It began simply enough.
Two hunters and one desperate little brother stood in the dark before an old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, the latter holding a book. The spell was fifteenth century, like the manuscript, and Sam had corrected Jerry's very few errors. His voice was strong and measured, which said a lot in Dean's book, considering what was going on. The meaning of the Latin words slipped past Dean, but the cadence of the language was familiar, having listened to Sam recite similar invocations countless times over the years, and Dad before him. Jerry completed the first rite, and flicked on his lighter. He glanced at Sam, then Dean, both of whom nodded. Jerry set down his candle before Charles Brandt's bones, swallowed, and moved to the first candle ringing the house. Dean saw him take a breath, kneel, and light it. The herb and salt mixture hissed, grey smoke filtering into the darkness. Jerry stood, watching. A moment later, like an acme cartoon, the line of the volatile powder mix caught, and began a swift, steady burn toward second base. Showtime. As needed, Jerry followed it at a run, keeping pace with the racing flame, reciting the chant he knew by heart. At the second candle, the mixture flashed brightly, coinciding with Jerry's chant. Third and fourth followed on schedule without a hitch, and by five, he was out of sight. Dean tried to mentally keep pace with him, but it was pure guesswork. All they could do was wait until he came out the other side.
Just when Dean was starting to worry, the form of Jerry Brandt sprinted around the corner of the house, his voice slightly breathless but strong, following in the chant, raising the power he needed - the spark before the blaze - as the circle ignited each point. Dean sucked in his breath as Jerry reached thirteen and dashed his handful of powder into the flame. There was a flash, and silence. Phase one complete. It took a moment for the inward spiral of powder to hit the house, but when it did, Dean silently congratulated he and Sam on their generosity with the gasoline. Within moments, the dry, ancient wood of the house started blazing, washing all three men in orange light.
Jerry moved back to the Winchesters, taking up the stolen manuscript. He recited the Latin without falter, following the old rite as before them, the fire gained strength as it sucked in oxygen and fuel, the heat pinching their faces.
Jerry ended the second invocation on a shout, and Dean absently wondered. He couldn't have known that energetically, that was the right way to go. He just seemed to know instinctively. Interesting.
Jerry took up the brass bowl and the blood - and it was the first time Dean saw him falter. Memories of the woman he had almost killed, Dean guessed. He had met her, spoken to her himself. A young, pretty brunette with rich brown eyes. Had she cried, pleaded, begged him? Jerry had done everything he could for her, to make sure she survived, but saving Charlie was his priority. He was all that mattered. His brother. For the first time since kick-off, he chanced a glance at Sam. His little brother was watching Jerry with a tempered version of the expression he'd worn listening to Jerry's story the first time. Pity, sympathy, understanding, regret. He had seen the flinch too, and felt for the guy. Dean smiled at him softly. What they had gone through for, and with, each other. Good and bad. God, if anything happened to Sam through these trials … Suddenly, he needed the Brandt brothers to come out on top, on a personal level.
He looked back at Jerry.
At the thirteenth candle, the youngest Brandt knelt to pour the heavy thickness of the woman's blood into the bowl, stood, and continued his recitation.
Before him, several of the remaining windows in the house shattered under the heat in a sharp trill of breaking glass, and Dean felt a sense of quickening, realizing the sweat gathering under his collar. He knew that feeling. Here we go …
Jerry turned and moved back to Sam and Dean, his nervousness almost palpable. Hostage exchange. The furthest he had ever got. He knelt, picking up the vessel containing Asrael carefully. He chanced the frightened, uncertain glance of a kid half his age at each of them. Wordlessly, Dean clapped his shoulder in encouragement, and Jerry cast him a tremulous smile before that weird, multiple personality steel Dean had noted before shunted into his expression, and when he turned back toward a ritually burning building creating a hole in Hell, carrying a demon, his expression was resolute. Asrael's fate was consummated in one word, one Dean actually recognized for some reason, as Jerry got as close to the building as he could with the heat, hefted the vessel over his shoulder, and flung in cleanly into the fire.
"Verto!" Jerry's voice yelled, his silhouette bracing hands on knees.
It fit. It translated, Dean knew, into "exchange." He supposed in many ways it was. The power of Asrael's soul for Charlie's. Demon for human. Good for evil, forward for backward, whatever way you wanted to look at it, symbolically it matched up.
It was then something started actually happening, in Dean's book. The circle of flame around the house suddenly flared, the candles he could see melted, and a noise like a jet engine suddenly seemed to suck inwards around the house, a pulse of power beating out against them. Jerry was not a man to be dissuaded.
Both Dean and Sam flinched, as Jerry worked his way back to them, gathering the crude, but effective, inscribed stones of his intent. It was horribly clear to Dean at that moment that Jerry was more than prepared for this. He hurled stone after stone, the symbols Dean had already interpreted, into the blaze. His scream of each Latin phrase painted thereon grew more desperately hoarse each swing. He flung the final stone, voice breaking, falling to his knees.
"Charlie!" He screamed at the steadily burning building before him. "Charlie!"
He drew a knife Dean didn't even know he carried, and on some mad impulse, sliced his palm open, flinging a handful of his own blood into the blaze.
Everything exploded, knocking both Winchesters off their feet.
A mushroom cloud of fire and darkness exploded from the house. Black demon-souls formed into faces with fathomless eyes and gaping mouths, writhing in the dimness. Hands with grasping fingers clawed at the outer reaches of Sam's binding spell.
Seeking escape from the frail human bonds.
Sam fumbled to his feet, making a desperate scrabble for the open exorcism.
Sam began the words of his worst case scenario, of denoms trying to break loose, the exorcism that woud force them back. But he was only one man…
Something ticked over in Dean's head, and he drew Ruby's knife on impulse. If this was going to happen, then they weren't getting Sam. He'd cover his brother until they sliced him to pieces.
Jerry Brandt was still on his knees before the blaze, screaming his brother's name barely audibly over the voice of the fire, the deeper scream of the contained demons.
"Jerry get back!" Dean yelled at him, the steady chatter of Sam's Latin exorcism continuing behind him. "Sammy read faster!"
Sam obliged as above and around the house, the twisting collums of demon souls pressed the boundaries of the binding, clearly unable to cross. So far. The sheer energy of it pressing against Dean's skin. Light flashed all around them.
Sam's exorcism suddenly ended, and for a moment there was complete silence.
Then with a howl that set his hair on end and made both Winchesters stumble a few steps forward, the dark substance of the demon souls seemed to be sucked back into the fire, figuratively and literally, on Earth in the form of the burning farmhouse, and back to Hell through the connection. Sam was one man closing a breach into Hell.
Jerry's powder circle suddenly fizzled out into darkness, the now entirely mundane fire of the farmhouse continuing to burn.
Dean skittered his eyes around them, around the house, down at Jerry. He flexed his fingers around Ruby's knife, cautiously approaching the youngest Brandt brother where he knelt before the blaze.
"Jerry? That you in there?"
"Charlie," Dean heard him whisper confusedly. "What about Charlie?"
He looked up at Dean, frowning. Before Dean could get a word out, the shocked yell of a new voice startled both Jerry and Dean, sending the former scrambling to his feet. Sam had startled right along with them, stumbling a few steps toward the fire and clutching the book.
Charles Brandt's bones were gone. Instead, there was what appeared to be one very surprised Charlie.
"Charlie," Jerry gasped at Dean's side, starting forward.
Dean caught him across the chest with one arm as Sam moved back toward them.
"Hold on, Jerry, we don't know what we've got yet."
"But you said -"
"We're just gonna be sure, okay. Come on."
Charlie Brandt was stumbling around in a pointless circle in the firelight, his mouth literally hangning open.
"Hey!" Dean caught his attention.
Charlie spun to face him, dark eyes to match Jerry's wide with shock and confusion.
"Wha - what -"
He stumbled a step toward them and stopped, caution overcoming shock.
Dean was still holding Jerry back, and could feel the pressure building up in the other man's body. He'd make a break for his brother any moment and if they had dragged out something wearing Charlie's face, Jerry was history.
"You Charles Mason Brandt?" Dean asked, tone hard.
He realized they were silhouetted against the fire, and thus difficult to make out, when Charlie raised a hand to shield his eyes.
"Who're you?" He demanded.
Dean edged closer, stil blocking Jerry, Sam mirroring him.
"Sammy," Dean tipped his brother.
"On it," Sam responded, edging around Charlie to get to the holy water.
Tipping it on Charlie had no effect except earning them a sharp "What the hell?"
Ironic choice of words for a man they'd just pulled out of it. Undaunted, Sam flung salt at him.
"Sam," Dean said, palming Ruby's knife from his belt and throwing it to his brother. "If he lights up he's history."
"We've just got to be sure you are who you say you are," Sam told Charlie, creeping closer carefully. Charlie understandably backed away from a big man coming toward him holding a knife.
"You were in Hell. We just have to make sure you're still … you. Here, look."
Sam shuffled back his sleeve and shallowly sliced his own arm.
"Your turn."
"You stay away from me," Charlie warned, holding out a hand against Sam.
"Charlie please!" Jerry's voice held every bit of pleading he had, and Dean cursed silently. He may have succeeded in holding Jerry back for the meantime - didn't mean he could shut him up. Charlie immediately froze, despite Sam's proximity. He'd know that voice anywhere and Dean knew it. Slowly, he raised his hand again to shield his eyes from the firelight and stare disbelievingly at Dean and Jerry.
"Jerry," he whispered.
Dean knew what came next, and cursed again for having thrown Sam the knife. He had his colt on him, but there wasn't much sense in shooting a guy they had just resurrected.
"Jerry! You done something to my brother?"
He moved toward Dean, and it wasn't the stunned stumble of a man thrown back hot into life. He could read Charlie like a book - he presumed his little brother was in danger, and would try tearing Dean apart to get to him.
"Sam, a litte help here," he said, pushing Jerry back.
Sam came from behind Charlie, using his distraction to grab one arm, drawing the blade across it.
"He's clean."
Charlie instinctively grabbed his arm and backed away from Sam, his head whipping from Jerry to Sam and back again. To break that ice, Dean finally released Jerry, who made a beeline for his brother. Charlie grabbed him and bodily shoved Jerry behind him, eyes on the Winchesters.
"What the hell is going on here? Who are you? What do you want with Jerry?"
"It's okay, Charlie, they're friends," Jerry tried consoling him as he tried to muscle his way out from behind. But Charlie was shocked and confused and probably scared out of his mind, not to mention bigger that Jerry, and he wasn't rolling over that easy.
"Answer me," he demanded, ignoring Jerry.
"It's okay," Sam replied, holding out his hands. "I'm Sam Winchester, that's my brother Dean. We're here to help."
"It's true, they helped me get you back!" Jerry pleaded, voice breaking.
"Back," Charlie whispered, dropping his eyes from the Winchesters to frown in confusion, his face washed in the firelight.
"You died on me!" Jerry finally lost his last nerve and yelled, punching Charlie hard in one shoulder. That spun his brother, as Jerry wound up for another swing. "You died!"
"Stop, Jerry stop it," Charlie said, his attention now on calming Jerry down.
When he couldn't catch both Jerry's fists at once, he made good use of his size advantage and bear-hugged his brother, effectively trapping Jerry's hands between them.
"Stop. Calm down," he said, over Jerry's repeated lament of you died.
"What is going on?" He asked, eyes on Sam and Dean.
"It's uh - it's a really long story," Sam said, his eyes skittering back to the road.
Dean followed both his eyeline and his train of thought.
"Yeah one we don't want to be telling to the law. Lets amscrade."