A/N: Like most folks, the S9 finale left me reeling. It also left me with a zillion and one ways the show could play out for S10. Storyteller's dream to end where it did. Not sure where this is going to go yet, still too many ideas swirling, but I hope you'll join me for the ride. :)
Thanks as always to TLOGirl for her beta work!
Chapter 1
"Dammit," Sam hisses, kicking the brass bowl across the room as he stands. Crowley clearly isn't going to respond to the summons. He's going to have to work on something stronger. Something Crowley can't resist.
He scrubs his hands over his face. His throat is tight and his eyes burn, but he doesn't have any more tears left. His balance off from the vast quantities of whiskey he'd consumed since he'd arrived back at the bunker, he stumbles as he makes his way out of the room, not bothering to close the door behind him.
He knows he should go back to the main room, start digging through the books, find some way to force Crowley here. He should also probably call Cas. Maybe he can do something to help. Maybe he's got some resource to either get Crowley or get Dean back.
But he doesn't do either of those things. He can't yet. There's just...too much. All the fighting and the First Blade and Metatron and ... everything. And as much as he told his brother he'd just let him go, he can't. He won't. As much as he insisted Dean couldn't be alone, neither can he. Not like this. Not with Dean letting go because of that stupid mark. They could have fixed it. Sam knows they could have fixed it. No, he's not letting this slide.
Pausing outside the door to Dean's room, he takes a deep breath. It'll only be for a minute, he tells himself. He only wants to check, make sure everything is still safe. Not like there's any reason it wouldn't be, but still. He wants a few more minutes with his brother right now.
Blinking a few times, he steels himself, then slowly swings the door open. His booze and grief addled brain takes far too long to process the scene before him. He was expecting to see Dean, laying on the bed, just as he'd left him. But what he finds is something completely different.
Dean, sitting up in the bed, cradling the First Blade against his chest. Crowley, standing next to the bed, the knowing smirk that always makes Sam want to punch him plastered across his face.
And Dean's eyes. They're pitch black.
Sam takes a step back, his gaze wide and wild as he tries to absorb what he's seeing. All he can think is no. No. No. This is not happening. His mind refuses to accept it.
Crowley grins and gestures at Dean. "I think it's time we were on our way, Dean." A condescending gaze toward Sam. "Moons to howl at and whatnot."
Before Sam can blink again, they're gone.
~~~SPN~~~
"He's WHAT?"
Sam flinches, clumsily setting the glass on the edge of the table, then fumbling for it when it starts to tip off the table. He only barely catches it and carefully puts it more toward the center of the table. He'd only gotten himself together enough to reach out to Cas after finding another bottle of cheap whiskey. Cas wasn't much of a yeller, but to Sam's half drunk, half hungover mind, he sounds like he's turned the volume up to eleven.
"I'm telling you, Cas, his eyes were black. Completely, solid black. And he blinked out just like Crowley does." Unsteady hands struggle to pour more alcohol without spilling it everywhere. But then, somehow, the glass and the bottle are both gone.
He looks up at Cas, confused and bleary. "Hey!"
Cas moves the glass and the bottle to the other side of the room, figuring at this point Sam was in no condition to walk that far to retrieve it. "You need to tell me everything you know, Sam."
Sam shakes his head. He doesn't want to talk about it any more. He doesn't want to think about it any more. Even after all these years and all the shit they've been through, Sam Winchester has his limits and he's now well past them.
Cas regards him, head tilted, sympathy and grief clear on his own face. This was not at all how this was supposed to go. He and Gadreel were supposed to short out Metatron's power and make him vulnerable. But they'd been too late from the little he could gather from Sam. Cas had hoped Dean's death had been just one more of Metatron's lies. He had somehow known it wasn't, but he'd held onto that hope until he'd seen Sam.
Slumped in the chair, Sam's head nods forward, as if it's too heavy to hold up any longer. And maybe it is.
Cas sighs, then reaches out, touching Sam's forehead lightly. He doesn't really have grace to spare, but clearing Sam's blood of the alcohol won't consume much and he needs Sam sober right now.
Sam gives a start as the grace flows through him, stripping the welcome blanket of drunkenness away and leaving him cold and exposed. The alcohol was the only thing between him and feeling the full brunt of everything that had happened and now it was gone.
"Jesus, Cas, knock it off," he snarls. He looks for the bottle, finding it across the room, but before he can get up, Cas has it and is gone. He hears noises in the kitchen and drops his head to the table when he realizes Cas is dumping it out.
The chair scrapes loudly on the concrete floor as Cas pulls it out and sits. "You need to focus. Tell me what happened with Metatron up to when you saw Dean last."
Sam draws a ragged breath. Tries to focus on telling the story as a third party. As someone watching from the outside with no stake in what happens. Distance is the only way to keep his head on straight right now.
"Dean knocked me out and went after Metatron on his own. By the time I woke up and got there, Dean was already pretty beaten up. I guess you guys hadn't knocked out the angel tablet yet. And then..." He swallows hard, not wanting to see this part again. "Metatron...he...with the angel blade..." He waves a hand, assuming Cas can fill in the blanks on his own.
And of course, Cas can. He closes his eyes briefly and says a short prayer for his friend. His brave, stupid friend. It was typical of Dean to try to protect his brother and take the burden on himself. Especially with the false strength he derived from the blade.
"And then?"
"I...uh... I tried to take down Metatron, but he disappeared. I went to Dean and tried to stop the...bleeding...to get him out of there." Sam's throat is closing again, so he clears it. He traces little patterns on the table, following the grain, trying to focus. "He said...um...he said it was better this way. That the blade was turning him into something he didn't want to be. But I couldn't...I couldn't just... " He shrugs. "So I tried to get him out, but..."
He's not going to tell Cas about that last moment. He can't. It's far too raw and too private.
Cas can sense there's something more, but he doesn't push. "So you brought him back here."
Sam nods. "I put him on his bed. I didn't know what else to do." His voice is pitching up and he swallows again, taking another deep breath. "After awhile, I decided to summon Crowley. This is his fault. He's the one who talked Dean into taking on that damned mark in the first place. I wanted him to do something to fix it. To make things right. To bring him..."
Rubbing at his eyes, he wonders if he'll ever be able to unsee what came next. "He wouldn't come. He resisted the summons, I guess. So I quit. Thought I could find another summoning spell...something stronger maybe. I stopped by Dean's room on the way. When I opened the door..." Shaky breath. "When I opened the door, Dean was sitting up. He had the blade in his hand, holding it against his chest. And his eyes..."
He shrugs. "That was it. They left. Gone."
"Did he say anything to you? Anything at all?"
"No, it was like he didn't even see me. Crowley said they should go, something about howling at the moon. But Dean...it was like...it was like he wasn't in there."
Cas sighs softly. "The mark. Could you see it, was it still there?"
Sam nods.
The angel sits back, thoughtful. "Clearly the mark has done something. Cain was a demon, he wore the mark, now your brother wears it, so..." Cas stops, not wanting to say it out loud.
He raises his gaze to Cas at last, staring at him helplessly. "He's gone, Cas. My brother's gone. What am I gonna do?"
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Next chapter will pick up with Dean. We'll see what Demon!Dean is like.