He Who Fights Monsters - Chapter Ten
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CHAPTER TEN
The lights explode in a shatter of electrical sparks and glass shards and there’s a soundless roar that pulls at Ruby's insides; she has to fight to remain in her meatsuit. There’s the high sound of ringing glass and she looks up in time to see a thick black plume of smoke surge out of the referee box. Lilith. Then darkness.
The few remaining lights are still humming, sickly yellow and anemic. Sam’s lathered with sweat and Ruby can see he’s still panting from the exertion but he’s steady.
He takes a few steps across the cage floor and crouches beside his brother’s cowering form.
She steps forward, scanning the carnage surrounding her. Dead. They’re all dead. Or cast back into Hell. Same difference. She looks back up at the cage, sees the bodies last worn by Alastair and Lilith. She steps around the bodies in the mosh pit surrounding the ring, and makes her way closer to him. She’s more than a little awed that she’s the only one untouched - either she’s far stronger than she thought or Sam has way more control than she’d ever conceived in her wildest imagination. She isn’t sure which possibility is more unnerving.
Sam cuts his gaze back at her and if she’d had breath, it’d have gotten caught up in her throat all over again at the sight of his eyes. As it is, she raises her arms, grips her fingers through the mesh of the cage above her head, and hauls herself onto the ledge of the mat. Dean’s curled up as small as his six-foot frame will allow, eyes clenched shut, but he still senses her true nature. He flinches, whimpers, and presses even harder against the fence beside him, hands clawing ineffectually at his nape. Whether he’s trying to seek comfort or will himself invisible, she can’t really tell.
Sam shifts closer, shielding his brother, futilely trying his best to soothe Dean’s distress, but Dean's shivering worsens at Sam's touch. After a few more seconds, Sam's hand stills, and he pulls it back, wrapping his arms around his knees as he watches his terrified brother.
“You should get him looked after,” Ruby says quietly. “Alastair really did a number on him.” She meets Sam’s strange gaze for a heartbeat and then jumps down from her perch and exits the arena without a backward glance.
::: ::: :::
In the wake of Ruby’s absence, the arena's silence settles around them along with the sulfur-heavy stench of the hundreds of dead. Alastair's glazed, lifeless eyes stare at Sam, surprise forever carved into his empty shell's features.
Sam feels little more than a small thrill of triumph as he surveys the carnage before turning back to his brother. He's done what he set out to do. Dean is free. He's free. All of this was worth it.
But the injections Ruby gave Sam haven't worn off, not even a little. The hellfire he'd used to kill Alastair still sears through his veins - he can feel that restless hunger and bloodlust coursing through him. He'll have to find a way to get it out of his system quickly, before Dean comes around. Maybe someday Dean will understand that Sam did what he had to do, but he won't ever accept him like this - a blood junkie, a vampire, a monster.
Gently, Sam leans over his knees, trying to evaluate the extent of the damage inflicted on his brother, inside and out. Dean still won’t look up, is still making his best threatened-armadillo impression. Sam thinks he can see a dark, sticky patch on the front of Dean's light-gray shirt..
"Your stitches," Sam says softly. "We've gotta get you cleaned up."
At the sound of Sam's voice, Dean flinches, but he doesn't turn his head. His hands squeeze the back of his neck, loosens, and tightens again but he doesn’t lower his arms, and it’s then Sam notices, under the bright glare of the lights, the dirt still wedged under Dean's fingernails. He silently chastises himself for not cleaning them.
"Dean," Sam says again, more quietly. "We have to fix your stitches." There’s so much more he needs to fix, but stitches are something he can start with.
His brother’s hands stop flexing, but Dean doesn’t budge.
After everything - Capital-H Hell, hellhounds, tonight… it's no wonder, Sam thinks. "Hey, it's okay," he says, laying his fingers carefully, feather-light, on Dean's shoulder. Dean's head bows down further at the touch, like he's expecting to be struck. A flare of anger sets Sam's teeth on edge as he remembers Alastair's bragging how thoroughly he'd broken Dean. "It's okay, Dean. You're safe now. Nothing’s bad going to happen to you. Look at me."
Dean huddles even smaller on himself, his body trembling.
Sam just wants to Dean to know he's safe, that he's not in Hell anymore. "Look at me," he says again. His voice echoes oddly, even to his own ears, as he wills Dean to respond.
Dean's head snaps up, eyes wide open and he stares at Sam, who gives him what he hopes is a reassuring smile.
Instead of relaxing, Dean makes a sharp frightened sound.
Sam lifts his other hand and Dean scrambles away from him, scrabbling and clutching the mesh of the cage, tucking on himself. He's still staring at Sam, eyes terrified, whites showing.
Sam raises his hands. "No, no, Dean- it's okay. It's me, Sam." He edges closer.
Dean whimpers, brings shaking hands up in a gesture of surrender. His arms vibrate harder as Sam moves towards him.
"It's just me," Sam says, swallowing down the hard lump in his throat. "Nobody's gonna hurt you. Not ever again. I swear." The power inside of him thrums through his veins in agreement. He reaches a hand down to Dean, who looks like he's praying for the ground to swallow him whole.
A bright glint in the polished metal of the referee's box-frame catches Sam's attention as he leans down, and he turns to the left to see his reflection, his eyes burning with yellow fire.
Horrified, Sam stumbles back, turning away from Dean.
He hears his brother's panicked gasps as Dean lunges to his feet and bolts for freedom, all adrenaline. The ruined cage door clatters as it bounces in its frame.
::: ::: :::
She’s about ten blocks away when her phone buzzes in her pocket. She thinks of ignoring it when it vibrates again, hard and insistent against her hipbone. Exhaling, she extracts it from her jeans pocket and answers it, her voice coming out sharp and impatient. Sam’s on the other end, babbling something about how Dean’d finally taken one good look at his face and bolted, shredded thigh and mangled core muscles notwithstanding. There were noises about how he couldn’t find Dean and would she please, please help.
She almost says no, almost tells Sam that he’s on his own, when something stops her. She can hear Sam breathing on the other end, wet and ragged. You must be getting soft in your old age, she scolds herself. “I’m on my way,” she tells him as she heads back the way she came.
::: ::: :::
Sam meets her at the fire exit that opens into the back alleyway. The lower half of his face - the bit of it she can see beneath the hood of his sweatshirt, at least - is tear-stained. He doesn’t yell at her, doesn’t cry about her not telling him his eyes had changed color. He silently lets her in, shuts the door behind him and exhales. “He’s terrified of me.”
Ruby blinks at him. Well, what d’you want me to do about it? Demon here, remember?
Sam exhales again, continues as though she’d spoken the words aloud. “Maybe you could convince him or something? Tell him he’s not in Hell anymore. He’s scared and hurt and won’t let me anywhere near him. I don’t know what else to do.”
It’s Ruby’s turn to blow out a slow breath of oxygen she doesn’t need or use. The idea is one of the stupidest she’d ever heard. Sure, just send a demon to tell the guy fresh out of Hell he’s safe. That’ll really go over well. But, then again, it’s so idiotic it just might work. “Alright,” she agrees and Sam smiles gratefully at her.
She steps into the darkened, deserted arena. It looks like a blast zone.
“Lights make it worse,” Sam informs her.
Right. And so do noises and soft, fluffy puppies, she thinks but doesn’t verbalize.
The cage, chairs, are all still there but the bodies have all been removed. There’s the sound of someone breathing loudly, harshly, as though he’s been running a marathon and can’t quite catch his breath, and Ruby follows it. She senses the sweat, blood, and sulfur that still pervade the space. It is so overwhelming that she can almost taste it in the back of her throat and she thinks she understands why Sam’s brother is choosing to hide here. For a soul ripped out of Hell, for a soul who hadn’t had time to process reality, this is a pretty damn close substitute. Hell, even for someone like herself who’d been around the block for a while, the arena felt a little like home, if she was honest . She picks up on the scent of Dean’s sweat and his pungent, urinal terror and hones in on it.
She finds him sitting on the floor, crammed up in the narrow footwell between two rows of seats. She doesn’t go to him, remaining crouched at the end of the row, as far from him as one can get. In the red glow of the exit sign, he looks pale, sick, his face slicked with feverish sweat.
Dean closes his eyes and bows his head in complete submission. The silence stretches between them. Then: “Go ahead,” Dean says hoarsely, his tone flat and listless. He’s rubbing his hand against his chest, the other going to his leg. There’s a dark patch seeping through his jeans as well. “Do whatever you want. I know you’re a demon.” He shifts, winces at the movement. “I can see your face, so you can stop pretending.”
She doesn’t bother lying. There’s no point in it. “Yeah,” she says, “I am,” and lets her eyes flip black. Dean doesn’t flinch. If anything, he straightens, stiffens, visibly tamping down his emotions, but doesn’t uncoil. She watches his expression go blank. Alastair’d trained him well. “But I’m not here to torture you or be tortured,” she says softly. “It’s over.”
He doesn’t show any sign he’s heard, understood.
She waits a beat. “This is real,” she tells him. She’s not about to try to convince or sway him to believe he’s not in Hell; she can already see that it’d be a losing battle. Instead she settles for confirming whatever he believes to be reality.
Dean doesn’t answer her, presses his hand against his chest and grimaces. Fresh blood steeps through his shirt. He sways where he’s sitting, braces himself against the back of the seat behind him, and steadies, his physical state and the strain of being hyperaware clearly wearing on him.
“I can knock you out,,” she offers, slowly, gently. “Put you to sleep for a little while. Bet you’d like that.” She pauses, allowing her words to fill the space between them. “Shut it all off for a bit. Regroup. You’ve been through a lot, Dean Winchester.”
She can tell he’s tempted.
“What’s the catch?” His voice is rough, ragged. “There’s always a catch.”
“There isn’t one.”
“You’re lying,” he says, conviction filling his tone. “You want something. You always want something. So tell me. What’s the catch?”
She gets the sense that he isn’t talking about her specifically, that she’s somehow lumped up with Alastair and Lilith and Meg and Bela and whoever else shredded him down there. There's no use repeating that there isn’t a catch, there’s no loopholes, even if it’s partly true. She decides to give him the truth. It’s cruel enough anyways: “Everything stays the same when you wake up.”
“That’s it?”
She nods. “No rack. No knife in your hand,” she pauses. “But nothing will change either. Everything will be exactly the way it is and it’ll be up to you to decide if it’s real. What'll it be?”
Dean nods, swallows, visibly weighing all of his options, and she gets a glimpse into what once made him the strategist of the pair. “So,” he grates. “Will Sam still be here? I mean…”
“Yes,” she says softly. “Sam will still be here. Yellow-eyes and all. Those are permanent, y’know.” She pauses, doesn’t tell him Sam isn’t possessed, isn’t a mirage - it’s not worth it, not when his hold on reality is so tenuous. “Like I said. Nothing changes.” She exhales, goes in for the kill. “It’s a pretty sweet deal for someone who jump-started the apocalypse if you ask me.”
“What?” Dean’s voice gets lost somewhere in his throat, comes out in a wheeze. “What did you say?”
“You said there was always a catch,” she holds her hand to her face, pretends to study her nails. She flicks her eyes - her real ones, all liquid black - over her bent fingers at him. “That was the catch for stepping off the rack. You were the first seal, Dean - the righteous man who started torturing souls just to save his own hide because he couldn’t hack it - and now the world’s on the fast track to an apocalypse. Once your brother frees Lucifer from his cage - and you better bet your ass Sam will break open that cage - the world will fall. And all of it will be on you.”
“Y-you’re lying,” Dean stammers, less convinced this time.
“Now, why would I lie about something like that?” She rises to her feet. “You of all people should know better.” She pauses. “How about that nap? No nightmares. No flashbacks. No pain or meathooks. Just sleep.”
His eyes close and he lowers his head, clasping his hands loosely in his lap. It’s a yes. In the grand scheme, what is one more concession? She can feel his defeat, smell his despair rolling off him in waves. The self-loathing is intoxicating. She goes to him, crouches, and cups her hand against his damp temple. "You broke the first seal, Dean. And Sam will break the last." A gentle nudge of energy and Dean's out. She catches him as he lists forward, wrapping her arms around him as his head lolls, bracing it against her shoulder. She tips her face towards his, bringing her mouth close to his ear, “and there’s absolutely nothing you can do to stop it.”
There’s a low sound and she looks up to see Sam standing in the aisle, still hooded and hunched on himself as though he’s a scolded child tentatively asking his parents if he’s free from time-out yet and that he’s really, really sorry for whatever he’d done.
“He okay?” He whispers, his voice loud in the silence, as he makes his way towards them.
“For now,” she tells him as he squats beside her, hands shifting, fingers twitching, searching for something to fidget with… or maybe jonesing for a fix. She tilts her chin to peer at Dean, still cradled against her the way Susanna had rested on her lap, once upon a time. “You ought to get him someplace comfortable while you can. He'll be out cold for the next sixteen hours.” She pauses, transfers Dean to Sam with the same care she once would’ve her daughter. “He’ll need it.” She turns back to Sam, and stands to go, her eyes flushed black. “Congratulations on your victory."
::: ::: :::
For few minutes, Sam stays crouched where he is, holding Dean - his brother’s body warm against his, watching the rise and fall of Dean’s chest with each inhalation and exhalation.
As carefully as he can, Sam picks up his brother and stands. Dean's head lolls, comes to a rest against Sam's chest, and Sam feels a surge of protectiveness mix in with his exhaustion and relief. There are two demons standing by the exit, the ones that helped clear the bodies out of the arena, and it makes Sam instinctively tighten his hold on Dean. When Sam nears, they step aside and bow their heads, whether in acknowledgement or fear Sam doesn’t know or care. It doesn't really matter. It's clear they won't make a move against him or Dean.
The air outside is brisk, the beginnings of autumn mixing in with the late summer. Sam crosses the parking lot until he reaches the Impala, gently maneuvers Dean into the back seat and covers him with the spare blanket they keep in the trunk. Dean makes a soft noise, a wince of pain or a whimper maybe, and Sam's fingers twitch. Alastair's dead, but he wasn't the only demon that hurt Dean.
Despite killing Alastair and the hundreds of others in the arena, there's one death Sam didn't feel. Lilith's. He can tell himself she died with the others; had seen the tiny, empty body she'd left behind, but with her level of power, even with the confusion that had been the end of the fight - he should have felt something more. And until he's sure she's dead, her name is still at the top of the list in the back of Sam's mind. There's others too - every other demon that laid a hand on Dean when he was in Hell, and once Dean is well enough, Sam's going to make it his mission to make sure every one of those names is checked off with a big bloody stroke.
Sam slides into the driver's seat and tries to decide where to go. He could rent a motel room, ward it, make sure Dean's wounds are clean, but then what? When Dean wakes up he'll try to make a run for it again. As much Sam hates to admit it, even to himself, they need help.
The phone rings three times before there's an answer, and at the sound of the man's voice on the other end, Sam's heart pangs.
"Yeah?"
"Hi Bobby."
"Sam?"
"Yeah, Bobby, it's me."
There's a pause, and a muffled curse. "Why didn't you call me back the last fifty times I left a message? Been worried sick about you. I swear you-"
"I got him out."
There's silence for a beat. When Bobby speaks again his voice is unsteady. "What did you do?"
"I- We need your help."
::: ::: :::
on to chapter eleven