Chapter 10: Don't Take What Isn't Yours
Metatron teleports them to a sprawling oak somewhere in the south of France.
“Here. This is it. I swear.”
It’s something, certainly. Dean can feel the crackle and hum of angelic energy even from yards back.
“Where are we?”
“About twenty miles outside Carcassonne, France. I needed to make sure it ended up somewhere you wouldn’t stumble across it accidentally.”
“Uh-huh.”
Dean moves the Blade from Metatron’s throat and in one fluid movement stabs it into the joint of his left shoulder, wrenching it out again with a needlessly painful twist. Metatron howls, trying to double over but being forced upright in Dean’s grip.
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not.”
“Don’t play dumb with me.”
“How can you tell without extracting it?” He hisses.
Dean doesn’t bother to answer.
“Next time I take off a limb. And maybe you’ll be able to grow it back, but I’m sure there’s only a finite amount of times you can do that before things starts getting nasty.”
*
This time they end up somewhere near Colorado. Dean knows they’re in the right place almost before they’ve finished materializing. His shoulder burns like someone’s taken a blowtorch to it, right where that handprint used to be. He spares a glance down at it and can see a faint blue glow through the material of his shirt. The stunted tree in the center of the clearing starts to glow in sympathy and Metatron tries to back away, which is hard when there’s someone behind you holding an oversized knife against your throat.
“Why is it doing that? It should only do that in Castiel’s presence.”
“Funny story.” Dean says, and doesn’t bother to explain further.
He avoids the logistical nightmare of trying to walk Metatron over to the tree and extract the grace while still keeping him captive by hobbling him, slicing through his Achilles tendons. He’s noticed that the shoulder wound doesn’t seem to be healing at all, so he figures it’ll be safe enough to leave him there while he gets the grace.
He could just kill him there and let his blood water Cas’s tree, but the demon in him has been clamoring to shred Metatron in the most hideous of ways since they laid hands on him. Dean thinks it’s only fair that he gets Cas’s grace first and then rewards the demon properly for its patience.
He takes Metatron’s angel blade and uses it to cut a deep wound into the tree. The amount of grace that drips out is pretty pathetic, barely enough to half fill a vial, but hopefully it’ll be enough to clean Cas of the fetid mess rotting him from the inside out, even if it does mean he’s forced to live out the rest of his short life as a human. And if it isn’t enough, well. Dean tried. Let that much be said.
Behind Dean, Metatron heals himself and stands. He doesn’t teleport away immediately; instead he waves, slowly and triumphantly. And like all good villains, it’s this little cocky goodbye that damns him. A hellhound materializes, all matted yellow-white fur, bunched muscles and bloody, slavering fangs. It throws itself at Metatron, fastens its bear-trap jaws on his arm and wrenches. He flicks it off but another takes its place, a snarling dervish of coal smoke and razorblade claws. More and more appear in the clearing, dog shaped clouds of poison gas, ashen masses that slaver molten lava, hulking figures formed of shards of broken glass, and even one particularly disgusting specimen composed of slime and fetid meat.
Individually, they’d be no match for Metatron, but by sheer force of numbers they overwhelm him. One rips off his left arm and takes it away to sit under a tree, gnawing at it like any normal dog with a bone. Another buries its face in his stomach, tears away the skin and fat and pulls out hot, glistening strings of entrails, while a third crunches his head between its teeth, chunks of white skull and goopy, grey matter visible through the streams of blood. The others wrestle over whatever they can reach, tearing off great strips of gristle and skin.
Of course, vicious and painful as this is, a pack of hellhounds is no more capable of killing an angel than a single beast. They’re certainly doing their job though, keeping him pinned down while Crowley saunters through the melee. He picks up a hellhound made of dripping seaweed by its kelpy scruff and flings it aside. Where it was feasting is a pulpy mass of red flesh and something that looks like splintered ribcage and heartstrings. Crowley draws an angel blade from his coat pocket and balances it on the space where the heart used to be. He toys with it for a second, twirling it around gently on the spot and then he slowly pushes it in with a single finger.
There’s a deafening roll of thunder, a smell of charcoal and cooked meat, and there are Metatron’s wings, the last remaining set of untarnished angel wings, burned onto the grass.
Dean whips around, looking every bit as canine as the writhing pile of hellhounds. His eyes sweep over the scene and then he roars, a scream of such furious hatred that several of the dogs turn tail and flee. Those that don’t come to wish that they had. The bottle of grace is left, abandoned by the tree as he charges over. He doesn’t bother to draw the First Blade. Instead he grabs one hellhound by the head and haunches, pulling in opposite directions until its spine breaks with a wrenching snap. He breaks the back of another with clenched fists and rips off the head of a third, screaming as he throws it into the sky.
That gets the attention of the remainder of the pack, yelping and whining as they scatter. Not even fear of Crowley’s whip hand is enough to override their hell forged survival instincts, and so they creep back into the shadows, circling the clearing from a distance with their tails tucked.
Dean draws the First Blade and lashes out with it, tearing great gouges out of the already defiled body on the ground.
“Dean.” Crowley says his name, thinking it’ll be enough to snap him out of his murderous rage. Instead it only redirects it. He launches himself at Crowley with another feral howl.
“HOW DARE YOU.”
Crowley scrabbles backwards on his ass, hands and angel blade thrust in front of him to try and hold Dean back.
“Dean, stop. It’s me.”
“That was my kill.” Crowley flinches at the weight of venom in his voice.
“He was escaping; I was doing you a favor.”
“You had no RIGHT.”
“Okay, you’re pissed, but we had a deal, a binding deal.”
“I didn’t sign a deal.” Dean stills, though, suspicious.
“I proposed an exchange of services, you said yes. That’s a deal.”
Dean is shaking with the effort required not to rip out Crowley’s guts on the spot.
“That’s not how it works.”
“It is between the King of Hell and one of his Knights.”
That only enrages Dean further.
“I’m not your Knight.” He snarls, drawing back the Blade ready to slice something off.
“Dean! Stop! You made a deal, you go back on that and bad things will happen.” Crowley garbles out as quickly as he can
Dean narrows his eyes, suspicious.
“What bad things?” He sneers.
“You’ll get dragged back to hell, for starters. And trust me, you of all people do not want to be anywhere near hell right now.”
Dean roars again, spittle flying and landing on Crowley’s face.
“Easy, easy. I took your kill, it was a mistake. An honest mistake. I was trying to help you and I messed up so how about I set you up with something else in return? There must be others you want to kill- hunters who’ve wronged you, monsters who escaped-angels who made your life a misery. You name them and I’ll have them captured, set loose in a location of your choosing, let you chase them down.”
The demon in Dean perks up at that. It’s been denied its kill; it might be appeased somewhat with another. Not fully, mind, but it’ll accept it. Dean overrules it though, better to remove any obligation they have to Crowley first.
“I’ll wave off the personal hunt on two conditions.” He bites out, the words coming clipped and stilted as the demon rebels and tries to stop them. “Release me from the deal-”
“No can do.” He flinches as Dean’s expression settles back to murderous. “It’s binding. No matter how much I might want to, there’s nothing I can do to break it now. A deal between demons as powerful as we are isn’t like the usual crossroads contract. No one holds them. They’re carved into the brimstone of hell; if either of us try to weasel out hell itself will be the one to punish us.”
“Hell is just a place, cut the crap.”
“Don’t presume to talk about things you know nothing of.”
“Don’t take that tone with me if you want to keep your HEAD.” Dean’s voice rises with each word until he’s screaming.
“What’s the second condition?” Crowley asks quickly.
“I want that bit of my soul back.”
Crowley laughs.
“That? You fell for that?”
Dean punches Crowley in the face.
“Do you want to get dragged to hell?” He spits, rubbing his cheek.
“You said I can’t kill you, said nothing about maiming.”
“I’m sorry, it’s just. Even death can’t split a soul but you think I could.”
It’s not that Dean had forgotten what Death told him about souls, that period of his life might have been one that the fully human version of himself hadn’t liked to dwell on- Sam without a soul, Cas’s betrayal- but he still remembered it with photorealistic clarity. It’s that all that had been about human souls. Demons are an altogether different breed; it hadn’t seemed weird at the time that the King of Hell would have that kind of power over his demonic kin. Maybe it should have, but whatever. He’s not going to beat himself up about it; it actually turned out well for him. If he hadn’t thought being cured could kill him he’d have had no qualms about strapping himself to the chair and just letting them get on with it.
“You’re telling me you don’t have a piece of my soul?”
“No. I just said that so they wouldn’t cure you. You’re no good to me as a moping, self-doubting human. I wanted Dean Winchester 2.0. New and improved.”
“You got him.”
Dean punches Crowley a couple of times and then lets him go, backing up and pocketing Cas’s grace from where it rests beside the tree.
“You can’t give me any of the things I want. That puts you in my debt, contract or none. Remember that next time you coming knocking, my King.” He sneers the word, washing the title with scorn and derision.
Crowley doesn’t take his cue to leave so Dean is forced to clarify for him.
“That was a dismissal, sire.”
Crowley up and vanishes with his hellhounds, before Dean figures out that he’s been talking bollocks and there’s no contract ensuring his continued survival.
Dean waits a moment, making sure he’s really gone, and turns towards a lopsided Colorado spruce in the west corner of the clearing.
“You can come out now.” He addresses the tree.
Hannah steps out from behind it.
“How did you know I was there?”
“I was keeping an eye on the dogs, noticed they wouldn’t go within a 100 foot radius of that tree. Figured something Heavenly had to be scaring them off.”
“Hmm.”
“So, I take it you’re here for Metadouche.”
That gets a reaction out of her.
“You had no right.”
“Look, I know there was a long list out for his blood, but he’s dead now. That’s what matters.”
“Trust a demon.” Hannah sneers. “We had him imprisoned. We were serving justice on him!”
“Screw your angelic justice! He deserved the way he died, torn apart by fucking dogs. I just wish I’d been the one to slide that fucking blade into his heart.”
“That wasn’t your choice to make!”
“Lady, he killed me. It was every bit my choice.”
“You didn’t stay dead, unlike all the angels who died in the fall, in the war afterwards.”
Dean shrugs.
“Not my concern. Look. We can fight back and forth about this all day. Not important. I actually have something for you.”
Hannah’s look of pure suspicion makes him laugh out loud.
“Calm it.” He draws the bottle of grace out of his pocket. “I don’t know how long you’ve been there, how much you saw.”
“That’s an angel’s grace, Dean. What have you done?” She looks horrified.
“Relax. It’s not anyone you know. Wait. Scratch that, it is. It’s Cas’s.”
The horrified look gets worse if anything.
“Whoa, whoa. I didn’t kill him! It’s leftover from the heaven spell.”
“Metatron lead you to it?”
“Yeah.”
“How do you know it belongs to Castiel?”
Dean pulls his shirt out of the way so that Hannah can clearly see the glowing handprint.
“It does this whenever he’s around.”
It’s actually getting brighter. Must be something to do with being so close to the concentrated power of Cas’s grace.
“Interesting.” She looks like she wants to come close and examine it. She also looks like she wants to be anywhere but near Dean right now. Revulsion wins out and she stays put.
“You’re just going to give me his grace?”
“Yup.”
“No bargaining, no deals?”
Dean shrugs.
“I want him better, I just don’t want to be there for it. If I see him again he’ll try and ‘cure’ me and I’m happy as I am.”
His shoulder is burning now, like Cas is standing right beside him and no. Hell no. There’s a pair of headlights speeding rapidly towards them. Familiar headlights. They’re in the middle of nowhere, there’s no way that shitty fucking Continental belongs to anyone but Cas. FUCK.
The car swings to an aggressive halt, nearly smashing the passenger side into a tree. Sam and Cas propel themselves out, armed to the teeth. Well, Sam propels himself out, Cas kind of falls out of it in an ungainly fashion. It’s a good thing Dean hurried up on the grace front because damn he looks like he’s got hours to live.
Dean rounds on Hannah.
“Is this you?”
She shakes her head.
“Dean!”
Sam sounds beyond pissed.
“What the fuck are you two doing here?”
“We were on your trail, about twenty miles from here when I felt my grace being extracted.” Cas says. His voice isn’t as cold as Sam’s. Although it’s so quavering and weak that it’s hard to tell what he’s feeling.
“Fucks's sake.” Dean swears. Trust his dumb fucking luck to lay a false trail through the very place he ends up.
“Well, touching as this is, I’m gonna take my cue-”
“You’re not leaving, Dean.” Sam grits out.
“Uh. Yeah. I am.”
“Look. I get it; you were pissed at us for keeping you contained. We should have talked it out, but we can make this work, go after Crowley-”
“Oh, uh, didn’t you hear the news, he never had my soul.” Dean waves his hands sardonically.
Sam and Cas gape at him.
“Yeah, turns out you can’t actually split souls in bits, not even demon ones. Something we really should have worked out. Oops.” His tone is deliberately flippant now.
“That’s great news, Dean! We can cure you. I’m sure there’s a church around here.” Sam’s anger is washed away in the onslaught of overexcited puppy mode.
Dean snorts.
“You haven’t got a fucking clue, have you?”
Hannah cuts in. “You won’t be able to reason with him. It’s been too long, he’s nearly all demon.”
“She gets it.” Dean gestures lazily at her with the Blade.
“But, Dean-”
He doesn’t let Sam finish.
“There’s nothing you can say to make me give this up. For once in my life, I’m top of the food chain. Yeah, so I might have to make the odd kill, feed the beast, but how’s that much different to the day job anyway-except now I’ve got the power to do what I want with impunity. No more getting thrown at walls, being outrun, outfought, outmatched at almost every turn. Now I’m the apex fucking predator.”
“You want to throw away your humanity, your family, just so you can be a better hunter?” Sam is incredulous.
“Who said I was gonna be hunting monsters, Sammy?”
“So that’s it. You’re just gonna up and leave us behind?”
Dean laughs.
“You want to know what the best bit about this is? Not having to give a shit about family. I feel good, really fucking good. For the first time in years. No more being dragged down by family and duty and all that fucking emotional damage I used to cart around.
“All the crap that happened to me before I was reborn, it doesn’t mean jack anymore. I can think about you and him,” he points the Blade at Cas “betraying me. I can think about Bobby, Mom, Dad, Jo, Ellen, Benny, Rufus…you name ‘em we’ve lost them. I can think about my childhood, all the shitty things that Dad forced me to do, and it just rolls off.”
He says it all in such a breezy, confident tone that Sam doesn’t doubt that this is what Dean is feeling for a second. And that fucks him up.
“We-” he stammers, “we can’t just let this go, Dean. If you really were Dean you’d know that.”
“I gave you fair warning. Alright. Remember that. Now you fucking catch me if you can.”
He hurls the bottle with Cas’s grace in, high as he can and then dives into the Continental. He’s counting on Sam being in too much of a hurry to take the keys out, and he’s rewarded. He swings the car around, hands pulling at the wheel, and shoots off to the west.
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