Chapter 7: We Need To Talk About Dean

Sam was slumped across the table in the bunker's library with half a bottle of whiskey still clasped in his sleeping hand when the broken radio suddenly lit up and poured a length of static into the previously silent room.

"Sam?" croaked the radio, the voice broken and distorted.

With a long, nasally inhale, Sam jerked awake, the bottle startling as his hand shot out in a half-punch. He looked around, bleary eyed. "Dean?"

It took him a moment to remember the black eyes.

He took another swig of whiskey, wishing the drink could burn away that unnatural memory, not just his throat.

"Sam?"

Sam stiffened, instantly alert. For the first time, he became aware of the static fizzling from the radio behind him. Slowly, cautiously, he rose from his seat and approached the radio he'd tried and failed to coax into life all those months ago. His hand reached automatically for his handgun.

"Hello?" he answered warily.

"Sam? Can you hear me?"

He frowned as he recognized the voice hidden by the radio's crackling. "Cas?"

"Yes, it's me," came the slightly clearer reply. Sam thought he heard a relieved sigh. "I wasn't sure this would work backwards. I'm glad it does."

"What works backwards? What are you – why are you in my radio?"

There was a short, and, Sam was sure, confused pause before Cas spoke again. "I-I'm not in your radio."

Shaking his head and feeling the first tiny glimmer of amusement in days, Sam pulled his chair over to the old wireless and sat down, resting the whiskey bottle on one knee and the gun on the other.

"It's good to hear from you, Cas. I thought you might be dead."

The static slowly decreased to background level, as though Castiel had tuned it to better reach Sam's station. "I was glad to hear your prayer, too, Sam. I, uhm ... Metatron told me about – about Dean."

A dark shadow of twisted pain and fear rippled across Sam's chest. He cleared his throat, hoping in vain it would clear the weight from his heart, too. It didn't. "He, uhm ... he told you Dean was dead?"

"Yes. I'm so sorry, Sam. I should have - should've found the Tablet sooner. And I'm sorry I can't come to you. I swear, if Heaven were safe, I'd be with you as fast as my wi- as a car could bring me, but even so, Sam." Cas's voice was suddenly thicker, as though with unshed tears. "I can't bring him back. I'm sorry, my Grace –"

"Dean isn't dead."

There was a stunned silence. "What?"

"Dean's alive, Cas." Or at least, part of him was.

There was a long pause as Cas digested this.

"What did you do, Sam?"

He snorted. "Nothing. Crowley did," he sneered, his tongue twisting around the hated name as though trying to avoid touching it.

"What happened? Did you make a deal? Did –"

"Dean's a demon, Cas."

Silence filled the bunker. Even the low-level static still seeping from the radio was dwarfed by the enormity of Sam's words, as though the entire bunker was as shocked as Sam had been. It lengthened and thickened and pressed down on Sam's ears, on his mind, as his words seemed to simply hang there, invisible, bombarding him with the lack of the one voice he longed to hear say how stupid the very thought of Dean Winchester being a goddamn demon was.

"No." Though the single syllable was barely whispered, it rang through the emptiness in the air like a gunshot.

"Yes." Louder. A grenade exploding.

"He – he's a –" Tentative shots, drawing fire.

"He's a demon." Hiroshima was a soap bubble bursting compared to this.

Sam heard a muffled crash. He guessed Cas had just thrown a chair or something across the room. Sounded like a good idea, actually. Too tired to stand up, Sam settled for another, longer pull on the bottle instead.

"DAMMIT!" Cas bellowed suddenly into the silence. Sam jumped, automatically fumbling for the volume control before he realised that was probably a stupid idea. "DAMMIT, DEAN!" Cas roared again, his voice dripping with the same rage that was coiled so tightly around Sam's heart, protecting it from the grief and confusion and fear and helplessness he couldn't afford to feel.

He took another pull.

"Dammit," Cas whispered, the energy gone from his voice. "I should have known. I should have remembered. The Mark."

"Yeah," Sam replied, anger clipping the syllable into a brief staccato. "That's what Crowley said too."

"Crowley?"

In short, painful sentences, using as few words as possible, Sam recounted what had happened since he, Cas and Gadreel had parted ways in their attempt to stop Metatron.

"Oh, Sam," Cas whispered, and Sam knew he, too, was caught in an ocean of pain, "I'm so sorry."

Rubbing the back of his neck for no real reason, Sam replied, rather more gruffly than he'd intended. "'S not your fault, Cas."

"If I had found the Tablet –"

"Doesn't matter."

"How?"

Sam chuckled humourlessly. "This would have happened no matter what we'd have done. It's just ... our lives. A big boss battle like this – with Heaven and Earth in the balance, of course one of us was gonna die." He paused, remembering Dean's single-minded disregard for the dangers of the task. I'm gonna take my shot, for better or worse. No matter the consequences.

No matter the consequences.

Sam closed his eyes against the tsunami of hurt welling up inside him. Oh Dean.

"What are we gonna do, Cas?" His voice was so low, he wondered if Cas could even hear him.

"I ... don't know. Dean is ... Dean is so much worse than dead. And we can't help him."

Sam's head shot up, his brow furrowing. "The hell we can't!"

"What?"

"I'm going to save Dean, Cas," he said slowly, deliberately, as though pointing out an overtly obvious fact to someone not only slow but also dense and impatient.

"Sam. Dean cannot be saved."

The words fell heavily from the radio's speaker, and Sam stared at it as though it – as though Cas – had gone mad.

"Yes, he can," he argued, injecting the classic Winchester stubbornness into his tone. "All I need is help finding him, and I'll just use the Demon Cure I used on Crowley for the Trials, and he'll –"

"No, Sam." Cas's voice was too calm, too even. He sounded like a parent explaining to an upset child that Santa Claus was a myth.

"What do you mean 'no'?" Sam's eyebrows mashed together. "You mean you won't help me?"

"Of course not. I mean no, you're wrong. The Demon Cure will not work on Dean. He's not just a demon."

Sam's arms flew up in an exasperated whoosh. "What the hell does that even mean! His eyes were black, he vanished into thin air – I know a goddamn demon when I see one, Cas!"

Castiel matched Sam's angry tone with a calm, patient one. "A normal demon is a soul that has, for some reason or other, come to Hell. There it is tortured until it breaks, until it turns –"

"I know, Cas." His voice was calmer but no less impatient.

"Well, then you know Dean isn't one of them. His soul was turned while he still lived – that was the beginnings of it. I should have realised, should have remembered ..." There was a pause as Cas lost himself briefly in whatever memories he'd forgotten. "The Mark of Cain starting eroding his humanity the second it burned itself into his skin. By itself, it can't do much; it and the Blade are most powerful together, and it's the Blade – the first murder weapon – that truly conquers the soul. I think," Cas added, uncertainly. "There's only one other person in the history of the universe who's ever had them both."

"Cain," Sam growled.

"Yes. And his descent into devilry was far quicker than Dean's. But from the moment Dean first killed using the Blade, in truth, he was lost."

Sam shifted uncomfortably at the mention of 'lost'. Dean wasn't lost, not truly. He could still be found. He could still be saved. Sam would see to it. He would bring his brother back if it killed him.

"So," Cas continued, sounding as though the words were dry and cumbersome to speak. "Killing Abaddon, being killed" – he swallowed – "it was the final straw. When you die, before your soul can ... move on, there's a time – sometimes just a few nanoseconds, sometimes hours – during which your soul remains in your body, until either a Reaper comes, or the connection – which is extremely tenuous after the heart stops beating – is broken. But in this time, the soul is weak. That's why young ghosts can never interact with the physical world. They're utterly drained. While Dean's soul was in such a weak state, it would be easy for the Mark to ... bleed out, and fill his soul." He paused. "Kind of like the transition from human to vampire. Unstoppable. And permanent."

"But being a vampire isn't permanent – not if you get to them before they drink human blood." Sam was grasping at hairs and he knew it.

"Well, yes. But for Dean ... this change is permanent."

Sam's anger reignited. "But how can you know that! The Demon Cure was only invented in the nineteen fifties! Cain was already in hiding, no one knew where he was, and anyone who would want to save him was dead, so how can you know if it wouldn't work on him?"

"Because," Cas said, anger rising in his voice in retaliation to Sam's tone. "Cain and Dean are both demons because of the angelpact – because of the Mark. The Mark is the source of their demonization, not Hell. The taint of Hell can – apparently – be washed away with human blood injections, but that will not – cannot – work on them because the taint is still there, still infecting them!

"Even if you were to try it, the best – the best – you could hope for would be a second or two of clarity before the Mark just pours more poison into their souls! It's in control now, Sam. The Mark and the Blade, and whatever fragments of the Dean we knew that survived the process! Which, just FYI" – the voice was sneering now, masking his own hurt with cruelty and mocking – "would be his liking of torture and violence and everything that he hated about himself!"

He stopped, save for the angry huffs of breath that puffed out of the old wireless. Sam was staring at his hands, clasped before him around the neck of the whiskey bottle. When he spoke, his voice was quiet, but deadly with its certainty.

"You're wrong. I'm sorry, Cas, but you're wrong. As long as Dean's alive, as long as I'm alive, there's hope. I've gotta believe that. I mean" – he grinned humourlessly – "Dean got Death to get my soul back from the Pit! He brought me back more times than I wanna think about. You brought him back from Hell." He was frowning again. "There's got to be a way to bring him back. I can't – I can't let him be a demon. He'd rather die than be that." His voice was slowly losing volume until the last words were just a lost-sounding whisper. "I can't leave him like that."

The rage had melted out of Cas's tone now. When he spoke, the words reached out like a comforting hand to hang in the air around Sam's shoulders.

"I know. I know."

"I've gotta try, Cas. I won't just leave him ..." The sentence hung unfinished in the air, the final word, 'again', hovering unsaid between man and machine.

"I know."

"All I've gotta do is find him and bring him to a church."

Tear-filled eyes looked imploringly up at the radio, as though he could see through the yellow-lit display and gaze upon his friend's face.

"Will you help me?"

Castiel hesitated for perhaps one whole second. "Of course I will, Sam. I'm with you till the end. You know that." Sam heard a small smile in the words that felt like a lifeline, and his own lips twitched upwards in a sad approximation of a smile.

"Thanks, Cas."