Lay This Body Anywhere, (Gen, R) 2/4
Continuation of Lay This Body Anywhere
Written for the ohsam commentfic me for this prompt
Post S7/Pre-S8: Sam finds out he can use his powers to bust Dean and Cas out of purgatory. He falls off the demon blood wagon. He tries to break them out, but it's a huuuuuge strain and he can only manage to grab Dean, and maybe the effort scrambles Sam's eggs a little, and he wasn't doing so hot with his magic mental health cure locked in Purgatory anyway. So basically, Dean comes back from Purgatory (in whatever state of wear you see fit) to a twitchy, hallucinating, migraine-plagued, babbling mess of a reluctant demon blood junkie. What little of a lucid Sam remains is convinced that he can rescue Cas too if he just has ONE MORE TRY.
back to part 1
Castiel’s voice wakes him. “This is different.”
Dean blinks open his eyes and stares at the angel. He’s wearing what’s left of his trench-coat and his scrubs - shredded as they were down in Purgatory. There are streaks of red, black and every color of ichor covering them, and big chunks are missing from the front of the coat.
“It’s dark, but the sky isn't bleeding anymore. How did I get here?” Castiel asks, crouching down next to Dean. “I tried to follow you earlier. There wasn’t enough room.” He reaches his hand out to Dean and pulls him up until he’s sitting. “They’re all wondering where you went, down there.”
“They can all go screw themselves,” Dean says, pushing himself to his feet. “Where’s Sam?”
“Sam…” Castiel’s eyes widen. “Oh yes, that would explain things. Sam was here, but then he left.”
“Okay…where did he go?”
“I’m not sure,” Castiel says. “He looked wrong though. Full of red and black, and there’s too much of him spilling out around the edges.”
“Did you see where he went? Did he go out a door, or just go poof, or what?”
“He went out a door.”
Dean contemplates strangling the angel briefly, but then realizes there really aren’t that many doors in this wreck of a house to begin with. He gets up and looks around at the options.
There’s the door leading outside, which is the last place to check, but also the least likely. In the condition Sam was in, he probably wouldn’t have gone out into the open. Probably. Then again, considering what he’s done to get Dean - and now Cas - out of Purgatory, what Sam will and won’t do isn’t all that easy to gauge anymore.
Dean pauses on a particularly creaky floorboard as he turns back around, walking into the room he’d first woken up in. There’s a faint noise coming from below his feet that makes his skin crawl. He crouches down and puts his ear close to the floor. As soon as he hears the sound again, he knows exactly what it is and moves to the basement door as quickly as he can. He runs downstairs, nearly tripping in the process. “He’s down here!” Dean shouts over his shoulder.
The basement is filled with crates - mostly empty and broken. There’s a boiler that looks like it hasn’t worked in years and in the very back there’s another room. It’s got a heavy metal door, and on the other side of it, Dean can hear Sam. He’s moaning, he’s in pain. “Sam!” he yells, pounding on the door. “Sammy!”
There’s silence from the other side and then a pained muffled scream that gets louder and louder. One of the two naked lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling shatter, and Dean flinches when a glass shard grazes his cheek. Too many of the things in Purgatory had claws like glass. It was always dark there, but that didn’t make it any better. Sometimes, it seemed like it was easier to see things for what they were without the false reassurance of light.
Behind him, footsteps sound on the rickety staircase. Castiel is walking down slowly, holding onto the railing.
“Cas! You gotta get this door open.” Dean snaps, examining the door again. There’s no handle on the outside, just a snapped off piece of metal.
Castiel walks next to Dean and reaches his finger out to prod at the jagged metal stump. “There is no handle.”
“Yeah, I can see that!”
“I can’t open this door.”
“Okay, then just zap inside and get Sam out so we can help him.” Dean yells, impatiently. "He’s going through the motherload of withdrawals in there, and he’s not gonna make it on his own.”
Castiel laughs. “Zap in there? Did you forget about that night the clan of Djinn cut me open and ate my grace? I’m completely powerless, remember?”
Dean shudders at the memory. “No, no I remember. Sorry. I just - we need to get this door open.” Dean pushes on it again, but it doesn’t budge in the slightest.
The angel leans closer to the doorframe and sniffs. “It’s been welded shut on the inside. It won’t open ever again.”
“What, but then how did Sam expect to get out of there?” Dean hates himself for speaking the question aloud, because as soon as he does, the answer comes to him.
“I believe Sam wasn’t planning on coming back out,” Castiel says, and tilts his head to the side when Sam starts howling again. “We will not be able to help him from out here.”
“Then we have to find someone who can,” Dean says, turning to head back up the steps.
********
Hours later, every contact in their not particularly extensive list of allies is crossed out. Crowley isn’t an option. Castiel doesn’t have the ability to contact any other angels, nor can he think of any that would help.
Dean decides their only real course of action is cutting the door open. He’s trying to think of who he knows that would have access to an industrial-grade cutting torch when there’s an odd thumping noise from downstairs.
He’s down the stairs as fast as his legs can take him, but he freezes on the last step. There are five men gathered around the metal door. “Hey!” he yells, and two of them turn to face him, their eyes solid black. They’re bleeding - they’re all bleeding - from everywhere. Cuts on their faces and hands, slashes in their clothing. Blood is spilling onto the floor, sliding down the wall and towards the metal door. All of it is running under the tiny crack beneath the door. Into the room Sam’s in.
There’s no noise at all coming from Sam. Dean yells out for Castiel who stands at the top of the stairs watching the scene unfold like he's in a trance.
Dean stumbles his way through the Rituale Romanum, glad that years of one crisis after the other have given him the ability to remember how to exorcize a demon - even when most of his rational brain has shut down. The demons start to cough, then choke, not fighting him in the least. Then they all turn to him, open their mouths, and speak as one.
"Dean, stop.”
“Omnis legio diabolica…”
"Stop.” The demon closest to him stumbles forward, blood streaming from his eyes, ears and mouth. He speaks again, with all five mouths, “I need them. I’ll die without them.”
“Adjuramus te…”Dean steps back and away and recites the rest of the exorcism as quickly as he can, fending off the one demon lumbering towards him. It starts to cough, and collapses at the foot of the stairs. Black smoke begins to pour out of all five demons, faster and faster, and spills up the steps, past Castiel who blinks at Dean like he’s been asleep with his eyes wide open.
The de-possessed bodies slump to the floor. Dean checks one pulse after the other. Two survived.
“Cas! Get these guys to the hospital.”
The angel stares at him blankly.
“Take the car!” Dean says, tossing him the keys. “I have to figure out a way to get Sam out of here.”
Castiel carries the two men up the stairs. He might have lost his mojo, but he’s still stronger than average.
Dean turns back to the metal door, and pounds on it hard. His hand aches when he pulls it back.
Then he hears Sam’s voice. He’s laughing. Or crying. Possibly both.
“Sam? How are you doing in there?”
“The blood...” Sam says quietly.
Dean has to strain to hear him. He gets down on his knees, bringing his ear as close as he can to the open space beneath the door without touching his face to the blood. “I was wonderin’ about that. Did you-”
“It ran right across the floor, and into my mouth.” Sam laughs again, hysteria tingeing his voice. “It ran across the floor, Dean. Right through the devil’s traps.”
Dean pushes himself to his feet again, a half-second before the last remaining lightbulb shatters.
Sam’s laughter turns to a low, pained scream.
The air all around him fills with sulfur and so much dark smoke Dean can’t see. He presses himself flat against the wall and watches as the demon-mass streams through the gap under the door. After what seems like an eternity, the air clears. There’s a loud crack, and Dean feels the floor beneath him heave and shift. The wall splinters, sending bits of plaster and wood into the air. They patter down like hail as the door swings wide open.
Blood trails across the floor, pointing to the empty center of the room like jagged arrows. There are no demons in the room. And there’s no Sam.
*******
on to part 3
Written for the ohsam commentfic me for this prompt
Post S7/Pre-S8: Sam finds out he can use his powers to bust Dean and Cas out of purgatory. He falls off the demon blood wagon. He tries to break them out, but it's a huuuuuge strain and he can only manage to grab Dean, and maybe the effort scrambles Sam's eggs a little, and he wasn't doing so hot with his magic mental health cure locked in Purgatory anyway. So basically, Dean comes back from Purgatory (in whatever state of wear you see fit) to a twitchy, hallucinating, migraine-plagued, babbling mess of a reluctant demon blood junkie. What little of a lucid Sam remains is convinced that he can rescue Cas too if he just has ONE MORE TRY.
back to part 1
Castiel’s voice wakes him. “This is different.”
Dean blinks open his eyes and stares at the angel. He’s wearing what’s left of his trench-coat and his scrubs - shredded as they were down in Purgatory. There are streaks of red, black and every color of ichor covering them, and big chunks are missing from the front of the coat.
“It’s dark, but the sky isn't bleeding anymore. How did I get here?” Castiel asks, crouching down next to Dean. “I tried to follow you earlier. There wasn’t enough room.” He reaches his hand out to Dean and pulls him up until he’s sitting. “They’re all wondering where you went, down there.”
“They can all go screw themselves,” Dean says, pushing himself to his feet. “Where’s Sam?”
“Sam…” Castiel’s eyes widen. “Oh yes, that would explain things. Sam was here, but then he left.”
“Okay…where did he go?”
“I’m not sure,” Castiel says. “He looked wrong though. Full of red and black, and there’s too much of him spilling out around the edges.”
“Did you see where he went? Did he go out a door, or just go poof, or what?”
“He went out a door.”
Dean contemplates strangling the angel briefly, but then realizes there really aren’t that many doors in this wreck of a house to begin with. He gets up and looks around at the options.
There’s the door leading outside, which is the last place to check, but also the least likely. In the condition Sam was in, he probably wouldn’t have gone out into the open. Probably. Then again, considering what he’s done to get Dean - and now Cas - out of Purgatory, what Sam will and won’t do isn’t all that easy to gauge anymore.
Dean pauses on a particularly creaky floorboard as he turns back around, walking into the room he’d first woken up in. There’s a faint noise coming from below his feet that makes his skin crawl. He crouches down and puts his ear close to the floor. As soon as he hears the sound again, he knows exactly what it is and moves to the basement door as quickly as he can. He runs downstairs, nearly tripping in the process. “He’s down here!” Dean shouts over his shoulder.
The basement is filled with crates - mostly empty and broken. There’s a boiler that looks like it hasn’t worked in years and in the very back there’s another room. It’s got a heavy metal door, and on the other side of it, Dean can hear Sam. He’s moaning, he’s in pain. “Sam!” he yells, pounding on the door. “Sammy!”
There’s silence from the other side and then a pained muffled scream that gets louder and louder. One of the two naked lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling shatter, and Dean flinches when a glass shard grazes his cheek. Too many of the things in Purgatory had claws like glass. It was always dark there, but that didn’t make it any better. Sometimes, it seemed like it was easier to see things for what they were without the false reassurance of light.
Behind him, footsteps sound on the rickety staircase. Castiel is walking down slowly, holding onto the railing.
“Cas! You gotta get this door open.” Dean snaps, examining the door again. There’s no handle on the outside, just a snapped off piece of metal.
Castiel walks next to Dean and reaches his finger out to prod at the jagged metal stump. “There is no handle.”
“Yeah, I can see that!”
“I can’t open this door.”
“Okay, then just zap inside and get Sam out so we can help him.” Dean yells, impatiently. "He’s going through the motherload of withdrawals in there, and he’s not gonna make it on his own.”
Castiel laughs. “Zap in there? Did you forget about that night the clan of Djinn cut me open and ate my grace? I’m completely powerless, remember?”
Dean shudders at the memory. “No, no I remember. Sorry. I just - we need to get this door open.” Dean pushes on it again, but it doesn’t budge in the slightest.
The angel leans closer to the doorframe and sniffs. “It’s been welded shut on the inside. It won’t open ever again.”
“What, but then how did Sam expect to get out of there?” Dean hates himself for speaking the question aloud, because as soon as he does, the answer comes to him.
“I believe Sam wasn’t planning on coming back out,” Castiel says, and tilts his head to the side when Sam starts howling again. “We will not be able to help him from out here.”
“Then we have to find someone who can,” Dean says, turning to head back up the steps.
********
Hours later, every contact in their not particularly extensive list of allies is crossed out. Crowley isn’t an option. Castiel doesn’t have the ability to contact any other angels, nor can he think of any that would help.
Dean decides their only real course of action is cutting the door open. He’s trying to think of who he knows that would have access to an industrial-grade cutting torch when there’s an odd thumping noise from downstairs.
He’s down the stairs as fast as his legs can take him, but he freezes on the last step. There are five men gathered around the metal door. “Hey!” he yells, and two of them turn to face him, their eyes solid black. They’re bleeding - they’re all bleeding - from everywhere. Cuts on their faces and hands, slashes in their clothing. Blood is spilling onto the floor, sliding down the wall and towards the metal door. All of it is running under the tiny crack beneath the door. Into the room Sam’s in.
There’s no noise at all coming from Sam. Dean yells out for Castiel who stands at the top of the stairs watching the scene unfold like he's in a trance.
Dean stumbles his way through the Rituale Romanum, glad that years of one crisis after the other have given him the ability to remember how to exorcize a demon - even when most of his rational brain has shut down. The demons start to cough, then choke, not fighting him in the least. Then they all turn to him, open their mouths, and speak as one.
"Dean, stop.”
“Omnis legio diabolica…”
"Stop.” The demon closest to him stumbles forward, blood streaming from his eyes, ears and mouth. He speaks again, with all five mouths, “I need them. I’ll die without them.”
“Adjuramus te…”Dean steps back and away and recites the rest of the exorcism as quickly as he can, fending off the one demon lumbering towards him. It starts to cough, and collapses at the foot of the stairs. Black smoke begins to pour out of all five demons, faster and faster, and spills up the steps, past Castiel who blinks at Dean like he’s been asleep with his eyes wide open.
The de-possessed bodies slump to the floor. Dean checks one pulse after the other. Two survived.
“Cas! Get these guys to the hospital.”
The angel stares at him blankly.
“Take the car!” Dean says, tossing him the keys. “I have to figure out a way to get Sam out of here.”
Castiel carries the two men up the stairs. He might have lost his mojo, but he’s still stronger than average.
Dean turns back to the metal door, and pounds on it hard. His hand aches when he pulls it back.
Then he hears Sam’s voice. He’s laughing. Or crying. Possibly both.
“Sam? How are you doing in there?”
“The blood...” Sam says quietly.
Dean has to strain to hear him. He gets down on his knees, bringing his ear as close as he can to the open space beneath the door without touching his face to the blood. “I was wonderin’ about that. Did you-”
“It ran right across the floor, and into my mouth.” Sam laughs again, hysteria tingeing his voice. “It ran across the floor, Dean. Right through the devil’s traps.”
Dean pushes himself to his feet again, a half-second before the last remaining lightbulb shatters.
Sam’s laughter turns to a low, pained scream.
The air all around him fills with sulfur and so much dark smoke Dean can’t see. He presses himself flat against the wall and watches as the demon-mass streams through the gap under the door. After what seems like an eternity, the air clears. There’s a loud crack, and Dean feels the floor beneath him heave and shift. The wall splinters, sending bits of plaster and wood into the air. They patter down like hail as the door swings wide open.
Blood trails across the floor, pointing to the empty center of the room like jagged arrows. There are no demons in the room. And there’s no Sam.
*******
on to part 3