My boy, I've finally found you.
Sam woke to the phantom taste of sulphur and blood in his mouth, rolling out of bed to dry-heave onto the floor. It took nearly a minute before he realised that the ringing in his head wasn't just in his head, but originated from an external source.
Staggering out of his bedroom, he followed the noise to his laptop which he had left on the kitchen counter the previous night. He stopped, gut churning, when he finally remembered why the alarm sounded so familiar.
It was the alarm attached to the Azazel-tracking programme.
Fingers unsteady, he opened up his laptop which had already booted itself up, thanks to some magic wrought by Col. Carter during a lookover of Ash's coding. The alarm cut off as a map of the United States presented itself on the screen. The state of Colorado was highlighted in flashing red.
He read the details rapidly. A rash of cattle deaths had been discovered several minutes ago, and had combined with the unexplained temperature drop and freak electrical storms last night to set off the alarm. Heart in his throat, he checked the time of the first freak storm.
More than seven hours ago.
He pressed his palms against his eyes, trying to think around his sudden panic and massive migraine. Dad and Jon were in the SGC. Dean was off-world – wait. Dean was due back this morning.
Logically, the SGC was one of the safest places a person could find. It was why their entire family had intended to work there, after all. But Sam knew, knew without a doubt that it was where Azazel was.
Despite knowing that he was most likely walking into a trap, Sam packed the Colt up and left for Cheyenne Mountain.
He called the others' cell phones the whole way there, but he already knew today was going to be a difficult one, so he wasn't surprised when no one picked up his calls. In the elevator, he let his fingers guide him to hit the button to the level the Infirmary was on.
He had only taken a few steps after exiting the elevator when he stopped, turning back. He waited impatiently for a minute, fingering the Colt in his pocket, before the elevator doors slid open again, releasing Jon in his civilian uniform.
The man raised an eyebrow at him. "You used the fake pass again, didn't you? The old man's not going to be happy about that."
Sam ignored him. "Is Dean okay?"
Jon rolled his eyes and started moving again, taking the path towards the Infirmary. Sam automatically fell into step next to him. "He's fine, just had an encounter with some knife-happy natives. A couple of stitches and he'll be good as new."
The headache, which had ebbed during the journey here, started up again.
"Honestly, though, he's more pissed about having to get the tat redone than about the stitches."
Sam stopped in his tracks. "Wait, what?"
"The tat. You know, the one all of us have that keeps us from being demonic meatsuits? It got nicked and now the pattern's broken – Sam!"
Jon caught him as he crumpled, eyes squeezed shut against the onslaught of images. Dean.
No. No.
He returned to awareness to Jon crouching over him worriedly. "Hey, squirt, back with me?"
"Jon –" he said hoarsely, reaching out to grab his arm, dragging himself to sit upright against the wall.
"What is it?" Jon asked lowly, hands on his shoulders, eyes dark and apprehensive. "What did you see?"
"The Azazel-tracking alarm went off an hour ago." Jon's hands tightened, but Sam barrelled on, voice cracking. "Jon, he has Dean. Azazel's possessed Dean."
000000000000000000000
It wasn't difficult to locate Azazel. He wasn't even attempting to hide.
Instead, he was holding a nurse hostage in the middle of a corridor, surrounded by soldiers and guns.
Above him, Walter was saying into the base intercom Foothold situation on Level Twenty-Two. Security teams six to eight, contain the situation. Teams five, nine and ten, secure the level. Base is going into lockdown in five minutes. I repeat…
"Will someone explain to me why there's a goa'uld in one of my men?" Jack was demanding in low tones from the back of the group as Sam and Jon approached at a run.
"General, this doesn't make sense. Sgt Winchester went through the standard post-mission check-up, he wasn't compromised!" A grizzled man Sam recognised as the CO of Dean's SG team was replying with palpable frustration.
"It's not a goa'uld," Jon interjected. "Sam, wait –"
He dodged around Jon, pushing through the gaggle of soldiers until he could see the situation clearly.
The creature possessing Dean had his arms loosely wound around the nurse's waist and shoulders, using her as a body shield. Despite the light grip, however, the petite woman wasn't struggling or attempting to escape. She wasn't doing much of anything; her open eyes were clouded and unseeing, her body still and relaxed. She was evidently under some sort of trance.
Azazel caught sight of him, his lips stretching in a parody of Dean's usual grin. "Sammy, my boy! What a chase you and your family led me on!"
"Get out of Dean," he said furiously.
"Now, Sammy, why would I want to do that after I've spent years finding you?" The demon laughed, a sound which reverberated around the metal walls, echoing eerily. "I have to congratulate you on a most incredible hidey-hole. I've only been here less than half a day, and already I see the endless potential here…"
It was utterly revolting to see sickly yellow eyes staring out from a familiar face. "Let the woman go, she's got nothing to do with this."
"Oh, Sammy, my dear Sammy. You mistake me for a compassionate soul." Azazel smiled darkly, eyes flashing. The soldiers around him tensed, fingers twitching on triggers, only backing off at Jack's hissed Hold your fire, hold your fire!
Fear and desperation clawed at his insides despite his best efforts. Sam searched Dean's face, looking for any sign of his brother, but all the emotions and expressions there were completely foreign; malicious ridicule and cruel mockery did not belong on those features. "Then what do you want?"
"I want a lot of things, my boy." Azazel smiled again, wide and nauseating. "But right now I'll settle for the Colt in your pocket."
His hand froze around the hidden Colt he had been gripping. "I don't know what you're talking about."
The demon chuckled, amused. "You need to work on your lying skills, Sammy. I can see right through you."
As Azazel finished his words, he looked directly into Sam's eyes, yellow meeting brown.
He knew what was happening; on some level, he had expected this. They had all expected this. He was sixteen the first time he experienced a splitting headache that left him with echoing afterimages; that night after confiding in Dean, his brother and father had sat him down to tell him everything, Jon listening grimly at the side. Afterwards, Sam learnt meditation techniques from Teal'c, while Dad endured a tongue-lashing from Missouri to ask the psychic for help. His powers weren't natural, but they were part of him, and if there was one thing the Winchesters were good at, it was making the most of what they had, whether good or bad.
Anticipating this didn't make it any easier as a dark haze settled over his mind. A soft voice crooned in his head, coaxing, murmuring at him to give in, just give in, everything will be so much better if you just stop fighting. The haze crept in, winding into the crevices of his self, warm and cajoling. It was so tempting to just fall into the abyss beckoning to him.
Let me in, and you can have everything. You're special, so special, and you can have unlimited power at your fingertips. Just let me in, Sammy…
Except there was a steady, reassuring hand settling on his back, firm and supportive. And the Sammy was all wrong, because only his family got to call him that, and the voice wasn't family.
Sam shoved back, breaking the thrall and shaking off the darkness twisting around him.
"Nice try," he rasped. He refocused on his surroundings, letting the light press of Jon's hand calm and ground him, soaking in the feeling of family and support and not being alone.
Instead of displeasure at his failure, Azazel looked delighted.
"This is more than I expected, child, you've been practising! You're making things so much easier for me later on!"
"There's no later on, bastard!"
"Oh, Sammy, when are you going to learn that you're never going to win? You and your family can fight all you want, but this is bigger than just you and me, kiddo; we are always going to walk down this path, no matter what, when and how."
Sam felt more than saw his dad's arrival on the scene.
"Azazel, you son of a bitch!"
"Finally here to see the show, John?" Sam could hear the mocking smile in Azazel's tone, but he didn't look up to witness it, too busy watching the woman still being held by the demon. "I never thought you had it in you to just give up. I profess I'm disappointed..."
He couldn't go against Azazel head-on, he knew that much from their brief mental tangle. The demon was much too strong. But there was another option here. Sam knew he would be spending hours with Teal'c after this if it worked and apologising profusely, but this was the only possible solution now.
"...after all, I thought you loved your wife."
Taking advantage of Azazel's preoccupation with his father, Sam breathed out, concentrated, and with all of his strength, pushed at the mind of the nurse cradled against the demon.
Drop.
It felt like breaking through metal chains with his bare hands, but they did break. The woman slid out of Azazel's loose grip, dropping to the ground and leaving the demon exposed.
In one smooth motion, Sam drew the Colt out and shot his brother in the right shoulder.
For a frozen moment, nothing happened. Then time seemed to speed up, Dean's body convulsing as blue and white lightning arched from the wound, a palm-sized devil's trap highlighted. The vicious grin smoothed away, and the yellow left his eyes, leaving behind familiar hazel-green. The itch at the back of his mind died along with Azazel.
Sam had a brief confused moment to think, that's not supposed to happen, before he locked gazes with his brother, soaking in the awareness in his eyes before Dean collapsed to his knees, coughing.
Two long steps, and Sam was kneeling beside his brother, hugging the hell out of him. Dean would call him a girl later on, but right now he couldn't care less. Another pair of arms enveloped them both – Dad.
The rising elation as it sunk in that Dean was alive, that the demon who had plagued the Winchesters for so many years was finally dead was cut short, when he finally realised that Dean hadn't stopped coughing. He drew back to stare at his brother, who leaned forward on his left arm and kept coughing, eyes screwed tightly shut.
"Son? Dean? Are you alright?" Their dad's worried voice held that thin edge of panic.
"Shit, Sam, look at his shoulder." Jon appeared next to them, frazzled.
Sam moved his eyes from Dean's face to his uninjured shoulder, where the edge of a marking peeked out from under his shirt. He blocked everything out, blocked out his dad yelling for the med team, blocked out Jon trying to talk to Dean, blocked out all the other random soldiers running around, and reached to push back Dean's collar. Symbols and sigils drawn with some kind of red substance marked his shoulder, running down to Dean's chest.
Sam barely noticed the medical team's arrival, mentally translating what he could see of the symbols. Souls. Binding. Death.
It was a very bad combination, and the feeling of dread only ratcheted up in intensity when Dean stopped coughing, and instead started fighting for breath, chest heaving.
Numbly, he reached for his big brother, to do something, to do anything, but he was hauled off his feet and backwards by two faceless Marines.
"Sir, you need to let the med team do their job." Out of the corner of his eye, he could see other Marines similarly holding his dad and Jon back.
"No, you don't understand, that's my brother –" his protests fell on deaf ears. He managed to move a few steps towards the huddle of people around his brother before the soldiers dug in their feet and tightened their grip.
"– doesn't make sense, it's a gunshot wound –"
"– nowhere near his heart or lungs, shouldn't be having this much trouble breathing –"
"– shock?"
Sam didn't remember the trip to the Infirmary, but he found himself pacing outside the room Dean and the doctors had disappeared into, his dad and Jon standing near him, faces drawn white with fear.
Dean would be fine. Dean had always been fine. He had been thrown into walls by ghosts, cursed by witches, shot by aliens, and walked away to tell the tale. Dean was his big brother, always there hovering over his shoulder being annoyingly protective. Even when they had been separated, Sam at Stanford and Dean at the base, he had found new and inventive ways to hover, the least of which manipulating Jon into studying at Stanford as well.
A rational part of Sam's mind repeatedly replayed the last image he had glimpsed of Dean before the nurses had firmly pushed him outside. Dean, blood streaming from his right shoulder, mouth open and straining to draw oxygen into lungs that refused to function, hands scrabbling uselessly in the air. Face slowly turning blue as his body illogically shut down on him.
Sam viciously told that part of his mind to shut up.
It felt like hours before the door to the emergency room opened and Dr Frasier stepped out, quickly shutting the door behind her. The three of them descended on her, and Sam felt ice spread through his veins at the doctor's expression.
"We tried everything we could think of. I'm so sorry. He's gone."