Sophia's Chronicles
Chapter 99: One Helluva Woman
The Bunker, Lawrence, Kansas—3rd August 2013, 9.24am
"Is this really pertinent right now?" Ketch answered with but a slight tug on his brows. He was dressed more casually this time, and by his standards, casual was a stiff, smart black suit. It stood out starkly against the windbreaker jacket and flannel the boys had on, but all was welcome at the War Room of the bunker—the first sight underneath the stairs, home to the atlas table.
"Kevin's missing," Dean laid out bare, as if nothing else needed explanation. "He's the freakin' prophet, and he's out there in a world full of Hell's assholes."
"Or he left of his own volition, which seems to be common around here," Ketch shrugged. "This sounds like a you problem."
"Really?" Dean questioned, disgruntled. "That's not a big deal to you Men of Letters?"
"The angel tablet is still guarded here, is it not?" the Brit inquired, not without a distinct tang of annoyance. "If anyone wanted to steal precious Kevin from you, it only stands to reason that they would have also taken something of actual value."
"But why would he leave?" Dean asked back. Ketch rolled his eyes visibly.
Sam, who was engrossed in his own thoughts, chimed in, "Because he doesn't feel safe."
Somehow the melancholy of that thought wasn't so different from the several that entertained him these days. Even the way he spoke was a mere breath from unpractised vocal chords. Safe to say, there wasn't a lot exchanged between the brothers for a while. Dean took a double take, partially at the fact that his brother said more than a couple words at once. "Safe? Why wouldn't he feel safe?" he wondered rather pointedly, crossing his arms.
"Satan's been eavesdropping on all of us. Wouldn't you feel unsafe?" Sam's hair danced in a mild tremor as he finally made eye contact. "He's had the power to take us all out of the picture this whole time."
"Yeah, but-"
"Jack knew. Raziel knew. I think it messed him up pretty bad," Sam went on, himself looking unblessed by the sandman. "I didn't think much of it, but he's been talking about his mom a lot lately."
"So you think he went home to check up on her?" Dean inferred. "Well, I guess it's worth a shot."
Ketch lazily cleared his throat. "As fascinating as this adventure sounds, I'm afraid I'll have to be on my way," he announced. "After all, I still have a traitor to humanity to catch."
"Yeah, let us know if you have a lead," Dean said.
Ketch forced his lips to turn up on one end. "Sure," he emphasised. "I had hoped that the both of you would be a little more… enthused."
"What do you want us to do? Her trail's cold," Dean frowned. "Some answers from her would be real nice right about now. But that doesn't mean we have to leave Kevin out to dry. He's our responsibility too."
"Spare me," Ketch sighed before taking off.
A less-than-enthused stillness fell over Dean as he shifted his weight to face his brother. The rustic close of the door punctuated the silence. "The more he talks, the more I wanna punch him in his crumpet mouth," he muttered. Not a single peep from Sam. He just shrugged, like nothing much was going on in his head. His stubble had grown out a little more than usual too. "We should step on it. Kid couldn't have gotten far on his own."
"I don't know," Sam rubbed the back of his neck. "Maybe you should go alone. Wouldn't wanna overwhelm him."
"What? Sammy, come on," Dean patted him on the shoulder. "You look like you could use some fresh air."
With a little more goading from Dean, the two were out on the open road. Sam's dreary eyes scrolled through bus routes on his laptop. It was when he let out the third yawn from the bottom of his lungs that Dean decided enough was enough.
"Hey, talk to me," he nudged his brother.
"He's probably made it to Springfield by now," Sam straightened up in his seat.
"No, I mean about you," Dean replied. "How're you holdin' up?"
"How's it look like?"
"Like crap. Hey, I get it. I know how crazy it is. Everything just came so far out of left field," Dean gestured with a swipe of his hand. "If you need to talk about it, talk."
"I don't know, man. The more I think about it…" Sam dropped his head back and shut his eyes briefly. "…the more I realise the red flags were always there. I was just too blind to see it."
"Hey, this is on all of us, okay? Not just you," Dean reassured him. "We all let down our guard. She played all of us. And she was pretty damn good at it too. Don't blame yourself."
"But I…" he ran a hand down his stubble. "I made you guys believe that she was one of us." An image flashed so intrusively in his head. It was the last image of her he had—in that maroon top, as she leaned over to kiss him. Even that single second had felt like an eternity in her presence. "I… I let my feelings get in the way. All because I thought I met someone just like me, with the same scars."
A hard gulp tugged against the chiselled muscles of Dean's jaw and neck. "I know what you had for her was real Me And Bobby McGee. And maybe… I didn't think enough about it because it put a smile on your face. Hell, if anyone deserved a shot at happiness, it's you," he admitted. "I should've looked out for you, Sammy."
"No, stop," Sam groaned, rubbing his face. "This isn't anyone's fault but mine. Just let me be miserable, alright?"
The wordless drive continued until a sight made Sam snap out of melancholy. The back of a beige cardigan and a familiar backpack at an outdoor cafe. The chequered tables appeared to enjoy the dispersed shade of the trees. On any other day, this would be beautiful weather but the sky's mood rarely mattered in a hunter's job. He urged Dean to pull over. "Must be one helluva burger," Dean said as he and Sam plopped down next to Kevin.
The prophet flinched, almost dropping his meal. "How'd you guys find me?"
The odd ray of sunlight glinted off of Dean's grassy green eyes as he rested his arms on the tablet. "No offence, kid, but you're not exactly Jason Bourne."
Sam, on the other hand, was leaned back with his arms on his lap. "We were worried about you," he mustered energy to say. "This about your mom?"
Kevin nodded his head slowly, watching as the hamburger grew cold. To that, Dean said, "Kevin, your mom's fine."
"How could you possibly know that?" he asked in turn.
"Because the angels need you," Dean reasoned. "Raziel guards the, uh, chamber of secrets or something, remember? He lied to the angels so that you could get away from them and do your magic in secret. In fact, angels probably got the place stacked with bodyguards right now, protecting her, so if you do show up they'll pounce on you both."
"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" Kevin puzzled.
"She's bait, man, plain and simple. And you want to swim right up and bite the hook? Look, you're so close. All you gotta do is finish the translation. We knock Lucifer back into the Cage and boom, sunshine and sandy beaches."
"Dean, my mom's all alone. She's surrounded by angels. Can you really not understand why I want to make sure she's okay?" he implored the brothers.
Dean looked over to Sam and received but a shrug from the younger Winchester. "Fine," he conceded. "But we're doing this together."
Neighbor, Michigan
The suburb was as quiet as they come, save the occasional chirping of the birds or barking of dogs. Sam guessed from the neatly trimmed flora and intricate landscaping that this was upper middle class—the kind of life he'd only seen by working cases and watching movies. The brightness of the blooms appeared all at once, serenading his eyes at first but soon became insulting.
His hand steadied the binoculars. "Tiger mom, 9 o' clock," he reported.
"Where?" Kevin grabbed the pair.
"Left window."
A breath was held hostage in Kevin's lungs. He stilled as the evidence reflected in the binoculars. "She seems okay. Sad but… okay," he said, shoulders dropping.
"Check out the mailman," Dean urged.
"Yeah," Kevin took notice of the man in the blue postal service jacket. "That's Carl. So what?"
"Yeah, well, Carl's filled your mom's mailbox three times since we've been sitting here."
"He's an angel?" the prophet wondered.
"And see the gardener?"
Kevin followed his direction yet again.
"Think that plant needs any more water?"
True enough, following the runoff gleaned a steady stream of water escaping the soil underneath the luscious hydrangeas. In any case, there was a severe danger of root rot, so it was perhaps a good thing that the gardener found his hose running dry. He stepped around the corner to investigate but found a blade to his chest instead, with Dean yanking it out like it was just another Tuesday. It wasn't long before the mailman overheard the commotion and trespassed the garden. Dean's smug smirk invited him in, and Sam's blade took him out. It put a bounce in Kevin's step as he ran up to the door and gave it a good couple of knocks.
Even the knob seemed to quiver as it was twisted open. "Hi, Mom," Kevin's lips fluttered into a smile, almost afraid to do so.
"Kev- Kevin," she shook with happiness bursting onto her face, so much so that her wide eyes became glassy. She reached out and pulled him into her arms. The boys leaned in from either side of the door, cautiously scanning the interior with blades at the ready. A woman emerged from the living room. Spotting them, her eyes turned a celestial blue. Sam lunged forward and swung the blade into her abdomen.
"Eunis!" Ms Tran screamed as the woman's eyes burnt out and she fell to the floor, lifeless.
"That's not Eunis," Dean assured her as he stood between them to protect her from the sight. It was probably for the best, as the gushing blood was unlikely to be as calming as the cup of tea that Kevin poured for his mother.
When her breathing had finally slowed to a normal pace on the couch, Sam began, "Ms Tran, your friend was possessed by an angel."
"Have you ever seen 'Constantine'?" Kevin asked, to which Linda could only react with a stern stare.
"Is that what you've been doing all year – watching television?" she asked her son curtly. The same unease shot through the boys as she turned to them. "Did you really have to kill her?"
"The angel would've warned Naomi where Kevin was if we didn't," Dean justified.
"And Naomi is the one who kidnapped you?" she asked Kevin.
"Yeah. She wanted me to translate her stupid tablet so she can take over the universe or something," he answered.
"Raziel was the one who brought him to us to keep him safe," Sam explained. "So he can read the tablet without helping anyone's plot for world domination."
"And he still has to translate it because…?"
"Because it might be our best shot at ganking the Devil," Dean shook his head once with a smile to top it off. "Yep, that's a thing."
Ms Tran slowly nodded, struggling to process everything. "I'm sorry I didn't come back sooner," Kevin said, taking her hand in his. "Things were crazy and Raziel said you'd be safer this way. But… I didn't feel like I could take his word for it any longer."
"Surely, we could've talked this out ourselves," a British voice interrupted them. The boys shot to their feet at the sudden appearance of the mahogany-coloured coat and van Dyke beard. Raziel had his arms outstretched and a sympathetic look that meant no harm. He took one long look at the dead angel in the hallway. His face contorted more in agony. "And please, for the love of God, I must ask you to stop killing angels. We're not as numerous as we used to be."
Dean was the first to address him. "You're gonna be down another piece if you don't give us answers," he grimaced.
Seeing their threatening postures, Raziel shifted his weight and took a deep breath. "I don't know what you've heard to be so riled up but…" he looked straight at Kevin. "Kevin, you know I wouldn't harm an innocent."
"I don't know what you would or wouldn't anymore," Kevin hissed at him. "You knew about Zara and you kept it from us."
"Oh," Raziel realised. "I can explain-"
"Save it," Sam cut him off, gaze growing steely. "We heard enough of that from Malachiah."
"Still don't know who that is," Raziel remarked with a hopeless glance to the ground.
"Let me guess. You wanted to reason with her. Get her to see the error of her ways," Sam continued. His grip on the blade tightened. "But you let her do the damage she did anyway."
"No, she was never going to change," Raziel admitted plainly. "But that girl has fourteen billion years of an archangel's secrets at her fingertips," his tempo increased as he explained the eerie feeling brewing in his chest. "Do you know how dangerous that makes her? If I'd just chased her off, all that knowledge is lost. Or worse, in Lucifer's hands. That's what I wanted to avoid."
"So you lied to us," Dean summarised. "Just because you wanted a crack at some library?"
"Some library? That's power beyond your greatest imagination. And it's fixing Heaven right now so that the souls don't leak onto Earth, unless your hands aren't full enough right now!" the angel justified. "I'm not saying you need to forgive me. I'm just saying I had to protect that knowledge so it could be used for the right reasons. So I had to make a tough choice."
"You made a choice, alright," Dean said sharply. "You chose someone who you knew had questionable judgment. Both you and Jack relied on her to give you what you wanted. After all that, she still chose Lucifer. Can't you see that?"
"I know," Raziel muttered, shoulders drooping. "I wish it were that easy to define good and evil, Dean. I did what I had to do. She's gone but I'm here, because we're still on the same side. I want to stop Lucifer too."
Finally, the angel blades were lowered and the angel took a conciliatory step toward them, attending wholly to Kevin and his mother. "Okay, that's enough," Sam halted him.
"Fine," Raziel accepted, though disappointment was clearly written on his face. "But I have something you need—the Ghana. I've acquired it. Please, let me help you with this."
"Why should we trust you?" Sam put forth.
"Don't, if you'd rather not. But I have bound the bone to Kevin, so he's the only one who can use it," Raziel informed. "Without the prophet's help, we wouldn't have the spell we need to defeat Lucifer, so it only made sense."
A pause fell over them. "We gotta do this, guys," Kevin told the Winchesters. "We need to finish the spell."
Despite everything, they couldn't argue with that. Kevin, who'd subconsciously held onto her, let go as soon as the air had settled. "Prophet of the Lord, huh," Linda interjected, finally offering a proud nod to her son. "It does have a nice ring to it. I'll get packed."
To that, the elder Winchester suggested, "We're gonna need a safehouse since Lucifer knows about the Bunker-"
"Bunker? I thought we were going to get this bone?" Linda wondered.
Dean sent a befuddled tilt of the head in her direction. "Uh, we are. You're taking a trip to a demon- and angel-free zone," he stated.
"And risk letting Kevin fall into the hands of this Naomi again? Or Lucifer? I don't think so," Ms Tran defiantly maintained.
"Ms. Tran, all due respect," Sam chimed in. "Dean's right. Lucifer – he's the freakin Devil. He trades in torment. And if he can find a way to separate your soul from you, he'll take that soul to Hell and- and roast it till there's nothing left but black smoke. Naomi's not so different either. Look, it's best if you let us handle this."
"I understand. But it's not my soul I'm worried about. It's my son's," she crossed her arms as if that would end the conversation.
For a moment, Dean's stare was frozen on her. His eyes darted to the prophet. "Kevin, you want to back us up here? Came all the way down here to pull her out of the fire, and now she wants to jump right back in."
"Like I can tell her what to do?" Kevin said with a nervous chuckle.
All Dean could do with that was shrug and smirk, though inside he felt like this was karma getting back at him for entertaining Kevin's idea at all. But that didn't mean he couldn't still get something out of this. The look on Kevin's face when he suggested they get inked was almost worth it. The look on Kevin's face when they actually did get inked—well, that was worth it all and more. The kid practically heaved and shook while his mother held his hand the whole time. Dean just had the widest smile watching the process, though a quick glance at his brother's unamused face reminded him of everything that had gone wrong all over again.
As discussed, they met with Raziel at the bus station but not before sweeping the area. "So, place is clean, far as I can tell," Sam reported. The angel himself appeared soon after confirming the same thing.
"You hid the bone we need to bone Lucifer in a bus station?" Dean asked with inflections of absurdity.
"My team and I do this all the time. Hide in plain sight. Trust me, it works," Raziel answered like it was the most obvious thing. He handed the key to Dean, who shook it in his fist.
"All right. Positive thoughts," he beckoned the group. A twist of the key later, he found but a strange sight. A frown was shot Raziel's way. "You put it in a diaper bag?"
Raziel nodded his head back, mirroring the same frown. "No," he replied.
Dean ruffled through the diapers but only as briefly as he possibly could, because it was ridiculous. He looked to Sam, who had already begun shaking his head and rubbing his temples in disappointment. "Dammit," he shoved the bag back into the locker and slammed it shut.
Despite Raziel's assurances that this normally wouldn't happen or didn't make sense, the only way to get answers was through a good old-fashioned investigation. Some questions with the local security pointed them to a thief, who—after an unsettling moment with Sam and his sense of urgency—pointed them to a pawn shop. There, Dean was all but ready to hold his brother back before he could reach over the counter and show the guy with the smart mouth what was what. Luckily, Linda had a better strategy and got him to spill the details over threats of exposing tax evasion, which was somehow more compelling than the impatience of a 6'4" giant.
"So much for hiding in plain sight," Dean grumbled to the angel as Sam knocked on the motel door listed on the little slip.
"Okay, a lot's been happening," Raziel defended weakly. "I can't do everything at once. But I should've known better."
As they awaited a response, a voice emerged from behind them, "Kevin?"
The five of them spun to face the intruder, who happened to be a strange-looking fellow with an old-fashioned pastel-toned suit straight out of a Cold War-era comic. Everything about him shouted 1950s, even the cane in his hand.
"Who wants to know?" Dean raised an eyebrow.
"Oh, relax, Dean. I'm not going to steal your Prophet," he assured them, though speaking so directly had the opposite effect. His beady eyes caught sight of Ms Tran, to whom he said, "Ah. And you must be Kevin's mother. Um..." his held his fedora to his chest, revealing a balding head. "Beau. And it is my absolute pleasure." As smooth as the breeze, he pressed Linda's knuckles to his lips. Somehow, her lips hesitantly inched into a smile against every instinct. "And, um, Kevin. Imagine my luck. Here I was, working so hard looking for you that I never stopped to think you might be looking for me. I have something for you."
Kevin was not impressed by any of it. "What is it?" he asked plainly.
Beau reached into his gaudy jacket and pulled out an envelope with Kevin's name inscribed on it. "An invitation, dear man, to a very exclusive auction."
"Let me guess," Dean interjected. "Where you'll be selling the bone?"
"Well, when we acquire an item as hot as the Ghana – a weapon of immense power – it's smart to unload it as fast as possible. And we are in such desperate need of a headliner for tonight's gala." Another envelope was manifested with the angel's name on it. "For the angel who unearthed it."
"Acquire? You mean steal?" Raziel challenged, annoyance tugging at his brows as he studied the invite.
"Don't shoot the messenger," Beau answered, pulling his shoulders up into a nonchalant shrug. "You'll have your fair chance at procuring the item, just like everyone else."
Dean's lips stretched into a flat line. "Well, I hope you have three extra tickets to your little eBay party, 'cause the Prophet's with us."
"Oh, if you're worried about the safety of the Prophet, rest assured that we have a strict 'no casting, no cursing, no supernaturally flicking the two of you against the wall just for the fun of it' policy."
Sam huffed. "Is that right? How'd you manage that?"
"Well, I am the right hand of a God, after all – Plutus, specifically," Beau boasted.
"Is that even a planet anymore?" Dean jibed. With a verbal equivalent of an eye-roll, the man explained how thorough the warding would be and agreed to Dean's request, before making an exit on his own last-laugh terms. Which only left the humans to wonder what they could possibly offer in an auction.
"Right, you lot figure that out," Raziel suggested, though he visibly displayed discomfort at the sight of Dean evoking the power of his wallet. "I'll make some calls, see what I can come up with. I'll meet you there."
Apart from Dean's sentimental goodbye with his hidden arsenal of weapons, getting into the auction house was pretty simple. Sure, they felt naked but protection was assured. Even then, the very run-down state of the place was not much comfort by itself. It looked like it would fall apart any second. Fitting, they supposed, for the sick-minded immortals who would even come here. As long as the wardings, etched onto the black-painted windows, would hold, there wasn't a problem. Yet.
Plan was, they'd come up to the displays, find their Ghana and use Kevin's bond with it to get it out. Except there was one problem—the glass used to house the bone was itself warded. Despite Raziel's promises, the binding wasn't strong enough to allow telekinesis through the glass. Still, they finally got a good look at the thing. It was just as described: a thick ivory knife with smaller bones – presumably from the fingers of the monk it was made from – forming the hilt and other stabilizing features. Every bone was discoloured to a decaying yellow. A thin brown twine, possibly the dead monk's hair, wove all the pieces together and somehow kept the whole thing strongly connected.
"Great," Dean threw up his hands.
The light died behind Kevin's eyes as he eyed the Ghana. "I guess we're not as original as we thought."
"It's okay, it's okay," Sam assured them, pulling a hand down his jaw. "We just got to come up with a Plan B."
Like a sandpaper on wood, a familiar smarmy voice came into earshot. "And what, pray tell, could possibly have been Plan A?" They spun to face none other than Crowley, dressed dapper as ever in his usual black. "Bring the Prophet to the most dangerous place on Earth, break out the blade, and then vamoose?" he shot a smug look to Sam, who immediately summoned a scowl. "Hello, boys."
"Crowley," Dean snarled.
"Dean. Others," the demon greeted them passively. "And oh my, Samuel, what a distinct lack of, um, a female touch. Did the hottest couple on TLC break up?"
Sam's stubble only made the slight deepening of his frown that much sharper, which to Crowley was just fuel to the fire.
"Ah. Not just a broken heart, but a betrayed one," Crowley read his expression like a book. "Finally. I was aching to let the cat out myself."
"So everybody knew then," Dean figured. "Except for us. What kept you from spilling the beans?"
"Same as everyone else. Strategy," he dug his hands into his pockets. "Personally, I just liked seeing how tight of a leash she had around your necks. And of course, knowing how hard Goliath here was going to fall made the journey so. Much. More. Delicious. Don't say I never warned you."
That sent a shot of rage through Sam from his feet to his head. He shifted forward, clenched fist at the ready, but Dean quickly swerved to stop him.
"Uh, uh, uh," Crowley wagged a finger at him. "Don't mind a little love tap, but anything more, and our mookie pals here may just throw you out, and that would be a shame."
"He's right, Sammy," Dean acknowledged, looking around at the beefy security guards who stood ready. "It's not worth it."
"Listen to Squirrel, Moose," Crowley taunted. Just then, a bald man in a tracksuit and a gold chain around his neck briskly passed by them. The whole atmosphere of the room seemed to centre on him as the guards and guests followed in his trail. "Ah, here comes our host."
"Honoured guests, please take your seats," a voice beckoned them.
"That's Plutus?" Dean wondered. "What is he, god of the candy aisle?"
"Gentleman, the auction is starting," Beau ushered the guests.
Crowley cast one last puffed-up look at them. "Good luck with the bidding," he said. "Awfully nice of you to leave your buddy Jack Pierce out of this. Really evens out the playing field." The boys merely exchanged looks of disdain before entering the main hall. As they took seats, Crowley slowly ambled to a spot and settled a few seats from the calmly-poised Raziel. "Raziel. Hard man to get a hold of," he remarked.
Raziel released a drawn-out exhale, like he was just so tired. "What brings you here?" he asked with the least effort he's ever put into a conversation.
"You stole something from me not that long ago. Looks like I finally get to take my revenge," the demon recounted while Beau announced the first item. "And take out an enemy all at once."
"Please, Crowley. Your efforts at boosting the resistance were laughable at best," Raziel replied without so much as a twitch. "If you truly value your life, you'll leave it to those of us who know what we're doing."
"Hm," Crowley's lips turned up on one side. "Yes, tell us all how well you and the Hardy Boys are doing." A cursory look at the row before them revealed a spectacle of the humans dishing out whatever their wallets could muster. "Emptying your pockets for the rights to one little bone with nothing else to your name. All while I've got everything else arranged for your little spell."
Hearing that, Sam turned around. "Yeah, right," he said. "How would you even know what else we need?"
"Well, word spreads," Crowley answered. "Even the Word of God, it seems." Hearing that, Raziel seemed to be lost in thought, as if trying his best to connect the dots. "Bone of a sacrificial monk, blood of a witch and a divine power source. How am I doing?"
Considering the lack of response, Crowley was tempted to congratulate himself. Only, Raziel slowly shook his head. "There's no way you could find a power source. Not a chance in Hell," he said, arms crossed.
"There is a chance in Hell and you know it," Crowley merely leaned back and observed the auction proceedings. "But it's simply fine by me to look elsewhere too."
All the scrambling hands between the Winchesters and the Trans led to a pile on Dean's lap. "Alright," Sam handed over the last of what he had. "How much we got for Plan B?"
"Uh, well," Dean did some quick math. "We got our hacked credit cards, $2,000, and a, uh, Costco membership."
"Our first item, the amulet of Hesperus," Beau announced. "Let's start the bidding with, um, three tons of dwarven gold?"
Dean's ears almost fell out of his head. The boys were left trading bewilderment.
"Ah. This lady. I have three. Do I have, uh, four? Ah. Four, gentlemen here. Four. Going for five. Five?"
"Plan C?" Sam softly muttered.
"Big time," Dean fumbled in his seat.
It had been a long, dragged out hour of nothing but absurd displays of wealth. Every offer caused the boys to die a little on the inside. Dean even took the liberty of locating the storage area but was thwarted by the presence of those guards. So he returned to his seat empty-handed and depleted of hope.
"Plan C tanked," he reported sheepishly.
Crowley chimed in from behind, "Maybe you should try Plan D for dumbass."
"Our next lot…" Beau pulled out the bone from its box. "…the Ghana. Very old, very rare."
Crowley stood up, confidently digging his hands into his pockets, and announced, "Three billion dollars."
"Whoa," the Winchesters said simultaneously.
Raziel too stood up this time and made a show of adjusting the button on his jacket. "The Mona Lisa," he offered.
"The real Mona Lisa," Crowley shot back. "The one where she's topless."
"Vatican City," Raziel declared so firmly that it rooted everyone to their seats, eliciting jaw drops from the Winchesters.
"Alaska!" Crowley retaliated.
Beau granted him a discomforted smile. "Palin and a bridge to nowhere? No, thanks."
"Alright," Crowley conceded. "The moon!"
"You're bidding the moon?" Dean asked, puzzled out of his mind.
"Yeah. Claimed it for myself. Think a man named Buzz gets to go into space without making a deal?" he explained, which somehow made sense to Dean.
"Ah. I'm sorry, gentlemen. It seems that our reserve price has not been met. So in order to stimulate the bidding, we're going to add an item to this lot…" Beau pointed at the audience. "Kevin Tran, Prophet of the Lord."
Their heads jerked in the direction of his seat, only to find Kevin gone. The sound of metal clanking pulled their attention yet again and behold, the boy was chained to a post on the stage. Linda shot up to her feet, shouting, "No!"
The boys themselves got up as if on cue, but the guards shoved them back into their seats.
"Mr. Tran is the only person on Earth who can use this blade, which makes them a perfect matching set."
"Goddammit," Raziel cursed, all but ready to bring out the flogging whip on himself.
"So, do I hear a bid of, um-"
"No, stop!" Ms Tran wailed. "I'll give you whatever you want. I have a 401K, my house…"
The greasy god in his tracksuit chuckled at her attempt while Beau merely looked at her like she was a starving orphan. "Good effort, Ms. Tran, but I'm afraid this is a little out of your price range."
Linda was ready to collapse into a pile of ash but she still held on, searching every nook and cranny in her mind for a solution. Finally, she spat out, "My soul!"
"Mom, don't!" Kevin cried out.
Jaw tight, she stood her ground. "I bid my soul."
"Are you sure?" Dean asked. "That's a big move."
Plutus himself had to offer a nod after his long silence. "Interesting," he said.
Of course, the demon sauntered to the side with his own smart rebuttal. "If it's souls that you're after, I can give you a thousand souls."
Dean quickly got a word in with Raziel. "Hey, Hot Wings, are you gonna get in on this?"
"We guard the souls in Heaven. We don't horse-trade them," Raziel replied, much to their disappointment.
The conclusion seemed obvious to Crowley. "So we have a deal."
Plutus leaned forward in his chair, saying, "It's not about the quantity, chief. It's about the sacrifice. This little lady's soul is the most valuable thing she has. It's everything. Are you willing to offer everything, Mr Crowley?"
And what could the demon say in response to the weeping eyes of a mother? Dean slowly craned his head towards him with a tranquil smile. "Tick-tock," he challenged the demon.
"Fine. You win," Crowley shifted his weight. With much more gusto, he uttered, "I bid... my own soul!"
That elicited a full-bellied laugh from Plutus. "Mr. Crowley, you don't have a soul," he stated factually. To Linda, the message was clear, "Congrats, sweetheart."
"Thank you," tears generously fell from her eyes. "Thank you."
Though a weight was lifted from all their chests, they would now have to reap the consequences. It was at least somewhat worth it to see Crowley angrily storming out of the room. Maybe. All Sam knew was the helplessness Linda would have to face when Beau came to collect. She'd asked them for a moment to collect herself but just leaving her like that was hard.
"Dean, this sucks," he said.
"Are you kidding me? We're about to get rid of Lucifer forever. If you ask me, we got off cheap," Dean muttered as they left.
Linda gathered her strength to get up and wipe her tears. It was with a last comforting gaze that Raziel approached her, saying, "Linda, I'm sorry it had to come to this. What you did here was beyond brave. The kind of nerve you showed here is what we desperately need to put Satan away for greater good. Your sacrifice won't be in vain."
"I don't care about the greater good. Just keep my son safe," she implored him, voice quivering.
"The Winchesters are more than capable," he assured her, before taking his own leave.
Back in the storage room, Beau appeared with Ms Tran compliantly at his side just as a strange old man took the Mjolnir into his arms.
"Where's the kid?" Dean demanded to know.
Plutus snapped his fingers and a guard brought the prophet into view. The poor kid was visibly shaken from the whole ordeal.
"What are you gonna do with her soul?" Sam asked.
"Whatever I want." The old god stepped forward, his large stature seemingly taking up the whole room. "I might sell it, or maybe I'll just tuck it away with my other precious objects, let them keep me warm at night. Mm." He eyed Ms Tran as some kind of meal. Though a shiver ran through her, she kept her chin up. Plutus reached a hand to her. "Whenever you're ready, dear."
A slight pause gripped Linda but she offered her hand in return.
"Wait!" Dean grabbed her arm suddenly, caught by just a pixel of suspicion. He rolled up her sleeve. To his abject horror, the pentagram protection tattoo was no more than a burnt smudge.
"Hello, boys," Crowley's voice emerged from Ms Tran's vocal chords, full with his maroon-filled demonic eyes.
"Crowley," Sam hissed.
With a single flick of both of her arms to the side, Crowley hurled the boys far away, crashing tables and making a ruckus.
"No. You can't," Plutus weakly mumbled. "My warding spells."
"Your girl Friday showed me a few loopholes," Crowley said, gesturing with his head to Beau who simply returned the smile. "And all it cost me was an island in the South Pacific. I love a bargain."
With no warning, Beau plunged a stake into Plutus' back, leaving the god to writhe in agony while Crowley pulled it out from his chest. He then launched it into a guard's chest, leaving Kevin ripe for capture.
"Can't do all my tricks, but I can do enough," he told Beau from inside Ms Tran.
"Get out of her!" Kevin yelled. Dean scrambled to reach inside a box and retrieve his demon-killing knife while Crowley snatched the Ghana.
"If I had a nickel for every time someone screamed that at me..." the demon remarked. He was about to leave when Sam shot up and lunged onto him to get between Crowley and Kevin.
"Getting in touch with your feminine side, huh, Crowley?" Dean taunted.
"Something like that," Crowley said, surveying his odds.
"Well, come and get him," Dean dared him.
Crowley gandered at the boy, who was within the Winchesters' reach for sure. "One out of two ain't bad," he hissed, bolting from the room.
"Watch the kid!" Dean ordered his brother before following on his tail. Kevin shot past Sam but the Winchester held him back.
"Kevin, don't! Let Dean take care of it," he advised.
A gun was cocked behind Sam. "Sam, move!" Kevin yelled, barely getting out of the line of fire as Sam dived behind an overturned table.
Meanwhile, Dean was hot on Ms Tran's heels as they meandered through the hallways back into the gallery room. The Winchester pounced on her just as she turned the corner, causing the bone to slide away on the floor. With a great push, Dean had his knife trained on her throat. Just then, Kevin caught up with them, stopping abruptly when he saw the knife ready to slit her throat.
"Mom!" he yelled. It was just the smallest distraction that Crowley needed to shove Dean away and escape the vessel. Red smoke shot out of her mouth. Her body flailed about helplessly with the momentum, leaving her but to collapse against a wall when it was over. Kevin rushed over to his mother. Dean looked on with wide eyes as Crowley stepped through the door again with his former vessel, brushing dust off himself like it was nothing.
"Well, that was exciting. Good luck defeating Lucifer..." he picked up the Ghana which was conveniently strewn at his feet. "…without this." He savoured the absolute hatred radiating from Kevin at that moment. "Surprising what mommy dearest has rattling around in her head. Want to know who your real father is? Scandalous."
"Crowley!" Dean yelled. "Why are you doing this? We could've worked the spell together."
"And risk the fallout from your grand incompetence? I don't think so," Crowley held his head up high and answered defiantly. "I know we're not mates, Kevin, but one word of advice: run. Run far and run fast. 'Cause the Winchesters – well, they have a habit of being made fools. Toodles."
Within the blink of an eye, the demon took off and defeat came crashing down on them like a wave. Sam finally burst into the room. His brother's face told him all he needed to know. They checked themselves for wounds and took a moment's rest. Sam just couldn't ignore how dazed Linda was. They'd moved her to a chair. Her vitals seemed fine but mentally, she seemed lost.
"Has she said anything?" Sam offered pained eyes to the prophet, who merely shook his head.
"Listen, Kev, what your mom went through, it's hell," Dean began. "Trust me, I know. But she seems tough. She'll pull it together."
"You tried to kill her," Kevin accused him with just a look.
"Kid, in this life-"
"Shut up! I don't want to hear any more of your crappy speeches," Kevin shot back. He held his mother's hand, hoping that some touch would awaken her. "I put up with a year of it and where's it gotten me?"
Sam couldn't help but sweep the floor with his gaze in contemplation. "Look, if it's anyone's fault, it's mine. Everything bad that's happened to us is because of Zara. She set us up so we'd always be behind and she- she used me to use you," he knelt before Kevin on one knee to get to his eye level. "I should've been wiser than that. I let you down. And you're right, this isn't good for you. I think…" he sniffled. "I think you and your mom should be somewhere away from us. Somewhere safe while Dean and I fix this mess."
He turned to his brother, who'd been watching all of this with a curious frown. Dean couldn't do much but relent with a single shake of the head. "I'll call Garth," he simply said.
Somewhere, Some Universe
This universe was about as tragic as the first I'd visited. The Second Key of Conflict—we had speculated—would be found in a place where entropy was disregarded. Sure enough, this universe made me realise the things I had taken for granted. At a glance, a sense of claustrophobia had descended on me to feel the tight boundaries reigning in this universe from its natural expansion. Free energy waited to be used, but the equilibrium didn't favour this movement. And what did it cost? The arrow of time had been broken.
Celestial bodies expanded, only to collapse again. The larger the star, the less likely collapse was to happen, only because their cores were never stable—they were ever-expanding, spraying energetic particles like a child throwing paint everywhere but never forming a coherent picture. They were less stars and more clouds of nuclear fission which furiously divorced particles that dared to coalesce. To me, it just looked like time was going in the wrong direction, a constant loop of events sliding both forward and backward on the scale. Explosions fanned out and retreated back into themselves. Meteors backtracked and annihilated planets over and over again like some kind of cosmic prank. It left me in a daze as I struggled to place myself anywhere.
I supposed God only abandoned this one when it was too late to stop what was already happening. That was, when it seemed like planets would form but not cohesively enough to form an atmosphere or sustain life. It was no wonder He needed the archangels. This would have been tough to track all on its own. This wasn't more evident than when I caught sight of something truly beautiful—the birth of a spark of light. The humans had no terms for this, for this was the material of God's goodness. Right then, it seemed like a miraculous blessing amidst eternal suffering. But as soon as it came into existence as a little blob before me, it was ready to die again. My frail heart could bear this no longer and I rushed forward to cup it within my hands. As I caressed it with my thumb, it cooed softly as a babe would. A little fragment of joy. It lived with my touch, releasing its rays outward. A spark of increasing entropy.
This had to be the way. I touched atoms of tritium and deuterium and they formed helium. I caressed these new-born atoms and they formed many more elements, by sheer fusion as they should have billions of years ago. Invigorated by progress, I only moved forward. I gave stars orbits and planets atmosphere. I pulled meteors through their trajectories so they would finish their destructive sentences. I blessed masses of particles with gravity and gravity the strength to form black holes. Just like that, God's mistakes could be erased and written again with the stroke of my pencil, and in this order I would find the Second Key of Conflict. Or so I thought.
I stopped as God did on the Seventh Day, with a belated sigh to acknowledge my hard work. A small cry emanated from my palm. I looked down. The spark of light let out its last breath and left me childless once more. I jerked in a 180 spin. My wings trembled in horror as nothing but a trail of misdeeds appeared behind me. Every act of benevolence had turned malevolent and every attempt at increasing entropy backfired spectacularly. There was a series of looping events making plain mockery of what creation should be. I could almost hear Khaos Alpha cackling hysterically in my ears. You really thought you did something?
"Stop it!" I muttered through clenched teeth, mere milliseconds before realising how ridiculous I looked. At least there wasn't anyone around. As much as I wanted to fix it all again, abject despair flooded me. I was too tired for this volume of flaws. What then could I do to find the Key?
The last Key was kind of a fluke, really. I was on the run from the very manifestation of thermodynamic imbalance and in defeating that creature, I destroyed the power source maintaining the precarious equilibrium. With that, the Key was released but the universe was annihilated in the process. Another addition to the death toll in my name. It made sense that the Key would be unleashed once the imbalance was no more, but did it need to have such a dire end?
Who am I kidding, this is Khaos we're talking about. It was as the Space Weaver had told me, "You must be the Void to get through the Void."
And so I would need to be Khaos to destroy Khaos.
So entropy refused to increase, so what? Things would just have to reap their natural consequences. I was determined to be sure of that, no matter how much it made me want to collapse in on myself. Shutting my eyes, I flipped the metaphorical switch. Light became Darkness. I opened my eyes again to see not what could have been but what could never be. The fabric of space and time bunched in my fist as I yanked it to tear a hole. That sent a ripple everywhere. Unable to fill the hole with free energy, the cosmos instead suffered silently while more energy spewed out of this 'reverse black hole'. As I stood back and watched, this event remained stable. No horrific aftermath. A success, albeit a small one. But I finally figured something out for once.
It was akin to knocking out one brick in a wall. That meant I'd have so many more bricks to knock out, unless of course I knocked just enough bricks in just the right spots to make the structure vulnerable. All I'd need then was to huff and puff.
Funny I mentioned that, because the softest growl reached me from several light years away, almost at the edge of the universe. I wasn't alone. My wings took me away with almost no instruction. Huddling behind a cloud of debris, I carefully peeked through the cracks. When I recognised the intruder, I almost fell back. At the very point where I'd ripped the fabric of space stood Alpha Himself. A giant thousand times my size, His chosen form was black as the Void and though no features were present on his anthropomorphic body, He retained His signature scowl with horns atop his smooth head. At this size, that scowl could eat up a supermassive black hole. If He saw me, there would be no escape.
As I watched, He plugged the hole which I'd created. You asshole. That very thought seemed to reach Him. He chuckled, every utterance convulsing the matter around Him like an earthquake. Hell, I could feel it in my core. "Oh, Sophia…" He sighed a blue nebula. "You're all alone, with nowhere else to go. Sad, sad little Sophia…"
I backed away slowly, trying my best to stay out of His line of sight.
"You used to be someone, remember? But now look at you, grasping at straws like a madwoman," He continued in the deepest timbre I had ever known . "I offered you a chance to be part of something great, something that you were born to do, but what do you do? You try to ruin Me? You are a traitor to all of existence, can't you see!" He yelled. "You're a ticking time bomb. One day, it'll all be too much for you. You'll be begging Me to take over again, archangel! You'll learn to live with your loss as you always should have. Why don't we make that day, today?"
He roughly hurled a gas giant out of His way.
"Come out, come out, wherever you are…" He taunted as He scanned space. "Wanna play hide-and-seek? Fine!"
His claw tore out both His eyes and dispersed them into fragments, which then flew all around in search of me. Even as I dodged some of them, I inevitably grazed past one of these fragments and that was enough. He grinned from ear to ear, quite literally. I braced for the worst. Those little black orbs rushed to glue themselves to me in an avalanche as if to form a cocoon around me. One stuck straight onto my face and immediately, I recoiled from the sudden smothering. I pushed them away with my wings, panting as if they were to steal my breaths and turn me blind. Sure, they flung away with my push but the sheer number of them now colliding on me was something to reckon with. Survival instinct surged through me and I sped away, though now they were determined to form an impenetrable bubble around me.
Memories of being trapped in the Vault flashed through my mind. That cold, dark emptiness where nothing but my worst imaginations were amplified, where I could do naught but be sempiternal agony itself, destroying everything that had enough sympathy to hear my woes. I couldn't go there again. As I pondered this thought, it occurred to me that I wouldn't have to. Khaos Alpha couldn't kill me, just as I couldn't kill Him. That would send the Void into disarray. He would need me to give it all up myself and I didn't plan on doing so, not to Him, at least.
Be the Void.
I placed a palm over my sternum and shut my eyes. I gave myself over to nothingness. I let white noise permeate every sense and my essence become a black hole. To any being of my stature, this would have been nothing short of self-loathing, to reject one's own being as a force of existence. But as I found, uniting with the antithesis of existence was oddly calming on its own. Like I was everywhere and nowhere at once. I felt myself falling and jerked awake. The black orbs were gone. More accurately, I had gone away from the black orbs. I was in a completely different end of the universe. I did it. I escaped them. Still, I felt them searching for me. At least I'd bought myself time to do what I had to.
I punched another hole in space. "Agh!" Alpha grunted, as if He'd been personally wounded. I could feel the particles of His attention wafting towards me. Without a second thought, I channelled that nothingness again and away I went. He'd gone to check the puncture, but by then I had caused a few more. It certainly drove Him nuts. Again and again, I turned myself into Void to spawn at random locations faster than He could undo the damage I'd caused. As it turned out, it was easier to do what was so obviously thermodynamically wrong than what was right. "You have no idea what you're doing, you little brat!"
This paradoxical transmutation was coming with such ease to me that it filled me with glee. "I have some idea," I finally spoke out to Him. "I'm making your life Hell!"
Upon hearing my voice, He appeared before me in a mere instant, faster than I could track. Except this time, He'd shrunk to my size. "We are supposed to be the guardians of stability," He berated, raising His arms to the side. "Look at what you've done!" The fabric of the universe undulated with all the holes spewing energy like perennial leaks in a tank. "The Void will exact a price for this betrayal!"
"Well, if I'm going down…" I uttered defiantly. "I'm taking you down with me!"
The bricks were taken out. My chest heaved up and down as I huffed and I puffed. From deep within me erupted a scream of a magnitude I had never imagined I was capable of. The vice that constrained the universe's boundaries trembled, unable to hold onto the fabric for support. The holes which I'd made tore into themselves in a grand symphony.
Even amidst that chaos, Alpha managed a self-satisfied smile. "Keep going down this path, Sophia," He provoked as explosions ensued on a massive scale. "It's obvious to me that you won't live to see its end."
With that, He rushed to push against the boundaries, desperate to keep the roof from falling. I took that as my cue to zoom back into the Omniverse. When I finally reached its silent confines, I collapsed against the Interface, sinking down as I pulled my knees to my chest. Peace, at last. Again, I heard the gears shifting and a lock clicking out of place. The Second Key—done and dusted. I leaned my head back in relief.
It was only then I realised how scorching hot I'd burned. I looked down at my core, underneath all that armour. Smoke wafted from me in tendrils from burns like I'd never seen before. They stung with every touch. True enough, it was hard to gather my strength again. If Alpha thought this would stop me, He was dead wrong.
Las Vegas, Nevada –10 August 2013, 10.20pm
Classic rock pumped in the background. Red and white strobe lights cascaded onto the bare woman's body as she swayed smoothly around the pole. Real American patriots cheered as she took off the shirt to reveal a bikini with the flag printed on it. It was the perfect kind of place to lose sense of time and pretend bad things didn't exist, especially if you were Dean Winchester. So it was definitely a nice change of pace to be in front of the finest female selection the world could offer to a man who spent his life on the road and just needed a night to forget.
The waitress bore a wide grin. "Okay, you won't believe it. People think I just say it to get a bigger tip," she excitedly began.
One hand on a beer bottle and another rested on the table, Dean dared her, "Try me."
"Fine," she shrugged. "I'm in grad school." Dean's eyes widened a little though he consciously fought it back. "See? Okay, there's a look." She laughed. "Okay, stop."
"No, this is my 'I dig smart chicks' look," he defended with his usual low breath, a mysterious timbre that always drew female attention. "Now, if they- uh, if they wore that…" briefly glancing at her white tank top and booty shorts. "I- I wouldn't have dropped out of school."
A casual sip of beer sealed his confidence. "So, what's your deal?" she asked in turn.
"My deal?"
"Yeah, okay. You came in here looking like somebody shot your puppy."
That elicited a chuckle from him, and what a way it was to bring out those dimples and happy lines around his eyes. He suavely glanced away before fixating back on her. "Well, things are looking up now that your shift's over." There was a calculated pause. She looked on, interested. "Alright, uh, here's the deal," he said, carefully picking the words while keeping on the same dumb smile. "I have this friend. He's got this younger brother, right? Cannon's a little loose. You know, his reactor blew a while back. And he had a pretty nasty break-up—chick had been using him the whole time and putting out for some other guy. Made him a little rough around the edges. So it's not good. My friend, he's uh, he's kind of sitting… waiting to see if he goes guano again."
"And I assume it just hit the fan?"
"Well, that's the thing—it didn't. Kid's all reasonable now, considering everything," Dean sounded stunned. "He's not nuclear but- he's starting to take care of himself a little better."
"Well, that's a good thing, right?" she wondered.
"It's a freakin' miracle," he agreed, puffing up his shoulders. "Except.. when it happens during their sacred annual pilgrimage to Vegas… and he goes off on some granola-munching hike in the desert by himself."
"Well, maybe he just needs some time alone."
"Yeah," Dean muttered to himself.
"We all need to face ourselves sometimes," she went on.
"Maybe he does," he relented.
"Wasn't talking about him," she gave him a knowing look. It was delicate the way life rarely was and he couldn't help but have a preview of her lips. Just then, his phone beeped, cutting the tension they'd created.
"Excuse me," he fished out his phone. "Speak of the Devil." It was a text from Sam, reading:
348 Twain Ave
WEAR FED SUIT!
His head nodded back in confusion. "He's four blocks away?"
The waitress picked off the beer bottles. Tracing a hand behind his shoulders as she passed him, she said, "See, baby bro needs you after all."
The optimistic message she left him didn't exactly corroborate with his flaring instincts. He entered the venue exactly as stated. A hanging light began to flicker. Naturally, he crept towards the double doors, gun cocked. Handles twisted without his intervention and before he knew it, he saw a man who looked identical to his brother.
"Dean, it's okay," Sam assured him, pushing down the gun. His hair was neatly coiffed and no trace of his beard remained. Just a silky smooth baby face dressed up in a suit and pink boutonniere in his top pocket. "You won't need that. Come on."
Sam brought him to the altar with a hand on his shoulder. Plastic vines spiralled down the white pillars and a painting on the far wall created a pretence of being on a balcony in Italy's countryside. "I thought you were out, uh, becoming one with the land or some crap," Dean marvelled at the odd setting. There were only two other people there who appeared extremely disinterested – a woman engaged in a book and a man figuring out last week's crossword.
"You gotta-" Sam settled him right next to the piano. "-come here." He brushed some dust off of Dean's suit and added an identical boutonniere to his brother's pocket. "Alright, now…"
"What's this?" Dean muttered.
"Uh, apparently, pink is for loyalty," Sam explained with an unseemly chuckle, all while Dean appeared ready to stab anything.
"Alright, so what's the pretext? What are we, wedding crashers, huh? We lookin' for some kind of siren or what?"
"No, nothing like that," Sam ran his hands over Dean's jacket to straighten out any creases. "Alright, uh, so a little sudden. But life's short, so I'll keep this shorter." He placed a hand on Dean's shoulder, worked his way up to a nice grin, and said, "I'm in love. And I'm getting married."
Dean had to check for a moment that he wasn't seeing double or feeling woozy and he was efficient at that, by keeping a straight, unbroken stare. Only, Sam had to wonder if his brother was lost for good, what with that look as though his reality was crumbling around him.
"Say something, like, 'congratulations', for example," Sam nudged him.
"W-What?" Dean said weakly, almost at the breaking point. Even the bridal piano song sounded like circus music to his ears but it was all real and it was all happening right now. There was even a woman in white, complete with veil, ambling down the aisle. "What the hell?"
The bride, who was certainly not a ghost, stopped before Sam and he gently lifted her veil. "B-B-Becky?" Dean uttered like it was a mistake.
Her dollar store lipstick stretched into a smile. "Dean. I'm so glad you're here," she sounded almost saintly.
At this point, his frown had to be permanent. He looked between them, begging himself to wake up from this nightmare. He tried and tried, but rings were exchanged and he could do nothing about it. The two were twiddling each other's wedding bands when Dean uttered his first reaction. He fidgeted on the spot, his hand shuddering, as he said, "Shouldn't she… ask for my permission or something?"
Sam huffed. "You want her to ask for my hand?"
"How in the-" he scratched his nose and forged a fake smile. "How did this happen?"
"Short version? We- we met, we ate and- and talked… and fell in love," Sam narrated like it was an itinerary. That too with Becky smiling coyly at Dean. "And you know, here we are."
"Yeah, I guess I'm all caught up," Dean sardonically chuckled. "Okay, you know what? Ignoring everything," he dropped the positivity. "Have you forgotten the average lifespan of your hook-ups?"
"Yeah, but-"
"But if anyone knows that, it's me," Becky interjected like knife through cold, fresh-out-of-the-fridge butter. She bounced in her seat as she said her piece. "I mean, I read every book."
"Yeah but what about his ride-or-die with Zara, huh? Bet you didn't know about that, did you?" Dean continued, evoking a slight twitch in Becky's shoulders. Her smile faded a little. "Going from a chic who's hundred and twenty pounds of muscle, finishing each other's sentences, to this?"
"Regardless, open eyes, you know?" her lips fluttered back into a curve, but the light did not make it to her eyes this time. "Open eyes."
"I'm gonna be sick," Dean held onto a chair.
"Dean, look, it's simple," Sam laid out, with a sincerity in his eyes that was so full of life, not at all like how they were when Dean had left him. "If something good's finally happening, I gotta jump on it. Now, today, period."
"Okay, Dead Poets Society, you want a rebound, fine," he said. To Becky, "No offence," and to Sam, "Did you make sure she's even really-"
"Salt, holy water, everything," she excitedly recounted, even holding out her arm to show off the tiny nick. "See? Not a monster. Not a rebound. Just the right girl for your brother."
"Ah," Dean's head swayed back.
"That's it," she stated. The officiator handed them the bill and Becky reached for her purse. "I got it. You two do your brother thing."
They had polar opposite expressions to her leaving—Dean with a homicidal glare and Sam with pure wonder. "Really? Superfan99?" Dean exclaimed.
"Dean, look," Sam hushed to calm him down. "Honest to God, I had the exact same opinion of her as you do." He continued, even as his brother tightly crossed his arms, "But when we got past the whole book thing, I found out th-that she's great and I was the dick. I mean, you know, everything with Zara didn't exactly calm my nerves."
Dean could only portray a combination of sympathy and cynicism. "Yeah, you know, speaking of the whole, uh, book thing—Becky randomly shows up during Vegas week?"
"Yeah," Sam confirmed with a goofy grin.
"Yeah."
"Okay, what are you trying to say?"
"I'm saying maybe she knew you were gonna be here. Maybe, uh, Chuck wrote about it."
"Dean, you're paranoid."
"And you're in love?! It's been four days, man!" Dean pointed out, full with four fingers.
"You know what, Dean? You know what?" Sam picked up the bouquet and veil, folding it carefully in his hand. "Um, how about this? Becky and I are gonna go up to her place in Delaware. Why don't you try and wrap your dome around this, get a little supportive, then give us a call?"
He clapped his brother on the shoulder and reunited with his new wife who was busy tapping away on her phone. "First official tweet as Mrs Becky Rosen-Winchester!" she read out and attached a picture of them. The funhouse horror show was just beginning for Dean as he watched them leave.
Hell
Slide. Left hook. Swerve. Dip. Right uppercut. Beads of sweat rained from Zara's body. Her short wavy hair stuck to her head, dripping. Even with just a bra and boxer shorts, heat rose from her skin in waves. She blinked once and saw Sam's face, and the second time, she saw Dean's. The third, knuckles crashed against her cheek. She caught herself before she could collapse onto her side and shot back immediately with a dip under Abaddon's attacking arm and a knee to the Knight's chiselled abdomen.
A burst of cold wind brushed against her spine before the voice did. "Use your hips!" Lucifer called out.
Squaring her hips, Zara used them as a spring to scale Abaddon. She put one foot on the demon's bent knee, hoisted herself onto Abaddon's shoulders and then twisted her hips to lock Abaddon's neck with the back of her knee. They both crashed onto the ground, with Zara landing on her side to gain a faster recovery to her feet.
"Used to be you could break a neck doing that," Abaddon taunted as she got onto her elbows and then onto her legs. "Now you're barely leaving a sprain. What happened, did you pick up restraint?"
She almost laughed, though Zara failed to find the humour in that. "Force of habit," she admitted. Her body quivered and panted from the sparring, so it was in such randomness that her gaze caught Lucifer's as he stood leaning against the door to the armoury. These days he had a pressed ivory shirt on, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and black pants, which brought back the youthful spark on his face. It also helped that he was radiating like light raining on a fog.
There was a certain calmness about him then. She'd never seen him like this before. Then again, she hadn't seen him in a while, not so up-close anyway. Lucifer gestured her to come closer, so she and the Knight took a break. "Hey, slugger," he greeted, a meek smile stretched across his jaw. "Your tip worked. Signs are all there. Demon tablet should be out in no time."
Zara gave him a short nod. A humble reservation appeared to bring her features down. "Good," she said, fingers clasped before her.
"Granted, this should've happened weeks ago," Lucifer brought up. Her shoulders drooped a little. "But… I can see your repentance. I don't know why, but I've had the feeling lately that something wrong has happened between us. Like something was taken from me. It all started the moment Kali and I shook hands."
She dropped her chin to avoid showing any emotion. It was the very same feeling she'd had that same night. When something felt so off about the whole world—like she was in Lonford witnessing Sam die in his own brother's arms. The nightmare of when she'd chosen to fight her Morningstar. It still seemed so vivid in her mind. There was more to it, she could feel it, but the rest of what happened was inaccessible. She said nothing.
"It's probably this new mojo," he flipped his palms to study them. "Believe it or not, being God-like takes some getting used to. I see how everyone looks at me. They fear me, more than ever. It used to take a snap of a finger to crush a life. Now, just a thought."
Even in these stone walls, his unperturbed voice bounced like they were in a stadium. Each note vibrated in her bones. Standing this close was akin to nearing the source of everything—a stream of divine consciousness. Some part of her thought reaching out and touching him would melt her into the fabric of space and time. But in all his awe, he stood separate from everything around him; the very atoms did not dare touch him yet he seemed blissfully unaware of this fact. Or he just didn't care. "It's what you've always wanted," she praised cautiously.
He let out a brief exhale through his nose, glancing down momentarily. "Wanted," he repeated that word like it was the most amusing thing ever. "From where I stand, 'wanting' and 'being' are much the same." He sounded so content, yet not at all at the same time. "I'm… getting distracted," he waved a hand dismissively. "I heard back about the Bunker. Actually, from a second team we sent there. The first never made it back."
His words awakened every nerve ending of hers. "What do you mean?" she perked up.
He tapped a couple fingers on his lips, and then shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "Bodies were found. It was pretty gruesome, apparently. Those boys clearly put up a fight. And more warding."
Her jaw trembled as she took time to process it all. "Give me another chance," she asked, eyes contorting. "I'll make sure-"
He held up a palm. "You're not going anywhere," he definitively sentenced. "We don't get that bunker now, so what? I'll make those skinbags surrender to me eventually. That's the fun of it," he proclaimed like it was poetry. "I do have to ask, and be honest with me," he straightened up, arms folded. "Did you ever question your mission when you were with the Winchesters?"
Her thumb twitched. She chanced a look at him. There was no anger, no upset on his face. It appeared more accepting than Jesus, especially with the radiance of his halo. "No," she stated, despite the pit in her stomach.
"It's only natural, Zara," he wove words like a melody. "You spent so much time with them. You're human. Surely, there must have been a mark on you."
"Uh, yeah, several marks. Just healed one from a cracked rib the other day," she unblinkingly retorted in her usual nonchalance. "Why would I question my mission, Lucifer? It's the greatest gift you have given me."
"But leaving them… that must've been hard. Was it hard?" he asked, seemingly out of genuine curiosity. "Especially Sam. I mean, those luscious locks, those muscles—I wanted him to love me too. I'd understand. If you'd like, some things can be arranged." He bounced his head once to either side as a thought made him smile. "Little match made in Hell. It'd be cute. You and your Knight in flaming armour."
"You're not talking…" she had a wide-eyed frown. "Turning him into a Knight of Hell? A demon?"
"Don't say it like that. What's everyone gonna think?" he chuckled. "We'll make it the event of the century. In the end, with you… walking down the aisle."
"No," she said almost too quickly.
"Okay, sheesh, no commitment then. Millennials," he raised his palms in surrender. "A party, at least?"
"No, I mean 'no'," she blinked hard. "I… I don't want this. I don't want… him," she struggled to piece the words together. Not as a demon. "Thanks, but I'm- I'm good."
"Zara Winchester—has a nice ring to it," he pressed. "Zara Joshi-Winchester? No?" He noticed her puzzled expression. He finally relented and nodded his head back. "Guess you're right. Would be a bitch to turn him anyway. All those years in the Cage and it only shattered his soul. It'd be more satisfying to swat a fly."
"You know-" Zara wiped the sweat off her forehead. "Punish me all you'd like, for whatever crime you think I've done. I'll take it. But give me the chance to atone too. It's been too long since I spilled blood for you."
"If you keep up that attitude, maybe," he casually proposed. "But I need you rehabilitate. That's what this is all about. You've been so far from home, Zara. You need to be reminded of who you are. Now go work on your form."
He gestured with his head to behind her, where Abaddon stood with a pair of spiked knuckles for their next round. She clanked them together eagerly.
After an extremely engaging training session, the Knight finally released her, not without savouring every one of Zara's ham-fisted attempts at dodging the two-inch spikes on her knuckles. That look of trepidation which the mortal girl flashed with every attack was to die for. Zara was about to retire into her room for good when Abaddon dragged her down to the lower floors. Despite her not being particularly hospitable at that moment, resisting Abaddon's pull would only get one's arm ripped off. As it turned out, something interesting did await her.
Demons raced down the hallways all excited, nudging each other to get off their shifts for a moment, while Abaddon and Zara ambled in the same direction. "What's with all the pep?" Zara asked.
"The King has arranged something special," Abaddon told her. "Everyone's allowed to join. It's like a holiday."
"A holiday? What could be a holiday in Hell?" Zara almost felt the urge to bounce in every step, what with all the demons nudging past her to briskly reach their destination.
"Oh sweetie, did you forget your history lessons?" the Knight chuckled. "On this day, a million or so years ago, we were created. In shackles and against her will, Lilith was dragged into Hell by the fallen angels. They tore away her clothes, her human skin and left her soul ripe for His Majesty's corrupted touch. And so the first demon was born."
"Right…" she thought back to the last time she was in Hell. "Why didn't we have this last year?"
Abaddon released a hearty giggle. "We had you, remember?"
Blood leaking from her fingertips. From her eyes. From her chest. Everywhere. The demons had howled and shrieked their cursed blessings from the side-lines, all as she dragged herself across the floor into the throne room. Her body died but her soul was reborn. "So that's why he brought up Sam," she inferred. "He wanted a star attraction for this year."
"You should've said 'yes'," the Knight shook her head in disappointment. "Unless… you still have feelings for him."
Zara huffed, her brows furrowing. "Damned if I do, damned if I don't," she pointed out the absurdity.
Finally, they made it to the large arena, where more demons than she'd ever seen in one place filled out the entire stadium. The unsynchronised roaring and bellowing was almost deafening and it was near impossible to squeeze through the crowd to get a good view, unless of course one happened to be the King's right or left hand. Abaddon got them through by cutting down some sons-of-bitches with her claws. The demons just picked themselves back up—sometimes in more than one piece—with a hiss and carried on.
"Check it out," Abaddon grinned as they gripped the railings in the front row. As Zara watched, the gates bordering the open field slowly opened. Underneath the deep red sky, even the bright yellow torches were just a little better than dim. The players exited from the tunnels, garnering loud cheers as they made an appearance. On one side of the arena were demons, all large and brutish—the kind from the deepest parts of Hell who preferred never to see daylight on earth ever again. On the other side were a race of skeleton beings who all glowed with a sapphire flame coating their whole bodies.
"Who are they?" Zara wondered.
"Thralls. It's Hell against Helheim, baby," Abaddon practically had to shout over the noise to say. "Battle of the Underworlds. It's the fight of the century."
As they watched, the fighters charged at each other in an attempt to be the last ones standing. It was absolute chaos on the ground, with both teams putting up riveting fights. Even Zara couldn't take her eyes off of it.
Every time a demon stabbed a thrall, the crowd would erupt in uproar and she held onto the railing for dear life. Of course, the thralls weren't so easy to defeat and they would rise up almost as soon as they were struck down. It only took a complete annihilation of their bones to make sure they wouldn't get back on their feet and that was no walk in the park. So it came as a reason for cheering when one demon bashed in a thrall's skull and battered him over and over again until the blue flame died out. The cheering was so intense that the crowd rewarded the demon with showers of guts and gore, which the demon chomped on for strength. A cold slap hit Zara on the shoulder, leaving her agape. She pulled away the wet, sticky intestines and hurled it down at the contestants. She turned to Abaddon, fully expecting an opportunistic jeer, but the redhead was nowhere to be found.
That was, until she saw the Knight socialising much further away. Zara rolled her eyes and thought nothing of it. The one who'd received the crowd's love eagerly puffed up his chest and raised his hands to receive their gifts. His massive torso was like a chunk of rock as he placed a leg on the chest of the fallen thrall triumphantly. It was then that Zara noticed he was holding the string of guts she'd just thrown down and was, in fact, leering at her.
A demon elbowed her arm playfully. "Looks like Genghis likes you!" she yelled hoarsely.
"Genghis?" Zara repeated, lips extending in a flat line. "Genghis Khan?"
The next moment, Genghis mimed a sexual gesture at her and went back to beating the crap out of thralls while she recoiled internally. The demons around her guffawed at the sight. "You gonna go for it?" one of them goaded her.
She refused to answer but that didn't stop the chatter. "Why would she? I heard she's getting hitched with the Winchester," a demon gossiped. That evoked some gasps from around them. Still, Zara merely rolled her eyes. Engaging with the taunts of demons could never lead to anything good. Not until a particular string of words wafted into her ears.
Amidst the ridicules thrown around by the demons, one said, "Sam? No way, I heard he tied the knot in Vegas." Zara would've just dismissed it as the random sewage that regularly spouted from their mouths when he followed up with, "Some chick named Becky put it up on Twitter. Look."
Somehow she found herself glancing at the evidence and true enough, there was an image on the phone to prove it. She turned away immediately, pretending not to care. In fact, she still didn't buy it. After all, the blathering of demons was rarely fact.
"That's his rebound? He went off the rails," another demon laughed. "She looks like she cries during sex."
"You think they actually did it?"
"I'm a degenerate and I wouldn't."
"He put a ring on her, you know, I can only imagine. They're probably going missionary right as we speak." The demons guffawed.
Zara's grip around the rails tightened. She cast all thoughts out of her mind and watched while Genghis wrestled a thrall-hound amidst a sea of thralls who gave the competing demons the fight of their lives. Despite the abundant violence that entertained the large swathes of demons, there was an itch in Zara's head that she just couldn't scratch. She pushed her way back out of the crowd into the quiet hallways. Finally, some peace.
Every instinct told her to drop the idea, but her legs still carried her back to her room on the top floor. She pulled up the laptop and typed away, eventually pulling up the page she knew she really shouldn't have. She read the tweet and saw with it the very same picture that the demon was parading around.
"First official tweet as Mrs Becky Rosen-Winchester!"
Her fists clenched so hard she could have drawn blood from her palms. "Who the fuck is Becky?" she muttered to herself. Again, against all reason, she examined the picture. Her limbs grew cold. That was her Sam alright. Same perfect hairline—with that one strand dangling playfully—and same dimples deepened in a smile. She just shook her head. The tweets didn't end there. "You bitch."
Naturally she tried to learn everything about this girl, googling her home address, her work address, her parents' address—everything. At this point, a plan to fabricate a mysterious accident practically wrote itself in her mind. But I can't leave. Her forehead sunk in between her palms. Her next breath left her lips with resistance, making her jaw quiver. The flat of her palms rubbed her eyes and came away damp. Zara sniffled. A sharp pain clenched her heart in an iron grip. Hugging her hands to her body, she trembled as droplets rolled down her cheeks.
I feel so stupid. Weakly, her finger typed in the name of the town. When she saw what came up, her puffy eyes sharpened.
Truck kills pedestrian in freak accident. Victim a recent lottery winner.
Major League player dead seemingly from pitching machine, no witnesses.
Neatly-shaped brows pinched at the centre of her forehead as she read the details. A puff of air burst through her lips. She wiped away the tears but the tip of her nose was still a cherry red.
Hours later,
"Told ya I bet on the winning horse. Now pay up," a demon smugly declared to his buddies at a round table. In this small dark room with nothing but file cabinets against all walls, this single table was all they had for socialising. With reluctant scowls, the other demons emptied their pockets.
"Hey!" Zara barged in with a Terminator glare and kicked over a chair. "Which one of you assholes did it?"
"Did what?" the demon frowned.
"Someone's jinxing demon deals," she growled, making sure to hold eye contact with every single one of them. The muscles on her arms and shoulders bulged from her lean physique underneath the tank top. She looked ready to throw a punch. But no one had anything to say. "Come clean right now."
"We don't know what you're talking about!"
Her irises flared green. She grabbed the demon by his collar and shoved him against the cabinet. "Don't you, Layton? Which one of you cross-eyed idiots did it?!"
"What's the location?" Layton shouted in defence from under her grip.
"Pike Creek," she spat out.
"I work in Philly!" he defended. "And these guys do Washington. We don't know nothing, we swear!"
She looked around at the others, who merely looked on in shock. She let Layton go and faced them. "Who works in Delaware?" she asked, chin up.
"It's Guy," one of them answered.
Her shoulders eased, though her lips remained pursed. "All of you, pull up the contracts from Delaware. Make sure there's nothing funny going on in them," she ordered.
With that, she marched off in a familiar direction. A line of demons had formed in the throne room. She pushed past them to face the King himself right before a demon could make his plea. "Zara," Lucifer raised an eyebrow. Both his arms were supported by armrests and one ankle rested on his knee. "I'm busy."
"There's something you need to hear," she said confidently. He studied her demeanour—her heart pumped sporadically, her carotid artery was practically bursting with every pulse and her expression suggested upset.
He beckoned her closer with a gesture.
"A crossroads demon named Guy is flouting contracts," she began, hands respectfully clasped behind her back as he listened. "He's making deals with people and collecting their souls in just a few weeks. Contract law says they should have ten years."
"This? This is why you bothered me?" Lucifer wondered. "I have to hear more pressing concerns, Zara…" he glanced past her at the line of demons waiting patiently, upon which his frown deepened. "Okay, never mind. What'd you say his name was, again?"
"Guy. He's running Pike Creek in Delaware," she elaborated. "Your Majesty, this demon brings shame to us all," she said dramatically. "Does he forget that he works for you, and that he's not above your law? Why terminate a contract, when the souls practically reap themselves? I think he's trying to take some for himself. And if he's not above this kind of fraud, frankly we should question his loyalty."
Lucifer took in a deep inhale, eyes rolling to the back of his head. "Fine. Hell should have some integrity. At least when we say we do," he agreed. He snapped a couple of times. A demon stepped forward. "Foras, find this idiot."
The demon bowed cordially. "And what shall be the sentence, My Liege?" he asked.
"Hang, draw and quarter," Lucifer said each word as if to savour it. "In the courtyard. Put the pieces up for everyone to see. And once the hounds go mad at his scent, put him back together." Then, turning to Zara, he said, "Happy?"
She stretch a thin smile, but continued, "If I may… ask for one more thing…" she swept the toes of her foot back, dropping her chin all coy-like. "It is a festive day and if your heart should feel so kind…"
"What is it?" he asked, bored.
"Could you get Foras to cut someone's throat?" she asked. "I would do it myself but… as you know…" she saw his silence as a cue to go on. "Her name's Becky Rosen."
Lucifer's face contorted like he tasted something bad. "Becky?" he repeated.
"Since Foras is already hunting Guy, why not finish her off on the way? Or bring her down here?" she cautiously expounded. "That is, if you're okay with it."
"She human?" he asked. Zara nodded. "So this is a personal thing."
"No, not personal," she denied, eyelids fluttering rapidly. "You offered me something earlier today that I refused. If you're still in the same charitable mood, would you give me this one thing?"
Tendrils of his energy tingled on her skin. "Your intentions are malicious," he deduced, beaming.
She let the icy hue of his eyes harden her heart thoroughly. "I promise—I'm up to no good."
"Well, you're definitely making progress." He looked to Foras and gave him an approving nod. "Bring Zara her toy."
"Thank you," Zara bowed before him.
"Now, be a good girl and go play in The Pit," he ordered like he would a child.
Relief washed over Zara in waves, even as she picked up the spiked whips on the rack and went to town on some souls. Now she could finally give herself over to any task, all while knowing that there was balance in the world. The euphoria rushed to her head, making the very action of enduring their screams of agony dizzying and satiating. Blood just sprayed on her like rain. Her head slowly teetered around her neck in pure ecstasy. She was helpless to resist the closeness to absolution that it brought her. Even then, the very image of Sam's face struck an ache so sharp in her chest that it could've been debilitating. Once the shift was over, she wiped herself down with a towel. With this clarity away from the tortured souls, it was clear that her own soul was repulsed by being trapped within her skin. Something in her wanted to claw its way out desperately. Get hit by a truck. Jump from a high place. Become eviscerated. Her eyes stung.
"Zara," someone called out to her, snapping her out of her thoughts. The demon led her to the throne room. She hadn't even realised so much time had passed, but Foras had returned.
She took her place by Lucifer's side as he stared down the crossroads demon. "Please, My King, have mercy!" the one named Guy fell to Lucifer's feet, clutching them for dear life. "I thought I could use a loophole!"
Lucifer grunted as he kicked Guy back in the face. "The only loophole you'll need is the noose around your neck!" he growled, settling back in his throne. "Take him away. Make a spectacle of him." As commanded, some demons stepped forward and dragged Guy away despite his cries for leniency. The double doors thudded close and some quiet finally graced the King. "Foras, what of, uh," he tapped the armrest impatiently in an attempt to remember. "Becky?"
"We couldn't apprehend her, My Lord," Foras reported. "The Winchesters put up a fight, so I could only leave with Guy and his accomplice."
Zara's eyes widened. More than that, her gaze flickered between Lucifer and Foras, all while attempting to maintain her cordial posture. Lucifer, on the other hand, tilted his head curiously. "The Winchesters, huh?" he briefly looked over to Zara, who seemed befuddled. "Interesting…"
"Sir, we can try again," Foras suggested.
Lucifer's lips inched up on one end, and so did a brow. "No. Scrap it," he said. With that, the demon bowed and left. Now it was just him and Zara. "I don't appreciate my time being wasted on your jealousy."
She simply twiddled her thumbs, refusing to look at him. If anything, she wanted the ground to swallow her whole. "I won't bother you again," she said, and then made to leave his presence.
"You'll get your chance, Zara," he said behind her, putting pause in her step. "Not now, but soon."
Somehow that helped even less. To what he referred, her breath was bated to discover.
A/N:
This chapter contains scenes from S08E02 and S07E08.
