Hell's Bells Part I: I'm Rolling Thunder, Pouring Rain
Title: Hell's Bells Part 1: I'm Rolling Thunder, Pouring Rain
Authors LJ Username: safiyabat
Artists LJ Username: disreputabled0g
Pairing(s): Meg/Abaddon
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 16,603
Summary: In this chapter Meg is revived by Sam and gets updated on how things have changed since she went dormant after Crowley stabbed her in "Goodbye, Stranger." Things can be summed up in two words: "Friggin' Winchesters." It doesn't take her long to come up with a plan.
Warnings: Graphic descriptions of violence, blood and gore.
Link to fic masterpost here. View the next chapter here.
Link to art masterpost here.
When Crowley’s blade pierced her side Meg had been pretty sure she that was it. There had been pain, and then there had been cold. She hadn’t felt cold like that since Lucifer’s hands had caressed her face back in the days of miracle and wonder, when her god had walked the earth. Of course he and his apocalypse had turned out to be something of a bust and now so had her life. She had just enough energy left to simulate the flashing lights of extinction. It was enough to fool Crowley, who stormed away with a kick and left her for dead. Once the scene was empty she pulled herself slowly and painfully over to one of the empty drums littering the lot where they’d fought and concealed herself inside.
Part of her wanted to hope that it wasn’t all finished for her. She had survived, like she always did. Hope, though, wasn’t exactly part of the typical demonic emotional repertoire. She probably wouldn’t survive for long. The angel blade he’d used hadn’t managed to hit her heart but it had done a lot of damage; a human wouldn’t have been able to survive it. Castiel - something was seriously wrong with him, she’d been able to tell even in her weakened state, and the chance that he’d be even remotely interested in helping her the way he was now was remote at best pizza man or no. There would be no help from Dean. Help was never to be expected from Dean no matter how good she’d been to them. She was a demon, and Azazel’s daughter to boot, and that was as much as he needed to know to know that she needed killing. And Sam - well, one way or another he wasn’t long for this world. Either he’d finish the Trials, in which case he’d die because who was seriously stupid enough to think he’d survive those? Or he’d die from the disease that she could see with her own eyes was devouring his body, consuming him from the inside out. Either way, she couldn’t expect much from him even if he could shake Dean for like two seconds.
Still, she’d gotten away from Crowley. She’d kept the angel tablet out of his grubby little hands. She’d done good. She’d won.
The thought consoled her as she descended into dormancy. Demons didn’t sleep, of course. They could be knocked out, rarely, and of course they could be killed. If their meatsuit was damaged enough and they didn’t smoke out they could also go dormant, and the funny thing about an angel’s blade was that it damaged the demon inside not just the packaging. And so Meg hid herself in the drum and let the comforting darkness close in on her until nothing bothered her anymore. She didn’t expect to wake up.
She certainly didn’t expect to wake up to the sensation of something hot and wet touching her lips. The stink of sulfur assailed her nose; demon blood, then. She drank greedily. It wasn’t until the end that she noticed the subtle hint of human blood, and not just any human either. There had been just enough blood to fill the wine glass that had been pressed to her lips and most of it seemed to be pretty basic stuff - Stunt Demon Number Five Hundred Forty Two kind of stuff. She picked up a few tiny undertones of something different, though. Human tinged with something far older, something infinitely familiar and at the same time mingled with just a bit of… angelic grace? None of that stopped her from draining every drop from the goblet before she opened her eyes. She could feel her stolen skin knitting back together from where it had become corrupted and putrid.
A pair of strong, massive hands helped her into a sitting position. She didn’t need to open her eyes to recognize those hands. After all, they’d been hers once, briefly. She opened her eyes anyway. Sam Winchester looked different. He looked a hell of a lot healthier for one thing, at least in body. His face had set into grim lines, though, that said nothing good about his mental state. Not, she reflected, that his mental state could ever have been called good. His hair might have been a little different too. “Look at you, getting all Jackie O on me,” she observed, sinking her head back against the headboard. A headboard was good. It strongly suggested that she was in a hotel of some kind. Sleazy motel in all likelihood, the Winchesters’ terra mater. “As soon as I’m back I’m buying you a twinset and pearls.”
He huffed a little, but his eyes brightened when he shook his head. “It’s good to know that some people never change, even with a year in limbo. How you feeling, Meg?” He sat back when she proved she could sit up by herself.
“Like I’ve spent a year holed up in an oil drum.” Her eyes flicked around to the rest of the room. It actually wasn’t the bottom of the barrel. It wasn’t the top of the pops either - kind of middle of the road, clean and comfortable but not fancy. It wasn’t bad. “Has it really been a year?” She let her eyes rest on the other member of the party. The meatsuit she wore was tiny, Caucasian but darkly tanned with dark hair and a tight black dress. Her true face was a lot more orange, with scales. “Nicole?” she asked, blinking.
“It’s been a while, huh, Meg?” the crossroads demon smiled. “Good to see you again.”
“You rescued me?” she quizzed, confused. The crossroads demons usually didn’t get involved with politics, whatever their personal loyalties.
“Not exactly. I mean yeah, it’s my blood you drank. And I’m not exactly a fan of Crowley’s but you knew that. But I had no idea that you were - that you could be saved until your little brother here came along and summoned me and, uh, offered me some subtle encouragement.” She glowered at Sam, who gave her what Dean would probably call a bitchface if he were here.
“Wait a minute - you knew I was alive?” Meg asked, shaking her head. “And you waited all this time?”
“I think that’s a more appropriate conversation to have in private.” He rose and gave a thin, tight smile to Nicole. “Thanks for the donation, Nicole. Are you going to be okay getting back to wherever it is that you need to go?”
“Sure, no big.” She gave an elaborate, bored shrug. “Crossroads demons get a lot of leeway, you know. And I am kind of a celebrity. I need to go and do celebrity things sometimes. Give a call if youse need anything.” She glared at him. “On the phone this time.”
Both Sam and Meg snorted. “I’ll do that. You do the same,” the former assured her, escorting her to the door. “Try to stay out of the Midwest, would you? Dean’s, uh - well, he’s not overly interested in the Jersey Shore or in California these days, let me put it to you that way.”
She winked at him. “I’ll be sure to keep that in mind. Thanks.” And Nicole was gone.
Meg put her hands on her hips and tilted her head to the side. “So. A whole year. Again. You want to tell me what the Hell?”
He grabbed a bottle of bourbon from his ratty duffel bag and passed it to her before sitting down. “Yeah. Uh, to be honest, at first I had no idea that you might still be alive. Or whatever,” he corrected himself, looking at her with those intense eyes of his. She remembered being inside his head, the constant weight of guilt.
She looked away. “Skip it with the mushy stuff, Winchester,” she muttered.
“Right. So, I was all caught up in that whole thing -“
“Yeah, congrats on the whole not dying thing,” she pointed out. “I was pretty sure you were toast.”
“I, uh, I was toast.”
“What, again?” She shook her head. The guy died more often than some ancient grain deities.
“Pretty much.”
“You want to elaborate on that?” she prodded when his lips folded tightly.
He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. He wanted me to do the Trials. Then he didn’t.”
She waited for him to continue. What she wouldn’t give for a rack and a couple of decades. Of course, the guy had been in the Cage for how long without breaking. She probably still wouldn’t get much out of him with torture. “So… I mean, work with me here, Sam. I’ve bled for you, I freaking died for you Winchesters. You can give me a few gory details.”
“It’s not about keeping secrets, Meg,” he sighed, and for a moment he looked every one of the five thousand something years on his soul. “It just doesn’t… matter. It doesn’t.”
It obviously mattered to someone, because he was here without his big brother looming over him. And who knew where that would lead, because Dean might well take exception to Sam consorting with demons again. This directly affected Meg’s well-being. She took a moment to mentally curse John Winchester’s spirit, wherever it had wound up. Azazel might have been a crap father but if he’d have had the raising of Sam at least he wouldn’t be sitting here saying that dying again didn’t matter. And a turd like Crowley would never have ascended the throne, so there was that. “I’ll decide what matters to me, Sam.”
He rolled his eyes. “Fine.” In clipped tones he ground out a tale that sounded too bizarre for language. Evidently Dean had not in fact figured out that Sam would die in completing the Trials, but he was dying anyway, and then somehow an angel got involved and Dean managed to give consent for Sam? Or maybe tricked him? Whatever. Winchester drama, extra angel sauce, moving on.
“How did you - “ she wondered. Then she stopped. He’d just done it. He’d taken control of the father of her species and locked him down in that mammoth body of his. He could do whatever he wanted with some pissant renegade angel. “Anyway. So you didn’t look for me this time because you were possessed.”
“I didn’t think to look because my mind was being erased on a minute-by-minute basis. Anyway, once that thing was gone I started having visions again. Of you. So I did a little research, cast a spell here or there, asked Nicole politely for her help and here we are.”
“How did you know that the blood would work?” she asked, taking a deep gulp of the bottle he’d offered. He hadn’t skimped on the booze, that was for damn sure. Booze was something humans got right. She couldn’t really get drunk, but she liked the taste and she loved the burn of hard liquor. It reminded her of the better parts of home.
“Found it in a book,” he admitted. “We’ve been squatting in this place, this abandoned secret society bunker. I’d love to bring you there sometime but Dean…” A shadow passed over his face at the mention of his brother; she’d always thought that was kind of clichéd but with demons anything could happen. Or with Winchesters, she supposed.
“Trouble in Winchester Paradise?” she clucked at him.
“He’s working with Crowley, Meg.” He looked down at his hands, then away. “He’s working with Crowley. On purpose.” He took a deep breath and launched into another explanation about Dean having met the First Knight - even Meg hadn’t actually met him, although she remembered having seen him from afar sometime back when the carpenter from Judea was doing his thing. Somehow Cain had passed his Mark to Dean, and if there had ever been anyone better suited to a lifetime of mayhem and murder than Dean Winchester Meg couldn’t think of it, and now poor little Dean was addicted to using the First Blade or to killing things or some crap like that. Fucking Winchesters. “He really isn’t overly interested in where I go or what I do,” Sam told her, looking up. “My biggest concern is Crowley. I don’t want to risk him finding out about you. I’m pretty sure I managed to keep him off my tail so far and I’ve kept this room warded against him -“
“Really, Sammy? Been going to night school?”
“…Shut up,” he glowered fondly. “I told you, abandoned secret society lair. And I actually learned a lot from Ruby.” He sighed and glanced toward the window. “Anyway. Nicole’s got this place covered for a week. I wouldn’t recommend staying any longer; someone’s bound to notice something.”
She snorted. “I do know how to do this, Sam. I’m a good two thousand years old, Earth-time.”
He tilted his head to the side. “Are you really? Well you don’t look a day over fifteen hundred.”
He stayed with her, which was a weird thing in and of itself. Meg spent the bulk of her time drifting in and out of consciousness for a couple of days because coming back from a state of near death isn’t to be taken lightly but she roused herself long enough to make note of things. She wasn’t a prisoner. There were no devil’s traps in the room. Sam took a few phone calls but they were rare. He mostly stayed on the computer or poked at huge, dusty books.
After a couple of days Meg felt well enough that she didn’t need sleep and she could focus on things again. “So what’s got Crowley so fired up that he felt compelled to go after the First Blade?” she wanted to know, turning off the television. Daytime TV made her want to wallow in the blood of someone or something, which had to mean that she was getting better somehow. “That thing is… I mean, the one who holds it is more animal than demon.”
“Or human,” he added.
“Sam, your brother won’t be human anymore if he even still is,” she pointed out. She let out a little chuckle. “Wouldn’t it be funny if he was all fired up about you being part demon but he wound up being the one to go full demon?”
“Not really.”
“Your demonic sense of humor needs some real refining, Sam.” She shook her head. She had managed to recover enough control over her abilities that she was able to repair a lot of the damage that had been inflicted on her host before her fight with Crowley. “Anyway, why would Crowley want a loose canon like that on staff? It’s a terrible idea. He may think he can control Dean but it’s going to come back to bite him in the ass.” That mental image would probably never leave her brain. “Dean’s not going to be able to pick and choose who he kills, Sam. You need to stay the hell away from him.”
He shrugged. “Don’t care, remember? Anyway, the First Blade is the only weapon that can kill Abaddon, apparently -“
Meg grabbed his arm. “Wait, Abaddon? Sam, that’s impossible. She disappeared in -“
“Nineteen fifty-eight,” he supplied. “She got caught in a time travel spell. Came out of a closet in 2013… right behind our grandfather. Whom she eventually killed,” he pointed out with a grimace and a scratch of the head.
“Time travel spell,” Meg repeated.
“Yeah. Our lives didn’t get less weird when you left them, Meg.”
“Do you have any idea about the ruckus her disappearance caused in Hell?” she demanded. “She was the last Knight of Hell, Sam. She was the best. She was the biggest, the baddest, the scariest, the most beautiful of all of the demons. You should have seen her at Masada. You should have seen her at the sack of Rome, Sam. “ She closed her eyes and sighed. “And you’re saying she’s here.”
The hunter was staring at her. The expression on his face was probably evenly split between amusement and horror. “Uh, yeah. She’s, uh, she’s something. Possessing a Man of Letters by the name of Josie Sands.”
“I remember she was supposed to infiltrate those hidebound snobs,” Meg mused. “I guess it didn’t go as well as planned.”
“Given that she initially intended to possess my grandfather I’d say so.” He shrugged. “Small world. Anyway, yeah. She found out that Crowley crowned himself king and has been trying to rectify the situation.”
Meg threw her arms around the mountain of a Winchester. “This is the best news I’ve had since that time we busted into Crowley’s lair to try to steal your soul back.”
He did his best impression of a poleaxed moose. “Uh, how is Abaddon ever good news for anyone?”
“Other than her being more than enough to take out Crowley by herself?” she challenged. “We’re gonna win this time, Sam. We’re finally gonna win!”
Sam rolled his eyes. “Define ‘we’ again,” he challenged. “Not actually a demon, remember?”
She bumped his shoulder. “Not entirely. Not yet.”
“I can’t decide if I should be insulted or flattered,” he retorted. “Anyway, she’s stealing souls from the living. No one has ever done that before.”
Meg felt her host’s face screw up. “That… that doesn’t sound like her,” she objected. “I mean yeah - demon. We’re all a little iffy on the whole moral spectrum thing, you know?” Privately she didn’t think Sam was as squeaky-clean as he pretended he was in that department but whatever let him sleep at night. “What makes you think that’s what she’s doing?”
“I tripped across an operation.” He shifted, buried his face in his hands and tried to wipe the fatigue from his face. “Town full of soulless people. Who’d have thought I’d have been a stellar example of a soulless guy, you know? These folks were… anyway. I managed to get some answers out of the demon possessing someone named Sister Agnes. And Abaddon had been at the same convent when she possessed Josie Sands.”
Meg bit her lip. “Okay. It sounds… bad. But I can’t bring myself… there has to be some other explanation. She wasn’t like that when I knew her back in the day. I want to talk to her.”
He shrugged. “Your funeral.”
“Let’s let the maid in. I need some blood.”
He rolled his eyes and sighed. “Meg. No. Here, wait.” He went into the bathroom and grabbed one of the Styrofoam cups and nicked a vein, providing enough blood to make a call. “That should about do it.”
She rolled her eyes. “Can you go for like ten minutes without heroing at someone? They don’t even know you’re doing it.”
“It’s hardly heroing, Meg. It’s not being a dick. Make your call before it coagulates. I want to be long gone before Abaddon shows up.” He spoke while he bandaged his arm up, not wasting time.
She did make her call. It was hard to get a read on the demon on the other end of these types of communications. She knew that it was Abaddon - you could say what you wanted about modern communications but there was no way to hack a blood call, no way to feign someone else’s identity. She simply told the Knight that she was Azazel’s daughter and she wanted to come on board with the fight against Crowley. The instruction came back to meet her at a beer bar in a seedy part of Boston in another week’s time. That suited Sam’s needs - Dean was starting to get suspicious about the whole disappearing for a week and apparently for all that he was less interested in where Sam went and what he did “less interested” didn’t mean “uninterested” or “trusting.” And he was itching to pull that leash a little tighter. Frigging Winchesters and their drama.
They made sure that they had each other’s phone numbers, Sam insisting that he’d help her out no matter what. “Like I told Nicole,” he reminded her before leaving, “he tends to stick to the middle part of the country these days. The coasts aren’t so interesting to him.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You know I’ll probably pass that little nugget on.”
He shrugged. “The First Blade can kill a Knight. Doesn’t mean it will. For now Dean’s still just a man, you know? He kicks a lot of ass, but so does she.”
“Damn straight.”
He chuckled. “I hope it works out for you and your high school crush, Meg. Although I have to say you sure can pick ‘em. First Cas and now Abaddon.”
She slugged his shoulder lightly. “Shut up.”
After he left she turned her attention to the things she needed to get. Nicole was a good ally, actually. She had a lot of leeway and plenty of perfectly valid excuses to speak to a wide variety of people. As it turned out there were still plenty of demons who were on the fence - not thrilled about Crowley’s little “alterations” to the Pit but reluctant to have a Knight on the throne, too. That made sense. A Knight could fight, and that was certainly a wonderful thing, but a Knight was destruction and chaos for its own sake. A Knight would be unlikely to have much patience for rule. Abaddon, out of all of them, was the most likely to be able to hold on the longest. She had always had a good head for long-term planning and strategy but even Azazel would never have considered setting one up to rule. He’d rather corrupt a human child, make a new monster out of an innocent and have order in the ranks, than have a wild-blooded creature like Abaddon with a crown on her head. And how much of that had been misogyny? Lilith had been older than Azazel, and nastier to a certain extent. Why had she not been his designated heir? Why had she needed to fight her way to the throne? Why had Meg herself never been considered for rule? She was Azazel’s daughter and far more legitimately than his designated heir was his son.
No more of that. Lucifer had favored her over all of the other demons. Alone among her race he had deigned to touch her, to caress her face and keep her close to him. She had to accept his defeat but she didn’t have to accept her own. She didn’t necessarily want to rule, she didn’t care about that. Not anymore. She wanted to not serve. She wanted to not bow down to that jumped up salesman. She wanted the glory days of Hell back and if that meant consorting with the occasional angel or Winchester then so be it.
Nicole was able to put her in touch with some of the more traditional demons, like Asmodeus and Ramuel and Tammuz. They had all known her father, they had all served Lucifer faithfully and they had all survived Crowley’s purge by simply lying low and awaiting an opportunity. Well, she was that opportunity. They had to admit that they’d initially felt a certain degree of despondence when she’d disappeared but now that they had proof of her continued life they were willing to consider her proposals. Of course they weren’t willing to simply take her apparent resurrection for proof of possible success - Crowley evidently had Cain and Dean Winchester on his side, and of course where Dean went Sam was certain to follow like the lost little puppy he truly was.
Meg kept her sneers to herself. Dean might have gone over to Crowley but Sam, Sam was a different story.
She did have another card to play, though. Crowley had some Hellhounds but Meg had always been a better trainer. That wasn’t arrogance, it was simple fact. Even as she and Nicole worked to rebuild her network of demon allies she began rebuilding her pack of canine defenders. Not only would they be better companions than any ten humans or twenty normal demons but they’d be a great defense against Dean “The New Cain” Winchester if he came calling. The guy apparently had such a phobia that a Yorkie could send him up a tree. She supposed she wasn’t in a position to criticize. Most people did, once they had an encounter with a Hellhound.
By the time her meeting with Abaddon came she actually felt like a real demon again. She might not be what she’d been back during the Apocalypse but she was getting there. She had something to offer the last Knight of Hell, and that was important. She wasn’t going in as some kind of empty-handed supplicant begging for shelter and succor; she was going in as a player in her own right. She dressed up a little for the occasion, having finally fixed the damage done to her meat suit and managed to find clothes she liked for it. Black leather with a purple silk shirt - that should be enough, right? Sam would laugh at her. Good thing he wasn’t here then.
Her phone rang. It was Sam. “Just checking in on you, making sure you’re okay before your meeting.” His voice was quiet but teasing - Dean must be somewhere vaguely nearby.
“I’m fine, Sam.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m a big demon now, remember?”
“I know, I know. It’s just a big deal. I worry.”
She thought back to her brief time spent inside his head. She supposed it hadn’t gotten any better over the years. “I remember. You know there’s pills you can take.”
“Probably not in high enough dosage, all things considered.” Well that much was true. “You getting all dressed up for her?” >
“Shut up, Sam.”
“You are, aren’t you?”
“Maybe a little.”
“Whatever. Just… call me when you leave, okay? Or text me or something so I know you’re good?”
“Good?”
“You know what I mean, Meg. Safe.”
“Aw, that’s so sweet.”
“Shut up.”
“I’ll call you when I leave.”
“Thank you.”