A/N: After last night's season finale, which ripped apart my soul and left me heartbroken, I figured I would post this fic in the hopes it might provide some relief to other fans who are equally as shaken up.
I wrote this in December for a few friends of mine and had no intention of ever putting it online, but here it is.
Because of when I wrote it, there are canonical inconsistencies concerning demons, weapons, etc. I did not space out. You don't have to tell me where I'm wrong. I'm aware. I just figure you can ignore that stuff.
Never any slash intended.
Right By You
After his brother dies, Sam Winchester becomes what his father had feared. He does his mourning in the middle of a South Dakota parking lot, clutching Dean too tight and moaning tears. He is another man by sunup, driving into Minnesota with Dean spread across the backseat. Once Sam reaches the state's northeastern tip, he stops and finds himself a butcher's shop to break into; he wraps Dean's body in a blanket, sneaks into the meat freezer, and lays him down in an empty compartment somewhere in the back. He padlocks the box, covers it in a dozen binding spells, draws a devil's trap underneath it and on the ceiling above, and vows to his brother he will come back.
By the time Sam crosses into Wisconsin, Bobby has called him fifteen times and left five messages. Sam doesn't listen to them, doesn't call back, contemplates chucking his phone out the window on the east-bound highway. The only reason he can still function is because he has a plan. He may not have found a way to stop the demon's collection, but damn if he hadn't done just as much research on retrieving souls as he had on hanging on to them. He found a contact in Philadelphia three months back, a secret he'd kept from his brother, and he knows he can bank on it. All he needs to do is haul ass; every minute Dean spends in Hell is one minute too long.
When he crosses the Pennsylvania state line, an unlisted number rattles his phone. Ruby.
"What do you want?" he says.
"Aren't you going to ask where I got your number?"
"I don't care. Good-bye."
"He's gone, isn't he?"
Sam pauses, driving with one hand on the steering wheel.
"I want you to know," he says. "As soon as I'm finished with this, I'm hunting you down, and I'm going to kill you."
He hangs up, and she doesn't call back.
Once Sam pulls into Philadelphia, he finds a run-down hotel and parks across the street from it. Doesn't check in. Leftover rain blankets the Impala like a net of eyes. He retrieves a restaurant business card from his visor, nondescript number written on the backside in his scrawl. His phone's face glows blue in the dark.
"Hello?"
"Ezra Blackburn? This is Sam Winchester."
"Sam. I know of you." Blackburn's voice is a velvety murmur, reminding Sam too much of demons. "Why are you calling?"
"I need your help. Business. I'll pay anything you want."
"No need. Just come. Are you in town?"
"Yeah."
"4313 East Warren Street. Apartment building on the corner. Room 42B."
Sam tosses the phone onto the passenger seat and starts the engine, radio turned down to silence. As he begins to pull out into the street, he takes a mental inventory of what weapons he has on himself: pistol at his back, blade in his boot, Colt waiting in the glove compartment. He shudders when he glances to his right and sees a flash of Dean in the window; he doesn't loosen his grip on the steering wheel until he reaches the apartment building.
When he finds 42B, he is only half-surprised to notice anti-demonic symbols carved into the door frame. It isn't the first he's seen like that. Blackburn opens up before Sam has the chance to knock, showing himself to be a middle-aged man as tall as Dean. They look at each other without moving, patting each other down for something other than weapons. Blackburn steps aside to let Sam in, and Sam goes, neither of them speaking.
The apartment's dimly lit, one lamp turned on immediately to the front door's left and a weak bulb burning from the kitchen ceiling. Blackburn keeps most of the space empty and clean, nothing on any of the tables and no useless decoration on shelves or countertops. Either he's a man of simplicity or secrecy; Sam can appreciate both.
"Would you care for some whiskey, Mr. Winchester?" Blackburn says as he disappears into the kitchen. Sam lingers in the hallway between living room and dining room, scanning the darkness and blinking at the address. He hasn't been called "Mr. Winchester" in years now – not since Stanford.
"I could use a beer, thanks."
Blackburn doesn't answer, but Sam can hear glass clinking and the refrigerator door shutting. He steps slow and quiet to the kitchen doorway, hands buried in his coat pockets. He doesn't remember where he bought the coat or when, but after finding it in the car, he decided to swap it with his jacket. It's June now, but another kind of cold has moved into his body since Dean died.
"What can I do for you?" Blackburn says, prying the bottle cap off Sam's beer bottle. The silver opener gleams quick, before he sets it down.
"I need some advice on trekking through Hell."
Blackburn arches one eyebrow at him.
"You can get into Hell?"
"Yeah. And I'm pretty sure I can get back out, too. I'm just not sure about the in-between."
Blackburn sips his whiskey from a short glass, other hand on his hip and mustache curved atop the glass rim.
"What exactly are you going to Hell for?" he says.
"My brother."
Sam takes a long drain of beer, feels nausea turn in his belly.
"Dean," Blackburn says, and Sam wants to punch him. "That's his name, isn't it? I remember hearing of him years back, when he started hunting on his own. Why is he in Hell?"
"Made a deal."
"And you think you can break him out of it? After he's already been collected?" Blackburn shakes his head. "You must have a damn high opinion of yourself."
"I don't think I can. I know."
Blackburn sets his empty glass down on the counter and looks Sam square in the face.
"What are you armed with?"
"The Colt and some knives I want to have altered for demon-killing. I know it can be done, hoping you'll be able to do it for me."
"By the Colt, I assume you mean Samuel Colt's all-purpose pistol."
"That's the one."
Sam finishes his beer and dangles the bottle at his side, staring at Blackburn and waiting. Blackburn turns and leaves the kitchen through the back exit, leading Sam down the dark hallway starting at the front door. Sam's hand twitches, ready to whip out his 9mm. Blackburn has to stop at the next door to fish out his keys, picking through them for the right one and sliding it into the keyhole.
It looks like an overcrowded library without any shelves. At first, anyway. Once Sam side-steps into the room and through a path breaking the book piles, he sees the room's majority is just as plain as the rest of the apartment. A block, wooden table sits in the center, with a desk pushed against the back wall. No computer. A large, locked trunk rests on the floor to the desk's left. Once Blackburn switches on another lamp, Sam notices a wardrobe standing at the right wall, near the corner, a keyhole below one of the doorknobs.
"These knives you're taking," says Blackburn. "Are they on you?"
"One of them. Other one's in the car."
"What do you figure you'll do? Go down there and kill demons until they decide to give in? They don't care about their own anymore than they do about the rest of creation, not really. Even if you plow through a hundred, whoever holds your brother's soul won't care. Upper-level demons run deals like that; they can destroy you the instant they decide."
Sam locks hard eyes with Blackburn, body stiff.
"Have you heard the rumors?" he says. "What they say I'm meant to be?"
"I help hunters, Sam; I don't travel in their circles."
"Heir to the throne. Demon leader. There are bastards down there who are waiting to follow me; I'm using it to my advantage."
Sam doesn't expect any particular reaction, and Blackburn doesn't give him one. They only stare, and Sam realizes he isn't ashamed anymore to admit to his possible future.
"Go get the other knife," says Blackburn. Sam goes.
He makes the drive from Pennsylvania to Wyoming in a few days, not stopping unless he's too tired to see. The Colt has enough bullets now for a God damn bandolier. His scimitar and one of Dean's hunting knives have been dipped in blood, heated, cursed, and empowered – ready to kill anything that crosses him. He has a pouch of rock salt looped to his waist and a flask of holy water in every pocket.
The Impala stays silent. He hasn't listened to music since Dean died.
When Sam breaks into Hell, his silent rage pushes the fires back. Low-level demon spawn crawl away in his wake, like four-legged spiders with crumbling half-skulls. Everything smells of rotting flesh and sulfur, burning and blood. His eyes are cold, so dark he could almost pass for a demon himself, and his hair shudders in his face. He begins to move, squinting against the dusty wind, and doesn't have to go far before he meets another man, standing alone at the precipice of a cliff, his eyes solid black.
"Sam," the stranger says, a smirk curling up on his face.
And Sam knows, somehow, exactly who it is.
"Apollyon," he says, scimitar gleaming at his thigh. "Show yourself for what you are, slime; you don't deserve to wear human skin."
"You'll never find him," the demon says. "He's buried so deep, no one else can hear the noises."
Sam lifts the Colt with his left hand, bullet crackling through Apollyon's stolen head before the demon can see it coming.
Tortured souls find his ankles, wrapping their arms around him, begging for mercy as if their punishment is his doing. He kicks them away, shoots a couple because he has enough bullets to waste a few, and watches them disappear into ground holes or into the claws of snarling beasts he can't name. Mid-level demons stop when he passes, watching him go as if they'd been expecting him. He ignores them, searching for the upper-level creatures, but he can't help pay attention when one of the spectators nearby throws its head back laughing.
"Well, I'll be damned again," it says, lipless mouth nothing but a black hole. "Sammy Winchester. You came after all. Looking for Dean? Asmodeus has been fucking him up real good..."
"Meg."
If Sam were himself, it would scare him how he recognizes demons on sight, but now it doesn't faze him. Meg grins, sharp shoulder bones catching Sam's eye.
"My real name's better," she says. "You know that too, don't you, Sammy?"
"Miss your daddy, bitch? I can't tell you how awesome it was watching my brother kill him."
Meg stops smiling, and Sam thinks he sees a glint in her eye sockets. He doesn't wait for an answer – just throws Dean's hunting knife into her decomposing face.
When he arrives at the great pit, Sam licks his lip, knowing he's closer. The screams of the damned only register as background noise, as he wades through their twisted bodies. They try to hold onto him with fleshless hands but fail, as if he's covered in oil. Some of them still have traces of their earthly gender but most are beyond recognition, as grotesque as the demon spawn. He doesn't know what causes their pain and doesn't care. All he pays attention to is finding more demons, following an unseen trail to his brother.
As the ground ascends, leaving the human souls behind, Sam encounters another upper level demon. This one has a human in its grip, tearing into one shoulder with its teeth. The demon ignores its victim's screams; Sam does, too.
"Bael," he says, and the demon turns its head to look at him.
"Sam. Took you long enough. Missing out on the fun."
Bael's body is as lithe as all the other demons Sam has seen, poised with lupine angles, every bit a predator.
"Where's Dean?" Sam asks. Bael snorts, nostrils nothing but a pair of black holes in a raw face.
"Deeper. You're wasting your time; nothing left of who you know to save."
Sam rips through Bael's face with the scimitar but leaves him alive. He digs the heel of his boot into Bael's chest, pouring salt into the demon's wound with a poker face to beat Dean's.
The ground scuttles before him as he makes another descent, and if he were paying more attention, he would see all the unearthly spiders, thousands of them piled together and moving to create a solid mass. Going down a spiraling path, he can see a faux sun blazing weak in the sky far away, corpse yellow and swathed in gray smoke. Bael's black blood stains his scimitar, so thick it doesn't drip. The lower he goes, the hotter his chest sears with killing lust; he must be getting closer.
The path ends at the doorway of a new chamber, and he stops for a moment to observe. Here are creatures that are unlike any demon he's seen before, some prowling alone along the room's circular perimeter while others torture humans in the center. The ones who walk are bare-chested, with women's breasts and legs but scales covering their waists and thighs – leading to spiked tails almost as long as their bodies. They eye him hungrily, while their companions dig raptor claws into rotting human souls. By now, Sam figures the real torture must be that soul flesh grows back.
"What did they do?" he asks.
A scaly beast meets his stare, and he remembers, as if he always knew, they're fallen angels who never made a full conversion to demons.
"Tortured others," it says.
"An eye for an eye down here?" Sam says. "How quaint."
"Haven't found Dean yet, have you? Malphas has been eating out his stomach in crow form. Lucky Malphas."
Sam fires the Colt again, hole steaming through the beast's forehead. One of the others looks up from its human victim, blinking black eyes.
"Get out of here. We don't have what you're looking for."
Sam considers killing it too but leaves instead, emptying a flask of holy water in the beast's face. He doesn't smile when he hears the long shriek break.
When he finds the elevator, he raises his eyebrows and wonders what kind of wisecrack Dean would make if Dean were with him. Instead, he pushes the button and waits. The doors open to reveal another demon clothed in human disguise – a man as tall as Sam, with dark eyes and hair, wearing a long coat.
"Hello, Sam."
Sam's heart blazes, his jaw clenching with recognition.
"Samael."
"Funny how our names are so alike," the demon says. "Care to take a ride?"
"Angel of Death."
"In Hell, anyway. Don't take all the credit away from Azrael."
Sam points the Colt at Samael, baring his teeth. "You hold my brother's contract."
"No. I'm afraid I wasn't given that pleasure. Come with me and I'll show you who was."
"He had to pass through you."
"He passed through a lot of us, Sam. And why not lower the gun? Won't do you any good with me. Can't kill Death."
Sam doesn't budge for a while, nostrils flaring, but when Samael shows no sign of fear, he lowers the Colt and steps inside the elevator. The doors slide shut, Sam standing in the center of the little compartment, with Samael in the corner behind his right shoulder. Sam glances down and sees no panel of floor buttons anywhere.
"Heard you were buddying up to Ruby," Samael says. "I thought you were smarter than to trust a demon like her to come through for you against her own kind."
"She'll get what she deserves."
"Bitch should've known better than to incur Sammy's wrath. I can smell it rolling off you in waves."
Sam feels the demon's hot breath puff against the back of his neck, making him grimace. The elevator sinks down slowly, stench intensifying with the heat.
"Killed Apollyon there. Nice," Samael says.
"You better not be lying about taking me to Dean – or I swear, I'll find a way to punish you."
"I have no reason to lie, Sam. I'm not as spontaneous as the other demons here. Death is my one job, that's all. I do what I was created to do and leave the dirty work to my colleagues."
Sam fights hard against the urge to strike out against Samael, a lifetime of demon hunting and its subsequent urges not easily ignored. He squeezes the Colt and his scimitar handle until his fingernails might break the skin of his palms, reasoning with himself that he'll get out of this elevator in a few minutes. He has to play nice with this son of bitch; it's the only way to reach Dean.
"I admire your stamina," Samael says in his ear. "Of course, being a potential demon king helps, but I have to give your character some credit too. You should see yourself, Sammy – the way you've been stalking through, fearless, as if you own every last piece of shit here. It's not difficult to understand why so many of my kind have been waiting to follow you."
"Do yourself a favor," Sam says. "And shut the fuck up."
Samael stands back and smirks but keeps quiet until the elevator stops.
Whoever it was that Sam had imagined guarding Dean's soul, Beelzebub had not been it. But that's exactly who it is, as Sam finds when he crosses into the circle of scorched earth. It's as if he's in another world, a different hell that appears as a desert – mountains in the distance, open sky the color of bloody bruises, ground cracked with deathly thirst. The circle he walks with Samael is cut off from the rest of the land, a clean break all the way around. If he cared to look over the edge, he would find a bottomless drop.
As Sam draws near the center, Beelzebub looks up from his task and flashes a toothy, rotten grin. The demon's face is a disfigured mesh of sickly green, eye sockets hollow and black, and Sam can smell the burning stench curling off of the skull alone. He almost loses it, almost aims the Colt at the son of a bitch right away; a tsunami of hatred and rage crashes through him. Beelzebub laughs.
"Sammy!" he says. "Sammy Winchester! I knew you wouldn't disappoint me. I kept telling Apollyon it was just a matter of time; you made it faster than I thought."
"Where's my brother, you piece of shit?"
"Whoa, there, Sam. You just got here; why don't we chat, hm?"
Now Sam does aim the Colt, standing a few yards away, not caring if Samael is still behind him or not.
"Why don't you hand over Dean and I maybe let you exist another day?"
Beelzebub grins.
"Heard you've been making quite the mess around here," he says. "Haven't met with much resistance, have you? Why do you think that is?"
"Give him to me," Sam says. "Or I will fucking shoot you right now."
"Sure – you have your loyal subjects. I won't deny that. But not everyone is so receptive to the idea of your leadership, Sam. Personally, I would rather run things down here myself, though I do admire your gall."
"You be my guest. I don't care. Just give me my brother."
"Ah, but I like Dean..."
Beelzebub moves, the Colt following.
"I've been waiting a long time to get a hold of him. Your daddy was fun – but what do you know? He broke himself out."
Sam feels his breathing come in tight, steamy bursts. Part of him wants to lay the Colt down and destroy this demon with his hands.
"I never actually counted on pulling Dean down here," says Beelzebub, pacing now. "It was only ever a demonic wet dream. But then you got yourself killed... And your poor, big brother just couldn't go on. We demons had a big pool going, you know. Some of us bet on a deal, some of us bet suicide—"
Sam's hand shakes a little.
"I bet deal," the demon says, stopping. "And boy, what a sweet deal it was! Dean's soul in a measly year, and then you – right after him, like a shark to blood. Do you see the genius, Sam? I expected you to come here! I wanted it! And you came through."
A familiar force grabs Sam from the inside, lifting him off the ground, and hurtling him aside. He lands on his back, head hanging off the edge of the circle, Colt flung out of his hand. He tries to move, but he's pinned. God damn pinned – like that night in the cabin, when his father was possessed. He grunts and squirms but to no avail. Beelzebub moves toward him slowly, picking up the Colt where it lies.
"You son of a bitch!" Sam says. "I'm gonna kill you. I'm gonna kill you..."
"I don't think so."
Beelzebub kneels down beside Sam, staring down at him with the gun in hand. A foul wind sweeps through Sam's hair, as his cheeks puff in and out with every breath.
"Lucky you're going to die down here," the demon says. "You're right where you need to be."
He points the Colt at Sam's face. His bony, green finger curls around the trigger. He fires –
And in one, swift motion, Sam breaks the binding, grabbing the Colt with his left hand and yanking it away. He shoots his right hand up, scimitar blade glinting as he hooks it through the demon's skull, the tip popping out one cheek and curving under the jaw. Steam hisses out of Beelzebub's face, and Sam twists the scimitar around, black blood squirting haphazardly in all directions. He yanks the weapon back out and swipes the demon's body aside with his knee.
Sam lies still for a moment, gulping the fake air, his stoicism destroyed. Shit, he thinks. That was too close. When he sits up, he finds Samael grinning at him.
"Thanks for the help," Sam says.
"You're welcome."
He pushes himself to his feet, breathes, and freezes when he sees Samael cock his head over to the right. Sam looks over, sees a lump on the ground where Beelzebub was originally standing, and his heart bolts up into his throat. He rushes toward the body, sliding on his knees, and when he's close enough, he thinks – it must be Dean. The body's back is turned to him, head covered in what he thinks is drying blood, and the clothes are black. Sam rests his hand on the top shoulder, afraid and gentle, and the body cries out. Sam coaxes it over, pulling it from side to back, and he makes his own indescribable noise when he sees the face.
Dean.
Sam takes Dean's head in both his hands, eyes broken with humanity for the first time since he laid his brother's body in the Impala's back seat. Dean's soul feels as solid as his body would, face splattered with his own blood and contorted in agony. Sam wants to throw up; he's never seen anything as beautiful as this. He can't be sure what it is that has his stomach rolling and his throat constricting, his brain turning all the noise into static, but he thinks it's love. He thinks he has never been as consumed by it as he is now, looking at his brother's soul, touching it and knowing it's real. He's fought long and hard, sacrificed everything else that mattered to him, and he wants to lie down and sleep for a thousand years. He just needs to bring Dean home.
"Sammy," Dean says, coughing up blood. Sam smiles, runs his thumb across Dean's cheek.
"I'm here. I'm taking you back."
Dean can't open his eyes for long, but he forces them to crack for a moment. He needs to see Sam. He needs to know this isn't another demon fucking with his head.
"Don't know – if you're real," he says. Sam almost lets him go, thinking his stomach will betray him, and the tremors strengthen in his shoulders, arms, and hands. He dips down and aligns his face with Dean's, looking into his brother's eyes, their noses almost touching. Dean tries to look as long he can, sees the bloody nicks and cuts all over his brother's face and the light in those irises he spent his whole life protecting. A sound escapes him, a strangled whimper, and Dean begins to cry when he thought he didn't have any tears left. Sam pulls his brother's curled, mangled soul into his own arms, bowing his head to rest on Dean's and letting himself weep. Dean sobs hard into Sam's beating heart, the only one in Hell's entirety, and he can't speak.
"I'm going to take you home," Sam whispers. "You're not going to suffer anymore."
He plants a kiss in Dean's hair, and they clutch to each other only for a few extra minutes, before Sam picks his brother up. He doesn't know where he gained the strength to carry Dean in his arms like a child – maybe souls don't have real weight – but he doesn't falter the rest of the way back toward the gate. He marches steady past the demons and all the other condemned souls, and nothing stops him.
When he crosses over into the cemetery, Dean's soul disappears. Sam swallows back protest, locks the gateway, and gets back into the Impala. It's a long drive from Wyoming to Minnesota.