All Hell Breaks Loose

AN – This chapter is inspired by the Supernatural episodes All Hell Breaks Loose Part 1 and 2

All Hell Breaks Loose

He couldn't do it.

But he had to.

But it was a trap, it had to be a trap.

But if it saved Buffy...

And in saving Buffy, he'd be saving Dean, too, Sam realized. And the slayers, and her friends, and Faith...

He'd probably never get to see Faith again. Or his brother or his father. That kinda sucked major ass.

He had to do it. He was resolved. He had to do what the demon wanted. Because they still needed her. They still needed Buffy, more than anyone had realized.

So Sam spent the entire day – because there was no way he'd be able to manage to sneak away during the day with everyone on constant Sam watch – researching. He came up with zilch. He was walking into a big glaring trap, and he couldn't even come up with any information to help him.

Knowing that he was probably going to die, Sam waited until everyone had fallen asleep that night, before stuffing his belongings carelessly into a duffel and slipping the colt – which he'd borrowed with the pretence of wanting to research it some more because, Azazel had told him to bring it along – into his holster, and walked right out the door without once looking back.

Dean was a coward.

Dean was a stupid, snivelling little coward who hadn't been to see Buffy once since the night she'd been brought into the school.

Dean was a stupid, snivelling little coward who hadn't been to see Buffy once since the night she'd been brought into the school because he couldn't bear to see the woman he loved so lifeless. Dying, because he'd put her there.

But Faith had caught on to his cowardly ways and kicked him in the ass – literally, actually – and told him that if he was going to pull that stupid 'pity me' face all the time, then the least he could do was to sit by Buffy's bedside as he did it.

Made a bit of sense, really.

In a softer voice, she'd reminded him that he needed to spend time with her now. While he still could.

After that, he couldn't get there quick enough.

So there he sat by Buffy's bed, feeling as though there was something dark and sinister gnawing away at his insides.

Slowly, he reached out to touch her still hand. He pulled back quickly when he was just an inch away. He really was a fucking coward.

"Um," he said awkwardly. He shook his head at himself. He was such a stupid idiot. "I guess I wanted to tell you how sorry I am. Sorry that I haven't been here. Sorry that I put you here." He squeezed his eyes shut tight and took a shaking breath. "I'm so sorry I did this to you. I'm sorry that I couldn't save you. I thought that I could, but I...I just...I failed. And I want you to know that if there was anything, anything, I could do to save you, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Baby, I'd go to the end of the world to bring you back. I'd...I'd die."

If Dean had thought just for one crazy moment that his heart wrenching speech might have gotten though to her and woken her up, he was very wrong.

God dammit! Dean should have known there was something wrong with Sam. He'd been hunched over his lap top for the entirety of the day before, and had grunted out a non-committal response whenever anyone had tried to talk to him. But Dean had been too consumed with his own issues to even bother to realize that something was up. He was such a jackass!

He should have paid more attention earlier that morning when he woke up to find Sam gone, but he'd just stupidly assumed that he'd gone to the school with someone else.

He should've known!

Because now it was late afternoon and no one had seen him all day. Sam was gone, and so was the colt.

"I can't pin point his location," Willow informed them fretfully.

Dean's nostrils flared. "Don't you tell me that means what I think it means!" He couldn't lose Sam too.

"No. No! He's not...It's not that. If by that you mean...dead. It's like with Buffy. He's being cloaked somehow."

"Cloaked by who?"

"If I had to take a guess, I'd say by the same thing that cloaked Buffy. It feels the same."

"The demon?" John growled.

"That's what I'm thinking."

Dean swore loudly. "You think that Sam went to the demon? That he turned? No way! He wouldn't do that!"

Giles quickly shook his head. "No, we aren't saying anything like that. None of us know what has happened as of yet."

"Whatever's happened, we need to find him," John expressed. "Fast."

Searching through the few meagre belongings that Sam had left behind did no good. There was nothing at all to indicate where and why he'd gone.

It wasn't until Bobby returned – he'd left a day ago after hushed whispers with John – with a man in tow that they finally caught a break.

"Who's that?" Faith demanded grumpily, pausing sharpening an axe for a moment to stare.

"This is an old friend of mine, of ours," Bobby indicated to John. "Name's Ash. He's been looking into a few things for us."

John strode over to shake his hand. "It's good to see you again. Tell me you've got something that's gonna help me find my boy."

Ash nodded. "Oh yeah, I found something all right. And it is good!" He fished a map out of his jacket pocket and after pushing a stack of books off of the table – ignoring Giles' protests – he spread the map out."

Dean looked down. "Wyoming?"

Rolling his eyes, Ash prodded the map harshly. "Wyoming with x's drawn on!" He said it like it explained everything. When they jut continued to watch him, clueless, he heaved a long suffering sigh. "Do you people know anything at all about history?" He pointed at each of the x's. "These are all drawn on churches, built one hundred miles apart. Churches built by none other than Samuel Colt."

"The same Samuel Colt that made the demon killing gun?"

"The one and only." He snatched up the pen resting behind Faith's ear, and began drawing lines on the map, from x to x. "Not only did Samuel Colt build the churches, he built railway tracks going from church to church. Which happened to be laid out like...this." He pulled back, revealing the shape of a pentagram.

"A devil's trap..." Dean breathed.

"Hell, yeah."

John pulled the map towards himself excitedly. "A railway track is made out of iron...it's perfect! Jesus, I've never seen anything so elaborate before, anything on such a large scale!"

"But why bother?" Faith piped up. "Why would he even need to create something like that? What's in there that's so important? What's he tryna protect?"

Ash raised worried eyebrows. "Or what's he tryna keep from getting in?"

Giles took his turn with the map. "Is there anything in there? Anything special, of note?"

"Not that I've been able to tell. Just an old cowboy cemetery right in the middle."

"But we're okay, right?" Dean asked. "Because whatever's in there, no demon's getting past those iron lines. So it's safe."

His father looked up sharply. "Sam!"

Sam pulled up in his stolen car at the precise spot the demon had instructed. He glanced down at the railway track with a puzzled frown.

"It's so nice to finally meet again in person, after all these long years."

Sam spun quickly around and raised the colt. "You..."

Azazel rolled his eyes and sighed in disappointment. "I sure didn't see this one coming."

"Maybe you should have looked harder."

"Didn't need to. You know the deal, kiddo. I die, Buffy dies."

Sam ground his teeth. He had no choice but to lower his gun. "Why the hell would you tell me to bring this anyway? I'm not handing it over if that's what you're after."

"Never asked you to. Besides, you're gonna need it."

"For what?"

"To open that door we talked about. Which is about fifty miles," He pointed somewhere behind Sam. "thataway. Keep going and you'll find a cemetery. When you get there you'll find a crypt – you'll know the one I'm talking about when you see it. When you get there, you use the gun to open the door."

"If it's that easy, why don't you just go do it yourself. Let's not pretend you couldn't get this gun off of me if you really wanted to."

"Because I just can't."

God, he wanted to shoot him in his stupid cryptic face. "Fine," he uttered. "What happens when I open the door?"

"You save Buffy's soul. Set it free. Like a butterfly."

"I'm not stupid. What else happens?"

"That's not part of the deal, Sam."

Dean clenched and unclenched his fists, and then glanced at his watch for the hundred and eleventh time. He wished he was driving. "We're not gonna get there on time," he stated.

John's hands on the steering wheel whitened as he gripped his harder. He didn't reply, but his face was grim.

Sam entered the cemetery and crossed it swiftly. The demon had been right, the crypt was easy to find. He took out the colt and gripped it tightly. "I'm coming, Buffy." And then he stuck the gun in the hole.

"Sam, no! Don't!" But it was too late.

He turned to see his brother sprinting in his direction, followed by his dad and Bobby and Willow. "Dean! What are you doing here?" He shook his head. "Later, okay? I'm doing this for Buffy, it's the only way to save her!"

Dean's eyes widened as he stopped by Sam. They flickered from his brother to the colt, wedged in the centre of the door which had just stopped spinning. "No, Sam, this is all wrong!" He yanked the colt out.

John grabbed the both of them and began to pull away. "Boys, we need to get back, now!"

"Why?" Dean demanded. "What's going on? What is that thing?"

"It's a devil's gate!" Bobby yelled, pulling them down behind a cluster of gravestones.

Sam was shaking almost as much as the crypt door. "A what?"

"A hellmouth," Willow explained. "And it's about to explode." And then she leaped up and ran towards it.

Dean grabbed for her but missed. "Willow!"

She turned back, her eyes dark with magic. "Stay back," she warned, and her voice was so fierce that none of them argued. And then her hands were in the air and blue bolts of electricity were sparking around them just in time for the devil's gate to burst open, spewing out an army of black, smokey demons. But most of them were held back, shoved back inside the gate by the magical barrier Willow had created. "Close the door!" she screamed. "Do it quickly!"

The four of them leapt up from their hiding places and pushed at the doors, trying to force them closed.

"Where's Faith?" Sam called out over the rush of demon's, thinking they could really use her strength right about then.

"None of the slayers could get through the tracks!" Bobby explained loudly, a muscle ticking in his neck from the strain of pushing.

"What?"

"The railway tracks are actually a giant devil's trap. We'll explain later if we don't die!" Dean barked. "It's so damned strong that even the slayer's couldn't get through!"

Despite giving it everything she had, a handful of demons managed to get around Willow's barriers and escape. Enough demons to break the railway tracks.

Smiling evilly, Azazel stepped in. it was a ceremonial kind of gesture, because in a blink, he was gone.

A second later he reappeared, right where all the action was going down.

When the devil's trap ceased to be, Faith and the other slayers felt it. Like an icy tingle in their spine, slowly sliding away.

The case was proven when Faith but a hand up against the barrier keeping them out, only to find nothing in her way. "It's down!" she yelled out to the rest of the girls. "The track must have broken! Come on, we need to hurry!"

"The cemetery is fifty miles away," Rona pointed out. "By the time we get there, it'll all be over. One way or another."

Faith's nostrils flared. "Then we go quicker."

Dean sensed the son of a bitch as soon as he appeared. Without a word to the others, he abandoned his task of getting the doors shut and stalked over to where the demon was standing. He didn't even have a chance to aim the colt at him before Azazel was flicking him away, his body one way and the colt another. He groaned as his head hit a gravestone.

John watched this, terror rising in his stomach for his son. He turned to Sam. "Don't you leave this spot 'till these doors are closed!" he shouted. "You hear me?"

"Dad-"

"Promise me!"

Sam nodded, and John ran for the demon. He lifted hid gun, even knowing it was useless. But Azazel was looking like he was headed in Willow's direction and he was pretty sure she didn't have enough energy to fight him off and keep all the demons of hell from getting lose so he shot him in the chest anyway.

The demon paused in his pursuit and turned to face him. He looked down at the bullet sized hole in his shirt and rolled his eyes. "Howdy, dad." And then he flicked him away and against a tree right near where the colt had landed, just as easily as he had done Dean. John's body was pinned back against the tree, and he eyed the colt in desperation. Azazel chuckled. "Ah, to be so, so close, and yet so impossibly far. Now let me ask you, is this the day you've been dreaming of all these years? Is this the moment you went over in your head again and again, every night since I killed your wife?"

"Something...like...it..." John hissed out furiously.

Azazel cocked his head. "Look at your boys John."

Whether by his own choice or not, John did as he was told. He looked from Dean, struggling against invisible bonds with a worryingly bloody gash on his head, to Sam, still struggling with Bobby to close the doors to hell.

The demon stepped closer to him and lowered his voice. "I want you to know that after I've stripped the flesh of your worthless, mangy body, I'm gonna go ahead and kill your boy Dean, too. Slowly, painfully. But not Sam. I have special plans for him."

John's face went white, but he didn't say a word. Instead, he focussed all of his energy on his foot. If he could just move his foot a couple of inches, he could kick the colt towards Dean and they might have a chance at ganking this son of a bitch. He could distract him while Dean got the shot in. And if John died whilst doing it...then that was just the way it had to be.

Just a couple of inches.

"Say bye bye, Johnny boy..."

But before Azazel could so much as blink, a bright, white cloud pushed its way through the haze of black demon smoke, and burst right past Willow's shields. It shot straight towards the demon, and knocked him right out of the body he was wearing. The white cloud and black smoke swirled together in battle for just a short moment.

But that moment was all John needed. He felt his body relax from its bonds, and his foot shot forwards, kicking the colt in Dean's direction.

And then the black smoke broke free of the white cloud's hold, and it poured back into the body.

The white cloud shimmered for a moment, as if losing it's power, and then it disappeared, but not before John caught a flash of blonde hair. "Mary..." he gasped.

Back in form, Azazel stood up, cricking his neck from side to side. "That was annoying. I do hate when pets get out of control. Now, where were we?"

"You were wasting time talking when you should have been killing me," John declared with a short smile.

"Oh, is that right?"

"Yes." But John wasn't talking to the demon any more. He looked over Azazel's shoulder. "Do it."

Azazel span around just in time to see a forgotten about Dean pull the trigger of the colt. The bullet landed squarely between his eyes.

Azazel must have been using some of his own power to keep the devil's gate open, because the moment he died, Sam and Bobby found it a whole lot easier to get the doors shut.

Willow let out a cry of relief and collapsed on the floor in sheer exhaustion. Bobby rushed over to help her, and Sam moved cautiously over to his father and Dean, who were staring down at the demon's body in disbelief.

"You killed him," Sam said in awe. "After all this time..."

Dean nodded, speechless for once.

John looked between the two of them, a million words bubbling up inside of him. A million ways of telling them how proud he was of both of them, how glad he was that they were still alive, still together. But words could wait until later, when the reality of the night had sunk in. Instead, he clapped a hand on each other their shoulders and pulled them close. And then they knew anyway.

Sam pulled away and shook his head. "I'm sorry. I knew this was a trap, but I had to do it."

"What exactly were you trying to do?" Dean wanted to know.

"The demon told me I could save Buffy."

Dean died a little inside. "And you believed him?"

"I was desperate! Everything is...I just wanted to make things better. I wanted to get her back."

"I know." Dean closed his eyes. They'd have to talk about this eventually, but he just couldn't right now. Later.

Sensing this, Sam asked instead, "What happened? How did you..." He gestured towards the body. "I mean...wow."

"I honestly don't know." Dean still felt bewildered by the whole thing. "I was sure we were toast there for a while. The demon had up pinned and he was just about to kill dad and then this...this white cloud of something...like a demon but...not...I mean, what the hell? Seriously."

John cleared his throat. "Son, I think that was Buffy."

Sam nodded like this made perfect sense to him, but Dean didn't understand. "What?"

"I thought it was Mary at first, but I was wrong. It had to be Buffy," John explained.

"But Buffy isn't in hell. She's at the school-"

"But not her soul," Sam interrupted. At Dean and John's puzzled looks, he quickly explained everything the demon had told him.

At that point, Bobby ambled over, carrying an unconscious Willow in his arms.

"Is she okay?" Sam asked him.

Bobby nodded. "She just passed out, is all. Her heartbeat's fine and her breathing's even, so I reckon she'll be right as rain as soon as she's rested up for a couple of days. She must be exhausted. That was some serious mojo she had going on back there."

"She saved our asses," John agreed. "And managed to stop a whole boat load of demons from escaping in the process. Girl deserves a medal."

Bobby eyed the demon on the floor. "Congratulations," he said gruffly.

"Feels kind of unreal right now," Dean spoke up for the three of them.

"And your girl...she'll be at peace now, right? That's a good thing."

Dean couldn't answer. He wouldn't answer. Because Buffy was at peace now because she was dead. That didn't seem like so much of a good thing to him.

Eventually, the five of them made it over to where they had parked the cars, just in time to greet an army of approaching slayers.

"Sam!" called out a relieved voice.

He turned and was instantly enveloped by a warm body and a tight set of arms. Sam was so surprised by Faith's unusual display of emotion that he could do nothing but pat her on the back and stick his nose into her hair and inhale deeply.

After a moment, she pulled away awkwardly, making sure to avoid the eyes of all the girls watching her. "I thought you were dead or somethin'. Or evil. Wait, you're not evil, are ya?"

"No, I'm not evil."

"Well that's a relief." She finally took in the rest of the worn out group. "Did we miss all the action. It kinda looks like we missed all the action."

"Yeah, it's all over."

"Damn! And you killed the demon?"

"Yeah, Dean got him."

"Double damn! I seriously wanted to beat on that punk ass!" Suddenly, her face fell, paled. "But if the demon's dead, then that means that Buffy..."

"Yeah, just...yeah."

Dean had been silent for the first hour of the car ride. They'd all been silent. But Dean...more so.

"I'm sorry," Sam repeated, finally breaking the quiet. "I never should've-"

Dean shook his head. "You thought you were doing the right thing. Don't be sorry for that. And we got the demon thanks to you, so..."

Silence reigned for the rest of the journey.

Giles and Xander and Andrew had remained back at the school with they very young slayers, and the three men were stood waiting in the main hall when the large group returned. All three wore white, odd expressions on their faces.

"I take it you killed the demon?" said Giles, after clearing his throat several times.

None of them felt the need to point out that they wouldn't have made it back otherwise.

"Yeah," was all Faith said. Her eyes were red rimmed.

Xander swallowed audibly and then looked over at Dean. "So, uh...do you want to see Buffy?"

Dean stepped back and let out a choked sound. So far he'd managed not to lose control, because he wanted to make sure he was good and alone before he cried every last drop of liquid out of his body before drinking his entire weight in whiskey. "I can't...I just can't, okay? I can't see her body 'one last time'. I don't want to say goodbye! I..." He threw up his hands in defeat, before turning to leave the school.

A door opened behind him, but he didn't stop. Not until he heard the voice. Her voice. "Maybe you don't have to say goodbye..."