Fic: Won' Get Fooled Again (6b/7)
Title: Won't Get Fooled Again
Author(s): Safiyabat
Artist: Evian-fork
Beta: tumblr user parvasilvi
Characters & Pairing(s): Pairing: Sam/Castiel, brief Sam x Ruby.
Rating: M
Word Count: 52,959 over 7 chapters
Warning(s): Graphic violence, suicidal tendencies, depression, mention of non-con
Summary: Sam and Lilith meet.
Previous Chapter
They went to a nearby diner. Dean got, as expected, a burger. So did Chuck. Sam got a salad. He mostly picked at it. Chuck, as it turned out, really was a prophet. The whole lightshow thing was an archangel protecting him from demons - a demon couldn’t be in the same room with a prophet without that defense mechanism kicking in. “Is it a two-way street?” Sam inquired.
“What do you mean?” Dean wanted to know, speaking around a mouth full of ground meat.
“I mean, the angels obviously can sense that you’re around demons. Can they hear what you’re saying, or what’s being said around you?” he clarified, poking at the one olive in the mix like he was trying to hide it from a defender. Soccer seemed like it had been so long ago, even though he’d played at Stanford.
Chuck pursed his lips and stroked his stubble thoughtfully. “I hadn’t thought about it like that. I don’t think so. I mean, maybe.”
“Is that a problem?” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “You been up to dirty things you don’t want the angels to hear about Sammy?”
Dirty bad impure evil. It wasn’t what Dean meant of course. Not this time anyway. That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. “Dean.” He glared.
“I missed the bitchface, Sammy. I really did. I should take a picture and tape it to the shotgun seat for the next time you decide to run off and ditch me.” The last four words came out like knife thrusts.
“Not gonna stay where I’m not welcome, Dean. You told me we were past the siren thing, but you lied.” He folded his lips together. “Are we done here?”
“Sammy, Jesus. Listen. I’m just trying to reach out here, okay? Look.” He sighed. “Chuck here is a writer. It’s how I found him as a prophet - it turns out he’s been writing a series based on our lives.” He waved a hand between them. “Like, all of our lives. Every detail. It’s all there.”
“The publisher went bankrupt after I published the one where Dean went to Hell,” Chuck added, seeing Sam freeze. “I’ve still been writing, though. It’s not like I can freaking stop. It’s how we found you today.”
“Which you did why again?” Sam looked up.
Dean blinked. “To stop you from making a deal with Lilith. I mean, Chuck saw it happening.”
He sighed. “So when I had visions, they were either crap and could be safely ignored, or they were evil and I had to try to prevent them from happening at all. This guy, because they come from Heaven, they’re all good?” He massaged his own face. “Dean, Lilith called me there to offer a deal. You’re right. And it was a tempting deal, sure.”
“Not worth your soul,” the blond vowed. “Trust me on this.”
“Actually my soul was safe. No one has ever wanted that, remember? It’s too tainted even for Hell?” Chuck opened his mouth and closed it again. “She offered to stand down from the Seals. All I had to do was die. Complete oblivion in exchange for saving the world.” He grinned. “Sounds pretty perfect, right? And I told her no. Because she couldn’t deliver. Even if she stands down from breaking the seals, she’s not the only one breaking them. Angels are doing it too, Dean.”
He scowled. “No way, Sam.”
“Yeah, Dean. Uriel was one of them. He’s the one that sabotaged the devil’s trap and let Alastair out, put you in the hospital.” He gave a thin little grin. “I’m sorry. I hate to be the bearer of bad news; I know how much faith you’ve invested in them. But angels are no better than demons. They’ve just got better PR.” He bit his lip. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry you don’t have any faith, Sam. Cas told me Uriel was rotten. It doesn’t mean they all are.” He shook his head. “You can’t go off on your own like this, Sam. You’re using your powers, you know that’s wrong.”
“Why? Because they’re not human?”
“Exactly. See? If you know they’re not human you know you have to fight to stay as human as possible, Sam! We’ve been over this!” There were tears in his eyes, Sam could see them shimmering in the lighting that hadn’t been updated since the Eisenhower administration. “I can’t sit here and let you turn into a monster.”
“I have to do what needs to be done to stop the world from ending, Dean. I’m sorry that you can’t see that.”
“You’re not the one who’s going to stop it, Sam. The angels -“
“Aren’t helping, Dean. Look. The abilities I have, they’re part of me. I didn’t ask for them, they’re part of something that was done to me. But they’re here. They’ve helped more people than you know. Maybe they do make me a monster and like I said before, if you decide you want to take me down because of them that’s fine. Just wait until after we’ve stopped the whole Apocalypse thing to do it, okay?”
“Dean.” Chuck cleared his throat.
Sam’s older brother sighed. “Okay.” He bit the inside of his cheek and looked away for a moment before rearranging his face into something that would have resembled jocularity on someone who didn’t know him as well. “So. Uh, I mentioned that Chuck has our whole lives laid out in his books.”
Sam nodded. “Yeah, Dean. So?” He gave the prophet an apologetic shrug. “I mean, we’ve already lived them once. Were they really such great lives that we really need to go living them again?”
He raised his eyebrows and grinned. “I learned an awful lot about you, Sammy.”
“Okay. Like what? I was a mathlete? I like Pearl Jam? My favorite color is purple? What does any of that have to do with anything?”
“I found out you like boys, for one thing.” He wiggled his eyebrows again. He’d gotten fond of that gesture since Sam had been gone. “All these years and I had no idea you were gay, Sammy.”
“I’m not gay. I’m bisexual. I like men. I like women.” He paused. “I probably like other genders too, I just haven’t really had an opportunity to find out.” He shrugged. “Is that a problem?”
Dean deflated a little. “What? No! Of course not. I just… were you ever planning to come out to me?”
“Dude. We lived in one room - one car- for most of our lives and you didn’t notice I was checking out guys just as often? I didn’t think I needed to. I figured you already knew.” He forced himself to chuckle a little and met Chuck’s eyes. The guy shook his head, almost imperceptibly. He hadn’t included anything about Sam’s relationship with Cas, then.
Why was Sam so relieved by that? Part of him wished that the guy had forced Cas’ hand, outed them to Dean and the world. He immediately felt guilty about it. Dean didn’t deserve to have that comfort taken away. Whatever he was getting from Cas, comfort or validation or whatever, he deserved. He’d suffered, he needed help.
“I just… figured you were comparing yourself to them. Like, a lot of guys do that.” He looked uncomfortable for a moment. “Damn it, there goes all my big-brother teasing.”
“Oh darn. So you seem to have made a full recovery.”
“From?”
“Alastair?”
“How did you - oh yeah, the nurses mentioned that you stayed with me in the hospital. Said it was my brother, anyway. I wasn’t sure it was you since you told the nurses when you were in the hospital that you didn’t have a brother. Or an uncle.” He fixed him with a stare.
“You were trying to hunt me down and ‘bring me back into the fold’ or whatever at the time.” He shrugged. “The difference is that I’m the one who brought you to the hospital, so I got to be the one to tell them the facts there.”
He frowned. “You brought me there? Why didn’t someone tell me?”
“Because they didn’t want you to know,” he said, leaning forward, “that even though I’m a monster, and a freak, and everything that you hate, I’m still your brother and I’m always going to look out for you.” Sam got up and pulled out some cash for the salad, ignoring his brother’s stricken look. “Look it’s been real, but I’m not so keen on getting hit on the head and dragged off to Bobby’s panic room either.” Dean looked sheepish. “Take care of yourself, Dean. Watch your back.”
“You know, Cas was really upset after that last incident. I didn’t know why. Did you say something to him?”
“I pointed out that you wouldn’t have gotten hurt if it weren’t for him. Which is the truth. Why?”
“I mean, I never even saw the two of you even spend more than a few seconds in a room with each other but he really, really wanted me to bring you back home. I figured that he wanted me to bring you back to keep an eye on you. I mean, powers and everything, the secrets, the sneaking around -“
Sam held up a hand. “I get it, you don’t trust me. Your point?”
“Do you think maybe he just feels bad that you’re gone?”
He laughed out loud. He knew that the sound was harsh, and grating, and so painful to hear that several patrons turned to stare. He leaned back down to the table and pitched his voice so that it would not carry. “Dean, I’m demon-blooded trash. No. No, Castiel does not feel bad that I’m gone. He wanted you to bring me home because he wanted you to keep an eye on me. That’s all. If you don’t believe me, go ahead and ask him yourself. See what happens when you make an angel laugh so hard he falls from heaven and bruises his goddamn wings.” He stalked out of the diner, leaving a stunned Dean in his wake. The prophet would not be abandoned. “Sam!” he called as Sam marched down the road. “Sam!”
He turned to face the smaller man. “Hi, Chuck. Sorry you had to witness all our family drama.” He grimaced. “I mean, ever.”
Chuck laughed a little. “Yeah. That’s a lot of drama for such a small family.”
“Winchesters never do things by halves.”
“No, no you don’t. I just wanted to check in and see if you’re okay. I mean… that was kind of intense.” He looked into Sam’s eyes.
“I’ll be fine. It doesn’t matter. It’s all going to be over soon anyway, right? I mean, the whole Apocalypse thing?” he added hastily.
He wasn’t fooling anyone. “I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, but this whole thing doesn’t need to end with your death, Sam.”
“But it could. I mean, that option is on the table,“ he added when Chuck stared in horror, and then shrugged. “It’s not like it matters. Whatever happens happens, as long as we stop the Apocalypse, right?”
“It matters to some people. Your followers, for one.”
He flinched. “Can we maybe not call them that? It’s kind of creepy.”
“They believe in you, Sam. They’ve chosen you.”
“And they’ll choose someone else when I’m gone, or when I make a decision that they don’t like. They’re demons. They’re a lot like humans that way.” The pair of them shared a laugh. “They like the idea of this Boy King or whatever. I’m not important. They’ll like Zille just as much.”
“Anna and Ruby will care.”
“For a while. Look, Chuck, I appreciate the ‘it gets better’ talk but I’m not looking for an exit here. I’m just looking to solve the problem of the Apocalypse.” He paused. “I’m guessing you left some pretty major stuff out of the drafts you’ve got sitting around.”
“About you and Cas getting Dean out of Hell? Oh yeah. An angel named Zachariah was pretty insistent about that. But I know all about it. I mean, I had to watch, you know?” He sighed. “I know how you feel about Cas, Sam.” When Sam opened his mouth to object, he held up a hand. “Prophet, remember? And I get that you’re angry about the way you’ve been treated. You should be. It’s pretty shitty. But you still love him. You still miss him and you still want him.”
“Doesn’t matter, Chuck.” He was getting tired of repeating the same phrase. “All that matters -“
“Yeah yeah. I know. But hear me out. Rebellion is almost impossible for an angel. It takes a lot of effort.”
“Damn it, I gave him everything he asked for. How much more effort can I put in?” Sam exploded.
“Not that kind of effort, Sam. I mean, you have been pushing him away as hard as you could ever since he said it was best if Dean stayed in the dark for now, but that’s neither here nor there. I mean the act of rebellion takes actual mental and physical effort.” He put a hand on Sam’s bicep, then thought better of trying to offer comfort through touch. “I’m just saying. Anyway, it was nice meeting you, Sam.”
Chuck went back into the diner. Sam went back to his car and started the long drive back to Baltimore. He explained the encounter with Lilith to his inner circle of colleagues - he could not bring himself to call them followers, even though Baltimore could now be safely said to be crawling with demons. Ruby threw a pillow at him. “Damn it, Sam! You could have been killed!”
“But I wasn’t,” he reported. “Look. We’ve got to take the fight to her. Whatever happens, in the end even if she manages to free Lucifer it’s not going to work out well for her. She said she’s seen that somehow, right? So that tells me that we need to get rid of her before she finishes breaking the seals, and then we can turn our attention to the angels.”
“If we take over Hell,” Zille nodded, “we’ll have a better stronghold to fight from.”
“We still only have two people who can actually fight angels - three, if someone feels comfortable using Uriel’s sword,” Anna objected. “And Sam’s powers haven’t really been tested against an angel!”
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