The Dark Wind: ’Akóhájí Doogááł 2/3

[ramblin_rosie]

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Chapter 2
Immovable Object
Dean knew something was off the moment he woke up on the park bench. He’d been talking to Castiel, but he couldn’t remember what they’d been talking about. And when he walked into Jay Bird’s Diner, that sense of wrongness doubled, then trebled when he saw the date on the newspaper and the much younger version of Dad who was sitting at the counter. It wasn’t just a matter of being in the wrong year, though that was part of it. Something kept tickling the back of his mind, not quite déjà vu, but some warning that things were about to go spectacularly wrong. But he couldn’t put his finger on it, so he followed the instinct he could put his finger on: protecting Mom and Dad, in spite of Castiel’s conflicting warnings of “you have to stop it” and “you can’t change the past.” He even went so far as to ‘borrow’ the Colt from Daniel Elkins.

And all it got him was a clearer picture of the blood-spell Bináá łitso had placed on Sam and the sickening knowledge that he’d drawn Bináá łitso’s attention to Mom.

The fog cleared as soon as Castiel brought him back to the present, though, and Dean cursed as he found the missing memory. Before the angel could say anything, Dean stormed out to the car and grabbed Mom’s journal out of the trunk.

“Dean?” Castiel asked, following. “What’s wrong?”

“My name,” Dean growled, flipping to the first entry about the Whitshire interview. “The missing word was my name.”

Castiel came over to look at the place where Dean was pointing-and as they both watched, the smeared ink returned to its original state: Charlie Whitshire says the man had yellow eyes. Dean says it’s the demon that killed his family, but Dad’s never heard of a demon having yellow eyes before, and he’s so sure he’s right that he’s not listening to anything else Dean says...

“You set me up,” Dean snarled. “You stopped me from remembering. You let me walk right into that house knowing I’d put Mom on Azazel’s radar.”

Wide-eyed, Castiel shook his head. “No, Dean, I was acting on orders from my superiors, and I didn’t tamper with your memory. I understood that the deal would have been made even without your attempted interference. Destiny can’t be changed. But that those words were expunged from your mother’s journal... puts an entirely different light on the subject.”

“Look here.” Dean moved his finger down to another newly-revealed line. “I warned her. I warned her, and she wrote it down. And something made damn sure that line was erased before I was born, from here and from her memory.”

“I don’t understand. If your mother’s death was my Father’s will, such erasures would not be necessary.”

“Then why the hell did they happen, Cas? Who wanted her dead?”

Cas didn’t even react to the nickname. “I don’t know, Dean. I’m as confused as you are. I’m sorry. I wish I had the answer for you. And I can’t be sure whether I can find out. But if I can, I will.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know if you can find out?”

“We’re expected to obey without question. My superiors are very strict on this point. I could be demoted or reassigned-or worse.”

“And that’s supposed to trump doing the right thing?”

Cas looked a little like a kicked puppy. “Surely there is a logical explanation, some reason that is beyond your ability to see at this point. I will... find it if I can. I’m sorry, Dean.” And he vanished.

Seconds later, Sam returned from the diner down the street with the breakfast he’d gone out to get before Cas turned up. He stopped short at the look on Dean’s face. “... Dean? Haidzaa?“

“Inside,” Dean replied tightly, keeping his place in the journal with his finger while he closed the trunk.

Sam warily followed him into the room and set the food on the table before accepting the opened journal from Dean. He read about two lines and looked up at Dean, the color draining from his face. “What-how-”

“Seems angels can time travel. Cas took me on what was supposed to be a fact-finding mission. Only for some reason, I forgot that book existed until I got back. He swears he didn’t know anything about the journal, didn’t mess with my memory, was just following orders.”

“Do you believe him?”

Dean sighed. “I dunno. Maybe. He’s hard to read, but he sounded pretty confused. Question is...”

“Whose orders and why.”

“Exactly.”

Sam shut the journal carefully. “So what was the fact you were supposed to find?”

Dean switched to Gaelic. “Yellow-Eyes told me what he did to you. He dripped his blood in your mouth, so now there’s demon blood in your veins, giving you powers. He said it’s about more than just you leading Hell’s army, but Cas says they don’t know what it is about. And Cas kept saying I have to stop it, so I guess the angels want me to stop you.”

Sam swallowed and frowned as he replied in kind. “Stop me from what? What powers am I supposed to have, and what do they think I’m doing with them?”

“I don’t know. Something about this whole mess stinks to high heaven.”

“I thought my powers died with Yellow-Eyes. I haven’t had a vision since. Ruby kept dropping hints, but knowing what she was, I have to assume she lied about that just like she lied about being able to help you.”

“Maybe so. You know I want to trust you on this, Sam. But I want to trust Cas, too. I just...”

Sam nodded. “I understand. And I don’t want powers. We’ve got the Colt; that’s enough to kill Lilith.”

Dean nodded thoughtfully. “True. Maybe Cas meant I have to help you stop Lilith. I don’t know.”

There they let the matter drop for the time being and sat down and ate. But Dean, though he made himself finish everything, wasn’t actually hungry, and from the way he picked at his food, Sam wasn’t, either.

Sam wasn’t sure exactly what it was about the sudden change in Dean’s demeanor during the case in Rock Ridge, Colorado, that set off his internal alarms, but when Dean started scratching his arms after the hands-on autopsy, the Diné side of his brain clicked the last piece of the puzzle into place. “Dude. How far is it to Chinle?”

Dean blinked. “C-couple, three hours, I guess. Why? You... don’t want to try to drive there tonight, do you? I mean, those are pretty twisty roads. And there’s deer.”

“Well, we may need to, if Chris can’t get up here.” Sam grabbed his cell phone and started scrolling through the phone book.

“Chris?”

“Begay. Gwen’s husband.”

“Wait, why do we-aw, come on!“

“The symptoms match, Dean. But considering how fast the ghost sickness is moving, I don’t think we’ve got the time to do a full Nidáá, even if it were the right time of year. Chris should know the protocol for an emergency like this.”

Dean buried his face in his hands with a muffled curse. “All these years, and I get ghost sickness from the chindi of a damn Bilagáana we don’t even know.”

Sam shot him a worried look and called Chris.

Unfortunately, Chris didn’t think he could get away in time to stop the ghost sickness from progressing further. Fortunately, they had what they needed to be able to improvise. So while Bobby drove down to figure out what to do about the actual ghost, Sam turned the hotel room’s bathroom into a makeshift sweat lodge and, ignoring Dean’s paranoid objections, turned the bathtub’s hot water tap on full and just let it run. The steam prompted Dean to cough up a couple of wood chips, which Sam set aside to destroy properly. After the prescribed period of sweating, Sam got Dean dried off and rubbed down with yucca suds and cornmeal. Then he smeared soot on Dean’s temples, arms, and palms and red ochre on his hair, chest, and back.

“Any better?” he asked at that point.

Dean swallowed hard and considered. “Well... my arms don’t itch. I guess that’s an improvement.”

Sam nodded. “Okay. Prayer sticks next.”

Making the prayer sticks and sand painting took most of the night. Sam had to scramble to get the sand and the wood chips properly disposed of before dawn and barely remembered to save some sand to put in Dean’s boots and Fed shoes. But while the process hadn’t been completely effective, Dean did feel better enough to shower and eat around daybreak. Bobby had arrived in the meantime and gotten his own room, so he brought breakfast when Sam called, and together they went over the details they had.

Once they’d connected the wood chips to the abandoned lumber mill, Bobby gave Dean a once-over. “How you holdin’ up?”

Dean sighed. “Honestly, Bobby... I’m better, but I’m still pretty damn jumpy. I... don’t even know if I could look out the window right now; we’re on the fourth floor, and that’s... that’s high.”

Bobby nodded. “All right. You two stay here, keep doin’ what you need to, buy us some more time. I’ll go see what I can find out at the mill.”

Dean nodded his agreement, and Sam rubbed his back a little and said, “Thanks, Bobby.”

After further consultation with Chris, Sam made Dean a tea infused with amaranth and potentilla, put in a pinch of salt, and browbeat him into drinking it without the addition of any alcohol. Then they went through the sweat process again, but this time Sam confined the soot and ochre to areas that could be covered by Dean’s shirt in case they needed to go out again. And sure enough, about the time they were finished, Bobby called to ask them to interview a witness regarding the death of Luther Garland, their probable ghost, while he got to work on tracking down ways to dispatch the spirit. Dean was still anxious but insisted he’d be good to go as long as the ochre didn’t bleed through his shirt, so they suited up and went.

On the one hand, Sam was glad he’d brought Dean both so that he could keep an eye on him and so that he wouldn’t have to repeat the story. And Dean did get through the interview okay. On the other hand, the realization that Luther’s road-hauling probably meant that the ghost couldn’t be dispatched with a simple salt-and-burn jarred Dean enough that he retreated into rambling in Navajo about how insane the hunting life was. Sam collared him before he could run off and made him drink some more tea, which helped, but he still wouldn’t speak English on the drive back to the hotel.

When Bobby returned, he’d found an obscure Japanese text that basically suggested scaring the ghost to death. Dean was both insulted (“Japanese? Seriously?“) and skeptical, but he assured Sam that he wasn’t hallucinating and that he’d be okay by himself, so Sam took Bobby outside and suggested reenacting the road-hauling. For lack of a better option, Bobby agreed. And it worked-though not quite fast enough, because they got back to find Dean fighting with the sheriff. Though the ghost sickness itself was gone, it had evidently done a number on the sheriff’s mind, and he was not about to let “you damn Tontos” turn him in for failing to investigate Luther’s death.

All three hunters decided Dean needed a break after that one, so the brothers went through Chinle to thank Chris on their way to Grandmother’s, where they tried not to worry about the Apocalypse for a few days. It... sort of worked.

The reason it only sort of worked was that being on the ranch meant seeing first-hand how low Grandmother’s and Amá Sání’s food stores were and hearing all about the weird things that had started happening across the reservation since Dean’s return. Crops failing. Sheep dying. Wells that had been in use for hundreds of years suddenly going dry. Food spoiling too soon. Adults drinking themselves to death, even if they’d never touched alcohol before. An outbreak of Hanta virus near Shiprock. Whooping cough shutting down the elementary schools in Indian Wells. The BIA clinic in Tsaile being burglarized and all the medications stolen. A fire on Gobernador Knob that wiped out a whole host of rare plants used by the singers in their medicine bundles.

It was the last event that convinced Dean that something more was at work than just bad luck. Gobernador Knob was where First Man had found the infant Changing Woman; it was the heart of Dinétah. Something was attacking the Navajo Nation deliberately.

Sam didn’t take much convincing, and the brothers spent most of the next several days in Tuba City, holed up in the library researching, making phone calls, trying to establish patterns. Nothing clear emerged; the events were too varied and dispersed to be the work of a single witch, and Bobby couldn’t definitely link the attacks to anything else. Dean floated the suggestion that all of the skinwalkers on the reservation might be acting in concert to aid Lilith, but Sam shot that down a few moments later when he found that one of the first victims to die of Hanta virus had been a skinwalker.

Then he said, “Hey, Dean? Have you found any news about all this in the national media?”

Dean snorted. “When the hell has the white press cared about what happens on the rez?”

“Well, I know, but... I mean, Hanta virus? That’s so deadly, the CDC ought to be putting out some kind of a warning against travel, and the way people die is so horrible, it ought to make sensational headlines. And about fifty more people have starved to death than usual in Tsaile, too. You’d think somebody would notice.”

Dean frowned and started searching news sites, and Sam started searching aid organizations to see whether any of the groups that they knew had outreach points on the reservation had sounded the alarm. There were a few reports from groups like the Salvation Army of relief attempts being sabotaged or food shipments that had been fine at the warehouse being rotten and buggy on arrival. Beyond that, all they found was silence.

So they tried organizing online fundraisers, petitions, and letter-writing campaigns. Nothing got anyone’s attention. Yet all across the reservation, people were dying of starvation or of diseases that could have been treated had the clinics and hospitals not been desperately short of medicines. The numbers kept climbing throughout October, but the silence in the wider world was deafening.

Finally, out of sheer desperation to find some way to help relieve the suffering, the brothers hijacked a Niveus Pharmaceutical truck outside St. George, Utah, on October 30. After checking for hex bags and EMF, Sam drove the truck while Dean followed in the Impala; Chris and Gwen were supposed to meet them at Bitter Springs to organize some way to distribute the medications. Everything was fine as the two-vehicle convoy sped through the Utah wilderness and crossed into Arizona. But the second the truck crossed completely onto Navajo land, Dean swore loudly as he saw the entire trailer become engulfed in cockroaches.

“SAM!” he yelled into his CB.

The truck immediately pulled over, and Sam jumped out, cursing and staring in shock at the trailer. “Dean, what the hell do we do?!”

“Flamethrower? Bug spray? How do I know?!”

Just as suddenly as the roaches had appeared, however, the trailer suddenly erupted in flame. And between it and the brothers, two figures appeared; one was Cas, and the other was a sour-faced Zhini.

“WHAT THE HELL?!” Dean bellowed. “We NEEDED that, Cas!”

Cas looked at the burning truck in slight confusion and back. “I’m... sorry to interrupt, Dean, but we need your help. There’s a seal-”

“Forget it. Find someone else. Or better yet, do it yourselves; you’re angels.”

“But Dean-”

“I said forget it, Cas. I don’t care about your damn seal. My people are dying.”

Cas was taken aback, but the Zhini spoke up. “The alternative, Dean, is that we smite the town to stop the witch from breaking the seal.”

“Yeah? Well, you can forget that, too, Chuckles.”

“My name is Uriel.”

“Find another hunter. Save the damn seal. And then help me save my people.“

Uriel snarled. “Listen, you mud monkey-”

“Uriel,” Cas interrupted, and Uriel shut up. Then Cas looked over his shoulder, and the fire went out, leaving what looked like an intact and bug-free truck behind. When he turned back to Dean, looking sad, he said, “All humans are your people, Dean, not just the Diné.”

“I’m not leavin’, Cas,” Dean repeated more quietly. “Not while they’re still dyin’ and no one else cares.”

Cas nodded. “We’ll do what we can.” And the angels left.

After a moment of stunned silence, Sam got out his flashlight, and the brothers made their way to the truck cautiously. But there was no sign of fire damage or of bugs, and the boxes inside looked intact. So with a sigh and a shrug, they closed it back up and went on their way to Bitter Springs.

Just outside of town, the Winchesters discovered that the Begays had arranged some sort of meet-up that night with doctors from all over the reservation who needed medicines desperately. They triple-checked every box as they unloaded it and handed it off; all looked as pristine as if they had just rolled off the assembly line in Nevada. Once the last box was distributed, the doctors all drove off into the darkness, and Gwen and Chris took the truck to dump while Sam and Dean headed back to the ranch.

The boys went back to Tuba City two days later to try to sort out what had happened to cause the spontaneous roach outbreak. But Bobby was still in the middle of getting Sam’s side of the story when Dean got a call from Gwen.

Every last box of the medications they’d delivered had been ruined by the time the clinics opened the next morning, either covered with mold or overrun with bugs or arachnids.

Devastated, Dean gave the bad news to Bobby and Sam, then went down the street to a park and just... sat. He couldn’t even process anything. They had tried so damn hard...

“Hello, Dean.”

Dean looked up to see Cas sitting beside him. “Hey. How’d it go?”

“Jo and Ellen Harvelle did their best. They were able to put a stop to the uprising of zombies and demons and exorcise the demon behind it, and we were able to save the town.”

“But?”

“The seal did break.”

Dean sighed. “I wouldn’t have done anything different, Cas. I don’t regret making that choice.”

Cas frowned a little. “No, Dean... I was praying you would choose as you did. Our orders were to follow your commands; it was a test to see how you would perform under battle conditions. That’s why I came back, too. In fact, that’s why I restored the truck Uriel destroyed. You were right. Your people do need those medicines.”

“Uriel the reason they all went bad anyway?”

Cas looked confused, fluttered away, and reappeared a second later, looking disturbed. “No. Something else is at work here, something extremely powerful. I didn’t realize it then, or I would have warded those boxes.”

Now it was Dean’s turn to frown. “Powerful-like Lilith?”

“No, no demon could do this, but whatever it is, it’s probably acting on Lilith’s behalf.”

“So what do we do? How do we stop it?”

“I don’t know. Whatever it is, it’s concealing itself well. But I did ward the clinics I checked, though I don’t know how many lives that will save. And at the very least, I can add extra protection to that anti-possession tattoo of yours. You’ll need to be healthy to continue the fight.”

“Not just mine. You do that for me, you do it for Sam.”

Cas blinked and stared at Dean for a moment, then nodded. “Very well.”

They walked together back to the coffee shop where Sam was wrapping up the conversation with Bobby. Sam hung up quickly and stood as they walked up, staring in breathless awe at Cas.

“Sam,” said Dean, “this is Castiel.”

Cas nodded. “Hello, Sam.”

“You came back,” Sam said, his eyes suspiciously bright. “You-I mean-sorry, I just...” He rallied enough to hold out his hand. “It’s an honor. I’ve heard so much about you.”

Cas looked a little baffled until Dean nodded at him, then took Sam’s hand in both of his. “And I you, Sam. I’m glad to see that you haven’t fallen into temptation.”

Sam blushed.

Dean decided it was time to step in. “Cas thinks whatever’s attacking the rez is working for Lilith.”

Cas nodded. “Yes, and while I may not be able to do much more to help you stop it, I can at least offer you more protection against its powers.”

Sam looked from Cas to Dean and back and shrugged. “Okay, sure.”

Cas raised two fingers and touched them to Sam’s chest, right above his tattoo. Dean couldn’t see what happened, but Sam gasped a little. Then Cas did the same to Dean, and Dean felt a sharp pain flare just under his skin for a split second.

“There,” said Cas. “Those wards will not be visible, but they will protect you better than a hex bag would.”

Dean had just opened his mouth to thank Cas when a sudden wind shook the building-and everyone around them started coughing deep, racking coughs. One asthmatic went for her inhaler but lost consciousness before she could use it.

“Pnemonia,” Cas said quietly with a frown. Then his eyes widened. “And it’s headed toward your grandmother’s ranch. You go; I’ll do what I can here.”

Dean slapped Cas on the shoulder, and he and Sam ran for the car and raced back to the ranch. But as fast as they were, they couldn’t outpace the wind. Grandmother and Grandfather were already sick when the boys arrived; Grandmother barely had time to smile at the boys before she stopped breathing altogether. Cursing, they ran to check on Amá Sání, but she too was very sick, and Dean realized for the first time just how frail the lack of food had made her.

“Monster Slayer,” she wheezed as Dean scooped her up and ran toward the car. “Your brother... must cut the life out... of the enemy... the night grows dark... but day will come... he will come back...”

“Hold on, shimásání,” Dean said.

She coughed and murmured a blessing over them... and then she, too, was gone.

As Dean stumbled to a halt and met Sam’s tear-filled eyes with a whimper of despair, he heard a flutter of wings and then felt Cas’ hand come down on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Dean. She’s at peace. I’ll see to Joe and Sarah.” And he left again.

Dean was still cradling Amá Sání’s body in his arms when Cas returned with Grandfather, who was now well and staring at the angel in shock. Aunt Sarah, too, Cas was able to heal. But nobody else said much of anything for the rest of the traditional four-day period of mourning over both Grandmother and Amá Sání, during which Cas came and went, healing as many people as he could before he had to go back to protecting the seals on Lucifer’s Cage.

A cold rage built in Dean over those four days, and he sensed that Sam felt the same way. So once their mourning was done, they didn’t even have to talk about it to know that they needed to get back to the outside world. It was time to stop chasing the middleman and take down Lilith.

“But we’ve only broken fifty seals!” Lilith objected.

The Horsemen’s demonic liaison, who had retaken his willingly-vacated host and said host’s name, shrugged. “The Winchesters were there. Pestilence and Famine believed the time was right. Besides, they weren’t sure how long they could keep Castiel or Sam from figuring out that they were behind the attack. Dean’s ready to gut Pestilence in any case, and he can do it easily enough if he catches Pestilence before Lord Lucifer rises.”

Lilith snarled something in Ugaritic.

Brady frowned. “There are six hundred seals. Surely you haven’t run out of ones that could be broken outside the US.”

“No, but the easiest ones are gone. And I don’t know how many others we can break before they catch up to me.”

“Okay. How many easy ones are there in the US?”

“Are you offering to help?”

“If it’s within my job description. I will still need to be on the Horsemen’s good side after the last seal breaks, after all.”

She looked at him narrowly for a moment before answering. “Seven. Abaddon will see to the Reapers on the solstice. That leaves us with seven more before the last.”

“What about your double agent?”

“We can’t use Uriel. He has to keep Castiel from figuring out what’s going on.”

“I wasn’t talking about Uriel.”

She took a step forward. “The angels are making too many mistakes. We can’t rely on their ability to hide their involvement.”

He looked away, then back down at her; even though she’d taken a new, adult host, she was still shorter than he. “Look, it’s not my fault that the timetable’s moved up, but we have six weeks to the solstice. I know you can evade the Winchesters that long. But can we break all fifteen seals in the time that’s left without the angels’ help?”

She pulled a list out of the air and handed it to him. “Have your people take care of these, and do it fast. I’ll talk to Zachariah.”

He sighed, bowed, and vanished.

And in Kripke’s Hollow, Ohio, Chuck Shurley woke with a start, made coffee to clear away the headache and beer goggles, and sat down to research what the hell was going on in Arizona, at least so he could describe the mourning rituals the right way in case the publisher ever got the funds to pick up the Supernatural series again. He had no clue what he’d do with the information, especially if it was true, but...

... but...

... but it was true. Emily Winchester’s obituary in the Navajo Times was one of the first hits Google turned up-and it included the sentence, “Emily is survived by her husband Joe and her grandsons Sam and Dean.” And the obituary of her mother, Janet Chee, was on the same page.

Chuck sat in front of his computer in shock for a long moment, a shaking hand over his mouth. Finally, he swallowed hard and typed “singer salvage yard” into the search bar.

And the power and the phone line both went out at the same moment.

After a few panicked pants, Chuck did the only sensible thing he could do. He ran.

A strange car was parked outside Bobby’s house when Sam and Dean arrived, so they took the precaution of knocking before they let themselves in. Bobby wasn’t immediately visible from the door.

“Bobby?” Dean called.

“Down here,” came the reply from the basement.

That was weird. “Why’s Bobby in the basement when...” Sam asked.

Dean shot him a look. “Do I look like I know? C’mon.”

So they clomped down the stairs to find Bobby sitting in the panic room and talking with a scruffy, scrawny little guy with curly brown hair and worried blue eyes. Said scruffy guy, who was sitting on the cot, just about hyperventilated when he saw them.

“Boys,” said Bobby. “This here’s Chuck Shurley.”

“I’m sorry,” Chuck blurted out. “I’m so sorry-I never would have if I’d known-”

Dean held up a hand. “Wait, whoa, slow down. Dude, we don’t even know you. What are you sorry for?”

“The books.”

Both brothers blinked and chorused, “Books?”

Chuck nodded. “I... I guess I’m psychic or something. Which I guess ought to be a relief, ’cause I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been accused of ripping off Tony Hillerman, but-I mean, if even half of what I’ve written down has been true, then...”

“Chuck,” Sam interrupted, “slow down. You think you’re psychic?”

“Right. I’ve, um... it’s been about four years now, I’ve been writing books. About you. I... I get these terrible headaches, and I take aspirin and drink until I pass out, and then I have these really vivid dreams about you. And I’ve been turning them into novels, because I thought they were just dreams, y’know?”

Sam and Dean exchanged a look of alarm.

“But then... then I dreamed about... about the pneumonia thing last week, and then yesterday I had another dream that was so weird, I figured I needed to do some more research. And I... I found... oh, gosh, guys, I’m so sorry about your grandmother and-”

“Y-thanks,” Dean cut in. “What was the weird dream? And why are you here?”

“I’m here because something tried to stop me from contacting you about the dream.”

The brothers exchanged another look. Then they stepped into the panic room, shut the door, and sat down on the chairs Bobby had evidently brought down for them.

“What do you mean, something tried to stop you?” Dean asked.

Chuck swallowed hard. “I was about to Google Mr. Singer’s phone number when the power went out. So I picked up the phone to call Directory Assistance, but the line was dead. And my cell phone wouldn’t work, either, no matter where I’ve tried to call from on the road. So I just... I ran. I drove straight to Sioux Falls-well, as straight as I could, had to stop for gas and food and stuff. And I went to the sheriff’s department to get directions. I knew... I mean, I figured if the pneumonia was real, and you guys were real, then maybe the panic room was real, too.”

“Well, it is,” Bobby said. “And we’re in it, so tell us what that dream was about.”

Chuck swallowed hard again. “Lilith. She’s taken a new host, and she said that fifty seals have already broken. They plan to break another fourteen in the next six weeks, then the next-to-last on the winter solstice-it’s got something to do with Abaddon and Reapers.”

“Do you know where?” Sam asked.

Chuck shook his head. “I think they’re breaking as many outside the US as they can so you guys won’t be able to stop them.”

“What about the last seal?”

“I didn’t get anything about it. Sorry.”

Dean leaned forward. “Why the rush? And what made you look up what’s been going on in Arizona?”

“I-I’m not sure I understood right, but it sounded like the attack was being launched by Famine and Pestilence. And now they have to move fast because you’re so mad about it.”

“Famine and pestilence?”

“As in two of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Brady said they’re not at full strength, but...”

Sam sat up straighter. “Brady? As in-”

Chuck nodded. “He’s possessed again. I’m sorry, Sam.”

Dean frowned as he tried to put the pieces together. “So Lilith had Famine and Pestilence attack the rez-what, like Meg killed Pastor Jim and Caleb?”

“Pretty much.”

“Why?”

Chuck shook his head. “I don’t know. I think I only got part of the conversation; it didn’t all make sense. And some of it’s fading. I know Brady said you were about ready to gut Pestilence, though.”

“Well, he got that right. I’d gut all of ’em. But I think I’ll leave Lilith for Sammy.”

Sam answered with a small but deadly dangerous smile.

“How do we find her?”

Chuck sighed. “I don’t know. I couldn’t tell where they were; there weren’t any landmarks or anything. It was just a room, no windows. She’s probably on the other side of the world, though.”

Dean leaned back and was just wondering how seriously to take the information when Cas appeared in the middle of the group, looking frazzled and startling the hell out of all four humans. “CAS!” Dean yelped. “Don’t you knock?!”

“Dean, Sam,” said Cas, sounding almost plaintive. “Three seals have fallen in the last hour. Lilith seems determined to break them all before the year is out. And seven angels have died in the last two days. We need your help-” Cas paused and turned as if noticing Chuck for the first time, then turned back to Dean with a puzzled frown. “Why is the prophet here?”

“Proph-oh, you gotta be kidding! This guy?!”

“Y-you’re an angel?” Chuck stammered. “You’re Castiel?”

Cas turned back to him for a moment. “Yes, Chuck, and I am a great admirer of your work.” Then he looked back at Sam and Dean. “He is charged with recording your legend for future generations. But I don’t understand why he’s in this room.”

“It’s for protection, Cas,” said Sam. “He came to Bobby for help.”

“Each prophet is protected by an archangel. He shouldn’t need this precaution.”

“So explain how something got close enough to try to stop him from contacting us with a vision about Lilith.”

Startled, Cas looked at Chuck, who nodded. Then he looked up and around warily before focusing on Dean again. “Let me borrow a knife.”

Dean handed Cas his pocketknife. Cas sliced his arm open, used the blood to finger-paint a sigil on the door, cleaned the knife with a glance, and handed it back to Dean. Then he sat down hard next to Chuck as if he was suddenly lightheaded.

“Y’okay there, Feathers?” Bobby asked.

Cas looked at him. “No. I... I fear there may be a traitor among the angels. Perhaps more than one.”

Sam frowned. “I thought for angels, the Fall was a one-time deal. The ones who fought Lucifer can’t fall, and the ones who fell with him can’t repent.”

“There may be some universe where that is true, but here... it’s complicated. We may not fall-that is, we are not allowed to disobey-but we are still capable of falling.”

Dean leaned forward. “Cas, what’s that sigil you just drew? Some kind of angel proofing?”

“Not precisely, but it is a ward against other angels.”

“And you drew that because...”

Cas looked him in the eye. “Apart from the four humans in this room, I have no idea who to trust.”

Chuck shifted. “I... think Lilith mentioned Uriel.”

Cas nodded sadly. “I don’t want to believe it of him, but it may be true. He hates humans, and I don’t know why. But Uriel is a specialist; he deals out death in judgment. He wouldn’t manipulate memories.”

Bobby blinked. “Chuck, you said you think there’s some of that vision that you forgot?”

Chuck nodded.

Dean’s eyes narrowed. “So wait, Cas, you’re thinking whatever messed with Mom’s memory, her journal, my memory, and now maybe Chuck’s memory...”

“Could well have been an angel,” Cas concluded gravely. “And that would explain why it could pass the archangel to try to stop Chuck from contacting you. It might also explain why my orders have been so bewildering lately; they seem to be sending me in exactly the wrong directions to stop any seals from breaking.”

A heavy silence hung over the panic room for a long moment.

“So what do we do?” Sam finally asked.

Cas shook his head. “I don’t know. The only thing I’m sure of, assuming that anything I’ve been told is true, is that only Lilith herself can break the final seal. We need to stop her somehow.”

“That won’t be easy,” Chuck noted. “She knows you’re after her, and Brady said he was sure she could stay hidden until the solstice.”

“Solstice?”

“Yeah, she said, uh... ‘Abaddon will see to the Reapers on the solstice.’”

“Well, that’s something, but I’m not entirely sure it helps us. Even if we can stop Abaddon from performing the ritual and killing two Reapers, there are so many other seals that we may not be able to prevent another from breaking.”

“Cas,” Dean said firmly, “we cannot sit in this damn panic room for six weeks twiddling our thumbs. We need a plan.” He paused for a beat. “Even if it’s only to go back to the rez and twiddle our thumbs there, ’cause then at least we’d have more space.”

“We got a whole house upstairs, idjit,” Bobby grumbled.

Cas raised his head as if listening for something, then flitted out of the room for a moment before appearing again outside the panic room. “I’ve warded the house. You can come out.”

“And?” Bobby asked as Sam got up to open the door.

“I suppose we begin by tracking Lilith by human means. I’ll stay here as an additional measure of protection and monitor the conversations of the Host to see what I can learn that way.”

“Um,” said Chuck. “W-what about me?”

“Stay here,” Dean replied. “Until we know who tried to stop you, you’re better off with us, archangel or no archangel.”

Chuck nodded and let the others usher him upstairs.

After some discussion, Cas carved some Enochian sigils into the brothers’ ribs to keep them hidden from both angels and demons if they had cause to leave the house. Then Sam fired up Ash’s Lilith-tracking program while Dean and Bobby tried to plan strategy, Chuck waited for a vision, and Cas listened to what Dean called Angel Radio. None of the above got them anywhere for a solid week, even when Sam widened the search parameters for the program to cover the entire globe. The few times anything did turn up, it appeared Lilith truly was on the other side of the world.

Then suddenly, in the middle of a conversation, Cas’ eyes went wide and unfocused. “No,” he breathed. “Anna...”

Sam and Dean looked at each other. “Uh, Cas?” Sam prompted.

Cas focused on him again. “I’m sorry. My sister needs help. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” And he was gone.

Dean threw up his hands. “Great. There goes our inside man.”

Sam sighed. “We’ll figure something out, Dean. I mean, maybe I can get Ash’s program to track Abaddon, too, and we can stop him before the solstice.”

“Yeah. It’s a thought.”

“Somethin’ to do,” Bobby added wryly.

So Sam and Bobby got to work pinning down omens they could definitely tie to Abaddon, and Dean cleaned guns. Chuck didn’t seem sure whether to be alarmed or reassured by the size of the hunters’ combined arsenal.

A few days later, Dean came down to breakfast looking a little confused and concerned. When Chuck asked if he was okay, Dean drew a deep breath and said, “Yeah, yeah, I’m okay. I just... got a message from Cas. He showed up in a dream a few minutes ago.”

“And?” Sam prompted.

“He said he found Anna, got her out of danger, but now they’re both on the run. Anna just killed Uriel because he tried to kill Cas. They’re trying to figure out what else is going on Upstairs, whether Uriel was the only traitor or not. He said he’ll be back when he can.”

Sam sighed. “Chuck, did you get anything last night?”

Chuck shook his head miserably. “No. I haven’t had writer’s block like this in months... like, since Dean got back from Hell, not that writing’s been very easy since then. And I don’t know how much advance notice I’m getting; I think I dreamed about the pneumonia outbreak, like, two days before it happened.” He paused. “Speaking of which, Sam, can I just tell you how glad I am that you shot Ruby? ‘Cause my first outline for what happened this summer was disturbing, even for me.”

Sam and Dean looked at each other in alarm and asked, “Disturbing how?”

“Uh, y-you were supposed to try to make a crossroads deal, but the demon turned you down, and you killed it with Ruby’s knife.”

Sam frowned. “Not the Colt?”

“No, the-the Colt was supposed to have been stolen while you guys were dreamwalking to help Bobby. Bela was supposed to give it to Lilith. But that changed when you shot Ruby.”

Sam’s frown deepened. “Why?”

“I dunno. The dreams for that book came back, but they were different. And so were some of the later books-Ghostfacers didn’t change any, but like, in No Rest for the Wicked, Lilith was supposed to steal Ruby’s host to get through your defenses. But that obviously wouldn’t work if you knew Ruby was dead.”

“So after I killed the crossroads demon...”

“None of the others would deal. You went on a bender. And then Ruby came back and saved your life and started teaching you how to use your powers to exorcise demons. But it-it didn’t go very well, so she seduced you and then got you to start drinking her blood to make your powers stronger. And by the time Dean got back, you were addicted, even if you didn’t know it yet.”

Dean’s eyebrows had been slowly inching up his forehead throughout Chuck’s revelation. “Yeah, I’d say that qualifies as disturbing.”

Sam shifted. “How far had your outline gone before the dreams changed?”

Chuck shrugged. “Only through the Rising of the Witnesses.”

“And the changes came...”

“Mid-January.”

Sam leaned back. “After I’d shot Ruby. Huh.”

Dean looked at him. “What are you thinking? We can’t trust his intel?”

“No, but we need to be careful with it. I mean, it sounds like what he’s been seeing lately has been accurate, but... something had our lives planned out nine months in advance, at least. And when we didn’t follow the script, Chuck got rewrites.”

“Not just you guys,” Chuck confessed. “I wasn’t expecting Talking God to know Loki.”

Dean held up a finger. “So somebody has a grand narrative already planned out-but it’s not actually predestined, ‘cause if it were, nothing we do could change it.”

Sam nodded. “Sounds right to me, from what you said Cas said about Mom’s journal.”

“But anytime we do change it...”

“Somebody tries to force things back on track.”

“So somebody is manipulating Chuck’s visions, is that it?”

“Could be. I don’t know how we could prove it for sure, though. I mean, we were able to prevent some of my visions from coming true. We saved Jess.”

Bobby had been cooking this whole time and now brought a plate full of pancakes to the table. “Well, you know the old saying, ‘Trust but verify.’ If Chuck sees anything about where Lilith’ll be, we can verify it with Ash’s program. Then we take what we know for sure, figure in what we can’t know and the probability of a nasty surprise, and act on it the best we know how.”

The others agreed and ate.

Thanksgiving came and went before Dean heard from Cas again. Cas and Anna were still alive and on the run, he said, but they had managed to save a couple of seals and were closer to finding out who the other traitor might be. He didn’t dare say more, though he promised again to return as soon as he could.

But another three weeks passed without further word. Sam’s attempt at kludging together an Abaddon-tracking program was a bust without Cas there to tell them whether or not they were following the right omens, and from what Dean could tell from having taken over Bobby’s switchboard duties, the demons had found other seals to break to make up for the ones Cas and Anna had saved. Dean was beginning to get fed up with the forced inaction; he knew they needed intel, but the wait was killing him. He seriously considered suggesting that they go back to the rez and see what Talking God could tell them, even if it meant not being able to cut Abaddon off at the pass.

Before he could, though, Chuck came down with a killer headache in the middle of supper. Bobby got him a bottle of Jack and settled him on the couch, and Sam and Dean packed their gear to be ready to move as soon as they could verify Chuck’s vision. Yet as much as he tried, Chuck couldn’t get to sleep easily because of the severity of the headache. Dean found himself falling asleep before Chuck did.

And it seemed that no sooner did he drop off for real than Cas showed up in his dream. “Dean. I’ve learned something important.”

“Great,” Dean replied. “Let’s hear it.”

“I can’t tell you now. Even your dreams may be monitored. And Anna just gave herself up to help me escape my superiors. I’ll tell you in person as soon as I can get to you.”

“Okay, well, we’re-”

“Dean! Don’t tell me! I’ll find you somehow. Just-be careful. I’ll see you in a day or two.”

And Dean woke with a start to find Sam about to shake him. “Hey,” said Sam. “Chuck’s got something.”

“Great,” Dean replied groggily. “Cas is on his way. He’s all upset about something. What’s the word, Chuck?”

Chuck groaned and accepted a mug of coffee from Bobby. “I... can’t tell if this is a rewrite or what. But I saw Lilith about to attempt some kind of ceremony on the solstice.”

That woke Dean up. “You’re sure?”

Chuck nodded.

“Lilith, not Abaddon?”

Chuck nodded again. “I didn’t get much. Just that Lilith was there and was in charge.”

“Where?”

“Chapel of St. Mary’s Convent. Ilchester, Maryland.” Chuck took a long drink of coffee.

“I’ll look it up,” said Sam and grabbed his laptop.

Dean helped Bobby get breakfast going, and Chuck went back to sleep. But while Ash’s program didn’t turn up much, Sam found an old news article from 1972 about a massacre that had happened at St. Mary’s, when the priest-who claimed to have been possessed by Azazel-slaughtered all of the nuns in the middle of Mass. The place had been deserted ever since the chapel had been desecrated.

“So which seal you reckon Lilith’s figurin’ to break?” Bobby asked. “Next-to-last or last?”

Sam shrugged. “Either way, if we can stop her, we stop everything.”

Dean sighed. “Wish we could wait for Cas, but that’s a long two-day drive, three to be safe with the weather.”

“Well, as long as Bobby knows where we are, Cas can catch up to us. And we can keep an eye on the tracking program on our way.”

“True.”

“... But?”

“I dunno, Sam. We’re missing something. I think Cas knows what it is. And I can’t help feeling like we’re about to walk right into a trap.”

“Well, we can’t keep waiting around, can we?”

Dean looked back at Chuck, who was still sacked out on the couch, and sighed. “No. I guess not.”

So the brothers left after breakfast, taking their time on the genuinely treacherous winter roads. Sam was rather impatient with Dean’s sudden desire to take his time, given the rush he’d been in when they didn’t have any news. But Dean just couldn’t shake the sense that they needed the piece of the puzzle that only Cas held, and he kept hoping that if they went slowly enough, Cas could catch up to them before anything went sideways.

Unfortunately, they weren’t able to get all the way to Maryland on the 20th. And after Dean went out to warm up the car the next morning, he stepped back into the motel room-and found himself someplace completely different. The room was white with gilded trim, no windows and presumably only the door he’d entered through. There were all kinds of fancy art objects around the room, including a painting of Michael the Archangel killing a dragon, as well as a buffet-style table with a platter piled high with bacon cheeseburgers and a huge champagne bucket full of ice and bottles of beer. And standing next to said table was a guy who looked like a cross between Werner Klemperer and Gavin McLeod, beaming smugly.

“Hello, Dean,” said the guy.

Dean felt his shocked expression sliding into a scowl. “You’re an angel, aren’t you?”

The guy nodded. “My name is Zachariah.”

“That’s all I need. Another one.”

“I’m hardly another one, Dean. I’m Castiel’s superior. And believe me, I had no interest in coming down here, but... circumstances being what they are, I needed to step in personally. And it’s a good thing I did-do you know, I actually had to use a map to find you? How did you manage to hide yourselves?”

“Hodiyingo,” Dean snapped. “Where’s Sam?”

“Oh, don’t you worry about Sam. He’s got a role to play still. But we needed to make sure you were absolutely safe for the time being.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I said don’t worry about it.” Then Zachariah started offering him the burgers, the beer, Ginger and Mary Ann from Gilligan’s Island, anything he could to deflect the question. But when Dean started countering with threats in Navajo, Zach gave up with a sigh and admitted, “The seals have fallen. All but one.”

Dean’s frown deepened. “All but one? Even Abaddon’s?”

“Yup.”

“But the solstice-”

“Was yesterday-in New Zealand.” And Dean thought he detected a very faint note of triumph in that statement. “But Lilith’s the only one who can break the final seal. She’ll be aiming for tonight at midnight.”

“Super. Let me go to Sam so we can stop her.”

“‘Fraid I can’t let you do that, Dean. It’s too dangerous.”

“I don’t care. I’m leaving.”

“Through what door?”

Dean spun, and the door he’d come in through was gone. When he turned back, so was Zachariah. He cursed in all three of his languages and tried to call Sam, but the signal was blocked. Then he cursed again, considered his options, and started examining the walls to try to find some way to make his escape.

He had no idea how much time passed as he plotted options and prayed to Cas as quietly as he could. Zach came in and out to try to convince him that resistance was futile. But finally the pieces of what Zach was and was not saying came together with a snap.

“You don’t want Lilith stopped, do you?” he asked.

And Zach dropped the act. “Nope. Never did.” Then he started pontificating about how the angels were going to beat Lucifer and establish paradise on Earth, brushing off Dean’s objection about the millions of lives that would be lost in the process.

“How is this God’s will?” Dean raged. “How is this right?“

Zach scoffed. “You’ve got some nerve lecturing me about right and wrong, Dean... considering you started all this.”

Dean froze. “What?”

“It is written that the first seal would be that ‘a righteous man shed blood in Hell. As he breaks, so shall it break.’“

And full memory of those last horrible moments Downstairs came flooding back. “No,” Dean breathed. “No, I didn’t-I never said-”

“You never agreed to torture, but you did shed another’s blood of your own free will. It counts.” And Zach left before Dean could recover enough to take a swing at him.

Just about the time shock had given way to rage, however, Cas finally showed up and clapped a hand over Dean’s mouth, then held up a knife. Dean heaved a quiet sigh of relief and nodded. Cas zapped over to a wall, cut his wrist, and drew a different sigil from the one he’d drawn in the panic room.

Zach appeared behind him. “Castiel, would you mind telling me-”

Cas slammed his open palm down on the sigil, and Zach disappeared with a scream in a bright flash of light.

“He won’t be gone long,” Cas told Dean. “We need to go now.”

“Thanks, Cas. Where the hell have you been?”

“There’s no time to explain. We have to stop Sam.”

“But Lilith’s about to break the final seal!”

“Lilith is the final seal. If she dies, the end begins.”

Dean swallowed hard. “Cas... Zach said-”

“You were deceived,” Cas interrupted. “As was I. I arrived seconds too late to stop you, but I saw the cloud of illusion Alastair had placed over your eyes. You bear no guilt for this. But we’re running out of time. Where is Sam?”

“S-St. Mary’s Convent, Ilchester, Maryland.”

Cas put two fingers to Dean’s forehead, and suddenly they were outside somewhere; Dean had to assume they were in Maryland. Then Cas snarled. “She’s locked me out with Enochian sigils. You’ll have to go-”

And they heard the shot.

Cursing, Dean kicked in the door and ran into the chapel to see Sam staring in bewildered horror as Lilith slid, glassy-eyed, to the floor in front of the altar. She wasn’t sparking, like most demons did when shot with the Colt; she was bleeding profusely from the bullet wound.

“Sam!”

Sam startled. “Dean! What-where-”

“No time. Sołtį’, we gotta get out of here.”

“Why? I just...”

“You just broke the damn seal, Sammy!”

Wide-eyed and breathless, Sam looked back at Lilith, whose blood was pouring out onto the floor in an unnaturally straight line. “No-no, that’s not-”

“Cas just found out. That’s what he was tryin’ to tell me in that dream. Come on, let’s go.”

Lilith’s blood began to run in a circle, and Sam’s joints finally unlocked enough for him to let Dean pull him away to where Cas was waiting. Cas zapped them and the Impala to a safe distance, but they were still close enough to see when Lucifer burst out of the Cage with a massive bolt of white light.

Sam started crying. “I... I didn’t mean to...”

“You got good company,” Dean replied, not able to keep his own voice steady.

Cas squeezed their shoulders. “Neither of you is at fault here. If anything, I should bear the blame for not finding you sooner. But Zachariah would have found some way for Sam’s hand to be the one to slay Lilith, even if he’d had to apply the same level of force it took to trap Dean in the deal and make him shed blood in Hell. He doesn’t care that he’s stooping to Lucifer’s tactics to ensure an outcome that he thinks will lead to Lucifer’s death.”

“Why’d it have to be us, Cas? Why’d it have to be Sam?”

“It is said,” Cas replied slowly, “that Michael’s vessel and Lucifer’s vessel must be brothers. And the two of you are of that bloodline, through the Chees and through the Campbells. I don’t know why it was so important that you two be the ones to break the seals, though... perhaps to break your spirits enough to prompt you to accept possession.”

Dean didn’t say so, but he wasn’t so sure it hadn’t worked. He felt pretty damn broken.

“So what do we do?” Sam asked. “How do we fix this?”

Cas looked about ready to cry himself. “I don’t know, Sam. I don’t know.”

Suddenly, Dean’s phone rang; the number had a Sioux Falls area code, but he didn’t recognize it. “Hello?”

“Dean!” came Chuck’s panicked voice. “Dean, where are you?”

“We’re in Maryland, but-”

“But Lucifer just busted out. I know. Bobby had to go get groceries, and he was outside when... I think it was Meg and a bunch of other demons attacked. I ran out to help, and I think the archangel chased off the demons, but Dean... Bobby’s... he’s hurt bad. I’m taking him to Sioux Falls General. Can... can you...”

“We’ve got Cas with us. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

“Okay. I... I should probably go as soon as I get him to the hospital so Cas can’t run into the archangel, so-give me, like, fifteen?”

“Sure. Thanks, Chuck.”

“Dean, I am so sorry...”

“Dude, if Zach’s been controlling your visions, there’s no way you coulda known. Nothin’ to be sorry about.”

“Yeah. Okay. I’ll... I’ll be in touch, I guess.”

It was a long, silent fifteen minutes between the time Dean hung up and passed on the news and the time the three of them piled into the car to let Cas zap them to Sioux Falls. They landed in the hospital parking lot and hurried in to the ER, only to be told that Bobby was still being stabilized; Cas went off to ward the hospital, and Sam and Dean had to just sit and wait. Finally, after Cas had rejoined the brothers, a doctor came out and brought them back to the examining room so that he could give them and Bobby the bad news all at once. Most of the wounds were superficial enough that they’d heal readily, but somehow one of the demons had managed to break Bobby’s back. He was paralyzed from the waist down and would most likely never walk again.

When the doctor left, the humans looked expectantly at Cas. But Cas shook his head. “I can’t heal you, Bobby. Something happened while I was warding this place. I’ve been cut off from the Host; my power is already diminishing. I’m sorry.”

So there they were. Just like Amá Sání had foreseen it back in ’78. Bobby was crippled; Cas was weakened; and between them, Sam and Dean had started the damned Apocalypse. The brothers exchanged a look of despair.

“What I can do,” Cas continued, “is try to find God. Apparently He’s on Earth right now, not in Heaven. If I can find Him, perhaps He can tell us how to set things right.”

Dean sighed. “Well, if you can’t, we’ll just have to find some other way to make our own destiny. Hell, we know we made ’em rewrite the script at least once. We can do it again. We can fight, and we can win. We’ve still got the Colt-we can kill ’em all, even Lucifer, even Michael if we have to.”

Bobby shook his head. “Boy, you are nine kinds of crazy.”

“It’s been said,” Dean conceded.

But after Cas had left and Bobby convinced the brothers to go get some rest, Sam and Dean walked out to the car and just... stopped and looked at it for a moment.

“A big black horse,” Sam murmured in Gaelic. “And a badger with horns.”

“She said she thought I might be 30,” Dean replied in kind. “She was only a year off.” After a long pause, he continued, “When... at-at the end... she said you had to cut the life out of the enemy. I thought she meant Lilith. Now... hell, I don’t know what she meant. And I don’t know how much darker the night can get.”

“I’m sorry, Dean. This is all my fault.”

“No, it’s not, Sam. Not like Chuck’s first draft. You made the right calls with the intel we had.” Dean looked him in the eye. “You’re still my brother. And I still trust you.”

A tear ran down Sam’s cheek as he whispered, “Ahéhee’, shinaaí.”

Dean reached over and squeezed his shoulder. “Sołtį’, shitsilí.“

The fight dragged on for a year and a half. There were other hunts to take in the meantime while Cas was off trying to find God, including one which revealed that “Loki” was actually the archangel Gabriel in disguise, but the Apocalypse was still their problem. Lucifer found a temporary vessel and started stalking Sam’s dreams, but he seemed content to wait for a time when he was convinced Sam would consent to possession no matter what happened in the meantime. Zach wasn’t nearly so subtle or patient and did everything he could to railroad Dean. But both sides seemed flummoxed by the fact that the brothers weren’t at odds. Apparently Michael and Lucifer having their Celebrity Death Match wearing brothers who were not ready to kill each other ruined the dramatic irony (or whatever-Dean never had liked analyzing literature half as much as he liked reading it, not that he’d admit even the latter in front of Thousand Books).

It wasn’t like Heaven and Hell didn’t try to tear Sam and Dean apart. In fact, they threw everything they had at the brothers, up to and including War. All that accomplished was the Winchesters succeeding in cutting the Horseman’s ring from his hand. The angels threw a trauma-addled Anna at the family, too, which finally explained the mystery of Mr. Woodsen’s death and Mary’s missing memories. And it wasn’t like any of the members of what Dean came to call Team Free Will were exactly the picture of emotional health. Bobby was near suicidal over the loss of his legs and the insanely cruel zombie uprising Death caused in Sioux Falls, and neither Dean nor Sam could quite get a handle on his guilt over his share in having started the Apocalypse or the losses of hunters like Jo and Ellen, who got killed in Carthage, MO, trying to help them stop Death from rising in the first place. But they had each other’s backs, and Dean thought for a long time that that would be enough.

Then they went after what Cas thought was a rogue cupid but turned out to be Famine amplifying people’s deepest desires to a fatal degree.

Dean knew he should have wanted nothing more than Famine’s head on a plate for his role in the attack on Dinétah. Yet weirdly, he had a very hard time summoning the energy to want anything at all, even food. And Sam confessed that the first time he’d happened to be within ten feet of a demon, Azazel’s blood-spell had triggered the most bizarre craving for demon blood he’d ever felt; he’d subdued it, given what Chuck had said about his first outline, but it had taken a major struggle. Knowing that Famine would probably be surrounded by demons, Sam begged Dean to restrain him and leave him behind while Dean and Cas went off to fight Famine at a diner. Dean reluctantly agreed.

He would never know for sure whether that had been the right call. What he did know was that after Famine managed to trigger a craving in Cas’ vessel that allowed Cas to be distracted with a tray of raw meat, Sam showed up with his hair a flyaway mess, madness in his eyes, and blood around his mouth. Despite being clearly high as a kite, though, he held onto enough control to be able to reject Famine’s offer of more demon blood, force the demons out of their hosts, and inflict enough damage on Famine that Dean could take Famine’s ring.

That done, Sam looked dazedly at Dean. “Dean, I-I’m-y-you gotta take me to Bobby’s, lock me up in the panic room... I... I don’t...”

“Haidzaa?“ Dean asked quietly.

“I dunno how they got in-five of ’em-held me down, dripped blood in my mouth, forced it down my throat-I... oh, gods, Dean, I drank two of ’em before I could stop myself...” Sam started crying. “And then I-I don’t know how, but I killed ’em like Lucifer did in Carthage, and I ran-knew I had to stop Famine before I could do something worse... Dean, you gotta help me!”

Dean nodded miserably. “Okay. Okay. We’ll get you clean. C’mon.”

He bundled Sam and Cas, who was himself starting to look ill from what Famine had done to him, into the Impala and sped back to Bobby’s. They arrived just as Sam was beginning to hallucinate. Dean kept vigil outside the panic room as the violent blood withdrawal tried to kill Sam, not daring to enter lest Sam accidentally lash out with his uncontrolled powers and kill him. But he knew they needed divine intervention fast if they were going to win this fight and show angels and demons both what they could do with their so-called destiny. He couldn’t hold onto hope much longer. So finally, desperately, he called out to the white man’s God and begged for aid.

Not even a week later, two hunters named Roy and Walt made sure they got a face-to-face meeting with the only angel in Heaven who still talked to God, who sent them back to Earth with “Back off” still ringing in Dean’s ears. And Dean, at the absolute end of his rapidly fraying rope and so damn tired of being manipulated every time he turned around, knew what he had to do. Even Zach grabbing their second cousin, Adam, didn’t sway him, nor did the resistance from Bobby, Cas, and Sam... until the last possible second, when he looked into his brother’s eyes and found himself unable to let Sammy down.

Of course, that landed him in a hotel full of (non-native!) gods and later in a Chicago pizzeria having to look Death himself in the face, which might well have been the weirdest thing a Navajo had ever done, but hey... whoever claimed Winchesters were normal? He did at least get the satisfaction of cutting off Pestilence’s ring finger with a snarled “That’s for my great-grandmother,” which Michael certainly wouldn’t have allowed. But the trade-off, ultimately, boiled down to hearing from Gabriel and Death exactly how Amá Sání had foreseen Sam playing Na’ídígishí to Dean’s Naayéé’ Neizgháníi-a plan Sam himself devised based on Gabriel’s intel.

Dean hated the plan with every fiber of his being. But this was one battle he couldn’t fight for Sammy. It was the only plan that both sides wouldn’t see coming. There were no other options. And if the two of them really were supposed to be like the Hero Twins... Dean had to let Sam have his shot. So as much as it pained him, as impossible as it was for him to look Sam in the eye when he said it, he managed to make himself say the one English sentence that might well be the death of them both:

“I’m in.”

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