Chapter Two

God, but he loved her. Every inch of her; every thought, every gust of laughter, every sly cut of blue eyes and long wiry blond curl; every burned meal, forgotten intent; every shudder and shiver of bliss, of release and relief and flesh damp and sticky from head to toe with the slow, sweet tumble into afterglow.

Jessica Moore was everything he'd ever dreamed of—no; more, more than he'd ever dreamed of, because he'd been nothing, and no one, other than something bred, and fed, and shaped, and aimed, to be used for another agenda—and part of him was utterly bewildered that she'd given him so much as the time of day, while another part was thrilled, and a third part was proud, and the fourth and last part of him wanted to shout to a father—and, to a lesser extent, to a brother: See? See what I can do? See what life can be? See how everything can be normal and safe and apple pie? See how I can count for something more than as a weapon, than a human computer, than the means to an end?

But even that was perverted, those memories, those wishes, destroyed. He could tell off names verging on a dozen, counting them on his fingers, all those entities engaged in disassembling the things he'd valued. Even among them those whom he knew at school, where all was inviolable, because nothing other than class, and grades, and a woman mattered. Nothing else did.

Except it did matter, all of it, after all. Because there was Brady, taken over Thanksgiving break; and then Meg, and Azazel . . . and eventually Ruby, who had, in the end, perverted his memories of Jessica, because he was an older and more experienced man by then, and his needs were different. Sharper. Harder. Demanding. But guided, yet again, by others. Upon them balanced life, and death, and the damn apocalypse.

And finally there was Crowley.

But mostly: Lucifer.

Born to be Lucifer's vessel.

Even Dad—DAD—had said: If you can't save him, you'll have to kill him.

Nothing was said to Sam. No hint that maybe, possibly, potentially, Sam was destined not only for hell, but to lead hell.

No. It was said to Dean. To the brother, brought—no, bought—out of death into life by a deal with a demon, who'd been tasked with safeguarding his baby brother from the time he was four.

Save your brother, against all threats. Always. No matter what. Lay down your life for him.

But if he falters, if he fails, if he is lost: kill him.

Who did that?

John Winchester.

And every other father, mother, brother, sister . . . they did no such thing. Said no such thing. Never expected the eldest to end the youngest.

Hell, even the archangels couldn't agree among themselves about who was loyal, who was not; who might need to be killed just in case; who needed to be killed immediately.

Abomination, Cas had called him.

Suckled on demon blood, that night in the nursery. Mother's milk forgotten in those seconds, lost forever in the flames upon the ceiling. And all those years without, all those years of being wholly human in all ways, in all appetites—until he wasn't. Until he realized milk was lesser then blood.

Azazel had asked: "How certain are you that what you brought back is one-hundred percent pure Sam?"

And Dean had shot the bastard.

To this day, Sam didn't know if Dean had shot the yellow-eyed son of a bitch because he was pissed, or because he was afraid.

Then the dreams were shattered, and the world crashed upon him with a pounding on his door, and shouting; and in that instant, with the soundest of sleeps destroyed, as he shifted from dreams, and visions, and memories, he recalled all over again that Jess was dead—

Young Sam in his head cried: Oh God, oh God, she's dead—even as he recalled he was no longer that boy—

—and recalled, too, that Lucifer, who had used his memory of her to gain access to the vessel he wanted so badly, was free of the cage; that the voice on the other side of his door belonged to his brother.

Sam realized he was in the here, and the now, not the then—not when Jess was a constant memory, constant regret and guilt; and while none was ever lost—he recalled too much, too much—time had faded the vivid pain of the colors to something less than blinding.

"Sammyy!" his brother shouted, with a bang of fist upon wood. "Crowley's in the dungeon!"

Even as Sam levitated out from under the covers into the dim illumination of his nightlight, knowing apprehension and shock, he felt the interior click into place of relief, the certainty of safety, that all would be well.

It had never failed him, that relief, that certainty. That trust in his brother.

Not even when Dean, so far gone, so consumed by—so lost in—the Mark of Cain, had wielded Death's scythe.

If you can't save him, you'll have to kill him.

Dean never had.

Dean never would.

Sam reached the door and yanked it open. Hallway light spilled into his room.

"Let's go." Dean was grim and taut and honed.

Sam snatched up the Kurdish knife with its Arabic etchings. "He can't be, Dean—"

Dean shouldered back from the doorway to allow Sam egress. "He says he is."

Sam exited, shook his head, paused briefly upon the threshold. "Crowley says a lot of things. Remember? He's a demon. Demons lie."

Dean's face was tense. "Yeah? He also says you forgot to close the door after you summoned him. You know, when you were going to pitch him a deal to resurrect me."

Sam froze, staring at his brother. He thought back, cast himself back, recalling the shock of Dean's death; of laying his brother's body upon the bed; of the whiskey he'd downed, the vow he'd made in the dungeon—and how Crowley hadn't come.

Hadn't come to him. Because he'd gone to Dean.

To the newborn demon.

Sam was running now, leading through the hallway too narrow for Winchester males to run abreast.

Because he really, really, really didn't want to believe that Crowley could simply appear in the bunker.

Because if so, if Crowley could, it really was Sam's fault.

He had no memory of closing a door.

Only of opening it.

~ tbc ~