Demon Seals
Chapter Twelve: Fray and Snap
Two weeks of teaching down, and I feel as though I'm fairly drowning! I've got a great team of teachers to fall back on, but man, it's still really hard. Anyway, I haven't had much time or energy to write, but I love this chapter so much that I wanted to share it with you guys sooner rather than later. I hope you enjoy it!
Lyrics by Kansas. You'll know 'em when you see 'em. Also a brief mention of 04.04 "Metamorphosis".
Three months.
Three fucking months.
Sam and Ruby had chased the Trickster all over the continent, and all they had to show for it were 18 dead-ends, a surprise meet up with another Hunter who going after a Rugaru that hadn't transformed yet, and a witch who was getting revenge on those who had wronged her growing up.
Three months of horrible nightmares, three months of Dean in Hell, and Sam's sanity was wearing severely thin at the edges. Some nights it was easier to drink a whole bottle of whiskey in one shot than it was to deal with his constant failure.
After dead-end number 19, Sam lost it.
He was driving away from Richfield, Utah, and suddenly anger welled up inside him and became a storm he could no longer control. Sam barely managed to pull over the Impala to the side of the road before he was up and out, raging at the injustice of it all, fists slamming against the hood of Dean's baby, but Dean was dead, gone forever, and the one thing Sam thought could bring him back continued to elude him like it fucking knew he was after it, and it wasn't fair, none of this was fair, Dean never should've sold his soul for Sam's life because he wasn't worth it —
"Sam!" Ruby was suddenly in his space. "Stop it! Please, this isn't helping anything!"
Before Sam could process what he was doing, he had punched Ruby across the face, only to be slammed against the side of the Impala by Ruby's demonic powers a moment later. He collided with the hard, unforgiving metal with a grunt and stayed there for a moment out of pure shock. The last thing Ruby ever liked doing was using the abilities granted to her as a demon, instead relying on her fists, the knife, or the magical abilities she had learned as a witch before going to Hell.
Just as Sam started to fight back with his own powers, Ruby was pushing against his chest with her hands, keeping him firmly in place and reminding him just how strong demons were compared to humans. "Listen to me!" Ruby shouted at him, dark eyes wide and sad. "You — we're doing everything we can! The hex bags should have been working, they should have shielded our presence from this demi-god. We've chased more than enough leads that one of them should've been him, and the fact that we've got nothing…" She trailed off, brown eyes locked with Sam's. "I don't think this Trickster is a demi-god," she finally finished. "I think he's something else pretending to be a demi-god. There's no way we shouldn't have caught him by now."
Sam stared at Ruby, chest heaving from his outburst. "So what do we do?" he forced himself to ask, hating the unsteady wobble of his voice.
Ruby shook her head, smoothing her hands down his shirt and not looking at him. "I don't know," she answered quietly. "I just — I'm so used to either having the answers or at least knowing where to look to find answers, and I have nothing for you."
When a tear splashed on Ruby's wrist, it took Sam a moment to realize it came from him. Within seconds, a sob escaped him, followed by another and another until he was drowning under the wave of despair that was crashing over him. Sam sank to the ground, Ruby following him, fingers running through the hair at the base of his skull as their bodies tangled together in the dust and weeds along the side of the road.
John's death had wounded Sam deeply.
He was certain that Dean's had all but shattered his heart.
Sam gave into his tears, safely ensconced in Ruby's embrace until he had nothing left to give to his sorrow. Eventually, he began to come back to himself and realized that Ruby was softly singing a song by Kansas, voice lilting and a little unsteady, but gentle like the mothers on TV who sang their children to sleep.
"Carry on my wayward son,
There'll peace when you are done.
Lay your weary head to rest.
Don't you cry no more."
Ruby took over driving, and Sam gave into his exhaustion in the backseat, waking up in the middle of the night to find Ruby parked in a clearing miles away from civilization. He sat up and saw that Ruby was sitting on the hood of the car, staring up at the star-lit sky.
"There's nothing like this in Hell," Ruby said when Sam slowly exited the Impala. "Really, you spend long enough in the Pit, and you forget what the surface world is even like. It's just… cloudy skies filled with smoke and ash and lightning, and you're never clean. Your reality down there is faded, all colors muted except for the colors of fire and blood." She sighed as Sam eased onto the hood next to her. "This world is so vibrant," she continued. "A million different colors and a million billion different sounds, so many people who think and feel in so many different ways, and then you have nature, this amazing place that's greens and blues and browns, warmth and coolness in the same breath, and then the sunsets?" She shook her head, awe pouring out from her emotions in a near-torrent. "Brilliant lightshows of pinks and purples and golds! And at night…" She smiled and looked up at the stars above them.
"Who knew that numberless glowing lights in a sea of darkness could be so breathtaking?" she whispered. Sam smiled.
"Sometimes… Dean and I would park in a clearing like this and just stare up at the stars for hours." Sam swallowed and licked his lips, feeling wrung out and dried up. Ruby silently handed him a bottle of water, and he gratefully took a long drink from it. "The days were always so busy, and sitting out here was like, a way to unwind from everything, to just remember that in the end, it was the two of us in this incredible world. We never had to talk out here, it was just…" He trailed off and smiled. "I think that it was everything I ever wanted Heaven to be."
"Is it okay that we're here like this?" Ruby asked him. "I could always go find a motel instead if this is too much for you."
Sam shook his head. "It's… it's fine," he finally settled on, surprised that he meant it. "I think that I needed this tonight. Thank you."
Ruby smiled, nodded, and turned her gaze skyward again.
The warm Colorado night was the first one in a long time where Sam knew a measure of peace.
Dean slouched on the bed in his current motel room, staring absently at his things. Two duffle bags and his favorite gun were pretty much all that remained from his time before Hell. It hurt more than Dean wanted to admit.
All in all, Sam had tracked down 19 different leads on the Trickster, and it seemed every last one had panned out because Sam's driving suddenly turned aimless after Richfield, Utah. Jo had returned to Bobby's house to run phones for Bobby's old friend Rufus while Bobby and Ellen looked at a possible Seal. So for now, Dean was on his own.
He forced himself to lie down, to try and sleep. He was pretty exhausted from the nightmares and all-nighters he forced on himself, which meant he wasn't very surprised when he was awake barely an hour later from yet another nightmare.
He was surprised to see Castiel standing at the foot of his bed.
"Cas — Castiel?" he mumbled, scrubbing at his face. "Wos goin' on?"
"You have to stop it," Castiel said, moving forward.
"Stop what?" Dean asked, confused. Did he mean that the Apocalypse was starting right now or was it something else?
It seemed, however, that Castiel was done talking. Instead, he pressed two fingers to Dean's forehead, and the world exploded in a flash of light.