Chapter 10: I Haven't Slept Since Summer

Previously:

He frowned when the heavenly creature didn't even see it coming and promptly fell to the floor because of it. Twitching in pain.

Now:

Sam was freaking out. The blood in his veins was darkening, adding color to his skin. Black, it appeared to be turning black. Demon black.

Flashes were still being broadcast into his mind albeit at a much less intensive pace. His own memories this time, his brain supplied, though he wished it hadn't. Knowledge meant understanding of where the memories came from. He remembered a panic room. He remembered Bobby and Dean, but he also remembered Lucifer.

His brother had told him that it took about a day for Castiel to dig him out of the Cage, but his memories stretched farther than that. He remembered days.

Weeks.

Torture at the hands of Lucifer who thought he'd get to play with Sam for the rest of eternity and Sam who'd thought the same. The notion that the Devil hadn't had eternity, but rather a few weeks to torture his pony didn't comfort Sam like it should've. He remembered the preliminary acts of "pleasure" Lucifer wrought from afflicting physical and emotional pain on him. He remembered them very well.

Castiel had warned him the memories might return, but this far they had just been vague impressions when faced with a certain view or smell. Nothing this…vivid. He remembered having his clothes ripped off and long claws gripping onto his skin as something whined in reverie. He remembered the sound human skin made when it was flayed. He remembered the sensation of being forced to his kneel naked and put on display for all the demons of Hell.

It was surfacing and the rational part of him realized the danger of falling into those memories. Weeks' worth of pain, humiliation and longing had to be forcibly pushed back with tremulous control though the memories began to wane like a polished dream only seconds after remembering them.

The sensations were forced back and left him staring at hands and wrists with black veins beneath white skin. He'd had a tan when they left Earth. That seemed to have vanished and in its place was a pale, vaguely human thing with black veins and a twitching angel by its side.

In that moment, so rudderless, Sam almost longed for the structure of Hell. He longed for Dean, for Dad and days long since past when John would yell at his sons to run faster or protect their family above all. He vaguely remembered some form of structure. Of comfort.

He looked up towards the exit of his newest prison and wondered where his brother was.

Dean had no idea where the hell he was. Everything was the same beige and it all smelled like chalk powder for some reason. Made his sinuses itch.

He had slowed his pace, but not out of exhaustion, in fact he felt more alive than he had in a long time. Fingers tingling, feet itching to move, muscles tense in anticipation. No, he stopped because he couldn't quite decide what was more disconcerting: his sudden "up" in physical stamina or the fact that his head and stomach were swimming like he was about to faceplant.

But, as an irrational male of the twenty-first century, he decided to focus on trying out his budding superpower first. He moved up to a pillar and gave it a tap, looked up and tried to see the top. Gave it another, slightly harder jab when he hardly felt a sting. It was about eight feet in diameter, he figured. Didn't sway or appear as if any outside force could ever really do anything to dent it. A little love-tap wouldn't hurt.

So he curled his fist and punched into the granite and it struck him for a millisecond that it might not be a good idea, but as his intact fist pounded through rock and ripped a piece of the pillar loose he decided that bad ideas were a thing of the past.

He looked at his fist and at the granite chunk on the floor and a blossoming sense of control began to take hold. A dangerous feeling of invincibility.

His smile spread and he began laughing. Lightly at first, but then it was like something snapped and he fell into hysterics. It was amazing! This complete sense of punched again and again, knocking chunks of rock loose.

His knuckles barely stung and whatever pain he felt was gone seconds after he realized it was there. He wasn't tired because he didn't want to be tired and he wasn't weak because he didn't want to be weak. He bent over in a wide grin and reared back, but stopped instantly when his eyes caught something previously missed. When he accidentally looked up and noticed, for the first time, that the sky was visible through the beige mist. Though, even for how high up it was, it still wasn't a sky like any he'd seen before.

Instead of empty ether he could see the underbelly of a massive, limestone dome. Dulled carvings crisscrossed the inside of the voussoir, from springer to keystone. It was huge, Dean noted. It didn't just fill up the "room" he had stopped in, but it continued on. It was so wide that he couldn't see the pillars that supported it at each end and so high that he couldn't have guessed his own size in comparison had he been next to it.

It was like looking at a mountain from its base, he realized, and stopped moving completely.

He was in a hall. Someone's castle. A castle that appeared to be very, very empty as he looked around. Perhaps it was in need of someone to fill it? Perhaps there was an even greater world outside?

Maybe it just needs someone to find it, was his last thought before he once again started running.

The angel inside Jimmy was vaguely aware of moving. The usual control it felt over its human's extremities was almost completely gone. It could hardly even blink, let alone lift a hand to strike the stupid human that currently controlled it.

Sam Winchester, the Lucifer-sword, was walking two steps in front of it, seemingly without a care in the world. He kept looking from left to right even though there was nothing but great open, empty space.

Or, almost empty.

The angel sensed a pleasant humming in the air and wondered if it was this place or perhaps an aftereffect of its human companion's new power surge. It leaned more towards it being a product of their surroundings, because there was something about this place.

It was buzzing with something, but the angel couldn't determine what despite the fact that its thousand year old memories were all working towards the same conclusion. It just couldn't put words to the feeling yet.

As it studied Sam Winchester from behind it realized that it had perhaps been more foolish than initially suspected. Because it was beginning to realize that the allure of this place was perhaps not so harmless; a feeling of rising and all-consuming certainty that whatever had affected the human, making him appear calm and rational one moment only to explode the next, was not something intended, yet something utterly unavoidable.

And it realized – with dead certainty – that humans had absolutely no place here.

Denna looked at the pool where there was carnage before. All the blood had slowly drawn to the center and gathered in black ooze. Everything in her screamed to retreat even though the entire library had gone dead silent after the gateway opened and nothing appeared to be waiting to leap out of the shadows.

If she ignored everything she could almost imagine it was normal, perhaps even foster hope, at the sight of a foreign world. Perhaps this world had served its purpose and needed to be discarded.

She studied Sonner and the rest of their psychics with rising determination. She nodded to herself, it's going to be alright. Everything was going to be just fine. Better even. She was going to get out of her restraints and deliver them all from this horrible world, into a new one. One full of hope and peace.

She'd be honored and remembered as the Bringer of Light in a time of darkness.

She smiled when she caught Sonner's eye. He looked deranged, but that wasn't necessarily bad. She would need people to take risks in her new world and those people only had to be able to follow orders. "Adam?" He looked up, practically drooling. "Can you get us out of here?"

"I can-" a woman called further back.

"Who's here?" Denna tried to twist her neck and look behind her at the others captured, but couldn't completely.

"Soledad,"

She instantly remembered a young girl with the power to move objects. A power so finely honed that she didn't have to look at the things she shifted. A psychokinetic they called her. "Very good, Soledad. Can you get all of the psychics?"

"Hey-" someone called, interrupted by another: "What?"

Denna didn't bother responding to the humans on their right. The men and women who hunted her kind simply because their ancestors had done the same. She had no inclination to help them escape. Their binds or otherwise.

"I think so," Soledad called back and suddenly the restraints on all the psychics' wrists fell away as one. Most rose to their feet instantly and made to leave the room, presumably looking for any surviving children. Some reunited with long bereft friends or lovers while a few of them simply stood and looked at either Denna or Adam for directions. "My friends," she began. "Look," She pointed to the black pool. "Look at our salvation."

This made all of the remaining pause and turn to her, some in disbelief and others in quiet curiosity.

"This world has been nothing but unkind to us all our lives," She looked around at the faces of her friends and tried for a soft smile. "All our lives we have been hunted," The smile vanished. "Like animals."

"What are you doing?" one of the hunters asked, suddenly worried.

"They think we're the animals… When they are the ones… raging like stupid dogs and living in squalor!" She pointed a finger at the man who had spoken up. Some still looked worried and the sight warmed her heart. They were worried that she would ask them to rip into the humans after the carnage they had all just witnessed. "But we're nothing like them," Her smile returned and she looked over her flock. "We deserve nothing they give us," As she looked around she saw more and more men and women following closely, watching with rapt attention to see what she would next suggest. "We deserve better."

She turned to the black pool and took a few steps closer.

"What're-" One of her men darted forward, but stopped with a nervous glance at the pool.

"This," She gestured and turned to her followers. "This will lead us home."

"No, it's DEATH!" one of the humans roared from his perched position, but Denna ignored him and stared calmly at her disciples. He kept roaring and calling at them, joined by a few others, but Denna had her kind enthralled.

"Are the very best of nurturing mothers not the fiercest of predators?" She looked around, challenging her charges to speak up. "Did the very fiercest of angels not protect the Treein the sacred GARDEN?" she thundered and reached into their minds and hearts like she had all these years, she reached in and plucked out their fear and loneliness, their desire to run or cower.

She reached in and ripped it all out, leaving only devotion.

"Would you not die for peace!" She ripped it all out and left them hollow and searching for comfort with nothing to prove it except her own pleasure. She scarred them and looked at the remains with satisfaction, feeling filled to the brim with their love and their trust.

Feeling an instant like the world rotated only for her.

Screw the retrieval, she thought; her previous notion for Grace to reach in and try to retrieve their two fallen heroes. They would dive in after them and bury Sam and Dean's bodies in the new holy ground, Winchester or no. The two men had involuntarily opened the door to Paradise and Denna would be remembered as the savior who erected monuments in their honor.

Domes and pillars worthy of kings.

She took a step backwards, closer to the shore and held out a hand for them. "Will you not follow me?" She smiled and sighed. "And take what is rightfully yours?"

TBC

AN: ...So. Denna's gone insane.