Chapter 3 New Enemy Revealed

Third chapter is here. Some things are explained – or made even more confusing. A few ideas from cannon, with a weird spin to them, excuse the blasphemy ;). Thanks for your continuing interest. I hope you'll like this one too.

I don't own the shows, this is just a bastardized version of them. I don't own most of the characters, either. I owned Llewellyn, for all the good that did to him.

Colony 10. Motel.

Sam and Dean sat on their respective beds, while Crowley paced the length of the room. At any other time there would have been snide comments about his need to declaim and his delusions of grandeur. But both brothers were too anxious to pay much mind to his eccentricities.

"After the Leviathan were driven back," Crowley began, "everything went quiet. I suppose most were stunned. The past few years had not been exactly a picnic. The Gates of Hell opening, then Lillith and the Seals, then Lucifer and the Apocalypse, the charming Eve and so forth. I need not repeat the list to you. You were in the middle of it all the time."

"We were put there," Sam pointed out. "And we tried to fix things."

To the brothers' surprise, Crowley actually nodded.

"That you did. I'll give you that. Which makes one wonder…how things would have gone, had you not decided playing border patrol was more important that Hunting."

Crowley paused and sat down in the small, uncomfortable chair at the other edge of the room. He looked thoughtfully from Dean to Sam. Dean scowled.

"Don't keep us in suspense. What happened?"

Crowley shrugged.

"I do not rightly know. At least, I do not know what lead to it. I was content with things as they were. Hell was mine, after the Shadows and President Clark's regime, there were plenty of souls to keep us busy. Frankly, it's getting a little overcrowded in our torture chambers. We're thinking of enlarging our premises. Not enough room."

"Let's skip the hell-remodeling lesson and fast forward to how informers of the Rangers started getting killed," Dean urged.

"It did not take long for us to realize the First Ones were gone and their…flocks were sheperdless, if you'll allow me an overused cliché. That was bound to spark a few ambitions. Add that to the fact that Heaven was in shambles – after his disastrous stint as Sheriff of Heaven, our darling Castiel is never going to be trusted in a position of authority again, as for most of his kind, they're overly ambitious and bicker like cranky children. There's no one to rule with a firm hand there and rumor has it there have been a few rebellions in Paradise. But I'm sure your dear Cas has mentioned all this to you."

Crowley paused staring at Sam and Dean meaningfully. The two brothers avoided looking at each other. Suddenly, Cas' frequent evasions made more sense. Dean's look turned stony.

"What about you?" he demanded. "You wouldn't be telling us all of this, if you were holding things together at your end."

A brief flicker of fury appeared on Crowley's face. He mastered it quickly.

"I am holding things together, thank you very much. But, yes, lately there has been…dissension in my domain. More than usual. I do not authorize targeting the Anlashok, but someone does. Things are starting to look a mess, frankly. It hasn't been like that since Lucifer was freed."

Out of the corner of his eye, Dean caught Sam tensing.

"But," Sam began reasonably, "he can't be out. Can he?"

Anyone who did not know Sam well – and Dean was beginning to think no one knew his brother as well as he did – would have taken this as a casual request for information and nothing more. Dean, however, caught the vague tremble in Sam's voice. He got up and went to stand behind Sam. Crowley pretended not to take any notice.

"Now that, I think, I would know," he said. "Although, it might be just a matter of time. Everything has been upside down, lately. Ever since…"

He paused and looked at the two. Once more, he wondered how things would have been now, if the Winchesters had been active in the Hunting world when the mess started. Knowing the two, they might have broken the world completely. Or, they might just have saved them all – again.

"About a year after the Leviathans were back in Purgatory, someone set free a very powerful demon – Abbadon, a Knight of Hell – very powerful, almost impossible to destroy. Abbadon was mostly in hiding. Not a lot of people knew she was there, not at first. But she started getting bolder and bolder, and at one point she even declared open war against me."

"And you just let her get away with it?" Sam asked skeptically.

"It was not about letting her do anything. We are talking very powerful, high-level demon. Not one you could just chuck Holy Water at. There were not many ways to kill her. A few Hunters tried – inspired, no doubt, by your legendary deeds – or thinking they could do better. Save the word with less damage. Funny enough, one of those was a pair of brothers. People called them the new Winchesters."

Dean snorted.

"Now that I'd like to see."

"You can't actually," Crowley said dryly. "See, in order to kill Abbadon, one of them took on the Mark of Cain. Now, that's a nasty bit of work."

"I'm guessing that did not work too well," Sam deduced.

Crowley nodded.

"In many ways, it did exactly what it was supposed to do. Abbadon is dead. However, dark power like that of the Mark…there could have been only one outcome in the end."

"He killed his brother," Sam discovered.

Because that was the obvious conclusion one could reach, when he heard Cain's name. What else could one expect after taking on that Mark?

Beside him, Sam heard Dean shift. Turning your back on one's family always hit Dean on a personal level. Attacking your own brother was beyond Dean's comprehension. Sam nearly smiled, only he did not want to appear a sap in front of Crowley.

"Funnily enough, you guessed correctly," Crowley said. "Problem is, this Mark of Cain is really a lose-lose situation. You keep it, you become a cold-blooded murderer, bent on extermination. You try to erase it – let alone that it's next to impossible, you also set lose powers beyond your comprehension. You do the deed it's been leading you to do…despite what team Michael and team Lucifer might have had you think, fratricide isn't all the rage. Under normal circumstances, it earns you extra sessions downstairs with our best torturer, wrack and whips on the house. But those weren't normal circumstances."

"So where's this dickbag now?" Dean asked sharply. "He still alive?"

"In a manner of speaking. He has become something else. Not entirely human. Not demon either. The Mark is gone, but there's something of its essence still in him, and now he has nothing and no one holding him back."

"I don't understand," Sam admitted. "What's he after?"

"Chaos," Crowley answered. "The bigger, the better. And since your intrepid president and his charming first lady stand for the opposite of chaos…well, you see how you might be a thorn in his side. Usually I'd sympathize, but…"

Dean scoffed.

"But, he's after you as well," he deduced. "Right?"

Crowley sighed. Now they came to the crux of the problem.

"I want him gone," he admitted. "And you want him gone. So I was thinking – maybe we should try a…shall we say…a mutually beneficial agreement?"

Dean snorted. Sam's face turned stony.

"I did help you in the past," Crowley pointed out. "With Dick Roman…"

"I got blown up, then," Dean reminded him.

"You told me Dean was dead."

Dean cast Sam a concerned look. Sam rarely allowed his emotions to be so on the surface. He wondered what exactly Crowley had said to him after the explosion.

"Despite what you no doubt flatteringly think about me, Moose, I'm not omniscient. There was no way to predict the explosion – or that Dean was in Purgatory."

As a matter of fact, Crowley had guessed Dean was not dead. But he remembered how Sam had been when Dean had gone to Hell, how he had been used by demons and manipulated until he turned into what they wanted. Crowley had thought he could try to do a bit of manipulating of his own. He could have done with someone like Sam, and Crowley knew enough about the Winchesters to take advantage of Sam's grief over his supposedly dead brother. But before he could do any taking advantage, Sam had vanished off the face of the world. When he had finally resurfaced, Dean was back from Purgatory, and the Winchesters had switched allegiance in a completely unexpected manner. Crowley still did not know what to feel about that. For one thing, he could now breathe more freely. For another – the Winchesters were good at solving messes. Besides, Crowley did not find riling other Hunters up quite as fun.

"Say we do decide to work with you," Sam said at length. "What guarantee can we have that you won't double-cross us the minute it's good for you?"

Crowley smirked.

"Well, none really. But I am honest when I say I have no interest in the Alliance. I just want to get rid of a nuisance – so, I'm calling in Pest Control."

The deal was not exactly to Sam and Dean's liking – and working with demons was always going to make them uncomfortable. But Crowley was a mine of information and they needed all the help they could get.

"Cas is gonna love this," Dean commented, when Crowley was gone.

Impala.

Sam and Dean left Colony 10 the very next day. Their plan was to go to Mars, touch base with Jody and Garth and reconnect with some of the Hunters still active. This was a problem that had to be tackled on all fronts. They did not talk for a long while, not really knowing what to say. There were plenty of topics that were too raw for them to mention up front.

"You know, we have to figure out how to gank him," Dean spoke at length.

Sam sighed.

"You do know he's human, Dean."

"Not anymore," Dean said uncompromisingly. "Not according to Crowley."

Right, Sam thought, because they were suddenly going to believe Crowley completely, when they knew he had the habit of twisting the truth.

"Besides," Dean went on, "I don't care what the Mark of Cain was making him do. He killed his brother."

Sam leaned his head against the seat. His face grew somber, his eyes staring unseeingly at the stars.

"He might have had a good reason," he said quietly.

Dean spluttered. He half-turned to stare at Sam disbelievingly.

"You did not just say that! That means you'll knife me in the back, if you had a good reason? What's a good reason anyway, Sam? Music too loud? Snoring too much? Shirt too smelly?"

Sam's eyes widened. It would have been comical, if the topic was not so macabre.

"What?" he cried. "No! No, I never said I'd…not you. You're…you're you. There never would be a reason. I was just…well, I was just thinking…"

Sam paused and Dean did not ask him to continue. He knew what Sam had been thinking. A few years back, during a sharing-and-caring ritual before joining the Rangers, Dean found out at one point Sam had received a message thinking it was from him in which some very hateful things were said – among them being Dean's supposed intention of killing Sam. It still horrified Dean, and he did not really know what broke his heart the most – that Sam had tackled Lucifer and cast himself into Hell – for eternity, as they had both thought – thinking that message had been from Dean, that, while Dean was in Purgatory Sam still thought the message was genuine, or that he had never once tried to contradict it. Sam was no pushover. He gave as good as he got. Even when he sensed he might be in the wrong, he was too proud to just admit it. He usually thought to make his side of things heard. So, for him to just accept the message meant he had believed each and every word of it. And the thought still gave Dean nightmares.

He thought they were over it. He thought that, with the discovery that the message had never been sent by Dean, that Dean's message had been completely different, completely the opposite, they would be able to move on. Sam had acknowledged the misunderstanding and had seemed a little better since then, more secure in his place with Dean. But there were things that could not be completely fixed – some wounds that never healed for good. There was always something to open them up. And Dean was aware they both had issues of galactic proportions. Such issues could not be erased for good.

"Nothing would be a good enough reason for that, Sammy," Dean said heartily. "Do you hear me? Nothing!"

Sam turned startled eyes towards Dean. He swallowed slightly, his stance relaxing and something akin to gratitude appearing on his face.

"Yeah," he said quickly. "Yeah, I hear you."

Dean resolved then and there not to mention the topic of fratricide unless there were other people present.

It was the day after that they received their message from Ralph. They had not expected to be contacted until they reached Mars, so they immediately knew something was not as it should have been. Hearing Ralph's slightly shell-shocked voice was not that much of a surprise.

"Sam, Dean, something's happened. It's…well, it's Llewellyn."

Sam and Dean exchanged worried looks. The feeling of something oppressive crept over them. Suddenly, Dean was sure he did not want to hear the rest of the message.

"Llewellyn? What's wrong with him? He was supposed to be on B5, right?"

Ralph sighed heavily.

"Yeah, he…he was there. He's…he was killed. It's the same as before. And, Dean, in the place where he's found, there's a big W on the wall…written in blood."

Dean swore. Sam did not say anything, his face hardening, turning to stone, his body tensing. Dean knew the signs, he knew this was Sam shutting down, Sam deciding to keep the world out of his mind, because it he let anyone see what was going on inside him, he would surely break. Dean could not blame him. Llewellyn had been a friend – and had paid the price for it.

"They were talking at headquarters about reaching his family," Ralph was saying. "I don't even know if he had one…"

"He has a mother on Mars," Sam said. "Tell them not to bother. We're on our way. I'll tell her face to face."

Dean watched Sam concerned, noticing Sam had said I and not we. Sam meant to see Llewellyn's mother alone. It might have made more sense – Sam knew her, after all, while Dean had never seen her. But this was not Sam being practical. This was Sam taking the blame all on himself. Dean wanted to tell Sam to stop – he should not be doing this, he should not attempt penance for something that wasn't really his fault. Because it wasn't his fault, Dean told himself fiercely. It wasn't either of their faults. Except…

"You know, when I went to see her first," Sam began, his hoarse, mechanical voice snapping Dean's attention to him, "With that star chart that would take me to the portal to Purgatory…I was wearing a Ranger uniform and I walked in her office…She looked up and she saw the uniform…and her face fell. She thought I was there to bring bad news about her son. She was expecting that call. She's always been expecting that call."

Dean sighed, because he wished things were easier on Sam – but they couldn't be.

"It's the job, Sam," he pointed out. "She knows it. Llewellyn knew it too."

Sam's expression darkened.

"Llewellyn did not die because of the job. He died because he knew us. He died because some nutjob wanted to send us a message. He shouldn't have died like that."

Dean could not argue with that. No matter how much he wanted.

Mars

Once on Mars, Sam and Dean separated, Dean to touch base with Jody as planned, Sam to the Museum of Interplanetary History where Llewellyn's mother was curator. Dean would have offered to go with him – there were moments when it made his blood freeze whenever Sam was out of his sight – but he sensed something in Sam and decided to drop it. If Sam needed to do this alone, that was his right. They might have been a united front now, but there were still certain things they did differently. Grieving was one of them. Sam grieved privately, at first. When he was ready to talk, he would come to Dean. Until then, all Dean could do was wait him out.

Sam walked the streets of Mars – the familiar sights always bitter-sweet to him. This had been Bobby's home, and Sam knew he would never be able to step foot on Mars without feeling Bobby close, no matter how many years passed. And Bobby was dead because he knew the Winchesters – he was not the first and he most definitely had not been the last.

As he walked, Sam's mind went to Llewellyn. He remembered the first time he met the Ranger, on the White Star that was to take Sam to the Enphili homeworld and the beginning of his desperate search for his brother. Llewellyn had been more than accommodating then. True, most was due to orders from Delenn, but Llewellyn had actually gone out of his way. He had tried to give Sam a purpose, to keep his mind busy. He had understood Sam, even when he had not completely agreed with him. He had offered help whenever he was able. He had been kind to Sam when Sam had needed the kindness the most. And Sam had forgotten to mention that being kind to the Winchesters usually brought with it a death sentence.

Sam stopped abruptly. He suddenly realized something was wrong. At first, he thought it was the world, something had shifted in the air, sound and sight had become unclear. But Sam realized with a jolt it was actually him. He staggered, suddenly feeling his brain about to explode. He knew the pain, knew the feeling of moving away from reality, of being taken somewhere else. he had not experienced it for years. But he could still remember those times, images of death that had not happened yet, visions of fire and burning ceiling's, days before the flames came to swallow up his life.

I know…yet another cliffhanger…I hope you're still with me after I twisted the original storyline until it became a different beast altogether. Incidentally, I always had issues with the Mark of Cain thing, even though it did offer us some great character development for both the brothers. The thing is, what bothered me most was that Dean was supposedly going to get rid of the Mark if he killed Sam. Which, essentially meant he would be redeemed through murder. But murder is a big taboo in a lot of cultures, especially murdering one's flesh and blood (and yeah, I know a lot of those involved thought Sam had a lot of issues and probably had it coming, but still…). I was always wondering: what if the Mark would, in fact, not just go away, if Dean killed Sam? What if things were actually taken to another level? I've always wanted to explore this, but I'm not big on death fics and, anyway, the show got one thing right: Dean would under no circumstances kill Sam. So I weaved the story of the Mark – its aftermath, anyway – in this fic, using different characters. I hope I didn't offend any SPN purists, but since you're reading this story, I assume you can probably tolerate a different interpretation :)