Fic: Won't Get Fooled Again (5c/7)
b>Title: Won't Get Fooled Again
Author(s):
safiyabat
Artist:
evian_fork
Beta: tumblr user parvasilvi
Characters & Pairing(s): Sam/Cas, brief Sam x Ruby
Rating: M
Word Count: 52,595
Warning(s): Graphic violence, sexual content, mentions of noncon, suicidal tendencies, depression
Summary: Dean is back from Hell, but it's nothing like Sam imagined.
Previous Chapter
They hadn’t been expecting a lot of resistance, only having five demons in total in the building including Alastair. Apparently they were counting on Hell’s grand inquisitor being enough to solve any serious problems for them. They’d covered the building in angel wards for some reason. Maybe not all angels were in on the plan to raise Lucifer? Not Sam’s problem. He sent his companions to surround the building. If they wanted to hide him and his from some more of his foes, fine. He exorcised the door guard without anything resembling a problem. The body collapsed to the ground, dead before he’d been possessed but unable to die thanks to the lack of reapers.
Sam and Ruby sneaked inside. She stabbed the first of Alastair’s henchmen to approach. He felt bad about letting her do the fighting right now - he’d taken some hits in his earlier fight with Alastair and he’d feel them later but right now whatever had opened in his brain had really brought something forward and he was feeling no pain at all. Still, it was up to him to find the reaper and free him. He reached out with his mind, a yellow-tinged tendril searching for the sub-zero chill of Death’s servant.
He peeled off to the right, following a long, dark corridor. The reaper was trapped in one of the smaller funerary chapels, stuck in the middle of an intricate symbol on the floor that looked like a few squares drawn at angles to one another. This one was in the body of an old man, more like what Dean had seen in the faith healer’s tent, and he looked like he was asleep. Sam scratched his head. Well, the simplest solution was usually the best one, right? He took a knife from his boot and scraped away one of the lines.
He never even saw the reaper move. One moment he was sleeping peacefully - like the dead, his mind helpfully supplied - and the next he was standing behind Sam. “Thank you,” he intoned, laying a frozen hand on Sam’s left shoulder before simply ceasing to occupy that space.
He blinked, still feeling the chill on his flesh. Then he broadcast a message to his team. “Seal saved. Fall back when safe.” He ran back to Ruby and collected her. Together they made their way back to the cars, where they were to rendezvous with the rest of the team.
Sam decided to head back to Cole’s place to check on the ghostly boy. He didn’t want Alastair to take his frustrations out on the child or his family, after all. He decided to teleport, both in the interests of time and because he could. The feeling of raw power had not left his veins. He had to focus, had to remember why he was here. Once he showed up at the home he had no trouble regaining that clarity. Alastair had indeed decided to pay the boy a visit.
Sam got between the demon and the ghost again. “So good to see you again Sam,” the demon leered. “Let’s see if you’re really worthy -“
A bright blue lightning bolt struck Alastair, just like something out of Greek mythology, and he was gone. Sam jumped back, only to find Castiel standing the same distance behind him as Alastair had been in front of him. His heart caught in his throat. “What are you doing here?” he rasped around the lump.
“Tessa found me,” he admitted. “She was concerned for your safety; angels and reapers rarely interact.” He turned to Cole. “You should go home, Cole.”
The kid wasn’t about to resist that tone of gentle authority. He disappeared. “We saved the seal,” he reported. “No casualties.”
“I am glad. I must confess that I miss our time together.”
“Wasn’t me who decided it had to end.”
Cas sighed. “I miss you, Sam. But orders -“
“I know. We’ve been over this.” He looked away. “What did you do to Alastair?”
“We took him prisoner. He’ll be a valuable asset to our intelligence.” He stepped forward, close enough to touch. “Your brother misses you.”
“My brother wants to hunt me. He wanted to hunt me before. I’m sure he’d love this.” He gestured at his eyes. He had to do something with his hands. He couldn’t put them on Cas however much he wanted to.
“He wants to keep you safe, Sam. I don’t think he’s certain what he wants to keep you safe from, but he wants to keep you safe.”
“He should worry about himself. What exactly is it that your side wants him for, Cas?”
The angel reached out and touched his face. His hand was still as soft and gentle as Sam remembered. “I didn’t come here to fight, Sam.” He stroked his cheek as he brushed some of his hair away. “Why can’t you just come home, be part of the team again?”
“I was never part of the team, Cas.” He couldn’t stop himself from leaning into the touch, even though he didn’t want to. “Even when we were working together. You were still using me. You encouraged me to love you so that I would play along, but you still threw me away once you were done.”
“I didn’t want to. I still don’t. You know that I care for you, Sam.”
“Then why am I alone? Why do I need to dodge hunters and my own family while I try to stop Lilith?” He gave a bitter little laugh. “We shouldn’t be on different sides here, Castiel.”
“We’re not.”
“Bullshit.”
Cas kissed him then, and for a moment Sam let the sensation carry him away. Nothing else mattered, nothing else even existed and Sam needed this, needed to feel something good and pure and right and loving in his life.
And that was what brought him up short. This wasn’t right, it wasn’t pure and it wasn’t loving. He loved Cas, he couldn’t help that. But there was very little about love in how Cas felt about him. If there were, he wouldn’t have thrown him under the bus with Dean. He wouldn’t have wanted them to be strangers when Cas met Dean. He wouldn’t have been so ashamed of having been associated with a demon-blooded freak, whatever his words about Sam’s blood not being something to be ashamed of.
He couldn’t have this, even though every cell in his body cried out for it. “I’m sorry, Cas,” he said, shaking his head and pushing him away gently. “You don’t get to do that unless you mean it. I’m not going to be your dirty little secret.”
The angel gave him a sad little smile. “Angels don’t get dirty, Sam.”
“Kind of my point, Cas.” He teleported back to the car before he could hear anymore.
He didn’t speak the entire ride back to Baltimore. No one asked him to.
They had about a week’s peace when they got back to base. Well, peace was relative for demons. They researched. They hunted. They fought. Sam tried to understand the power that now burned inside him, but even Anna couldn’t explain it to him. Not that she was around much anyway. She heard something on what they euphemistically called Angel Radio that made her nervous and insisted on checking it out. Sam was capable of listening in on Angel Radio, but they’d decided early on that it wasn’t a great idea. It was too hard to filter out all the different voices, and of course many of them were filled with hate for him specifically, which didn’t do great things for his mindset. Ruby had actually put her foot down rather firmly on the subject, and Anna concurred. They were after all on a pretty strict timetable and the end of the world wasn’t going to wait for Sam to unravel himself from a knot of self-loathing in the corner.
It was at the end of that week that he got a call from Anna asking him and Ruby to meet with her at her favorite coffee shop in Baltimore. They went, of course. Sam knew that Anna and Ruby were meeting a lot more frequently than Sam was meeting with Anna; that was great. He felt bad about taking away her ability to choose not to betray them, but she and Anna had chosen each other completely and openly and they seemed to be pretty good for each other despite the difficulty in terms of species. Or maybe because of it, he didn’t know. If she was asking to meet them both the matter clearly needed immediate attention.
He sat down across from her with lattes for both women and glanced around, wondering yet again if anyone had the first idea of what was in their midst. An angel, a demon, a whatever-he-was - enough cosmic firepower to take down an entire city block right there, drinking coffee and foamed milk. “So what’s going on, Anna?” he demanded.
“The angels have Alastair,” she announced, leaning forward. “They’re holding him in a warded warehouse in Utah and they want to interrogate him about broken seals and murdered angels.”
Ruby frowned. “I mean, we know about the detention and about the seals. Hadn’t heard about the murdered angels, but I can’t find it in my heart to be too worried about it. With one exception, I’m not a fan.” She grinned and grabbed her lover’s hand.
“Well, the thing is, Alastair’s not talking.” Anna gave Ruby a squeeze, but her eyes stayed on Sam. “They showed up in Dean’s hotel room last night and abducted him, demanding his ‘help’ in getting Alastair’s cooperation.”
Sam’s mouth went dry. “They want him to start torturing Alastair.”
The redhead nodded. “He was Alastair’s apprentice in Hell.”
“But he wasn’t his apprentice for all that long,” he objected, leaning forward himself and grabbing his spoon. “And… honestly, I don’t think he can do it. I mean, I haven’t been around him in a while, but I don’t think he’s able to do it. I don’t think he’s strong enough.”
“I don’t know.” Ruby’s pretty lips curled in distaste. “I think he’s enough of a dick to stoop to torture.”
“That’s not what I mean.” He glared at the disparagement of his brother but didn’t argue. He didn’t have time. “Alastair’s been in his position for millennia. Dean studied under him for how long? And Alastair’s the one who broke him in the first place, who convinced him to break. I don’t think - “
“Exactly.” Anna leaned back, lips twitching with triumph.
“Oh God. Whose idea was this?”
“Uriel seemed to be leading the cause, but Castiel pressured Dean into giving in.” She sighed. “I’m sorry, Sam. I know how you feel about him.”
“How I feel about him has nothing to do with how I see him. It’s not like I don’t realize we’ve both got flaws.” He barked out a bitter chuckle. “I need to go deal with this, Anna.”
“I’m still not seeing a problem. Alastair’s contained, the angels are distracted and not screwing up any more seals, and Dean’s caught up in something else instead of breathing down our necks.” Ruby put her hands on the table and looked at both of the others with nonchalance. “It doesn’t have to be a thing.”
“Ruby, he’s my brother. No matter what else, he’s my brother. I can’t let him do that.” He turned to Anna. “Can you take me there?”
She nodded. They went out into an alley for the teleportation - no need to draw attention to themselves after all - and in the blink of an eye he found himself outside an abandoned warehouse. He could feel the energy inside: Alastair, uncontained, was the most pressing concern. “Shit,” he said, running inside.
Anna heard something and went to investigate, leaving Sam to deal with the mess of a situation before him. Dean was unconscious - Sam could only tell by his spirit’s presence in his body that he still lived - and bloody on the floor, beaten to a pulp. Castiel was being held against the wall by an unfettered Alastair, who was trying to draw the angel out of his vessel. Cas was fighting, but losing.
Sam lashed out with power, not bothering with finesse or gestures. He just shoved the demon away from his former lover, pinning him against the wall. “Sam!” Cas croaked.
“Oh, look,” Alastair gagged. He could do no more than speak and even that was only with difficulty. “If it isn’t the little prince himself.”
“Who is murdering the angels?” Sam demanded. And then he grabbed onto Alastair’s essence and he twisted.
The demon screamed. “It isn’t us!” he wailed. “We appreciate the help but it is not us. We would kill a thousand. Not seven.” He drew a deep breath when Sam relented slightly. His mouth twisted into a pained grin. “Will you send be back to Hell, Your Highness?” he mocked.
Sam forced his body to relax, without letting go. “No.” He hadn’t done this, not on the surface, but he remembered how it had been done. He reached out with the power inside him and slew Alastair. The demon expired in a puff of light, like a light bulb suddenly going out. The host body, long since dead, dropped to the ground.
Cas gaped at him. “You have your answers,” Sam growled at him, scooping Dean up into his arms. “Clean him out of this crime scene. Leave no trace.”
He teleported himself and his brother outside. Anna was nowhere to be found, but someone had thoughtfully brought the Impala here. He grabbed Dean’s keys and drove him to the nearest hospital.
He stayed with his brother until Castiel found them, three days later. The police were interested in how he’d managed to get into such a state, but had no way of disproving Sam’s story. The angel came into the room to find Sam holding his brother’s hand. “How is he?” he inquired lamely.
“You can’t tell?” Sam snorted.
“Alastair’s attack harmed my grace. It will be some time yet before it is healed.” He looked away.
“So you can’t even heal him.” He shook his head.
“Not at the present.”
“You had no business putting him in that situation,” Sam seethed.
“We had no choice. We had no other interrogators -“
“That’s not what I’ve heard.”
“Anna was not a reliable narrator. And it should have been perfectly safe. That devil’s trap should have held. I made it myself.”
“But it didn’t hold. Why is that again? My brother is lying here fighting for his life because you can’t manage a goddamn devil’s trap? If I hadn’t come when I did my brother would be dead, Cas. Again. That might not mean much to you or to Heaven but it means a Hell of a lot to me!”
“Is that why you abandoned him?” Blue eyes glittered in the fluorescent light.
“Everything I’m doing I’m doing for him, Cas. You used to know that.” He shook his head. “Bobby Singer’s on his way. I’m sure you’ve got very important angel business to attend to that doesn’t involve worrying about petty things like humans.” He glared.
“Stop trying to push me away, Sam. Dean is my charge, and you are my -“
“I’m not your anything, Cas. You made that very clear.” He stood up. “Neither you nor Bobby are even going to tell him that I was here, and you’re here now, so I’m going. The nurses say he should wake up soon.” Sam walked away.
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