Elizabeth dreams of a world brought to its knees, the earth covered in ash thick as snow, clouds perpetually covering the sun so that only thin rays of it spill across the forest floor. Even with the landscape so harshly changed, she recognizes it as the patch of woods she and Dean had gone to the night of her prom, where they had made love for the first time surrounded by flowers.
Her bare feet leave faint impressions as she passes like even this nightmare world knows it's simply a figment of an overworked imagination. She walks, feeling no brambles or stickers to pierce the tender soles of her feet, brushing aside branches absent waxy, green leaves. She doesn't stop until she finds the overlook, a decimated Sioux Falls spread out below her.
"This isn't real," she whispers.
"It's going to be." She doesn't turn, doesn't want to see the person lurking behind her. The voice is hoarse and well-used, belonging to a man who isn't a man. She knows he'll be wearing a content smile, that his hands will be in the pockets of a red blazer that pairs oddly with jeans worn soft with age.
"No, this is just a nightmare." The man who isn't a man draws ever closer and his hand burns her where it rests on her shoulder. His fingers, long and made for strumming guitar strings, curl over so that blunt nails dig into the hollow of her collarbone. "This isn't real."
"This is a world without the Winchesters, a world where you died young and bloody. It's not my favorite." The man shifts so that he's at her back, his free hand going to her neck. Fingers wrap around her throat like a collar, pulling her against a solid chest as a chin comes to rest against the crown of her head. She fits perfectly against him as though she'd been made for this.
"Please, don't hurt me." Tears prickle at Elizabeth's eyes, falling across her cheeks and pooling against the man's fingers.
"I never want to hurt you, Elizabeth. You weren't just born to be a demon's plaything, a puppet on rotten strings." The hand on her shoulder slips down, following the curve of her side and around so that he's brushing his fingertips across her abdomen. They settle there like a heavy weight, five tiny brands burning their way through her thin hospital gown. "You could give me a child."
"I won't," she bites out. The tears still come freely, but resolve wraps itself around her spine like a growing thing. Flowers bloom along the thick green of it, red and pink and violet; anger, loyalty, spite. "I won't give you anything. You're just a bully." The man laughs, a rasping sound that burrows its way into her heart like a cavity. "I won't."
"You'll try to resist, my dearest darling, but you'll give in just like Mary did. You'll give me a son and he will build worlds beyond anything you could ever imagine. And when he's old enough, when he's endured the suffering of humans like your Winchester boys, he will sacrifice himself to jumpstart Heaven. Can't you see him, Elizabeth? Can't you see how beautiful he'll be?"
Elizabeth sees a young man with eyes like molten gold and a smile to match, deadly promise and a child's innocence all wrapped up in the gangly form of a teenage boy. She sees his smile, the propensity for good that nearly overwhelms her. It's not the boy that the eldritch being clinging to her would create, but it's the boy Elizabeth knows she'll love one day.
"Don't worry about that boy," says the man who isn't a man. "He'll be dead by the time he's two."
The world shifts and distorts around them until they're standing in a room stained with red light. An alarm blares from distant speakers, echoing off brick walls and sleek metal switchboards. She's reminded, briefly, of a control room she'd visited as a girl; her first hunt, a vengeful spirit hidden deep in the woods that would have gutted her if Bobby hadn't swung his tire iron at its head.
"I don't know this place."
"You will," says the creature at her back. "It's rare that you don't make it to this place, no matter the world." A man comes skidding around the corner and nearly trips coming down the stairs, his shaggy hair whipping this way and that. She doesn't have to be a genius to recognize Sam, this one far older and painted with agonized horror.
"You don't have to do this," Sam says, pleading.
"I don't," a voice agrees, a thunderous baritone. For one impossible, aching moment, Elizabeth thinks the voice belongs to John. She turns her head as much as the creature will allow and shock makes her belly cramp when she finds Dean framed in the doorway. He's older, too, dressed in a black tee with a red button-up open over it, moving far more gracefully than he ever has. His eyes are not a perfect springtime green in this vision, they're filled in with black. "But I want to."
"Please, p-please, Dean—"
"I always love to hear him break and beg," the creature whispers, fetid breath washing over Elizabeth's face. She wants to flinch away from it, to hide her face, but those long fingers tighten and force her to watch.
There's a hammer in Dean's hand and his grin is bloody as he brings it down against his brother's skull.
"This one is my personal favorite," the creature says.
The red light and incessant alarm have been shut off, but the room is the same. The floor is covered in bodies and blood, Sam standing amongst the slaughter with a cold smile curving his lips. His eyes, much like Dean's had been, are an inky black and blood paints his open palms.
"Do you see the happiness, Elizabeth? How free he is?" The man at her back shudders and she can feel him pressing against her bottom. She yanks herself from his grasp as Dean trips into the room, running to her boyfriend. Dean doesn't even look at her as she stops in front of him, his gaze focused solely on their brother.
"Sam," Dean says, voice choked. "Oh, Sam…."
"You can try to touch him if you want." Elizabeth reaches out, her fingers passing through Dean's cheek like they're made of smoke. "It's a divine torture, isn't it? To be so close to the man you love and be unable to touch him." Footsteps echo from the smooth floor and then there's a hand at the small of her back. "I've always liked the story of Cain and Abel."
"Brother killing brother," Elizabeth says hoarsely. The man who isn't a man lets out a sigh, content as a house cat. The hand at her back slips beneath the ties of her hospital gown, tracing nonsense over the bare skin between her shoulder blades. "Why are you doing this? Why won't you just leave me alone?"
"I'll never leave you alone." The man's laugh is like a tsunami, roaring and echoing and devastating. He laughs and a world buckles under the stress, billions of lives wiped out for one creature's entertainment. "You and the Winchesters are the only good things in all of my worlds. I've tried it without you all and they never come together properly."
"And yet it ends with us dying."
"Cain and Abel," the creature says, his shadow nodding. It's thrown against the floor, the shape looking so normal that she's almost tempted to look at the real thing. She doesn't, though. "You don't die yet, not in the world we just left. Dean finds you and your son hidden in the dungeon, he kills you both there."
"What about…. What about this one?"
"Oh, Sam makes it fast. One snap of his fingers and you're gone."
"My son?"
"Sam's always had a soft spot for kids. He and your son burn this world to the ground and rule over the ashes, a Hell on earth. It'd make a pretty good Hallmark movie if it didn't end with your boy cutting Sam's throat."
The world changes and suddenly she's outside again, staring at the house that she should have been raised in. The Mayson house is decked out in Christmas lights and shadows move past the windows, silhouettes gone blurry at the edges as the people inside continue their dance. She doesn't move to investigate, too scared of what she might find waiting on her.
"Cain and Abel," she asks, voice choked with tears.
"Not quite. This is what would have been if you were never born. Nothing changes for the Winchesters, not really, but your parents and sister are still alive." Elizabeth's feet move over dewy grass, carrying her across a manicured lawn and through the closed front door.
The man who isn't a man follows.
Alice and Christopher Mayson dance to a slow song, Alice humming along as she gazes lovingly up at her husband. Curled up on a nearby couch, Dana and Archer are smiling at the dancing pair, Lilly snuggled soundly between them. This sight, more than anything, is what forces Elizabeth to her knees. Her family is alive and healthy and all it took to get them that way was Elizabeth's non-existence.
The burning hand drops to her head, heat flooding through her in tingling vines, wrapping her up like a Christmas present. Blunt nails dig into her scalp, but they don't draw blood. She wonders, briefly, if she could bleed in this neverending nightmare.
"They're happy," says the man who isn't a man. "They don't know that they'll all be dead in two days." The hand shifts so fingers can tangle in Elizabeth's hair, dragging her to her feet so he can hiss against her ear. He moves against her like a lover might, his free hand going back to her abdomen as though it belongs there. "She still made a deal with Azazel and he doesn't like being stiffed. No you means no Mayson family."
"Lilly—"
"Lilly's best timeline is the one you exist in right now. I can keep her alive forever if you so wish, but my help doesn't come for free. She will be safe and sheltered and happy, the perfect little niece with the cookie-cutter life her aunt could never have. Don't test my patience, though, I am not a forgiving man. I'm a creator, a writer, and we like to kill our darlings."
"Touch my niece or my boys and I will make you scream." The man who isn't a man laughs, another tsunami wave of foul things that turns the Mayson house into ashes. The sky grows dark overhead, red streaks of lightning and thunder booming. The ground rocks and breaks, silver blades the size of a Buick tearing through the fragile earth until their pointed tips nearly reach the clouds.
"My dearest darling, you're going to break so wonderfully under my hands."
When Elizabeth wakes up, the callous voice still ringing in her ears, John Winchester is dead.
In my time of dying/Want nobody to mourn/All I want for you to do/Is take my body home./Well, well, well, so I can die easy/Well, well, well, so I can die easy.