You're the one aren't you? It's you. Ten hunters. Ten." Is all Sam can say, not taking his eyes off the demon, his bright eyes shift from the old hunter to an even older hunter entering the room wearing a hunting vest and trucker hat.
"Eleven." The demon smiles.
"You didn't get Bobby here."
"Anders was pregnant."
Anders, Sophia Anders, hunter number nine in the line dead by this Demon's hands.
"Fuck. You son of a –"
"Figured it'd be sweet, coulda' killed her husband too, they're a family of hunters, aren't they? Naw, let him come, he's a sweeter kill when he comes running for revenge."
Bobby grunts but doesn't say much as he opens a black leather bound book, rustling pages with gentle ease; the demon snarls.
"Before you go, tell us your name." Sam says as Bobby comes toes up to the salt line between Sam and the demon.
"When you're strange, no one remembers your name."
Bobby starts the exorcism.
…
It takes four weeks and extreme patience for Dean to combat his way out of Hell. This time he finds himself wearing a housewife, she must have been in the middle of cooking breakfast. He smells bacon before he feels bits of jumping grease testing the nerves of his now smaller and slender hand.
"Mommy?"
He turns; finding a spatula in the same hand, puts it down and looks at a mop of blonde hair and blue eyes, sitting at a heavy oak table in the middle of the rather clean kitchen.
The kid stares, palms flat on the table, breathing shallowly, breathing quick.
"Mommy?"
Dean moves fast, this body leaner and more agile.
…
This time around, Dean leaves messages, notes. Taunting the other hunters who he knows are following his trail.
Missed me? He writes on the ceiling above a nineteen year old boy who only started hunting nine months before, since his sister nearly got taken down by a vengeful spirit.
Weak. He writes on what's left of the chest of a forty year old medicine man that cleared a reservation of a wendigo.
He watches the little spiraling paths disappear on the map in his head. His shadow casting them into darkness; one dot, though, always brighter than the others, the one that sent him back. Dean follows that one close, leaving bodies once, couple of hookers he found not too far away from the motel the hunter stays at, on the doorstep; Dean waits to see the look on the hunter's face in the morning.
He doubts the man would ever suspect the soccer mom van driving away, interior stained with whores' blood.
…
Thirty five bodies later and Dean finds himself in an interesting position. Again.
"Who are you?" The hunter asks, same hunter from before.
Dean stares past the salt lines protecting the hunter from his wrath. Their both stepping in blood; Sam can't help it, and Dean loves leaving little imprints in the floorboards with the last warm bits of the southern hunter he just claimed.
"Everybody I know seems to know me well, but they're never gonna know that I move like hell."
Sam doesn't need a book anymore, memorized the Latin lines that saved his ass more times than he could ever count, takes in a breath to begin the exorcism, but asks,
"Why? Why just hunters?"
"Better Prey." A delicate smirk arises, "better pray."
Sam doesn't flinch.
"You'll keep coming back."
"The drums will shake the castle wall, the ring wraiths ride in black. Ride on." He cracks his neck, "Got me a score of forty six, think I can beat that in the next round?"
Sam stares at the demon contorting the woman's face, such a pure glee misplaced by the words spoken. Sam represses the bile rising in his throat, before turning his back to the demon and fishing through his weather worn duffel.
"You ever heard of a fellow named Samuel Colt?" He doesn't turn around to see the demon's smile falter. "As the story goes, this man went out of his way to make-
"Winchester…" Sam stops going through his duffel to eye the demon, "Sammy-boy Winchester. That's you. Met your brother once, or twice down in the Pit. Been a while though, nice boy, he." Sam's jaw tightens, "Last family to posses the Colt. See, Winchester, I know you've got the gun, but you're bluffing, you'll shoot me, but you won't shoot…" Dean lets go of his hold on the body, face slacking for only a moment before the woman beings weeping.
Sam watches as the woman tries to scamper across the salt line,
"Oh god, oh god, please…Please help me. He's-oh god. Please, my baby. You have to see-oh my god-my son- please…"
"Ma'am…" Is all Sam can manage as she claws at the salt to let her free. Her eyes wide, breathe ragged. Then it stops. All of it, her body stills and her eyes red from tears hold none of the previous emotions; she's motionless.
Sam knows he's failed when he looks her in the eyes and sees them glow bright green.
"See, I got the husband. Anders? He came after me with this knife. Seemed he got it off of some demon, Ruby, I think her name was. Funny thing that."
The crime scene photos littered Sam's motel desk, pictures of a headless body in the middle of Wyoming forest.
Sam sighs and recites from memory the only option he has.
…
This time, Sam prepares, knowing he only has a matter of weeks to find a solution, hoping the demon doesn't claw its way back up in less than four weeks.
Living with Bobby helps, makes research quite a bit easier, with all the books around, rather than going to the library.
Sam and Bobby work fast together, building a plan. It only takes them two and a half weeks to realize it.
They both agree it is the list topper on stupidest shit ever done. They go ahead with it anyway.
…
Dean's so close; he can feel the planes begin to change, feel the fire and bone slip beneath him to the lightness above him. He's so close before he finds himself blinking, heavy again.
He doesn't remember breaking the surface; slow recognition of the curves of his heaviness nudges his mind. A body, whole and unmarred; his. Looking down at his hands, they are clean, fresh and soft, not tempered by the struggle out of the Pit. He blinks, and see; his eyes. Dean remembers this body, nothing to compare it to because it's not a memory, not anymore. He stretches and catches from the corner of his eye the old hunter from before, and smiles.
"You put me home." He cracks his fingers, feeling the sound pass through his wrists; he rolls those as well. Cold seeps into his toes and up his feet. Dean finds himself staring down at them, and then casually locks eyes with the old hunter.
Dean hears nothing swirling around his own thoughts, trying to break through. Only he, nothing else, is there, alone in thought. Even in the Pit there is so much noise, enough to drown in. It's the first silence Dean knows, not remembering another one. The desire to close his eyes and sit in the dark silence is overrun by his desire to paint the walls red.
He doesn't blink as he watches the old hunter hand falter around the gun he knows to be the Colt. There's a look within the eyes of the man Dean doesn't recognize, doesn't know what to call it.
"Dean?"
What he does know though is that tonight he's going to have a score of forty seven.