FIC: Frailty (Complete)
Title: Frailty
Author: chrissie0707
Word Count: 5,400
Spoilers:Everything up through S9 is fair game
Genre: Angst, H/C
Rating: PG-13 for brief strong language
Author Notes: Lately I’ve been putting notes like these after a story, but I felt a need to explain something before this one, lest a canon-crazy superfan flip out halfway through reading because he/she can’t accurately find a place for the “present” portions of this story to exist where I’ve labeled it as occurring.
I used to spend almost as much time agonizing over the canon chronology of my stories as I did writing them. Reading transcripts, rewatching episodes, tweaking description or rewriting dialogue or changing who said what or sometimes flat-out deleting entire scenes because I couldn’t find the “between episodes” place for it. I used to go back and go over and forward and sideways through a story, telling myself I needed to add more exposition, and detail, and “what does the ROOM look like?”
But to paraphrase Amy Poehler in her new book, the agonizing isn’t the thing. The writing is the thing. The story is the thing. And I feel like I’ve done a disservice to the stories I’m trying to tell by wrapping them up in pretty paper with an ornate bow that will make people go “Ooh.”
The foundation of this thing was one scene, and then a title, and then a much broader idea of exploring a multitudes of themes we’ve seen over and over through the course of nine seasons of this show. Life and death, love, sacrifice, right and wrong and how far is too far, that slippery slope question of morality. In my imagination, this was going to be a behemoth, and thought-starters for scenes came random and quick, some extensions of what happened during episodes and some original, to be inserted into the show’s timeline, spanning all nine seasons. After a few months, what I had was a loud, colorful cacophony of wonderfully disjointed craziness that was enjoyable and surprising for me to read through but it didn’t exactly make much sense and was completely out of order. I had a feeling that a random spewing of disorderly scenes spanning nearly ten years would not be well-received, and scrapped the original idea. I started pulling out bits and pieces, and the “life and death” stuff became “Blood Oath.” The original title, and all of the demon pieces, have become this.
This is the story I wanted to tell, with no fluff, and no agonizing.
Frailty
“I think Dad wants us to pick up where he left off. Saving people, hunting things. The family business.”
Present, Late Winter, 2011
Did we save these people?
The body, hollow of life and soul but not quite yet cold, falls away from him and hits the cement with a meaty smack. Arm bent, knife gripped tight and business-like in his right hand, Dean stares, takes in the scene. Feels a little hollow, himself.
Blood pools beneath the man at his feet, a glistening red lake spreading like a slowly creeping fog, reaching fingers towards him. Pointing out the guilty party. You did this to me. He hears it clear as a bell, takes a heavy step back out of the path of the growing puddle, feeling the vibrations of the movement travel all the way from the sole of his boot through his legs, torso, neck, and into his damaged face. He winces, fights the urge, the curious twitch in his fingers to probe the source of pain.
You’re right, Dean thinks, wiping the flat of the blade across the left sleeve of his navy jacket, the one he wears when he means business. Dark colors, Sammy. Hides the blood. The sleeve is stiff already along the crook of his elbow; blood from previous kills not quite washed out all the way but hidden by the pigment, unless you’re really looking for it. Wide smears are left behind but the fabric doesn’t catch it all, and dark drops cling to knicks and crevices in the steel, appearing black under the dim yellow light leaking in from the parking lot outside.
Footsteps approach, not heavy but with a purposeful sense of urgency, echoing in the cavernous room. Sam stops just out of Dean’s eye line, catching his breath with deep, loud inhales. Dean can’t look at him, holds the blade out hilt-first, doesn’t want the weapon in his hand any longer.
He’s been counting them. Every kill. Every single one, dreading this day. More than dreading it. Steeling himself for the inevitability of it all.
It’ll never happen. You won’t let it get that far, he’d told himself. Lied to himself.
You’ll die first, or Sammy will stop you. You got along just fine for years without it, and you’ll get rid of the damned thing, throw it into the river and get back to exorcising demons and giving the victims a chance to live.
Sammy will stop you. It’s not even a question; of COURSE he will. Sammy is his conscience, his safety net.
But they stopped thinking of the possessed as victims they can save. Both of them. Now, they’re lost causes, given up for dead as soon as the demon takes hold. It makes the job easier to only see the demon.
He really always knew they would get here, he just thought it would take longer.
One hundred demons they’ve killed with Ruby’s knife.
“Dean. We need to clean this up and clear out before the cops show.”
And along with them, one hundred poor sons of bitches who maybe just happened to be having a bad day when the demon came along. A worse day when the Winchesters came along. Like this poor bastard. Plain gold wedding band, maybe in his mid-forties. Probably had kids. A dog. Now Dean and Sam have a body.
Sam clears his throat, jerks his head, and Dean has to correct himself. They have three bodies.
He hasn’t yet moved, watches as Sam drags the girl’s body to the center of the warehouse. She was pretty. Maybe nineteen, with pale skin and long blonde hair. Reminds him too much of Jo, but there’s nothing to be done for either of them. There’s a third body in the far corner, and Sam looks up, meets Dean’s gaze and raises his eyebrows, wordlessly requests a hand. He obliges.
**********************************
Spring 2006
John Winchester knows a fair amount about a lot of things and that includes demons but this sort of information doesn’t always properly trickle down the father-son pipeline and they weren’t thinking that’s a human girl in there when the Daeva threw Meg through a fifth-floor window to the unforgiving street below, they were thinking ding dong, the witch is dead, and they were wrong on all accounts.
They’ll always call the demon Meg, but Meg Masters the girl doesn’t survive her possession. It’s not for an obvious, conscience-crushing lack of trying, but in the moment getting to Dad is more important. A proper exorcism can, should take hours, not minutes, and maybe they don’t give it their all. Taking it out on the girl, what the demon did.
If there weren’t bigger fish to fry that backhanded slap would have haunted Dean’s dreams longer than it did. He clings to the thought that she was a doornail anyway, from the fall, from a gunshot wound neither of them can remember, and that instinct-driven blow had nothing to do with her death. It felt good in the moment, though, before Bobby dragged him away from her.
She walked into the house under her own power, like she owned the place and tossing Bobby and Dean like rag dolls, but lives only minutes after the demon is exorcised, putting into stark reality just how much damage a possession can hide. Just how ruthless the demon can be when it comes to its host, keeping the body alive as long as it wants for kicks, for shits and giggles, the unfortunate victim feeling all of it and straddling the line between life and death, existing and not. More often than not it’s no question as to what state they’ll be left in when the demon finally leaves.
Bobby calls for an ambulance, but he knew what they were getting into. Just gives the boys as much hope as he can for as long as he can. It’s a lesson for all of them.
**********************************
Present
They entered the abandoned industrial building, a demonic den of iniquity, with weapons drawn and game faces on. Looking to kill. Anyone possessed was dead already; that’s just their standard operating procedure now.
One heavy son of a bitch dropped soundlessly from the rafters, landing on Dean’s back and driving him face-first to the chipped concrete and, from the current of feel of it, maybe breaking his nose. Tasting the blood streaming from his nostrils, through a red haze of pain and watery eyes, he’d held his own against the middle-aged man who’d laid him out, let his reflexes do the work while his brother made quick, methodical work of the other two. Sam ducked a blow aimed at his head and slammed the knife home in the girl, dispatched the heavyset man with a swift cut across the throat, sending a spray of blood flying from the serrated edge and throwing the weapon to Dean in time to jam the point into his attacker’s chest. Right in the heart; Dean has good aim and better instincts.
They stand in the center of the hangar-sized room, just outside the fire that’s eating the bodies, the flames not nearly hot enough to rid Dean of the chill in his bones. There’s a constant wet tickle under his nose, the appendage a mess of agony in the center of his face. He swipes at the spot, his fingers brushing the skin under his nostrils, ratcheting up the pain, and come away coated in blood. His own blood on his hands, for once. That’s something.
“What are we doing here, Sam?” A thought inadvertently given a voice because his mind is too preoccupied with managing the throb of his broken nose. It’s out there now, though, and he can’t take it back. Can’t make Sam unhear it.
Sam shakes a shank of brown hair from his forehead, eyebrows pulled together. The expression, the facial quirks still belong to young Sammy, but he’s growing, maturing, his face thinning, and Dean can’t stop it. Can’t put things back. They’ve been through a lot lately, literally through Hell and back, and he’s not asking so many questions, but makes an exception here. “What do you mean?”
Dean surveys the scene: the blazing fire, the dark choking smoke rising from twisted, bloody bodies. Open eyes, vacant expressions, souls in the wind. Pain makes him just as sloppy as whiskey does, and this is no small twinge in his face. “When did this become what we do?”
“Stopping demons?”
“By killing people.”
Sam looks down at the bodies, checks the knife tucked into his belt and folds his jacket over the hilt. Getting rid of the evidence. Getting it out of sight, at least. He takes charge now in such a way that Dean almost forgets he taught his little brother everything he knows. Almost.
**********************************
Winter 2007
Demons require a window to get in. Not just anyone can be possessed; they need a weakness, a vulnerability. Sam’s always been an OCD-worrying-stressball but this possession finally clues Dean in to just how crazy his brother’s been making himself over Yellow Eyes and whatever plan that son of a bitch may have for him. Now he has even more to obsess over.
You can hurt the body to hurt the demon, but the body isn’t the demon. The trouble is, when you pause to make that distinction, you die. If you hesitate with your finger on the trigger, you get shot first.
Dean wouldn’t put a bullet in his brother, tucked the gun away and opted for the holy water, and he got a bullet himself. Sam’s body pulled the trigger but it wasn’t Sammy who took aim. A demon used one of their guns, and now they all feel dirty.
“What did I do?” Keeping his distance, staying across the room but it would be easier if he’d take a walk. Let Dean drop the wall for a minute and acknowledge how much his shoulder friggin’ HURTS.
“You pounded my face like hamburger meat, wanna brag about it?”
“Dean.”
“Nothing, Sam. You didn’t do anything.”
He knows the basics, the obvious. The patchwork quilt of yellowing bruises on Dean’s face doesn’t lend itself to much interpretation, and Sam can probably match the patterns on Dean’s jaw and head to the contusions left on his own knuckles.
But it’s three days later and Dean’s favoring his left arm in a way that’s embarrassingly obvious, but it’s too painful not to.
Sam frowns, stares down at the scabbed knuckles of his right hand. “I remember some things.”
Dean sets the reassembled Smith & Wesson aside, moves on to the next gun in the line. “That’s called memory, Sam. It’s pretty common, doesn’t make you special.” Suppressing a scream as he pulls back the slide.
“I shot you.”
“Meg shot me. The demon shot me.”
“My hand. My gun.”
“Did you want to shoot me? Do you now?”
“No! God, Dean, I tried to stop - “
“Okay. End of story, then. Drop it.”
“Dean, just stop. What you’re saying, what you’re doing. Quit with the guns. Your shoulder is fucked.”
Dean grabs a knife from the arsenal on the bed, flips it into his left hand as he stands and flings it at the far wall as Sam takes a step back. The blade sticks dead center in a framed canvas print of a flowered field hanging next to the motel room’s bathroom. Pain rips instantly through his abused shoulder, a lance of heat that feels like the bullet tearing apart skin and muscle all over again. He pushes the pain down, makes a fist and bites his lip while Sammy can’t see. He sniffs and turns to his brother. “Satisfied?”
Sam purses his lips, taps his fingers on the tabletop. “Yeah.”
“Good. Drop it.”
Sometimes a possession leaves you more vulnerable than it found you.
***********************************
Present
Dean lets Sam drive back to the motel, doesn’t turn on the light in the room, doesn’t care to see the state of himself. A horror movie extra, from the feel of it, his nose pancaked across his face, a bloody smear like a dragonfly impacting the Impala’s windshield.
Sam has no such sympathy. He flips the switch immediately and grabs Dean’s arm, forcing him around. He hisses. “We should really call Cas, have him fix your…face.”
“No.” It’s not the first time his nose has been broken, and he deserves the pain, the deformity. No one can fix those people back there.
“Dean…”
He sighs. “You do it.”
Sam releases his arm, steps away with exaggerated, childish disgust. “Um, no.”
“You did it before.”
“That was Dad, and it was like fifteen years ago. You copped that door in the face in Fresno, remember?”
Did he ever. “Just…” Dean holds his thumb and forefinger close together and jerks them across his face. The pad of his finger barely brushes his broken nose but an intense furnace blast of pain lights up his entire face. “Son of a bitch!” He bows in the middle, battles gravity and the instinct to sniff as he watches blood and an errant tear drip to the gray carpet underfoot. “Cas!” he shouts, nasally and rocked with pain.
“Don’t be a baby,” Sam carefully chastises, dragging a chair behind Dean’s knees and gently guiding him to sit with a hesitant push on his shoulders.
There’s just the faintest flutter of wings on the furthest edge of awareness, and when Dean raises his head Castiel is there in front of him. There’s no need to ask; the angel steps forward and places an outstretched hand on Dean’s forehead. He’ll never be used to the sensation, the instantly WHOLE feeling.
Castiel fixes the break but leaves the ache, the bruises inside and out, as though he knows Dean wants the pain to hold on to. The angel’s gone as quickly as he came, his only goodbye a sour look directed at Sam.
Sam slaps a towel full of ice cubes into his hand and Dean sniffs, raises the ice pack to his nose. “Thanks.”
**********************************
Fall 2007
It seems to happen in slow motion the first time.
The tip of the blade pierces the soft, vulnerable flesh of the underside of his chin, its upward trajectory visible through his mouth, open in surprise. Not just the demon, but the man the demon was possessing. Killing the both of them instantly.
Or, in hindsight, Sam hopes it was instant, for the man’s sake, to have both the misfortune of being possessed in the first place and then to be killed because of it. To attract a dickbag like Pride, himself, though, he can’t have been a good guy. Right?
Bobby manages to save two of them, the girl and the big guy, but it’s a small mercy. There are still bodies to burn.
Sam doesn’t sleep well that night, tossing and turning in a sleeping bag on the cold wood floor of Bobby’s study. When he wakes, Dean is already gone from the couch above his head, crumpled pillow and blankets suggesting the same struggle with slumber.
He hunts down and cautiously corners his brother in the bathroom, leans in the doorway and leaves him no avenue for escape. “Hey.”
“Morning,” Dean answers too quickly and too casually, without looking up longer than the brief moment it takes to meet Sam’s eyes in the mirror, gets back to watching water run down the drain. The small room holds the faintest whiff of alcohol.
Brushing his teeth to get rid of the smell, Sam figures, spotting the red toothbrush on the counter near Dean’s hand, but his brother doesn’t seem to have gotten that far. He’s processing, doing his Dean thing. Sam shoves his hands deep into the pockets of his sweats. “You sleep okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
Because it tore Dean up, the possessed guy he killed with the Colt two years ago. Sam shrugs, waves his leg left to right, scuffing the heel of his bare foot across the dusty hardwood. “We saw some crazy shit last night, with that girl and that knife she had. I don’t know, it’s a lot to digest.”
Dean snaps out of it at even the slightest hint of an accusation of such things, turns off the tap but keeps his back to his brother. “I don’t understand it but, sorry, Sam, I’m not losing sleep over a couple of dead demons.”
“What about the people the demons were possessing?”
Dean squares his hands on the counter, framing the sink, old plumbing still allowing a slow drip of water. He won’t bring his eyes up to meet Sam’s.
Sam swallows. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
“Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Act like I’m thinking more than I’m saying. Trust me, Sam, I’m not that deep.”
In the following weeks, Sam sneaks peeks at the missing person’s reports around Sioux Falls. For all of them. But it turns out demons really know how to pick ‘em.
*******************************
Present
Maybe it’s time to put the knife away, Dad’s storage lockup or Bobby’s basement. Time to take this particular piece off of the game board for a bit.
“Whatever it takes to do the job,” Sam counters. “That’s what Dad always told us.”
“Dad was a great hunter, Sam, but he wasn’t perfect. He was scared, and he made mistakes. He made rash decisions just like we have.”
Sam smirks.
“What?”
“It’s just weird, you saying something negative about Dad.”
It’s not negative, Dean wants to argue. Just the truth. The reality of things he can see now much clearer than he ever could as that little boy with his father on a pedestal, the young man with a hero complex and a death wish. “He didn’t mean this.” Knows it’s not true even as he says it.
*****************************
Spring 2009
Ruby is a very literal black spot on Sam’s permanent record as far as trustworthiness goes. He comes through in the end, though, standing at the edge of the cliff.
He steps forward like a hunter, not like a lapdog. Without hesitation, and pins the bitch’s arms down as Dean rushes her with her own knife. The serrated edge slides satisfyingly through her like butter.
It wasn’t nearly top of mind as he was reveling in the pleasure of putting that final period on the too-long life of the skank demon bitch who’d spent the past two years polluting Sam’s mind and body, occasionally literally screwing with his brother.
Dean hadn’t thought, hadn’t paused. Just wanted her OVER too damn badly.
It was quick, but it wasn’t instant. He’d wanted to see the pain.
Sam, behind her, didn’t see anything. Didn’t see the fear. The fear wasn’t the demon, it was the girl.
There’s a brief moment sandwiched between the thud of her hollow body hitting the floor and the cage opening under their feet that Dean thinks for the first time, what’s happened to us?
An exorcism gives the host a chance to live. Maybe not a great chance, but a chance nonetheless. The engraved, unexplainable blade takes that away, replaces “hopefully” with very, very dead.
There’s buckets of blood of his hands, literally, human blood, running warm and thick between his fingers. He wipes frantically at his jeans, trying to get rid of the blood.
It’s not Ruby’s, no matter what he’ll be telling himself in an attempt to sleep at night, assuming they don’t die horribly in the next few minutes. No matter what bedtime story she’d spoon-fed Sam, jumped a freshly brain-dead coed just so he’d stick it to her with a clean conscience.
Sammy’s actions, his stories prove he’s already made his peace that she was telling him the truth. Or with Sammy lately, maybe he just didn’t care.
The purely human fear in her eyes, the warm, tacky blood between Dean’s fingers says otherwise. Another one of her lies.
That poor girl.
He can never tell Sammy.
It didn’t take much force for the blow to be a kill strike. Dean has such little regard left for his own physical wellbeing, maybe he’s finally desensitized himself to the truth of just how frail the human body is.
He’s a hunter. He’s never before thought of himself as a killer.
********************************
Present
The knife is a different kind of messy. Up-close and personal, looking them in the eye and blood gushing over your hands.
Without the blood on his hands, Dean’s not sure he would have made it to this point. He’s a guy who can respect violence, likes the adrenaline rush of a good fight, a slug to the jaw. But he doesn’t know how to go on seeing this as killing monsters. He’s just killing.
He leans against the counter, palm warming a beer and cloth-wrapped ice cubes held to his swollen nose. Cas left him with just enough pain to be punishment for his actions, for the disregard of human life. “I’ve just been thinking a lot lately, and…” They don’t see eye-to-eye anymore, haven’t in a long time. He shakes his head. “You know what, never mind.”
But he’s got Sam’s attention now, can’t shake that. “No, tell me.”
Dean glances down at the homemade ice pack, the bright red blood spots on stark white motel linens. “I was thinking we could try exorcising again.”
Sam’s eyebrows meet in that way that would be comical if it weren’t so damn frustrating. “You…wanna start exercising? I mean, I run every morning, you could - “
Dean heaves the ice pack at his dumbass brother. “Ex-OR-cising. Come on, Sam.” What are we talking about here, little brother?
Sam cradles the bundle against his chest and leans back in his chair. He stares down at the splotches of Dean’s blood. “We talked about this, Dean.”
“Yeah.” He isn’t doing his job right if this is so easy for his little brother.
“I mean, we had a conversation.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Then what’s the - “
“What if it was you, Sam?”
Sam frowns, holds Dean’s eyes in an aggressive manner. “It’s been me. What if it was you?”
Dean sniffs, winces and averts his gaze. He knows he’d sacrifice himself in a heartbeat to take out just one demon.
Sam sighs. “We decided this was the more humane way to…it’s a pretty low survival rate for an exorcism if the demon’s been riding you longer than the weekend, and it can take hours, and the host suffers, too…”
“Yeah. I know.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“I don’t like the way this feels, Sam. I feel like…I don’t like the way this feels.”
“Okay,” Sam relents, a placating tone. “Okay. And you wanna…”
“Can we put the thing away for a while, maybe?”
Something about his tone, his words, the pathetic state of his swollen, blackened face, has Sam’s eyebrows drawn together again, this time in concern. “Yeah, sure, Dean.”
***********************************
Summer 2009
It would have been easier for Sam if they’d just died. But they survive, again, unexpectedly, and now it’s time for explanations. And there are no good ones.
She tricked me. You were dead and I didn’t know what to do.
He’s pathetically throwing excuses like darts at a board; seeing what sticks and how close he can get to a bullseye.
Because Dean can’t even look at him right now but something will stick, eventually. Dean plays at being tough, at having some kind of resilient outer shell that’s capable of withstanding the emotional grenades Sam is lobbing, but he will cave eventually.
Sam knows it just as well as Dean does. Knows it and exploits the chinks in Dean’s armor in all of the same ways their father always did. His weakness is his sense of duty, his loyalty, his hero complex. His need to be needed.
**********************************
Present
It’s not exactly like they go out looking for another demon, but it’d be a lie to say that thanks to Dad, Bobby, and Ash they don’t know how to find one.
They’re about forty minutes into the exorcism, and the boy’s just young enough to keep Dean going. It’d be nice to put this one in the win column. He’s the pawn, the one taking the hits, twisting his body with every impact to protect his still-tender face while Sam chants in perfect, frantic Latin. He once had the exorcism rite memorized but it’s been more than a year since they used it and Sam’s reading from the journal, clutching it with both hands.
Dean drags himself upright, props up on a shaky elbow that argues holding his weight. He’s going to save this boy.
The demon marionettes the small body across the room, big cocky steps, and its black eyes lock on his.
“I know what you’ve done. I know what you’ll do.” The demon manipulates the boy’s voice, sickly sweet, dripping honey.
Dean sneers as he hauls himself to his feet. “And I know where you’ll be in about five minutes.”
He’s whipped back with the jerk of a hand, connects painfully with an unforgiving wall behind him, steels himself for impact but can’t keep his head from snapping back against the brick. Flashbulbs go off before his eyes.
***************************************
Early Winter 2010
The cuts aren’t shallow, not by a long shot, but neither are they deep enough to kill the demon. There’s a stomach-wrenching amount of blood left behind in the room, though, and the loss of that much would have killed a human.
She seems annoyed by the blood and the slashes more than hurt, though the passing hours have left her complexion paling beyond the naturally milky white pallor of her host. Reclining casually on the dumpy, narrow loveseat, knees bent over the arm, she wipes a lingering crimson smear away without inspecting the wound beneath, like shooing away a fly.
She catches Sam staring and smiles. “It’s me keeping this body alive now,” she confirms in a purr, the cadence silky smooth regardless of the body she’s most recently stolen. “There’s no one in here but me.”
They call her Meg but she isn’t. Not in this body. “What was her name?”
“Do you care?”
“No.”
“No, you don’t.” Swings her legs around and kicks them playfully, nudges his pant leg. “We have something in common now, Sam. You have just enough left to keep you a person, but not enough to really be human.”
She sounds eerily like Ruby, that manipulative trait that serves as a demon’s personality.
**********************************
Present
“Dean!”
“Keep going,” he growls, suddenly on his hands and knees, a mouthful of blood spilling to the floor. A superficial wound, bit his tongue when he hit the wall. His ears are ringing. He swallows with a wince and shakes his head. Darker blood that isn’t from something as simple as a bit tongue smacks the floor in thick drops. That one isn’t superficial, and Dean can’t bring himself to inspect the source of the sharp ache at the base of his skull, the obvious wet trickle streaming down his neck.
Dean’s distracted, the lesser of two threats for the moment, and that leaves Sam open to an unobstructed attack. While he blinks, clearing his vision, he hears the sounds of struggle across the room. “Keep going,” he says, using the wall at his back to pull himself upright, not sure if he’s still encouraging Sam or instructing himself.
In a brief moment of convictional weakness, with Sam at a disadvantage and yelping in startled pain, Dean gropes at his boot, where the knife is tucked. They’ve become so spoiled by the blade, so accustomed to how easy this can be, he couldn’t bring himself to confront a demon without it on his person, even one in a child. He can make the hard decision if it’s his last option.
Sam snarls and kicks the boy away as Dean’s fingers graze the hilt of the blade. “Dean?” He stands shakily but quickly enough, blood running from a split lip. He wipes it away and grabs the journal from where it had fallen from his grasp. His finger leaves a bloody smear on the tan leather cover.
“I’m good. Keep going.”
He was almost finished with the rite, booms out a few quick words of Latin and the demon leaves in a howl. Sam drops the book to catch the boy as he falls. Dean struggles to stay standing, wipes blood from his eyes with the hand that isn’t white-knuckling a narrow ledge of brick.
Sam lifts his head from the boy’s chest and solemnly shakes his head. There’s more there, an accusation. Was it worth it? He doesn’t have to say the words out loud; Dean can still hear them.
This one will sting for a while but, yeah, it was worth it to try.
**********************************
Summer 2014
The instinct, the blood pumping and boiling under his skin, the voice inside pushing him to thrust the bone out and draw blood from whatever or whomever is closest. He can’t fight it, can’t shut it off. Doesn’t necessarily want to do either.
Dean’s fingers grip the bone; rough when it came to them but over the weeks the surface has become smoother from the wear of his palm, the desperate hold he keeps on the weapon. HIS weapon. They’re two pieces of one puzzle, and there’s only one thing either of them is good for.
He knows he can’t kill. Shouldn’t kill. He KNOWS.
He no longer cares.
Friend, foe, ally, enemy, OBSTACLE. That’s what it comes down to now. What everything comes down to. What the end game is.
His heart pounds, terrified of the day Sam attempts to stop him with more than words. The day he steps between the blade and its intended target. His self-control and willpower are draining out of him like life’s blood, he has no moral compass to speak of, and he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to stop himself.
He doesn’t know if he’ll try.
Author: chrissie0707
Word Count: 5,400
Spoilers:Everything up through S9 is fair game
Genre: Angst, H/C
Rating: PG-13 for brief strong language
Author Notes: Lately I’ve been putting notes like these after a story, but I felt a need to explain something before this one, lest a canon-crazy superfan flip out halfway through reading because he/she can’t accurately find a place for the “present” portions of this story to exist where I’ve labeled it as occurring.
I used to spend almost as much time agonizing over the canon chronology of my stories as I did writing them. Reading transcripts, rewatching episodes, tweaking description or rewriting dialogue or changing who said what or sometimes flat-out deleting entire scenes because I couldn’t find the “between episodes” place for it. I used to go back and go over and forward and sideways through a story, telling myself I needed to add more exposition, and detail, and “what does the ROOM look like?”
But to paraphrase Amy Poehler in her new book, the agonizing isn’t the thing. The writing is the thing. The story is the thing. And I feel like I’ve done a disservice to the stories I’m trying to tell by wrapping them up in pretty paper with an ornate bow that will make people go “Ooh.”
The foundation of this thing was one scene, and then a title, and then a much broader idea of exploring a multitudes of themes we’ve seen over and over through the course of nine seasons of this show. Life and death, love, sacrifice, right and wrong and how far is too far, that slippery slope question of morality. In my imagination, this was going to be a behemoth, and thought-starters for scenes came random and quick, some extensions of what happened during episodes and some original, to be inserted into the show’s timeline, spanning all nine seasons. After a few months, what I had was a loud, colorful cacophony of wonderfully disjointed craziness that was enjoyable and surprising for me to read through but it didn’t exactly make much sense and was completely out of order. I had a feeling that a random spewing of disorderly scenes spanning nearly ten years would not be well-received, and scrapped the original idea. I started pulling out bits and pieces, and the “life and death” stuff became “Blood Oath.” The original title, and all of the demon pieces, have become this.
This is the story I wanted to tell, with no fluff, and no agonizing.
Frailty
“I think Dad wants us to pick up where he left off. Saving people, hunting things. The family business.”
Present, Late Winter, 2011
Did we save these people?
The body, hollow of life and soul but not quite yet cold, falls away from him and hits the cement with a meaty smack. Arm bent, knife gripped tight and business-like in his right hand, Dean stares, takes in the scene. Feels a little hollow, himself.
Blood pools beneath the man at his feet, a glistening red lake spreading like a slowly creeping fog, reaching fingers towards him. Pointing out the guilty party. You did this to me. He hears it clear as a bell, takes a heavy step back out of the path of the growing puddle, feeling the vibrations of the movement travel all the way from the sole of his boot through his legs, torso, neck, and into his damaged face. He winces, fights the urge, the curious twitch in his fingers to probe the source of pain.
You’re right, Dean thinks, wiping the flat of the blade across the left sleeve of his navy jacket, the one he wears when he means business. Dark colors, Sammy. Hides the blood. The sleeve is stiff already along the crook of his elbow; blood from previous kills not quite washed out all the way but hidden by the pigment, unless you’re really looking for it. Wide smears are left behind but the fabric doesn’t catch it all, and dark drops cling to knicks and crevices in the steel, appearing black under the dim yellow light leaking in from the parking lot outside.
Footsteps approach, not heavy but with a purposeful sense of urgency, echoing in the cavernous room. Sam stops just out of Dean’s eye line, catching his breath with deep, loud inhales. Dean can’t look at him, holds the blade out hilt-first, doesn’t want the weapon in his hand any longer.
He’s been counting them. Every kill. Every single one, dreading this day. More than dreading it. Steeling himself for the inevitability of it all.
It’ll never happen. You won’t let it get that far, he’d told himself. Lied to himself.
You’ll die first, or Sammy will stop you. You got along just fine for years without it, and you’ll get rid of the damned thing, throw it into the river and get back to exorcising demons and giving the victims a chance to live.
Sammy will stop you. It’s not even a question; of COURSE he will. Sammy is his conscience, his safety net.
But they stopped thinking of the possessed as victims they can save. Both of them. Now, they’re lost causes, given up for dead as soon as the demon takes hold. It makes the job easier to only see the demon.
He really always knew they would get here, he just thought it would take longer.
One hundred demons they’ve killed with Ruby’s knife.
“Dean. We need to clean this up and clear out before the cops show.”
And along with them, one hundred poor sons of bitches who maybe just happened to be having a bad day when the demon came along. A worse day when the Winchesters came along. Like this poor bastard. Plain gold wedding band, maybe in his mid-forties. Probably had kids. A dog. Now Dean and Sam have a body.
Sam clears his throat, jerks his head, and Dean has to correct himself. They have three bodies.
He hasn’t yet moved, watches as Sam drags the girl’s body to the center of the warehouse. She was pretty. Maybe nineteen, with pale skin and long blonde hair. Reminds him too much of Jo, but there’s nothing to be done for either of them. There’s a third body in the far corner, and Sam looks up, meets Dean’s gaze and raises his eyebrows, wordlessly requests a hand. He obliges.
**********************************
Spring 2006
John Winchester knows a fair amount about a lot of things and that includes demons but this sort of information doesn’t always properly trickle down the father-son pipeline and they weren’t thinking that’s a human girl in there when the Daeva threw Meg through a fifth-floor window to the unforgiving street below, they were thinking ding dong, the witch is dead, and they were wrong on all accounts.
They’ll always call the demon Meg, but Meg Masters the girl doesn’t survive her possession. It’s not for an obvious, conscience-crushing lack of trying, but in the moment getting to Dad is more important. A proper exorcism can, should take hours, not minutes, and maybe they don’t give it their all. Taking it out on the girl, what the demon did.
If there weren’t bigger fish to fry that backhanded slap would have haunted Dean’s dreams longer than it did. He clings to the thought that she was a doornail anyway, from the fall, from a gunshot wound neither of them can remember, and that instinct-driven blow had nothing to do with her death. It felt good in the moment, though, before Bobby dragged him away from her.
She walked into the house under her own power, like she owned the place and tossing Bobby and Dean like rag dolls, but lives only minutes after the demon is exorcised, putting into stark reality just how much damage a possession can hide. Just how ruthless the demon can be when it comes to its host, keeping the body alive as long as it wants for kicks, for shits and giggles, the unfortunate victim feeling all of it and straddling the line between life and death, existing and not. More often than not it’s no question as to what state they’ll be left in when the demon finally leaves.
Bobby calls for an ambulance, but he knew what they were getting into. Just gives the boys as much hope as he can for as long as he can. It’s a lesson for all of them.
**********************************
Present
They entered the abandoned industrial building, a demonic den of iniquity, with weapons drawn and game faces on. Looking to kill. Anyone possessed was dead already; that’s just their standard operating procedure now.
One heavy son of a bitch dropped soundlessly from the rafters, landing on Dean’s back and driving him face-first to the chipped concrete and, from the current of feel of it, maybe breaking his nose. Tasting the blood streaming from his nostrils, through a red haze of pain and watery eyes, he’d held his own against the middle-aged man who’d laid him out, let his reflexes do the work while his brother made quick, methodical work of the other two. Sam ducked a blow aimed at his head and slammed the knife home in the girl, dispatched the heavyset man with a swift cut across the throat, sending a spray of blood flying from the serrated edge and throwing the weapon to Dean in time to jam the point into his attacker’s chest. Right in the heart; Dean has good aim and better instincts.
They stand in the center of the hangar-sized room, just outside the fire that’s eating the bodies, the flames not nearly hot enough to rid Dean of the chill in his bones. There’s a constant wet tickle under his nose, the appendage a mess of agony in the center of his face. He swipes at the spot, his fingers brushing the skin under his nostrils, ratcheting up the pain, and come away coated in blood. His own blood on his hands, for once. That’s something.
“What are we doing here, Sam?” A thought inadvertently given a voice because his mind is too preoccupied with managing the throb of his broken nose. It’s out there now, though, and he can’t take it back. Can’t make Sam unhear it.
Sam shakes a shank of brown hair from his forehead, eyebrows pulled together. The expression, the facial quirks still belong to young Sammy, but he’s growing, maturing, his face thinning, and Dean can’t stop it. Can’t put things back. They’ve been through a lot lately, literally through Hell and back, and he’s not asking so many questions, but makes an exception here. “What do you mean?”
Dean surveys the scene: the blazing fire, the dark choking smoke rising from twisted, bloody bodies. Open eyes, vacant expressions, souls in the wind. Pain makes him just as sloppy as whiskey does, and this is no small twinge in his face. “When did this become what we do?”
“Stopping demons?”
“By killing people.”
Sam looks down at the bodies, checks the knife tucked into his belt and folds his jacket over the hilt. Getting rid of the evidence. Getting it out of sight, at least. He takes charge now in such a way that Dean almost forgets he taught his little brother everything he knows. Almost.
**********************************
Winter 2007
Demons require a window to get in. Not just anyone can be possessed; they need a weakness, a vulnerability. Sam’s always been an OCD-worrying-stressball but this possession finally clues Dean in to just how crazy his brother’s been making himself over Yellow Eyes and whatever plan that son of a bitch may have for him. Now he has even more to obsess over.
You can hurt the body to hurt the demon, but the body isn’t the demon. The trouble is, when you pause to make that distinction, you die. If you hesitate with your finger on the trigger, you get shot first.
Dean wouldn’t put a bullet in his brother, tucked the gun away and opted for the holy water, and he got a bullet himself. Sam’s body pulled the trigger but it wasn’t Sammy who took aim. A demon used one of their guns, and now they all feel dirty.
“What did I do?” Keeping his distance, staying across the room but it would be easier if he’d take a walk. Let Dean drop the wall for a minute and acknowledge how much his shoulder friggin’ HURTS.
“You pounded my face like hamburger meat, wanna brag about it?”
“Dean.”
“Nothing, Sam. You didn’t do anything.”
He knows the basics, the obvious. The patchwork quilt of yellowing bruises on Dean’s face doesn’t lend itself to much interpretation, and Sam can probably match the patterns on Dean’s jaw and head to the contusions left on his own knuckles.
But it’s three days later and Dean’s favoring his left arm in a way that’s embarrassingly obvious, but it’s too painful not to.
Sam frowns, stares down at the scabbed knuckles of his right hand. “I remember some things.”
Dean sets the reassembled Smith & Wesson aside, moves on to the next gun in the line. “That’s called memory, Sam. It’s pretty common, doesn’t make you special.” Suppressing a scream as he pulls back the slide.
“I shot you.”
“Meg shot me. The demon shot me.”
“My hand. My gun.”
“Did you want to shoot me? Do you now?”
“No! God, Dean, I tried to stop - “
“Okay. End of story, then. Drop it.”
“Dean, just stop. What you’re saying, what you’re doing. Quit with the guns. Your shoulder is fucked.”
Dean grabs a knife from the arsenal on the bed, flips it into his left hand as he stands and flings it at the far wall as Sam takes a step back. The blade sticks dead center in a framed canvas print of a flowered field hanging next to the motel room’s bathroom. Pain rips instantly through his abused shoulder, a lance of heat that feels like the bullet tearing apart skin and muscle all over again. He pushes the pain down, makes a fist and bites his lip while Sammy can’t see. He sniffs and turns to his brother. “Satisfied?”
Sam purses his lips, taps his fingers on the tabletop. “Yeah.”
“Good. Drop it.”
Sometimes a possession leaves you more vulnerable than it found you.
***********************************
Present
Dean lets Sam drive back to the motel, doesn’t turn on the light in the room, doesn’t care to see the state of himself. A horror movie extra, from the feel of it, his nose pancaked across his face, a bloody smear like a dragonfly impacting the Impala’s windshield.
Sam has no such sympathy. He flips the switch immediately and grabs Dean’s arm, forcing him around. He hisses. “We should really call Cas, have him fix your…face.”
“No.” It’s not the first time his nose has been broken, and he deserves the pain, the deformity. No one can fix those people back there.
“Dean…”
He sighs. “You do it.”
Sam releases his arm, steps away with exaggerated, childish disgust. “Um, no.”
“You did it before.”
“That was Dad, and it was like fifteen years ago. You copped that door in the face in Fresno, remember?”
Did he ever. “Just…” Dean holds his thumb and forefinger close together and jerks them across his face. The pad of his finger barely brushes his broken nose but an intense furnace blast of pain lights up his entire face. “Son of a bitch!” He bows in the middle, battles gravity and the instinct to sniff as he watches blood and an errant tear drip to the gray carpet underfoot. “Cas!” he shouts, nasally and rocked with pain.
“Don’t be a baby,” Sam carefully chastises, dragging a chair behind Dean’s knees and gently guiding him to sit with a hesitant push on his shoulders.
There’s just the faintest flutter of wings on the furthest edge of awareness, and when Dean raises his head Castiel is there in front of him. There’s no need to ask; the angel steps forward and places an outstretched hand on Dean’s forehead. He’ll never be used to the sensation, the instantly WHOLE feeling.
Castiel fixes the break but leaves the ache, the bruises inside and out, as though he knows Dean wants the pain to hold on to. The angel’s gone as quickly as he came, his only goodbye a sour look directed at Sam.
Sam slaps a towel full of ice cubes into his hand and Dean sniffs, raises the ice pack to his nose. “Thanks.”
**********************************
Fall 2007
It seems to happen in slow motion the first time.
The tip of the blade pierces the soft, vulnerable flesh of the underside of his chin, its upward trajectory visible through his mouth, open in surprise. Not just the demon, but the man the demon was possessing. Killing the both of them instantly.
Or, in hindsight, Sam hopes it was instant, for the man’s sake, to have both the misfortune of being possessed in the first place and then to be killed because of it. To attract a dickbag like Pride, himself, though, he can’t have been a good guy. Right?
Bobby manages to save two of them, the girl and the big guy, but it’s a small mercy. There are still bodies to burn.
Sam doesn’t sleep well that night, tossing and turning in a sleeping bag on the cold wood floor of Bobby’s study. When he wakes, Dean is already gone from the couch above his head, crumpled pillow and blankets suggesting the same struggle with slumber.
He hunts down and cautiously corners his brother in the bathroom, leans in the doorway and leaves him no avenue for escape. “Hey.”
“Morning,” Dean answers too quickly and too casually, without looking up longer than the brief moment it takes to meet Sam’s eyes in the mirror, gets back to watching water run down the drain. The small room holds the faintest whiff of alcohol.
Brushing his teeth to get rid of the smell, Sam figures, spotting the red toothbrush on the counter near Dean’s hand, but his brother doesn’t seem to have gotten that far. He’s processing, doing his Dean thing. Sam shoves his hands deep into the pockets of his sweats. “You sleep okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
Because it tore Dean up, the possessed guy he killed with the Colt two years ago. Sam shrugs, waves his leg left to right, scuffing the heel of his bare foot across the dusty hardwood. “We saw some crazy shit last night, with that girl and that knife she had. I don’t know, it’s a lot to digest.”
Dean snaps out of it at even the slightest hint of an accusation of such things, turns off the tap but keeps his back to his brother. “I don’t understand it but, sorry, Sam, I’m not losing sleep over a couple of dead demons.”
“What about the people the demons were possessing?”
Dean squares his hands on the counter, framing the sink, old plumbing still allowing a slow drip of water. He won’t bring his eyes up to meet Sam’s.
Sam swallows. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
“Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Act like I’m thinking more than I’m saying. Trust me, Sam, I’m not that deep.”
In the following weeks, Sam sneaks peeks at the missing person’s reports around Sioux Falls. For all of them. But it turns out demons really know how to pick ‘em.
*******************************
Present
Maybe it’s time to put the knife away, Dad’s storage lockup or Bobby’s basement. Time to take this particular piece off of the game board for a bit.
“Whatever it takes to do the job,” Sam counters. “That’s what Dad always told us.”
“Dad was a great hunter, Sam, but he wasn’t perfect. He was scared, and he made mistakes. He made rash decisions just like we have.”
Sam smirks.
“What?”
“It’s just weird, you saying something negative about Dad.”
It’s not negative, Dean wants to argue. Just the truth. The reality of things he can see now much clearer than he ever could as that little boy with his father on a pedestal, the young man with a hero complex and a death wish. “He didn’t mean this.” Knows it’s not true even as he says it.
*****************************
Spring 2009
Ruby is a very literal black spot on Sam’s permanent record as far as trustworthiness goes. He comes through in the end, though, standing at the edge of the cliff.
He steps forward like a hunter, not like a lapdog. Without hesitation, and pins the bitch’s arms down as Dean rushes her with her own knife. The serrated edge slides satisfyingly through her like butter.
It wasn’t nearly top of mind as he was reveling in the pleasure of putting that final period on the too-long life of the skank demon bitch who’d spent the past two years polluting Sam’s mind and body, occasionally literally screwing with his brother.
Dean hadn’t thought, hadn’t paused. Just wanted her OVER too damn badly.
It was quick, but it wasn’t instant. He’d wanted to see the pain.
Sam, behind her, didn’t see anything. Didn’t see the fear. The fear wasn’t the demon, it was the girl.
There’s a brief moment sandwiched between the thud of her hollow body hitting the floor and the cage opening under their feet that Dean thinks for the first time, what’s happened to us?
An exorcism gives the host a chance to live. Maybe not a great chance, but a chance nonetheless. The engraved, unexplainable blade takes that away, replaces “hopefully” with very, very dead.
There’s buckets of blood of his hands, literally, human blood, running warm and thick between his fingers. He wipes frantically at his jeans, trying to get rid of the blood.
It’s not Ruby’s, no matter what he’ll be telling himself in an attempt to sleep at night, assuming they don’t die horribly in the next few minutes. No matter what bedtime story she’d spoon-fed Sam, jumped a freshly brain-dead coed just so he’d stick it to her with a clean conscience.
Sammy’s actions, his stories prove he’s already made his peace that she was telling him the truth. Or with Sammy lately, maybe he just didn’t care.
The purely human fear in her eyes, the warm, tacky blood between Dean’s fingers says otherwise. Another one of her lies.
That poor girl.
He can never tell Sammy.
It didn’t take much force for the blow to be a kill strike. Dean has such little regard left for his own physical wellbeing, maybe he’s finally desensitized himself to the truth of just how frail the human body is.
He’s a hunter. He’s never before thought of himself as a killer.
********************************
Present
The knife is a different kind of messy. Up-close and personal, looking them in the eye and blood gushing over your hands.
Without the blood on his hands, Dean’s not sure he would have made it to this point. He’s a guy who can respect violence, likes the adrenaline rush of a good fight, a slug to the jaw. But he doesn’t know how to go on seeing this as killing monsters. He’s just killing.
He leans against the counter, palm warming a beer and cloth-wrapped ice cubes held to his swollen nose. Cas left him with just enough pain to be punishment for his actions, for the disregard of human life. “I’ve just been thinking a lot lately, and…” They don’t see eye-to-eye anymore, haven’t in a long time. He shakes his head. “You know what, never mind.”
But he’s got Sam’s attention now, can’t shake that. “No, tell me.”
Dean glances down at the homemade ice pack, the bright red blood spots on stark white motel linens. “I was thinking we could try exorcising again.”
Sam’s eyebrows meet in that way that would be comical if it weren’t so damn frustrating. “You…wanna start exercising? I mean, I run every morning, you could - “
Dean heaves the ice pack at his dumbass brother. “Ex-OR-cising. Come on, Sam.” What are we talking about here, little brother?
Sam cradles the bundle against his chest and leans back in his chair. He stares down at the splotches of Dean’s blood. “We talked about this, Dean.”
“Yeah.” He isn’t doing his job right if this is so easy for his little brother.
“I mean, we had a conversation.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Then what’s the - “
“What if it was you, Sam?”
Sam frowns, holds Dean’s eyes in an aggressive manner. “It’s been me. What if it was you?”
Dean sniffs, winces and averts his gaze. He knows he’d sacrifice himself in a heartbeat to take out just one demon.
Sam sighs. “We decided this was the more humane way to…it’s a pretty low survival rate for an exorcism if the demon’s been riding you longer than the weekend, and it can take hours, and the host suffers, too…”
“Yeah. I know.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“I don’t like the way this feels, Sam. I feel like…I don’t like the way this feels.”
“Okay,” Sam relents, a placating tone. “Okay. And you wanna…”
“Can we put the thing away for a while, maybe?”
Something about his tone, his words, the pathetic state of his swollen, blackened face, has Sam’s eyebrows drawn together again, this time in concern. “Yeah, sure, Dean.”
***********************************
Summer 2009
It would have been easier for Sam if they’d just died. But they survive, again, unexpectedly, and now it’s time for explanations. And there are no good ones.
She tricked me. You were dead and I didn’t know what to do.
He’s pathetically throwing excuses like darts at a board; seeing what sticks and how close he can get to a bullseye.
Because Dean can’t even look at him right now but something will stick, eventually. Dean plays at being tough, at having some kind of resilient outer shell that’s capable of withstanding the emotional grenades Sam is lobbing, but he will cave eventually.
Sam knows it just as well as Dean does. Knows it and exploits the chinks in Dean’s armor in all of the same ways their father always did. His weakness is his sense of duty, his loyalty, his hero complex. His need to be needed.
**********************************
Present
It’s not exactly like they go out looking for another demon, but it’d be a lie to say that thanks to Dad, Bobby, and Ash they don’t know how to find one.
They’re about forty minutes into the exorcism, and the boy’s just young enough to keep Dean going. It’d be nice to put this one in the win column. He’s the pawn, the one taking the hits, twisting his body with every impact to protect his still-tender face while Sam chants in perfect, frantic Latin. He once had the exorcism rite memorized but it’s been more than a year since they used it and Sam’s reading from the journal, clutching it with both hands.
Dean drags himself upright, props up on a shaky elbow that argues holding his weight. He’s going to save this boy.
The demon marionettes the small body across the room, big cocky steps, and its black eyes lock on his.
“I know what you’ve done. I know what you’ll do.” The demon manipulates the boy’s voice, sickly sweet, dripping honey.
Dean sneers as he hauls himself to his feet. “And I know where you’ll be in about five minutes.”
He’s whipped back with the jerk of a hand, connects painfully with an unforgiving wall behind him, steels himself for impact but can’t keep his head from snapping back against the brick. Flashbulbs go off before his eyes.
***************************************
Early Winter 2010
The cuts aren’t shallow, not by a long shot, but neither are they deep enough to kill the demon. There’s a stomach-wrenching amount of blood left behind in the room, though, and the loss of that much would have killed a human.
She seems annoyed by the blood and the slashes more than hurt, though the passing hours have left her complexion paling beyond the naturally milky white pallor of her host. Reclining casually on the dumpy, narrow loveseat, knees bent over the arm, she wipes a lingering crimson smear away without inspecting the wound beneath, like shooing away a fly.
She catches Sam staring and smiles. “It’s me keeping this body alive now,” she confirms in a purr, the cadence silky smooth regardless of the body she’s most recently stolen. “There’s no one in here but me.”
They call her Meg but she isn’t. Not in this body. “What was her name?”
“Do you care?”
“No.”
“No, you don’t.” Swings her legs around and kicks them playfully, nudges his pant leg. “We have something in common now, Sam. You have just enough left to keep you a person, but not enough to really be human.”
She sounds eerily like Ruby, that manipulative trait that serves as a demon’s personality.
**********************************
Present
“Dean!”
“Keep going,” he growls, suddenly on his hands and knees, a mouthful of blood spilling to the floor. A superficial wound, bit his tongue when he hit the wall. His ears are ringing. He swallows with a wince and shakes his head. Darker blood that isn’t from something as simple as a bit tongue smacks the floor in thick drops. That one isn’t superficial, and Dean can’t bring himself to inspect the source of the sharp ache at the base of his skull, the obvious wet trickle streaming down his neck.
Dean’s distracted, the lesser of two threats for the moment, and that leaves Sam open to an unobstructed attack. While he blinks, clearing his vision, he hears the sounds of struggle across the room. “Keep going,” he says, using the wall at his back to pull himself upright, not sure if he’s still encouraging Sam or instructing himself.
In a brief moment of convictional weakness, with Sam at a disadvantage and yelping in startled pain, Dean gropes at his boot, where the knife is tucked. They’ve become so spoiled by the blade, so accustomed to how easy this can be, he couldn’t bring himself to confront a demon without it on his person, even one in a child. He can make the hard decision if it’s his last option.
Sam snarls and kicks the boy away as Dean’s fingers graze the hilt of the blade. “Dean?” He stands shakily but quickly enough, blood running from a split lip. He wipes it away and grabs the journal from where it had fallen from his grasp. His finger leaves a bloody smear on the tan leather cover.
“I’m good. Keep going.”
He was almost finished with the rite, booms out a few quick words of Latin and the demon leaves in a howl. Sam drops the book to catch the boy as he falls. Dean struggles to stay standing, wipes blood from his eyes with the hand that isn’t white-knuckling a narrow ledge of brick.
Sam lifts his head from the boy’s chest and solemnly shakes his head. There’s more there, an accusation. Was it worth it? He doesn’t have to say the words out loud; Dean can still hear them.
This one will sting for a while but, yeah, it was worth it to try.
**********************************
Summer 2014
The instinct, the blood pumping and boiling under his skin, the voice inside pushing him to thrust the bone out and draw blood from whatever or whomever is closest. He can’t fight it, can’t shut it off. Doesn’t necessarily want to do either.
Dean’s fingers grip the bone; rough when it came to them but over the weeks the surface has become smoother from the wear of his palm, the desperate hold he keeps on the weapon. HIS weapon. They’re two pieces of one puzzle, and there’s only one thing either of them is good for.
He knows he can’t kill. Shouldn’t kill. He KNOWS.
He no longer cares.
Friend, foe, ally, enemy, OBSTACLE. That’s what it comes down to now. What everything comes down to. What the end game is.
His heart pounds, terrified of the day Sam attempts to stop him with more than words. The day he steps between the blade and its intended target. His self-control and willpower are draining out of him like life’s blood, he has no moral compass to speak of, and he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to stop himself.
He doesn’t know if he’ll try.