Author's note: Same POV as last time...Sam first, Dean second in italics. There's one more chapter after this and then an epilogue, but there's a chance I'll be late on the Saturday update as I will have limited internet access. Please bear with me!
It's different, somehow.
Drinking the blood, this time.
It still tastes terrible...pennies and meat...but there's not a sense of rot this time. What there is is a definite sense of Dean.
He feels it as the blood pools over his tongue. An energy, a vivaciousness, a life in it that reminds him of sunny, grassy childhood memories that he doesn't have and that Dean doesn't have, either, sparkling like irrepressible spirit, heavy like burdens that shouldn't be carried, sharp and bitter but sweet like the kind of kindness that cruelty can't kill no matter how hard it tries.
He coughs once, past a sob building in his throat, but he drinks.
Azazel is mercifully silent, watching closely and wordlessly as Sam drinks, his eyes never leaving Sam's face. It's distracting, the intensity of it, it sends uncomfortable shivers down Sam's spine and it makes his skin crawl, but it's not enough to stop him.
Not when he can feel his body beginning to sing with power.
It starts as a tingling in his fingers, almost like the pins-and-needles of a recovering limb that had been asleep. It's not quite pleasant, but not quite painful, either, and it's the promise of things to come.
It spreads up his arms like a thin electrical current, following his veins, and he knows that it's nothing physical. He knows enough about anatomy to know that if this was some chemical that Azazel was pumping into Dean's bloodstream, it wouldn't have had any opportunity to get into Sam's bloodstream yet. This is something else.
Last time, it felt like an electrical storm was caught in his chest: wild and untamed, foreign and awesome. This time, it feels like he is the electrical storm.
This time, it feels right. Like home.
This sensation should make him light-headed. He's being filled with vast stores of power he doesn't have the foggiest idea how to control. He can feel it crawling up his arms and into his core, pooling and collecting behind his ribs, and he can feel himself swelling with it more and more in time to the beating of his heart. But if anything, his perception is clearer than it normally is. He sees everything in bright, sharp, vivid color. He hears sounds from through walls and across distance.
He can hear John and Bobby trying to break the door down, and feels a stab of pity. Azazel fortified every entrance. They won't be able to break the windows, or knock the door down. Not unless Azazel wants them inside.
He can hear Ava huddled by the door, her breathing heavy and irregular, interspersed with the occasional small weeping sound. He can hear her slide farther and farther away, an inch at a time, as she watches him drink.
Maybe strangest of all, he can hear Azazel not breathing in front of him, perfectly still and silent, and it makes him falter for a moment because Dean should be breathing.
As soon as the thought crosses his mind, Azazel inhales a breath deep into Dean's lungs, and Sam continues.
"This will protect you in transit," Azazel says softly. Sam lifts his eyes up to meet Dean's, narrows them. The glare is a token and insignificant act of rebellion when his lips are still pressed against Dean's arm, but it makes him feel a little better. "Hell will want to reject you, or cast you into the pit with the other damned. The blood will protect you. Make you strong enough to determine your own path."
Stop talking.
Azazel continues, regardless of the darkening of Sam's glare that accompanies his thought. "Once we arrive, you will have to stay close to me," he muses. "Hell can be difficult to navigate, especially at first, and there are many factions, some of which aren't as fond of the idea of a mortal boy with the kind of power you have. I can keep you away from them, and handle them if they decide to become a problem."
Stop talking.
"When we arrive, I will present you to the Lords, and you will receive your place, and begin your training," Azazel says, and the fact that Sam's glare isn't burning holes into his eye sockets seems amazing. "Dean will be safe alongside you, and you'll come to understand, in time, why this was necessary. The power you'll hold, Sam..." Azazel breaks off with a half-laugh of wonder, shaking his head, eyes wide. "You have no idea. But soon you'll—"
Stop talking.
Azazel stops talking.
His eyes are wider yet, lips pressed together, and he looks down, as though to find the source of his silence. Then he looks back up at Sam, and Sam recognizes that expression on Dean's face.
He hasn't seen it many times, but it's primal enough that it doesn't matter who's at the reins, it will look the same.
Fear.
Sam lifts his head, and keeps Azazel's gaze. The demon leans back slightly, trepidation written across his features, but Sam shakes his head. "Don't move," he says. Azazel freezes.
The thrill of it washes through Sam's body. The power. He narrows his eyes in thought, and says, "Stand up and then don't move again."
The demon obeys, and Sam stands, too. He sticks his hands in his pockets—the pockets of Dean's hand-me-down jeans, rolled up at the cuffs and belted tight because they're still way too big for him—and he smiles a little bit. He begins to walk around Azazel, and the demon's eyes follow him until he's out of range. "Okay," Sam says quietly, and Azazel flinches. "Okay. Here's what's going to happen. Before we discuss anything else about me going to Hell with you, I have a few questions."
He senses Ava poking her head around the corner, watching him, but doesn't look at her or react. Azazel stammers, "No, this—you can't—you've already—"
"I thought I said to stop talking," Sam orders, and Azazel quiets immediately. Ava lets out a barely-audible gasp, and when Sam turns to her, she freezes, too.
Her eyes are wide and she's shaking. Her heart is racing, he can hear it, and she barely blinks. She doesn't want to let him out of her sight. He knows this. She's frightened of him.
He should feel bad about that. Guilty. Sick.
But he doesn't and he can't make himself, so he turns back to Azazel. "My memories," he says. "I'm missing the first four years of my life. Growing up with Dean and my dad. That was you?"
Azazel glares at him for a second before nodding.
"Give them back," Sam commands.
"I can't," Azazel says. "We didn't take them, we erased them. Couldn't have some pesky psychic uncover them later. Undo all of our work."
"They're gone forever," Sam murmurs, then shakes his head. "Okay. Next question. Dean says that I was taken by demons when I was four. Was he right? You took me, or your goons?"
Azazel shakes his head. "A human who was working for us," he says. "That's why we were able to get to you, even past the salt lines. Your brother and your daddy...so focused on the big bad bump-in-the-nighters that they forget how shitty your own species can be."
Sam stops in front of Azazel, pauses, and then says, "If you talk like that about my brother or my dad again, I'll exorcise you now. Forget the questions, you're going back to Hell."
"You want to know the answers to your questions too badly," Azazel argues. "You won't."
Sam meets his eyes squarely for a long moment. The pus-yellow clouds and undulates over the base of green, and it's getting easier to remember that it's not Dean he's talking to, that Dean's being held prisoner. Held captive, because of Sam.
The thought causes a surge of anger through Sam, and he tightens his right hand into a fist.
Azazel gasps and throws a hand over his throat, another flailing in the air for some purchase. Sam releases the hand, startled, and Azazel sucks in a deep breath, staring in uncomprehending terror at Sam.
Well.
Sam raises his hand, which Azazel follows with his eyes, and he asks, "Why me?"
"Big plans for you, kiddo," Azazel replies, his voice quiet, his eyes never leaving Sam's hand. "They'll have my head if I spill. But it was better if you saw the worst humanity had to offer, so you'd understand, when the time came."
"So you took your golden boy and sold me to a bunch of Hunters, let me get beaten and humiliated and almost killed dozens of times—"
"Why do you think you always scraped out of it?" Azazel interrupts, and Sam stills. "We were watching you, Sammy. Always. We wanted you dark and jaded, not dead."
And it does, in a sudden way, make sense. It sounds right. Because Sam hadn't understood, not really, how he'd always managed to survive. Hell, that last Rawhead that Walt had sent him out as bait for should've killed him. After he'd sprained his ankle he'd been moving way too slow to outrun it, and he wasn't paying nearly enough attention to outmanoeuvre it. He shouldn't be alive.
But thanks to Azazel, or his demons, he is. He owes his life, in part, to the same demons who ruined it. Who took him away from Dean. Who made sure he had no memories of an even halfway normal life, of being loved and wanted, of knowing what it was to be part of a family.
It bothers him.
But not as much as he feels it ought to.
"So why'd you let my dad buy me?" he asks.
Azazel doesn't answer for a second, and Sam flexes his fingers in warning. The demon swallows and says, "It was an oversight. The demon whose duty it was to watch you then was...insufficiently vigilent. And once you were with the Winchesters, it proved difficult to extract you."
"You sent Walt," Sam says.
"We...positioned him in a place where your father would find him," Azazel amends.
"You ruined my life."
Azazel looks at him, then, really looks at him, narrows Dean's eyes and asks, "Were we wrong?"
Sam doesn't say anything.
"Were we wrong? About most of the people you met? Did any one of the Hunters, humanity's protectors, treat you with kindness? Even the ones who didn't own you, did any of them intervene on your behalf? Before Dean, did you know that humans were capable of kindness?"
Sam still doesn't say anything because Luke is in the back of his head, screaming his agreement.
"If you can take Dean with you," Azazel says, his voice low and urgent, "if you could keep him safe, if he could sit at your feet where you can ensure his well-being, what else in the world is worth saving?"
Sam hesitates, then hears breathing behind him. "Ava," he answers.
"Bring her," Azazel replies. "What else."
"Ellen and Jo. Bobby. Missouri. They saved me. Pastor Jim and my dad, they came to help me."
"Sam, if you come with me, you can do with all of them as you see fit," Azazel promises, though he still doesn't move towards Sam. "You can decide."
Sam sits back in the chair that Azazel had forced him into, and rubs his face with his hands. "You've never been big on me deciding things before," he mutters.
"You had to be prepared. For your destiny."
Sam doesn't look up, but stares down at Dean's scuffed boots. "Is it destiny, or my decision? It's one or the other. You can't promise me both."
Azazel hesitates, and Sam springs out of the chair and grabs his arm. It's still bleeding, sluggishly, and though Dean's sleeve is already rolled up to his elbow Sam jerks it up higher and drags Azazel forward with a harsh pull on the arm. He glares up at him and latches back onto the wound, sucking in deep swallows of blood.
"That's enough, Sam," Azazel says, quietly at first, but then louder: "Enough, Sam!"
Sam comes up for air, and turns his eyes to Azazel. He can feel the hairs on his arms standing on end. "Exorcizamus te, omnis immundis spiritus," he intones, and Azazel stiffens, bites back a cry.
"I'll take him with me," Azazel threatens, Dean's features twisted with fury. "I will drag him down to Hell with me."
Sam stops, and Azazel begins to lift the corners of Dean's mouth into a smile, before Sam raises his hand and clenches it into a fist. Azazel begins to choke, falls to his knees, and his yellow eyes are blown wide with panic.
"Don't," Sam says slowly, "ever threaten my brother."
He clenches his fist.
And before he can finish it—before he can figure out what it is he's doing to the demon—Azazel pours out of Dean's mouth, faster and thicker than Sam's seen it before, pours back into his host and disappears.
Sam crashes to his knees in front of his brother, who has crumpled to the ground without the demon controlling him, and pulls Dean's head onto his legs. "Come on, come on," he murmurs, feeling for Dean's pulse and exhaling violently in relief when he finds it. "Wake up, Dean, come on, please."
Dean doesn't, and the panic Sam feels welling up in his chest seems to fill the room. He hears the door finally crash open, hears the Hunters outside pour in, hears Ava say something in a shaky voice and hears them all come to a halt just outside the threshold of the room he's in.
He doesn't care.
Dean doesn't wake up.
Dean feels it every time Sammy hurts Azazel.
It's not pain, not for him, not precisely. It's just a sense of pressure, of panic, of surprise and fear that he gets from Azazel.
It's dismay and horror from himself.
He still can't talk to Sammy, can't beg him to stop, can't tell him that this path he's going down is the wrong one. And even if he could talk, what would he say? What could he tell his brother that would counter what Azazel is saying?
Because Sammy was hurt. Sammy was tortured and made to feel like he deserved it. Sammy was made to feel like he was less than human, unworthy of love or safety or dignity. By humans. Not by monsters; by humans.
So if Sammy wants revenge, Dean can't get behind it, but he can understand it.
Sammy's cold when he's mad. Dean watches all the warmth drain from his eyes as he paces around Azazel, making demands and threats, interrogating the demon that he has total control over. He could exorcise him now, Dean knows. Maybe even kill him. But he doesn't, because he has use for him.
It takes Dean a little while to realize what that feeling pooling in the pit of his stomach is.
It's fear.
He's afraid of Sammy.
It's the last thing he thinks before the grip of whatever Sammy's doing to Azazel takes hold of him after the demon smokes out.
And it's the first thing he thinks when he comes back to.
