Fic: Along This Crooked Road - chapter 2 (3/5)
The more the light shines through me, I pretend to close my eyes.
The more the dark consumes me, I pretend I'm burning bright.
~~Burning Bright, Shinedown
If he closes his eyes, looks sideways, Dean can see something else, somewhere else, jarring dislocation that sets his teeth on edge and it never quite goes away, that sense that he's divided, somehow. Fractured, missing your reflection, man with no shadow, River had said, and he wonders how she knows, how she sees him when no one else seems to.
It's odd, the things that ground him. It should be Sam, he thinks, should always be Sam but looking at his brother makes him see a whole new kind of wrong. Crowley, though, one glance at the demon sends fire surging through his veins, molten steel that roots him in the here-and-now like nothing else.
“Dean.”
He realizes he's growling, steady vibration low in his throat and looks sidelong at Zoe.
“Sorry,” he mutters, and she glances across to him and shrugs.
“Whatever he did, he's not worth it.”
“Yes it is,” Dean answers her, but he stays seated where Mal told him to 'stay' after the captain had separated them. Sam's a half dozen yards away, Jayne looming over him while Mal talks to Crowley - Badger, they'd called the demon Badger, he remembers.
“Did you think about making a deal?” he asks.
“What?”
“With him. For your husband. To get him back.”
“I...no,” Zoe spits out, growls something he can't recognize.
“It's not worth it. Seems like it at the time, but it's not. Believe me,” Dean murmurs, more to himself than anyone else. “Things they do Downstairs, no one's worth that.”
“Not going to pretend I understand what you're saying, but you want to stop talking. Now.”
He stops, lets his eyes drift sideways until he can see desert, true desert, not the half-way terraformed landscape where they're sitting but deep, arid sand and scrub and buildings crumbling down into dust that sifts away on the wind and he drifts with it for a while, far-off sense of his body sitting on one side of the fire, Sam watching him from the other, in between arguing with the captain. He can feel the deep-rooted fury bubbling over in his brother, recognizes it for the same rage that drove him in the last couple of years.
“Don't do anything stupid,” he whispers. “We can get through this.”
He thinks Zoe asks him something, but he can't really hear her and he doesn't answer, drifts away again, watches his hands skim along friable stone. They leave a trail, five deep, dark tracks gouged into the walls, looping up and around. Devil traps, enochian sigils carved into a dead city, watched over by empty, blank spaces he can't see into and he understands that they're where the bodies the crew told him about lie, voids that just aren't there to him in this weird half-world.
“You've been there.”
Somehow, her voice is the only one that sounds real. He nods and tries not to shiver.
“A long time.”
“Not so long,” he answers, voice rusty as if he hasn't spoken in years. Or as if he's been screaming.
“Long enough.”
Dean shakes himself, looks sideways at the girl, sat on her heels beside him, looking up at the stars.
“Yeah. Long enough.”
“Storm out there, that hasn't been.”
He's been trying to put a name to the feeling of whatever it is that's out there in the desert, rolls her 'storm' around in his head and decides it fits.
“I used to hunt monsters,” he tells her.
“No such thing.”
“I wish.”
River turns to him, says, “there's not, not anymore. They got scrubbed away along with all the rest.”
“She's right.”
His hands curl into fists before he's even consciously recognized the voice.
“Give me one reason to trust you, Crowley.”
Crowley - Badger, Dean reminds himself - snorts.
“Oh I'll give you a dozen, but try this for starters. There're no more monsters because there's no heaven, no hell, no more power. I'm mortal, thanks to you and that overgrown mutt you call a brother, stuck in this meat. Do you have any idea what that's like?” The shorter man has edged closer to him, right up in his face; he realizes he's standing, feels a hot swell of blood soaking into the bandages on his hands where his fingernails have torn open the burns on his palms again and out of nowhere he's hit with a flash of metal burning tearing shrieking shredding bone from meat over and over day after day after blazing day under the swollen eye in the sky that drips blood and black and screams.
Out in the desert, far away, something roars. There's a hand on his shoulder, too small to be Sam's but he leans into it, sags to his knees, retching and spitting up blood.
“Time to go,” she's saying, quiet and calm but he wouldn't cross her, can feel the power thrumming through her fingers, readiness to hurt that's almost tangible. Footsteps scuff on the sand, he can hear his brother calling his name, the others shouting but around him there's just stillness, centered on the girl, standing at his shoulder.
His ears are bleeding, hot spill that tickles the side of his neck, almost severs the link she's forged between them, just by holding on to him, holding him up when his body wants to
curl up on the ground and wait for it to swallow him whole chew him up spit him out bits and pieces and scraps. She digs her fingers into the meat of his shoulder, tight enough that he can feel her shaking, but not with fear. Suppressed violence, then, barely held in check and he understands what it costs her to just stand and watch Crowley back away.
“Thank you,” he gasps. He hadn't even realized he'd been holding his breath. She shrugs.
“Didn't do it for you. Need him in one piece.”
He struggles to his feet, just in time to meet Sam's frantic rush.
“Jesus, Dean. Are you alright? God, you're... god.”
He lets his brother swipe at the blood, already drying on the side of his neck.
“I'm fine. Did you hear what he said?”
Sam's hand stops and he resolutely doesn't look at Dean as he nods.
“You think they - ”
“I don't know,” he butts in. “Does it really matter?”
“Maybe.”
“All I want to do is find our way back. I've, uh, I've been trying to call Cas, but he's not...”
“He's gone.”
Oddly, it doesn't hurt anymore. He can't work out if that makes it better or worse.
“Do you think there's anything left?” Sam asks, flicks a glance at him. “Back there. Then, I mean.”
Dean looks down, kicks at the dust, watches it fall slowly back to ground. In the corner of his eye he can see a phantom hand lift, fingers wrapping around stone that's miles from where he's standing, half a world away, where the moon's beating down relentlessly on worn fingers that tear the stone away from a wall and it crumbles to dust, sifts down at the same time as the small cloud he kicked up and he hears a quiet wail, far off and distant, so lost it makes his chest tighten and his throat ache.
“No,” he finally answers quietly, knows it to be true. “It's all gone.”
Sam stills, drops his chin to his chest and he looks so worn, so tired that Dean just wants to be able to wrap a hand around the back of his neck and make everything alright again, just by saying it would be.
All he can do is apologize, and Sam huffs a weary laugh.
“Not your fault, man.”
“It's not yours, either.”
“I don't know. Maybe there was another way.”
“Like what? We tried everything, Sam. Everything.”
His brother flinched, and Dean knew they was remembering the same moment, the desperate choice they'd made before they realized they didn't have any choices left anymore.
They, the angels and demons who stood there and watched wouldn't let them die, wouldn't let them do anything but say 'yes'.
“We could have kept telling them to go to hell.”
“For how long? Thirty years? A hundred? They could have kept it up forever, Sam, you know they would have and I couldn't, man. I couldn't do that.”
“Yeah,” Sam whispers, drops his head again, like he can find answers in the dust between their feet, if he stares hard enough. “I know.”
He wants to say something else but before he can work out what, Mal calls them together. Dean stands for a moment, looking at his brother looking at the ground, honestly not sure in, that moment, which of them is more broken. He can feel the missing part of him like a lost tooth.
“Hey,” he says at last. “C'mon. Guess we better see if these space cowboys've gotta plan.”
They join the crew, Badger eying them suspiciously from Mal's side. The captain's talking, something about shuttles and docking and some Russian dude's station that he can't be bothered to try and work out so he tunes it out, listens to the quiet whisper of the wind in the night on the other side of this planet, this strange world that's not home.
Home doesn't exist anymore, maybe never did in this version of reality.
”Dean.”
There's something about Sam's voice, about the way he's shaking Dean's arm that makes him think it's not the first time his brother's called him. Dean blinks, looks up and smiles absently.
“Yeah?”
Sam rolls his eyes and huffs.
“We're moving. Come on. We don't keep up, I think they'll leave us behind.”
It doesn't do a thing to hide how scared he is.
Dean falls in beside him and they trudge through the desert, all of them on edge, nervous and twitchy. When he looks back he sees their bootprints, blowing away in the wind that never quite seems to die here; he knows, though he doesn't know how he knows, that it's something to do with the terraforming, with it reverting to the desolate, arid rock it was before they tried to turn it into home.
Jayne's behind them, scowls at him and he smiles weakly back, faces front again when the big man glowers and mutters to himself.
Soon, he realizes Sam's watching him.
Just sidelong glances as they're walking, when he thinks Dean won't notice and it doesn't take a genius to work out he's waiting for Dean to freak out again, to space out or start bleeding from the ears again, or whatever it was he did before that Sam wouldn't tell him about when he asked and he can see the dry, chapped cracks in his brother's lips and the red-raw knuckles where he's been chewing at them.
It won't be long; whatever's wrong with him now he's got a lifetime of reading his brother to draw on and he counts down in his head.
“What's going on with you, Dean?”
Sam aims for casual, misses by a mile.
“I don't know. I just...” he can't even begin to explain it, so he doesn't even try. “I don't know,” he says again.
Neither of them speak again. No one does; the desert is silent except for the low whistle of the wind, heavy, oppressive hush that settles over them with the sticky heat of the sun
as they hike for miles until Zoe comes back from where she's been ranging out ahead again and tells Mal, “City's up ahead, Sir.”
Dean thinks they ought to be relieved, but the tension just seems to wind tighter, the crew sharing troubled glances. He's starting to wonder what he's missing.
“Ain't gonna get any better, longer we dilly dally out here,” Mal announces. “Jayne, stay on Kaylee and the Doc. Zoe, you're with me.”
It's an odd kind of deja vu, flashback to their hike that morning and further, to Arizona, betrayal and endings and blood and his gaze keeps finding Crowley's back, sliding up to it as if drawn there by some kind of magnet. It makes the demon twitch and shrug, as if his stare is tangible weight, a touch feather-light against the back of his neck.
Dean grins and stares harder, listens to the quiet rasp of their footsteps against the wind-murmur.
“Holy crap.”
He startles, looks over at Sam who's gazing straight ahead, eyes wide, mouth open like he's forgotten to close it and Dean follows the line of his sight, feels his own jaw drop when he sees the city rising up over the dunes of the horizon. The sun's slipping down the sky behind them, soft blue light splashed across the buildings and if he'd been harboring any thoughts that maybe this was all just some kind of twisted-up dream or mistake, they're blown away in the wind. It's like nothing he could have imagined, and with all the shit he's seen, that's saying something. There were cities in Hell, he remembers that, built of living flesh and bone and there's something about the way the walls of this place flow together, out of each other and the desert so seamlessly that reminds him of them but where the cities of hell bled and screamed, this one is silent, utterly sterile, devoid of even the smallest life. He's not sure which creeps him out more.
“It's real,” he says, hears his brother swallow hard.
“It really is,” Sam whispers. He sounds as shocked as Dean is, heart-sick, like he's giving up any hope of ever going home again.
“Well it's about damned time,” Crowley snaps. “Thanks to you two overgrown neanderthals, I've been stuck here in this armpit of a universe with no goddammed power for five hundred years.”
“What are you talking about?”
The demon turns on Sam, squinting into the sun behind his brother's head.
“What do you think I'm talking about? No more heaven or hell means no more power. I'm stuck in this meatsuit forever, no power, no goddamn money in this cess-pool corner of the galaxy and I don't know what kind of deal you made with Michael and Lucifer, but you can damn well find a way back there and unmake it. Pronto!”
Sam looks around them, steps closer to the demon.
“How do you know about the deal?”
“I don't. Not the details. But hello? King of the Crossroads, here! I know a deal when I see one.”
“You can't tell them,” Dean puts in, but there's something scratching at the edge of his awareness, taste of copper and salt on his tongue, dust itching the back of his throat and he's only half-listening as they argue, hushed voices that don't quite drown out the ringing in his ears, not-quite-words that seem just out of reach, infuriatingly close as if he could understand them if he just reached the right way, looked sideways at the world and -
- he is sand, he is dust, he is taste of dying sun and smell of distant stars and he is dance of planets and moons and suns, endless and eternal and forever and he is touch of empty, cold on skin like kiss of wind in the spaces between worlds, he is-
“Coming,” he breathes, quieter than a whisper. “It's coming, it's -
- breaking, broken, he is two halves of the wrong whole, sundered, not-enough everything and too-much nothing he is brief, moth-to-a-flame light and life there-and-then-gone he is-
“It's coming, coming, it's coming,” he whimpers but they don't hear him, not even River, drowned out by the ghosts in the city. “It's coming, I -
- lost and he is alone, never meant to be alone never meant to be and there up ahead in the wide open nothing, brother and enemy and betrayer, he is tricked and he is angry and he is -
“Here.”
:: : ::
Arizona
There is frost-fire in the devil's eyes. Cold, blue shards of ice that flicker, dance like flames as Lucifer smiles, right into his face, so close his mouth waters with the dry, scorch-taste of hell on his tongue.
“Whaddaya say, Sam? Sam-Sammy-Sam-Sam? Sammy-boy?”
“Go to hell,” he bites out, leans back as Lucifer chuckles. Dean's shoulders press against his, faint trembling with every rasping breath his brother draws in. The wet hitch at the bottom of each breath makes the blood dried tacky on his own chin itch, sharp hurt lingering in his ribs; Lucifer isn't the only one getting his hands dirty to try and persuade them.
“Come on, Sam. No need to be like that. Why can't we all just face facts? This is inevita-”
“Let them go.”
He doesn't dare hope, even at the rough, ragged command that echoes out across the desert. The assembled angels and demons shift, low rustle of wings and claws scraping down metal that's more psychic than real.
In front of him, Lucifer blinks, astonishment creasing his face, incredulity.
“Oh, spare me,” Zachariah mutters to the sky.
“Let. Them. Go,” Castiel says again, and Sam knows the angel has virtually no grace left, powerless, but his voice still rolls out, rich and heavy and strong, and maybe Sam can't hope anymore but he can still believe and he does, he does, right up until Zachariah says to the devil; “Would you like to take care of this whining little insect, or should I?”
Lucifer grins.
“Oh please. Allow me.”
Castiel's behind him but Sam can't move, can't turn his head to see. Doesn't want to, once the fallen angel starts to scream, but he can see the shadow, wrenched up into the air, can feel Dean flinch against him as that small, dark shape on the dirt fragments, scraps and pieces torn off with a flick of the devils' fingers. Only when there's nothing left but rags does Lucifer let them drop, tatters that fall to earth with a sound like summer rain.
“Now,” Zachariah mutters. “Where were we?”
“You sonofabitch,” Dean grates out, rumbling against Sam's back.
“Do we have to be so melodramatic?” The angel's smirking, Sam can hear it in his voice and his hand flashes back, catches hold of Dean's arm just as he tries to lunge at Zachariah.
“Dean. Don't.”
Be careful, he doesn't say, knows his brother hears it, feels it. We have to be so careful.
“Maybe this will help you see our side of things,” the devil's saying, holding out a hand for one of his demons to step forward, place an incongruously tiny cell phone on his palm.
“Don't you boys listen to him, you hear me? Don't you - ”
It's Bobby, tinny voice cut off with a pained cry that slices right down to the bottom of Sam's guts.
“How about it, boys? Would you say yes to save your surrogate daddy? No? Hmm.” Lucifer sounds gleefully disappointed. “Oh well. Guess it's curtains for Daddy zero point two then.”
The small, crackling speaker on the phone isn't really adequate to carry the awful, wet sound of crushed meat and bone. Bobby never even gets the chance to scream.
“I'll kill you,” Dean snarls. Sam tightens his hold on his brother's arm, makes himself hold tight, when all he wants to do is fling himself at them. “I swear to god I'll kill every last one of you.”
“You really won't,” the devil muses. “Now. Who's behind door number two, Monty? You've heard of the seven degrees of Kevin Bacon, right Sam? How long do you think it'd take me to get from you to everyone else?”
Dean lunges against his hold again, subsides when Zachariah chimes in;
“You can't keep this up forever.”
The worst thing is, Sam knows he's right, sinking feeling right underneath his ribs, like someone's hollowed him out inside. He can't breathe, as the Devil holds out a hand for another phone, as he sees the small glints of silver, glossy red and shiny black that match the eyes of dozens of waiting demons, he can't fucking breathe as Missouri starts to scream over the sound of the flames but somehow he forces out a ragged cough, “Dean.”
“I know. Fuck. Sammy.”
His brother doesn't sound much better, breathless and shaking where they're pressed against each other, back to back.
“It was always going to come to this,” Zachariah says. Lucifer 'hmms' his agreement.
The screaming goes on for hours.
“I can't,” he whispers, finally. Too late for so many, Ellen and Jo, Luis, Haley, Lisa and Ben, so fucking many, he thinks. He hadn't known they'd touched so many lives.
“Dean. I can't.”
“Alright,” Dean chokes out, like he's just been waiting for Sam. “You motherfucking bastards, stop.”
Sam can almost hear Zachariah holding his breath, eager anticipation.
“You'll give your consent?” the angel asks.
“We want to deal,” Dean shoots back, and Sam thinks we do? brief urge to laugh, hysteria bubbling up his throat. It tastes of iron and copper, of blood, and it makes him want to retch but he's too busy holding himself still and silent, as if he could take it back if they just forgot he was there. Dean's still talking, voice somehow hard and steady when Sam can feel him shaking. “You get your apocalypse, your goddamn fight, but you find a way to let everyone live. Another world, another dimension, I don't fucking care. No one else dies because of this.”
Lucifer looks up, over Sam's shoulder and he knows the Devil must be looking right at Zachariah because after a moment, he nods and the angel says, “Done,” and Lucifer rushes forward, slams his mouth over Sam's and pours down his throat and then everything shifts
sideways,
white becomes black becomes down becomes fire becomes thorns red void blade bullet burning tearing brother-mine hurts it hurts
screaming-sky fist and claw and heart beating heart broken back broken bone
broken broken broken
brother
it hurts it hurts it hurts hurts hurts
and then
fading falling slowing beat
th-thud th-thud
beat stutter beat
th-th-thud
light last light dying of the light beat
th-thud
brother together
us
th-thud
we
th-thud
one
th-
:: : ::
Miranda. 2519
It's a blur, a mad, sand-choked dash for the city, blind instinctive belief that they'll be safe there. Knowing what he knows, he can't figure out why, but it seems to have worked; the screaming, howling thing is out there in the desert but it doesn't cross the edge of the city, a clean wall across the end of the street. On one side, stillness and quiet and on the other, a maelstrom of whirling sand.
If he looks too closely, he thinks he can see faces in it.
He tries not to look.
“You think they're right?”
Mal looks back over his shoulder, to where Jayne's crouched, peering down Vera's sights. The blood streaking the big man's face is drying fast in the desert heat, dark in the weird storm-light that filters through the sand kicked up, choking the air. There's just as much blood on Mal's face, on his hands too and it itches. He scratches at it, flaking away under his short nails, ground in deep and if he let himself think about it, it would make him sick to his stomach but he learned how to not think years ago, in the middle of one battlefield or another, and it's old habit by now.
Mostly.
“What, that Badger's some kind of yāo mó?”
“Seems kinda hard to figure.”
“It really does,” he mutters, twists to look the other way. The Winchesters are huddled against a wall, hunched out of the relentless wind and Sam's got one hand locked tight around his brother's arm, as if he's afraid Dean might just blow away if he can't hold him down. Mal's not so sure he isn't wrong. He can see Sam's mouth moving, talking to his brother but Dean isn't listening, staring slack-featured at the storm raging across the end of the street.
He wonders what the kid sees in it, if he sees those screaming faces or something else. Something worse.
“Not their fault,” River says. She sitting behind Jayne, so quiet and still he'd almost forgotten she was there.
The blood that's on their hands and faces is missing from hers, but she looks at her fists as if they're dripping.
“Never said it was,” Mal tells her.
“Thinking it. Sorry.”
He's not sure if she's apologizing for reading his thoughts or for laying them out in the open like this, grits his teeth. Last thing any of them need right now is a shouting match. He looks the other way, down the street instead of up or across it, finds Zoe, ever watchful, crouched next to Simon, sitting hollow-eyed against the wall, knees drawn up, one wrist resting across them while the other presses into Kaylee's jaw, over the pulse point there.
“Going to be fine,” River murmurs. “Promise.”
She is, but that's not the point. Unbidden, his hands wander to the revolver holstered at his hip, twisted, buckled metal that's still warm to the touch and he can't quite remember what happened, just a chaotic screaming of dust and her cry, the furious roar he'd never suspected Simon was capable of and the burning in his hand as he tried to hold his aim steady, nothing to aimat until the Winchesters had surged up out of the false dark, Sam shoving a limp and bloody Kaylee at him while Dean faced down a storm, alone and unarmed, things moving in the clouds before him. Mal had felt it then, hunger and longing that beat on the winds, shrieking madness that plucked at something buried deep in the bottom of his mind as they ran for the dubious safety of the city streets.
He won't forget it anytime soon, much as he'd like to.
Maybe that's what finally boils over inside him, nervous fear bubbling into outrage over another nightmare he doesn't want or need; he shoves up, fast, sees Jayne flinch at the movement but he's already running, crouched over instinctively to avoid bullets and laser-fire that aren't coming. He's aware of Zoe's questioning call, ignores it, slips and slides on the skim of loose dust that's covering the street and drops to his knees, shoulder fetching up hard against the wall. The glass tolls, bell-like, funereal and he snatches a fleeting glimpse of shapes inside, oddly thin and softened edges.
They just lay down and died.
It takes a wrenching effort to ignore the shiver that crawls down his spine, Badger and Sam looking at him curiously, Dean still staring seemingly mindless out into the storm he'd talked down long enough to let them make it here.
“What crawled up your pigu?” Badger snarks.
“One of you doesn't tell me what that is, I ain't gonna be held accountable for my actions,” Mal bites out, lets one hand drop to the revolver on his hip, just in case they misunderstand. Sam looks at Dean, glares at Badger, who shrugs.
“Don't look at me, mate. Your apocalypse, your deal, your brother. Your explanation.”
Mal can almost see the rage boiling off the hunter, heat-haze shimmering against the street and sky and damned if it doesn't feel a little too much like the storm howling behind him for comfort, but the kid swallows it down, throat and jaw working tight. It shivers and ripples through his voice when he can finally force himself to speak.
“I told you how we grew up, right? It was... fuck. Our whole lives, we were being driven toward something. Our destiny.” He spits the word out, face pinched, like it tastes foul. “We thought, I thought I was doing the right thing, but they played us, strung us along to do just what they wanted.”
“End of the world,” Dean breathes, blinking slowly, and Sam pales, nods heavily.
“The apocalypse. The final battle between good and evil, between Lucifer and Michael.”
It's been a long time since Mal sat through a sermon, but some things are hard to forget, no matter how much he might have wanted to.
“There was war in heaven, Michael and his angels going forth to war with the dragon,” he quotes, wonders how Book would have said it, if he'd have had the same flair for fire and brimstone that the preacher on Shadow once did. Badger peers up at him.
“Never took you for a sheep, captain.”
He ignores the man, just like he ignores the taste-memory of the cross against his lips through the blood and the grime of the battlefield.
“Go on,” is all he says, watching the two brothers as Dean frowns at the storm, Sam casting him a worried glance.
“We were supposed to be their vessels, only they had to have our consent and they tried everything. We kept saying no.”
“Shove it where the sun don't shine,” Dean mumbles and Sam gives a bitter, hard little laugh.
“Over and over,” he says. “We just kept telling them no.”
“Somethin' changed.”
Sam nods.
“We were trapped.” He won't look at Mal or his brother, or anything except Badger. “He tricked us, lured us in and summoned all of heaven and hell right to us. We didn't have a choice. You understand? There was no way out, and they... fuck. They found everyone we ever cared about, and they killed them.”Something about the way he says it tells Mal that it was much, much worse than that. “They would have killed everyone, just to get us to say yes.”
Sam falls silent, like he can't go on, like he can't stand to remember what happened next but Mal can guess.
“So you said yes to whatever they were askin'. Figure it had to be somethin' pretty bad.”
Sam nods.
“It was,” he whispers hoarsely. “It was... you can't imagine. They possessed us.”
He looks up at Mal then, as if to make sure he knows what it means. He doesn't, really, but he remembers the stories the old ranch hands used to tell back when he was a boy, things riding a man from the inside, turning him into something he wasn't. There was a time, mostly in the dead of night, when he'd thought maybe that was what the Reavers were. Before he knew better.
“They fought,” Badger says, speaking up suddenly and if he didn't know better, Mal would think it was mercy that colored his words, shame that darkened his eyes. “A battle would've made Serenity Valley look like a roll in a park with a liánjià de jìnǚ. When they were done, they'd destroyed each other. Mutually assured destruction, we used to call it. Whatever it was, there was enough energy in the end to toss these two through time 'n space but it took a bit of Michael with 'em. Locked up in his head, best guess. That's what's out there. A piece of an archangel's soul all twisted-up with a bit of his and all of it stark raving bloody insane.”
Mal blinks for a moment.
“Don't really know if I believe all this,” he mutters. “Yāo mó and tiānshĭ? That's fairytales.”
Sam laughs softly. There's not much humor in it, weary and stretched thin, worry deepening the lines on his face, bracketing his mouth, carved between his brows.
“Like I said to Zoe. Spaceships and colony worlds are pretty far out there for us, man.”
He sounds almost wistful, Mal thinks. He asks, “There a way to get you back?”
Badger shakes his head, Sam shrugs.
“God knows, we've found ways to do things that were supposed to be impossible before, but this... I don't know. I just, I don't know.”
“There anything to go back to?”
Sam laughs again, jagged and harsh as before and it twists something sharp underneath Mal's ribs, something equal parts recognition and old, old fury he'd thought he was done with until a year ago.
“Probably not. We gave them everything they wanted, an Earth with no people. If it even still exists, there's nothing there for us.”
Mal chews at the inside of his cheek for a moment, tastes salt-sweat and the slow fading tang of blood and ozone. The still air shifts, cool breeze flickering over his skin and he looks over his shoulder, at the building behind them, knows the boy's seen the bodies inside by the way he refuses to even acknowledge the wall of glass at his back.
“Way I remember it,” he says, quietly. “That last battle 'twixt good and evil was supposed to bring about the second age, world of peace and plenty.”
“They lied,” Sam whispers. “It was never meant for us.”
“Alliance tried to make this world a place like that, turned it into a charnel house instead. Occurs to me, we ain't meant to live that way. We fight, as a rule, and sometimes it ain't for anythin' worth fighting for. Hell, most of the time, it's that way. But there's times a man has a chance to fight for somethin' real. Somethin' that matters.”
“And sometimes you can't win, no matter which side you're fighting on. Captain Reynolds, believe me. I've told myself all of that. Justified everything that happened but it can't be justified. We fucked up. That's all.”
“Then you make it right,” Mal grinds out, jaw tight. That old anger's building again, burning cold along his veins, not really at these boys at all. “Even if it's just this little patch of the 'verse, you make it right. My crew, my ship got taken down by your battle and now we're trapped here by it too and I ain't aimin' to die on this ghosa world, dong ma?”
“I don't... I don't know how,” Sam sounds young and lost and his fingers turn white where they're locked around his brother's arm, until Mal winces. Dean doesn't react.
“You keep tryin',” Mal tells them, shivers as a chill snakes through him. “You keep on fightin' until you figure out how to make it right.”
“Like you did?” Dean snaps, out of nowhere, turning on him. Sam yells, scrambles back, knocking Badger away and fumbling for the gun at his belt. It's suddenly, bitingly cold, Mal's fingers aching with it as the butt of his gun turns to ice, frost crackling along the edges of the building.
“You made it right, didn't you, Captain?” the boy snarls and his eyes are white from edge to edge, blank, empty white that hits Mal like a physical blow, air rushing out of his lungs as he doubles over around a sudden fire that burns in his belly. The gun slips out of his fingers, turning blue with the cold as Dean looms over him, voice like thunder shaking the ground.
“Took your war out into the worlds and let them all turn on each other again, don't any of you ever learn?”
“Get out of him!” Sam shouts, but he can hardly hear it over the pounding rush of his heart. His legs buckle, fold beneath him and he can taste blood in his mouth, the world narrowing down to the sensation of it slipping hot and slick down his chin, everything else a confused blur; someone grabbing his leg, dragging him away. He comes back to himself in the middle of the street, the pain and the terrible cold fading away, Zoe crouched over him, Simon's hands on his head.
“Captain? Can you hear me?” the doctor's saying. He looks like he's been asking for a while, concerned, and Mal rouses himself enough to mumble an answer.
“Sir?”
“Gun,” he manages again, twists his head out of Simon's hands to spit a bloody mouthful onto the sand. One appears, thrust into his sight and he takes it out of Jayne's hand, hefts the weight before he turns back. “What's happenin'?”
It comes out slurred and thin, and when he lets Zoe pull him to his feet he feels just as bad as he sounds, wrung out and shaky.
“Not rightly sure, Sir.”
Her reply's punctuated with thunder that he doesn't hear, a low rumble that trembles up along his spine and he turns, too fast, staggers sideways as he tries to find his balance again. It takes him a moment to realize that it's not just him; the ground itself is shaking, rippling under the 'crete surface, concentric cracks stretching out away from the end of the street, where the storm's gone, sand drifting lazily down from the air, the evening sun setting the haze alight with a glow that shines fierce and bright around a figure. It's Dean Winchester, the thing that's in him, at least, Mal doesn't need to see those awful, hatefully empty white eyes to know that but he can see them anyway, somehow, shining out from the shadows that cloak the rest of his face like a shroud. He's standing at the end of the street, arms thrown wide, fingers grasping at nothing and -
“He ain't touchin' the ground,” Mal breathes. “Lao tyen yeh, his boots ain't on the gorram ground.”
“He's some kind've crazy psycho, Mal,” Jayne mutters. “Kinda like River, only not as pretty.”
Mal slides the man a bemused glance, half aware of Zoe doing the same and Jayne shuffles uncomfortably.
“Well, she is. 'Cept for the being all crazy.”
“Remind me later how that girl ain't fried your brain yet?” he mutters, turns back to the incredible, awful scene unfolding at the end of the street. Sam's in front of his brother, he sees now, one hand held up, palm out and Mal can see it shaking from here, trembling with an effort that brings the young man to his knees even as they watch.
He hasn't felt so helpless in a months, not since they were last here watching the recording that turned the 'verse on its head and even then, he knew what to do, what had to be done. Now, there's nothing, and he hefts the gun in his hand, swears under his breath.
“There a plan, Sir?”
Mal shrugs, shakes his head. Sam chokes at the end of the street, barely audible over the sound that Mal knows he's not really hearing, a tearing groan like the world coming apart at the seams as the thing in Dean laughs.
It sounds beautiful, that laughter, rich and deep and it makes Mal want to throw up; nothing so gut-wrenchingly wrong should sound so perfect. Sam flinches and Mal finds his feet moving, carrying him closer of their own volition, Jayne and Zoe beside him. They're moving like puppets, like marionettes controlled by a demented puppet master; in the edge of his vision Mal can see Simon standing jerkily, Kaylee swaying on her knees, face cheesy-pale, all of them drawn inexorably closer to the thing - Michael, he thinks, Badger was right - still laughing and bringing his arms down, as if he's waiting to embrace them all.
“Run-tse de shang-dee,” Zoe breathes. “Sir. Inside.” She sounds like she's choking on the words and Mal looks, feels something deep-rooted in him break with a clear, hard sound as he sees the bodies in the buildings twitch and crumble to dust as they try to stand. He tries to lift the gun but his arm doesn't move, hangs dead weight at his side no matter how much he strains and then he's level with Sam Winchester, sees the blood trickling steadily from the boy's nose and eyes when Sam looks up at him.
And winks.
It's so fast, he's not even sure he saw it, would dismiss it if the sensation hadn't returned to his limbs with a tingling rush, a thousand needles prickling just under his skin. He almost stops, catches himself just in time and stumbles ever closer to Michael, to where the angel just keeps on laughing, waiting for them.
“We will remake the worlds again,” he says. Mal thinks he can hear Dean's voice beneath it somewhere, cracking and breaking with the force of Michael's, a faint grimace of agony flickering across his features before they smooth out again into the somehow ageless, impassive mask that Mal knows is Michael. “In our own image and this time they will be perfect.”
“Never did care much for perfect,” Mal retorts, lifts the gun and pulls the trigger before he can let himself think, and Michael's hand is suddenly there around his throat, as if he
didn't cross the intervening space at all. The bullet drops from his other hand as Michael lifts him up, thrusts his face right into Mal's, so he's staring straight down into those awful white eyes.
“Did you believe a bullet could stop me? Mud monkey,” it calls him, spits it up into his face. “Crawling little maggot, did you truly believe you could stop me?”
“No.”
Mal barely hears Badger through the roaring in his ears, his vision tunneling to the look of surprise on Michael's face.
“He was just the diversion. They're the ones gonna stop you.”
Iron fingers loosen from around Mal's throat, drop him carelessly and he sprawls on the dusty 'crete, gasping. Under his wide-spread hand, he feels it shift and crack, crawling power that etches symbols into the 'crete, inches deep, and they glow hot as the angel begins to scream. Mal scrabbles away, finds Zoe and Jayne's hands and lets them drag him back to where he can see Sam and River, on either side of the angel, Badger standing behind him with his hands carelessly in his pockets. The circle completes itself around the angel in seconds, closes with a short, sharp thunderclap and Michael slumps to his knees, panting hard. One hand splays out on the ground, fingers digging in until Mal's sure he can see blood seeping up around the beds of his nails.
“Get out of him.”
Sam's mouth moves, but it sounds even less like him than Michael's voice did coming out of Dean's throat. Badger twitches, just a little, schools his face back to careful arrogance but he looks scared, deep down.
“You're not my brother,” Michael sneers. ”Pathetic. I killed him.”
“Not all of him.”
It's a threat, that much is obvious, and Mal's racking his brain for half-remembered lessons of the hierarchy of the angels, comes up with a name he shapes silently.
Lucifer.
He doesn't know what it means, but Badger sees him and pales, sweat staining the collar of his jacket and his tie. It looks like a noose as the little man shakes his head, a short, sharp motion.
“I won,” Michael says, digs those bleeding fingers in deeper, forcing them through the cracks in the 'crete like he's looking for something. “I won,”
“No.” Sam shakes his head, and he's just Sam now, just a poor, lost kid five hundred years displaced, watching the mad remains of an archangel ride his brother's body into the
ground. “No one did.”
He steps forward, until his toes are brushing the edge of the outermost circle, reaches over the line and rests his hand on his brother's head.
“You'll kill him,” Michael whispers.
Sam smile is painful to see.
“I know,” he manages, and the fierce glow that spears up out of Dean's mouth and eyes glitters on the tears on their cheeks before something sucks all the air out of the world and turns everything white.
chapter 1
epilogue