Larger Than Life

by KatiKat

Disclaimer: The characters belong to the CW and Eric Kripke
Genre: Gen
Words: 2000
Warnings: None
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: For AHBL2
Summary: The demon and Sam, one year after AHBL2.
Notes: My big thank you goes to my wonderful beta yamitai!
Notes2: It still doesn't sound/feel right in places but gah!, I'm done with it huffs

She stood on the staircase that spiraled down and down into the darkness, leading from the world on the surface into the deepest pits of Hell. She never realized how worn the stone steps were or that there were no walls, no railing to protect her and others from the fall. Until now. Because now she held a light in the palms of her hands, a light so bright that even the darkness of Hell retreated from it. She squinted because otherwise the burning speck would cause her to go blind. She tried to close her hands, to dim the blaze but she couldn't, the soul was so small and yet larger than life. This was a soul that had no place in Hell but she held on to it stubbornly, for it was her prize that she won through a fair deal.

Usually she sent her lackeys to do the dirty work, to tear the victims apart and claw their souls out of their mangled bodies. Usually she didn't care. But for this soul, for this one she went herself.

She couldn't remember how long she had stood there - a day? a month? a year? - though she felt other sinful souls passing by on their way to meet the Devil himself. But she still remembered him clearly, the way he looked, his smell, his taste. Dean Winchester wasn't a man even a Demon could easily forget. The way he stood there in the shadows, head held high, shoulders squared... He didn't beg for mercy, for a year, even a day more. His only concern was for his brother's life and safety. And when she kissed him and buried his hands into his chest to tear his soul out, he swallowed his pain, one tear falling from his beautiful green eyes for all the things that would never come to pass now. Then his heart stopped and his last breath passed through those sinful lips and she lowered him gently to the ground - she wouldn't let him drop like a sack of potatoes, not when he tasted like honey in good old English tea.

And now she stood there, gloating over her prize...

That was when she felt it, the tug from upstairs, from the world of the living. Some loser was calling her, black cat bone, graveyard and all, intent on selling his soul for money or fame. But this time, she decided to do the guy a favor and not respond, let him live his boring, poor, unappreciated life. She held the treasure of a lifetime in her hands and everything else was trash. But as soon as the thought of refusal formed in her head, she felt it again, more than a simple tug this time. Something grabbed her, pulling at her, tearing at her, dragging her up the stairwell, closer and closer to the surface. And when she tried to resist, she felt as if she would burst at seams and fly apart, so terrible was the pressure.

Suddenly, she was outside, on a crossroads, the headlights of a car cutting through the darkness.

And then she saw him and recognized him, whispering his name in an arrogant voice: "Sam. Nice to see you, boy."

Sam stood there, tall and proud, his body a simple, dark silhouette, drawn by the headlights of what must have been the Impala that blared so bright they drowned out even the light of the street lamps. Sam didn't move when he spoke in a voice that didn't allow objections. "Give me his soul back, you bitch!"

If she hadn't been so proud, so full of herself, so sure of her own invulnerability, she would have noticed that something was not right. But she was all that and she held his brother's soul in her right hand, the most important bargaining chip there was. And so she laughed, throwing her head back and propping her left hand on her hip carelessly. "And why would I do that, boy?"

He took a step forward and another one. And that was when she noticed and the laughter died on her lips. The asphalt of the road melted under his feet, burning footsteps flickering in the night. His jeans were almost white-washed, his shirt worn but they looked almost black now as he walked through the pools of light the street lamps cast on the dark road. His face was pale, sharp angles and dark shadows, but his eyes... his eyes were the most terrible. Completely black with small red flames burning in them. As he walked, the trees along the road groaned and sighed, their branches drooping, leaves turning brown and dry in seconds, and the street lamps screeched, metal on metal, and bent as if a heavy hand put pressure on them from above.

He stopped just a few feet from her but his presence was larger than life, just like his brother's soul, and the air shivered and twisted as if the world was too small contain his being. And she tried to take a step backwards and found out she couldn't. She looked down and saw that she stood exactly on the spot where he melted away the asphalt to bury the tin box... and that the spot lay right in the middle of a devil's trap. The back of the living creature she inhabited tingled with anxiety. He spoke and her head shot up because his words almost turned her into a stone.

"Because if you don't," his voice was velvety smooth, "I will destroy you... and the whole world with you."

She barked out a laugh, but it sounded harsh and false. She gripped the burning soul tighter in her hand for she knew that only she could return it to the body, that he couldn't simply steal it from her because a deal was a deal. "You would destroy yourself too."

He started walking along the edge of the trap that was burned into the surface of the road and she turned with him, never taking her eyes away from him. "You think I care?" His voice was deep and rumbling, it made the earth shake and sucked the oxygen from the air. "Without him, there is no world. If I don't get him back, I will kill them all, humans, demons, angels... I will burn Heaven and freeze Hell until there is nothing left."

She shifted but before she could voice her doubts, he stopped and his burning eyes bored into hers and she felt as if he was turning her inside out.

"You still don't believe me, do you?" he asked and the smile on his face was terrible, promising pain and agony. "You made me and you still don't believe. You returned me back to life and you gave me all this." He lifted his hand, flames dancing on his palm, their red light casting an evil glow, making him look like he was Satan's son himself. "Because while I was dead, all the barriers I erected in my mind dropped and my soul returned to a body that just hummed with untapped powers." He closed his hand into a fist, extinguishing the flame. "And he was the only one who could contain all that, who could make it bearable and worth it. And you took him away," he growled, his disturbing eyes sliding past her towards the Impala.

She turned to the car too, still keeping an eye on the dangerous creature that was nothing like the Sam she knew about. And there, when she squinted, she could see the outline of a body lying on the hood of the Impala. That gave her back a part of her confidence and she turned around to face him, knowing that she had something he needed, something that she could use...

But he anticipated all that as if he was reading her mind. Because in that moment she heard it, the rumble of thunder as lightning raced across the sky. She looked up and saw heavy clouds swirl in at dizzying speeds, all the orange of burning fire. The ground started to shake and crack, the devil's trap and the Impala with its precious cargo the only things painstakingly untouched. The air was freezing but the asphalt boiled, the fumes choking the body she inhabited, the heat burning the perfect skin.

She tried to escape the human shell, turning into a black cloud, the soul of Dean Winchester still stubbornly clutched. But as soon as she left the body, something happened and for the first time in millennia, she experienced true agony as her being started evaporating, the shear power of him killing what shouldn't have been possible to kill. She snapped back into the female husk and fell to the ground in a small heap, screeching, promising anything, anything at all to stop the agony, the dying.

He crouched in front of her, his eyes burning, small fiery droplets falling from the sky as the earth bubbled around them, deep cracks leading straight to Hell appearing around. He was calling down the end of the world upon them but there was still a casual expression on his face, the idea of killing billions, of destroying their whole existence not fazing him at all.

"Give Dean back his soul!" he ordered in a cold voice.

And she did. She did because he would do it. He would kill and destroy and tear apart, not leaving a stone unturned. She finally believed him.

The bright, bright speck rose in the air, slowly flying towards the Impala and the body it had inhabited and would inhabit again. He followed, protecting his brother's soul with his cupped hands, holding it like the most precious jewel, making sure nothing touched the radiant spark of life.

She lay there on the ground in the middle of the devil's trap, cowering and whimpering, watching from afar, scared but unable to take her eyes away. The headlights of the car were too bright so she couldn't see well, though she noticed how he leaned over his brother and how Dean's body arched up from the hood of the car, drawing a deep, rasping breath, followed by a coughing spell so harsh it almost hurt to listen to it.

And then it stopped. Everything stopped. The fiery rain, the earthquake... The clouds dissipated, revealing a dark starry sky, the earth ceased to boil and the air stopped freezing. But she remembered it all vividly and as her gaze flitted across the wasteland that used to be some town's crossroads, she couldn't stop shaking.

She heard a quiet murmur from the direction of the car and turned around just in time to see Sam lower his brother into the passenger seat like an exhausted child, Dean's head lolling on his shoulder for a second before the gentlest of hands made the older Winchester comfortable in the car. When Sam assured himself that his brother would be alright alone for a minute, he closed the passenger door and headed towards her.

He looks... completely normal, she realized as Sam came closer, his clothing a white-washed blue now, his face pale and eyes hard, but no diabolic presence in them anymore. He crouched in front of her and she flinched away but he only lifted one hand, tearing a piece of asphalt from the road, destroying the devil's trap... releasing her.

"You are letting me go?" she whispered hoarsely in disbelief.

Sam looked her in the eyes. "Yes. You'll tell everyone, every creature down in Hell, up in Heaven and here on Earth that Sam Winchester says, 'Hands off!'" His voice was cold and biting like a wind blowing from the North. "Dean is mine and any one of you who thinks otherwise, will pay." For a second his eyes glowed and flames danced over his fingers as if to emphasize his words.

She managed to nod but stayed crouched until he got into the car, the door closing with a loud creak. She huddled there on the broken road and didn't get up before the Impala's backlight disappeared in the dark distance. She stood up on shaky legs, shivering all over... and she decided that some fifty odd years in Hell might be a good vacation.

The End