[SPN]: The Time is Near.
5,593 Words
PG-13.
Gen, apocalypse!fic.
For mangacat201 and spn_reversebang
Warnings: Slight horror themes, some bad language.
Summary: Lucifer has risen, along with the horsemen. But a year and a half later, the final battle still hasn’t come to fruition and the demons have disappeared completely. Sam and Dean are leading a compound and not talking about the abilities they both possess, but when Castiel goes missing, it’s time for them to get back on the road, back to their life and back into the war.
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The Time is Near.
With the exception of Death, they rise before the Lightbringer does. Skeletal and glowing red even in the darkness, they stand in a triangle and draw the shadows around themselves, cloaked in the night. The grass they stand on wilts beneath their feet, dying as patches of cold earth spreads outwards. They stand and look at each other.
Brothers, War says, now is our time.
Have patience, says Pestilence, let it run its course. It is too soon for us to interfere, it is not our place to. It is not our time. Not yet.
Our time will come, brother, says Famine, and when it does we will take our place as the kings of Earth. The little angel has not risen, and without him to raise our brother, we are powerless.
But this world, says War, this world is ours. We do not have to bow to the commands of a child.
Patience, brother. That child underestimates our power. He will be nothing against us. Death has asked us to wait, and so wait we must. When the time is right, the little angel will have no choice but to cease his efforts. Lucifer is headstrong and capricious. He wants without consideration.
Famine nods in agreement, He believes we are on his side, and that is all we need. When our brother has joined us, we will be free to do as we wish.
Until then, Pestilence says, acquiesce to the silly child. The world was once ours, it will be ours again.
-
18 months later.
His footsteps don’t echo.
Along the walls, scratch marks line the plaster, long and thin and stretching down the hallway farther than Dean can see. Near the end, a light flickers intermittently, bright and harsh, flashes of broken doors and fractured glass, temporarily illuminating the debris they’re walking on. It’s surprising that there’s even electricity here, in this building, in this city abandoned far too long ago, the grid cut and left as a tangle of wires beneath the streets. This quadrant in particular- the city’s dead zone. Under any other circumstances, no one crosses the barriers, no one comes here anymore, not even they do, not where the streets are cracked beneath rotting buildings and bone-dust bodies.
Then again, they’re tracking the angels, so that light is as good as any to tell them they’re going in the right direction. Dean pauses a moment and the group behind him does as well, all except for Sam who takes an extra step and comes to rest standing behind Dean. They stare at the light for a minute or two before Dean turns, brings two parted fingers swiftly up to his eyes and waits until five sets of guns have been drawn up, ready and waiting in their owner’s hands and pointed towards the shadows. Dean turns back to Sam.
‘Feel anything?’ he asks.
Sam closes his eyes and stills, silent and breathing slow and deep. It’s only a moment before he opens his eyes and shakes his head. ‘No,’ he says, ‘no one, no thing. It’s empty.’
Dean faces the group. ‘Alright, keep caution. Nick, Thomas, you stay and keep our exit clear. Call if you need anything.’ He gets two nods in acquiescence. The other three move forward when Dean and Sam continue, one foot in front of the other and eyes trained on the darkness. Just because the demons cleared out months ago doesn’t mean something else hasn’t taken up residence. They move down the hall, a shapeless mass of twisting shadows, and Aaron creeps up closer behind Sam, and Dean can feel the air shift, thrumming slightly with Aaron’s excitement.
‘What are you guys thinking?’ he says. He’s always so excited when they’re out, eager to know everything and understand. It’ll get him killed one day if he doesn’t learn to calm down, to be still and not disrupt the air. His bright blue eyes spark in the flickering light. Behind him, the twins, Mark and Jillian perk up slightly, their attention shifting to Aaron’s words. Trust only goes so far these days, and Dean feels a strange surge of pride that they understand this enough to not just jump when Dean says to, no matter how much he may need them to. If you’re going to trust someone, you better have a damn good reason to do so. Dean has Sam, as shaky as that is it’s still true. Mark has his sister, and Jillian has her brother, and together they manage to block out most of the world from their own tiny circle.
Sam looks at Dean, and Dean knows he has to give an answer. ‘I’m thinking that the only thing powerful enough to juice up a place like this is an angel, but since there’s nothing here-’ fuck damn but he’s not explaining this properly.
‘Whatever happened here was big enough the leave a lasting energy residue’, Sam interjects, ‘which means we’re probably not gonna like what’s on the other side of that door.’ He nods towards it and their eyes follow.
Mark and Jillian exchange looks as Dean puts his palm to the door. It’s hot to the touch and gets hotter the longer he keeps it there, the handprint on his shoulder tingling and itching. Dean hefts his gun higher, pressing inwards on the door. It doesn’t swing open. Instead it jerks to a stop, not even enough space to squeeze through. Dean puts his shoulder to it and pushes, feeling something give on the other side. Sam steps up and between the two of them, they manage to get a decent sized gap. Dean fits himself through and immediately thinks oh shit. The entire floor in front of him is demolished, walls blown outward. The ceiling has collapsed in a few places, the support beams swinging loose. It’s one of them that is causing the blockage at the door, wedged into the crack by the floor. He kicks at it as Mark slips through, but it doesn’t move.
Dean turns his attention to the room as Jillian appears, followed by Aaron and then Sam. Aaron whistles, a low, long sound, and the five of them stand there for a moment, taking in the devastation, wind slicing through the gaping walls as the long bar lights stutter out bright pulses, the torn wiring sparking in the air. The silence is broken by Sam lowering his gun and pulling out an angel sword from his belt. He looks at Dean and Dean knows what he’s thinking. Sam doesn’t need to speak aloud for Dean to know what’s happened, but he does anyway, for the benefit of the others, eyes locked to Dean’s.
‘She’s not here anymore. Spread out, take a look around. Be careful and don’t touch anything you don’t need to.’
The three nod and set off into the room and Sam steps into Dean’s space, close enough that Dean can feel Sam’s breath on the side of his neck when he looks away.
‘Castiel was here,’ Sam whispers. Dean turns further into him.
‘You sure?’
‘Yes. Cas has a distinct feel. He was here, and so was she, but there’s nobody alive in this room.’ Sam fidgets on the spot. ‘But I can still feel him,’ he says, ‘in the back of my mind, I can feel him there.’
‘He skipped out?’ Dean doesn’t believe it, but he needs Sam to continue.
‘No,’ Sam says, ‘no Dean, I think- I think he was taken.’
‘You think they knew? After all this time of nothing, you don’t think they’re coming back, do you?’
‘Maybe. I don’t know.’ Sam sucks in a breath. ‘Maybe they just followed Cas, maybe it’s just coincidence. But there were at least five angels here, excluding Castiel and the girl. All I can tell is that he’s not here anymore.’
‘And the girl?’ Dean asks. Sam looks at the room, bites his lip and shakes his head. Dean knows what that means. It means Sam thinks she’s dead. It’s logical, at least. Something happened that left a big enough power spike to give power to lights that aren’t even connected.
‘Hey,’ Jillian calls, ‘here.’ She doesn’t say anything else, but they’re used to that, she and Mark both don’t talk much, and Sam begins stepping over the mess of the room to get to her, Dean close behind. It’s apparent once they’re there of what it was that caught her attention, easy to see even if she wasn’t looking down at the pale hand curled loosely over a board, slim and ghostly in the flickering light, the thin wrist disappearing under plaster and steel.
Dean looks back the way they came, searches until he sees a charred piece of what was once an office chair. He shifts other pieces around it, moving them out of the way, brushing dust out of the cracks. He stares down at the dark burn, hangs his head.
‘Holy Crap,’ says Aaron, ‘are those… feathers?’ Dean stands and sighs.
‘Well kids, look closely. This is what happens when an angel dies,’ he pauses and looks at Sam, who looks back, nods once. ‘Let’s get her out of here. She doesn’t deserve to be left like this.’ They walk back to Nick and Thomas, faces solemn and a body between them, but Dean’s mind is already on something else, something that makes his stomach turn and anger well up inside him.
Castiel is missing.
-
They’re mostly silent in the trip back to camp. It’s only Aaron talking, babbling in low tones about what he wants for dinner, hoping it’s chicken, with peas, and carrots. ‘I always hated carrots as a kid, he says, wouldn’t touch them. Mom used to have to mash them up with a bit of honey, spread it on some bread. One time, she tried to pass them off as pumpkin soup, because I liked pumpkin you see, only I could tell straight away that it was carrot. I ate it anyway, only because she went to a lot of effort to disguise it…’
No one tells him to shut up. Dean suspects it’s for the same reason he doesn’t. Aaron is everything about life before, when the world didn’t know about demons, or Heaven, and the Apocalypse was only rumours among the angels. Aaron is life, and happiness, and making the best of a bad situation. He lets the emptiness and death of this world pass over him. He stays sane. He stays human.
He reminds them to be the same.
The truck can’t move very fast, there’s too much crap in the way. Overturned cars, broken glass and black skeletons lie piled on top of each other, a blanket of destruction that drove people out of the cities, let the demons move in. It was a result of Lucifer’s ascent, a giant pulse of energy that wiped Maryland off the map, left nothing but a crater and a gateway straight to hell. When life kept going, the demons swarmed in to stop it, poisoning the water and encouraging violence. Then they sat back from the tops of their high rises and watched the world destroy itself.
Until about six months ago, when they disappeared. One day they were there, the next they were gone, no warning, no whispers along the grapevine that there was anything going on. No more possessions, no more attacks, just the complete absence of anything demonic. Like they never existed in the first place. Most hunters believe that Lucifer wiped them out, but rumours are he still has a circle of them doing his work. Besides, Dean knows they’re still around. They’re just not on Earth.
The truck jolts to a stop and Aaron’s mouth follows, choked off sentence disappearing into the silence. Mark and Nick lean forward and Jillian locks eyes with Dean in the rear view.
‘It’s nothing,’ he says. She looks at him sceptically until the truck starts moving again, settling back in her seat beside her brother. They both look at Aaron, who’s wide-eyed, open-mouthed and apprehensive that his talking attracted something unwanted and that’s why they stopped, but he nevertheless takes their attention as a signal to continue, and launches into a new story, leaving the other unfinished.
Dean reminds himself to keep more focus. He misses the Impala, misses the warmth of her seats and the steady hum of engine. She sits packed away now, wrapped up in a sheet and waiting for him. He visits her every now and then, to wash her down and tune her up, even if he doesn’t drive her. They use trucks like this one, because it fits them all in and doesn’t make as much noise. But ever since he fixed the truck up to run quieter, it’s been a lot more sensitive to stalling at the smallest of bumps in the road, each restart telling them that they can’t risk the possibility of something hearing them. When they reach the city limits it’s like a weight has been lifted, an easy sigh of relief passing through the group. The outskirts of the suburbs lead straight on to farmland, on to wide open fields that allow them to see for miles, see anything choosing to come for them. There’s nowhere for them to hide either, but they do have the guns and the salt and the moving vehicle.
‘Well,’ says Nick, ‘who’s up for poker?’ There’s a collective hum of approval from the bed of the truck and they move into a rough circle. Dean doesn’t like how easy they let go of their vigilance, how they seem to think that it’s safe out here, away from the buildings. But he grants them this because he doesn’t need them on watch right now. Sam’s doing the job, half rigid in the seat next to him, listening and feeling into the wind. Sam can always sense if something’s coming long before they can see it on the horizon. He says it feels like a twist inside his mind, sometimes a vision, sometimes a feeling, always unique to whatever it is. He can tell when it’s Castiel and when it’s another angel. Sam’s the best alarm system they have, and all it will take is one word and the rest of them will be back in battle mode, barrels raised and pointing out towards the empty fields.
-
The camp isn’t enclosed by wire fences and padlocks. True, they’ve got people on watch round the clock, Enochian symbols on all the buildings and there’s an outer wall of sorts, but extending just over half a mile beyond that is a ring of iron, enclosed by a salt trench, and beyond that they have an irrigation system of holy water. They don’t need much else, the Croatoan virus ran itself out months ago, destroyed by its own violence by ripping itself to shreds of blood and flesh. Sam may have helped that a little, planting the suggestion, the thought, the feeling, the little rush of heat that Dean could feel temporarily pass through his blood that made the Croats fall over themselves to destroy each other, all because Sam asked them to.
It’s not something they talk about often, Sam’s powers. Dean doesn’t like to think about them, thinking how it feels for Sam to control it all, burning under his skin. He doesn’t like to think about how he once tried to stop it, but now he just lets it happen, vindicated by the fact that Sam is his brother, and he loves Sam no matter what, and Sam doesn’t need the demon blood anymore. His abilities are just there, simmering under the surface, only used when he has Dean’s permission, or he can’t help it. Something shifted when Lucifer rose, and Sam wouldn’t let Dean walk away, and Dean wouldn’t let Sam walk away, both clinging to apologies and each other. Sam held his hand up and killed Lilith in a convent, because Ruby told him to, set Lucifer free and everything that came with him. And then Sam shoved a knife into Ruby, and though that was enough to say he was sorry, to say he was an idiot, to say he should have kept his trust in Dean, he’s still spent every moment since Maryland atoning. Sometimes he looks at Dean like he used to when they were young, like Dean will fix things, just slap a bandaid on it and give Sam a kiss on the forehead and there, it’s all better, no need to make a fuss.
But Dean’s terrified he’ll fuck it up, that he’ll make a mistake along the way and destroy his brother, so he’s giving Sam this, permission to use his powers, he’s giving him the trust that this time, Sam’ll do it right. And Sam’s still here, a year and a half on, no blood, no secrets. So Dean’s stopped treating it as something bad, tries to see the good that can come from it. And he can, Sam’s ability to feel the presence of things has undeniably kept them alive at times, and his visions are as relevant as they ever were. He can see the good in having the kind of control Sam used in dealing with the Croats, but it doesn’t mean he likes talking about it. As long as Sam keeps telling him truth, keeps letting Dean in and not hiding secrets, Sam’s okay. They’re okay, the two of them against the world like it’s always been.
Dean pulls the truck to a stop in front of the church, an old converted tent that, if the faded colours are anything to go by, was once part of a circus, and Nick and Thomas lower the girl down from the bed of the truck and carry her inside, Aaron holding the tent flap open for them. The twins disappear in the opposite direction as others from the camp come running up, but Dean stops them with a lift of his hand. He’ll let Sam deal with the explanation, still able to work the you can trust me completely eyes when he needs to. The camp tends to believe Sam more, obey Sam more, even if the same words are leaving Dean’s mouth. They trust Sam on less than a word because Dean looks and acts too hardened, too impersonal. But they need it to be that way because if some of them found out about what Sam can do, or knew the cold calculation he can possess when faced with evil, if they found out that he’s Lucifer’s most prized possession, they’d crucify him.
The guys they run with, Nick and Thomas, Mark and Jillian, and Aaron, they know. They don’t care. They all have their secrets too. The twins won’t talk about what happened to them, but Dean knows that they were in Maryland when Lucifer came up, and somehow they not only made it out alive, but perfectly unharmed. They found Nick on a supply run, blood on his hands and a dead child in his lap, but all he can remember is the twisting black smoke that he choked on before he blacked out. Thomas said that what he’s doing now, protecting the innocent and human life, is his penance for every single life that he didn’t deserve to take in Iraq, that Sam’s abilities to help, however unorthodox, was a blessing. Aaron just doesn’t give a damn, says that when Sam does his funky thinking thing it’s the coolest fucking thing ever. They’re a good bunch of people they’ve got, and Dean hopes they all make it out the other end of this okay.
Dean enters the church at the same time that Rachel does, emerging at the other end, bee-lining past the altar with the body draped over it and straight toward Dean, who fights the urge to run away. Rachel is persistent and impatient, and for someone who spends the majority of her time extolling the virtues of faith and prayer, she spends an inordinately hypocritical amount of time trying to get into Dean’s bed.
‘Dean,’ her voice is saccharine sweet and sickly, stretching his name across four syllables, ‘I was so worried you wouldn’t make it back okay. Did anything go wrong?’ as if the dead body on the altar was a vase of flowers.
He doesn’t have the energy to talk to her, so he just ignores her and her pout, heading up to where Nick and Thomas are sprinkling herbs over the girl. Dean picks up the bowl of holy oil and anoints her forehead, sternum, and the tops of both her feet. They wrap her in a white sheet and tuck the ends in tight, Dean pressing a light kiss to the covered head.
‘Sam’ll finish it up,’ he says, and Thomas nods.
-
He feels almost weightless, but every step he takes makes the earth tremble beneath his feet. It’s hot, oppressively so, and he blinks against the burning dryness in his eyes. When he’s back here, it’s like the first time all over again, naked and dirty and bleeding, the gashes that they ripped into his body screaming, wide and stinging. He hurts here, always does, it’s one of the ways he knows it’s not just simply a dream, every part of him brought back whenever he walks this terrain.
Alastair is in the distance. Dean can always recognise him, no matter what form, whether smoky and loose or human, or skeletal and half-translucent, like he is now, skin stretched tight over bones that look black under the blood red of the sky. Alastair smiles and it’s dark, twisted and Dean steps forward, footsteps making the ground jump beneath him. His skin feels leathery, pulling at itself when he moves, blood drying in half sticky streaks where it slips out of him. Alastair’s gaze is predatory, but he loses it the closer Dean gets, until he looks at Dean with an almost softness, like Alastair is truly happy to see him.
Hello my boy, Alastair says, and the pain of Dean’s open wounds flares slightly under his gaze.
Alastair. Evidently you wanted to see me. Dean gestures to their surrounds. The air whips about them, hot and heavy and crawling under Dean’s skin through his cuts.
Alastair smiles again, Indeed I did. I wanted to get ahead of the game plan and tell you, it’s not us.
Not you for what?
Not us that took your precious angel. We don’t have him- at least not that I’m aware of. Alastair clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth. I can’t speak for those who know how to keep their secrets.
How do I know you’re not lying to me, Alastair?
Alastair looks amused. Dean, Dean, Dean, the last thing I want, or need, is you traipsing your little fighters all the way down here looking for something we don’t have. And don’t ask me why, he says before Dean can open his mouth, I have my reasons. Point is, we don’t have the angel.
Dean sighs.
And besides, Alastair continues, only angels have the power to kill other angels. His grin turns again. Now wake up.
-
When he opens his eyes, Sam is sitting on the end of Dean’s bed, legs crossed, watching Dean sleep.
‘You went to Hell again, didn’t you?’ he says.
Dean runs his hand across his face and breathes deep. ‘Yeah, how’d you know?’
‘You always toss and turn more, and your body temperature rises. I can feel it from here,’ he pauses, ‘you said you didn’t want to go back there anymore, why did you?’
‘Alastair called. I didn’t have a choice.’
Sam sits up straighter and leans forward. ‘He called? What for? Castiel?’
‘Yeah, but he doesn’t have him. He said the angels do. Used the killing excuse again.’
‘I suppose,’ Sam says, frowning, ‘it does make sense.’
‘Because of how trashed that floor was, I know. I thought that too.’
They fall silent, Dean’s arm slung across his eyes. He can feel the weight of Sam’s eyes on him, feel the questions heavy in the air between them. He wants Sam to leave then, suddenly, doesn’t want Sam to ask the questions he keeps asking, the questions that Dean doesn’t have answers to. He doesn’t know why he can do this, doesn’t know why he can go places in his sleep, dream walk through Heaven, or Hell, or the diner in Florida with the honeycomb waffles. He doesn’t know why, when Sam’s meant to be the one with the powers, when Sam has a reason for having powers, that Dean can do this too. It scares him, what he can do.
Dean gets up and Sam watches him splash some water on his face from the adjoining bathroom. The entire camp is centred around an old country mansion they stumbled across, with more room than they needed or wanted, but as more and more people came looking for refuge, the less and less space they had. As it stands, there are more than 100 people living in the camp, mostly outside of the house in cabin-like buildings. The house is now mostly used for recreational purposes. They’ve installed a library, of both occult and normal material, and a few months back Aaron went out on a recon run with Nick and they came back with two pool tables and a jukebox. The rest of the community moved on, installing the church tent and a day care centre for the kids. While they still rely on help for getting food and water, some of them recently started up a vegetable field with some seeds that Jillian found, when she and Mark brought back an Angus calf wandering the fields. The camp has been raising it, and talking about finding the now-adolescent bull a mate, pleading with Dean to keep a watch out for cattle.
Over time, they managed to accumulate all they’d needed to be self supporting. They have a plumber, who Aaron follows around when he’s stuck at the camp, an electrician, who’s taken it upon himself to consistently check the generator is working fine. They have a chef living onsite, should they ever want to open a restaurant, a priest, who surprisingly is not in argument with the reverend over who gets to use the church- they share between them apparently. They’ve even got a cop, who doesn’t arrest anybody but does provide an authoritative air to keeping people in line. Every so often a new group of people come wandering in, claiming they heard rumours about the camp and a new life in the new world that makes Sam snort and shake his head.
‘They think they’re living,’ Sam had said, ‘but they’re just waiting around to die.’
It’s true. Until they can find a way to stop Lucifer without saying yes, the apocalypse is still on the go-ahead for heaven. Michael, when he appears in Dean’s dreams to plead that Dean accept his role, has been saying that Lucifer is set to raise Death, that he’s ready to jumpstart the battle and wipe the Earth clean. He goes on to say that Dean can stop it if he just accepts his destiny, but Dean makes himself wake up. He promised Sam he wouldn’t when Sam promised him the same.
Dean thinks it’s finally time for Death to come. Castiel had been hearing whispers from angels who are wanting rebellion, angels like the one they were going to meet that morning, who say that the Horsemen are waiting for their brother, that they don’t agree with Lucifer’s plans, that they need Death by their side to overthrow Heaven. If this is true, then Dean’s all for it. He’s not sure he wants to know what the Horsemen have planned after that, but Castiel was certain it isn’t destruction, and that’s enough for Dean to get on board with. It still poses a question of what the hell happened that morning in the city. They have a dead angel who was supposed to rebel and a missing Castiel, who’s leading the rebellion- if the angels came after them, do they know about the Horsemen? Does Lucifer know? Was it all a set up to get to Castiel and the girl was just collateral? Dean doesn’t want to think about it, can’t think about it or he’ll end up punching something.
He’s standing there, water running through his fingers when Sam screams. When Dean looks over Sam’s shaking, sharp jolts of his torso and his head snaps backwards. He’s gasping, pained noises coming from his mouth and Dean runs over, trips on the corner of the bed and nearly goes sprawling, manages to haul Sam into his lap and get Sam’s head in his arms to hold him still. It goes on for a few minutes before Sam falls still and silent, and Dean’s about to let him go when he lets out a long burst of sound, and his body arches upwards.
When Dean looks, there are thin red lines spreading under Sam’s skin, bulging under the surface and crawling up his neck and down from his hairline. He’s breathing sharply, mouth moving in a parody of words. His eyes become unfocussed and then roll back in his head, and Dean screams his name. It lasts maybe a minute and then Sam slumps back down over Dean’s lap and goes quiet. The lines recede back until they’re gone, leaving Sam with a sweaty forehead and flushed cheeks. His eyes are closed, but he’s breathing slowly and evenly and they flutter open, gaze jittery until they land on Dean’s face and focus.
‘Sam?’ Dean asks, ‘you with me?’
Sam nods and goes to sit up, but his arms don’t hold him. Dean lays him so he’s back fully on the bed, his head on a pillow and goes to get up, get some water from the bathroom. Sam stops him with a hand on Dean’s wrist, fingers curled in a weak grasp.
‘Death,’ he breathes, ‘Dean, Death has risen.’
-
They try to leave without anyone noticing them, but Aaron spots them just past the kitchen and follows them out behind the house, to where Dean keeps the Impala under a sheet.
‘Where are you going? Are you leaving?’ he asks.
Dean looks at Aaron while Sam puts the duffle bags in the trunk. ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘and you can’t come with us, it’s too dangerous.’ Aaron opens his mouth to protest but Dean cuts him off. ‘I mean it. This isn’t your battle. You need to stay here.’
‘We need you to stay here,’ Sam says. His voice rasps and trembles slightly, ‘you need to be able to protect everyone if anything comes for the camp. They’ll be helpless without you.’
Aaron drops his eyes and nods. Dean puts a hand on his shoulder. ‘You’re a good guy Aaron, and you’ve come such a long way from the kid we picked up a year ago. You’re one of the best hunter’s I’ve met.’ Aaron’s head comes back up and he grins.
‘I’m a hunter?’
‘Sure are. And that’s why we need you here. To keep them safe.’ Dean turns away and heads back to the car.
‘What are you going to do?’ Aaron calls.
Dean looks back at Sam, who nods and gets in the car, rifling through a box of tapes. He finds one, slots it into the player. Dean smiles at Aaron.
‘We’re gonna go find Castiel, get him back.’ Dean gets in the car and slots the key into the ignition. She starts up with a rumble, like new, like she hasn’t been quiet for a year and a half. Creedence blares out of the speakers and Dean laughs. In the seat next to him where he belongs, Sam smiles and rolls the window down. Dean turns back to Aaron.
‘And then we’re gonna save the world.’
-
Light pierces the darkness, sweeping through the trees and into the clearing. The car pulls to a stop, blood red under the light of the moon and headlights flick off, plunging the clearing into a muted blue. War steps clear of the car as two others pull up, one white, one black, their headlights spotlighting War where he stands.
Pestilence joins him first, halting directly opposite, his mouth curving into a smile. You look good as a human, brother, he says, and War returns As do you. They both turn to where Famine rolls up to them, wheelchair bound and breathing in shaky breaths.
Interesting form, War says, you could not have shaped something better for yourself?
Famine dismisses him with a wave of his hand. The grass in the path of the motion wilts with the movement. Where is our brother, he asks, we have waited far too long for this.
A sweep of light rushes over the ground as the pale car rumbles into the clearing with a crunch of the gears. The car idles as Death steps out, coat brushing against the long blades of grass when he approaches the others. He greets them each with a smile, and for a moment they stand there, silent and watching each other.
Death is the first to move, a shift of muscles and his cane comes to rest in front of him. His mouth twitches unnaturally, his eyes darken, and with a long exhalation of breath, says
It is time.
END
---
Authors Notes:
This is the very first challenge that I managed to complete on time and not drop out of or abandon. And I owe it wholly and completely to mangacat201 , because without her I probably would have left the challenge. Her prompt was amazing and I was desperate not to let her down. I can only hope this fic lives up to her brilliant trailer.
This fic is AU from about mid-season four onwards, and almost completely disregards the end of season five. I wanted Sam and Dean to forgive each other like they should have and for them to build their trust back up. That couldn’t happen with the events of the beginning of season five, or the middle, and of course, in this story, they don’t say yes for eighteen months, so Sam doesn’t go to hell. At all. Lucky boy.
And finally, a big thank you to the mods of spn_reversebang for running the challenge and dealing with everything.
PG-13.
Gen, apocalypse!fic.
For mangacat201 and spn_reversebang
Warnings: Slight horror themes, some bad language.
Summary: Lucifer has risen, along with the horsemen. But a year and a half later, the final battle still hasn’t come to fruition and the demons have disappeared completely. Sam and Dean are leading a compound and not talking about the abilities they both possess, but when Castiel goes missing, it’s time for them to get back on the road, back to their life and back into the war.
You can check out Cat's amazing trailer here :)
The Time is Near.
With the exception of Death, they rise before the Lightbringer does. Skeletal and glowing red even in the darkness, they stand in a triangle and draw the shadows around themselves, cloaked in the night. The grass they stand on wilts beneath their feet, dying as patches of cold earth spreads outwards. They stand and look at each other.
Brothers, War says, now is our time.
Have patience, says Pestilence, let it run its course. It is too soon for us to interfere, it is not our place to. It is not our time. Not yet.
Our time will come, brother, says Famine, and when it does we will take our place as the kings of Earth. The little angel has not risen, and without him to raise our brother, we are powerless.
But this world, says War, this world is ours. We do not have to bow to the commands of a child.
Patience, brother. That child underestimates our power. He will be nothing against us. Death has asked us to wait, and so wait we must. When the time is right, the little angel will have no choice but to cease his efforts. Lucifer is headstrong and capricious. He wants without consideration.
Famine nods in agreement, He believes we are on his side, and that is all we need. When our brother has joined us, we will be free to do as we wish.
Until then, Pestilence says, acquiesce to the silly child. The world was once ours, it will be ours again.
-
18 months later.
His footsteps don’t echo.
Along the walls, scratch marks line the plaster, long and thin and stretching down the hallway farther than Dean can see. Near the end, a light flickers intermittently, bright and harsh, flashes of broken doors and fractured glass, temporarily illuminating the debris they’re walking on. It’s surprising that there’s even electricity here, in this building, in this city abandoned far too long ago, the grid cut and left as a tangle of wires beneath the streets. This quadrant in particular- the city’s dead zone. Under any other circumstances, no one crosses the barriers, no one comes here anymore, not even they do, not where the streets are cracked beneath rotting buildings and bone-dust bodies.
Then again, they’re tracking the angels, so that light is as good as any to tell them they’re going in the right direction. Dean pauses a moment and the group behind him does as well, all except for Sam who takes an extra step and comes to rest standing behind Dean. They stare at the light for a minute or two before Dean turns, brings two parted fingers swiftly up to his eyes and waits until five sets of guns have been drawn up, ready and waiting in their owner’s hands and pointed towards the shadows. Dean turns back to Sam.
‘Feel anything?’ he asks.
Sam closes his eyes and stills, silent and breathing slow and deep. It’s only a moment before he opens his eyes and shakes his head. ‘No,’ he says, ‘no one, no thing. It’s empty.’
Dean faces the group. ‘Alright, keep caution. Nick, Thomas, you stay and keep our exit clear. Call if you need anything.’ He gets two nods in acquiescence. The other three move forward when Dean and Sam continue, one foot in front of the other and eyes trained on the darkness. Just because the demons cleared out months ago doesn’t mean something else hasn’t taken up residence. They move down the hall, a shapeless mass of twisting shadows, and Aaron creeps up closer behind Sam, and Dean can feel the air shift, thrumming slightly with Aaron’s excitement.
‘What are you guys thinking?’ he says. He’s always so excited when they’re out, eager to know everything and understand. It’ll get him killed one day if he doesn’t learn to calm down, to be still and not disrupt the air. His bright blue eyes spark in the flickering light. Behind him, the twins, Mark and Jillian perk up slightly, their attention shifting to Aaron’s words. Trust only goes so far these days, and Dean feels a strange surge of pride that they understand this enough to not just jump when Dean says to, no matter how much he may need them to. If you’re going to trust someone, you better have a damn good reason to do so. Dean has Sam, as shaky as that is it’s still true. Mark has his sister, and Jillian has her brother, and together they manage to block out most of the world from their own tiny circle.
Sam looks at Dean, and Dean knows he has to give an answer. ‘I’m thinking that the only thing powerful enough to juice up a place like this is an angel, but since there’s nothing here-’ fuck damn but he’s not explaining this properly.
‘Whatever happened here was big enough the leave a lasting energy residue’, Sam interjects, ‘which means we’re probably not gonna like what’s on the other side of that door.’ He nods towards it and their eyes follow.
Mark and Jillian exchange looks as Dean puts his palm to the door. It’s hot to the touch and gets hotter the longer he keeps it there, the handprint on his shoulder tingling and itching. Dean hefts his gun higher, pressing inwards on the door. It doesn’t swing open. Instead it jerks to a stop, not even enough space to squeeze through. Dean puts his shoulder to it and pushes, feeling something give on the other side. Sam steps up and between the two of them, they manage to get a decent sized gap. Dean fits himself through and immediately thinks oh shit. The entire floor in front of him is demolished, walls blown outward. The ceiling has collapsed in a few places, the support beams swinging loose. It’s one of them that is causing the blockage at the door, wedged into the crack by the floor. He kicks at it as Mark slips through, but it doesn’t move.
Dean turns his attention to the room as Jillian appears, followed by Aaron and then Sam. Aaron whistles, a low, long sound, and the five of them stand there for a moment, taking in the devastation, wind slicing through the gaping walls as the long bar lights stutter out bright pulses, the torn wiring sparking in the air. The silence is broken by Sam lowering his gun and pulling out an angel sword from his belt. He looks at Dean and Dean knows what he’s thinking. Sam doesn’t need to speak aloud for Dean to know what’s happened, but he does anyway, for the benefit of the others, eyes locked to Dean’s.
‘She’s not here anymore. Spread out, take a look around. Be careful and don’t touch anything you don’t need to.’
The three nod and set off into the room and Sam steps into Dean’s space, close enough that Dean can feel Sam’s breath on the side of his neck when he looks away.
‘Castiel was here,’ Sam whispers. Dean turns further into him.
‘You sure?’
‘Yes. Cas has a distinct feel. He was here, and so was she, but there’s nobody alive in this room.’ Sam fidgets on the spot. ‘But I can still feel him,’ he says, ‘in the back of my mind, I can feel him there.’
‘He skipped out?’ Dean doesn’t believe it, but he needs Sam to continue.
‘No,’ Sam says, ‘no Dean, I think- I think he was taken.’
‘You think they knew? After all this time of nothing, you don’t think they’re coming back, do you?’
‘Maybe. I don’t know.’ Sam sucks in a breath. ‘Maybe they just followed Cas, maybe it’s just coincidence. But there were at least five angels here, excluding Castiel and the girl. All I can tell is that he’s not here anymore.’
‘And the girl?’ Dean asks. Sam looks at the room, bites his lip and shakes his head. Dean knows what that means. It means Sam thinks she’s dead. It’s logical, at least. Something happened that left a big enough power spike to give power to lights that aren’t even connected.
‘Hey,’ Jillian calls, ‘here.’ She doesn’t say anything else, but they’re used to that, she and Mark both don’t talk much, and Sam begins stepping over the mess of the room to get to her, Dean close behind. It’s apparent once they’re there of what it was that caught her attention, easy to see even if she wasn’t looking down at the pale hand curled loosely over a board, slim and ghostly in the flickering light, the thin wrist disappearing under plaster and steel.
Dean looks back the way they came, searches until he sees a charred piece of what was once an office chair. He shifts other pieces around it, moving them out of the way, brushing dust out of the cracks. He stares down at the dark burn, hangs his head.
‘Holy Crap,’ says Aaron, ‘are those… feathers?’ Dean stands and sighs.
‘Well kids, look closely. This is what happens when an angel dies,’ he pauses and looks at Sam, who looks back, nods once. ‘Let’s get her out of here. She doesn’t deserve to be left like this.’ They walk back to Nick and Thomas, faces solemn and a body between them, but Dean’s mind is already on something else, something that makes his stomach turn and anger well up inside him.
Castiel is missing.
-
They’re mostly silent in the trip back to camp. It’s only Aaron talking, babbling in low tones about what he wants for dinner, hoping it’s chicken, with peas, and carrots. ‘I always hated carrots as a kid, he says, wouldn’t touch them. Mom used to have to mash them up with a bit of honey, spread it on some bread. One time, she tried to pass them off as pumpkin soup, because I liked pumpkin you see, only I could tell straight away that it was carrot. I ate it anyway, only because she went to a lot of effort to disguise it…’
No one tells him to shut up. Dean suspects it’s for the same reason he doesn’t. Aaron is everything about life before, when the world didn’t know about demons, or Heaven, and the Apocalypse was only rumours among the angels. Aaron is life, and happiness, and making the best of a bad situation. He lets the emptiness and death of this world pass over him. He stays sane. He stays human.
He reminds them to be the same.
The truck can’t move very fast, there’s too much crap in the way. Overturned cars, broken glass and black skeletons lie piled on top of each other, a blanket of destruction that drove people out of the cities, let the demons move in. It was a result of Lucifer’s ascent, a giant pulse of energy that wiped Maryland off the map, left nothing but a crater and a gateway straight to hell. When life kept going, the demons swarmed in to stop it, poisoning the water and encouraging violence. Then they sat back from the tops of their high rises and watched the world destroy itself.
Until about six months ago, when they disappeared. One day they were there, the next they were gone, no warning, no whispers along the grapevine that there was anything going on. No more possessions, no more attacks, just the complete absence of anything demonic. Like they never existed in the first place. Most hunters believe that Lucifer wiped them out, but rumours are he still has a circle of them doing his work. Besides, Dean knows they’re still around. They’re just not on Earth.
The truck jolts to a stop and Aaron’s mouth follows, choked off sentence disappearing into the silence. Mark and Nick lean forward and Jillian locks eyes with Dean in the rear view.
‘It’s nothing,’ he says. She looks at him sceptically until the truck starts moving again, settling back in her seat beside her brother. They both look at Aaron, who’s wide-eyed, open-mouthed and apprehensive that his talking attracted something unwanted and that’s why they stopped, but he nevertheless takes their attention as a signal to continue, and launches into a new story, leaving the other unfinished.
Dean reminds himself to keep more focus. He misses the Impala, misses the warmth of her seats and the steady hum of engine. She sits packed away now, wrapped up in a sheet and waiting for him. He visits her every now and then, to wash her down and tune her up, even if he doesn’t drive her. They use trucks like this one, because it fits them all in and doesn’t make as much noise. But ever since he fixed the truck up to run quieter, it’s been a lot more sensitive to stalling at the smallest of bumps in the road, each restart telling them that they can’t risk the possibility of something hearing them. When they reach the city limits it’s like a weight has been lifted, an easy sigh of relief passing through the group. The outskirts of the suburbs lead straight on to farmland, on to wide open fields that allow them to see for miles, see anything choosing to come for them. There’s nowhere for them to hide either, but they do have the guns and the salt and the moving vehicle.
‘Well,’ says Nick, ‘who’s up for poker?’ There’s a collective hum of approval from the bed of the truck and they move into a rough circle. Dean doesn’t like how easy they let go of their vigilance, how they seem to think that it’s safe out here, away from the buildings. But he grants them this because he doesn’t need them on watch right now. Sam’s doing the job, half rigid in the seat next to him, listening and feeling into the wind. Sam can always sense if something’s coming long before they can see it on the horizon. He says it feels like a twist inside his mind, sometimes a vision, sometimes a feeling, always unique to whatever it is. He can tell when it’s Castiel and when it’s another angel. Sam’s the best alarm system they have, and all it will take is one word and the rest of them will be back in battle mode, barrels raised and pointing out towards the empty fields.
-
The camp isn’t enclosed by wire fences and padlocks. True, they’ve got people on watch round the clock, Enochian symbols on all the buildings and there’s an outer wall of sorts, but extending just over half a mile beyond that is a ring of iron, enclosed by a salt trench, and beyond that they have an irrigation system of holy water. They don’t need much else, the Croatoan virus ran itself out months ago, destroyed by its own violence by ripping itself to shreds of blood and flesh. Sam may have helped that a little, planting the suggestion, the thought, the feeling, the little rush of heat that Dean could feel temporarily pass through his blood that made the Croats fall over themselves to destroy each other, all because Sam asked them to.
It’s not something they talk about often, Sam’s powers. Dean doesn’t like to think about them, thinking how it feels for Sam to control it all, burning under his skin. He doesn’t like to think about how he once tried to stop it, but now he just lets it happen, vindicated by the fact that Sam is his brother, and he loves Sam no matter what, and Sam doesn’t need the demon blood anymore. His abilities are just there, simmering under the surface, only used when he has Dean’s permission, or he can’t help it. Something shifted when Lucifer rose, and Sam wouldn’t let Dean walk away, and Dean wouldn’t let Sam walk away, both clinging to apologies and each other. Sam held his hand up and killed Lilith in a convent, because Ruby told him to, set Lucifer free and everything that came with him. And then Sam shoved a knife into Ruby, and though that was enough to say he was sorry, to say he was an idiot, to say he should have kept his trust in Dean, he’s still spent every moment since Maryland atoning. Sometimes he looks at Dean like he used to when they were young, like Dean will fix things, just slap a bandaid on it and give Sam a kiss on the forehead and there, it’s all better, no need to make a fuss.
But Dean’s terrified he’ll fuck it up, that he’ll make a mistake along the way and destroy his brother, so he’s giving Sam this, permission to use his powers, he’s giving him the trust that this time, Sam’ll do it right. And Sam’s still here, a year and a half on, no blood, no secrets. So Dean’s stopped treating it as something bad, tries to see the good that can come from it. And he can, Sam’s ability to feel the presence of things has undeniably kept them alive at times, and his visions are as relevant as they ever were. He can see the good in having the kind of control Sam used in dealing with the Croats, but it doesn’t mean he likes talking about it. As long as Sam keeps telling him truth, keeps letting Dean in and not hiding secrets, Sam’s okay. They’re okay, the two of them against the world like it’s always been.
Dean pulls the truck to a stop in front of the church, an old converted tent that, if the faded colours are anything to go by, was once part of a circus, and Nick and Thomas lower the girl down from the bed of the truck and carry her inside, Aaron holding the tent flap open for them. The twins disappear in the opposite direction as others from the camp come running up, but Dean stops them with a lift of his hand. He’ll let Sam deal with the explanation, still able to work the you can trust me completely eyes when he needs to. The camp tends to believe Sam more, obey Sam more, even if the same words are leaving Dean’s mouth. They trust Sam on less than a word because Dean looks and acts too hardened, too impersonal. But they need it to be that way because if some of them found out about what Sam can do, or knew the cold calculation he can possess when faced with evil, if they found out that he’s Lucifer’s most prized possession, they’d crucify him.
The guys they run with, Nick and Thomas, Mark and Jillian, and Aaron, they know. They don’t care. They all have their secrets too. The twins won’t talk about what happened to them, but Dean knows that they were in Maryland when Lucifer came up, and somehow they not only made it out alive, but perfectly unharmed. They found Nick on a supply run, blood on his hands and a dead child in his lap, but all he can remember is the twisting black smoke that he choked on before he blacked out. Thomas said that what he’s doing now, protecting the innocent and human life, is his penance for every single life that he didn’t deserve to take in Iraq, that Sam’s abilities to help, however unorthodox, was a blessing. Aaron just doesn’t give a damn, says that when Sam does his funky thinking thing it’s the coolest fucking thing ever. They’re a good bunch of people they’ve got, and Dean hopes they all make it out the other end of this okay.
Dean enters the church at the same time that Rachel does, emerging at the other end, bee-lining past the altar with the body draped over it and straight toward Dean, who fights the urge to run away. Rachel is persistent and impatient, and for someone who spends the majority of her time extolling the virtues of faith and prayer, she spends an inordinately hypocritical amount of time trying to get into Dean’s bed.
‘Dean,’ her voice is saccharine sweet and sickly, stretching his name across four syllables, ‘I was so worried you wouldn’t make it back okay. Did anything go wrong?’ as if the dead body on the altar was a vase of flowers.
He doesn’t have the energy to talk to her, so he just ignores her and her pout, heading up to where Nick and Thomas are sprinkling herbs over the girl. Dean picks up the bowl of holy oil and anoints her forehead, sternum, and the tops of both her feet. They wrap her in a white sheet and tuck the ends in tight, Dean pressing a light kiss to the covered head.
‘Sam’ll finish it up,’ he says, and Thomas nods.
-
He feels almost weightless, but every step he takes makes the earth tremble beneath his feet. It’s hot, oppressively so, and he blinks against the burning dryness in his eyes. When he’s back here, it’s like the first time all over again, naked and dirty and bleeding, the gashes that they ripped into his body screaming, wide and stinging. He hurts here, always does, it’s one of the ways he knows it’s not just simply a dream, every part of him brought back whenever he walks this terrain.
Alastair is in the distance. Dean can always recognise him, no matter what form, whether smoky and loose or human, or skeletal and half-translucent, like he is now, skin stretched tight over bones that look black under the blood red of the sky. Alastair smiles and it’s dark, twisted and Dean steps forward, footsteps making the ground jump beneath him. His skin feels leathery, pulling at itself when he moves, blood drying in half sticky streaks where it slips out of him. Alastair’s gaze is predatory, but he loses it the closer Dean gets, until he looks at Dean with an almost softness, like Alastair is truly happy to see him.
Hello my boy, Alastair says, and the pain of Dean’s open wounds flares slightly under his gaze.
Alastair. Evidently you wanted to see me. Dean gestures to their surrounds. The air whips about them, hot and heavy and crawling under Dean’s skin through his cuts.
Alastair smiles again, Indeed I did. I wanted to get ahead of the game plan and tell you, it’s not us.
Not you for what?
Not us that took your precious angel. We don’t have him- at least not that I’m aware of. Alastair clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth. I can’t speak for those who know how to keep their secrets.
How do I know you’re not lying to me, Alastair?
Alastair looks amused. Dean, Dean, Dean, the last thing I want, or need, is you traipsing your little fighters all the way down here looking for something we don’t have. And don’t ask me why, he says before Dean can open his mouth, I have my reasons. Point is, we don’t have the angel.
Dean sighs.
And besides, Alastair continues, only angels have the power to kill other angels. His grin turns again. Now wake up.
-
When he opens his eyes, Sam is sitting on the end of Dean’s bed, legs crossed, watching Dean sleep.
‘You went to Hell again, didn’t you?’ he says.
Dean runs his hand across his face and breathes deep. ‘Yeah, how’d you know?’
‘You always toss and turn more, and your body temperature rises. I can feel it from here,’ he pauses, ‘you said you didn’t want to go back there anymore, why did you?’
‘Alastair called. I didn’t have a choice.’
Sam sits up straighter and leans forward. ‘He called? What for? Castiel?’
‘Yeah, but he doesn’t have him. He said the angels do. Used the killing excuse again.’
‘I suppose,’ Sam says, frowning, ‘it does make sense.’
‘Because of how trashed that floor was, I know. I thought that too.’
They fall silent, Dean’s arm slung across his eyes. He can feel the weight of Sam’s eyes on him, feel the questions heavy in the air between them. He wants Sam to leave then, suddenly, doesn’t want Sam to ask the questions he keeps asking, the questions that Dean doesn’t have answers to. He doesn’t know why he can do this, doesn’t know why he can go places in his sleep, dream walk through Heaven, or Hell, or the diner in Florida with the honeycomb waffles. He doesn’t know why, when Sam’s meant to be the one with the powers, when Sam has a reason for having powers, that Dean can do this too. It scares him, what he can do.
Dean gets up and Sam watches him splash some water on his face from the adjoining bathroom. The entire camp is centred around an old country mansion they stumbled across, with more room than they needed or wanted, but as more and more people came looking for refuge, the less and less space they had. As it stands, there are more than 100 people living in the camp, mostly outside of the house in cabin-like buildings. The house is now mostly used for recreational purposes. They’ve installed a library, of both occult and normal material, and a few months back Aaron went out on a recon run with Nick and they came back with two pool tables and a jukebox. The rest of the community moved on, installing the church tent and a day care centre for the kids. While they still rely on help for getting food and water, some of them recently started up a vegetable field with some seeds that Jillian found, when she and Mark brought back an Angus calf wandering the fields. The camp has been raising it, and talking about finding the now-adolescent bull a mate, pleading with Dean to keep a watch out for cattle.
Over time, they managed to accumulate all they’d needed to be self supporting. They have a plumber, who Aaron follows around when he’s stuck at the camp, an electrician, who’s taken it upon himself to consistently check the generator is working fine. They have a chef living onsite, should they ever want to open a restaurant, a priest, who surprisingly is not in argument with the reverend over who gets to use the church- they share between them apparently. They’ve even got a cop, who doesn’t arrest anybody but does provide an authoritative air to keeping people in line. Every so often a new group of people come wandering in, claiming they heard rumours about the camp and a new life in the new world that makes Sam snort and shake his head.
‘They think they’re living,’ Sam had said, ‘but they’re just waiting around to die.’
It’s true. Until they can find a way to stop Lucifer without saying yes, the apocalypse is still on the go-ahead for heaven. Michael, when he appears in Dean’s dreams to plead that Dean accept his role, has been saying that Lucifer is set to raise Death, that he’s ready to jumpstart the battle and wipe the Earth clean. He goes on to say that Dean can stop it if he just accepts his destiny, but Dean makes himself wake up. He promised Sam he wouldn’t when Sam promised him the same.
Dean thinks it’s finally time for Death to come. Castiel had been hearing whispers from angels who are wanting rebellion, angels like the one they were going to meet that morning, who say that the Horsemen are waiting for their brother, that they don’t agree with Lucifer’s plans, that they need Death by their side to overthrow Heaven. If this is true, then Dean’s all for it. He’s not sure he wants to know what the Horsemen have planned after that, but Castiel was certain it isn’t destruction, and that’s enough for Dean to get on board with. It still poses a question of what the hell happened that morning in the city. They have a dead angel who was supposed to rebel and a missing Castiel, who’s leading the rebellion- if the angels came after them, do they know about the Horsemen? Does Lucifer know? Was it all a set up to get to Castiel and the girl was just collateral? Dean doesn’t want to think about it, can’t think about it or he’ll end up punching something.
He’s standing there, water running through his fingers when Sam screams. When Dean looks over Sam’s shaking, sharp jolts of his torso and his head snaps backwards. He’s gasping, pained noises coming from his mouth and Dean runs over, trips on the corner of the bed and nearly goes sprawling, manages to haul Sam into his lap and get Sam’s head in his arms to hold him still. It goes on for a few minutes before Sam falls still and silent, and Dean’s about to let him go when he lets out a long burst of sound, and his body arches upwards.
When Dean looks, there are thin red lines spreading under Sam’s skin, bulging under the surface and crawling up his neck and down from his hairline. He’s breathing sharply, mouth moving in a parody of words. His eyes become unfocussed and then roll back in his head, and Dean screams his name. It lasts maybe a minute and then Sam slumps back down over Dean’s lap and goes quiet. The lines recede back until they’re gone, leaving Sam with a sweaty forehead and flushed cheeks. His eyes are closed, but he’s breathing slowly and evenly and they flutter open, gaze jittery until they land on Dean’s face and focus.
‘Sam?’ Dean asks, ‘you with me?’
Sam nods and goes to sit up, but his arms don’t hold him. Dean lays him so he’s back fully on the bed, his head on a pillow and goes to get up, get some water from the bathroom. Sam stops him with a hand on Dean’s wrist, fingers curled in a weak grasp.
‘Death,’ he breathes, ‘Dean, Death has risen.’
-
They try to leave without anyone noticing them, but Aaron spots them just past the kitchen and follows them out behind the house, to where Dean keeps the Impala under a sheet.
‘Where are you going? Are you leaving?’ he asks.
Dean looks at Aaron while Sam puts the duffle bags in the trunk. ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘and you can’t come with us, it’s too dangerous.’ Aaron opens his mouth to protest but Dean cuts him off. ‘I mean it. This isn’t your battle. You need to stay here.’
‘We need you to stay here,’ Sam says. His voice rasps and trembles slightly, ‘you need to be able to protect everyone if anything comes for the camp. They’ll be helpless without you.’
Aaron drops his eyes and nods. Dean puts a hand on his shoulder. ‘You’re a good guy Aaron, and you’ve come such a long way from the kid we picked up a year ago. You’re one of the best hunter’s I’ve met.’ Aaron’s head comes back up and he grins.
‘I’m a hunter?’
‘Sure are. And that’s why we need you here. To keep them safe.’ Dean turns away and heads back to the car.
‘What are you going to do?’ Aaron calls.
Dean looks back at Sam, who nods and gets in the car, rifling through a box of tapes. He finds one, slots it into the player. Dean smiles at Aaron.
‘We’re gonna go find Castiel, get him back.’ Dean gets in the car and slots the key into the ignition. She starts up with a rumble, like new, like she hasn’t been quiet for a year and a half. Creedence blares out of the speakers and Dean laughs. In the seat next to him where he belongs, Sam smiles and rolls the window down. Dean turns back to Aaron.
‘And then we’re gonna save the world.’
-
Light pierces the darkness, sweeping through the trees and into the clearing. The car pulls to a stop, blood red under the light of the moon and headlights flick off, plunging the clearing into a muted blue. War steps clear of the car as two others pull up, one white, one black, their headlights spotlighting War where he stands.
Pestilence joins him first, halting directly opposite, his mouth curving into a smile. You look good as a human, brother, he says, and War returns As do you. They both turn to where Famine rolls up to them, wheelchair bound and breathing in shaky breaths.
Interesting form, War says, you could not have shaped something better for yourself?
Famine dismisses him with a wave of his hand. The grass in the path of the motion wilts with the movement. Where is our brother, he asks, we have waited far too long for this.
A sweep of light rushes over the ground as the pale car rumbles into the clearing with a crunch of the gears. The car idles as Death steps out, coat brushing against the long blades of grass when he approaches the others. He greets them each with a smile, and for a moment they stand there, silent and watching each other.
Death is the first to move, a shift of muscles and his cane comes to rest in front of him. His mouth twitches unnaturally, his eyes darken, and with a long exhalation of breath, says
It is time.
END
---
Authors Notes:
This is the very first challenge that I managed to complete on time and not drop out of or abandon. And I owe it wholly and completely to mangacat201 , because without her I probably would have left the challenge. Her prompt was amazing and I was desperate not to let her down. I can only hope this fic lives up to her brilliant trailer.
This fic is AU from about mid-season four onwards, and almost completely disregards the end of season five. I wanted Sam and Dean to forgive each other like they should have and for them to build their trust back up. That couldn’t happen with the events of the beginning of season five, or the middle, and of course, in this story, they don’t say yes for eighteen months, so Sam doesn’t go to hell. At all. Lucky boy.
And finally, a big thank you to the mods of spn_reversebang for running the challenge and dealing with everything.