Hello Lovely Readers!
This idea has been floating around for a loooong time. I decided to go ahead and get this first chapter out because I'm pretty proud of it. It will be my first multichapter fic since my fanfic return, so I'm excited!
I want to give a shout-out to Static_Saturn for beta-reading. Their enthusiasm for this fic is ultimately pushing me towards wanting to finish it. Thank you!
So, please, I encourage kudos and comments. They not only motivate me, but I actively take reader input into consideration for these stories!
Chapter One
He woke up screaming in a lightless wooden box.
For a few seconds, he thrashed around on instinct; the pain of his hands smacking into the rough wooden sides of the box was enough to make him pause. What the hell?
No, that was just it. This wasn't Hell.
The Zippo was in his jeans pocket; he managed to wiggle his hand down enough to fish it out. After a couple of sparks, a tiny flame confirmed his growing suspicion.
Dean was lying in a pre-treated pine box barely large enough to fit him. He could smell the overwhelming earthiness, could sense the pressure that seemed to surround him. Tapping the lid of the box dislodged some dirt on his face, making him cough and sputter. The truth hit home:
He was in a coffin. Under the ground.
A few panicky breaths escaped him before he could focus enough to slow his lungs. If he thought about the situation too much, he was going to hyperventilate. Gulp up all the air in this little box, and die. Again.
Dean Winchester was not going to pass out and die in his goddamn coffin after somehow escaping Hell itself.
Dean took a breath and wiggled his fingers in between the boards, tried to punch and push the coffin lid. He wasn't getting anywhere. "Come on!" he screamed. The box was, unfortunately, solidly built. More dirt fell onto him.
Another steady breath; he had to think his way out.
His hands pushed up deliberately on the lid above him, unbidden. Something whispered to push as hard as possible. Get out, now!
The wooden boards split like tissue paper-dirt poured in on him and fell down his nose and throat, but he could pull himself up now. Out of the box, up and up. Fingers grappling and clawing through the dirt until they broke free. He kept pulling until his head broke the surface of the ground.
The sun was high in the sky, and the light warmed his face and hands like a blessing. Dean pulled himself from the hole and lay on the ground, breathing and spitting out errant clumps of dirt. Mostly, he just enjoyed the lack of screams. The smell of grass and earth was a nice change from burnt flesh, too.
After several minutes, he tried to get to his feet. His fingers massaged his temple as a headache attempted to start on him. He looked at his hands and watched them open and close. They were numb, though. Or, at least, felt like his nerves were going through a fog.
As he stood in a clearing of dead grass, the hastily made wooden cross confirmed he had just done the impossible.
He'd crawled out of his own damn grave.
Eyes wide in realization, he patted himself down. There should have been blood. He should have been a pile of sorry-looking hamburger. Instead, there were no wounds or bloody, torn-up clothes.
A radius of destroyed trees extended at least a hundred feet around his tiny patch of dead grass. It looked like a tornado and hit this one spot and then disappeared.
Something with serious mojo had plucked his ass from the basement.
Who or what? And why?
He had to find out what had happened to him. Where was Sam, Bobby? What about Lilith?
Dean's forehead beaded with sweat in the blazing heat. The humidity made it feel like he was breathing soup on the surface of the sun. Still, he would instead be burning up under the noonday sun than be burning up in hellfire again.
He pulled off his flannel and tied it around his waist after wiping the sweat from his face. Then, he picked a direction to start walking.
The closed gas station was a few miles down the road from where he'd woken up. No cars passed him by as he walked, and the road was little more than gravel in a road-shaped line. When he saw the gas station come into view, he couldn't help but feel his spirits lift somewhat. There had to be something there-either people, food, or water at least.
As he walked closer, he saw how derelict the place looked, with its rusty spots and peeling paint. There was a truck sitting outside the entrance that he might be able to hotwire to get to Bobby's. Since there was no one inside when he looked into the windows, he wrapped his flannel around his hand and broke into the building. No alarms went off, and no one with a shotgun came out of the back.
Once inside, Dean helped himself to bottles of water and candy bars. The shopping took longer than was safe because he kept losing focus and staring at a display of magazines or chips or beer. It felt like it was the first time he saw this stuff. Well, I guess everything looks new after coming back from Hell.
The newspaper he found said it was July 18; depending on how recent the newspaper was, it was at least two months after he'd died.
Walking into the tiny, grungy bathroom, he tried not to touch any extra surfaces more than necessary. Splashing cold water on his face and getting rid of most of the grave dirt and sweat made him feel much more human. Curious, he lifted his shirt to confirm the skin over his stomach and chest was smooth and completely healed, but not just from the hellhound's attack. Old hunting scars he had gotten over the years were gone, too, though his anti-possession tattoo had remained.
Dean studied his reflection for a moment. In his head, memories started to play of the torture and agony. He closed his eyes to try and make it go away. He had to focus on the fact that he was out. Somehow.
A hiss escaped him as his sleeve rubbed something painfully on his shoulder. Pulling the sleeve of his t-shirt up, his jaw dropped at his reflection. There was a human handprint branded onto his shoulder-the skin was bubbled up and an angry red color.
"What the fuck is that?"
Dean's brow furrowed in confusion. He was momentarily distracted by his voice, at least an octave deeper than he remembered before Hell. Had his years screaming in the Pit imprinted on his soul, or something? He shook his head-while a deeper voice was disconcerting, the painful brand on his shoulder was a bigger concern.
His fingers brushed the mark, disturbed by the implication that something had claimed him. Like a piece of cattle or something. Did some sort of uber-demon ride his ass out?
Despite knowing that it was dangerous to linger, he didn't move from the bathroom. Instead, Dean turned his head back and forth, studying his face, his green eyes, the freckles across his cheeks. Why did it feel like it was his first time seeing them?
Blood started to trail from his nose over his lip.
Startled, Dean grabbed some toilet paper to stop the nosebleed, only for a powerful headache to start in his head. It felt like someone was pounding a railroad spike into his brain. Keeping the toilet paper to his nose, his eyes grew wide as the screeching sound of metal on metal reverberated around him. He felt a similar tickle from his ringing ears, and his fingers touched blood trickling from them.
The mirror in front of him slowly cracked across its surface.
Dean launched himself from the bathroom back into the store. The TV behind the register was on and blaring static; the old radio was flipping through the frequencies by itself. The pounding got worse, to the point that he felt tears trail down his face. Dean touched them and screamed; the tears were blood.
Of fucking course. Typical Winchester luck; man drags himself out of his own grave, and the first place he stops at is haunted by a poltergeist on steroids.
The entire building shook, and he heard the glass creaking all around him. He curled into a ball on the floor just in time as every window and glass bottle exploded. The flying glass felt like a cyclone of jagged shards; his arms were slashed to bloody bits. He managed to tuck his head down, face grimacing because his brain felt like it was in a blender on high-
Everything stopped.
Deathly calm descended over the gas station. Dean didn't dare move, barely dared to breathe. The pain in his head had stopped just as suddenly. Sitting up and turning slightly, he vomited on the dirty floor.
Dean managed to get himself up into a cross-legged sitting position. The pressure of his palms against his eyes eased up the ache in his head. Breathing for several minutes, he waited until he didn't feel like he was on a Tilt-A-Whirl at the fair. He finally opened his eyes, and a gasp of surprise escaped him; he spun around in confusion.
The gas station was normal.
There was no broken glass, and the appliances were off. Dean touched his face and ears, checking for the trails of blood; there were none. His fingers weren't bloody with it, and his clothes were clean. Dean stumbled to the bathroom and checked in the unbroken mirror. Except for the bitter taste of vomit on his tongue, everything was fine.
No, that was a lie. Whatever just happened was the complete opposite of fine.
Dean grabbed his bag of snacks, water, and the newest addition of Busty Asian Beauties (even spooked he still had his priorities). He shoved all the money from the register into his pocket and fled the store.
Outside, he swished around a mouthful of water to get rid of the acrid aftertaste. He studied the store, but there was no movement. Something had even fixed the broken glass from his breaking and entering. He spat out his mouthful of water off to the side of the truck. Despite knowing that there might be something here, he decided just to leave and hope for the best. He needed to catch up with his brother and Bobby-that was priority number one.
It took a few tries, but he was able to hotwire the engine into starting. The truck raced away from the station as Dean got his bearings and made for Bobby's place, diving like he was worried about hellhounds on his tail once again.
The entire way, he felt like he wasn't alone. He kept checking his mirrors, but there was nothing behind him. Nothing was in the truck's bed, and obviously, he was alone in the cabin.
Maybe the paranoia was just a residual Hell thing? It wasn't like there was a manual for this stuff.
"Come on, Dean, pull yourself together. Bobby will know what's going on. He has too."
Dean knew, intellectually, that Bobby was going to have a hard time accepting that one of his adopted sons had just risen from his grave. It was still another matter to be chased through Bobby's kitchen by the old man with a silver knife in his hand.
"Bobby, it's me!" He managed to grab a kitchen chair and fling it between them so Bobby was forced out of arm's length and stabbing distance.
"Yeah, right," Bobby spat. The disgust and hatred in his eyes were frightening. "I may be a redneck, but I ain't an idjit. You're a shifter, and you're gonna regret taking my boy's form."
"Your name is Robert Singer, you taught me to throw a ball at 12, and you're the closest thing I have to a father," Dean babbled, keeping his hands up in surrender. "Bobby, it's me," he pleaded.
Bobby's shoulders relaxed a little, his eyes going wide. "Dean?"
"Yeah, it's me. I promise it's me."
Bobby drew in a breath, then lunged forward, aiming to stab Dean in the stomach. Dean managed to grab the old man and wrestle the knife from him. He backed away, annoyed but unhurt. "Bobby, look! If I was a shifter, could I do this with a silver knife?"
He rolled his eyes and cut a clean line across his forearm. Blood trailed from the cut, but no other reaction occurred, except for Dean's slight wince of pain. When he looked back, Bobby looked like he was about to burst into tears.
"My god, Dean...how…?"
Dean handed the knife back to the old man and let out a frustrated sigh. "I don't know, Bobby, I-"
Bobby threw a tiny vial of holy water on him that he had hidden in his pocket. As the water dripped down Dean's unamused face, he shrugged. "Sorry. Can't be too careful."
With a roll of his eyes, Dean stomped off to the bathroom to wash his face and clean his arm. When he looked down, however, the cut was gone. Shit, that can't be good.
Bobby and Dean sat at the kitchen table, beers in hand for both men.
"So, what happened after I became Cujo-kibble?" Dean asked, surprisingly nonchalant.
"Well, Lilith took off. Sam and I got into a pretty heated argument over your remains. I wanted you salted and burned; standard procedure." He took a long drink. "Sam wouldn't hear it, said we had to bury you."
"For once, I'm glad Sam won that discussion. Anything after that?"
"Yeah, he said you'd need your body when you came back."
Dean ran a hand over his face. "Goddammit, Sam."
Bobby's face pinched together as he contemplated Dean's reaction. "You think he made a deal?"
Twisting in his seat until his shoulder was pointing at Bobby, Dean pulled off his flannel and pulled up the shirt sleeve. Bobby sucked in a breath as he stared at the handprint.
"What in God's name?" His hand partially moved up to touch it, but then he dropped it.
Dean scoffed. "Yeah, pretty sure He had nothing to do with this. If Sam made a deal, then a demon could have pulled me out. Or rode me out."
He quickly pulled his flannel back on so Bobby would overlook that the cut was also completely healed. One crisis at a time, please.
"We gotta talk to him. Where is he, Bobby?"
The old man looked away from Dean and lifted his cap to scratch under it. "Dunno. He took off pretty soon after you...I couldn't keep up with him."
"You were supposed to watch out for him!" Dean admonished.
Bobby glared at him. "He's a grown man, Dean, same as you," he snapped in irritation.
With an exasperated sigh, Dean pulled out his cell phone. "Luckily, I know that kid better than he knows himself."
One phone call later, they had GPS coordinates to Sam's phone's last location. It was, unfortunately, quite late, and it was going to take several hours to get to him. Dean, surprisingly, was alert and awake. One would think that climbing out of his grave and being attacked by some super ghost would have worn him out, but he didn't feel tired at all. He even offered to drive Bobby's Chevelle so they could leave immediately.
Bobby shook his head. "No, you need to try and rest, Dean. Probably just still riding some adrenaline from the rude wake-up. Well get a few hours of shut-eye and head out tomorrow." His tone brokered no room for argument.
After a few sandwiches for dinner, Dean took the longest shower in his life, making sure not even an atom of dirt was on him anywhere. He'd probably used the entirety of the hot water supply and most of the cold water supply while he stood under the spray, just enjoying the feel of the water on his skin.
He changed into a clean t-shirt and gym shorts stashed in his room upstairs. The bed was worn and sagging in the middle; the clothes smelled slightly musty from being left in an unaired drawer for so long. At the moment, they, along with the tiny twenty-inch tube TV on his dresser next to his bed, felt like 5-star amenities to Dean.
He stuffed the couple flat pillows he had behind his back so he could sit up and stare vacantly at the little TV. Commercials played quietly since he didn't want to wake Bobby up. A woman in white leather sang the number for a phone-sex hotline. There was a commercial about a super blender that could pulverize rocks into dust. A hot guy dressed in black plugged one of those prime-time dramas that had been running for years. Despite Dean watching a few episodes here and there, he couldn't remember the show's name-he just smiled at the guy and his accent.
A random movie started to play, something about snakes on a train, but he wasn't paying any attention to it. Dean's mind was running around in circles, back to the gas station and the high strangeness he'd experienced there. Thinking about how he had pulled himself out of his own grave made him cough as he felt phantom dirt ticking his throat.
Dean thought about his little brother, Sam. He hoped Sam was safe somewhere, although the handprint on his shoulder made him twitch at the implication that Sam may have sold his soul to get his big brother out of Hell. Please, Sammy, please don't tell me that's what happened. He gritted his teeth at the thought of bright, smartass Sam getting ripped apart by Hellhounds in front of him. Dean's stomach twisted in knots.
After tossing and turning for a while, the clock on the bedside table showed in bright red numbers that hours had gone by, and he still wasn't tired. Frustrated that he wasn't going to get any sleep tonight, he decided to give up entirely. The TV was now playing a Fast and Furious sequel as he pulled on a clean flannel from his dresser.
Dean pushed the undid laces into the toes of his boots and slipped them on. Having memorized the creaky spots around the house years ago, he descended the stairs to the kitchen, grabbed two cold beers, and slipped outside to the garage as silently as a ninja.
There was a worn picnic table in the garage that Dean sat at-he ripped off the cap of his beer and flung it towards a metal trash can. The gentle clink of the cap going inside barely broke the calm night air around him. The night was mild, and a slight breeze blew often enough to keep any biting bugs at bay. Fluffy clouds obscured the stars overhead, but once in a while, he'd get a glimpse of their glittering glory. It was tangible proof he'd somehow escaped.
In the scrapyard, metal sometimes creaked and groaned as the skeletons of old cars lay stacked in piles. Clouds of moths and June bugs flitted around the bright spotlights Bobby had installed around the property to scare off intruders. One of the lights closest to Dean, about fifty feet away from him and twenty feet up, started to flicker. Then the other lights started strobe on and off.
He choked on his beer as he watched the lights all over the junkyard blink in sync. The lights grew brighter, an audible hum getting louder. Dean felt that familiar tickle from his nose. His nose was bleeding again, and the headache from earlier was back with a vengeance.
Shit, not again!
Dean slammed the beer bottle on the table and jumped off the table. Frantically, he searched the garage for an iron crowbar. The strobing lights made it more difficult, but he managed to find one on a work table surrounded by engine parts.
With the bar in his hands, he went to the fifty-gallon drum of rock salt stationed near the kitchen door. He wrenched the lid off and pulled out the metal scoop in the salt. He flung the salt around him to make a rough circle.
Dean leaped back into his salt barrier and held the iron bar like a baseball bat. His green eyes darted around the yard, waiting.
The lights in the yard exploded, one by one, showering the scrapyard in broken glass and sparks. Dean could feel the trickling from his ears and nose, but he still held up the bar, ready and waiting as the lights continued to explode with ear-shattering screeches. It looked like the darkness was rushing towards him, swallowing up the whole world until there was one light left.
The hanging light in the garage, hanging right over his head, finally hummed and exploded. Glass and sparks showered his head and shoulders. Everything was black and still-he could see nothing, hear nothing.
"Come on!" He flinched at how loud he sounded in the silent night. Darkness only lasted for a few seconds. Then, the lights in the yard all came back up, perfectly intact.
Standing about twenty feet away from him, a man appeared.
He was dressed in all black: black overcoat, three-piece suit, button-down shirt, tie, shoes; he'd had only seen crossroads demons dress like that. The stupidly handsome stranger was white and in his mid-thirties, with a 5 o'clock shadow along a sharp jawline. His head of dark hair was thick and so tousled it looked like he'd just arrived from an orgy.
Dean had the weirdest sense of deja vu that he couldn't shake.
The man was inspecting himself, curiously looking at his clothes and staring at his hands. "How interesting," he muttered to himself as he opened and closed his fists. When he finally looked up at Dean, the hunter sucked in a breath.
His eyes. They were a brilliant shade of blue, somewhere between sky and ocean, that Dean had never seen before. And they bored into his soul with an intensity that made Dean's throat dry.
"Dean." The man's voice was low, a raspy rumble that reminded Dean of his own new voice. "Can you understand me now, Dean?" He spoke like he was tasting Dean's name.
The hunter swallowed hard as his eyes darted all over the stranger-the bastard looked and sounded like sin incarnate.
While Dean had understood that he'd "appreciated" men just as much as women over the years, he'd never gone so far as to actively want to sleep with any of them. This guy, however, was hitting buttons Dean didn't even know he had until that very second. He'd never felt this weird draw to a demon before, never actively wanted a voice whispering damnation in his ear.
Hating his reaction to the monster, Dean turned his fear into aggression as he snarled, "Who the hell are you?"
The stranger studied Dean for a moment, blue eyes narrow and all-seeing. "I'm the one who gripped you tight and raised us from Perdition."
"Do you have a name to go with that 'raising from Periditon'?"
The demon frowned at him, and mentally Dean wanted to kick himself. He really did have a suicidal tendency to backtalk monsters that could kill him in agonizing and creative ways, didn't he?
"My name is Castiel."
"Castiel." Dean felt it again, that deja vu-he couldn't have heard that name before, right?
"I thought you might be one of the chosen ones," Castiel said quietly. "Those that can hear my True Voice and understand it. It seems I was mistaken."
Dean had to pause. One of his hands unconsciously went to touch the streak of blood from his nose. It was gone; not even a dried trail was left.
"That...was you talking?"
Castiel nodded.
"Buddy, next time, lower the volume," Dean scolded.
Surprisingly, his eyes darted down for a second. "I wasn't trying to hurt you, Dean." Looking back up, Castiel straightened up to his full height. "I must talk to you."
Dean drew the crowbar back. "If you come any closer, I'll knock your head into next week." He managed to keep his voice firm as he delivered his threat. "Now, why'd you yank my ass out of Hell? Did my brother make a deal?"
"He tried," Castiel confirmed. "However, your soul was too important to trade so easily."
Dean couldn't help but mutter under his breath, voice ragged and angry. "Stupid asshole, I'm gonna kill him if that's true."
"That would defeat the purpose of this whole situation," Castiel said dryly, which caught Dean off guard. Dean's tongue darted out to lick his lips. He harshly swallowed.
"Alright, so if Sam didn't make a deal, then why'd you do it?" Despite Dean's earlier threat, Castiel slowly moved forward closer to him. Those eyes seemed to reveal some ancient depth behind them. He felt this urge to stay and stare at this entity. As much as Dean kept trying to convince himself otherwise, he was starting to think this wasn't a demon. It acted so differently compared to ones he'd met, like Lilith and Azazel.
His head cocked to the side ever so slightly, as if studying Dean from a different angle.
"What?" Dean said, leaning away from Castiel's creepy lack of personal space. "We just going to stare longingly into each other's eyes for the rest of the night?"
Castiel raised an unimpressed eyebrow at him, and Dean had to take a steadying breath. Jesus Christ, if he were wearing panties, they'd have evaporated off him with that look.
Dean's comment seemed to have forced him into motion. He circled Dean, his eyes taking in the cluttered garage, the junkyard, Bobby's old house. "I saved you so that we could stop it."
The hunter's arms shook from holding the crowbar, but he pushed through the exertion. He kept his eyes on Castiel, but they widened in surprise.
"Stop what?" Dean asked, puzzled.
Castiel stopped in front of him once more, his stare was all-encompassing. "We're on the precipice of the End of Days, Dean; you and your brother are the beginning and end of the Apocalypse."
Oh my goodness! What an introduction, right? What did you think? I'm excited about this fic, and I bet you are too!
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