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Chapter title is from song by Metallica.
36
The Unforgiven III - Metallica
The silence was thick as he turned the car west towards Kansas.
"Dean."
"Shut up, Sam."
He slanted Sam a look that would have withered anyone else into silence. Unfortunately, Sam was made of tougher stuff.
"Cas is hurt pretty bad."
"I mean it, Sam. SHUT. UP."
There was enough sharp frustration in his tone that Sam fell silent. It wasn't going to last, but he'd bought himself a few precious minutes. He needed them. Needed to concentrate on not noticing the SUV fading to a pinpoint in the rearview mirror. Needed to turn off his awareness and not think.
Not feel.
He stole a glance down at his hands on the Impala's steering wheel. It was hard not to see the fire there. All the things he had become. Dark, all of them dark, all of them burning and pain and danger. It was better for them all to be far away from him. Better if he could somehow get Sam to go too, except Sam was a stubborn cuss, and except he was weak, and he needed Sam.
Needed his brother.
How could he tell Sam the darkness was clawing at him? Clawing and winning? The things he could do now with his hands.
Toby knew it. He'd seen it in the kid's eyes, too clear for his age. Wariness. The kid had remembered, even when it seemed Sam and Cas wanted to forget. To forgive.
He forced himself to breathe. She'd done the right thing, leaving. It was the smart thing to do. He didn't need Sam to point out the obvious. He was poison. They'd gotten too close. And now they were marked, the kid and the girl, chips in a high stakes poker game they should never have been a part of in the first place.
He felt Sam looking at him. His brother's eyes on the tightness of his face, looking for an opening, looking for hope.
She should have steered clear. They would have been safe.
His right hand tightened on the steering wheel as he glanced in the rearview at the empty road behind him.
Let go. He had to let them go.
"Hello, boys."
Unlike every other time Crowley had done his appartating trick into the backseat of the Impala, Dean knew he was coming and kept his foot on the gas without blinking. Sam, however, both hissed and yelped. Dean caught Sam's arm before Sam futilely sliced through Baby's upholstery with Ruby's knife again and suffered Sam's reproving glare without turning a hair.
"Crowley." He replied without turning. The King of Hell stared speculatively at the back of his head before shrugging himself into what he had come to say.
"You're going to need to do something about them."
"About who?" Sam snarled.
"The Fallen, you moron. Dean knows."
Sam darted a quick look at him. Like, he does?
Somehow he did.
Sam blanched.
A thousand questions popped into Sam's head. He could see them like little thought bubbles over Sam's gourd. Chief among them were: How? I've been with you 24/7. How do you know these things now? Is there a supernatural Reddit that I don't know about? Who are you? What are you? What else don't I know about you?
It was good for Sam to be unnerved. He should be. He couldn't just go on thinking the person, no, the corpse sitting next to him, was his brother. His family. He wasn't.
Not anymore. Not really.
"What do you got?"
He addressed the question to Crowley, cutting through the idle chitchat and getting to the heart of the matter. Crowley didn't want to be here, and Crowley was being cautious, even for Crowley.
Fear.
Dean's lip curled. Damned right he should be afraid.
Crowley hesitated.
"Talk."
Sam looked sharply at his tone. At the command, so easily given.
"They're sniffing around, the Fallen."
"Who else besides you knows the keys?"
Crowley gave him an exasperated look.
"No one, you great dumb oaf. Think I'd still be alive if anyone else did?"
"How'd you get them, then?"
Crowley pursed his lips. "King of the Crossroads, remember? You thought humans are the only ones who want to make deals?"
"Can you keep them out?"
"Not anymore."
Sam turned around to face the demon in the backseat. "What do you mean?"
"These aren't wingless monkeys we're dealing with anymore, Moose. With the power of the Holy High Above behind them, they can go anywhere. Do anything. Pluck whatever souls out of Hell they damned well please. Remember?"
With that, Crowley cast a look at the back of his head.
As if he could forget.
Sam's lips tightened, like he didn't need the reminder.
"So I figured the safest place was with you."
Crowley tacked that last bit on guilelessly, but Sam just about shot through the roof.
"You are not coming with us!"
"Oh, come on, Samantha. I'm useful."
"You're duplicitous!"
The King of Hell tilted his head to one side deprecatingly.
"Hazards of the job."
"If they can do anything they want now, why do they still need you?" Dean asked curtly, cutting through the bickering.
"They're lazy. It's tedious getting your feathers singed and sweaty getting souls out one by one. Far easier to release the floodgates if you have the keys."
"And then what? What do they want all these souls for?"
"If I knew that, you think I'd be sitting here?" Crowley snapped back.
"What do you know about Ramiel?"
Crowley froze for a half second. Sam's eyes narrowed.
"Crowley. What are you not telling us?"
Crowley flashed Sam an irate look.
"Loads, Jolly Green. What I know wouldn't fit in your tiny brain."
Sam's face hardened.
"Crowley." Dean interrupted abruptly. "Ramiel."
"Lucifer's second? The archangel of Hope? Bad news, mate. Word is he's gone off the reservation. Even more so than most, and you have to admit, his brothers weren't exactly pattern cards of sanity. Where's Cas?"
The way Crowley asked was off-handed, incidental, even, but Dean's attention snagged.
"Why?"
Crowley focused on buffing his nails against his lapels.
"Crowley."
"I'm sure it's nothing."
"Crowley." Dean growled.
"There's a price out on his head."
Sam looked immediately at him. Worried.
"I thought they didn't need him after they got Heaven."
Crowley shrugged. "It sounded a bit personal, if you ask me."
Dean looked at his hands again. Instinct and temptation, the right thing, the reasonable thing, bit at him. His knuckles were white with the force of his grip on the wheel, and the things he wanted—to turn the car around, to go make sure—he couldn't do that. He shouldn't.
He closed his eyes, blocking out the road for a moment.
"Cain. Can you find him?"
Alarm flashed across Sam's face at those words.
Crowley made a rocking motion with his hand, considering the merits of the idea. Maybe.
"Find him."
The only other person who knew what the First Blade could do. The only other person capable of holding Hell.
Just in case.