Chapter title is from song by Metallica.
5
Some Kind of Monster - Metallica
They had been here one time too many, the ingredients for Crowley's summoning spell dumped into a copper bowl, freshly painted devil's trap in front of them, a squeeze of blood, a lit match, and acrid, sulfur-y smoke.
"Hello, boys."
He advanced on Crowley with Ruby's knife, a flash of déjà vu.
"Fix it."
"Fix what?" Crowley asked innocently.
Sam slid a look behind him and grit his teeth. "That."
Crowley cocked his head to one side and looked at Dean standing behind him.
"You said 'Bring him back.' He's back. What's not to like about that?"
"He's…" Sam grit his teeth. "A demon. Possessed. You did something."
"Well. I did say he would be 'better than new'."
Sam narrowed his eyes, because Crowley had said that. "That's not what I meant, and you know it."
"Then it seems you should have been more specific, Moose. Didn't they teach you that at the big poncey school?"
He took a step in Crowley's direction, but came to a hard stop, because there were hands on his shoulders, yanking him back. Dean's hands. And he didn't know what Dean was up to, what with Dean's whole bromance with Crowley, but Dean had always been too easy on the bastard. He tugged absently against Dean's restraining hold, all of his attention on the King of Hell.
"Just. Fix him. NOW."
Crowley smiled.
"Or what?"
They had the demon cuffs and they had the First Blade. He was lifting Ruby's knife again when Dean's hands clamped down on his arms and twisted them behind him. The jagged blade in his hand clattered down to the ground in surprise.
"Dean? What are you doing? DEAN!"
His voice rose, turning too late to see the black eyes in Dean's face. Dean yanked his left arm more tightly behind him. Sam twisted sharply, jamming his shoulder into Dean's right collarbone, a take-down move that had always worked on Dean before, except Dean didn't stumble. He didn't even budge. It was like slamming into a wall.
"See, Sam. King of Hell." Crowley murmured mildly with a mocking little bow, then pointed at Dean. "Demon."
No. No no no no no no.
"Dean!"
Dean's face was like a wooden mask.
"DEAN! Come on, you have to fight it! DEAN!"
Crowley smiled a cool little smile.
"Ah, Moose. Ever so hopeful." Crowley gestured to the devil's trap. "Dean, if you would?"
Obediently Dean scratched through the outer circle of the trap with his boot.
In the next second Sam found himself flung across the room and pinned against the wall, his feet kicking at empty air. Crap Shit Crap. He kicked harder despite knowing it would do no good, grunting with effort.
Crowley sauntered across the room as if he owned it.
"Now, knife, please?"
Moving as if he were a marionette, Dean picked up Ruby's knife.
"Dean, no. DEAN!"
His words fell on deaf ears as Dean handed the knife to Crowley.
"Lovely." Crowley smiled, all teeth and no charm. "Well lads, it's been fun. But things to do, Hell to rule, yada, yada." Crowley turned towards the door, took one step, and paused. "Oh. One thing, Samantha."
Crowley pointed at Dean.
"Your new pet. I wouldn't try exorcising him."
"What?"
"Exorcism. You know, Latin chant, banishing the demon to hell and all. He's bound to this body now, Mark of Cain being what it is, so the effects might be a little…unpredictable."
"What?"
Crowley looked at him shrewdly. "You're not quite so sure who's really in there, are you, Sam? Of course not, or you'd have been spitting Latin the first time you saw black eyes in your brother's face."
No.
"That's alright. You're not alone. Never known anyone more stubborn in denying what they are than your brother. " Crowley smiled, a bare flash of teeth, before Crowley turned towards the door again with a wave. "Have fun, Moose."
The invisible force pinning him to the wall vanished with Crowley. He crashed down to the floor, scrambled up, and rushed over to check on Dean, grabbing Dean by the shoulders to wake him, to shake the blackness out of his eyes. He didn't expect Dean's fist to come up in a swift upper cut, smacking straight into his jaw, blinding pain lashing his head back with enough force to send him flying clear back across the room. His head cracked down hard on the concrete, and the room spun around a few times before it stilled.
Unsteadily he shook his head to clear it and looked back at Dean. Dean's fist was still raised and half-cocked, frozen where it had connected with his jaw. Black eyes stared blankly into space, like a puppet without a master. Sam breathed out uneasily. The painted trap he lay on was broken. Ruby's knife was gone. The .38 with the devil's trap bullets was lying on the table. He'd thought he had time. Now, he could only lie there and stare.
The seconds ticked like eons. Dean blinked, then took a shallow breath. When his eyes opened again, Sam saw a faint sheen of moisture on the familiar green-hazel irises. Dean stared at his fist as if it no longer belonged to him.
Dean blinked again, his eyes focusing and expression hardening. "Sammy?"
"Dean?"
"Sam. I'm sorry."
Sam rubbed his jaw. It was going to be a hell of a bruise, but he'd had worse. With one hand he pushed himself up to a sitting position, then stood.
"Don't. This is my fault. I should have known better."
Dean flinched. "Yeah, been there."
Gadreel. Dean's voice was low, and raw with regret. If it was a demon animating Dean's meatsuit, then it was one hell of an act.
"What did Crowley mean about the Mark, Dean?"
Dean's eyes slid away from him.
"Back when I was human." Dean paused. "I didn't tell you."
"Tell me what?" Sam made an effort to keep his voice level. "What does Crowley know about you that I don't?"
"The Mark—it wants things. It's like a compulsion. A drive. It's hard to explain."
"Try." Sam said between his teeth.
Dean looked away. "I had to kill. To survive. For it to survive. Something. If I didn't—if I tried to stop…" Dean looked back at him, torn. "…it'd make sure it got what it needed."
"The Mark."
Dean nodded. "Crowley said." Dean paused at his ferocious frown. "Crowley said, Cain was able to withstand the compulsion because he was a demon. I couldn't do it before, because I was human. And it was changing me, Sam. It was making me…" Dean looked down. "…something I didn't want to be."
It's better this way.
"And then what, Dean? You didn't think to tell me? No. Instead, you told Crowley. You decided to try suicide by Metatron. Least you could do was go down fighting the good fight, right?"
He was breathing hard by the time he was done. He wasn't sure what pissed him off more. The way Dean kept gunning for these kamikaze runs, or that Dean had confided in Crowley about the Mark without so much as sending an oh-by-the-way his way. Or both. Both was a definite option.
He turned around.
"So. What does this mean now?"
Dean flinched.
"I don't know, Sam. I'm not sure I can control it."
The uncertain edge in Dean's voice brought him up short. He waited a beat, but there was no pep talk coming, no rousing kick-it-in-the-ass speech. And maybe for once, Dean knew he had bitten off more than he could chew. Sam huffed, and rubbed at the bruise on his jaw.
"Come on. We'll hit the books. There's got to be something there."
Dean didn't move. He just stood there, fists clenched at his sides.
"Dean. Books. We'll find something. You said yourself that Cain is able to withstand the compulsion, so there's gotta be a way. Come on. We just have to find it."
The note sitting on the library table was brief in Dean's sharp scrawl.
"I'm sorry, Sammy. Don't look for me."
Disparate expressions of disbelief fought for real estate on Sam's face as he stared at the words on the folded up paper. He set it down carefully on the table again while he blew out a huff of steam. Dean's logic, such as Dean's logic ever was when it came to these things, was ... impeccably screwed.
Words pretty much failed him at this point, which was a rare occurrence. The litany of absurdities to Dean's request ticked themselves off like a talking checklist in his head. Setting aside the fact that Dean was 1) his brother 2) a demon he had brought into the world 3) finding the supernatural was kinda what they did 4) all the other hunters would be on Dean's ass once they even got a whiff of what was up, because seriously, Dean Winchester as a Knight of Hell was a complication to the landscape nobody wanted 5) never mind the hunters, there were angels who were going to be out for Dean's head for the same or lesser reasons, and 6) the crowning glory-this whole fiasco was on him to begin with for dealing with Crowley when he damn well should have known better. If Dean thought he could just up and walk away, vanish into the desert, meditate himself into stone on some remote mountaintop or whatever... or sit his butt down somewhere inaccessible like the Mariana Trench—aw, crap, could Dean do that now?
Blood thumped in his temples, signaling the onset of a truly vicious headache. He should have expected this. For all Dean's pretty words about being family, when push came to shove, "I'll take care of it" had always been Dean's way of handling things. Sammy needs a spotter for the heavy lifting. Better step in and take over before the kid fucked things up. Well, in this case, fucked things up more. Dean would say yes to Michael, call on Cas, trust Benny, hell, even partner up with Crowley, before he could bring himself to count on his freak kid brother.
Okay. Going down that road would get him nowhere. He needed to think—think things through carefully, and not just react. He needed to make a plan. He should check to see if Dean took the Impala. Hell, did Dean even need a car now? He should...
He stopped breathing. The bottom dropped out of his stomach.
He shoved out of the chair with a violent clatter and ran down the hall to the second safe room. The door handle was icy under his fingers as he threw the room door open and step across the unbroken devil's trap and looked with anticipatory doom into the vat of holy water at its center.
The First Blade was gone.
Betrayal was a cold vise twisting in his guts. Angry didn't begin to describe the tidal wave of feeling that swamped him—a simultaneous desire to knock Dean flat on his butt and shake him until he saw stars and grip him by his shoulders to hold on to what humanity may be left and never let go and then maybe knock him on his ass again a few times more.
Sam sat his own ass down on the concrete floor and put his head in his hands. He was wrung; or he would have caught on to the fact that Dean had summoned the First Blade from whatever lockup Crowley (probably) had had on it in the first place. And Crowley would know how to rig an anti-demon lockup right and tight. He'd add this to the list of things Dean somehow 'failed to mention', which was getting to be a downright tome. An encyclopedia of good times. Dean's ass-backward, unyielding, asinine, convoluted, martyr complex, and damned STUPID protective streak.
The walls of the bunker closed in on him. He wanted out. Needed out. He wanted to drop, no, throw, no, HURL the damn ball that Dean was so afraid of him dropping. He walked coolly to the garage. The Impala sat quietly in her spot, elegant black curves gleaming in the artificial light, bright and spotless. Loved. His hand passed briefly over her keys, but settled on the ones for the '72 Dodge. He couldn't sit in the Impala. Not now.
For a while, he simply drove. The flatness of Kansas was a balm, featureless fields and prairie for mile after mile, a road without end asking no thought. He didn't have a direction, just out. Away. Somewhere new. Somewhere different. Somewhere where he hadn't broken anything. Somewhere where he hadn't screwed anything up. Somewhere where he hadn't hurt anyone. He took the back roads, the undemanding silence slowly easing the knot of thought and blame and anger and grief and doubt that racked him.
Night fell. Sometime in the last hours, one state melded into another then another. The terrain changed to high desert, thin and brisk with winter. He chased the uninterrupted view of the horizon line, far in the distance, watching the sun melt below the road, watching the colors of fire erupt across the low sky like a hunter's pyre before the claim of darkness. The high moon lit the clear night and bathed the desert in half light, shadow and darkness beyond the reach of the headlights, and he kept going, wondering if he would ever find the line where the road ended and met the sky's embrace.
Eventually he was forced to stop, checking in at the first motel in the phone book, the habit of years too hard to break. In the back of his mind sat the tiny niggle of hope or doubt or despair or some mix of all three, the same niggle that had prompted him to put his cell phone in his pocket. He thumbed it on now, the blank screen a comfort and a disappointment. Clicking it off with a snap, he went out to get something to eat.
Too soon the business of necessities were taken care of. His teeth were brushed and flossed. He went through his daily rituals, checking his weapons and securing the room. He looked at the blank screen of his phone again, and scrolled idly down his contact list, imagining conversations. "Oh, hey, this is Sam Winchester. Have you seen Dean? Please don't hurt him. He's a demon now." Or maybe he should be warning them instead. "Hey, this is Sam Winchester. If you see Dean, you might want to run. He's a Knight of Hell now."
The motel room felt cavernous and hollow as he sat on the edge of the bed. Determinedly he lay down on the coverlet and closed his eyes. Maybe he would start over. Maybe he would go do the things he'd always wanted to do.
He tried counting backwards from 100. A sense of self-preservation said he had to sleep, no matter how much his brain objected to it. He would decide what to do next, later, in the moment after waking.
Cas was sitting on the bed next to him when he came to the next morning, staring at him fixedly. Grief and a depth of despair wreathed him, even though outwardly Cas simply sat, hands folded in his lap, his trench coat wrinkled around him.
"Holy sh…! Cas! Dammit!" Sam shouted in surprise as he sat bolt upright in bed, Beretta in hand.
"Sam."
The single word sank into the carpet. Castiel hadn't moved, but it seemed Cas drooped even further, as if he had phantom wings that dispiritedly fluttered and dragged, weighted by the very air. Sam scrambled in his mind to remember—what Cas knew, how he knew, and came up with nothing.
"Cas?"
"Sam." Cas replied slowly. Even more slowly, "I am sorry I was not able to come earlier."
Sam squinted. Had Cas heard Dean pray to him after all? Gotten Dean's calls and ignored them because Dean was a demon now?
"I am sorry for your loss."
The formality and intonation of the words snapped him up sharp. Cas thought Dean was dead?
"Uh, Cas?"
Cas turned to him dully. Sam stalled.
"What happened in Heaven?"
"It was a trap. Gadreel committed suicide in an attempt to free us. Metatron made a mistake of arrogance that was his own undoing." Cas paused. "He said he had killed Dean."
"Cas."
"And somehow I cannot sense Dean's soul."
"Cas."
Cas drooped suddenly, worn and bowed. Sam started backwards at the unexpectedly emotional gesture, almost reaching for the holy water to make sure it was their Cas, sitting there.
"I only found you because you prayed."
Sam tried to remember exactly what thoughts flitted through his mind somewhere between the numbers 92 and 33, but there were too many. One of them must have been a half-formed call to Castiel, rusty and uncoordinated, that had found wings and drifted to him anyway.
And now Cas was here.
"Um. Cas."
Castiel's head came up, eyes locking on him with forlorn attention. "Yes, Sam?"
"Dean's not dead. Well. Sort of not dead."
Castiel sat up a little straighter. "What do you mean, not dead?"
"I, uh, made a deal."
"Sam."
"There's something else."
Cas was now frowning at him, as if he could pull the words out by sheer will.
"Dean's a demon."
Cas didn't move.
"Did you hear me, Cas? I said Dean's a …"
"Demon. Yes, Sam. That is not possible."
"I'm afraid it is."
"No. You can't deal away someone else's soul."
"What?"
"Souls are one of a kind. They can only belong to themselves. You shouldn't have been able to deal away Dean's." Cas' eyebrows pulled together. "The demon was Dean? Not a demon possessing his body?"
"I. I don't know." The mannerisms, the attitude, if it wasn't Dean, then it was a hell of an act. He grimaced, wanting to hope, but afraid to. "Crowley specifically said not to exorcise it. Him. Dean. It. Something about the Mark of Cain."
Cas' snapped upright and stood. "The Mark."
"There's a legend." Cas frowned as if the information he was reaching for kept skittering out of his grasp. He paced across the room and stared upwards out the window. "Sam, I'm going to need a ride."
"Um, Cas? Didn't you get your wings back?"
"No." A perturbed look crossed Cas' face before he dismissed whatever it was.
"Then how did you get here?"
"Hannah 'sent' me. The grace I have, Theo's grace." Cas' voice dropped awkwardly. "Is burning out. It won't last forever." Cas shook himself, casting off the thought before he stood up straighter. "But it should last long enough."