Make Thick My Blood (3/5)
Dean doesn’t expect to sleep that night, but he does. He dreams of Sam in a white suit with glowing white eyes, feels the comforting solidity of the First Blade in his fist, and watches the demon fizzle out of his brother’s mouth as he plunges the teeth of it deep into Sam’s belly.
“Thank you, Dean,” Sam says; and dies.
When he wakes up Dean sees Sam, alive, standing in his open doorway with the familiar crease of wrinkles across his forehead. He throws Dean’s empty duffel at his head.
“Heading out,” Sam says, short and firm, like since the night before he’s pressed a pencil hard over the fading lines of himself, become something sharper and tougher and more clearly defined.
Dean should have expected this: Sam’s always been one for action, doesn’t like sitting and waiting around when there’s a job to be done. He remembers how it was during the Trials, even (no, especially) when Sam was at his weakest, feverish and shaking, bones rising through his dwindling flesh. The whittling back of Sam’s body had been painful enough to witness, but for Sam the real source of agony had been Kevin’s slow progress on the tablets’ translation; the waiting had kept him constantly fretting and jittery, burning too fast through his picked-over morsels of food. If Sam has something horrible to do then he likes to just do it, flat out, just mans up and squares his shoulders and takes the worst on the chin. Dean’s seen it, over and again: seen Sam grit his teeth and stick his hand into a monster’s heaving guts, seen him set his jaw and point his gun and shoot a weeping girl he was half in love with. It’s admirable, Dean supposes, but he doesn’t always like it: finds himself obscurely resentful, like Sam’s ability to put his head down and grit on is some kind of criticism of Dean’s own strategy; suppress, deny, and hope things work out better than they ought to. So far neither of them is really coming up trumps.
Anyway, this is turning into Sam’s gig, and Dean obediently begins filling the bag. He’s a pretty well-practised packer by now, so the process takes maybe ten minutes, max, but by the time he makes it out into the central hall Sam’s already antsy, itching to go.
“I came as fast as I could,” Dean says, although Sam hasn’t voiced a criticism.
“I know,” Sam says, already heading upstairs.
When Dean gets up into the sunlight he finds Cas sitting quiet in the back of the car. Sam’s standing beside it, wavering a little, but Dean strides confident over to the driver’s door, slides right in. Of course he’s driving. He always drives.
He has his hands on the wheel before he realises. “Where are we going?” he says.
Sam’s tone is carefully level. “Ilchester, Maryland. I thought, if we go straight on Route 36 across to Hannibal -”
“Wait,” Dean says. “Ilchester.”
“Yes,” says Sam. Somebody who knew him less well than Dean might miss the strain in his voice.
Cas breaks in. “I was concerned about the strength of what remnant of Lucifer’s power might still be left in Sam. This location, where he broke through once before, should help to reinforce the spell.”
It could have been worse, Dean supposes; it could have been Stull. Even his current, intermittently emotional state, he’s not sure that he could face going back to that spot, the place where he’d dug his fingernails raw, clawing at the ground that had so dispassionately swallowed Sam up. But at least the cemetery is in Kansas, just a few hours away. Ilchester is more than a day’s solid travel.
Dean’s tried out a lot of metaphors for the Mark and how it works: it’s a brand, a burden, a drug. Here’s another: it’s a catalyst, an alchemical reactor that turns everything he feels, every strong emotion, into rage. There are a lot of things he might feel about going back to Ilchester, the place where Sam killed Lilith and broke the seal that set Lucifer free. He might feel pain, horror, misery. Frustration. Regret. The thing on his arm swallows up all of this, greedily, chews on the sensations and spits them back out as a thick fury that threatens to consume him, numbing him to anything else.
He breathes deeply, struggles to keep calm. But he’s barely pulled the Impala out onto the road when he finds himself blinded by a lightning vision of the car smashed sideways into a tree, Sam’s forehead mushy against the dash. It’s beautiful. It’s sick.
Struck sideways by the vivid heavy metal scent of blood, Dean slams hard on the brakes; and Sam has to slam out a hand to stop himself going head-first into the window for real. Sam doesn’t say anything, though. Instead, they sit there, all three of them, in the stopped car maybe 100 yards from the bunker’s door.
Eventually, “What’s happening?” says Cas.
“Sam’s driving,” Dean manages to choke out. The Mark sends a sharp, punishing shock of pain through his arm; but he ignores it, fumbles open the door and staggers round to the passenger side. Sam slides compliantly along the seat. He lifts his hands to the wheel, shakes the hair out of his eyes. He clears his throat.
There’s another beat of uncomfortable silence before he starts the car.
~~~
Sam and Cas kill the demons outside Normal, Illinois; fast and efficient, in and out, four bodies drained dry and left at the side of the road. They leave Dean in the car, as if he were a child; and he remembers Sam, maybe ten or twelve years old, wrapped in a blanket in the back of the Impala and parked way out in the woods while Dean and Dad were chasing something big. It didn’t happen often, of course; better to leave Sam back at the motel or the house, doing his homework and cooking his dinner and tucking himself into bed. But sometimes, if the money was running low, there was no other way. Dad would give Sam a gun and tell him to leave the lights out and hunker down in the dark. “Get some sleep,” he’d say: but every time they got back to the car, however late, it had been to find Sam white-faced and open-eyed, staring out into the night.
Left waiting while Sam and Cas execute their executions, Dean shouldn’t be scared. He’s not a kid, but a full-grown man: not a skinny adolescent jumbling worries about werewolves with anxiety about outgrowing his sneakers and fitting in at the latest school, but a hunter scarred to toughness through Purgatory and Hell. Still, there’s something inherently disconcerting about being left out here in the dark. He knows, of course, why they’ve done it. They don’t want to set him off, don’t want to start the avalanche when they’re never quite sure it will stop. He’s tried to tell them that killing helps, although he’s not actually sure that’s true. It keeps his mind clear, at least, delivers a welcome focus that helps him to block out the whispers and the fear, distracting from the constant thirst for Sam’s screams.
Out here in the car by himself, there’s nothing else to think about; so Dean falls to mulling things over, worrying at the cracks in this so-shaky plan until they seem to split wide open. Sam’s strong. That’s what Cas has said. Sam is stronger than Dean gives him credit for, and Lucifer won’t take hold. It’s probably true. It might be true. Sam did it before. But then… Dean doesn’t want to think it, but out here, there’s nobody to lie for. Last time, Sam took hold of the devil for Dean. It was them, the two of them, the link between them, that helped Sam to find his way back. Nowadays, that’s looking like a pretty frayed fucking thread to hang all their hopes on.
It doesn’t help that when Sam comes back, he has blood up to his elbows, a smudged thumbprint of red on his lip, and is wearing a focused, almost feral expression that throws Dean immediately back into those terrible months when he could see Sam lying every day and couldn’t do a thing to stop it.
“Did you….?” says Dean, looking at Sam’s mouth, and Sam scrubs the smear away with the hem of his coat. He leaves red fingerprints on the fabric where it’s touched his hand.
“Cas said I should start now,” he says. “With a little bit. Or my body might reject it.”
“I thought it was in you all the time,” Dean says.
Sam opens his mouth; closes it. “I’ll drive this next bit,” he says, eventually. “You need to sleep.”
Sam scrubs his hands on the seat of his pants before he touches the steering wheel, but it only does so much, and Dean can’t help staring at the red-brown stains that still outline his knuckles and nails. Sam doesn’t say anything, doesn’t show that he’s noticed, until he pulls off the road by a dilapidated gas station.
“Bathroom break,” he says.
When he comes back to the Impala, his hands are pink and raw, and the chalky scene of cheap soap filters up slowly until it’s filling the car. It’s pungent, persistent enough that Dean can still feel the edge of it at the back of his throat ten hours later, when they hit the Maryland state border and he retakes the wheel from Sam.
~~~
“The thing about demon blood,” Sam says, “is that it’s also… blood.”
He looks at the mess in front of them, big empty lot, weeds already growing through the concrete cracks. This is where the convent used to be. Dean turns his head, too, standing silent by Sam’s side. He remembers the terror that he felt that night; the desperation and the panic as Cas finally let him free and he pounded through the night to stop Sam starting the end of the world.
“Okay,” says Dean.
“What I mean,” Sam says, “is that it comes from… it’s the same blood that belongs to the vessel. Right? It’s human blood, it was human blood once. Only the demon does something to it, turns it, fucking... transubstantiates it into this other thing. But I’m still drinking human blood.”
Dean thinks about it. He’s not sure that he understands the horror Sam’s evidently struggling with on this point. People exchange bodily fluids. That happens. It’s the demoniacal part of the bargain that Dean finds problematic. Mostly.
“You’re a vampire, Sam,” says Sam. He’s smiling, but the corner of his mouth tugs down. He pauses. It’s like he’s quoting a line from a movie; like he’s waiting for Dean to join in. But Dean doesn’t understand the reference.
“… A bloodsucking freak,” Sam supplies.
Dean frowns. “I don’t…”
“Don’t worry about it,” Sam says. “Not worth remembering.” He turns to pick up the blood, big plastic jugs of it set in the trunk of the car just like the last time Sam chugged himself powerful and went off to let Lucifer in. For a moment he stands there, his back toward Dean, hand resting on the handle of one of the bigger containers. It’s a long moment before he grips it properly with his fingers, screws off the cap with his other hand, and lifts.
This time he doesn’t ask Dean to turn away.
Dean watches the volume of the liquid dwindle, thinks about the thick viscosity of it running down Sam’s throat. He understands blood-hunger, now; understands the draw of it, the thrum of the need in his veins. But Sam the addict is something that still fucks with his head. Nowadays, Sam’s best distinguished by his resolute self-control: the discipline that keeps him working out and eating right and so constantly, carefully chaste. He knows, of course, that’s probably just the point, Sam’s unshakable restraint the necessary counter against his still-pulsing, dirty desire. But nevertheless, it’s hard to square his increasingly ascetic brother with the headstrong, power-hungry kid who once tumbled so desperate and reckless into Ruby’s clutches.
He wonders what it tastes like, demon blood. Like sulphur, he supposes; like death. But maybe he’s wrong. Maybe the stuff is intoxicating, heady like perfume, ether chemical-sweet. In the past, he has sometimes thought that it might taste like the smell of Sam’s skin: a subtle, woodsy, rosemary scent that clings to his brother’s clothing and that has, on occasion and in Sam’s absence, brought him to tears. (Turning up a worn T-shirt from the bottom of his duffel when he was running the first load of laundry after Sam left for college; burying his face in Sam’s stupid, ugly shirts, hunched over the back of the tarpaulined Impala in Lisa’s garage.) It’s a stupid thought and one, now, that seems strangely distant; he can access it but it’s like looking through the wrong end of a telescope, his feelings all withered down to a tenth of their normal size. Demon blood, human blood... Sam's right, there's no difference, not really. Dean found out when he was a demon himself that the Mark can be satiated with it either way.
Thinking of satiation, watching Sam swallow, Dean’s struck by a thought.
“Don’t drink it all,” he says.
Sam flinches. “I never asked you to watch this.”
“No. I mean. For after. Don’t you think it might be better to, you know, come down slowly? Last time - both the last times. It was brutal, man.”
“I’m not drinking it after,” Sam says, tersely, fiercely. “I just want to get it out of my system as fast as I can. I’m fucking fed up of all this crap inside of me, clogging me up.”
~~~
There’s a circle on the ground, a wide one, etched out on the concrete in chalk and hedged around with symbols that send a shiver over Dean’s skin when he crosses them. Sam has set a chair in the circle, a bent old plastic thing that might once have lived in a schoolroom, and Dean wonders for a moment why the seat is so off-centre, close up towards the circle’s near edge. Then Cas appears with a wrapped-up bundle that sets the Mark singing, ripples of power running down Dean’s arm.
The First Blade. Cas takes it out, sets it carefully on the ground at the far side of the ring. Dean wants to get up, cross the distance. It’s just a few paces away. And his hand is aching for it, a sharp splintering pain running right through the bones of his forearm. It doesn’t seem so unreasonable, just to hold the thing one last time.
Cas stands on the edge of the circle, just outside it, just beyond the Blade. Dean looks longingly at the stubby curve of bone, the teeth uneven in the sockets; he seems to feel the smooth warm grip of it under his palm. But Cas is there, his feet in their stupid sensible shoes framing Dean’s vision; and Dean knows that when he looks up Cas will be frowning disapproval. So he doesn’t; doesn’t look up, but doesn’t move either, just sits obedient where he’s been put.
Sam’s standing behind Castiel, some yards away, with his back to Dean. He’s bent over a trestle table that they’ve set up as a makeshift altar; ingredients lined up in a neat row along the far side of the bench, the book Dean found in the bunker’s archives splayed open beside him with Ruby’s knife weighting it down. Dean killed Ruby with that knife, with the blade she gave them. He sank it deep into the the bitch’s belly and he watched her eyes flicker fire as she faded away. It’s a nice feeling. A good feeling. He did that for Sam.
That’s the thing, though, isn’t it? He did it for Sam, but he was too late to fix the real mistake. Killing Ruby felt good, felt fucking fantastic, but it didn’t stop Lucifer rising and it didn’t save the thousands of people who died in that apocalyptic year. It didn’t save Ellen. It didn’t save Jo.
Dean looks towards Sam, bent oblivious over the copper bowl in which he’s casting the spell, and he feels a calm sense of certainty settle over him. This isn’t the way. Dean trusts Sam, and he trusts Cas - he does. He trusts them to mean well, and to try to do the right thing. But he doesn’t trust them to know best, to think clearly, to see what’s really right, not where Dean’s own well-being is concerned. It’s all - it’s so fucking obvious. This has to be a trap.
It’s a trap, and Sam’s fallen into it, but Dean can pull him out.
Yes, Dean thinks. He reaches out his hand, arm straight, fingers splayed; and the Blade flies straight into it, lifting swift as a slingshot away from the ground beside Castiel’s feet. As soon as the handle hits his palm, Dean’s electric all over, thrumming with power. He crosses the circle in five bounding strides, takes two more and then he’s at Sam’s back with the blade in his fist and the blunted point of it between Sam’s shoulderblades. Sam hasn’t even turned round; too absorbed in his magic, or perhaps it’s just that Dean’s moving faster than the world around him, suffused as he is with light. It’s better this way. Sam won’t know what’s hit him; what’s saved him. Dean lifts the weapon, ready to strike.
Dean has the Blade high over his head, clenched tight in his joined fists, when Sam tells him to stop. He’s not speaking English. The word is guttural, low. But it shivers through Dean’s system like ice.
Sam turns around, pushing forward, and Dean steps back. Sam’s face is flushed, a hectic line of colour over his cheek, and his eyes are dark, the irids huge, expanding into black.
Get back, Sam hisses, or that’s how it feels, and Dean tries to fight against it, tries to find the strength that he was glowing with just moments before. It’s fruitless. Dean feels Sam’s power holding him back: feels the twist of his mind tugging deep inside Dean’s gut and ripping at him from the inside. Dean coughs a little, black smoke. This is him, disappearing, his own essence wrenched out of him and then that’s it, he’ll be straight back to hell amidst the bones and the fire, back on the rack or slapping other people onto it, slicing open his own being with every pass of the blade. He’s thrashing and furious, foaming with impotent rage; but Sam has him pinned, advancing with his hand outstretched and his teeth bared and a dark, fixed purpose in his eyes. Dean howls and Sam glances momentarily away, back over Dean’s shoulder where Cas must be waiting, before he brings up his other hand and starts speaking the spell.
Though he’s got the basics of Enochian pronounciation, Dean still doesn’t understand the language: he didn’t have Sam’s long apprenticeship in the Cage. But these words touch him with something visceral. All the anger that has been brewing for the past year boils inside him, bubbles, multiplies, dividing and dividing into black cells of fury so that every bit of him is made up of driving rage. The Mark burns on his arm like a brand.
Sam is standing quite still in front of him now, lips still moving, eyes never leaving Dean’s face. The spell continues and the Mark is wailing and Dean opens his own mouth and screeches his fury, everything he’s ever thought or envied or hated about Sam, all the tiniest resentments and the longest-held grudges, everything he knows that is best calculated to hurt. Monster, he calls him; filthy devil-fucker, mother-killer. He screams at Sam for all the times Sam let him down, strings him out for all the things Sam ever did trying to save him. I hate you, Dean tells him. You’ve ruined everything, ruined me. You’re disgusting. You are obscene.
He’s crazy with anger, thrashing against Sam’s implacable power, feeling his muscles strain and tear and the rawness at his throat spit blood and then suddenly, suddenly, Sam stops speaking and a jet of blue light arcs from his right hand across the concrete and into Dean’s arm. Dean looks down. The Mark burns for a moment hotter than ever, dazzling white, jerking tears from his eyes; and then, so quietly, it flares out and shimmers away.
Sam’s power over him retracts, a hand under the shoulder suddenly dropped, and Dean stumbles forward, almost falling. He catches himself and stands for a moment, breathing, holding his naked arm out in front of him; seeing and not trusting the unmarked skin. His breath is coming in painful heaves, his airway torn and corroded with screaming and bile. He hurts all over. It’s like somebody took a rolling pin to every muscle in his body. But the Mark is gone, and his mind is finally, blessedly clear.
Ahead of him, Sam makes a snuffly, stifled sound. Dean looks up just in time to see him drop; but it’s Castiel who runs forward to catch him, who wraps his arms firm around Sam’s middle and lowers him carefully to the ground. The pair of them settle into a configuration that Dean knows well from playing his part in it so many times. Sam is on the floor, legs sprawling. Cas is crouching beside; his hands on Sam’s shoulders, his face lowered to catch Sam’s eye.
Dean steps forward, unsure.
Sam’s face is a mess of blood and snot and tears. He gasps in short, hitching, desperate gulps of air; and Dean watches with a jerk of guilty jealousy as Cas lifts his hand to run it soothingly over Sam’s hair. But Sam looks up at Dean where Dean stands over him, and he nods, because he can hardly talk; he smears back the gunk all over his face and he smiles and he sniffles and he breaks Dean’s heart.
“You’re okay, Dean,” Sam tells him. “I’m okay. You’re okay.”
Dean watches as Sam reels himself in, forces the tears in and the cheer out until he’s shaking with the effort. Not fooled, Dean thinks about objecting: about telling his brother, “I see you. I know what you’re doing.” But in the end, it doesn’t seem fair. The lie is an important part of Sam’s forced composure, a building block and if Dean tugs it away he’ll have to deal with the full extent of the destruction that his choices have wrought.
Instead he nods, breathes out, watches Sam almost relax.
“This probably calls for a beer,” Dean says.
( Chapter Four)