FIC: Supernatural: Recrudesence 12 - 17
We'll be fighting in the streets
With our children at our feet
And the morals that they worship will be gone
And the men who spurred us on sit in judgment of all wrong
They decide and the shotgun sings the song.
I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
And I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again…
Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss
~The Who - Won’t Get Fooled Again
___________________________________________________________
*
The rings were beyond his reach.
Raphael growled. He had no Sacrifice, the other archangels would not allow their own lives to be shed for Michael’s freedom, and he could not. He had been created for the coming war. He could not die before it came. He felt he need of it like his lightening, shimmering through his celestial body, burning as it went. But without a Sacrifice, he had to have the rings.
Winchester had the rings. He had no way to track him. The frustration of that was…unbearable.
He could not find the Winchester brothers, not on his own. He’d sent out a call, to all his followers and to all the fanatical little monkeys who would listen, and he knew that all he need do now was wait. Eventually they would be seen. And then the rings would be his.
And he could have his war.
But patience had never been a virtue he had much adhered to, and every second he was forced to wait, his anger at this world, this petty little existence, grew deeper.
“Well, well, well…aren’t you just a tasty little morsel.” She strolled out of the night, all strut and pride and amusement, but underneath there was the stench of fear and despair. “All that yummy anger and pride. Mmmmm,” she practically purred, “I could just eat you with a spoon, lover.”
He stared at her, feeling the evilness of her seeping from her core like rot from a corpse. “You dare speak to me, you pismire? You dare?” He felt the lighting come to him, sparking under his feat, flaring in his eyes. “It would take me less than a second to obliterate you. Less than a thought. You are nothing. One of the least crawling about in a plague colony of the worthless. Go away.”
“If I’m so worthless, why haven’t you offed me yet, oh great and powerful Oz? Could it be curiosity?” She smiled, the expression dark and slightly threatening. “You know what that did to the cat, right?”
“I am not some human soul,” he turned the word into an insult, “given a few magic tricks. I am not curious about you.” He reached out, not physically, but with his grace and began to squeeze.
The demon gasped, choked, slowly began to topple. He took his time. It was interesting how the shades of death in the face of the host complemented the blanching of the demonic spirit underneath.
The demon whooped in a blood soaked breath, tossing her head back, and shouted: “We want the same thing!”
“I sincerely doubt that.” He twisted his ‘grip’, and enjoyed the half scream that resulted.
“The. End.”
He relaxed his hold, just a bit. “What?”
“The end. Of the world.” The words bubbled and popped as they escaped her host’s throat. “I know another way to open the cage!”
“I need only one way.”
“The rings won’t work for you!”
Raphael hesitated. Demons lie. But she was no threat. “Explain.”
She fell as he let his power retract, panting and rubbing her chest and throat. “Wow,” she eventually croaked. “I haven’t had foreplay like that in way too long.” She grinned up at him through bloodstained teeth.
Electricity filled the air. “You try my patience, demon.”
“Yeah. I’m told that’s my best talent.” She heaved herself to her feet, staggering a bit as she caught her balance. She smiled. “Or, well, one of them.”
He slapped her. Though he didn’t move, her head snapped back viciously and she staggered. She looked back at him, rubbing a cheek. “You’re good at causing pain…almost as good as us.”
He glared. “Explain yourself or you will find out how much pain I can cause.”
“Promises, promises.” Raphael took half a step toward her, but she held up a hand. “Chill, alright? I’m going to tell you if you’ll give me a second.”
“The rings,” Raphael growled.
“Yeah. Okay. I’ve been watching those rings for a long time, now. I’ve been looking for a way to get at them for months. I probably want the cage open even more than you do, believe it or not. So I’ve been waiting…and watching. And, Mr. Angel, you got played. Winchester and his pet bird pulled a shill game on you.”
“Shill game?”
She smirked. “Winchester did give the feathered freak the rings. They were two feet in front of you, and he sent you running in the wrong direction.” She shrugged, “Not that I don’t appreciated the art of it.”
Lightening pulsed through borrowed veins. “Castiel has the rings? He lied? I will destroy him.” He began to move, shifting his location on this plane -
“Hold up, chief,” she said. “I know where the rings are.”
Raphael glared, judging the sincerity of the words. “How would you know?”
She chuckled. “I told you, I’ve been watching those rings for months, looking for an in. I watched you and the other whitemeat chat. I knew what he was doing. And when you left, I followed him.”
“He would have sensed you,” Raphael growled.
She only shrugged, though. “Maybe he did. I don’t know. I wasn’t going to take on an angel, anyway, so maybe he just didn’t care.”
It was a reasonable explanation. “So, if you know where the rings are, why haven’t you gone after them yet?”
“Your boy put them out of my reach. Hell, he probably made it so your kind can’t get to them, either. I was going to nab some human and make him do the dirty work no matter if it killed him…especially if it killed him - but then I got to thinking, and realized it wouldn’t do me any good anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
She smiled, a trace of mockery in the expression. “Even if you could get the rings, what would you do with them?”
The ozone smell to the air increased with his irritation. “Open the cage.”
“How?”
For a moment he didn’t take her meaning, then slowly comprehension began. He blinked. She smirked.
“You don’t know how to use them anymore then I do, do you? No instruction manual, and no idea how to turn the rings on.” She stepped toward him, actually had the gall to bring her filth nearer him. “Winchester is the only person this side of Death that knows how they work. Without that, you’re spiting into the wind, big guy.”
Rage flared, hot and sharp and not so different from the lightening that was his gift. “I will find Winchester. He will scream and die and keep screaming, until he tells me.”
“Ooo, nice. You almost sound like one of us.”
“I am not one of you.” Light flashed as a bolt crack the sky, as clear and as powerful as a whiplash.
She smiled in the harshness of the burst. “Anger. Pride. Hate. And a willingness to destroy to get your own way. If it quacks like a duck…. Damn, you even got the feathers.” She looked him up and down, speculatively, then she shrugged. “You could try torturing Winchester for the info, hell, I’d love to watch, but he held up under one of our best for a long damned time. It’ll take awhile to break him. And I don’t think you want to wait that long. Especially when there’s an alternative.”
It grated, that such a corrupt and lesser being could know more then him. “Explain.”
“You like giving orders, don’t you, Ducks. I thought it was better to serve in Heaven.” She shrugged. “Not that I really care. Anyway, you’re looking for the wrong Winchester.”
His limited acceptance of the creature snapped. “Enough of this,” he snarled, and closed his talons over her again. “You’re talking in circles.”
“Sam Winchester! It’s him you need!”
He lifted her off the ground, letting the weight of her host’s body skewer her on his power. “The abomination?”
“Yes! He’s the real key!”
He dropped her for a second time. He enjoyed the noise she made as she hit the ground. “There are only two ways to open lock on the Devil’s cage: The rings and Sacrifice. You spout nonsense.”
“Use him as the sacrifice.” The words were panted, pain filled, broken…
And ridiculous. “It would take the death of a powerful being to open the lock,” the archangel sneered. “He’s nothing. Less than nothing. A human with a soul so broken that he is barely alive. He has no power.”
“Neither did Lilith, once,” the demon said, and her voice was like velvet. “Lilith was created human. The only human to see and speak to Lucifer himself, in his true form.”
“She was corrupted,” Raphael agreed.
“She was changed. Through his blood. She was the original key. Three ways to open the cage, Ducks: the rings, power, or understanding of true evil. A human soul who has been possessed by Lucifer himself - and Lilith was the only one that ever existed… until now.”
“It was her power that allowed her sacrifice to open the cage,” Raphael argued.
But the demon shook her head. “She was the key from the moment the cage was locked. At any time she could have been sacrificed, and her death would have turned the lock - but nobody wanted to open the cage back then. She was the key before she was powerful. It was genius, to make her the key. She was self-aware enough to want to live, and would fight against being killed - so the stronger she got, the more secure the cage became.”
“But it was her power that allowed the opening of the cage,” Raphael repeated, growling.
“I’ll take it slow for the logic impaired. Lilith’s death tuned the lock, the release of power swung the door wide.”
“Selaphiel’s sacrifice opened the door quite nicely. And he never knew evil.”
She only chuckled. “Never knew evil? He was related to it. All of you are. But, that’s a debate for another day,” she shrugged. “You guys are powerful, I admit that. So powerful that your sacrifice will blow the lid off the cage without help, sure. Power of that type? It bypasses the lock entirely. Instead of turning the lock, you blow the door off its hinges. I like it…but I don’t see any more of your kind lining up to take the bullet - or the blade or whatever. And, let’s face it, Lilith never had the power of an archangel. What she had was the only once-human mind to have known true Evil - with a capital E. The same understanding that Winchester carries now. The knowledge of evil will let Sam’s death turn the lock. Add some of that massive angelic power, and you pop the door. See? Power plus knowledge and you can spring the lock without the rings, and without killing an archangel.”
He stared at her, wondering if she spoke the truth. Wondering if he dared listen. “Samuel Winchester,” Raphael almost hissed the name.
Her grin showed too much tooth. “Sammy Winchester. Who is now the only human to have spoken to Lucifer directly. In his true form. Which makes Sam the new Lilith.”
“And the new key,” Raphael mused.
“And the new key,” the damned-soul confirmed. “Kill him, add a power spike - say a few dozen simultaneous lightening bolts - and the cage opens. And you get what you want…the beginning of the end, no angelic-suicide needed.”
It could be the truth. It did not taste completely of a lie. Truthful or not, Samuel Winchester’s death would be welcome to all righteous angels, whatever their caste. If that death could open the cage, then at least he would have provided one useful service in his wasted existence. And if not, where Sam was, Dean would not be far. And Dean was the map to the rings.
Raphael closed his eyes, seeking…but the response was the same as it had always been. The rage that filled him as he hit that wall of silence was massive. “I can not locate them. They are blocked from me. Castiel has done this.” His lesser brother was truly outgrowing his wings. It was far passed time they were clipped. He would enjoy setting his brother on the righteous path - right after he made him watch as he told his pet monkeys the truth, and right before he ended his traitorous existence.
“But they are not blocked from me,” the damned soul said. “And I’ll take you to them. For free.”
“Why do you do this, demon?”
She smiled, and it was like a death’s head. “Payback. Now let’s go.” She started forward, but he grabbed her, and she turned, questioning.
“What do they call you, demon?”
“I have lots of names, Ducks. But only one that matters now. You can call me Meg.”
With that, she strolled into the darkness.
And the Angel followed.
*
Part 11 Part 13
With our children at our feet
And the morals that they worship will be gone
And the men who spurred us on sit in judgment of all wrong
They decide and the shotgun sings the song.
I'll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around me
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
And I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again…
Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss
~The Who - Won’t Get Fooled Again
___________________________________________________________
*
The rings were beyond his reach.
Raphael growled. He had no Sacrifice, the other archangels would not allow their own lives to be shed for Michael’s freedom, and he could not. He had been created for the coming war. He could not die before it came. He felt he need of it like his lightening, shimmering through his celestial body, burning as it went. But without a Sacrifice, he had to have the rings.
Winchester had the rings. He had no way to track him. The frustration of that was…unbearable.
He could not find the Winchester brothers, not on his own. He’d sent out a call, to all his followers and to all the fanatical little monkeys who would listen, and he knew that all he need do now was wait. Eventually they would be seen. And then the rings would be his.
And he could have his war.
But patience had never been a virtue he had much adhered to, and every second he was forced to wait, his anger at this world, this petty little existence, grew deeper.
“Well, well, well…aren’t you just a tasty little morsel.” She strolled out of the night, all strut and pride and amusement, but underneath there was the stench of fear and despair. “All that yummy anger and pride. Mmmmm,” she practically purred, “I could just eat you with a spoon, lover.”
He stared at her, feeling the evilness of her seeping from her core like rot from a corpse. “You dare speak to me, you pismire? You dare?” He felt the lighting come to him, sparking under his feat, flaring in his eyes. “It would take me less than a second to obliterate you. Less than a thought. You are nothing. One of the least crawling about in a plague colony of the worthless. Go away.”
“If I’m so worthless, why haven’t you offed me yet, oh great and powerful Oz? Could it be curiosity?” She smiled, the expression dark and slightly threatening. “You know what that did to the cat, right?”
“I am not some human soul,” he turned the word into an insult, “given a few magic tricks. I am not curious about you.” He reached out, not physically, but with his grace and began to squeeze.
The demon gasped, choked, slowly began to topple. He took his time. It was interesting how the shades of death in the face of the host complemented the blanching of the demonic spirit underneath.
The demon whooped in a blood soaked breath, tossing her head back, and shouted: “We want the same thing!”
“I sincerely doubt that.” He twisted his ‘grip’, and enjoyed the half scream that resulted.
“The. End.”
He relaxed his hold, just a bit. “What?”
“The end. Of the world.” The words bubbled and popped as they escaped her host’s throat. “I know another way to open the cage!”
“I need only one way.”
“The rings won’t work for you!”
Raphael hesitated. Demons lie. But she was no threat. “Explain.”
She fell as he let his power retract, panting and rubbing her chest and throat. “Wow,” she eventually croaked. “I haven’t had foreplay like that in way too long.” She grinned up at him through bloodstained teeth.
Electricity filled the air. “You try my patience, demon.”
“Yeah. I’m told that’s my best talent.” She heaved herself to her feet, staggering a bit as she caught her balance. She smiled. “Or, well, one of them.”
He slapped her. Though he didn’t move, her head snapped back viciously and she staggered. She looked back at him, rubbing a cheek. “You’re good at causing pain…almost as good as us.”
He glared. “Explain yourself or you will find out how much pain I can cause.”
“Promises, promises.” Raphael took half a step toward her, but she held up a hand. “Chill, alright? I’m going to tell you if you’ll give me a second.”
“The rings,” Raphael growled.
“Yeah. Okay. I’ve been watching those rings for a long time, now. I’ve been looking for a way to get at them for months. I probably want the cage open even more than you do, believe it or not. So I’ve been waiting…and watching. And, Mr. Angel, you got played. Winchester and his pet bird pulled a shill game on you.”
“Shill game?”
She smirked. “Winchester did give the feathered freak the rings. They were two feet in front of you, and he sent you running in the wrong direction.” She shrugged, “Not that I don’t appreciated the art of it.”
Lightening pulsed through borrowed veins. “Castiel has the rings? He lied? I will destroy him.” He began to move, shifting his location on this plane -
“Hold up, chief,” she said. “I know where the rings are.”
Raphael glared, judging the sincerity of the words. “How would you know?”
She chuckled. “I told you, I’ve been watching those rings for months, looking for an in. I watched you and the other whitemeat chat. I knew what he was doing. And when you left, I followed him.”
“He would have sensed you,” Raphael growled.
She only shrugged, though. “Maybe he did. I don’t know. I wasn’t going to take on an angel, anyway, so maybe he just didn’t care.”
It was a reasonable explanation. “So, if you know where the rings are, why haven’t you gone after them yet?”
“Your boy put them out of my reach. Hell, he probably made it so your kind can’t get to them, either. I was going to nab some human and make him do the dirty work no matter if it killed him…especially if it killed him - but then I got to thinking, and realized it wouldn’t do me any good anyway.”
“What do you mean?”
She smiled, a trace of mockery in the expression. “Even if you could get the rings, what would you do with them?”
The ozone smell to the air increased with his irritation. “Open the cage.”
“How?”
For a moment he didn’t take her meaning, then slowly comprehension began. He blinked. She smirked.
“You don’t know how to use them anymore then I do, do you? No instruction manual, and no idea how to turn the rings on.” She stepped toward him, actually had the gall to bring her filth nearer him. “Winchester is the only person this side of Death that knows how they work. Without that, you’re spiting into the wind, big guy.”
Rage flared, hot and sharp and not so different from the lightening that was his gift. “I will find Winchester. He will scream and die and keep screaming, until he tells me.”
“Ooo, nice. You almost sound like one of us.”
“I am not one of you.” Light flashed as a bolt crack the sky, as clear and as powerful as a whiplash.
She smiled in the harshness of the burst. “Anger. Pride. Hate. And a willingness to destroy to get your own way. If it quacks like a duck…. Damn, you even got the feathers.” She looked him up and down, speculatively, then she shrugged. “You could try torturing Winchester for the info, hell, I’d love to watch, but he held up under one of our best for a long damned time. It’ll take awhile to break him. And I don’t think you want to wait that long. Especially when there’s an alternative.”
It grated, that such a corrupt and lesser being could know more then him. “Explain.”
“You like giving orders, don’t you, Ducks. I thought it was better to serve in Heaven.” She shrugged. “Not that I really care. Anyway, you’re looking for the wrong Winchester.”
His limited acceptance of the creature snapped. “Enough of this,” he snarled, and closed his talons over her again. “You’re talking in circles.”
“Sam Winchester! It’s him you need!”
He lifted her off the ground, letting the weight of her host’s body skewer her on his power. “The abomination?”
“Yes! He’s the real key!”
He dropped her for a second time. He enjoyed the noise she made as she hit the ground. “There are only two ways to open lock on the Devil’s cage: The rings and Sacrifice. You spout nonsense.”
“Use him as the sacrifice.” The words were panted, pain filled, broken…
And ridiculous. “It would take the death of a powerful being to open the lock,” the archangel sneered. “He’s nothing. Less than nothing. A human with a soul so broken that he is barely alive. He has no power.”
“Neither did Lilith, once,” the demon said, and her voice was like velvet. “Lilith was created human. The only human to see and speak to Lucifer himself, in his true form.”
“She was corrupted,” Raphael agreed.
“She was changed. Through his blood. She was the original key. Three ways to open the cage, Ducks: the rings, power, or understanding of true evil. A human soul who has been possessed by Lucifer himself - and Lilith was the only one that ever existed… until now.”
“It was her power that allowed her sacrifice to open the cage,” Raphael argued.
But the demon shook her head. “She was the key from the moment the cage was locked. At any time she could have been sacrificed, and her death would have turned the lock - but nobody wanted to open the cage back then. She was the key before she was powerful. It was genius, to make her the key. She was self-aware enough to want to live, and would fight against being killed - so the stronger she got, the more secure the cage became.”
“But it was her power that allowed the opening of the cage,” Raphael repeated, growling.
“I’ll take it slow for the logic impaired. Lilith’s death tuned the lock, the release of power swung the door wide.”
“Selaphiel’s sacrifice opened the door quite nicely. And he never knew evil.”
She only chuckled. “Never knew evil? He was related to it. All of you are. But, that’s a debate for another day,” she shrugged. “You guys are powerful, I admit that. So powerful that your sacrifice will blow the lid off the cage without help, sure. Power of that type? It bypasses the lock entirely. Instead of turning the lock, you blow the door off its hinges. I like it…but I don’t see any more of your kind lining up to take the bullet - or the blade or whatever. And, let’s face it, Lilith never had the power of an archangel. What she had was the only once-human mind to have known true Evil - with a capital E. The same understanding that Winchester carries now. The knowledge of evil will let Sam’s death turn the lock. Add some of that massive angelic power, and you pop the door. See? Power plus knowledge and you can spring the lock without the rings, and without killing an archangel.”
He stared at her, wondering if she spoke the truth. Wondering if he dared listen. “Samuel Winchester,” Raphael almost hissed the name.
Her grin showed too much tooth. “Sammy Winchester. Who is now the only human to have spoken to Lucifer directly. In his true form. Which makes Sam the new Lilith.”
“And the new key,” Raphael mused.
“And the new key,” the damned-soul confirmed. “Kill him, add a power spike - say a few dozen simultaneous lightening bolts - and the cage opens. And you get what you want…the beginning of the end, no angelic-suicide needed.”
It could be the truth. It did not taste completely of a lie. Truthful or not, Samuel Winchester’s death would be welcome to all righteous angels, whatever their caste. If that death could open the cage, then at least he would have provided one useful service in his wasted existence. And if not, where Sam was, Dean would not be far. And Dean was the map to the rings.
Raphael closed his eyes, seeking…but the response was the same as it had always been. The rage that filled him as he hit that wall of silence was massive. “I can not locate them. They are blocked from me. Castiel has done this.” His lesser brother was truly outgrowing his wings. It was far passed time they were clipped. He would enjoy setting his brother on the righteous path - right after he made him watch as he told his pet monkeys the truth, and right before he ended his traitorous existence.
“But they are not blocked from me,” the damned soul said. “And I’ll take you to them. For free.”
“Why do you do this, demon?”
She smiled, and it was like a death’s head. “Payback. Now let’s go.” She started forward, but he grabbed her, and she turned, questioning.
“What do they call you, demon?”
“I have lots of names, Ducks. But only one that matters now. You can call me Meg.”
With that, she strolled into the darkness.
And the Angel followed.
*
Part 11 Part 13