Disclaimer: None of it's mine.
Timeline: An AU season four (follows the show directly up through "Jus in Bello" in season three), but there's spoilers for all of the seasons.
Characters: Dean, Sam, Ruby, Castiel, Jo, Sarah (from Provenance). Also features Bobby, Uriel, Alastair, among other surprises.
Pairings: Dean/Ruby, Sam/Sarah, there may be another one eventually...
Warnings: Ruby, Jo and Sarah are main characters and play strong roles in the story, so if you don't care for them that might hinder your enjoyment of the story. Other than that, language, violence, some sexual content.
Author's Note: This is a revamped version of the story I had posted on here. I neglected it for a while because I really wanted to incorporate season four's angels & demons arc into it (as well as Castiel because I love the character). Some details have changed, but the basic premise - demon!Dean has not. This prologue is quite different than the old one.
"I guess if you're going to have faith, you can't just have it when the miracles happen." - Layla, Episode 1-12, "Faith"
"Daddy'll come in and get them, right? If they come for me?"
Even as her son's small voice makes her smile, the innocence of his question pains her. She knows what's out there in the dark. What she hasn't seen with her own two eyes in several years she remembers in memories and dreams. Her own promise for her husband's life is in the wind outside their home, waiting until the day came when she will have to pay for it. But here in her eldest son's dimly lit bedroom, monsters do not exist. And she hopes and she prays with everything she has that they will never exist for her precious children.
"Of course your Daddy would," she says soothingly, smoothing her son's golden brown hair from his forehead while he stares up at her with sleepy green eyes. "But don't fear the monsters, Dean. Angels are watching over you."
"Are they watching over Sammy, too?"
Dean's gaze is momentarily so intense, so adult, that it takes Mary's breath away. She leans down and kisses his forehead reassuringly.
"Yes, baby, they're watching over Sammy, too."
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The smoke burns her eyes and her throat. She can still smell it even as she runs into the forest, stumbling, tearing the edges of her dress and cutting the bottom of her bare feet until they sting so badly she can barely keep moving. Still she struggles through the foliage, away from the village, away from the ashes of her sister.
Her mother's voice haunts her from the grave. "God must be punishing me, Elizabeth! He's punishing me for my wickedness - that's why I'm dying of this. You must promise me to never again use what I have taught you! Promise me!"
She'd promised, and then she'd broken that promise so many times. For her sister.
Her sister's screams of agony as the fire claimed her drown out her mother's useless warnings echoing in her head, and Elizabeth sinks to the muddy ground as tears stain the dirty hands she presses to her face.
She should have been the one to burn! Not Emily! Emily was innocent. Emily had begged her not to do it. She'd begged her not to kill him - the monster who had forced himself on her young sister.
Elizabeth remembers the sound of Emily's sobs through the locked bedroom door. She remembers sitting on the wooden floor with her knees drawn up to her chest and crying helplessly with her, wishing for all the world their appointed guardian would die.
She remembers the night she chose to end his life using the black arts her mother had practiced.
The blood on her hands is gone now, but they're still stained with crimson. She can see the stains if she stares at her hands long enough….. Ruby red stains she can never wash away.
She doesn't care if God punishes her; she only cares that her sister is suffering in her place. She only prays for her sister's soul. She cares none for her own. She wishes that she had destroyed the village and everyone in it. If only she'd used her dark power against them, they wouldn't have been able to burn her Emily alive!
Times passes, and a girl her sister's age finds Elizabeth in the forest. Her eyes are black, hollow, but her expression is one of understanding. She offers Elizabeth her hand and the promise of revenge against those who'd taken Emily's life, assures her that then and only then will her sister's spirit be at peace.
In return, all Elizabeth has to do is give the black eyed girl her soul.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
It's well past her bedtime when she hears her mother's raised voice. Jo tiptoes quietly through the house with her doll clutched tightly in her small hands and stops just next to the door leading to the living room. She doesn't peek, she knows she'll get caught that way; instead, she presses herself against the wall and listens.
"Get out of my house." Her mother sounds angry and sad all at once, and Jo hugs her doll to her chest.
She thinks she hears a man whisper that he's sorry before the front door slams shut, and Jo jumps at the sound and hurries back to her room. She climbs into bed and pulls her blanket over her body. She's suddenly cold and the blanket's still warm.
She closes her eyes just as her mother comes into her room and sits down on her bed. "Joanna Beth, you heard that didn't you?"
There's no anger in her mother's voice now, only sadness, so Jo opens her eyes and stares up at her. She sees tears running down her mother's face and frowns. Her mother's always upset when Daddy's away fighting the monsters, but she never cries.
"Daddy'll be home soon, Mama," Jo tells her, hoping to make her feel better, but Jo sees more tears gather in her eyes.
"No, he won't, Jo," her mother says. She takes the blanket from Jo and lifts her up into her arms, allowing her to get her doll from where she'd set it in the bed before settling her onto her lap. "The monsters got him this time, honey. Your Daddy's gone."
Jo stays in her mother's arms for the rest of the night until her mother gets too tired to stay awake, then sneaks away into her parents' room. It still smells like her father inside, a mixture of leather and the Old Spice stuff her mother teased him about. She walks over to the nightstand next to the bed and sees her Daddy's knife laying there, the silver shining in the darkness. Next to the knife there's a gold cross necklace that her mother got Daddy for Christmas because "Daddy believes", or so her mother said. He used to tell Jo that it protected him, and she wonders if that's why he died - because he forgot the necklace when he left to fight the monsters this time.
It makes her angry, not at him, but at something she can't name.
Jo ignores the necklace and reaches a shaking hand out to the knife and picks it up. It feels heavy and it turns her hand to ice, but she doesn't let go.
She takes the knife back to her room and places it under her pillow, where it stays for days, then months, then years. Whenever she gets upset she no longer looks for her doll - the doll is long gone - but runs her fingers along the battered, sharp blade of the knife.
She makes a vow on the third anniversary of her father's death that she will learn how to fight the monsters like he did.
And she won't need anyone's protection from the darkness.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
The cemetery is in flames around him, but Sam Winchester doesn't care. The heat of the flames at his back is nothing compared to the icy chill of the body he holds protectively against him.
He gazes down with burning eyes and blurred vision at his brother's vacant stare. The green that had been so bright before is dull and lifeless and the light brown hair on Dean's head feels brittle in Sam's fingers as he rocks them back and forth. The dried blood on his brother's shirt sticks to his jacket, and he knows, should he live through this, he won't ever wash the blood away.
"Dean." He nearly chokes on his brother's name as he holds back a harsh sob that threatens to break free from his shattered soul. "Dean!"
He closes his eyes and buries his face against his brother's neck, allowing the tears to fall onto the cold skin.
He can sense Ruby behind him before she speaks.
"Sam, you have to finish it."
He lifts his head at the sound, and if his heart wasn't consumed with such agony, if the body in his arms was warm and the green eyes bright again, he would notice the thickness of her voice, the way she seems to force the words from her lips.
She kneels down beside him. "You can stop them. All of them. But you have to let him go, Sam. You have to get up and walk away."
She places her hand over Sam's, the one that's holding his brother's, and he's momentarily stunned by how warm it is. How alive her skin feels.
It's wrong. Her skin's warm and his brother's is cold and it's all wrong.
She loosens his grip on Dean's hand, and he understands that he needs to listen to her. He needs to leave his brother here and finish what they had begun together. He turns to Ruby, gazes into her black eyes, and doesn't see how oddly they are shining.
"Watch over him."
He gently lays Dean on the ground next to Ruby, and before he turns away he watches as she closes his brother's eyes.
Sam enters the Devil's Gate as just the fire swallows it up, praying to a God he isn't sure existed anymore that his brother will rest in peace once he's done.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
The angel wears his faith as a cloak around him. It is his protection, his shield here in this darkness, this desolate wasteland of agony and decay, of fire and ash. He can feel the misery and despair surrounding him in the air, hear the pain filled cries of the souls that suffer eternal damnation.
But he cannot see beyond the remains of the young man his Father has sent him here to retrieve, the broken and brutal way that he carves into another soul with a twist of his lips and a shadow of a smile that has been desecrated by unending torment.
The angel searches the young man's eyes, sees nothing in them. There is no light, and for a moment, the angel doubts. He doubts his mission. He doubts his Father. He fears he is too late. He fears he will not be able to save this soul, to raise this man from perdition. But he gathers his faith. Banishes his doubt. And then he reaches for the man, who screams at his touch. His touch burns the man's blackened soul, but in return his own is stained as a chilling cold spreads through him, marking his descent into this world.
He does not let go of the man. He lets the cold sink its claws into his being, his grace, and grips the man tightly in his grasp.
The angel flies from Hell, heals the man's physical form and reunites it with his soul. The only mark his body will bear will be that of the angel's hand on his shoulder.
He is there but out of sight when Dean Winchester breaks free from the earth and breathes in the night air for the first time in one year. One hundred and twenty years. He is watching as Dean opens his eyes for the first time. And he is horrified when he sees not green, but black staring up at the sky.
The angel called Castiel searches the stars, seeks his Father's forgiveness.
What has he done?