Broken
This was written for agelade’s very awesome 9.16 prompt: can someone write me a version of 9x16 where Sam gets back into Magnus’ lair only to find himself facing a Dean under Magnus’ spell, will sapped and giving into the Blade’s bloodlust. The blade is reacting to the demonic taint in Sam’s blood, and Dean doesn’t have the will to resist. Can someone write me that please? (A side of Magnus realizing a human with demon blood in him is also a neat artifact might be kind of cool too.)
I’m sorry this is late! Terribly busy week, and I, uh. Might’ve deleted and rewritten this thing several times.
Warnings: SPOILERS for 9.16: Blade Runners. Gore, violence, disturbing imagery, pov-hopping, weirdness.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Supernatural or any of its characters.
Broken
Forty six years ago, Dean Winchester was reborn.
-
So, here’s the thing: Dean likes to talk about how very little scares him, but he’s actually scared all the fucking time. He’s not even sure what he’s scared of; just knows the fear running through his life like background radiation-you know, like that leftover shit from the Big Bang or something (except his big bang didn’t create universes; his was just his mother exploding in flame on the ceiling). He can ignore it most times; other times he can even use it. But it’s not pleasant, you know? That vague, terrible feeling that the world’s going to collapse around you when you’re not looking, nestled beneath your skin like some kind of parasite-not exactly a Disneyland tour.
It is what it is, and Dean puts up with it. He’s put up with a lot of shit, after all.
Hell and Purgatory-now, those places, yeah. They were different. They were places where Dean could slash and burn a thousand Marys, rip out the hearts of a hundred Johns, break the spines of a million Sams, and put them out on display and ask them, ask his stupid, stupid background-radiation fear (all-consuming terror), who the hell are you? what the fuck can you do to me now, huh? huh? And they wouldn’t answer. They would look back at him, wide-eyed, agonised, terrified, simply because he was. He’d make fear fear, and damn if it isn’t the best feeling on any plane of existence.
It’s a lot more complicated topside, however. There are rules, here.
All of it changes when Dean holds the First Blade. The smooth bone fits perfectly into his hand like it was made for this (he was made for this). That fear thrumming under his skin ratchets up until it feels like he’s going to fucking explode; the Mark burns and he’s aching to lay out and dissect his world again, damn the consequences.
Magnus is talking in the background (irrelevant), and now Dean swears he can see himself unspooling-his essence like black thread leaping from his arm and twining around the blade, and Dean doesn’t care if all of this feels like one extended acid trip because now he understands-his hand and the Blade are one-one creature fulfilling one purpose, and he can’t drop it even if he wants to (and why would he?).
He doesn’t know how long he stands there, revelling, rejoicing (resplendent), when he hears a familiar voice (fear) and he turns and it’s Sam.
It’s Sam, tied to a pillar with blood on his face, going dean dean like a broken record, and Dean smiles, because he’s in his element now; he’s in the zone. Big, vulnerable Sam, trussed up like the war prize he always fucking is, acting like a prissy bitch now because Dean won him back like he’s always done. Tall, never-ending Sam, whose clothes never fit him right, because, really, Sam is all of Dean’s fears in one big package, and Dean’s fears are forever.
Dean smiles, and raises his Blade.
He says, what the fuck can you do to me now? and brings the Blade down.
-
Forty six years ago, Dean Winchester was reborn in a hole in the ground, his skin flayed open and needles driven through his eyes. He was reborn when he was dragged into Hell, kicking and screaming. He was reborn the moment he bought into Hell’s biggest lie, its coldest comfort, and picked a soul to flay on the rack.
For Dean, Hell was an infinitely more generous place than Heaven.
-
Sam has never been terrified of his brother.
Terrified of the things done to him, yes. Of what was done by him? Definitely. But Dean’s… pretty much always been Dean, good or bad, and Sam’s learned over the years how to deal with both pretty well.
But now-
Dean’s staring off in the distance, his face flushed, holding the Blade in a white-knuckled grip. Magnus is standing by him, a smile spreading slowly over his face like oil on water, and Sam can feel a distinctive charge in the air, the psychic snap-crackle of a powerful spell recently put into motion. Whatever it is, Sam’s willing to bet anything that it’s part of why Dean’s just standing there, chest heaving, his grip on the Blade so tight like it’s suddenly the axis of his universe.
Sam struggles against the chains binding him to the pillar, shouts, “Dean!” because that’s just what he does in this song-and-dance that he’s come to hate but can’t help falling into, time and time again. “Dean!” because he dared to think he could save his brother when he has to put so much energy into saving himself.
Dean turns to him, and his gaze is alight-with so much ferocity, so much life, that Sam is momentarily dumbstruck. This anger, the swagger with which he walks, like a predator approaching a paralysed prey, is both bizarre and familiar to Sam. He’s seen it before, when he’s had both his legs and his tongue ripped out, vulnerable to slow, languid strokes of a knife that turn him inside out.
This isn’t even the first time he’s seen it on Dean’s face.
Familiarity does nothing to lessen fear; Sam writhes in his bonds like the prey that he is as Dean mutters something that he can’t hear over the buzzing in his ears and slides the Blade into his abdomen. It goes in cleanly, without even a whisper of resistance, and Sam only feels numb as he stares at the knife in his stomach and then at Dean.
Then Dean rips it out like he’s pulling the fucking Excalibur out of stone, and that’s when the pain hits, so hard that Sam can barely pull in a breath in the shock of it. Layers upon intricate layers of skin and muscle and tissue irrevocably damaged, his guts spilling out onto the floor, and the blood, the blood-lucifer sprawling over the congealing mess, twining his fingers through sam’s intestines and telling him, “if only you would learn what i teach you, sammy; if only you could heal yourself,” and Sam both knows and doesn’t knowbecause what he knows is more than a human brain is designed to bear and Sam knows what he’s opening himself to if he tries to tap that knowledge; knows where hubris lead him last time, and oh god, it hurts, it hurts!
oh please, lucifer tells him, poking holes through his diaphragm and cradling his beating heart. like this is the worst you’ve ever endured.
It isn’t, it isn’t, and Sam’s last conscious thought is of the taste of the blood filling his mouth before he slips into darkness.
-
Forty six years ago, Dean Winchester was reborn in a hole in the ground, his skin flayed open and needles driven through his eyes. He was reborn when he was dragged into Hell, kicking and screaming. He was reborn the moment he bought into Hell’s biggest lie, its coldest comfort, and picked a soul to flay on the rack.
For Dean, Hell was an infinitely more generous place than Heaven; it provided the illusion of passage of time. It was what he wanted it to be: it didn’t matter, in the greater scheme of things, if Dean thought he broke in thirty years, or thirty seconds. Shame, sacrifice, nobility-such concepts didn’t exist down there.
If Dean thought he was forty-six and thirty years old, he was welcome to his delusions; even encouraged in them. Dean got a twisted sense of heroism out of Hell-that didn’t even compare to what Hell got out of Dean Winchester.
-
There was a time when Henry Winchester visited Magnus in his secret abode-the very day before his fateful Initiation, in fact-and asked that most pertinent of questions: why. Why did you choose to do what you did? Why couldn’t you compromise?Why couldn’t you restrain yourself?
Magnus wasn’t interested in taking Henry through the complexities of epistemology-it was exactly the kind of empty, dry academia that he rejected in the Men of Letters-and had only smiled and sent Henry on his way back home. Why, indeed? Because if knowledge were to be gained for knowledge’s sake, the Men of Letters’ weak stabs at experimentation, governed by some bizarre, arbitrary code of ethics, was worse than useless. Nor were they willing to apply what they knew to the world; Hunters did most of the ‘dirty work’, aided by the few scraps of information that the Men of Letters were willing to throw from their elite treehouse.
It was a bizarre in-between state that drove Magnus insane.
He stands here now, in the middle of his carefully-built collection of the arcane and the beautiful, and watches both extremes conflate before him, as Dean Winchester picks up the Blade and is transfixed by it. The pure joy at having the Mark of Cain and the Blade together; the excitement at the sheer number of possibilities that having the world’s oldest and most powerful weapon at your command opens up.
(Magnus could kiss somebody, he really could.)
He whispers a short incantation that ensures Dean listens to his every command; then, with nothing more than a mental nudge, turns him towards Sam. Dean takes over from there, gathering all that magnificent rage like a wave cresting before it comes crashing down, and brings the blade down on his brother, who’s still bleating his name. To have a Biblical story re-enacted before him with Biblical tools-honestly, Magnus is so thrilled that he can barely-
-wait.
Sam slumps in his chains, eyes rolling back, blood pouring out of him, and the Blade-is reacting to the blood, glowing fiercely, which can mean only one thing.
“Oh, Henry, Henry,” he says, his smile growing wider until he feels like his face will crack with the force of it. “What special grandsons you have bequeathed me.”
He springs into action immediately; Sam does not have much time left. One swift incantation renders Dean unconscious and out of the way; another slaps a supernatural bandage over the worst of Sam’s wounds. He drags Sam to the centre of the hall, one hand on his faltering pulse, and calls for one of the prize acquisitions in his zoo-his arachne.
The arachne soon has Sam in a silk cocoon, buying Magnus time until he can try more complex spells to heal Sam, and of course, have Dean completely under his sway. A demon knight with a brother who is part demon-is simply too rare, too beautiful, and all Magnus has ever wanted to prove: that his ever-relentless (and often ruthless) pursuit of knowledge has ended with him possessing the rarest thing in this universe, and using it to cleanse the world of evil.
“If you’ve finished gloating.”
Magnus whirls, and it’s another man through his secret portal, a demon, with eyes flashing red. “Do I have to do everything around here?” he says, lifts one hand, and curls it into a fist. Something crumbles inside Magnus’ chest, and the pain drives him to the ground while blood flows out of his mouth, his nose, his ears.
“I’m sure you had a very productive evening with these two dolts,” the demon says conversationally. “But I’m afraid it’s time for us to leave.” He kneels and places one hand on Dean and the other on Sam and disappears.
Magnus lies there, gurgling on his blood, when suddenly the arachne straightens, and looks at him with a keen eye.
-
Forty six years ago, Dean Winchester was reborn in a hole in the ground, his skin flayed open and needles driven through his eyes. He was reborn when he was dragged into Hell, kicking and screaming. He was reborn the moment he bought into Hell’s biggest lie, its coldest comfort, and picked a soul to flay on the rack.
For Dean, Hell was an infinitely more generous place than Heaven; it provided the illusion of passage of time. It was what he wanted it to be: it didn’t matter, in the greater scheme of things, if Dean thought he broke in thirty years, or thirty seconds. Shame, sacrifice, nobility-such concepts didn’t exist down there.
If Dean thought he was forty-six and thirty years old, he was welcome to his delusions; even encouraged in them. Dean got a twisted sense of heroism out of Hell-that didn’t even compare to what Hell got out of Dean Winchester: he was their warrior on every plane, the knight they got in place of a King. He was raised to the mortal plane to fight their battles there, but now?
Now, Dean Winchester is coming back home.
Finis