Never Look Back 19/21
With all the hoop-la over the 4.01 promos, I nearly forgot that I was supposed to post today!
Chapter Nineteen
The Stand
He had loved her, had kissed her, had found understanding and compassion within her. He’d hated to leave her, to go along his way, to save her from his life.
He’d failed her.
It wasn’t a mercy killing.
Sarah Blake was dying, ripped apart by a canine that had been summoned from the depths of Hell, and Sam could only watch, only smile, only tell it to keep going. Guilt, fear, and a sickness so deep that it knew no bounds tugged at his heart as Lilith screamed, her shrieks of pain drawing the attention of the warring armies.
He voice rose over the soldiers’ cries, both terrifying and pathetic at once. Human screams faded into demonic ones, tones that hurt his ears, threatening to split his skull with their viciousness, their hellishness, their finality.
He was killing another loved one. He seemed to do that a lot.
Lilith snarled, a sound that matched the hound’s perfectly, and threw the beast from her failing body. She staggered to her feet, staring at it, able to make out its powerful, yet barely there form as it turned on her.
Blood dripped lazily down her face onto her now-ragged shirt, one hand straying to the deep slashes the dog had left across her stomach, the gashes that threatened to spill vital organs onto the sunny hillside.
“Bad puppy,” she rasped through a throat that had been ripped almost beyond recognition. She snapped her fingers and the dog disappeared with a howl, back into the depths of Hell.
Psychic and demon stared at the spot it had inhabited, their fight quelled by the sight before them. The two armies were parting, making a path through the valley, bodies both dead and alive flying back as Dean stumbled through the mass of warriors.
Lilith turned to Sam, eyebrows raised in surprise. “He just won’t die.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Leave Dean alone. I’m the one you want.”
“No. He’s the one I want. He got away. That doesn’t look very good on my permanent record.”
“Record’s about to be erased, sweetie.” He spat the final word at her, putting as much anger and hate behind it as he could, hoping to keep her away from Dean, to stop her from focusing on him, from hurting him, from killing him.
She smiled. “How’s that?”
Sam froze up. He wasn’t sure.
o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o
Dean drew the back of his hand across his face, scowling at the blood that was smeared across it as it brought it away. He didn’t care about the blood, didn’t care about what he was doing to himself. He only cared about two things, Sam and Ben, and at the moment, at least one of them was being threatened.
He barely registered what he was doing, barely noticed the spikes of pain that raked across his raw back, just knew that he had to get across the valley to save his son. The valley was filled with warring demons and psychics, holy water and varied bodily fluids flying across the small expanse, bodies falling, limbs dropping to the ground.
He pushed them away without touching them, pushed them with the same blind determination that had given him the ability to do so. He pushed them with the singular, overriding need to save what he had left, the only thing he had left. His soul, some brain cells… he didn’t need them if it meant protecting his family.
Dean blazed a trail through the masses, shoving bodies both dead and alive aside with his mind, his eyes never leaving the crest of the hill, the body of his son as the boy shook in the grasp of a particularly bulky demon.
Every child was backed by a demon, monsters that Dean knew were merely waiting for Lilith’s order to snap the kids’ necks. He wasn’t about to let that happen. He charged from the crowd, staggering a bit as he turned off whatever had been clearing his way through the war.
The hill was steep, but the hunter was determined, and determination could beat a forty-five degree incline any day of the week. He saw hope shining in young, wide eyes as he approached the group that Lilith had called forth in an attempt to stop the battle and claim her reign over what was left of the world.
He stormed up to the possessed man who had wrapped strong hands around Ben’s shoulders, holding the boy in place, and stared at him. “Let go of my son.”
The demon smirked. “Make me, pretty boy.”
Dean shrugged. “Have it your way.” He narrowed his eyes and focused on the big guy. The demon’s hands flew away from Ben’s shoulders as the man it was possessing was tossed through the air to roll down the back of the hill and into a tree.
Ben ran immediately to his father, wrapping trembling arms around the hunter’s legs. The other demons tensed, backtracking their comrade’s path until their black eyes rested on Dean. He glared at them, looking up and down the line that they formed on the crest of the hill, every feature of his face dark and dangerous.
Slowly, carefully, the demons took their ands from the children and backed away, toward their fallen counterpart and away from the fray.
Dean dropped to his knees and opened his arms, beckoning the group of children closer. They ran to him.
o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o
She crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him, white eyes wide with wonder. “Well?” Her foot tapped out a rhythm in the dirt, a sign of her impatience.
Sam just stared at her. This was the new up-and-comer, the demon that had demolished a precinct and killed new-found allies, the thing that had been gunning for him since Jake had opened the Gate, the one that had dared to take his brother’s soul.
She was old. She was powerful. She was Adam’s first wife, Satan’s spouse, a force to be reckoned with. There was more lore on her, in every nation, than there had any right to be. She was legendary.
And who was he? What was he? Some random hick psychic from Kansas with a too-devoted brother and an obsessive late father. He refused his destiny, shunned his own blood, turned from what was asked of him.
He chased after normal even though he now knew he could never be. He shirked his duties and family while following selfish wants. He only stepped up to the plate when he saw no other way, nothing but his brother’s blood and a white light so all-consuming that he wished he had given into it.
He was young. He was inexperienced. He was Mary’s son, Dean’s brother, a curse to all that he cared for. He was the favorite to win, the boy who would be king, the one the underworld had watched rise, fall, and rise again. He was nothing.
Lilith was waiting for an answer, for a plan, for action, and Sam was at a loss. He’d tried running from her, tried fighting her, had sicced a hellhound on her, and there she was, still staring at him with those mercilessly blank eyes, waiting. He couldn’t kill her. There was no way.
He’d never felt so helpless before, not even when watching his brother getting ripped to shreds before his eyes. There had still been hope, still been the knife, still been that blind determination that he could save Dean.
His hope was gone. The knife was gone. He risked a glance in his brother’s direction, smiling as he noted the throng of children surrounding the older man. Even over the distance, the blood that seeped through his clothing was visible, a stark reminder of what Sam had almost let happen again.
This time, he had saved his brother.
He would save them all.
The sounds of the fight reached his ears for the first time, the screams of the dying, the hiss of melting flesh as consecrated water touched evil, the primal shouts of pain and rage as demons and psychics clashed in a free-for-all melee.
They couldn’t decide the war. He knew that now, with the same certainty he’d developed after his second trip to Hell, the trip that had left him open, his mental door kicked-in, unlocked, swinging slightly in the breeze of the back of his mind. The soldiers were never meant to fight. It was the leaders that would determine the outcome, the true winner of the world. It was the leaders that held the power to create and destroy. It was the leaders that had to fight to the death.
He almost resented Yellow-Eyes for leaving that particular tidbit out.
Lilith smiled, blood leaking out from between once-shining teeth. “You can’t, can you? You can’t do it. That’s too bad, Sammy.” She stepped forward. “See, you? You, I can’t touch. But him?” She looked across the valley at Dean. “Him, I can’t miss.”
Sam started at the familiarity of the words, the pinprick of pain that wormed its way into his shoulder, a phantom bullet.
She owned the deals. She owned all the deals. She had owned Dean’s. She had killed Dean, and now she was gunning for round two.
And there was nothing Sam could do about it.
He stared back across the valley, stared at his brother, at the children bound to be caught in the crossfire.
“If you wanted, you could wipe her off the map without moving a muscle.”
“You told me once to trust you to keep this thing in check, and now I do. You’re not evil, Sam. Not at all.”
He hoped they were right, prayed they were right. He only had one shot, one chance at making up for his past failure, to save lives, including the one most important to him.
Dean had told him he was a good person, the farthest thing from evil he had ever seen. Sam hadn’t been sure whether to believe him. He didn’t feel good. He felt like he’d been used, like he’d been set up, like evil had touched him, drawing a cold finger across his soul, tainting him for life.
But Dean would never lie to him. He had told Sam, in the last moment of the younger man’s life, that he would patch him up, make him good as new. When Sam had risen from the grimy mattress, he’d had a fresh scar on his back and a new realization of just how far his brother would go to make good on a promise.
No, Dean didn’t lie. Dean had seen his brother’s soul, seen something that even Sam had never imagined could reside there. He had faith. He had trust. He was willing to take the burden until little brother was ready to pick it up, to stretch himself thin so that Sam could build up the confidence to do what was needed.
And he knew that he could do it now.
Lilith held her hand out toward the opposite hill, the place that would be Dean’s final resting place if Sam refused to act, to take destiny by the horns, to make a choice.
Sammy closed his eyes, let himself drift back into the farthest, darkest recesses of his mind.
He blew the door off its hinges.
o0o0o0o0o0o0o
Dean wasn’t paying attention to the fighting. He was too busy focusing on the kids, the tiny bodies that had been dragged from South Dakota after witnessing the murders of their caregivers.
He only bothered to turn when Mike, the oldest of the group they’d left behind, pointed.
Dean turned his attention over his shoulder, to the other hill, the hill where he’d left Sam and Lilith alone in his blind quest to save his latest responsibility. He had to squint to see, the light emanating from the other peak was so bright.
His mind had barely registered that as a bad thing before he moved himself in front of the children, spreading his arms wide, ready to protect them from whatever the white-eyed bitch as doing.
Only, it wasn’t Lilith.
Light spilled from Sam’s body as the young hunter’s head jerked back, turning his eyes to the sky. His mouth hung open, the white glare spearing upward from his eyes, mouth and nostrils as his arms spread wide at his sides, palms open toward the heavens.
Dean wasn’t an expert on the supernatural, even after all of his years hunting it down. There was just too much to learn. Maybe, if Bobby had still been alive, or Rufus, or Missouri, anyone who’d been in the game longer than Dean, they would have known for sure. But they were dead. They were dead, and he couldn’t ask them for their opinions.
It didn’t matter though. Light spontaneously spilling from a human being couldn’t be good, right?
The fact that it was spilling from his little brother made it somehow worse.
He yelled Sam’s name, drawing attention to the younger man, to the light radiating from his body. The fighting stopped as heads turned to the psychic, mouths gaping, eyes bugging.
For a moment, there was no war, there were no armies, no soldiers, no psychics or demons, no good or evil. There was just a light, golden-white, spreading out from a tall body, growing in intensity, spreading out from the figure of the boy king, engulfing them all.
It washed over Dean, bright enough that he had to cover his eyes. The air charged around him as his heart pounded harder and harder, threatening to break in his chest with the weight of a sacrifice that Sam never should have had to make. His stomach dropped to the ground, bile rising in his throat as whatever force Sam had summoned surrounded him, pulling him in, ending it.
Lilith screamed.
Chapter 20
Chapter Nineteen
The Stand
He had loved her, had kissed her, had found understanding and compassion within her. He’d hated to leave her, to go along his way, to save her from his life.
He’d failed her.
It wasn’t a mercy killing.
Sarah Blake was dying, ripped apart by a canine that had been summoned from the depths of Hell, and Sam could only watch, only smile, only tell it to keep going. Guilt, fear, and a sickness so deep that it knew no bounds tugged at his heart as Lilith screamed, her shrieks of pain drawing the attention of the warring armies.
He voice rose over the soldiers’ cries, both terrifying and pathetic at once. Human screams faded into demonic ones, tones that hurt his ears, threatening to split his skull with their viciousness, their hellishness, their finality.
He was killing another loved one. He seemed to do that a lot.
Lilith snarled, a sound that matched the hound’s perfectly, and threw the beast from her failing body. She staggered to her feet, staring at it, able to make out its powerful, yet barely there form as it turned on her.
Blood dripped lazily down her face onto her now-ragged shirt, one hand straying to the deep slashes the dog had left across her stomach, the gashes that threatened to spill vital organs onto the sunny hillside.
“Bad puppy,” she rasped through a throat that had been ripped almost beyond recognition. She snapped her fingers and the dog disappeared with a howl, back into the depths of Hell.
Psychic and demon stared at the spot it had inhabited, their fight quelled by the sight before them. The two armies were parting, making a path through the valley, bodies both dead and alive flying back as Dean stumbled through the mass of warriors.
Lilith turned to Sam, eyebrows raised in surprise. “He just won’t die.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Leave Dean alone. I’m the one you want.”
“No. He’s the one I want. He got away. That doesn’t look very good on my permanent record.”
“Record’s about to be erased, sweetie.” He spat the final word at her, putting as much anger and hate behind it as he could, hoping to keep her away from Dean, to stop her from focusing on him, from hurting him, from killing him.
She smiled. “How’s that?”
Sam froze up. He wasn’t sure.
o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o
Dean drew the back of his hand across his face, scowling at the blood that was smeared across it as it brought it away. He didn’t care about the blood, didn’t care about what he was doing to himself. He only cared about two things, Sam and Ben, and at the moment, at least one of them was being threatened.
He barely registered what he was doing, barely noticed the spikes of pain that raked across his raw back, just knew that he had to get across the valley to save his son. The valley was filled with warring demons and psychics, holy water and varied bodily fluids flying across the small expanse, bodies falling, limbs dropping to the ground.
He pushed them away without touching them, pushed them with the same blind determination that had given him the ability to do so. He pushed them with the singular, overriding need to save what he had left, the only thing he had left. His soul, some brain cells… he didn’t need them if it meant protecting his family.
Dean blazed a trail through the masses, shoving bodies both dead and alive aside with his mind, his eyes never leaving the crest of the hill, the body of his son as the boy shook in the grasp of a particularly bulky demon.
Every child was backed by a demon, monsters that Dean knew were merely waiting for Lilith’s order to snap the kids’ necks. He wasn’t about to let that happen. He charged from the crowd, staggering a bit as he turned off whatever had been clearing his way through the war.
The hill was steep, but the hunter was determined, and determination could beat a forty-five degree incline any day of the week. He saw hope shining in young, wide eyes as he approached the group that Lilith had called forth in an attempt to stop the battle and claim her reign over what was left of the world.
He stormed up to the possessed man who had wrapped strong hands around Ben’s shoulders, holding the boy in place, and stared at him. “Let go of my son.”
The demon smirked. “Make me, pretty boy.”
Dean shrugged. “Have it your way.” He narrowed his eyes and focused on the big guy. The demon’s hands flew away from Ben’s shoulders as the man it was possessing was tossed through the air to roll down the back of the hill and into a tree.
Ben ran immediately to his father, wrapping trembling arms around the hunter’s legs. The other demons tensed, backtracking their comrade’s path until their black eyes rested on Dean. He glared at them, looking up and down the line that they formed on the crest of the hill, every feature of his face dark and dangerous.
Slowly, carefully, the demons took their ands from the children and backed away, toward their fallen counterpart and away from the fray.
Dean dropped to his knees and opened his arms, beckoning the group of children closer. They ran to him.
o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o
She crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him, white eyes wide with wonder. “Well?” Her foot tapped out a rhythm in the dirt, a sign of her impatience.
Sam just stared at her. This was the new up-and-comer, the demon that had demolished a precinct and killed new-found allies, the thing that had been gunning for him since Jake had opened the Gate, the one that had dared to take his brother’s soul.
She was old. She was powerful. She was Adam’s first wife, Satan’s spouse, a force to be reckoned with. There was more lore on her, in every nation, than there had any right to be. She was legendary.
And who was he? What was he? Some random hick psychic from Kansas with a too-devoted brother and an obsessive late father. He refused his destiny, shunned his own blood, turned from what was asked of him.
He chased after normal even though he now knew he could never be. He shirked his duties and family while following selfish wants. He only stepped up to the plate when he saw no other way, nothing but his brother’s blood and a white light so all-consuming that he wished he had given into it.
He was young. He was inexperienced. He was Mary’s son, Dean’s brother, a curse to all that he cared for. He was the favorite to win, the boy who would be king, the one the underworld had watched rise, fall, and rise again. He was nothing.
Lilith was waiting for an answer, for a plan, for action, and Sam was at a loss. He’d tried running from her, tried fighting her, had sicced a hellhound on her, and there she was, still staring at him with those mercilessly blank eyes, waiting. He couldn’t kill her. There was no way.
He’d never felt so helpless before, not even when watching his brother getting ripped to shreds before his eyes. There had still been hope, still been the knife, still been that blind determination that he could save Dean.
His hope was gone. The knife was gone. He risked a glance in his brother’s direction, smiling as he noted the throng of children surrounding the older man. Even over the distance, the blood that seeped through his clothing was visible, a stark reminder of what Sam had almost let happen again.
This time, he had saved his brother.
He would save them all.
The sounds of the fight reached his ears for the first time, the screams of the dying, the hiss of melting flesh as consecrated water touched evil, the primal shouts of pain and rage as demons and psychics clashed in a free-for-all melee.
They couldn’t decide the war. He knew that now, with the same certainty he’d developed after his second trip to Hell, the trip that had left him open, his mental door kicked-in, unlocked, swinging slightly in the breeze of the back of his mind. The soldiers were never meant to fight. It was the leaders that would determine the outcome, the true winner of the world. It was the leaders that held the power to create and destroy. It was the leaders that had to fight to the death.
He almost resented Yellow-Eyes for leaving that particular tidbit out.
Lilith smiled, blood leaking out from between once-shining teeth. “You can’t, can you? You can’t do it. That’s too bad, Sammy.” She stepped forward. “See, you? You, I can’t touch. But him?” She looked across the valley at Dean. “Him, I can’t miss.”
Sam started at the familiarity of the words, the pinprick of pain that wormed its way into his shoulder, a phantom bullet.
She owned the deals. She owned all the deals. She had owned Dean’s. She had killed Dean, and now she was gunning for round two.
And there was nothing Sam could do about it.
He stared back across the valley, stared at his brother, at the children bound to be caught in the crossfire.
“If you wanted, you could wipe her off the map without moving a muscle.”
“You told me once to trust you to keep this thing in check, and now I do. You’re not evil, Sam. Not at all.”
He hoped they were right, prayed they were right. He only had one shot, one chance at making up for his past failure, to save lives, including the one most important to him.
Dean had told him he was a good person, the farthest thing from evil he had ever seen. Sam hadn’t been sure whether to believe him. He didn’t feel good. He felt like he’d been used, like he’d been set up, like evil had touched him, drawing a cold finger across his soul, tainting him for life.
But Dean would never lie to him. He had told Sam, in the last moment of the younger man’s life, that he would patch him up, make him good as new. When Sam had risen from the grimy mattress, he’d had a fresh scar on his back and a new realization of just how far his brother would go to make good on a promise.
No, Dean didn’t lie. Dean had seen his brother’s soul, seen something that even Sam had never imagined could reside there. He had faith. He had trust. He was willing to take the burden until little brother was ready to pick it up, to stretch himself thin so that Sam could build up the confidence to do what was needed.
And he knew that he could do it now.
Lilith held her hand out toward the opposite hill, the place that would be Dean’s final resting place if Sam refused to act, to take destiny by the horns, to make a choice.
Sammy closed his eyes, let himself drift back into the farthest, darkest recesses of his mind.
He blew the door off its hinges.
o0o0o0o0o0o0o
Dean wasn’t paying attention to the fighting. He was too busy focusing on the kids, the tiny bodies that had been dragged from South Dakota after witnessing the murders of their caregivers.
He only bothered to turn when Mike, the oldest of the group they’d left behind, pointed.
Dean turned his attention over his shoulder, to the other hill, the hill where he’d left Sam and Lilith alone in his blind quest to save his latest responsibility. He had to squint to see, the light emanating from the other peak was so bright.
His mind had barely registered that as a bad thing before he moved himself in front of the children, spreading his arms wide, ready to protect them from whatever the white-eyed bitch as doing.
Only, it wasn’t Lilith.
Light spilled from Sam’s body as the young hunter’s head jerked back, turning his eyes to the sky. His mouth hung open, the white glare spearing upward from his eyes, mouth and nostrils as his arms spread wide at his sides, palms open toward the heavens.
Dean wasn’t an expert on the supernatural, even after all of his years hunting it down. There was just too much to learn. Maybe, if Bobby had still been alive, or Rufus, or Missouri, anyone who’d been in the game longer than Dean, they would have known for sure. But they were dead. They were dead, and he couldn’t ask them for their opinions.
It didn’t matter though. Light spontaneously spilling from a human being couldn’t be good, right?
The fact that it was spilling from his little brother made it somehow worse.
He yelled Sam’s name, drawing attention to the younger man, to the light radiating from his body. The fighting stopped as heads turned to the psychic, mouths gaping, eyes bugging.
For a moment, there was no war, there were no armies, no soldiers, no psychics or demons, no good or evil. There was just a light, golden-white, spreading out from a tall body, growing in intensity, spreading out from the figure of the boy king, engulfing them all.
It washed over Dean, bright enough that he had to cover his eyes. The air charged around him as his heart pounded harder and harder, threatening to break in his chest with the weight of a sacrifice that Sam never should have had to make. His stomach dropped to the ground, bile rising in his throat as whatever force Sam had summoned surrounded him, pulling him in, ending it.
Lilith screamed.
Chapter 20