Part 4
We will always end up here.
The muffled groan of Sam Winchester interrupted Dean's thoughts. Lucifer caught him glancing away toward the body of his brother, still tied and chained (now to the floor) whilst wearing the elaborate suit.
Sam tried and failed to sit up, swearing incoherently into his gag.
"Why is he waking up?!" Dean demanded, fear spiking. Sam was never supposed to find out what he was going to do.
Lucifer shrugged. "I stopped singing Highway to Hell inside his head."
This whole time, the fevered sleep was Sam's body's way of protecting itself from Satan's onslaught. The thought made Dean cringe.
"Let's loosen his tongue a bit." The Devil's fingers snapped, and Dean watched the rag fall bloody and wet from Sam's mouth.
A sigh of relief emanated audibly from the youngest Winchester as he tried out his dry lips and tongue, hoping they'd form words.
"Bas—tard," Sam coughed, dotting the floor with blood. "Ge—t . . . get out—my—head!"
"Done and done," Lucifer announced, "You're a free man, Sam. There've been some changes."
Sam glared at him, and then he caught the guilt in Dean's face. "What—" A short cough sent a rivulet of blood down his chin. "—changes?"
Satan twisted his decaying fingers into Dean's hair and pulled his face near his own. "Body of proof, as it were."
Sam's eyes narrowed. He couldn't possibly mean body, as in Dean's body. "No . . . he's not . . . I'm your—"
"Sorry, Sam, word on the street is your too pure for me. Got all that demon blood out of your system. I can't risk another degenerate vessel. Forgive me."
Dean swallowed and looked down, unable to meet his brother's questioning eyes. The rotting flesh of Lucifer's face grazed his cheek, and he imagined his insides rotting as well, slowly, to match the defiled soul he would soon play host to.
"Dean," Sam's voice was broken, "I'm the vessel. You can't—I can't let—" a fit of coughing cut him off.
Dean looked up into that bloody face framed with dirty hair and didn't see a grown man's jaw, brow, or scruff. Instead, he saw a four year old little boy that didn't yet know about demons. Believed that all angels were saviors. Whose definition of Hell was something other, and certainly not within.
"Sammy," he whispered, "You can go home now. Don't fight anymore. Whatever happens next, live out your last days happy. Please, Sam. It's over."
"I'm gonna need a yes, Dean. My options are still open," Lucifer threatened.
Their eyes met. Sacrifice and slaughter, about to become one.
Sam saw it coming and nearly strangled himself wrenching against the choke chain, his white suit splattered in his own blood. "NO!"
Dean swallowed. "Yes."
Lucifer's mouth opened and a thick smoke, silver, not black, spewed forth into the air. The tattered meat suit fell as the Devil himself raced toward Dean's lips and pried open his jaw.
The burn as Satan forced himself down Dean's throat was unbearable, and what's more, the weight of evil in it's purest sense settled so heavily on his ribs he was certain they would crack with the slightest movement. His organs screamed. His tendons and skin reached a fourth dimension of burning. He felt both eviscerated and, miraculously, sinfully whole.
In the back of his mind he whispered to the invading force, "One last thing, dick bag. I want a partition."
Serpent-like, the voice answered, "And why would I grant you that mercy?"
With every ounce of personal strength he had left, Dean replied, "Would you watch your own brother suffer at the hands of anyone but you?"
Images that were not his own flashed across Dean's memory. Michael young and weeping. Michael bloody in battle. Michael cowering in Hell. Pain tightened Dean's chest. Lucifer's pain.
"Fair enough. Goodbye, Dean."
And everything went black.
To be continued.
