Fic: All The King's Horses (3/4)
Title: All The King's Horses
Author: safiyabat
Artist: d00lface_hooker
Beta: tumblr user queen-of-carven-stone
Written for: Sam Dean OTP MiniBang 2014
Rating: PG-13
Genre/Pairing: Gen, with one brief het scene (Sam/OFC, Dean/OFC)
Wordcount: 16,012 (full fic)
Summary: When Sam is unable to restrain Demon!Dean to cure him on his own, he tracks down Gabriel and makes him an offer that makes even an archangel blanch. Instead of giving Sam what he wants, the Trickster enlists the help of Castiel and Flagstaff to help both brothers remember that it was their love story that saved the world once... by sending them on a quest through Sam's mind. AU after 9.23.
Warnings/tags: Descriptions of extreme violence, Demon!Dean, Mark of Cain and associated issues, mentions of suicide and suicidal tendencies, two very damaged guys trying to work out their issues
Disclaimer: This is a work of fan fiction, and I own neither Supernatural nor the characters.
Previous
The plan was stupid. Castiel did not like the plan. Yes, he and Dean had been close but this… monstrosity wearing his skin was not Dean. Perhaps it could be cured and returned to a state where it was once again Castiel’s best friend, but Heaven’s current administrator - for lack of a better term - wasn’t sure that this was in Dean’s best interests. He would be devastated to learn what he’d done while a demon, all the people he’d killed and worse. If he’d been full of guilt and angst after having tortured in Hell, when he truly hadn’t had a choice, how much more so would the horror be when he faced the consequences of his actions now? He would not be able to live with the shame, the horror. The weight of the memories would crush him, even more so without an Apocalypse to derail that would take his mind off things.
“Perhaps we could put up a wall in his mind,” he suggested as they waited for the demon to respond.
“No,” Flagstaff glowered. “He needs to understand what he did. Otherwise he’ll just do it again. You don’t learn from your past if you don’t remember it.”
“He is a good man, Flagstaff.”
Both the healer and the trickster rolled their eyes. “That won’t help with the second half of Operation Winchester,” Gabriel pointed out. “Or were you planning to just write Sasquatch over here off?”
He sighed. It was a human habit, although one he’d picked up fairly early from - where? His human vessel? Dean? “I am not convinced that interfering in the brothers’ relationship is the wisest course of action, brother. Their feelings for one another have always been complicated. I don’t know that they will appreciate meddling.”
“It’s not as though they’ve been able to fix things on their own, Castiel,” Flagstaff pointed out.
“Perhaps they cannot be fixed,” he suggested, turning to look at her. “I cannot remember a time when Dean took any pleasure from his brother’s presence, and Sam is…” He paused, searching for the best way to describe the younger brother. “He has been deeply troubled for as long as I have known him,” he rephrased. “But he has usually managed to claw some kind of semblance of normal living when he’s separated from his brother. Maybe it is best if they separate.”
Gabriel frowned. “What purpose, exactly, would that serve, genius?” He stepped forward. “They’re the Winchesters.”
“Exactly,” he insisted, refusing to back down even in the face of the infinitely superior power of the sole remaining archangel. “They’re the Winchesters. The fate of the world has rested on their shoulders alone over and over again and they’ve suffered terribly as a result. Don’t you think it’s time for them to… not have to fight?” he finished lamely at Flagstaff’s upraised eyebrow. She might have been his subordinate but somehow he had a hard time facing her disapproval.
“You’re suggesting that we just let Dean run around as a Knight of Hell.” Gabriel crossed his arms over his chest.
“Well, no. I mean, that’s just not even thinkable. But I’m just saying that I’m not sure that what’s gone wrong between them can be fixed just because we want it to be, Gabriel.” He sighed. “Much of it is my doing.” He might have been under orders to widen the cracks between the brothers back before Lucifer rose but it had still been his doing, and he’d never done anything to fill those cracks in after he rebelled despite knowing what he’d done to “help.” And of course what he’d done to Sam had exacerbated tendencies that already existed in the Winchester.
“Sure it is!” Gabriel declared brightly. “And some of it comes from me - especially the damage to Jolly Green. And a lot of it comes from Daddy. No one, though, has done as much damage to these two as they’ve done to themselves, to each other. At the same time, even you have to admit that they’re pretty damn special. No one knows what might be coming down the pipeline and if it’s their… whatever it was… that saved this world before then shouldn’t we try to fix that same weapon? At least try?” He shook his head.
Castiel opened his mouth to respond, but in that moment a wave of malice and loathing overwhelmed him. “It’s him,” he identified. “It’s Dean - he’s here.”
Flagstaff paled, but held her ground. “Are we ready?” she asked.
Gabriel smirked. “Oh, we’re ready,” he purred as he and Flagstaff made themselves invisible.
The door flew open. “I thought we’d been over this, Sammy,” Dean said in a casual, friendly voice that only had a hint of tightness underneath it. “You call me, you’re not going to be real thrilled with what shows up.” His eyes were green as he surveyed the room but they slid over to black when he noticed Castiel. Cas swallowed in fear but remained silent, not sure he was ready to hear what his friend had to say. “Well now. Heya, Cas. This is a surprise. I never figured he’d go for help from angels. Whatever. You’re backing the wrong horse here, Cas.”
Cas frowned. “He is a large man, Dean, but he is not a horse.” He supposed that it was a metaphor but he didn’t have a lot of time or patience to tease out its meaning. He was a warrior, a soldier, not a wordsmith. “You had to know that we would not allow you to remain in the state in which you were.”
“You don’t really get a choice in this, buddy. Sorry. But what’s done is done, and there really ain’t much you can do about it. Besides.” He put his hands to his chest and smirked. “I kind of like it.”
Cas felt sick. “We will heal you, Dean.” “There’s nothing to heal, Cas.” He spread his arms wide. “For the first time since 1983, I feel… I feel free. Whole. There’s nothing weighing me down or holding me back. I can do what I want when I want. I can think about myself without worrying about anyone else. I screw who I want, I drink what I want. I don’t have to worry about keeping an eye on that useless, pathetic sack of skin sleeping away on that couch over there.” He sneered and gestured toward Sam. “Now look - no hard feelings, Cas. I get it - you’re an angel, I’m a demon. We can’t really be such good buddies as we’ve been in the past -even though,” he added in a lower voice, “we both know you’re not exactly opposed to a little sulfur flavored sugar. Now are you?”
Cas cleared his throat. “If you’re referring to my relationship with Meg, Meg was… different. She was special. And part of what made her different was her connection with your brother.”
Dean snorted. “You keep telling yourself that… Angel.” He moved suddenly, impossibly fast, with his blade out and toward Sam.
Gabriel made himself visible then, snapping his fingers. The door repaired itself and the demon found himself frozen in place. The angels stared at him. He stared at his brother stubbornly, willing his body to move for a good thirty seconds before moving his eyes to the angels. “I’m going to pluck every feather from your wings and use them to stuff a duvet,” he spat.
Gabriel smirked. “Promises promises.”
“I can actually take you on now, short ass,” Dean growled. “A Knight of Hell is the only thing that can take on an archangel.”
“Besides, you know, your brother. Who has. And he won. But you know, who’s counting?” God’s Messenger stepped forward, eyes narrowed. “Not to toot my own horn here but I seem to be the one who’s got you trapped, bucko. Now. This is what’s going to happen. I’m going to take a divine cheese grater to that nasty little brand my brother left you with. Then we’re going to cure your dose of pinkeye. Blackeye. Whatever.”
“Who says I want to be cured?” Dean snarled.
“You don’t get a choice, Dean,” Cas told him heavily, fetching the demonic cuffs from his bag. It had been years since he’d seen these - not since Alistair’s disastrous captivity. It had been Sam who had saved them then, Sam who now lay near lifeless on the couch.
“So much for Team Free Will then,” the demon smirked. “I guess that only counts when we’re doing what you winged dicks want?”
“When your free will impinges on the rights of others then yes, others get to override yours,” Flagstaff declared firmly. Castiel knew her fear - Dean had attacked her, had drawn the First Blade on her, before his transformation. Still, she held herself calm and immobile. “You have the right to live your life. Not to slaughter innocents.”
“There are no innocents, sister,” the demon sneered, and Castiel quailed to hear him speak so.
“I am not your sister.”
Gabriel gestured and Dean fell silent. His mouth moved and his face turned red, but no sound came out. “Don’t engage the superdemon in a philosophical debate, Flagstaff,” the archangel advised gently. “You’ll just get pissed off. Come on. Let’s strap him down and get this show on the road.”
Strapping Dean down proved to be more difficult than Castiel had imagined. Gabriel’s spell kept him immobilized, but that meant that they had to physically maneuver him into position. That meant moving his arms, his legs, every part of him into a sitting position instead of the stabbing lunge he’d been frozen into. It took all three of them to do it, too. Dean wasn’t about to make it easy on them or to even make it possible to relax the celestial restraints on his body and he absolutely had to taunt them about their involvement. “So Sammy came crying to you about not being able to clean up his own mess, is that it?” he sneered as the three angels painstakingly shackled one ankle to the leg of the chair. “Suckered you into helping him with those big puppy-dog eyes of his? I can’t believe they still work for a guy his age.”
“He was right to seek out Gabriel when he was unable to restrain you by himself,” Cas grunted, turning his attention to the other leg.
“He just wasn’t strong enough. He couldn’t face what he caused,” Dean continued. “And you were just perfectly happy to jump right in there and help, weren’t you?”
“Don’t engage, Castiel.” Gabriel spoke through gritted teeth, the effort of maintaining the spell while wrestling with a demon apparently intense. “This isn’t Dean-o. Not really.”
“But it is me. Really. None of you can face it but it really is me. Just… unburdened. I don’t see why you won’t just let me finish the process. It’s not like any of you had any use for him in the first place, unless it was to do your dirty work.” He gave a low, throaty chuckle. “Oh, what? Did you think I just forgot about that? Or didn’t know? Please. You were perfectly willing to leave half of Sam in the Cage as long as he was fetching and carrying for you and Crowley back in the day. Oh, but somehow I’m the bad guy.” Black eyes glittering with spite turned to Gabriel. “And maybe he didn’t tell me even half of what he went through with the whole thing in Broward County he sure as Hell wasn’t ever the same afterward. And you were more than happy to turn him into a car and make me rummage around in his ass to try to get us to play the roles you and your brothers wanted for us. So you can’t sit here and pretend that you’re on his side all of a sudden.”
Gabriel’s lips pressed shut as Flagstaff got a cuff on his arm. “You probably won’t believe us,” Flagstaff told him as she began to force the other arm down. “And I find that I don’t care. But this is not what Sam wanted. He had a different solution in mind.”
“And it was dumber than this?” Dean snarled.
Every muscle in Cas’ vessel hurt. Even his Grace hurt. He hadn’t known that you could strain Grace like a muscle but here he was. “That must have been some plan he had going on there.”
Cas’ temper got away from him. He lashed out and punched Dean in the jaw. Flagstaff laid a hand on his arm, but the damage was done. He could see - he could smell - the blood coming from his friend’s mouth. “We felt he deserved better,” he growled.
“And what about what I deserve, huh?” Dean’s words came with droplets of sulfurous blood and spittle. “Do you think that I deserve to go back to a life of constant recrimination and restraint? Is that it? Of constantly having to schlep around someone with more than a foot in the grave and the other one out the door?”
Cas glanced at Flagstaff and then at Gabriel. Maybe there was some hope.
“I think that when you decide that slaughtering an entire village worth of people for kicks is a grand way to spend an afternoon then you’ve lost the right to choose,” Gabriel sneered. “I’ve done some nasty shit in my day but hey - I’m me. And first things first - that shiny little mod has to go.” He gripped the Mark of Cain with both hands and the appendages began to glow, bright and white. Ostensibly Castiel knew that this would be the only way to heal the brand on Dean’s flesh; it was created by an archangel’s Grace, after all, and only an archangel’s Grace could heal it.
He’d only expected more ritual to the cure, more ceremony. This was simply an excision. Gabriel’s face went completely blank as his hands circled around the demon’s forearm and his Grace focused on that narrow little part of his skin with the angry red scar. It took maybe five minutes. Dean didn’t just scream, he howled. His cries echoed off the cheap drywall but the angels had prepared for that. No neighbors would complain, and Gabriel wasn’t so soft-hearted that he was about to let up. The stench of sulfur and brimstone and burning flesh filled the air but in the end he was inexorable.
An ugly red burn, a perfect square of flesh, replaced the stylized jawbone that had previously represented the First Blade and everything that came with it. The wound would scar, there would be no way of getting around that.
“Well that’s just great,” Dean spat out. “You’ve taken the one great thing from my life.”
Castiel glanced at Sam’s prone form and closed his eyes. This was not Dean, not really. “We’re ready for the next step in the process,” Flagstaff declared. “The cure.”
“What’s that now? You think shooting me up with some of Sammy’s toxic blood is going to purify me? I’ve got news for you, sister. I know how this is supposed to work. He hasn’t confessed. He hasn’t done what he needs to do. So your little gambit here isn’t going to do jack or shit.” He smirked. “And then I get right back to my plan with the duvet cover. And a nice leather jacket made from Sammy-boy’s skin. Sound good?”
“I never noticed how much you like to hear yourself talk before, Dean-o.” Gabriel offered up a brilliant, smarmy grin. “As it happens there are some things that archangels get to do that filthy hellspawn like, say, you, do not. Oh - and gods, too. Don’t think we’re limited to Abrahamic methods here, boy.” He patted Dean on the head.
Dean snarled and tried to bite the angel’s arm. “I’m going to scatter your grace from one side of the ocean to the next!” he seethed.
A rolled-up newspaper appeared in Gabriel’s hand. He smacked Dean on the nose with it - hard. “Bad demon. No brimstone. Oh, there’s a plan here, boy. This is just part of it. And at this point there ain’t a damn thing you can do about it. So you might as well just sit back and accept it. You’re going to be human again. It’s going to happen in about eight hours. And that, Dean-arino, is when the fun really begins. For me anyway.”
Dean looked at Cas. “Dean-arino?” he mouthed. Cas shrugged.
Gabriel had not, in fact, gotten the blood from Sam. He’d acquired it from a cooperative human priest. After all, Sam’s death would put a serious crimp in Gabriel’s ultimate plan. Cas didn’t know if simply using Sam’s blood for the cure would constitute the abomination completing the third Trial or not but he’d given up quite a bit of blood to summon Dean. No one present honestly believed that if a reaper showed up Sam wouldn’t follow it, especially if the reaper pointed out Gabriel’s duplicity.
The archangel administered the first injection, prompting a stream of obscenity from Dean. “You’re wasting your time,” the demon insisted. “You can’t cure someone who doesn’t want to be cured, assholes. I’m just going to go out there and find a way to get back to what I’m meant to be and you know it.”
“Sam will stop you,” Cas informed him.
“When has he ever managed to stop me from anything?” Dean scoffed. “Come on, Cas. Name one time.”
“He stopped you from saying ‘yes’ to Michael.” Cas had wanted to stop him, but in the end it hadn’t been the angel. It had been Sam’s love and faith and trust that had done the job.
“And look how well that turned out. It got our littlest brother locked up in the Cage instead. No one ever thinks of that, do they?” He chuckled. “Kid’s still down there, a chew toy for Michael and Lucifer -“
“He is not,” Flagstaff inserted firmly. “His soul is in Heaven. His body is deceased. The sole inmates of the Cage are Michael and Lucifer.”
Dean blinked. “But I chose Sam.”
“And Death returned Sam to you. As requested. But he also delivered Adam unto Heaven. He was not so cruel as to leave the poor boy there.”
Dean considered this for a moment. “It doesn’t matter. He still had no right to stop me.”
The angels rolled their eyes as one and declined to engage with the demon until the next injection.
The next three injections, actually, were not much different from the first. Castiel began to develop a headache. Dean would not have pulled any punches in his attempt to avoid his fate if he’d been human; Dean as a demon was no different. He threatened Flagstaff, reminding her of how easily he’d taken her down before. He mocked Gabriel’s newfound sympathy for Sam, suggesting that it was all part of some kind of sick game or crush on his “demon-spawn” brother. Most of his abuse he saved for Castiel, however. He mocked their friendship. He tore into Castiel’s mistakes - his attempt to lead the angels, how he’d worked with Crowley. How he’d tried to make things better and failed. How he might be pretending to think of Sam now but he hadn’t thought twice about turning the wall in Sam’s head into rubble, into dust, causing him to suffer in ways from which he would never be able to save the man.
And of course it was all true. The old trope was that demons lied but in Castiel’s experience they mostly told the truth. It hurt more. Cas had done terrible things, and he certainly had little right to call himself Sam’s friend or set himself up as Sam’s protector now. He’d done it specifically to hurt Dean, too - how could he possibly try to claim any kind of kinship or moral high ground here?
Gabriel’s hand on his shoulder supported him. “Don’t listen to him, bro,” he murmured into Cas’ ear. “We’re going to get him through this.”
After the fifth injection Dean resorted to begging. “Cas, buddy,” he whispered. “Don’t do this to me. You know I can’t… this isn’t right. You know I can’t take it. I can’t face it.”
“Dean, it’s necessary. You can’t live as a demon,” he insisted. “We will get you through whatever happens after, but we cannot have you on Hell’s side.”
“But -“
Of course, the angels had no intention of stopping.
After the sixth injection he resorted to tears. “I can’t even look at him,” he admitted. “He’s not going to ever want to see me again.”
“He’s your brother and he loves you, Dean,” Cas assured him. “If he did not we wouldn’t be here.”
“But he… I went after him with a hammer. My own baby brother, it was my job to take care of him and I went after him with a hammer.” He looked at the others. “If she can’t stand to be around me because I pushed her onto the ground how will he be able to even look at me?”
“He loves you, Dean. More than anyone has ever loved you, more than he’s ever loved anyone.” Cas found himself petting the demon’s hair. It had grown longer during his time as a demon. “It will all be well.”
“It will never be okay, Cas. Couldn’t you have just killed me instead?”
The seventh injection brought incoherence and sobbing grief, but he submitted to it without complaint. The eighth injection brought the final step of the process. Castiel spilled some extra blood from the priest across his palm and spoke the words of the cleansing exorcism, clapping his hand over the demon’s mouth. Dean sagged in his bonds for a moment and an oily, smoky sensation tickled Cas’ grace. Then there was only Dean - that beautiful if somewhat twisted soul that he’d pulled from the Pit himself.
Flagstaff stepped in to heal the wounds that still lingered from Dean’s time as a demon. For a moment, Dean just sat in Cas’ arms. Then he rose and went to look at his brother.
“So what’s his deal, then?” His words were gruff, clipped. He sounded indifferent. He reached out tenderly, though, and stroked his brother’s face with a trembling hand.
Gabriel gave a wicked grin. “Now this here? This is my reward, bucko.”
Next
Author: safiyabat
Artist: d00lface_hooker
Beta: tumblr user queen-of-carven-stone
Written for: Sam Dean OTP MiniBang 2014
Rating: PG-13
Genre/Pairing: Gen, with one brief het scene (Sam/OFC, Dean/OFC)
Wordcount: 16,012 (full fic)
Summary: When Sam is unable to restrain Demon!Dean to cure him on his own, he tracks down Gabriel and makes him an offer that makes even an archangel blanch. Instead of giving Sam what he wants, the Trickster enlists the help of Castiel and Flagstaff to help both brothers remember that it was their love story that saved the world once... by sending them on a quest through Sam's mind. AU after 9.23.
Warnings/tags: Descriptions of extreme violence, Demon!Dean, Mark of Cain and associated issues, mentions of suicide and suicidal tendencies, two very damaged guys trying to work out their issues
Disclaimer: This is a work of fan fiction, and I own neither Supernatural nor the characters.
Previous
The plan was stupid. Castiel did not like the plan. Yes, he and Dean had been close but this… monstrosity wearing his skin was not Dean. Perhaps it could be cured and returned to a state where it was once again Castiel’s best friend, but Heaven’s current administrator - for lack of a better term - wasn’t sure that this was in Dean’s best interests. He would be devastated to learn what he’d done while a demon, all the people he’d killed and worse. If he’d been full of guilt and angst after having tortured in Hell, when he truly hadn’t had a choice, how much more so would the horror be when he faced the consequences of his actions now? He would not be able to live with the shame, the horror. The weight of the memories would crush him, even more so without an Apocalypse to derail that would take his mind off things.
“Perhaps we could put up a wall in his mind,” he suggested as they waited for the demon to respond.
“No,” Flagstaff glowered. “He needs to understand what he did. Otherwise he’ll just do it again. You don’t learn from your past if you don’t remember it.”
“He is a good man, Flagstaff.”
Both the healer and the trickster rolled their eyes. “That won’t help with the second half of Operation Winchester,” Gabriel pointed out. “Or were you planning to just write Sasquatch over here off?”
He sighed. It was a human habit, although one he’d picked up fairly early from - where? His human vessel? Dean? “I am not convinced that interfering in the brothers’ relationship is the wisest course of action, brother. Their feelings for one another have always been complicated. I don’t know that they will appreciate meddling.”
“It’s not as though they’ve been able to fix things on their own, Castiel,” Flagstaff pointed out.
“Perhaps they cannot be fixed,” he suggested, turning to look at her. “I cannot remember a time when Dean took any pleasure from his brother’s presence, and Sam is…” He paused, searching for the best way to describe the younger brother. “He has been deeply troubled for as long as I have known him,” he rephrased. “But he has usually managed to claw some kind of semblance of normal living when he’s separated from his brother. Maybe it is best if they separate.”
Gabriel frowned. “What purpose, exactly, would that serve, genius?” He stepped forward. “They’re the Winchesters.”
“Exactly,” he insisted, refusing to back down even in the face of the infinitely superior power of the sole remaining archangel. “They’re the Winchesters. The fate of the world has rested on their shoulders alone over and over again and they’ve suffered terribly as a result. Don’t you think it’s time for them to… not have to fight?” he finished lamely at Flagstaff’s upraised eyebrow. She might have been his subordinate but somehow he had a hard time facing her disapproval.
“You’re suggesting that we just let Dean run around as a Knight of Hell.” Gabriel crossed his arms over his chest.
“Well, no. I mean, that’s just not even thinkable. But I’m just saying that I’m not sure that what’s gone wrong between them can be fixed just because we want it to be, Gabriel.” He sighed. “Much of it is my doing.” He might have been under orders to widen the cracks between the brothers back before Lucifer rose but it had still been his doing, and he’d never done anything to fill those cracks in after he rebelled despite knowing what he’d done to “help.” And of course what he’d done to Sam had exacerbated tendencies that already existed in the Winchester.
“Sure it is!” Gabriel declared brightly. “And some of it comes from me - especially the damage to Jolly Green. And a lot of it comes from Daddy. No one, though, has done as much damage to these two as they’ve done to themselves, to each other. At the same time, even you have to admit that they’re pretty damn special. No one knows what might be coming down the pipeline and if it’s their… whatever it was… that saved this world before then shouldn’t we try to fix that same weapon? At least try?” He shook his head.
Castiel opened his mouth to respond, but in that moment a wave of malice and loathing overwhelmed him. “It’s him,” he identified. “It’s Dean - he’s here.”
Flagstaff paled, but held her ground. “Are we ready?” she asked.
Gabriel smirked. “Oh, we’re ready,” he purred as he and Flagstaff made themselves invisible.
The door flew open. “I thought we’d been over this, Sammy,” Dean said in a casual, friendly voice that only had a hint of tightness underneath it. “You call me, you’re not going to be real thrilled with what shows up.” His eyes were green as he surveyed the room but they slid over to black when he noticed Castiel. Cas swallowed in fear but remained silent, not sure he was ready to hear what his friend had to say. “Well now. Heya, Cas. This is a surprise. I never figured he’d go for help from angels. Whatever. You’re backing the wrong horse here, Cas.”
Cas frowned. “He is a large man, Dean, but he is not a horse.” He supposed that it was a metaphor but he didn’t have a lot of time or patience to tease out its meaning. He was a warrior, a soldier, not a wordsmith. “You had to know that we would not allow you to remain in the state in which you were.”
“You don’t really get a choice in this, buddy. Sorry. But what’s done is done, and there really ain’t much you can do about it. Besides.” He put his hands to his chest and smirked. “I kind of like it.”
Cas felt sick. “We will heal you, Dean.” “There’s nothing to heal, Cas.” He spread his arms wide. “For the first time since 1983, I feel… I feel free. Whole. There’s nothing weighing me down or holding me back. I can do what I want when I want. I can think about myself without worrying about anyone else. I screw who I want, I drink what I want. I don’t have to worry about keeping an eye on that useless, pathetic sack of skin sleeping away on that couch over there.” He sneered and gestured toward Sam. “Now look - no hard feelings, Cas. I get it - you’re an angel, I’m a demon. We can’t really be such good buddies as we’ve been in the past -even though,” he added in a lower voice, “we both know you’re not exactly opposed to a little sulfur flavored sugar. Now are you?”
Cas cleared his throat. “If you’re referring to my relationship with Meg, Meg was… different. She was special. And part of what made her different was her connection with your brother.”
Dean snorted. “You keep telling yourself that… Angel.” He moved suddenly, impossibly fast, with his blade out and toward Sam.
Gabriel made himself visible then, snapping his fingers. The door repaired itself and the demon found himself frozen in place. The angels stared at him. He stared at his brother stubbornly, willing his body to move for a good thirty seconds before moving his eyes to the angels. “I’m going to pluck every feather from your wings and use them to stuff a duvet,” he spat.
Gabriel smirked. “Promises promises.”
“I can actually take you on now, short ass,” Dean growled. “A Knight of Hell is the only thing that can take on an archangel.”
“Besides, you know, your brother. Who has. And he won. But you know, who’s counting?” God’s Messenger stepped forward, eyes narrowed. “Not to toot my own horn here but I seem to be the one who’s got you trapped, bucko. Now. This is what’s going to happen. I’m going to take a divine cheese grater to that nasty little brand my brother left you with. Then we’re going to cure your dose of pinkeye. Blackeye. Whatever.”
“Who says I want to be cured?” Dean snarled.
“You don’t get a choice, Dean,” Cas told him heavily, fetching the demonic cuffs from his bag. It had been years since he’d seen these - not since Alistair’s disastrous captivity. It had been Sam who had saved them then, Sam who now lay near lifeless on the couch.
“So much for Team Free Will then,” the demon smirked. “I guess that only counts when we’re doing what you winged dicks want?”
“When your free will impinges on the rights of others then yes, others get to override yours,” Flagstaff declared firmly. Castiel knew her fear - Dean had attacked her, had drawn the First Blade on her, before his transformation. Still, she held herself calm and immobile. “You have the right to live your life. Not to slaughter innocents.”
“There are no innocents, sister,” the demon sneered, and Castiel quailed to hear him speak so.
“I am not your sister.”
Gabriel gestured and Dean fell silent. His mouth moved and his face turned red, but no sound came out. “Don’t engage the superdemon in a philosophical debate, Flagstaff,” the archangel advised gently. “You’ll just get pissed off. Come on. Let’s strap him down and get this show on the road.”
Strapping Dean down proved to be more difficult than Castiel had imagined. Gabriel’s spell kept him immobilized, but that meant that they had to physically maneuver him into position. That meant moving his arms, his legs, every part of him into a sitting position instead of the stabbing lunge he’d been frozen into. It took all three of them to do it, too. Dean wasn’t about to make it easy on them or to even make it possible to relax the celestial restraints on his body and he absolutely had to taunt them about their involvement. “So Sammy came crying to you about not being able to clean up his own mess, is that it?” he sneered as the three angels painstakingly shackled one ankle to the leg of the chair. “Suckered you into helping him with those big puppy-dog eyes of his? I can’t believe they still work for a guy his age.”
“He was right to seek out Gabriel when he was unable to restrain you by himself,” Cas grunted, turning his attention to the other leg.
“He just wasn’t strong enough. He couldn’t face what he caused,” Dean continued. “And you were just perfectly happy to jump right in there and help, weren’t you?”
“Don’t engage, Castiel.” Gabriel spoke through gritted teeth, the effort of maintaining the spell while wrestling with a demon apparently intense. “This isn’t Dean-o. Not really.”
“But it is me. Really. None of you can face it but it really is me. Just… unburdened. I don’t see why you won’t just let me finish the process. It’s not like any of you had any use for him in the first place, unless it was to do your dirty work.” He gave a low, throaty chuckle. “Oh, what? Did you think I just forgot about that? Or didn’t know? Please. You were perfectly willing to leave half of Sam in the Cage as long as he was fetching and carrying for you and Crowley back in the day. Oh, but somehow I’m the bad guy.” Black eyes glittering with spite turned to Gabriel. “And maybe he didn’t tell me even half of what he went through with the whole thing in Broward County he sure as Hell wasn’t ever the same afterward. And you were more than happy to turn him into a car and make me rummage around in his ass to try to get us to play the roles you and your brothers wanted for us. So you can’t sit here and pretend that you’re on his side all of a sudden.”
Gabriel’s lips pressed shut as Flagstaff got a cuff on his arm. “You probably won’t believe us,” Flagstaff told him as she began to force the other arm down. “And I find that I don’t care. But this is not what Sam wanted. He had a different solution in mind.”
“And it was dumber than this?” Dean snarled.
Every muscle in Cas’ vessel hurt. Even his Grace hurt. He hadn’t known that you could strain Grace like a muscle but here he was. “That must have been some plan he had going on there.”
Cas’ temper got away from him. He lashed out and punched Dean in the jaw. Flagstaff laid a hand on his arm, but the damage was done. He could see - he could smell - the blood coming from his friend’s mouth. “We felt he deserved better,” he growled.
“And what about what I deserve, huh?” Dean’s words came with droplets of sulfurous blood and spittle. “Do you think that I deserve to go back to a life of constant recrimination and restraint? Is that it? Of constantly having to schlep around someone with more than a foot in the grave and the other one out the door?”
Cas glanced at Flagstaff and then at Gabriel. Maybe there was some hope.
“I think that when you decide that slaughtering an entire village worth of people for kicks is a grand way to spend an afternoon then you’ve lost the right to choose,” Gabriel sneered. “I’ve done some nasty shit in my day but hey - I’m me. And first things first - that shiny little mod has to go.” He gripped the Mark of Cain with both hands and the appendages began to glow, bright and white. Ostensibly Castiel knew that this would be the only way to heal the brand on Dean’s flesh; it was created by an archangel’s Grace, after all, and only an archangel’s Grace could heal it.
He’d only expected more ritual to the cure, more ceremony. This was simply an excision. Gabriel’s face went completely blank as his hands circled around the demon’s forearm and his Grace focused on that narrow little part of his skin with the angry red scar. It took maybe five minutes. Dean didn’t just scream, he howled. His cries echoed off the cheap drywall but the angels had prepared for that. No neighbors would complain, and Gabriel wasn’t so soft-hearted that he was about to let up. The stench of sulfur and brimstone and burning flesh filled the air but in the end he was inexorable.
An ugly red burn, a perfect square of flesh, replaced the stylized jawbone that had previously represented the First Blade and everything that came with it. The wound would scar, there would be no way of getting around that.
“Well that’s just great,” Dean spat out. “You’ve taken the one great thing from my life.”
Castiel glanced at Sam’s prone form and closed his eyes. This was not Dean, not really. “We’re ready for the next step in the process,” Flagstaff declared. “The cure.”
“What’s that now? You think shooting me up with some of Sammy’s toxic blood is going to purify me? I’ve got news for you, sister. I know how this is supposed to work. He hasn’t confessed. He hasn’t done what he needs to do. So your little gambit here isn’t going to do jack or shit.” He smirked. “And then I get right back to my plan with the duvet cover. And a nice leather jacket made from Sammy-boy’s skin. Sound good?”
“I never noticed how much you like to hear yourself talk before, Dean-o.” Gabriel offered up a brilliant, smarmy grin. “As it happens there are some things that archangels get to do that filthy hellspawn like, say, you, do not. Oh - and gods, too. Don’t think we’re limited to Abrahamic methods here, boy.” He patted Dean on the head.
Dean snarled and tried to bite the angel’s arm. “I’m going to scatter your grace from one side of the ocean to the next!” he seethed.
A rolled-up newspaper appeared in Gabriel’s hand. He smacked Dean on the nose with it - hard. “Bad demon. No brimstone. Oh, there’s a plan here, boy. This is just part of it. And at this point there ain’t a damn thing you can do about it. So you might as well just sit back and accept it. You’re going to be human again. It’s going to happen in about eight hours. And that, Dean-arino, is when the fun really begins. For me anyway.”
Dean looked at Cas. “Dean-arino?” he mouthed. Cas shrugged.
Gabriel had not, in fact, gotten the blood from Sam. He’d acquired it from a cooperative human priest. After all, Sam’s death would put a serious crimp in Gabriel’s ultimate plan. Cas didn’t know if simply using Sam’s blood for the cure would constitute the abomination completing the third Trial or not but he’d given up quite a bit of blood to summon Dean. No one present honestly believed that if a reaper showed up Sam wouldn’t follow it, especially if the reaper pointed out Gabriel’s duplicity.
The archangel administered the first injection, prompting a stream of obscenity from Dean. “You’re wasting your time,” the demon insisted. “You can’t cure someone who doesn’t want to be cured, assholes. I’m just going to go out there and find a way to get back to what I’m meant to be and you know it.”
“Sam will stop you,” Cas informed him.
“When has he ever managed to stop me from anything?” Dean scoffed. “Come on, Cas. Name one time.”
“He stopped you from saying ‘yes’ to Michael.” Cas had wanted to stop him, but in the end it hadn’t been the angel. It had been Sam’s love and faith and trust that had done the job.
“And look how well that turned out. It got our littlest brother locked up in the Cage instead. No one ever thinks of that, do they?” He chuckled. “Kid’s still down there, a chew toy for Michael and Lucifer -“
“He is not,” Flagstaff inserted firmly. “His soul is in Heaven. His body is deceased. The sole inmates of the Cage are Michael and Lucifer.”
Dean blinked. “But I chose Sam.”
“And Death returned Sam to you. As requested. But he also delivered Adam unto Heaven. He was not so cruel as to leave the poor boy there.”
Dean considered this for a moment. “It doesn’t matter. He still had no right to stop me.”
The angels rolled their eyes as one and declined to engage with the demon until the next injection.
The next three injections, actually, were not much different from the first. Castiel began to develop a headache. Dean would not have pulled any punches in his attempt to avoid his fate if he’d been human; Dean as a demon was no different. He threatened Flagstaff, reminding her of how easily he’d taken her down before. He mocked Gabriel’s newfound sympathy for Sam, suggesting that it was all part of some kind of sick game or crush on his “demon-spawn” brother. Most of his abuse he saved for Castiel, however. He mocked their friendship. He tore into Castiel’s mistakes - his attempt to lead the angels, how he’d worked with Crowley. How he’d tried to make things better and failed. How he might be pretending to think of Sam now but he hadn’t thought twice about turning the wall in Sam’s head into rubble, into dust, causing him to suffer in ways from which he would never be able to save the man.
And of course it was all true. The old trope was that demons lied but in Castiel’s experience they mostly told the truth. It hurt more. Cas had done terrible things, and he certainly had little right to call himself Sam’s friend or set himself up as Sam’s protector now. He’d done it specifically to hurt Dean, too - how could he possibly try to claim any kind of kinship or moral high ground here?
Gabriel’s hand on his shoulder supported him. “Don’t listen to him, bro,” he murmured into Cas’ ear. “We’re going to get him through this.”
After the fifth injection Dean resorted to begging. “Cas, buddy,” he whispered. “Don’t do this to me. You know I can’t… this isn’t right. You know I can’t take it. I can’t face it.”
“Dean, it’s necessary. You can’t live as a demon,” he insisted. “We will get you through whatever happens after, but we cannot have you on Hell’s side.”
“But -“
Of course, the angels had no intention of stopping.
After the sixth injection he resorted to tears. “I can’t even look at him,” he admitted. “He’s not going to ever want to see me again.”
“He’s your brother and he loves you, Dean,” Cas assured him. “If he did not we wouldn’t be here.”
“But he… I went after him with a hammer. My own baby brother, it was my job to take care of him and I went after him with a hammer.” He looked at the others. “If she can’t stand to be around me because I pushed her onto the ground how will he be able to even look at me?”
“He loves you, Dean. More than anyone has ever loved you, more than he’s ever loved anyone.” Cas found himself petting the demon’s hair. It had grown longer during his time as a demon. “It will all be well.”
“It will never be okay, Cas. Couldn’t you have just killed me instead?”
The seventh injection brought incoherence and sobbing grief, but he submitted to it without complaint. The eighth injection brought the final step of the process. Castiel spilled some extra blood from the priest across his palm and spoke the words of the cleansing exorcism, clapping his hand over the demon’s mouth. Dean sagged in his bonds for a moment and an oily, smoky sensation tickled Cas’ grace. Then there was only Dean - that beautiful if somewhat twisted soul that he’d pulled from the Pit himself.
Flagstaff stepped in to heal the wounds that still lingered from Dean’s time as a demon. For a moment, Dean just sat in Cas’ arms. Then he rose and went to look at his brother.
“So what’s his deal, then?” His words were gruff, clipped. He sounded indifferent. He reached out tenderly, though, and stroked his brother’s face with a trembling hand.
Gabriel gave a wicked grin. “Now this here? This is my reward, bucko.”
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