Fic: Monstrosity Divine - Chapter 3
The bodies were twisted and mangled, many beyond recognition, yet they formed an almost perfect circle around Castiel’s peaceful form. There was a twenty foot gap of space surrounding him before the first line of corpses, as if he didn’t wish to touch them. Likewise, although a few of their necks had been snapped, most of them were simply broken and smoldering, instantly annihilated and smote into oblivion with celestial power. Castiel closed his eyes, reveling in the brief peacefulness. He felt Lucifer’s approach before he heard him and turned around slowly.
“You’re supposed to be managing Hell.”
“It’s self-contained, at present,” Lucifer replied. “It takes years for a soul to twist enough to be called a demon.”
Castiel blinked placidly, head tilting to one side. “Does it? I’ve seen it happen much more quickly than that.”
“There are always exceptions, but trust me, I have it under control.”
A small, choked laugh bubbled up out of Castiel’s throat. “Trust you?”
Lucifer stopped halfway from where he was stepping over the bodies to reach Castiel’s side. “Don’t you think you should, considering our respective positions as of late?”
“I don’t need to trust you. I can destroy you if you cross me.” He waited a moment for Lucifer to react, expecting anger or pride, potentially both, but there was only the soft footsteps of Lucifer stepping ever closer. “You test me. You test me by coming here.”
“I don’t.”
“Yes you do. You are supposed to manage Hell.”
“And in exchange, I am no longer confined and thus permitted to visit Earth. Hell is managed, and I am visiting.”
“Why did you come here, Lucifer?” Castiel’s eyes remained closed, preventing Lucifer from accurately reading his expression.
“I was concerned.”
Muscles clenching in a brief moment of tension, Castiel’s posture became stiff as he turned to look at Lucifer. He gestured vaguely around him. “They were committing sins in my name,” he said. “Not that I owe you an explanation, of course, but I do not tolerate people speaking on my behalf. They attack their fellows for acts I do not condemn and then call themselves my champion. I gave them a chance to stand down, but…”
“I wasn’t talking about them, obviously.”
“Sam Winchester is unharmed.”
Lucifer’s face twitched with a barely restrained expression. “That’s good, but it’s not him I came for this time.”
“Even as a mere angel, I was more than capable of defending myself against humans.”
“Yes, and you used your battle prowess to defend them at great personal expense, I understand. Now you seek to wipe them out?”
“These sinners must be dealt with, Lucifer. I have little else to say on the matter. If you are going to put forth the argument that I am ‘not myself’, then you are correct. I’ve told you who I am now, as I told them, and I will hear no more argument on the matter. “
Castiel was gone in an instant, leaving Lucifer standing alone as had become the new habit between them. Running away, Lucifer thought to himself. Castiel was running away from something, and Lucifer was certain that he’d seen a flicker of fear hiding deep within his younger brother’s eyes.
“Man, where the Hell is freakin’ Crowley?” Dean grumbled. “He was supposed to be here ages ago. I mean, what are we supposed to do? Just sit on our hands until Cas decides that his whole benevolent dictatorship bullshit is suddenly less benevolent? After the way he… Sam. Sam. Are you even listening to me?”
Sam blinked his eyes several times, carefully and deliberately, before looking up to meet Dean’s gaze. “Yes. Crowley. Cas. Benevolent dictatorship. I hear you.”
“Yeah, you hear me, but you’re not listening. So what is this? The fallout from your downstairs vacation?” Dean shifted nervously. Sam hadn’t been the same since Castiel had broken the wall in his head, but it was rapidly becoming worse. He stared blankly at nothing, watched invisible movement with wide, red eyes. He had strange muscle spasms that had escalated to the point of making him collapse several times, lying on the floor twitching in agony for what might have been days, weeks, months inside his head. Attempts to treat him or console him at all were becoming increasingly impossible since he couldn’t keep down food, or medication for that matter, and every time he managed to fall asleep, he woke up shaking and crying. They weren’t talking about it. Sam would be fine, Dean knew, because Sam had to be fine. It was Sam.
“I just don’t know what you want me to say here, Dean,” Sam said quietly, trying to ignore the critical, scrutinizing way Dean’s eyes moved over his face. Ice cold fingers dug into his back, and razor sharp nails raked down his flesh. Sam could feel his shirt soaking with blood. That’s not real, he reminded himself. I’m fine. “For all we know Cas found out what Crowley was talking to us and already got rid of him.”
“No. No, he wouldn’t…. Yeah. He would, wouldn’t he? Dammit!”
“Calm down.”
“How am I supposed to be calm when Cas is out there doing who knows what kind of damage and our only chance to stop him just vanished? Not to mention your…” Dean gestured vaguely to his head, at a loss for words.
“You’re talking about killing Cas…”
Dean turned sharply, eyes dark and narrowed. “No, Sammy. I’m talking about stopping his insane rampage and saving a bunch of people.”
Sam shook his head quietly, refusing to meet Dean’s eyes. He only looked up when he heard the heavy footfalls in the next room reach the doorway.
“Hate to interrupt the party here, boys, but I think there’s something you oughtta see,” Bobby murmured. He moved with a sort of graceless lethargy, guiding the two brothers into the adjacent room where the television was playing an international news stream.
“He wasn’t like… you know, old or anything,” the perky girl on the screen explained, shaking her head. “No, he was young and handsome. He had these intense blue eyes, but he was wearing this really old tan trench coat. He said that sins committed in the name of God were the height of blasphemy and then he just… killed all the deacons.”
Sam’s breath caught in his throat. “Oh my God…”
“Yeah. Exactly,” Dean muttered, folding his arms across his chest. “How’re we doing on the spell there, Bobby?”
“Oh, you mean binding Death? That’s going just peachy. What happened to your double agent anyway?”
“AWOL. Probably smote.”
“At least you’re being optimistic.”
Dean shot him a scowl, but he didn’t answer. The reality was that Castiel was off killing people in a fit of self-righteous fervor, and there was absolutely nothing they could do to stop him. Dean switched from beer to whiskey and sat back down in front of the television, hardly paying any attention to the stack of research Bobby dropped in front of him on the table. He didn’t notice Sam ducking out of the room.
Lucifer lay stretched across his back on a grassy hill in the New Zealand countryside. After the ice and fire of Hell, eons of torment followed by a brief escape that was punctuated only by constant running and physical deterioration, the warm sun and cool breeze were a welcome relief. He wondered what it was like to sleep, how it felt to have worries slip away and let the mind go into a strange subconscious that created pleasant images to entertain itself while the body rested. He was tempted to try, hoping to build Heaven up behind his eyes and revel in the memories of his family, but the strange crackling in the air instantly eliminated any chance of relaxation. Lucifer opened his eyes and sat upright when he saw the dark red spatters across Castiel’s trench coat.
“Are you alright?”
Castiel gave him a disparaging glance, seeming almost insulted. “It is, quite obviously, not my blood.”
“Obviously, but my question stands.”
“I’ll not dignify that with response. Why have you left your post?”
Lucifer chuckled dryly. “Look, Castiel, if you came here to lecture me about-”
“I came to ask you a question.”
Lucifer waited, watching Castiel shift his weight from foot to foot for a few moments before he spoke again.
“Are you able to hear prayers?”
“I honestly don’t know. I sincerely doubt it, though I daresay nobody has ever tried. Why do you ask?”
“I do… hear them, I mean.”
“Naturally. You run about calling yourself ‘God’ and you’re bound to get some mental interference for it.”
“Yes. I suppose there is a fair bit of noise, but that’s not what I’m referring to. The one voice was clear for a moment. I thought perhaps you were involved.”
“Someone was praying to you, and you thought I was involved? I don’t exactly follow the logic.”
“It was Sam Winchester.”
“Oh.”
Castiel turned to look at Lucifer then, watching his expression with more than a hint of curiosity. “You sound concerned.”
“I am concerned.”
“He wants me to stop my work. He doesn’t understand the necessity of it… But surely you do.”
A small smile crept across Lucifer’s face, and he tilted his head to one side. “Having doubts?”
“No,” Castiel said, too quickly to be convincing. “I simply find the sound of his voice distracting.”
“Tune it out.”
Castiel’s lips pressed into a thin line, but he was too proud and too ashamed to admit that he had thus far been unable to do so. He couldn’t tune any of the strange voices out. He simply endeavored to ignore them as they ran together into a nonsensical hum in his mind. Sam was different though. Sam had been his friend. A look of irritation twisted Castiel’s features when Lucifer stood, forcing Castiel to look up in order to meet his gaze.
“Castiel,” Lucifer whispered, reaching for his younger brother’s shoulder, “if you need to tell me something, you can just say it. You don’t have to-”
“I don’t need anything from you,” Castiel snapped, jerking away from the contact. “I came here as a courtesy, but now I can see that such is wasted on you.”
Lucifer’s brows drew together in confusion as he watched the strange way Castiel moved. He paused. “…What happened to your face? Castiel?”
Castiel shot him an icy glare, lips curling into a frustrated snarl before his expression became totally blank. Lucifer reached for him cautiously, hoping to grab his hand, his arm, the sleeve of his coat, anything, but he was left gripping nothing but the cool air as Castiel vanished from his fingertips.
Dean and Bobby found Sam unconscious in the dirt, skin pale and clammy. The front of his face was streaked with blood where it ran from his nose, and his muscles clenched sporadically in a seizure. It took a lot of effort between the two of them to move his body back into the house, a clumsy, awkward, though mostly successful effort. They dropped him on the couch, and his body slumped uselessly, one arm dangling over the edge and a hand resting against the floor. They watched him for hours, watched hum struggle to breathe, watched his body twist in pain, watched as he arched and screamed in response to remembered pain and fear that he couldn’t escape from. Sam stopped breathing more than once. Then, all at once, he became very still.
“Sam…? Sammy? Dammit,” Dean muttered, wiping one hand down his face. “Okay, so, now what?”
Bobby stared at him a little blankly. “What do you mean ‘now what’?”
“I mean what do we do now?”
“Well, usually this is about the time you call-”
“Look, that’s obviously out of the cards now.”
“Have you even tried?”
“Tried what? Bobby, you saw him. That’s not Cas anymore. It’s ‘God’, and as much as I hate it, we’re going to have to…”
“Kill him?” came the soft, only vaguely familiar voice.
Dean turned around slowly, but his worst fear was already confirmed by the expression of horror on Bobby’s face. The Devil looked different, Dean thought, but then again, the last time he’d seen him, he had been wearing Sam’s skin and punching in Dean’s face. Now he looked almost calm. His deep blue eyes held the sort of serene confidence of one who knew that, try as they might, the hunters had no recourse to use against him. Likewise, his face was relaxed, no longer covered by peeling skin and blistering burns. If Dean didn’t know any better, he might have thought that this wasn’t Lucifer at all, maybe just his former vessel, but there was no mistaking the way the air seemed to hum and crackle with energy all around him.
“Don’t worry. I’m not here to hurt you. If I wanted you dead, you would have been a long time ago.”
“Sorry if some of us ain’t finding that too comforting,” Bobby mumbled, averting his gaze instinctively when Lucifer turned to regard him with little more than a slight tilt of his head, almost as if he didn’t even recognize him.
“Oh,” he said, after a moment.
Dean bristled at the nonchalance. “Look, if you’re here for Sammy, you can just-”
“Hardly seems necessary now, does it?” Lucifer asked, giving a hint of a smile as he moved his hand down in one sweeping gesture to the length of his body. “Though I daresay you wouldn’t be able to stop me. You’d do well to learn some courtesy, Dean. You are not immortal.”
Dean swallowed hard, resisting the urge for a sarcastic reply that he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get out even if he tried. His eyes followed the way Lucifer straightened up from how he was leaning against the wall and reached over to dust off the shoulder of his jacket with a small frown. That was a good opportunity for comment, he thought, but he still couldn’t speak.
“Fortunately enough, Castiel is, which is the only reason he’s made it near so long as he has. Still, if I don’t figure out some way to reverse the mutation-”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a second.” Dean held his hands up, and Lucifer frowned at having been interrupted. “Mutation? Guy’s God now, or haven’t you heard the good news?”
“Calling oneself a god doesn’t make one a god, but that isn’t exactly the point here. You were with him when it happened, so you can tell me-”
“You’re asking for our help?”
Lucifer sighed. “I’m cutting corners for the sake of sparing time. Besides, it was you who called us, the way I hear it. I figured that was as much of an invitation as I was bound to get.” He watched Dean’s eyes narrow, brows knitting together in confusion, and returned the glance. “Sam’s prayer?”
“Sammy wouldn’t pray to you,” Dean hissed.
“No… probably not, but he did pray to Castiel, and that’s why… I don’t need to explain this to you, Dean. I’m going to talk to Sam.” Lucifer stepped forward in an attempt to move past the two men and into the next room, but Dean cut him off.
“You can’t.”
“Excuse me?”
“What he means is that Sam ain’t up for talking right now?”
“Why not?”
Dean glared at him harshly. “Oh, I think you know why not.”
“I don’t. He was able to reclaim his soul, wasn’t he?”
“Oh, yeah. He got his soul back, complete with all the torture scars you and Michael left on him.”
Lucifer’s eyes widened, and his mouth hung open and useless for several moments in horrified shock. “Is that what you think happened?”
“I know exactly what happened. Sammy’s been reliving it all ever since Cas tore his brain wall down.”
“Brain wall? I suppose that would be temporarily effective in sectioning off the damage. Sam believes the same then?”
“I’m sure he remembers every minute of it.”
Lucifer nodded, fingers rubbing along the line of his jaw thoughtfully. Now wasn’t the time to be upset about this. “I need to see him.”
“No,” Dean snapped, stepping sideways to further block the door with his body and lifting his chin in defiance.
“Dean,” Bobby hissed warningly.
“I understand your hesitation, but Sam will die if you don’t let me see him. I’m an archangel. I can help.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you’re handing out healings out of the goodness of your heart.”
Lucifer smiled then. It hardly made any difference; they wouldn’t believe that he would heal Sam for nothing even if he tried to convince them. He had expected to be hated and blamed for many things, but there was an opportunity here as well. “You tell me how Castiel got whatever it is that’s crawling around inside of him, and I’ll do what I can for Sam’s wall.”
Dean considered the proposition for less than a second. One glance through the doorway to Sam’s limp form, his pale face, and the fresh trickle of blood and Dean knew. Sam was dying. Hell was killing him. He blew out an agitated breath. “You better fix him…”
When Lucifer first touched Sam, placing two fingers against his temple, nothing seemed to happen. Dean and Bobby both watched with trepidation from the doorway, but deep down, they were asking themselves how much worse it could get. Sam’s body arched off the couch, and he jerked his head sharply to the side, grimacing in pain. Dean started to step forward, eager to pull Lucifer away from Sam, but Bobby caught his arm. Now wasn’t the time to interrupt.
Sam opened his eyes slowly, staring up at Lucifer through a haze of confusion. “You’re not… You can’t be…”
“It’s alright now, Sam. You’ll be fine. I am sorry it came to this, for what that’s worth, which I’m sure is very little.” Lucifer fixed Sam’s hair back from his eyes before turning away. “We had a deal.”
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