Author's Note: Let me just start this off by saying a big thank you to everyone who has left feedback. I really didn't expect this kind of response! So, again, thank you! Enjoy the second chapter :)
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And all who heard should see him there,
And all shall cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair,
Weave a circle around him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
- Kubla Khan. Samuel Coleridge
----
Dean voluntarily stayed behind without saying anything.
He listened - didn't watch - as Cody and Hopkins dragged the thing wearing Sam's face away through the snow. Hopkins had said something about needing resources, knowing just the place, and had ordered Cody to help him without so much of a glance at Dean.
Dean stood in the snow a long time, knife held loosely in his hands, staring off into nowhere and only seeing what ran through his head.
----
Dean remembers waking up to a blood red sky above him, the roof and more than half of the church in smoldering ruins around him. He was alone; no Lilith, no Sam, no one. His head was killing him and someone was screaming incoherently, blind grief and confusion following them into nothing.
It took a long time for him to come back to himself and realize he was the one screaming.
----
Sam was dead. Had been since the world burned up and left only ashes. That... thing was a lie.
A damned good impression, but still a lie.
The sun hung higher in the sky and Dean moved to the edge of the woods. The Guard scheduled for the afternoon passed him with acknowledging nods before disappearing into the trees behind him as he numbly made his way back to the town.
A year and a half ago, Dean would have mocked Trinidad, Colorado. A little research turned up that it was infamously known as the sex change capitol of the world, and all other interesting historical facts went right out the window from there.
He could have seen it, gliding across gravel roads in his baby towards another job, Sam in the passenger seat with a map stretched out across his knees as he turned and said, Guess you can finally become a real girl, Sammy. He could see the eye roll clear as a day before the sun stopped shining so brightly.
It took Dean a moment to realize the space beside him was empty, and the joke was never uttered out loud.
Dean kicked through snow that covered the sidewalks, uncovering soggy, lopsided devil's traps drawn in chalk. "Humans and Demons" had become the new "Indians and Cowboys" for the kids, all of it still just a game to the younger ones. He tucked his jacket closer to him, shoving his hands into pockets that did nothing to hide his hands from the cold. Soft, cold flakes hit his face and caught in his lashes, falling without sound in the afternoon.
"Dean!" Came a call from one of the houses on his right. Norah stood on the porch of her house, arms crossed over a wrap she wore against the weather. She waved, and Dean did so, too, with a smile. "You look freezing."
Dean shrugged. "Just a little."
"I have some soup on, for when Cody got back. I'm sure he wouldn't mind sharing, unless you have somewhere to be?"
Dean couldn't help but grin, stepping up to the fence. "Don't mind if I do."
Inside, Dean breathed a sigh of bliss at the wave of warm air. He took his hands out of his pockets and flexed them, imagining ice chipping off of them, but when he looked down he only found chapped and callused skin. Norah disappeared into the kitchen, calling back, "Coffee?"
"Please!" Dean replied, stomping his feet on the rug in front of the door. Norah appeared seconds later, a steaming chipped mug in her hands. Dean took a sip - warm water with some grinds waved in front of it, not that he was complaining - as she turned to go back into the kitchen. "How are you?" She asked over her shoulder as he followed.
"Do you really need to ask?"
"Honestly?" Her smile slipped a little. "I could hear you all the way back in the woods."
Dean hid his slipping expression behind another sip.
A year ago, in a basement of half starving people in northern Colorado surrounded only by a circle of salt, Norah had been the one to look up seconds before someone could shoot him as he came down the stairs and say, "He's not possessed, goddamnit, he's going to help us." She had been huddled against a wall, her eighteen-year-old son, barely alive, leaning against her and an unloaded shotgun in her hands.
It was days later, in the snow and when neither of them were accepting sleep, that Norah whispered your brother's not dead and Dean knew.
An untrained psychic was dangerous, but then again, a psychic at all was not to be trusted. Before the fire ended and the ash settled, a large number of them found refuge on the other side after being exiled from society, or what was left of it. Even the ones who didn't found a home somewhere away from normal - or as normal got these days - society. Upon mentioning Missouri, though, Norah just shook her head and said, I've never been out of Colorado. I've heard it's pretty there, though.
Where Norah was untrained in the mind tricks, though, she was as good of a person as Dean had ever met. She was kind-hearted and strong, caring infinitely for Cody and everyone around her. Even after using the last shell in her shotgun to fend off her possessed husband, she never fell to the depression that clung to the backs of many, and Dean respected that completely.
"They brought someone past the circle." She said, aware that Dean knew. It was as if she said it just to make it feel real. "Did they find another survivor?"
"I don't know." Dean lied, and if Norah knew, she made no comment. He put his undivided attention on the wood stove by his legs.
The sound of the door opening and closing ended the conversation. Cody stepped into the kitchen, bringing some of the cold in with him. He looked tired right before he looked up and noticed his mother and Dean, a small smile quickly appearing on his face instead.
"Hi Mom. Dean." He took his gloves off finger by finger and draped them on a line over the wood stove. He stood there for a second, the light from the fire making his skin glow, before he looked up at Dean with that tired look in his eyes again. "Hopkins actually asked me to come find you.
Dean set the mug on the counter behind him. "What for?"
Cody shook his head. "He has a bunch of hunters down at the warehouse with that guy we found. He wouldn't let me go in. Just told me to turn around and go find you, wouldn't tell me why."
----
Dean has somehow kept the memories of the day that everything ended down.
He got out of the dead nameless town in Alabama, purposely turning away from the bodies whose skin had been melted off like wax and ignoring the cries of those who had unmercifully been left alive. He doesn't remember the news reports the further north he got; nothing about a plague in France, the Mediterranean Sea turning blood red, an endless fire spreading in the south, leaving loss in its wake. He somehow drove through it, blind for a reason, never stopping at a motel, numbly getting gas somewhere that had recently been abandoned with the words closed for judgement day scratched into glass.
----
The warehouse stood just a mile away from the inner circle, even further away from the rest of the town, tucked away from prying eyes and sensitive ears. Inside and out it was covered in protective and offensive wards; not much of an effect on humans, but enough to leave anyone - anything - pretty much immobile. Two of the Guard from the early shift stood on either side of the gaping door, whether they were cold or not never visible on their faces. They were armed to the teeth with their guns and knives, a signal that something nasty was inside. Both to keep people out, and otherwise inside. Dean gave a nod, receiving two in reply as he passed by.
The warehouse was wide and empty before him, and Dean swore that it was somehow even colder in here than out in the snow. His boots rapped dully against the concrete as he moved to the far wall. A trapdoor, also covered in wards, sat in one of the corners. Dean bent down and whispered in Latin, and the lock bolting the door to the floor snapping open on command.
Dean followed the wooden steps that waited beneath . They creaked obscenely, like sound added to a horror movie simply for effect. He followed them in the dark, one hand against the wall. He thought it was cold upstairs, but once he reached the bottom, he felt the temperature drop considerably further.
A single light hung flickering over the center of the room, casting an even paler pallor over the lone figure lying in the most elaborate devil's trap Dean had ever seen. He would know - he helped draw it in the first place. Another one mirrored it, drawn as carefully on the ceiling as it was on the floor and two of the opposing walls.
Five others who stood around the circle, all whom Dean recognized, Hopkins included, turned to give him a quick glance before turning their attention back to the center of the room. Each of them were armed just as heavily as the next, deadly in their silence. Dean joined them, standing just behind the group and closer to the stairs. He picked a spot across the room to stare at, rather than where the rest were looking. Hopkins was speaking, but Dean couldn't hear a single word he was saying. He could just as easily guess the topic.
Steven was the first to break the silence between the rest of them. "Correct me if I'm missing something, Hopkins," he began in a way closer to a growl than anything else, "but are you saying you just dragged the fucking devil himself into our town?"
The thing in the center of the circle looked unconscious, breathing soft and hitching as he lied on his side. His hands were wrenched behind him, tied with rope and chain alike halfway to his elbows. Dean knew without looking closely that they were inscribed with ancient runes that would have burned any other demon to the touch.
Dean accidentally noticed that the thing in the circle was barefoot. His feet were just against the edge of the circle, the soles raw and bloody, and Dean had to fight down instinct. Protect Sammy, above all else, just keep him safe. He wanted nothing more than to kneel down and wrap his feet in every pair of socks he had.
Dean looked away, fighting down the thought.
"He certainly doesn't look like the Antichrist." Another man - Jacobs, Dean remembered - said quietly.
Sam, on the other hand, looked like he had barely aged over the year and a half Dean hadn't seen him. His hair was a little longer, still shaggy. His skin was pale, too, but whose wasn't in this world? He was so skinny, though, the outline of his ribs appearing under his thin shirt with every breath he took. He looked just like the kid Dean knew, right down the slight twitch Dean recognized from night after night of watching Sam sleep when he couldn't himself.
"How the fuck do you know who this guy is?" A woman named Anne uncrossed her arms, clenching her fists at her side as she directed her attention at Hopkins. "What He looks like?"
Hopkins gave a humorous shrug. "I've seen things." Few words that said too much, and Anne backed off just a little. "Afterall, I think Winchester over there can back me up on this. Can't you, Dean?" Poison ran through the usage of his first name, and Dean could barely conceal the glare on his face as the rest of the group turned to look at him again, questions deadly in their eyes.
"Have something to say?" Hopkins prodded, and oh, that fuck. Before Dean could open his mouth to tell him exactly how he felt, Hopkins turned away and continued. "Winchester here knew the world was ending before we even saw it coming."
Dean kept his attention everywhere but the on eyes of the others, finally accidentally landing on Sam again. When Dean looked closer, he noticed that Sam wasn't asleep. His eyes were open in small slits, hazel green - normal - picking him out and watching him carefully, but not quite coherently.
"Fuck it." Anne said suddenly. "Gimme your demon killin' knife, Winchester."
"It won't do anything." Hopkins continued. "He's already trie--."
"What's done is done." Steven interjected before Hopkins could go any further. "All of that is in the past. What I want to know is how we kill this son of a bitch."
The longer Dean kept his eyes on Sam, the smaller the room felt. The less air there was. He needed air. He needed to get the fuck away from here.
Without a word, Dean turned on his heels and went back up the stairs, leaving five - six - pairs of eyes to watch him leave. He made it outside and around the back of the warehouse just in time before he collapsed to his knees and heaved.
He sat there until more than just his stomach was emptier, the snow starting to fall from the sky and leaving him cold.
----
He does remember driving over the circle that surrounded Bobby's land, sparks of something heavy and powerful meant to keep things out ever stronger. He remembers the look Bobby greeted him with a shotgun from his front door, narrowed eyes that were paying more attention to the empty space beside Dean than Dean himself.
He remembers the way his hands shook, the question where's your brother? going unasked.
He wouldn't have known the answer anyway.