Chapter 49
Ain't No Use in Crying
"From the door comes Satan's daughter, and it only goes to show. You know./ There's an angel on my shoulder, in my hand a sword of gold." Led Zepplin
She'd hurt his son, scared him.
She'd shot his brother.
She'd hurt the person he loved, made him scream.
Some of her men were stunned and others were falling from the rafters in pain, blinded by seeing an angel's true form, eyes melted from their skulls. Dean's odds had gotten better, but he really wasn't thinking about that. He was thinking about the best way to take out all of the hurt that Bela had caused on his family on her.
A bullet would do little good on the demon, but it was distraction enough as he fired first at her and then at the sources of the laser lights, though none of them were still on. Things had gotten a little too real for the snipers, or rather, a little too surreal. And even if they shot now, damage had already been done. Johnny had already been attacked, with his own father acting as the tool to cause him pain. Sam was already bleeding, and Cas's body had partially fallen into the flames that surrounded both his partner and his son. Dean knew if he didn't act now, Cas wouldn't have a body to return to, and his son wouldn't be able to escape the fire; he wasn't even old enough to know he was supposed to.
Dean made quick work of the snipers above, with Sam behind him, following suit with his one good arm.
"Get Cas and Johnny!" Dean shouted as he charged across the loading bay at the woman he wanted to make suffer. She was looking at him with fear and even a little surprise. They always underestimated him, even more than they did Sammy. Really, did she expect him to react differently after she attacked three of the four people he cared about most in this world? Did she really think she'd get away from it, from him? Even the ones who had misjudged Dean before had recognized he was a force to be reckoned with if you messed with his family, but it was here, apparently, that Bela miscalculated.
Dean watched as she pulled a switchblade from her pocket, which Dean initially thought was going to be for him, but instead, she moved it toward her own arm. He knew the symbol, remembered when it was burned into Sam's arm. The hell she was getting out of here. Not after what she'd done.
His adrenaline was running, and he was going to kill her. He was going to cut this fucking bitch up in all the ways he hadn't had the guts to do even after ten years in hell. He was going to make her scream and beg and cry, and he was going to love every minute of it. She would ask for mercy, pray for death, but Dean wasn't going to give it to her, not any more than he was going to touch that patch of marked skin. She would stay in this unfortunate woman's body and feel what he was doing to her.
As he drove his shoulder into her, he realized he'd miscalculated just how tall her new meat suit was. It didn't make it a match for a Winchestr out for blood, but it did cause him to fumble for a split second as he took her to the hard cement ground. The knife she'd been holding skittered across the floor and beneath a pallet of unfolded boxes. She hit him hard across the jaw, and he would probably feel it later, since she was so much stronger now as a demon, but he deflected it nearly as well as Cas did a punch.
She saw him pull out Ruby's knife, its blade glinting in the faint light of the too-small windows in the place. She began scrambling at the sight of it, and managed to flip Dean onto his back. She very nearly got the better of him. But she should have kept her mouth shut.
"Poor little boy," she said, both of her hands on the one Dean was using to hold the knife. "Deformed and blind, but don't worry. I'll put him out of his misery as soon as I'm done with you."
"Threatening my son," he said as he rolled them again and placed his other hand at Bela's throat, "is really not a good way to get me to back down."
The pretty face of a woman who couldn't have been more than twenty-two, twenty-three snarled nastily at him. "That won't work on me. Breathing isn't really what I'd call a necessity in here."
"Johnny's fine," Sam shouted over the baby's continued cries for his parents. Dean couldn't see him from this position, couldn't ask if Cas was okay, or if his vessel had survived the fire enough for him to return - because he was coming back. But at least, he knew this: His son was scared but not hurt."
"Fuck you," Dean spat at Bela. "He closed his eyes."
"His eyes were open..." And she turned her attention to Johnny because she obviously didn't believe he could be okay. And that was enough for Dean to finally get the upper hand, pinning her with his blade at her stomach and her hands trapped over her head.
"Oh, the things I'm going to do to you," Dean said, leaning close to her ear. "This knife can kill demons. I know you know that, but were you aware that it hurts a hell of a lot?" he asked as he drew a thin line on one of her arms, making her arch so prettily underneath him in pain. "I think it's worse than Alastair's blade, don't you? I can't really know for sure, not being a demon, so your feedback would be welcomed." He did another, and she cried out again. "If you thought I was cruel before, carving you up until there was nothing left, Bela Talbot, you haven't seen me when I'm angry. And right now? I'm downright pissed." Long, black hair tickled his nose as he hissed, "I'm curious if vivisection hurts more here or in Hell. What do you say we find out?"
"I think someone else can be your guinea pig," Bela said, trying to snap at his cheek, but he was too fast for her, and pulled back in time to see pearly whites snapping shut. He continued to hold her with one hand, moving the blade down for the first cut. He was so lost in his revenge, that he didn't care he had an audience of the two people he never, ever wanted to see him like this.
But then, in an instant, she was gone. He saw the change immediately as her eyes widened in fear and the woman let out a quiet whimper. Dean still held fast to her, afraid Bela would surface again if he gave an inch. "You're her vessel, aren't you? Did she do that? Can they do that?" he asked the vessel, his brother, no one at all, anyone.
"Yeah. They can." Dean really didn't want to know how or why Sam knew that fact, and maybe he'd ask later. Or maybe they'd just admit that today revealed some things about their pasts they didn't want sharing.
"She... she's a monster. She brings me out when people want to hurt her. The other demons don't like her. They 'put her in her place.' She always made me..." Big brown eyes closed and tears ran down her temples and into her dark hair.
"What's your name?" Dean asked.
"Padma," she said. "Padma Sengupta."
The room went quiet save for the clicking noise of a pair of women's black shoes that were slowly approaching them. Prepared for the worst, Dean looked up to find Azrael giving him that usual indifferent expression. His momentary distraction was enough for Padma to get her hands free and on the blade he held in his hands. Rather than trying to turn it on Dean, Padma Sengupta took away his opportunity for revenge and plunged the blade into her own stomach with two words in Hindi.
Though Padma had been the one in control, her entire body lit up just as it would have had it been Bela.
"Bloody bitch," Azrael translated. "Fine last words. Strong."
Dean looked up at the angel. "Fix this," he begged her. "You can heal her." But silently, he was begging for the body with the charred clothing, charred who knew what else, behind his brother's massive form.
"I can't heal anyone," Azrael said, closing the woman's face with a featherlight touch of her fingers. "I am the angel of death. But I can promise that Miss Sengupta will find peace."
With a casual flick of her wrists, the entire shipping area was clear of the sigils and Dean could hear the soft thuds as the snipers' bodies hit the ground. "See to your son. I will try to retrieve your angel."
And she was gone.
Dean stood slowly on shaking legs. Sam met him halfway with Johnny in his arms. "He's okay?" he asked, relieved but trying desperately not to get sick over the smell of burning flesh.
Dean stood slowly on shaking legs. Sam met him halfway with Johnny in his arms. "He's okay?" he asked, still not believing it. It was hard to believe anything good could happen when the shipping facility smelled so strongly of burning flesh.
"I checked his eyes. Either he closed them or he's even more special than we thought."
The little boy's eyes opened enough that Dean could see emerald green looking back at him behind the tears. The hunter wanted to cradle Cas's body the same way he now was his son, but he couldn't let Johnny see that. Not Cas's body, not Dean breaking down. All he could do now was hold the boy close and check on his brother's arm. Because this ... this was too much. If he let himself really feel it all now, he'd break and he didn't know he could pick up the pieces one more time. He couldn't deal with Cas being vulnerable, with Johnny being scared and nearly killed, Sam being shot, regressing back to his persona in Hell, and all of it happening because of something that was entirely his fault.
"Where's Cassie?" Balthazar asked as soon as his feet hit the ground.
"Bela used an incantation. Azrael said it sent Cas back to heaven," Sam explained. Thankfully, he was handling the Q & A, leaving Dean to calm the baby whose body was involuntarily shaking in his arms and whose tiny fist was tightly twisting the fabric of Dean's black t-shirt.
"Through all those sigils?" Gabriel asked, looking mildly sick. That expression on his face didn't bode well for either Cas or Dean.
"How is he?" Balthazar asked, jerking his head in Johnny's direction, but actually looking concerned for the baby.
"He just watched his father pulled from his body in pain," Dean snapped. "He's had better days."
"Good thing the kid can see angels' true forms," Balthazar said. Dean was torn between narrowing his eyes in anger that he hadn't been informed of this little detail before and surprise that he didn't know it, either. "You didn't know? Even after his birthday with the fireworks? He knew the angel with wings was his Tad."
At that word, Johnny let out a broken cry for his "Tata." Dean didn't know how to fix this, not without breaking his own heart, too. Unfortunately, that was looking to be the only option. As much as Dean didn't want to do it, when this was all done, he would have to ask the angels to wipe Johnny's memory and take him somewhere else, somewhere safe.
#
Sam hadn't fully realized how badly his ears had been injured until Gabriel snapped his fingers and healed him. All he had known was his arm burned and throbbed and his head felt like it was ready to crack. Suddenly, he could hear clearly and the pain in his head and arm was gone. It seemed, though, with the wound to Cas's body, the archangel needed a much more hands-on technique. He muttered something about having to feel up his little brother, since some of Cas's injuries were on his hip, but he still went to work on them all the same.
"So you're alive," Sam said.
"Can't pull a fast one on you," Gabriel said, then paused as if thinking better of it. "No, wait, I can. And have."
"For how long? Being alive, I mean, not play tricks on me." Sam had enough Tuesdays to fill a lifetime.
"Little more than a year. Dear old Dad brought me back."
"You're the mysterious head of the council then."
"That'd be me," he said.
"Can Cas make it back? I mean, what sort of damage would this have done, because when Alastair tried it on him before, it definitely seemed like he thought it would be permanent."
"The chant sends an angel to Heaven to be at God's side, and only God can release the angel again. Back when Alastair was trying it, it would have been a long wait for him to come back."
"Because our Father was busy on his little sabbatical," Balthazar chimed in while he tried to heal Cas, too.
"So, after all this time of looking for him, Cas is with God right now?" Sam asked
"Dad's in Heaven now," Gabriel said, "so, yeah. I guess so." He back to work on the blistered and puckered skin where once had been a t-shirt and jeans. The burns were much worse where the AC/DC shirt had been, providing very little protection from the flames. When Cas came back and things were all back to normal, Sam knew Dean was going to point out how right he'd been about the protective quality of thick denim over thin cotton jersey.
He had to hope that normal, by their standards, was still in the cards. He watched Dean try to sooth Johnny, though the boy was, at that point, more or less inconsolable. Sam didn't know if his nephew, who could apparently look at angels' true form, had any concept of what happened, beyond his father going away and this being frightening, but it was obvious enough that he was hurting. Sam wished he could make it better. Dean was trying, singing "Hey Jude" quietly as he rubbed small circles onto the baby's tiny back as it shuddered and lurched with gasping hiccups. Sam remembered Dean used to get those for ages after a hard cry, like he was still sobbing after the crying had stopped. It had always embarrassed him - their dad's sometimes callous statements hadn't helped, either - and the really hard cries stopped eventually. Dean stuck to suffering in silence, like he was trying to do now.
Except for "Hey Jude."
It was a part of Sam's childhood as much as Dean's. He'd go out and find tomato and rice soup somewhere, or open a can of Campbell's tomato and order rice from the nearest Chinese place, and sing that song whenever Sam got sick. He always reminded him it was what their mother used to do because he wanted desperately for Sam to feel that same connection to her that he had, but for Sam, the song, the soup, it had been a connection to Dean. Only once was Sam ever able to try to return the favor, not with the soup because he'd been four and couldn't open the can or find a place that had it. He'd tried singing to Dean, at least, only to have his brother put his hand over Sam's mouth and tell him he appreciated it but Sam didn't have a future in music.
"Hey Jude, don't make it bad/ take a sad song and make it better..."
Sam forced himself to look away because that song had been one of the good memories of his childhood, and it was so, so sad right now.
