A/N: Thanks for the wonderful reviews. I just thought I'd mention something before everyone got ideas about this story that weren't true; there are only three parts. The point of this story wasn't to explore Sam turning into a demon, but rather to overload on angst, explore the characters of Sam and Dean, and to have some brotherly bonding. So, sorry to anyone who thought there'd actually be, you know, plot… because there kind of isn't. Here's part two.
Dance with the Devil
By Spectral Scribe
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PART TWO
The slam of the door echoed, reverberated in the room as if it had the acoustics of a concert hall. Huh. Dean hadn't remembered motel rooms being that spacious before. But there it was, stretching out in front of him like a vast, empty wilderness, huge and expansive in its colorful emptiness.
Silence. Dean blinked slowly, tightly controlling his breathing in a steady rhythm. In, out. His eyes swept the room, the empty room, ghosting over the place where Sam had stood.
The room was too bright, too colorful; if the outside world could match the inner one, there would be no multicolored sheets, but rather dark and gloomy draperies to hide the sun, and black all over. And that damned mini bar would dejectedly cave in upon itself.
The rainbow maracas mocked him. Bastards.
In dreamlike slow motion, Dean slid to the floor, his back rubbing against the tauntingly bright wallpaper until he sat, knees up, against the wall. It wasn't supposed to be like this.
Shock numbed his every bone, and it certainly wasn't shock over Sam's reaction. How else would one be expected to respond? Oh, by the way, you're going to turn into a demon, but don't flip out on me now, all right? Cool. Sure. No problem.
No, it was not Sam that shocked him. In fact, Sam's freak-out had been so well predicted that Dean wondered momentarily if he could see the future, too. Then he snorted. Then he gave a laugh that was definitely, positively not a sob, thank you very much.
What shocked Dean was… himself.
"You can't tell Sammy… he can't know about this."
He'd been hiding it so well. Okay, so maybe that was the overstatement of the year. But Sam hadn't guessed, and he'd believed Dean when he said John hadn't told him anything. He believed him. And Dean had kept his promise. He had bottled it all tightly, corking the top, was careful not to spill the acerbic contents whenever Sam gave him one of those looks that just made him want to smash the bottle all to hell.
He couldn't believe he'd spilled.
Closing his eyes, he shook the thoughts from his mind. He needed to do something else, preferably something with his hands. He needed to move, not to sit and dwell on his too-loud thoughts that echoed horribly in the too-big room. What was there to be done? That was what he needed to assess.
Laundry wasn't too dirty. Nothing to research (because he knew Sammy was right; all signs pointed to Aswang. He had no doubt that was what they were up against). No extra cash to waste getting smashed at a bar. Transitively, no girls to screw.
But he did have dirty guns.
His dad had told him once, "Keep your records clean, and your guns cleaner." It was sage advice, coming from someone who'd managed to keep off the cops' radar for twenty-two years, and who also happened to have the goddamn frickin' cleanest guns on the face of the earth. Dean remembered those guns being shinier than a kid's smile on Christmas morning. Pristine, all the time.
Dirty guns were no good. "You let a gun get dirty, the dirt just spreads. Dirty guns are reminders of yesterday's failed hunt, and that reminder screws with today's hunt. Can't take a woman to bed with already soiled sheets." Dean particularly liked that last bit. His dad had been kind of a dark, demon-hunting fortune cookie when it came to teaching Dean the basics of their life. Before he was thirteen, Dean had already taken to memorizing Dad's bits of advice like it was scripture.
Setting about his task, Dean stood and robotically crossed the room, pulling open the duffel bag of weapons. It wasn't as immaculate as his dad's truck trunk. In fact, there were flecks of dried blood flaking off the inside from when they'd tossed in bloody weapons, not bothering to polish them off.
It was a bad habit. Couldn't very well start clean on a new hunt with dirty weapons, still sullied with the remnants of the last hunt, the last kill, the last death, death, death… it was a bad omen, he'd always heard from Bobby, starting a new hunt with your mind still fixated upon the last one. It said only bad things about how you'd handle what was to come.
That's why Dean always tried to live in the present. Make your kill, record anything that needs to be remembered (like how to kill the son-of-a-bitch), and move on. Forget. Hell, if he didn't let go of all the details of past hunts, he'd probably be incapacitated by horror and grief by now. But he was quite an expert at taking all that information, all that emotion, and shoving it to the deepest, darkest corner of his mind, and turning off that corner to go into hunter-mode. It was the only way to protect yourself when you had that kind of lifestyle.
Sam didn't seem to see it that way, but well, that's why he wasn't as good a hunter as Dean and John were.
He spread out a tattered old cloth on the bedspread (the dark, dirty material clashed horribly with the bright festiveness of the rainbow cover). Then he carefully lay down each of his guns, one by one, until they were evenly spread out over the cloth. He picked up the Glock first, turning it over in his hands for a moment, evaluating the smudged surface from the last time he'd picked it up with grubby hands.
Yep, it was a good deal, living in the present. Find, kill, forget. Find, kill, forget. Repeat.
Better than remembering all the time, and drowning in the past until you couldn't get back to the surface and breathe. Better than being consumed by the ache, the misery of everything done wrong, the pain of guilt and regret. Best to let all those emotions wash away, because there was a hunt ahead, a monster to kill. And boy, sometimes he slipped up, but most of the time Dean was the best of the best at forgetting and moving on. Shoving it all to a back corner of his mind and turning that corner off.
He'd learned from the best: John, who'd always had the cleanest guns known to mankind.
"Only thing better than a good, solid gun… is a good, solid, clean gun."
He'd learned from the best.
First thing he did was pick up the brush, peer into the barrel. Never liked looking into the dark, endless barrel of a gun, but thoroughness was key. And Dean was nothing if not thorough. So he peered into the barrel, poked the brush down into it, and scrubbed away the residue of past hunts.
When he was done scrubbing down the inside, he put down the brush and picked up another cloth, spit onto it. Best way to shine shoes, best way to buff guns. He placed the saliva-covered cloth on the gun and started rubbing it down, polishing off the exterior until it gleamed, pressing hard enough to fully scrape away the dirt and smudges. When he was done, the gun glimmered lustrously.
It was quick and easy, cleaning guns. If you knew how to do it right. And Dean sure did; he'd learned from the best.
Setting the meticulously clean gun aside, he picked up another and set to work. Brush down the barrel. Polish the outside.
"Listen carefully, because I'm only going to tell you this once."
He stuck the brush in the barrel, ignoring the whispered voice echoing inside his head. He scrubbed more fiercely at this one than the Glock, purging it of the dirt that just didn't seem to go away.
"The demon… it has plans for those children. And Sam."
The barrel was as clean as it ever would be, so he dropped the brush and picked up the cloth, sucking in a breath before hawking a huge ball of spit onto the material. That would do fine.
"It's a process. First it gets rid of any maternal influence… by fire. It replaces that with darkness so they grow up in the element of sin."
It was a really great thing, living in the present. Not having to worry at all. Because, that was the thing; people didn't worry about the present. It just didn't happen. People worried about things that had happened in the past, and they fretted over things that would happen in the future, but it was really kind of impossible to worry about the present. That's what Dean thought, anyway. That was Sam's problem, too. He was always worrying about the past or fretting over the future. But really, all that mattered was the present.
"Then it leaves the child for a while, until it starts to change. Develop powers. Lose a sense of morality."
He'd learned from the best. The polished gun gleamed happily, and he set it aside with the Glock, picking up yet another to ferociously clean it, suck out all the dirt until it was gone. And he tried so hard to get rid of the dirt, but for some reason, it just seemed to cling to him wherever he went.
"Eventually, the child loses its physical form, fully becomes something evil that can possess other people."
Scrub, polish, done. Next gun. No time to think. Just do.
"Sam… it wants to turn him into a demon. That's its plan."
Scrub, scrub, SCRUB, and man, this dirt was hard to get out. This gun was really dirty. Dirtiest fucking gun ever, and he couldn't for the life of him get it clean, man, he had to get it clean.
"You have to stop it. You can't let it happen. And you can't tell Sammy… he can't know about this."
He couldn't, he just fucking COULDN'T get this gun clean, no matter how hard he tried… frustration welled within him as he scrubbed and scrubbed at the barrel, the dark, endless barrel. He had to, but he couldn't. Just couldn't.
"I love you, son. Take care of yourself."
Sucking in a breath, Dean chucked the gun across the room, watched it dent the feeble wall and clatter noisily to the floor. Then he released the breath, slowly, and felt a bit more calm.
There were two guns left, and he went to cleaning them both. The first one cleaned up nicely, having barely a splotch distorting the glossy surface. He picked up the last, going about the monotonous movements. He cleaned it mechanically, finishing up with easy swiftness.
When he was finished, there they all lay, a neat row of perfectly clean guns.
So why was there still a churning in his gut that wouldn't go away?
Clean guns were supposed to fix everything. That's what his dad had always taught him. You clean your gun, your hunt goes well, and everything is fine. Everything should have been better now, clearer now. But it wasn't. It was still dirty. The clean guns hadn't fixed anything. The future was still bleak and obscure, the past a mesh of terror and pain.
A wave of anger welled within him, and he knew why: it was because he'd learned from the worst. The absolute worst.
His father lived in the present because that was the only way he could survive being stuck in the past. He was always in the past, couldn't get past the past. And there was no future for him.
He'd learned from the worst, and there was nothing he could do to change that, and now the worst was dead, and now he was left with the truth, and now there was no one to help, and now, and now, and now…
And now there was just too much in the present, too fucking much to deal with—he needed something else to do. Idle hands…
His trusty knife.
Yes, that would do. It was getting dull with age, worn and blunted. He needed things to be clear-cut, sharpened.
He unzipped the duffel bag and pulled out the lethal blade as well as the block he used to sharpen it. With slow, methodical movements, he tilted the edge against the block and smoothly ran the knife down, creating a satisfying metallic zing!
The disciplined, precise movements created a rhythm that had the soothing quality of a nursery rhyme. Dean calmed, angling the blade in the other direction as he continued to sharpen it, allowing the movements to lull him out of agitation.
"And you can't tell Sammy… he can't know about this."
His movements quickened fractionally, his arm pumping in time with the zing! of the blade against the block. Over and over… he was a natural at this sort of thing. He'd learned from the best, who was actually the worst, and goddamn but he didn't want to admit that, he didn't want to think that the one person he'd always looked up to was nothing more than a fraud at life, and was now gone so it didn't matter anyway.
"I love you, son. Take care of yourself."
He didn't want this… couldn't handle this…
The knife was sharp, but he kept going anyway. The sharper the better. Then the blade could slice through basically anything, was sharp and deadly, would make the kill a clean and easy one.
"You have to stop it."
He wished he could. But now Sam was gone, was out of the room, had left him alone, and fuck if he could do anything to fix it.
"You have to stop it."
His movements quickened to an almost manic speed, zing! zing! zing! against the solid block, the airy note ringing in his ears, and he couldn't forget, couldn't forget…
"You have to stop it."
The knife was so sharp, and he really was lousy at shoving everything into the corner of his mind, because it always came back to bite him in the ass.
"You have to stop it."
A feral sound guttered in his throat as he chucked the block to the ground and leapt to his feet, unable to continue suppressing the anguish raging within him. He needed to hunt something, needed to kill, to break, to smash...
Panting heavily as he tried to gulp down surging emotion, he lifted the knife, shining and silver and sharp, and lunged towards that horrible sombrero lamp. In one swift movement, the knife swooshed down through the air and tore into the papery lampshade, slicing the rough material until it frayed, tore, and fell away from the lamp. Continuing its downward motion, the knife crashed into the light bulb, the sharp tip cracking the glass, shattering it—a flurry of shards exploded out through the air, showering down over him like clear, glittering rain. The metal knife slammed into the center of the light bulb, and for one horrifying moment Dean thought, electrocution, but no bolt of pain sang through the knife to his arm; instead, the light bulb merely flickered wildly like a fireworks display as the glass fragmented and fell around him, then dimmed and died.
Dean stood with the knife, next to the broken lamp.
The room went dark.