Author's Note: *punches canonical soul theory in the face* it's my fanfic and I'll do what I want to!


Chapter 7

Counting Bodies Like Sheep to the Rhythm of the War Drums

"Any progress, Bobby?"

The old hunter looks up in irritation as Sam strides back into the room. "I'm trying to read ancient Hebrew that's handwritten on equally ancient paper. What do you think?"

"Well you'd better read faster, cause Dean's getting worse." Sam collapses into the chair by Bobby's desk and rakes his hair back from his face. "His wrist isn't sprained anymore."

"The hell does that mean?"

"He says the leviathan fixed it. And I checked; it's not in his head. His arm is perfectly fine."

"Son of a bitch." Bobby drops the book and sits back, face drawn and pale.

"How could they even do that? Cas couldn't heal people from far away, and he was a damn angel!"

"It's something to do with his soul, Sam. It has to be." Bobby frowns at the book in irritation, then glances sharply at Sam. "You tie him back up?"

"Yeah."

"Good. Look, boy," Bobby adds when Sam glares at him. "I'm tryin' to help Dean just as much as you are, but we've got to be careful too. We don't know what they can do, and if Dean runs off somewhere because he's out of his mind, or comes after one of us—"

"Dean wouldn't do that, Bobby!" Sam protests angrily, and the old hunter raises his hands in surrender.

"I'm not gonna argue with you, Sam. Just… leave me alone so I can keep working on this damn translation, all right?"

"Fine." Sam sits in silence for a few minutes, until his fidgeting drives Bobby over the edge and the older man banishes him from the living room. He paces the house for a while before going back into the basement and looking in on Dean. His brother is sleeping, looking peaceful for once, and Sam breathes a sigh of relief. Part of his mind reminds him that Dean didn't want to sleep, but Sam ignores it. He's not drugged or anything, and Dean really does need the rest. Maybe it will help him tighten his shaky grasp on reality. Or maybe it will just make him worse. Come to think of it, Sam could probably do with some rest himself. Parts of the room keep wavering and fading to the horribly familiar walls of Lucifer's cage for a few seconds before turning back into Bobby's basement.

"Sam?" Bobby's voice filters down the stairs, interrupting his brooding. "I think I might have somethin'. Come up here a minute." Hastily, Sam ascends, praying that whatever Bobby's found isn't a dead end.

}{

Dean's nightmares get worse the longer he sleeps, but he can't wake up. Invisible teeth tear into him while inhuman voices chant over him in a language that hurts his ears. He is trapped somewhere small, cold, and dark, drowning in blood and black ooze, but the walls are soft and pliant when he strikes out at them, bending but never breaking. He can't get free.

Abruptly his prison convulses, spilling him onto a hard, smooth surface. As he scrambles to his feet he realizes that there's faint light now, radiating from somewhere he can't find. It's enough for Dean to see the nothingness around him; hard, featureless ground merging into blank, uniform sky, and all of it a strange non-color that he can't find words for. The void is not entirely consistent though; the floor curves downwards off to his right and rises to his left. Tentatively, every sense pricked for the return of Leviathan or some new terror, Dean follows the slope down.

At the bottom of the basin there is a small table with two chairs placed opposite each other. Guided by some inner prompting, Dean approaches cautiously and takes one. Although he scrapes it across the floor, there is no sound. Dean realizes then that there is no sound anywhere, not even a rush of air as he sucks in another nervous breath.

Some part of Dean is on red alert, telling him to stand up and run away, back up the slope and on and on until he's as high up as he can go. Most of him is full of a cool complacency that leeches the strength from his legs, and he just sits there. When he glances over his shoulder, the slope has grown steeper behind him, so that if he tried to leave he would need to climb an almost vertical cliff with no hand or footholds. Alarm prickles in the back of his mind, but all he does is turn his head to face front again and wait for the other chair to be filled.

"iT ToOk a gREaT dEaL oF EFfoRt tO bRIng YoU heRE, DeAn." Leviathan, looking more at home in Cas's body than ever, approach the other side of the table. Dean watches calmly as the monsters pull out the other chair and sit, planting their elbows on the table and resting their chin on laced fingers to observe him.

"Where are we?" Dean is surprised that he can speak, but the words are there, and just as calm as his body.

"YouR cENteR," Leviathan purr, still examining Dean like scientists observing a new experiment. A tremor runs through him, and he remembers Cas's words. Don't let them bring you here again. He turns again to gauge the mountain behind him, the urge to run almost strong enough to get him to his feet. But something cold and rubbery wraps around his waist, securing him to the chair, and he turns to see Leviathan still watching, their eyes narrowed in irritation now. Dean knows that if he were to look at their legs, Leviathan wouldn't look like Cas anymore, but the thick, dark tentacle snaking from under the table and holding him down convinces him that he doesn't need to see that. His thoughts are sluggish, all his alarm drowning in whatever impulse made him sit here in the first place. He shakes his head slowly, trying to clear it, and Leviathan's face darkens further.

"yOU cAN't LEaVe, dEAn. yOu DOn't wANt To, aNd wE wOUlDn't lET YoU iF YOu dID." Their words settle on Dean's limbs like chains, and Dean nods dumbly, no longer trying to run. There is no escape, he knows that. And besides, this is where he needs to be. He relaxes further into the chair, although a tear that he had no intention of crying slides down his cheek. Leviathan reach across the table and wipe it off his cheek with a small smirk.

"dOn'T CRy, hUnTEr; wE hAVe gOoD NEws. wE'Ve dIGesTEd EnoUgH oF THe bIRdiE To kNoW What tO Do wItH YOu." That sentence sends a spike of horror through Dean, and he starts shaking his head again. The limb around his stomach tightens warningly, and against his better judgement he reaches down to try and pull it off.

"sTOp It," Leviathan order, taking his face in their hands. "STop fIgHTinG uS." Distractedly, Dean realizes that the table has vanished, along with Leviathan's chair. Cas's coat is hanging shut as they stand and lean towards him, hiding them from view except for the few long tentacles wavering around Dean. For a moment he thinks of Ursula from the Little Mermaid, and it makes him giggle nervously. They bend down and press a cold kiss to his cheek, and he lets his hands fall to his side. He's so tired, and something deep inside him aches. Still, pain is better than nothing.

"ArE yOu REadY, dEAn?" they purr, and Dean blinks slowly at them, wanting to question them but too weary to speak. They seem to sense his confusion though, because they smile down at him reassuringly. The sight of their many, many teeth doesn't even bother Dean. "iT wiLl AlL Be OvER soOn," Leviathan promise, reaching inside Cas's jacket to withdraw a familiar ball of light. They hold his soul in front of them, inches from Dean's face, and let him look at it. He shifts, wondering if he should lean forward and touch it, but Leviathan press him back with their dark tentacles and so he just waits.

"GoOD." With their other hand, Leviathan reach up and pluck something from between their teeth. It's dark and wispy, a spider web made of charcoal threads, and the sight of it would make Dean shift uncomfortably if he wasn't so lethargic. "a BIt oF RUinEd GraCE fROm ThE bIRdiE." Leviathan seem to be enjoying dragging this out, and they hold the thing out for Dean to inspect. It feels evil, and he turns his face away from it, making the monsters chuckle. "dON't YoU lIkE It, DEan?"

Without waiting for an answer that Dean is incapable of giving, they wrap the dead-looking shroud around his soul tightly and carefully, then let it go. The orb hovers in front of Dean, glowing interior flaring brightly against the grey web it's trapped within. Dean shudders as he feels the pain inside sharpening into something terrifying. Despite his exhaustion, despite the cloudiness in his mind that keeps telling him that it's good for him to be here, he starts to claw at the limbs holding him down, one hand reaching for his soul. Leviathan circle to his side and catch his hands in theirs. The little strength that Dean's found isn't nearly enough to fight them off.

His soul is sparking now; something in it trying to fight the corrosion, and Dean remembers Leviathan telling him how Cas used his own Grace to stitch him up after Hell. For a moment it looks like the pure Grace inside his soul is winning, but then the light starts to flicker and fade, and Dean whines under his breath as his thoughts start to slip sideways. The agony is huge and staggering, breaking him, remind him of Hell. Even as the thought crosses his mind, Dean remembers the Leviathan's plan for him, to break his soul back open. Apparently, they found out how to do it without Cas' compliance.

The corrupted Grace is chewing through Dean's soul, and he can barely see anymore. All of his thoughts are jumbled together, and he doesn't remember where he is. Hell? No, Cas saved him. But leviathan were going to put him back. No, they can't do that. Or can they? Cas could, and they have Cas, and maybe they'd broken him after all, and—

Dean's thoughts lose their last shred of coherency as the last of Castiel's Grace is consumed and his soul falls to pieces again. Everything hurts; his body, his mind, and especially his soul. It doesn't matter if he's really in Hell again, although he thinks he is. It feels like Hell, as though he had never left, as though he were still pinned to the rack, right where Alistair wanted him. It's been minutes. It's been years. Cas will save him like before. No one is ever going to save him. Dean's going to break again. He's already broken. He just needs the pain to stop.

Anything. Anything for the pain to stop. Alistair is dead. No, he isn't, and in a moment he's going to come ask Dean to get off the rack and Dean is going to say yes because he can't take it anymore.

"We'rE gOInG tO mAKe YoU iNtO a NEw CReaTurE DEan." The words may as well be Alistairs, but the voice isn't. Alistair is dead. Alistair is very much alive and he's going to make Dean an offer any moment now. Dean's going to say yes. "dO YoU aCcEPt oUR hELp, dEAn? COnseNt iS vITal."

Dean's nodding before the voice stops. It's not Alistair, but their words sound like an offer, and after thirty years, Dean will say anything. Anything to be free even if he damns himself. "Yes." Dean thinks he heard someone scream his name just before he spoke, but it doesn't matter. He said it. It's over.

"goOd."

Something wraps around his body, through his mind, into his soul, something cold and sticky that chokes Dean and numbs the pain away, numbs his mind until there's nothing left but the constant loop of make it stop, make it stop, make it stop that's been playing in his head for thirty seconds or thirty years, or just for too damn long. Then that fades too and he's totally empty, waiting for something to tell him who he is. Leviathan whisper in his ear and their words are the only thing left to him, so he drinks them down like poison.

}{

"Kilbit?"

"That's what it says. It's apparently a kind of vampire fish that attaches to the gills of a bigger fish and kills it." Bobby sits back from his neatly scribbled notes, weariness written across his face. "And according to this, it's the only thing Leviathan are afraid of."

"Afraid of?" Sam scrubs a hand over his face. "'Afraid of' is a lot different than 'vulnerable to', Bobby."

"It's all we've got, though. You just stay up here and help me figure out what it is and where we can get it, all right?"

"Yeah, okay." Sam rubs his face again, doing his best to ignore the way the room is changing around him, like all the colors are washing out into reds and blacks. He'll be fine, he tells himself; it's almost like when he used to get Azazel's visions, after all, except now he's seeing the past instead of the future. Sam can handle it until there's time to actually deal with the hallucinations. It's not like they're getting worse or anything.

"Sam…"

He jerks his head up, blinking. "What? Sorry, Bobby, I was just thinking."

"I didn't say anything, boy." The old hunter squints at Sam in concern. "You feeling okay?"

Sam feels his face freeze for a moment before he forces it into a tightly reassuring smile."Yeah, just. I'm tired. I'm gonna go down to wake Dean up and check on him, then I'll come help you research." Sam hurries out of the room before Bobby can ask any more questions.

"Sam?"

Now that he's paying attention, he knows the voice isn't Bobby's anyway.

"Why are you ignoring me?"

Like the bloody wallpaper that isn't really peeling off the walls around him, Sam pushes the voice out of his awareness, focusing on taking deep breaths. He's fine. He's out of the Cage, and the only other people in the house are Dean and Bobby. He knows what's real and what isn't.

"Oh, Sam. I wouldn't be so sure of that."