To Make What Is Broken, Whole

It was Dean who had sent Cas away when Gadreel inhabited Sam, and now that the rogue angel was evicted from human as well as bunker - hell, he was dead, Cas said - Sam saw no reason Cas shouldn't return. Without wings, he walked and drove like everyone else, and he needed a place to stay. Besides, the emptiness of the bunker, without Dean's presence, was overwhelming.

Especially knowing why it was empty of Dean.

But not the how. That, Sam didn't know. He'd carefully placed a body on the bed, and the body had disappeared.

At first, it was sheer hope, a little prayer, that Dean had inexplicably found a way back yet again, or been brought back. But Cas said no. With Heaven in shambles, no angel had played a role in resurrecting Dean Winchester this time. Cas doubted any knew, other than himself.

And Crowley answered no summons. Nor did Dean answer a phone. Dean was simply . . . gone.

Until he wasn't. Until Sam discovered his brother, though alive, wasn't exactly his brother anymore. And finding him, getting to him, before he harmed additional people, became vastly more important than finding him simply for Sam.

Shock paralyzed Sam at first. Utter disbelief. But evidence arrived, and he could no longer deny it. It took time, it took efforts he wished to forget, but the puzzle was undone, the clues were knitted together. One day, Dean was found.

Sam wished to be relieved, wished to be joyful. But that was denied when he came to know the truth. And now, wishing so much not to believe, Sam realized his brother was too far gone to simply be approached. Not by Sam, not by Cas. Not by anyone, perhaps. The rescue that was abduction would be something far more complicated, far more dangerous. So Sam called Cas to the map table, and they discussed plans for taking down his brother, for stopping the progression from bad to worse, from what Sam feared might transform from worse to worst.

Dean was, Dean had become, what he and Sam killed.

Sam didn't know why. Didn't know how, save he was certain the Mark of Cain, and the First Blade, and Crowley had been involved.

Plans they made, Sam and Cas, who loved the eldest Winchester more than any in the world: to take, to break, to make the demon whole, and human, and transcendently Dean again.

If it was possible.

If he survived it.

If he even wished to survive, when brother and angel were done.

# # #

It was a roadhouse, and not unlike Harvelle's. It stood between here and there, among no other neighbors, merely trees. A scattering of big Harleys lined the front, metal-and-leather mounts for men who were not cowboys. It was 1 a.m., moonless, and one ancient, tilted lamp pole illuminated, barely, the dirt parking lot beside a two-lane, backroad blacktop. Most of the cars, now, were gone, as customers departed for homes, or motels, or nothing more than a road heading elsewhere.

Moths gathered at the light. A few bats circled through, humming as they flew. The Impala, of black and silky skin, gleamed beneath it.

They had choreographed it carefully, Sam and Cas. They left nothing to chance in any scenario. Dean as a human was difficult; Dean as demon was deadly. Twice, in other circumstances, they hadn't made an attempt, fearing failure. This time, the circumstances felt opportune.

No lockpick, no slim-jim was needed. Sam had keys. He unlocked one of the backseat doors and slid inside the Impala. With infinite care he pulled closed the door, gritting his teeth against the grind of hinges. Clad in dark clothing, he settled upon the floorboards. It was vastly uncomfortable, but though it was unlikely Dean would even glance at the back seat, Sam wished to take no chances. Floorboards were best.

Cas could no longer 'zap,' as they called it. But he was still an angel, still fast, still incredibly strong.

And he would have to be.

He'd shed his trenchcoat, the white button-down shirt, any silhouette that might trigger a memory in Dean, an instinctive recognition and response. Like Sam, he wore dark clothing: jeans, black henley shirt, black hoodie. Very unCaslike, and thus less noticeable to a man accustomed to seeing something other. And while Cas's warding was against angels, they hoped it might also work with someone who was, when it came down to it, a very new demon.

Yet Cas, in the bunker, had said it clearly: "We mustn't underestimate him. There's never been a demon who was first a Winchester."

And now Sam heard other words from beside the car, in the unmistakable voice. "He's coming."

Sam drew in a deep, deep breath. His nerves were tight as wire. There was no easy escape from his awkward position upon the floorboards, his bent legs, the closed doors. Silently he released the breath, stilled himself, and waited.

Waited for Dean. For Cas.

The driver's door was unlocked, opened. Sam could see nothing. He smelled the tang of whisky. Heard the hinges groan, the settling of a body onto leather seats, the rattle of keys going into the ignition even as the door began to grind closed.

He heard, too, the blurted, vicious curse his brother uttered as he was, if the plan was working, jerked hard against the door's interior as Cas caught and yanked his arm outside of the car. He would, they hoped, automatically reach for his attacker with his free arm, unprepared for anyone else. Unprepared for Sam.

"Sam! Now!" Cas cried.

And he lunged upward, pushing firmly against the floorboards, to reach over the seatback. His mind registered Cas holding onto Dean's left arm, stretching it through the window even as Dean began to turn. Like a noose, Sam wrapped his own left arm around Dean's neck tightly, controlling the jaw, jerking back his brother's head. The fat veterinary syringe filled his hand as he jammed the needle deep into Dean's throat and thumbed the plunger down.

Dean managed to slam his right fist backward in a sharp blow. Sam's head snapped back from the impact. But the dose was massive, and, like the elephant it was intended for —he was demon, not human, and they risked no chances - it took his brother down.

Sam wiped a coated forearm across his bloody face, climbed hastily out of the back seat. Cas had reopened the front door and pulled Dean's body partway out of the car. Sam dumped the syringe, then hooked Dean's wrists together. He closed, snugged, and locked sigil-etched handcuffs tightly around bone and flesh. Together he and Cas quickly dragged the unconscious man to the back of the car. Sam opened the trunk, raised the armament compartment. Once Dean was dropped inside, Sam tore a strip of duct tape and placed it firmly over his brother's mouth, sealing it with pressure.

Then, only then, did he draw breath again, did he look down upon their handiwork. Illuminated by the pole light, Dean was slack, broad shoulders flat against the trunk floor, jean-clad legs bent sideways, boots pressed against the confines of the trunk. His head was turned toward them. Sam saw the clean bones of his face, the angles and hollows that light and shadow sculpted into an uncommon purity of feature. In that moment, loose-limbed and unconscious, he was simply Dean again.

Neither more, nor less, than his brother.

From the darkness, the question came: What would Dad think?

It was nearly unendurable. "Jesus," Sam said raggedly, "I can't believe we're doing this."

"It's the only chance he's got." Cas closed the trunk, because Sam couldn't. His expression was hard. All angel, all ruthlessness. And all friend. "The only chance we've got."

# # #

Again, Sam placed a demon into the bunker's holding chamber - Room 7B - into a chair, into chains. Ankles, wrists, neck. Last time, with Crowley, and it had been a guilty pleasure. This was not. This was no pleasure at all.

Still unconscious, Dean slumped in the chair as metal rattled, as cuffs were closed and locked. Cas had been clear about the bindings, about what must be done. No slack could be given. Crowley was a demon who recognized the odds, understood when they ran against him. He'd accepted captivity not precisely with grace, but with a mild sardonic stoicism, biding his time. Dean would not do so. Crowley was not a physical man, but all cold reckoning. Dean was highly physical, utterly honed, and his temperament had always run, even as a human, infinitely hot. As a demon, he'd proved incendiary.

Chains ran from neck cuff to wrists, around chest, to ankles, bolted to the chair. That cuffs and chains would be tested, Sam knew.

And so they were, as Dean roused to sudden, blazing consciousness even as Sam locked the band around his throat. It was immense, the pressure he threw against the bonds, the uncoiling of inhuman power. Teeth were bared as the tendons of his neck stood up against the encircling band. His face, and his eyes - so wide, so black, so pitiless - were terrible to see.

This close, it struck him more painfully than ever before. My brother is a demon.

Unable to help himself, Sam stumbled back, stepped out of the iron Devil's Trap embedded in the floor. He was vaguely aware of Cas behind him, standing near the door.

Dean tested the restraints so hard that he trembled with it, expelling breath in a long hiss of fury. He bared his teeth again in what could only be described as predatory, as utterly primal, and when he finally spoke, his voice was not the familiar rust and rasp, but ran deeper than ever, with an undertone of hard, abiding otherliness. "Do you think you can hold me?"

It was nothing he had ever heard from his brother, neither in words nor tone. For a moment Sam was frozen. But then he answered with utter certainty because he believed it. "Yes."

Dean's eyes shed the blackness, snapped back to themselves, to the green Sam knew. But despite the color, there was no Dean in them. "Ah Sammy, you have no idea what you're doing."

Sam wanted to say 'Don't call me Sammy.' It was something he'd said many times, and always to others; with Dean, the name had stuck. It was teasing from an older brother who knew the younger hated the name, and it was affection, and it was love, and it was a harkening back to their father. From Dean, he never minded. From the demon, it sounded obscene.

He felt a hand on his shoulder. Cas had moved close. The grip was brief, but full of compassion, of shared grief. Castiel, born of Heaven, not of earth; but who was, unquestionably, family too.

Sam looked at the man in the chair. Their eyes locked for a long moment, each testing the other, examining, weighing. For Dean, it was dominance, the need to overpower; for Sam, it was nothing of that. Merely desiring understanding, a way through, weighing options, knowing the need.

It wasn't remotely amusing, but Sam smiled. It was crooked, quickly dismissed. "Yes," he said. "I do know what I'm doing. I did it before, with Crowley. And you know what became of him. He came close, Dean, so close. A little more time, and I'd have turned the King of Hell." He smiled again, held it, moved in once more and leaned down, looming, using his height as much as tone. "You're just a lame-ass, two-bit, piss-ant demon. Do you think I can't turn you?"

# # #

Human blood, and his own - Winchester for a Winchester - after a quick visit to a Catholic church and confession. He felt an urgency, a need to rush, but the ritual had requirements.

After the fourth hour, the fourth syringe, he pulled the table over in front of the chair where his brother was bound by consecrated iron in the floor, by sigil-etched cuffs, by heavy chains. Upon it he placed a photograph.

Mary Winchester, and John.

It was as if Dean had expected it. He didn't bother to look. Just stared at his brother as his mouth curved slowly into a smile made all of glass edges, hard, sharp, and glittering. Lips parted. "Seriously?"

Another photo. Mary and John, their eldest. Sam hadn't yet been born.

"They should have stopped with the first," the demon said. "No one needed Sammy."

Sam lifted shoulders in the barest of shrugs. "They saved the best for last."

# # #

Six hours. Six syringes.

The demon hadn't broken.

Now an array of photos, fanned across the table. Mary had disappeared from them even as she'd disappeared from life. But there was John, and Dean, and now Sam.

They'd placed a camera, he and Cas, so they could watch Dean without remaining in the room. Sam felt it might be key to absent themselves so Dean was apart from the need to challenge, to dominate, to deny, left utterly alone with memories of mere months as a demon but of years as a human; as a son, and a brother. Sam had run out of photographs, but not of blood. He'd give it all, if necessary.

It had taken thirty years for Alastair to break Dean in hell. Sam was thirty-one. He had that much time, and more, to invest.

Some change had occurred. Dean wasn't saying much now when Sam dosed him. His challenge lay in the eyes, the almost feral eyes he knew how to use so well, to intimidate even those who were themselves powerful. Sam had seen it employed many times when they hunted, and when Dean swore oaths against those he deemed worthy only of killing. Now the full strength, and all the impact, was leveled at Sam.

He felt it. How could he not? It was what made Dean the most feared of the brothers among their enemies, their prey. Dean Winchester, even human, had always been a predator. It was a power Sam had witnessed, and envied, yet sometimes it scared him. Now, bound so securely, it was Dean's - no, the demon's - weapon of choice.

He filled two more syringes. Carried them one by one, hour by hour, into the room, inserted the needle, depressed the plunger. He knew it was painful by the way Dean rolled his head away, by the clenching of his jaws, the clamping of his teeth.

Sam removed the needle, and Dean laughed at him. Long and loud.

Cas never accompanied him, as if he knew it was something to remain between brothers, something of the blood. But every time Sam exited the room, Cas was there to take the syringe from his hand, to press him toward a chair, and to join him in silence as Sam sat forward against the table, hooked elbows atop it, threaded rigid fingers through his hair, and tried very hard not to weep.

# # #

After the seventh injection, with improvement but no cure, Cas took the syringe from his hand before Sam could insert the needle into his arm and fill the hash-marked barrel. "No, Sam." He set it down on the table. "It's time for something else."

Sam was startled when Cas placed into his hands the massive loop-handled glass-and-metal syringe found admidst the storage chambers of the Men of Letters. He looked sharply at Cas, opening his mouth to question if the angel intended he should draw that much blood after cautioning him against it. But Cas shook his head, sat down, bared his own neck.

"Withdraw some of my grace, Sam."

"Cas! You can't. You said it's dwindling. You can't afford it!"

The angel's smile was faint, but his tone, as always, serious. "One can always afford aid for a friend."

"Cas—"

"Do it, Sam."

Sam rose slowly, unsteadily, staring at the antique syringe. "How much?"

"I wish you could fill the chamber, but in my condition that would be too much for me to bear. You'll have to limit it to a quarter, Sam. We'll have to pray it's enough."

Sam knew how painful the procedure would be. He himself had experienced it when Cas withdrew the merest fraction of grace Gadreel had left behind in his own body.

"Be purposeful," Cas advised, "not tentative."

Sam blew out a sharp breath, nodded, then stepped close. He set the needle tip against Cas's neck. Then he pressed it through the skin beneath the angel's jaw, as Cas had done to him, swallowed hard, and began to draw shining grace into the chamber.

It was beautiful. Sam had always thought it so. It was the best of what angels were, of what man could never be. Within the glass chamber it twisted upon itself, glowing white and bright and blinding, richer than anything on earth because it wasn't of the earth.

On Cas's expelled breath, Sam withdrew the needle. "You all right?"

"I will be."

"It doesn't replenish itself?"

Cas resettled the collar of his shirt. "It's not my grace. I took it from another angel, and he unwilling . . . no, it won't replenish."

"But if you ever recover your grace?"

"That would be best," Cas said. He rose. "I can think of nothing more to do, Sam. Dean's very strong."

Tears threatened unexpectedly. "He's the strongest, most stubborn son of a bitch I know," Sam said unevenly. "And for once, this time, I wish he wasn't."

# # #

It was the merest shift in Dean's gaze, a narrowing of eyes, as he registered that Cas had entered the room behind Sam. For a moment he stared at the angel, then looked at his brother. Metal chimed as he lifted his head in an instinctive move to dominate. The deep bruising, the needle tracks, were visible above the band around his throat. His lips were dry, cracked. Shadows cradled his eyes. Unshaven, his scruff had grown into beard. A minute trembling beset his limbs. He clenched fists to control it, couldn't. But the eyes spoke volumes. Promised punishment.

Muscles moved in his jaw. The scrape in his voice was more pronounced. "Aw, Sammy, you miss me?"

There had to be something human in him. Something that was Dean, not demon.

As always, Sam pulled the table bearing photographs far enough away from the chair that he had access to his brother. But this time he didn't step in immediately. He stood before him and displayed the big syringe. "Something special on the menu today."

Dean looked at the blazing grace coiling within the glass chamber. Then his gaze went to Cas, and finally he flicked his glance to Sam. "You really think that will make a difference?"

Sam saw it, and smiled. "You do."

"Oh, I don't think it's going to make a damn bit of diff—"

But he didn't finish because Sam moved quickly, close, jammed the big needle deep into Dean's neck and shoved the plunger home.

Nothing. Dean lips parted as he began to smile.

The Mark, the Blade, the death. It had taken a man who was already dangerous and made him worse.

Worse, one day - were he not stopped - than Abaddon herself.

Sam gazed upon the demon, no longer hiding from it. I'm going to have to kill him.

But then Dean's body arched hard away from chair as if he'd been electrocuted. Sam removed the syringe and stepped away hastily, watching as his brother, as far as he was able within the cuffs and bands and chains, writhed. Metal rattled loudly as he shook. He slammed his skull against the chair back and opened his mouth wide on what began as a roar of fury and transmuted itself to a scream.

It was pain and rage and fear, an agony of suffering of such magnitude it nearly knocked Sam to his knees, it hurt so badly to hear it.

And then it cut off. Dean collapsed, slumped, hung against cuffs and chains; head drooped heavy upon a boneless neck. The stillness of his body was absolute.

Stunned, Sam made as if to move, but Cas's sharp voice stopped him. "Sam, wait."

"Cas—"

"He's not dead."

Because of Cas, he waited. And at last he heard the sound, the minute chime of metal-on-metal, saw the sheen of light glinting from it. Dean slowly raised his head. By the effort required, it seemed to weigh a great deal. It rolled against the chair back, and then Dean stilled it.

"Jesus—" Sam whispered.

His face was utterly bloodless. He breathed shallowly, as if it hurt. He looked briefly at Cas, then at his brother. He began to shake, and the chains and shackles shook as well in a welter of sound.

Sam set the big syringe down on the table. He knew. He knew. "Dean." No question at all as he said it. None.

What came was mostly a broken whisper. "Sammy." Dean swallowed hard. He looked at the table, at the photographs. The pictures, and the people, he'd repudiated. The grief in his eyes, his all-too-human eyes, was terrible to see.

"Hey," Sam breathed. He moved then, took the key from a pocket, and began to unlock the cuffs. He stripped away chains, threw them to the floor. He knelt, caught Dean as he slumped forward, wrapped his arms around him. "Hey."

And he held on tightly, oh so tightly, as his brother, who once was lost and now was found, began to weep.

Sam wept with him.

~ end ~