Jo watched with her heart in her throat as the fallen angel continued to speak. Slowly she tuned out his voice until the foreign words were just another background noise and all her concentration had focused on the task at hand. The arcane blade was heavy in her hand, and she adjusted her grip until it felt good resting in her palm. Two steps to the circle, another step to Dean, and then it was simply a matter of raising her hand and plunging the knife through his heart.
Jo Harvelle's inner stillness and Castiel's preoccupation with reciting the incantation perfectly meant that both of them missed the change in Lawson's face, the self-confident smirk and smug twinkle in his eyes that for a moment transformed him into someone else entirely.
It's almost there.
Even later Dean would never quite remember clearly what happened next. His soul, or whatever else you want to call it, was suspended in some limbo world somewhere between life and death. Castiel's voice was like a lifeline in the dark, which he clung to like a drowning man.
Then there was a moment of stillness and the shining rope quite inexplicitly snapped, sending him spiraling into nowhere.
Falling.
He was burning, being ripped apart all over again. The dark shadow was descending over him, over the world, and there was nothing he could do. Dean could feel his very awareness being pried off his own body as whatever the presence was set up shop in his head, and Dean was relegated to the vaults of someone else's immensely powerful mind.
"Hello, smalling." The dirty stain on his awareness spoke. Dean though he could see eyes gleaming at him from out of the darkness. And then the presence swept by him, opening a thousand horrific images in his mind, enough to break the strongest minds ever seen.
But Dean had already broken once, and he was determined not to do it again.
"How interesting."
This creature was greater than any demon ever before. He was to demonkind what humans were to ants. He'd destroyed warlords and vast armies with hardly a flick of his wrist.
Samael had escaped the last Seal.
Lucifer was dead.
And the thought was absolutely terrifying.
The demon flexed his new muscles, and looked down at his calloused hands. His face twitched into a smirk.
My smirk.
"And it's good to be back!"
"Fool!"
There was a scream as Castiel completed the incantation.
A painfully bright light exploded into the room, and for a moment Jo wondered who had dropped the bomb, but when she managed to open her watering eyes, it became clear. The Angel Sariel stood there, his face like God's judgment itself. Castiel was frozen in his wake, from fear or shock, it was unclear.
Then everything happened at once.
Elijah restrained Sariel from striking down Castiel, the office door burst inwards in a shower of splinters to show the demon Belial standing there flanked by his henchmen, something in Dean perceptively shifted, and the presence inside him flung out an arm sending Jo and Lawson hurtling back against the wall.
The knife was dropped.
Then Samael spoke, and everyone was silent, frozen in a bizarre montage of angel and demon and those creatures between. Waiting, as Samael inspected his new body.
"Could be worse." He said to himself. "A little frayed around the edges and a bit more mileage than I would have liked, but all in all, not bad." He looked up at them, peering at each face in turn. "My, my. Look at how many have come over for my birthday."
Sariel was the first to speak. "Begone from here, demon."
"Or you'll do what?" Samael raised an eyebrow, and amused look on his face. This was all a big game to him.
Jo was suddenly aware of another presence in the room, and she glanced back. Sam Winchester was in the room, and had managed to circle around Belial's demons without being seen. He was now inching toward the demon-killing knife.
But Samael wasn't as unobservant as all the others. "Get up." He demanded, and some sort of invisible force reached out and grasped Sam around the torso and tossed him against the wall.
"The Boy King." The demon stepped forward to inspect the human. Sam stared back defiantly. "Now reduced to no more than a pawn in this game of Gods and Devils. Azazel, Samhain, you've fought and won against some powerful foes, boy, but you haven't seen anything like me."
The very core of evil emanating from the demon almost made Sam physically sick. "But when I rebuild my Black Eden, my dark paradise-" Samael cocked his head to the side. "I will still need my disciples."
Sam bared his teeth in a snarl of defiance. "I would never join you!"
"And it will not be permitted." Sariel said. "You will not be permitted to go forth from this place."
"And how do you think to restrain me, host of hosts?" Samael asked in his sneering way, spreading his arms wide. "When it was you that allowed me to live to begin with?"
The angel had gone completely white. Castiel stared at his ex-comrade with horror.
"You're the traitor!" He gasped.
"Yes." Samael said. "The seraph gifted with the somewhat dubious honour of deciding the fate of his heavenly companions that stray from the path of the good and the righteous. Tell me now, God's puppet, did you make the right choice all those millennia ago? I was the first to draw blood on this earth, and I will be the last. And none of you have the power to stop me!"
The demon Belial's face was twisted into an expression of utmost fury. Sariel's face was hard and cold and Elijah still stood like he was merely an observer to the events taking place.
"You are a fool, Samael." Elijah spoke into the void.
The room held its breath.
"What did you say to me?" Samael demanded.
"You are a fool." The soft-spoken Elijah repeated, a hint of steel to his words.
"Oh? Indeed!"
"Look around you, Samael. We are ghosts, gone from this place forevermore; this brave new world where demons save the lives of the innocent and angels commit genocide. The line between us that was once so clear has blurred beyond all recognition. This world has moved on for us, and our age has passed."
"Then it is time for a new age to begin!" Samael roared.
"Oh, indeed?" There was distaste in Elijah's eyes, distaste but no hate.
It was then that a young female voice piped up from the crush.
"He speaks truly."
All eyes settled on the young girl as Mary Morgan casually walked toward the centre of the room, but even more shocking than the sudden appearance of Lilith was Samael's reaction to the demoness. He rocked back and bared his teeth as he was about to strike out. "Get back, wretch!"
Sam thought he heard raw pain in the demon's voice.
"This world was once made for us." Lilith said. The childish edge had dropped from her tone and the voice she used was solemn, with the weight of the years behind her. "But now this world has left us behind. We are all dead to these people."
"Then I will remind them of what they should fear." Samael growled. "Lilith, do not think to lecture me on what I do. In my time away I did hear about your escapades at world domination. Do as I say and not as I do, I would say."
Belial audibly groaned. "Please take the domestic outside,"
Luckily for him both Samael and Lilith ignored him.
"Thousands of years we have been two sides of the same coin."
"You abandoned me! Sent me away!" There was pure anguish in Samael's voice. "Now this place will be as ashes and good and evil will rise to do battle on the bones of their comrades! All worlds will run with blood!"
"No you will not." Lilith said in an icy tone. Her eyes sparkled with power. "I will drag you screaming into the abyss before I allow you to destroy both our people,"
"We shall see," Samael snarled, before the host dropped to his knees, dark, withering smoke billowing out his mouth. Dean fell forward onto his hands, coughing and spluttering. There was fury in Lilith's eyes. And something else.
"I have loved you forever." Lilith said, and the demon erupted out of the body of the young girl, billowing and undulating before launching herself at Samael, wrapping her insubstantial form tightly around him. The demon himself struck back, struggling against her, the air hot with his fury.
For a moment longer the two were locked together, and then the demons ignited into flame, burning away into nothingness. When Sam looked back to earth, Sariel, Elijah and the host of demons were gone. They had seen what they needed to see, and had vanished back to wherever they had come from.
Dean slowly sat up, head in his hands. "Man," He blinked and looked up blearily, his eyes unfocused. "I haven't been on a trip like that since high school."
As soon as Sam assessed that Dean was more or less in one piece, he followed through with a solid punch to the jaw. His brother reeled back, a look of hurt surprise on his face.
"You do that to me again," Sam practically shouted. "And I'll kill you myself."
Belial the demon was still in the room, leaning casually against the ruined doorframe.
"Now that was ever so exciting, wasn't it, kiddies?" He brushed some white ash from his fine dark suit. "And in one fell swoop, Lilith, Samael, and Lucifer are yesterday's news. No celebratory drinks? No ding dong the witch is dead? It would make sense," He said reflectively. "If you took a breather before the next apocalypse."
"What?" Dean said wearily. "What are you talking about? Lucifer is dead, and-"
"You kids don't know?" And the demon laughed.
"The genuine Lucifer, the real deal, he's been dead for eons now. He was destroyed before humans even came to walk upon this earth."
Sam went cold. "What?"
"Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, whatever you want to say. It's not a name. It's a job title." Belial grinned. "And now the next qualified is up for the mother of all promotions. You boys, you're gonna be fighting the Devil until the day you die."
He sounded delighted. Too gleeful.
"And I suppose you're the next in the food chain, huh?" Dean snarled.
Belial spread his arms wide. "And as a gesture of my good faith on this wondrous day, I won't kill you yet."
"You owe us." Sam said. "You wouldn't be the top of the pile if it weren't for us. And you expect us to take you for your word that you wont kill all of us as soon as we walk out of this building?"
"So you want me to call off the whole war instead? No can do, Sammy. My people like themselves a good bloodbath."
"No." Sam said. "I want you to leave that man's body. Let him die with some measure of dignity." Dean shot him a what-the-hell-are-you-doing look, but his brother held up a hand in a gesture to stay quiet.
"Sammy Sam Sam, you're getting sentimental in your old age."
"We'll call it even and start again tomorrow." Sam said challengingly.
"You would trade a favour from a demon lord for the death of an old man?" Belial asked incredulously.
"Yeah, Sam, you'd do that?" Dean asked sharply.
"This is important, Dean." His little brother said. "I know this guy. So do you."
"Do I? No I don't."
"Deal." The demon said. "See you crazy kids around some time."
And he left, leaving his host lying on the floor. Sam stood unmoving as Jo knelt down and felt for a pulse and mentally appraised his wounds. Sam didn't know what to do, and the steely way Dean was staring at him wasn't helping.
"He's dying." Jo said gravely. "Whatever you want to say, you better do it now." She moved aside as Dean knelt down beside her curiously. Something was tickling at the back of his memory, from a time before the fire, a time when he was just a little boy who would have run away from the creatures lurking in the night. "Hey," He said. "Do you remember who you are?"
There was blood on the man's lips and his eyes were mostly closed, so Dean couldn't be sure that he had heard, until broken words rasped out of the damaged body.
"Ahn…" The man tried to get his mouth around the word, unsure of how to speak after all his years as a demon's host. "An-drew. Drew Wh… Winchester." Then he opened his eyes to look at those gathered around him, and Dean finally noticed the resemblance to the late John Winchester. The old man grasped both Sam and Dean by the collars, drawing them down. His words threatened to fall apart, causing the brothers to come closer to catch them. "I've… wanted to see… Look at how you've grown. My… little brother's boys."
"Hi, Uncle Drew." Sam said, while Dean seemed to be in a state of delayed shock. There were footsteps behind them and Lawson and Castiel were there, each holding a hand of the young girl that had up until recently been the host of Lilith.
"John?" Drew wheezed, and both Winchester brothers heard the pain and desperation in that one-word question.
"He's a good man. You'd be proud of him." Dean said solemnly, one older brother to another. He pulled in a breath, and exhaled it slowly. "Are there any others?" He asked Drew in an urgent whisper, trying and failing to keep the hopeful spark from his voice. "Are there any other Winchesters?"
The man's eyes were clouding over. "No." He whispered. "My boys… my little girl. My wife. All of them were stolen from me forever."
With some effort, he reached into a pocket and pulled something out. A heart-shaped pendant bounced to the floor. Dean carefully picked it up and peered at the half of the inscription. I will fear. Strange message for a piece of girly jewelry.
The eyes of the young Mary Morgan were wide.
"My wife's. He let me keep it, hoped… it would help drive me mad."
The girl took something from around her own neck and reached forward to tug the pendant from Dean's unresponsive hand. Small hands shaking, she fit her half of the pendant with Drew's.
I will fear no evil.
"Where did you get that?" Sam asked.
"It belonged to my birth mother." She said.
The old man was drifting away, but he saw the girl.
"My name's Mary."
"A good, strong name." Drew said, and closed his eyes.
"Yes it is." Dean agreed softly.
"Grandfather," Mary whispered. She took one of his hands, Dean took the other, and Sam looked on as the man none of them knew but was still part of them died.
Sam and Dean, along with a guard of Jo, Mary and Castiel, cremated Drew's body, and they took him back home.
Back to Kansas.
There they found the graves of Allison Winchester, along with those of her two young sons Cameron and Jack, and Mary's mother Annie. It was a hurtful irony to discover that for years the rest of the family had lain only two rows away from the resting place of Mary Winchester.
Mary Morgan clung to Dean's hand like she would never let go.
Sam and Jo put the disappearance of Ruby's knife down to one of Belial's minions, who had judged the weapon too powerful to remain in human hands. No one even stopped to consider that it may have walked out of the building under the jacket of Dean's old friend, Lawson.
Sam's dreams were just as vivid as before, only now they commonly featured a faceless monster gravely informing him that he would be fighting the Devil until the day he died. Dean was happy to report that he was once again vision-free, and his most disturbing dream was one of Bobby telling them that there was an evil leprechaun haunting Mardi Gras and Dean and his brother had to go undercover as strippers at a gay bar.
There was not a day Castiel didn't think about his divinity lost, and he continually pondered questing forth to rediscover his grace. He still heard the angels speaking in his mind, and from that he discovered that Sariel had vanished and Uriel had been appointed to hunt him down and bring him back. Castiel felt no empathy. In time the fallen angel was also accepted into the expanding menagerie that was Harvelle's Bar, a place where outcasts came together in unity.
The explanations the governing bodies thought up to cover the last few days of insanity were laughable, and for a while there Dean was collecting newspaper cut-outs of the most outlandish stories and pinning them to the notice board of the Bar. But before the brothers could leave on the next hunt, there was one last thing to do.
Somehow Jo Harvelle had managed to wrangle a marriage proposal from her older barman/hunter boyfriend, and she invited the Winchesters to the wedding herself, stopping just short of saying or else when she said she hoped they could stick around for it. Ellen, the Harvelle family matriarch, didn't say a word. Sam and Dean's undeniable presence in her daughter's life was now her husband's problem.
It seemed right to be married in Pastor Jim's old church by a friend of her father's. Jo and AJ said 'I do' in the company of Ellen Harvelle, Bobby Singer, Castiel, Jo's friends Deacon Ridgeway, Gabriel Forsyth & Carmen Diego, Ellen's pal and voodoo expert Ruben, the kid that had been saved from his doppelganger Harry Colt, young Mary Morgan who had seen too much to be surprised anymore, and of course, the Winchesters.
And then it was back to the Bar.
All in all, it wasn't a very conventional wedding. Almost all the guests looked like they'd walked out of a Lumberjack Monthly magazine in their flannels and denim, the groom wore an ACDC concert tee underneath his tuxedo jacket, and the bride wore a pretty embroidered satin shirt, had coifed her blonde hair into insensibility, but completed the ensemble with tight leather pants and stiletto boots.
Bobby toasted the couple in the place of the late Bill Harvelle.
"May they live long enough to be a problem to their grandchildren,"
There was uproarious laughter and thunderous applause, but Sam knew there was real meaning behind the words. AJ and Jo were hunters. Subtext: Stay alive. Don't get killed. Give your kids a life and make sure they have somewhere to run to.
Sam was sitting in the corner nursing a beer when his brother decided to grace him with his presence. "Whet the hell are you doing over here, Sammy? Get up and have some fun. Congratulate the bride and groom. Dance with a bridesmaid."
"I'm thinking." Sam replied. "You should try it. Especially when we need to explain Mary's absence to her adoptive family."
At the very mention of the girl, Dean's face tightened into a stubborn expression and his eyes flashed defiantly.
"You can't keep her, Dean!" Sam exploded. "She's a kid, not a pet!"
"She's family."
"Which means we should consider her situation even more carefully than we would otherwise. As family, do we have the right to expose her to all the things that have damaged us? We have a moral and ethical responsibility to keep Mary safe."
Dean slowly considered it.
"If it's any consolation, I think we've probably imprinted our images on the back of her retinas." Sam said. "Did we do the right thing?"
"About what?"
"The demon."
"You're asking yourself this now?"
"You heard what he said. There hasn't been a real Devil for years, and anyone else called that have been… promoted."
"So?"
"So did we do right? Letting Belial go, did we put someone even worse in Lucifer's place?"
The two were silent, creating a depressed bubble on the edge of the frivolity.
"Way to rain on the parade, Sammy."
"You don't like parades anyway."
"I suppose." Dean said. "I suppose we'll just have to meet what's coming when it gets here."
It was raining. Lawson's hair was slicked back from his forehead as the water trickled down his face and into this shirt. He kept walking forward, eyes on the darkening horizon before him. He was heading to a house, a house that had one light burning in the window.
He did not knock.
"My lord Belial." Lawson inclined his head slightly, but kept his eyes fixed firmly on the person before him. Belial had chosen a handsome young man as his new host, and Lawson found himself staring into the face of someone a good ten years younger, but with a hundred lifetimes of knowledge and darkness emanating from his heady stare.
"I did not think you would come back." Belial said in an offhand manner, two minions in the background creeping closer to their master. "I did not think you would have the courage after being branded a traitor."
"Yet it was you who allowed the Winchesters to survive. That's treason." Lawson said. "A new dawn emerges. I wish to be part of that."
Belial stepped forward and peered into Lawson's eyes. "You're lying."
"No I'm not." Lawson said calmly. "I am the new dawn." And from his jacket he produced the demon-killing knife. Belial had enough time to register shock on his face before Lawson drew back his fist and slashed the demon once, just once, right across his throat.
The creature inside the human convulsed even as the host died immediately. Belial attempted to reach out to Lawson in smoky tendrils, but the demon withered away into nothingness before his minions had even crossed the floor halfway. Lawson spun, brandishing the knife before him. "Back." He commanded Belial's demons. "Stay away unless you want to suffer the same fate."
"What do you want?" One hissed, his eyes black.
"Inform the rest of our people that Lord Belial, our Lucifer is dead." Lawson said coldly. "And a new order has begun."
"What name will we give when others ask of it?" Another asked.
Lawson smiled.
"Tell them that Ruby's home."
Disclaimer: I've been away from this story for a while, as I've been working on The Adventures of Goldie Locks and The Mary Sue Strikes Back *shameless plug* Sorry for the wait. If you want background info on Drew and Mary, best look at my other fics Christmas or Soothsayer, for AJ's story, see Perfect and Hellbound
Anyways, Supernatural belongs to Kripke and the CW and all that.
I own: Drew, Mary, Lawson, Monty, The Don, AJ, Assorted Demons, Random Dead Guys, Token Pretty Girls, Nameless Original Characters Used To Fill Up Space, Extras There To Make The Leads Look Good…
It can be argued that Castiel, Sariel, Elijah, Belial, Lilith and Samael belong to themselves.
AN: For those who may be interested-
Samael: The face of a goat in an upside down pentagram is the Seal of Samael, which the Church of Satan really does use (um, yeah) to invoke the darker powers. Samael and Lilith are the two main deities in the church, and apparently the two were the equivalent of 'married'. In the Book of Enoch, Samael is listed as an archangel and one of the first fallen angels. In the Alpha Betha of Ben Sira, he's known as the 'Great Demon'.
Sariel: His role is to decide the fate of angels that stray from God's path. He is said to be an angel of knowledge. He's also been called a rebel angel, though he hasn't actually fallen yet.
Elijah: The Angel of Innocence. In Jewish tradition, he protects newborn children.
Belial: In the Goetia, he's the demon of lies and guilt. He's a prince/king of Hell, and has been associated with Lucifer and Samael.
Lilith: The demon queen who is the mother of all evil and has defied God. All through history there have been similar female figures that have been linked together as Lilith.
Castiel: If you don't know already, he's the Angel of Thursday.