SPN STORY: "Who Do You Say that I Am?"
Title: Who Do You Say that I Am?
Fandom: Supernatural
Rated: Gen
Pairing: none
Characters: Sam, Dean, Ruby
Summary: Sam figures out who the demons think he is.
SPOILERS: up to and including 3.12
Disclaimer: The characters and basic premise within are property of Warner Bros, Eric Kripke, etc. No money is being made off this work of fiction. Special thanks to the actors, writers, directors, and the whole creative team who make Supernatural so great! No offense intended. Thanks as well to the whole, crazy, SPN fandom. How is SPN fandom like AC/DC? AC/DC salutes rock with a cannon, and fandom takes canon and rocks!
Notes: 7,500 words. Thanks so much to my supercool beta,
susannaheanes, for her comments and encouragement on this.
Who Do You Say that I Am?
Sam had always thought of it as Dean’s Ratio of Howling to Scowling. That is, whenever Sam wanted a bit of introspection as the Impala crossed a seemingly endless, flat, featureless stretch of their home territory (the middle third of the United States), Dean would put in AC/DC. Then when Sam began to twitch and scowl after the auto-reverse had flipped the tape three or four times, Dean would put in Ride the Lightning. And soon Sam would have a blinding headache, which would precipitate the dreaded Motörhead.
Currently the Impala had been cruising at 70mph since daybreak, they were beyond the middle of nowhere, and Dean was gruffly shrieking along with Lemmy, “It’s only Rock and Roll! It satisfies my soul! If that’s how it has to be, I won’t get mad! Cause I got Rock and Roll to save me from the cold! And if that’s all there is, it ain’t so bad! Rock and Roll!!” Over and over and over again. Dean had progressed to not being able to imagine growing old with anyone, and marching to a different drum, when Sam reached over and violently ejected the tape.
“Listen, Dean,” he said, “I’ve got a really important question and you have to answer it. No bullshit.”
Dean, for his part, rolled his eyes. Sam was naturally gifted with the looks of utter, scornful disbelief, hurt disappointment, supercilious astonishment, and downright disdain. But Dean also had the emerald depths of “I couldn’t give a rat’s ass” that he could slowly bat his eyelids across, aim at you, then slide off you as though he were right back into his umpteenth contemplation of the Doublemint twins without a hitch.
“Dean,” Sam whined, and let’s face it. It was a whine. It’s the exact same whine he had perfected at age 18 months, the same time he perfected the final consonant in Dean’s name.
“Ok, Sammy, goddamn it. What.”
Sam chewed his lip a minute. Now that he’d got Dean’s attention he had to milk it because this is serious. Dean kept his attention on the road.
“When you were in that basement in Elizabethville, and that demon priest had you by the throat,” Sam began. He fidgeted a bit, licking his lips nervously.
“Yeah,” Dean said.
“And I shot him with the Colt. And then I shot the girl.”
“Yeah,” Dean said again. “What about it?”
“Why did you yell ‘no’?” Sam turned the eyes on him, the bleak looking ones like a kid whose ice cream has just fallen onto the asphalt.
“What do you mean, ‘no.’ I didn’t yell no. They were demons. Better them than me.” Dean still didn’t look at Sam, though, and Sam saw that his right shoulder was deceptively relaxed. Dean was never relaxed. He was tense as all hell. Whenever he deliberately relaxed, he was covering something.
“Dean, I mean it. You yelled ‘no’ just as I was shooting that bartender. Now tell me why.” Sam would’ve liked to think that Dean was just full of regret for the loss of life. Of course Dean did regret the loss of life, but he was always about the job first. If he had tried to stop Sam from killing the second demon, there was something more to it.
“Did she you tell you something, Dean? While the two of you were in that basement alone that whole time?”
Sam saw Dean begin to crack. He was terrible at keeping shit from Sam. He knew that as soon as Sam latched on to something he would worry at it until it cracked, whatever it was, including himself. So he usually gave in pretty quickly.
Dean tilted his chin away from Sam. That was his move while he sifted through what information he would pass on.
“Well, you know, we were just shooting the shit. She was trapped, but so was I. It doesn’t matter anyway. Demons are just full of lies, so whatever she said, it doesn’t mean anything.”
“But what did she say, Dean,” Sam pressed. “Did you ask her about the deal?”
Dean scoffed. “She didn’t know anything about the deal. You ever notice how the Crossroads Demon had red eyes? It’s the older, more powerful demons that show through their eyes like that. Casey was just a temptress. She didn’t even tempt that many people, just encouraged them to tempt each other.”
“Huh,” Sam responded. “So you two had a big heart to heart, all sharing and what not?”
“No!” Dean objected. Sam just waited.
“Ok, well, maybe a little bit. She was kind of cool for a demon. You didn’t have to dust her so quick.”
“Dude, her partner was strangling you,” Sam pointed out.
“Lover,” Dean corrected.
“What?” Sam asked.
“The one in the priest was her lover. She said they’d been lovers for whatever, eons or some shit. Makes you think,” Dean offered.
Sam pounced on it. “So you didn’t want me to shoot her because she chatted you up and told you about her boyfriend?”
“No,” Dean replied uncomfortably. “I mean, she was a demon. She had it coming. But, you know, we kind of thought alike about some stuff.”
“Like what,” Sam asked. Now we were getting to the point, he thought.
“Well, she didn’t think I should believe in God, which I don’t,” Dean said defensively, “but she believed in her own God. Lucifer, the bringer of light, she said.”
Sam knew that for their exorcisms to work, Dean had to have a certain base level of belief in God, but understanding Dean’s cold shoulder towards the Almighty, he let it slide.
“Wait,” he said, “there really is a Lucifer? Like, the fallen angel? Is he like hanging around with them in hell?”
“No,” Dean said, “and that’s kind of what had me curious. I didn’t want you to shoot her cause she was willing to talk to us, to me I mean, about what things are like down there. Well, you know, she said I’m not gonna like it, which I kind of guessed...” Dean tried to pass that off with a smirk but Sam didn’t return a grin. That kind of joke just wasn’t funny to him in the slightest.
“But Dean,” Sam continued, and this was the hard part. He cleared his throat. “Did she talk about me? Cause I get the feeling, you know, that a lot of them have, kind of opinions about me. Who I’m supposed to be, you know.”
Dean was silent a second, so Sam knew they had talked about him.
“Come on, man, spill. I deserve to know the truth,” Sam demanded.
Dean glanced over. “It was pretty vague, coming from her point of view. She just said that when we killed old Yellow Eyes, Azazel she called him, then all the demons who came through the gate had no one to follow. They were supposed to follow you. But no worries about that now, I guess.”
“Azazel? Are you kidding me, Dean?”
“What.”
“Haven’t you ever even cracked a look at any of the demonology texts I’ve had coming out my ears the past two years? Azazel’s like one of the Lords of Hell, so to speak. I mean, as far as demonologists can tell, he’s one of the really powerful old demons, up there with Lucifer himself. If we killed him, we have really decimated the leadership!”
Sam was triumphant for a second while Dean repeated “decimated the leadership” in a high-pitched tone of mockery. Dean knew his vocabulary words perfectly well, he just had a grudge against them.
“But wait, man,” Sam said, returning to the problem. “Why were they supposed to follow me? Just because I was the last one standing? You know, that Pride demon called me the Boy King. That doesn’t sound like a contest winner to me.”
“Boy King, shit. He was Pride incarnate, Sammy. He was blowing smoke up your ass.” Dean gave him the lowered eyebrows and pursed lips of don’t believe a word these demons say.
“But Dean. There’s something to it, you know? These demons take an interest in me. First Azazel, then Meg, then Pride - they all seem to have opinions. Who do they think I am? Was Dad right - am I still going to turn out bad?” Sam didn’t have any more answers after learning what the demon had told Dean, but he had suspicions.
“Well, I know who you are, Sammy. You’re Sam Winchester, and you’re my little brother, so stop worrying.” That was Dean’s answer, and he was sticking to it.
“Who do you say that I am?” Sam repeated under his voice, as though to himself. Next, he would have to ask Ruby.
Not long afterwards, the opportunity arose to do just that.
Sam had gone to lunch by himself while Dean scouted locations on a series of disappearances they were looking into. He soon found himself in not-so-welcome company. Ruby had shown up, plopped herself down and ordered fries, a half-pounder cheeseburger and an enormous chocolate milkshake on his tab. Demons, as she never tired of telling him, never pay. They only collect, she had told him, which he was really beyond tired of being reminded of.
Sam and Ruby argued about the Colt. Sam had shot the Crossroads Demon, then the demons inhabiting that bartender girl and the priest. Once that can of worms had been opened, Dean had given Sam the accusing eye about wasting another demon that could’ve given them information, maybe, and god damn if Ruby didn’t back him up on it.
“You would have had allies in them, Sam, if you hadn’t shot them on sight. So rude!”
Ruby slurped down her fries with an inordinate amount of ketchup.
“Allies. Demon allies. In a war where I’m trying to get rid of all the demons.” Sam pressed his eyebrows together in the look of utter disdain.
In response, Ruby rolled her own not inconsiderable glistening orbs. She and Dean should have a contest.
“Listen,” she said. “Yes, a whole bunch of demons made it out of hell. Who can blame them for wanting out? It’s hell. But now what are they gonna do? Well, a lot of them, if you’ll notice, are just here and there in bodies, kind of low-level making mischief, you know, live and let die.” Ruby chuckled a bit at her own appropriation of Ian Fleming’s somewhat lame canard.
“Ok, yeah, but I’ve still got a problem with that. The human body’s not meant to hold a demon. They can’t just take up residence like that in innocent humans. Whatever you all are made of...”
“Brimstone and treacle!” Ruby interjected with another Dean-like chuckle; God, why didn’t she torment his brother instead of him. With the gross eating habits and the pop culture references, the two of them would have a blast. Not to mention the weapons expertise. Unless they got in some kind of duel and killed each other simultaneously. Sam could see them both grandstanding from slouched positions on the ground in protracted death scenes. He shuddered.
“Whatever demons are made of,” Sam repeated through gritted teeth, “it eats away at the host whether the demon intends it to or not. Like a fever... it seems like most of you are usually glistening with sweat.”
“Attractive, isn’t it,” Ruby grinned. “All hot and bothered,” she pouted at him.
Sam physically recoiled. “Please don’t flirt with me. There’s not a chance...”
“In hell?” Ruby interjected with a wide grin. “Come on, baby, show a little love. A girl can’t get a little action from her own messiah?”
“What?” Sam blanched. He felt the blood drain away from his face as his eyesight focused in on Ruby. The rest of the diner seemed to fall away.
For the first time Ruby’s gaze faltered. She lowered her eyes. “Uh, ha!” she gave a laugh, but it was a bit forced. She went for the milkshake and sucked hard on the oversized straw, concentrating on the level of milkshake going down behind the thick, frosty glass.
“Why did you say that?” Sam reached out and grasped Ruby by the wrist. Yeah, he’d noticed in their previous encounters that she ran a little hot. Her skin was moist and fevered to the touch.
“I don’t know, Sam, why would I say such a thing.” Ruby’s face had lost all trace of humor. Sam watched in horror as the blackness swam up across her eyes.
“But... but... but I don’t even have any powers now that Azazel is dead! I’m just another kid! Not even psychic! Just because he fed me a few drops of blood...” Sam felt sick even as he mentioned what he had seen in the memory Azazel had given him of the night of his mother’s murder.
“No, Sam. He did that to all the children. That was the binding that gave you the visions, the powers. That didn’t affect who you are. In fact, it’s pretty ironic that he wanted to bleed into you...” Ruby gave a strange inflection to the pronouns.
“Why,” Sam demanded. Ruby had fallen silent. She crammed another enormous bite of cheeseburger into her mouth and then stood up. She reached out and touched Sam lightly on the cheek, then strode out of the diner.
Sam was too stunned at this new information to try to detain her. A couple of things clicked into place in his head. Demons.... blood.... his blood in particular..... shit. How was he going to explain this hunch to Dean? If Sam was right, Dean was not going to like this at all. But if it was true, then Ruby had given him the key-maybe -- to getting Dean out of the deal.
Sam couldn’t figure out how to broach the subject of his new theory with Dean without sounding insane. Instead, he resolved to put it into action at the next opportunity.
The series of disappearances proved to be the result of having the ass end of nowhere for a hometown -- despite the tasty cheeseburgers at that one diner. Bobby called to tell them about some omens a couple states over, so Sam and Dean got their stuff together and loaded up the Impala.
Sam wouldn’t really admit it, but he found something cleansing in stowing his gear, cleaning out the motel room, packing everything neatly away in its place in the trunk. Growing up, he’d envied other kids their seemingly endless supplies of stuff-toys, books, video games, the lot. But there was something clean about reading a book and leaving it behind. Mending a torn shirt, or discarding it as a loss. Truth be told he didn’t travel much heavier than Dean, who didn’t seem to own anything beyond weapons, clothes, and a box of cassette tapes. Well, the first aid kit, and the forgery kit, which was kind of part of the first aid kit, scalpel and all.
When Sam had left for Stanford, he’d felt sure that he’d start to accumulate stuff the way other people did. But that hadn’t happened. He had no desire to save his term papers; they were on his laptop anyway. He sold back his textbooks at the end of every semester. He’d moved in with Jess carrying the same duffel Dean had put him on the bus with. Everything he’d had in the apartment - his favorite coffee mug, a few novels, his potted plant - he left behind after the fire. It was easy to leave stuff behind. It was harder to deal with the traces of yourself that other people carried away.
He would never again be the charming boy Jess’s parents had welcomed into their home on holidays and over breaks. In their hearts, he knew, he would forever be just another tragic facet of their daughter’s loss; his potential, as far as they knew, gone to waste by his inability to complete his four years at Stanford. Sam knew his own potential; it had come between him and his family his whole life. He couldn’t live up to his potential as a hunter; neither, in fact, could Dean, but Dean spat out hopes and future plans like they were last night’s left-open beer. Better to ignore them.
Sam left the motel room with his worldly goods in a couple of bags. His potential, his gift to the world, was something hidden, riding along deep inside of him.
As Bobby’s information usually did, the omens panned out, and soon enough, Dean and Sam had a pretty girl tied to a chair. Sam tried not to think about it too hard. He’d tied Meg to that chair, and then Bobby and Dean had tied Meg to that chair again, only she was inside Sam that second time. Torturing demons for information was not something only Gordon did. At least, Sam justified to himself, the torture was inherent in the ritual that sent them back to hell. It wasn’t something they could get around; therefore, they might as well use it to their own benefit. It wasn’t something he condoned; it was something that blackened his soul a little more every time, something he repented; still, he went ahead and did it again and again.
The pretty girl on the chair was weakening. As Sam had begun to notice, having a demon was like having a bad flu. As the demon weakened, the stresses on the human body began to show. The fever increased, the sweating became more pronounced, as the body tried to help expel the demon, and the demon desperately tried to keep its hooks in its earthly host. Like a tapeworm, Sam’s mind helpfully supplied, and he tried to swallow back his disgust.
“Are there any more demons here?” Dean was asking. “Friends of yours, or like, co-workers?”
“I wouldn’t tell you if there were. We have just as much right to be here as you do,” the demon said from inside the girl.
“That’s not true,” Sam said. “God gave this world to us. You and your kind fell from grace and were expelled into hell.”
The face of the pretty girl twisted. Her eyes went black at Sam’s words. She opened her mouth, and a horrible echoing voice came out of it -- just like in a horror movie --but unlike THX or Dolby Surround, this voice not only shook the air around Sam but rattled his heart in his chest. It seemed to call out to his blood.
“What business do we have with each other, Samuel Winchester? Have you come here to torment us before the time? I beg you, don’t torment me."
Sam seemed to hear a rushing in the room, like in the theater when the audience is waiting for the action to begin. Or in the park, when a large flock of birds is just alighting on the cold ground.
He recognized the words. He knew what he had to do. But Dean would never, in a million years, let him do it. It was time for Dean Distraction #1, with backup plan A already in force.
Sam turned to Dean with all the earnestness he could muster. He put on his most hopeful yet confused looking face. “Dean, listen, I need Dad’s journal,” he whispered, seizing Dean by the arm.
Dean was instantly confused, and therefore belligerent. “What? What for? Hell, no, Sam, I’m not running you a little errand out to the car with a demon tied to a chair right there! There’s nothing in that journal we don’t have better right here.”
They had transferred all the information on demons from John’s journal into a new journal, which they had begun to fill with newer information and all the variants on exorcism they could find.
“No, it’s like I’m trying to remember something really important. If I could just flip through the journal I’m sure it would come to me.” Sam thought Dean would buy this. Sam, himself, was an eidetic learner and remembered almost everything he looked over as though he had taken a picture. Dean, however, was more of a kinesthetic learner and he mediated knowledge through his hands. Sam had learned to read with Dean following the text with his finger, and owed it to him not to smirk when he still did it.
Sure enough, Dean nodded, and dashed out to the car. Of course, Sam had hidden the journal back in their motel room. Quickly Sam crossed the room and drew his favorite buck knife from his pocket.
The girl’s eyes widened. “What are you going to do?” she asked. The demon allowed the real girl’s fear to shine through. Of course the demon had nothing much to fear from a regular, three-and-a-half-inch stainless steel blade.
Sam ignored the girl’s plea. Stepping closer, he said to the demon, “Do you know who I am?”
“Yes,” the demon gasped. Something like devotion rose up in its eyes, though Sam didn’t know how he could discern this through the blackness. “I know who you are, Samuel Winchester. You are the messiah, the anointed one,” the demon stated, pain and triumph mingling in its voice.
“But do you know what I’m meant to do?” Sam demanded.
The demon’s brow wrinkled. “You will lead us out of hell,” it whined, hopefully.
“No,” Sam replied. “I’m not the king you expected. The kingdom of hell won’t come on earth.”
The demon laughed, and the sound was like the wailing of the bereaved. “I was born in hell, I have survived an eternity in hell. This earth you humans are wasting - this is paradise.”
“You long for paradise, but you’ll never get there. You can’t -- you’re sin, embodied.” Sam watched the demon closely, and was rewarded when again it nodded, tears flowing down the pretty girl’s face.
“I think there is a chance,” Sam offered.
“You will lead us!” the demon cried, the hope in her voice heartrending.
“No,” Sam replied. “I will wash you white as snow.”
Sam stepped into the pentacle with the demon. He spat on the girl’s pretty face, and rubbed the spit across her eyes with both hands.
The girl’s body seized up. The blackness of the demon’s eyes roiled and a terrible scream came from it. The girl’s throat arched back, her mouth opened up, but the demon did not pour out. The girl began to convulse.
Sam cut across his hand and dripped blood into the girl’s beautiful mouth.
“Come out,” Sam whispered, and the whisper echoed in the rushing room.
The girl’s mouth abruptly closed and the demon’s howling ceased, leaving the room ringing. Her eyes opened wide.
Light began streaming out of her eyes. This was something new. Sam remembered the priest, Father Gregory, and his delusion that he was an angel. Sam had longed to believe in him, and had been devastated to learn that he was just another vengeful spirit. The light of this being made Father Gregory’s apparition look like a failing flashlight.
“Sammy!” Dean yelled, suddenly charging into the room, but Sam paid no attention.
“I’m not the light of the world,” Sam whispered. “You will be. Tell the others I’ll be waiting for them.”
“Sammy!” Dean yelled again. “What the hell! Get out of that circle! What’s happening?”
The light pouring out of the girl’s eyes became more and more intense. It seemed to solidify into a cloud, or a pillar of fire. As it coalesced it took on a form with what looked like wings. It hovered for a second, then darted at Dean.
Dean had hurt his shoulder in the fight with the girl, before they had gotten her securely tied. The cloud came at him and went for the shoulder.
Dean flew back against the wall, terror distorting his face. Then suddenly, he relaxed, the expression of terror replaced by a gentle smile. With a flash, the shining thing was gone.
Letting out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding, Sam went over to Dean and pulled him off the wall. Dean was still smiling. In fact it was a lot like when he’d had all those purple nurples.
“Shit, Sam,” Dean said, utterly relaxed. “What the hell was that? What in holy crap did you do?”
Sam felt a huge grin spread across his face at Dean’s words. “I destroyed that demon, Dean. But I think I might’ve made an angel.”
Dean was silent for a second, the cogs turning behind his eyes. Then a matching grin spread across his own face, a little bit looser and more nurple-ish though. Dean’s language was terrible when he was drunk, whether it was spirits or angels that got him that way. But he seemed to be feeling no pain.
“Jesus Christ, Sammy. You did, and I saw it with my own two eyes.”
As the pretty girl began to make confused noises behind them and feebly struggle against her bonds, Dean fell against his brother, and even in his altered state, managed to give Sammy a rib-crushing hug.
Part Two
Sam’s new status as the messiah of demons was worth three loads of bullcrap when it came to saving Dean from the Trickster. Sam’s mechanized, ritualistic existence had not been much affected by the demons who sought him out during the time without Dean. His ability to help demons purge their darkest nature did nothing to alleviate the power of circumstances to trip up, puncture, impale and otherwise mutilate his brother, again and again, like Wile E. Coyote, only not nearly so amusing. He purged them at their request, but still Dean was dead and the newly purified beings couldn’t change that. Unwilling to manipulate the bodies of humans as their evil brethren did, they were seemingly powerless.
The Trickster gave up trying to teach him a lesson, but Sam had to admit he’d learned one thing. There were plenty of monsters out there - monsters, powers, old gods, whatnot - that couldn’t be concerned about Sam’s purifying blood or the possibility that he was a demon’s messiah. Sam was helpless if a demon, like a backslider from a twelve-step program, didn’t really want to change. It was only the demons who were sick of hell and had clawed their way out for a chance at something better who sought him out as Messiah. The ones who were satisfied with the scope of their own power and were copacetic about the prospect of a coming hell on Earth usually just tried to strangle him, as per usual. Plus, there was the new Power Rising in the West to worry about.
Ruby’s mood had changed pretty abruptly when she got wind of the new Power. She had gone from being Sam’s biggest cheerleader to being a neurotic, backbiting naysayer, and her advice became panicky and dubious. Sam could tell she had spoken with Dean about something, and ever since their ordeal in the dream world, Dean had been more subdued about his fate. Sam could dislike Ruby for jerking him around, but he could hate her for doing the same thing to Dean. The showdown at the police station brought the difficulties between Ruby and Sam into focus. She wouldn’t commit to purification, preferring to retain her demonic personality and powers, so she was still saddled with the torments of her demon nature. After she accused them of botching the whole battle in Monument when Lilith hit the station after they left, they didn’t hear from her for a while.
It took Dean several days of silence to process the deaths of the friends he’d made while under siege -- Henricksen, Nancy-- but he finally had it out with Sam one afternoon over lunch.
“You know, Sam, you gotta be more careful about taking these demons at their word.”
Sam actually heaved a sigh of relief. A pensive, closed-mouth Dean was like a crime against nature. At heart, Dean was open and optimistic, but when he was really upset about something he shut up tight as a clam. Once he got to talking again, it meant that he had worked through the most part of what was troubling him.
“What, in particular, are you referring to, Dean?”
Dean was enjoying an enormous bacon cheeseburger that was dripping with a truly disturbing pile of fried onions and mushrooms. He had to finish chewing before even he could get his next sentence out.
“Well, you know, that sacrificing the heart of a virgin thing. That was so not cool.”
Dean looked at Sam with his own version of puppy dog eyes. Sam valued his life and all four limbs and he would never in a million years let on to Dean that Dean had puppy dog eyes that made his own look narrow and squinty - and he knew the value of his own sad eyes, using them without qualm as needed - but it would just piss Dean off, or worse, shut him up. Besides, Sam deserved it… to an extent.
Sam dipped his chin a bit and looked up at Dean, admitting his mistake.
“In my defense, you know, Nancy did volunteer.”
Dean, lowering his eyelids, nodded back. “Girl did have it in her. Still doesn’t mean we go along with whatever. Besides, doesn’t this crazy power of yours count for something?”
That, as they used to say, was the $64,000 question. Dean crammed in another sickening amount of burger.
Sam let him chew for a while, thinking about the seemingly endless time he’d spent on the road alone. One good thing, he’d learned the exorcisms by heart and could recite them now at top speeds. And the reflexes he’d honed in the months alone had come in handy when the possessed FBI guy had shot Dean.
But the thing Sam couldn’t get over was how, even with his new power, things still looked pretty bleak. It wasn’t as though Lilith was going to volunteer to be redeemed. None of her thirty-odd followers at the station had come forward for a drop of Sam’s blood.
“I’m not sure, Dean. I mean, I gotta keep hoping it does amount to something. Every demon that comes to me for redemption is one less that ends up back in hell to claw its way out again, and so far, every human those demons have vacated has survived.”
Dean looked up and gravely nodded. They both knew that whoever owned the contract wasn’t liable to come forward for redemption. If it was someone higher up, the demon was likely to be hungry for whatever power it could get.
“Ok, that’s all good. But what I don’t get, is what happens to the demons, once they’re cleansed. That one healed my shoulder, then we never see it again.”
They wouldn’t use the word “angel.” Whatever the cleansed demons became, they were the very opposite of messengers, vanishing with nary a sign or portent.
Sam lowered his gaze, and dove in. If Dean was up for talking, now was the time. “You have kind of a personal stake in knowing what happens to them, right?”
The thunderclouds rolled right in. “Sammy...” Dean sat scowling and wouldn’t meet his eyes.
Sam leaned across the table and grabbed for Dean’s arm. “I won’t let that happen to you, Dean. In fact...”
“Whoa, Sam. Stop right there.” Dean jerked his arm away from Sam as though he’d been scalded.
“Hear me out, Dean,” but Dean interrupted him.
“La la la, can’t hear you.” Dean even covered his ears with his hands.
Sam could wait him out, even though he knew his lips were pursed together in that particularly unattractive way.
Sam enjoyed his milkshake until Dean gave up, opening one eye like the six-year-old he essentially still was.
“I can save you, Dean. If I can save a demon, I can save anyone.” Dean might’ve ignored him, but Sam said it anyway, and they both knew he meant it.
Part Three.
Demons coming up to Sam freaked Dean right out. His protective instincts went all haywire. One time Sam, after a bit too much tequila, had pointed out that he was much larger than Dean, a lot more muscle mass, and perfectly able to defend himself, thank you very much; if he hadn’t been wasted he would possibly have had better judgment than to compare Dean’s urge to protect his younger bother to a yappy little dog, perhaps a min-pin, some kind of angry little dog that doesn’t know how small it is - all it knows is that if you’re near its yard, it will rip your throat out. Sam had woken up the next morning with his shoes still on, laces in knots, and all the fastenings of his clothing sewn together in Dean’s tidy chain stitch.
Case in point: Diner, somewhere in Pennsylvania near the mountains. Sam and Dean, tired out from banishing a pretty rude poltergeist (but not as bad as the one in Lawrence, neither one of them said out loud), were enjoying a refreshing Greek salad and pot roast special, respectively, when a trucker at the counter swung around and his eyes went over all black.
Dean bristled, Sam tensed up. Dean had taken to wearing his Taurus 9mm in the back of his pants at all times, loaded with silver, iron, and blessed rounds alternating in the magazine. He drew, keeping his gun under the table. Sam, for his part, had his hand on a very illegal eight-inch concealed blade threaded with veins of silver and iron and like Dean’s rounds, blessed with holy water and engraved with banishing runes.
Sam and Dean both knew that the demon had shown itself because it wanted to parlay, but they also knew better than to lower their defenses. Still, better not to open fire in a crowded diner at suppertime.
Dean threw down some money and they stood. Dean walked casually to the door, but his gun was drawn under his jacket. The line of Sam’s shoulders was tense as he turned his back to the demon, and they walked across the parking lot to the Impala.
Redbuds and sarvisberry trees were incongruously beautiful in the scrub woods around the parking lot, the tiny flowers picked out in the light of sunset. The Impala was parked nose toward the lot exit, tail to the scrub zone.
Dean’s mouth drew into a tight line. They had a defensible position - and behind the car, visibility from the diner was low - but this shit pissed him off no end. Out in the open, the only devil’s trap a small one painted inside the trunk - the only surefire way to go up against a demon without the Colt - but they couldn’t just get the Hell out of Dodge since the demon had probably shown itself because it wanted something from Sammy. Something Dean, though he’d like to, couldn’t in good conscience walk away from without acknowledging. His brother was the demon’s messiah, and it just wanted to drink a little of his blood.
He could feel his teeth grinding between his jaws.
The trucker came out of the diner and walked over toward Sam.
Dean felt every muscle in his body tense to spring. He held himself as casually as he could. He hand was still on the gun though, and he knew Sam had an equally good hold on the eight-inch blade.
Sam and Dean were leaning against the trunk of the Impala. The demon in the trucker probably didn’t know about the trap inside it. Dean had unlocked the trunk and left it ajar just a tad.
The trucker came up to them, eyes still all black. He went down on his knees, actually lowered his forehead to the ground, and touched Sam’s shoes with his fingertips.
Sam had been reading the New Testament, as it were, religiously. He reached down and lifted the man’s shoulders (two hands, Dean noticed -- he’d sheathed his knife) and spat in the man’s face. The man convulsed and the demon began its purge. Just as Sammy reached back to get his blade, a car sped into the parking lot spraying gravel toward the Impala.
Dean put himself between Sam and the commotion. The trucker was at his back too but the demon was incapacitated once the purge started. Dean watched, horrified, as a couple of high-school age boys got out of a family car and started toward them, eyes gone black, and not looking to parlay.
“Sam,” Dean said warningly, but Sam didn’t reply. He cut his finger and dripped blood into the postulant’s mouth. The change would take a second. The light began to shine out -
The boys were almost upon them, and Dean had his gun trained on the older one - brothers it looked like - his finger was on the trigger - headshot - just like that time when Dad was possessed, before -
The light poured out of the demon behind him, brighter than the fading sunlight all around them. The demons in the two kids froze, their blackness showing in their eyes, their faces full of fury. But as the light increased, the blackness faded away. It wasn’t like anything Dean had ever seen before - not an exorcism’s roiling pain and fury- not a transformation into purity and joy. Just the banishment of darkness as light was poured into it. The demons were gone. The boys shook their heads, then stumbled backwards as they registered the big gun Dean was pointing at the older one’s head.
Dean hurriedly put away the gun. The light was back to normal -- just a fading spring sunset, almost night.
Sam was helping the bemused trucker to his feet, telling him he must have drunk too much Red Bull and given himself a fit (and Dean rolled his eyes and thought, “Whatever, Sammy”). Dean wasted no time putting himself behind the wheel. Sam climbed in and in less than a minute they were out on the highway, getting some distance between themselves and the crazy scene in the parking lot.
“Jesus Christ, Sammy,” Dean finally said.
“Yeah, it does seem like it,” Sam replied with a bit of a smirk.
Part Four.
They had gone to see the Grand Canyon. They had won a good bit of money in Vegas (Dean was actually just as good a gambler as he thought he was), and Sam had looked the other way for a couple of days when Dean spent a weekend at a perfectly legal establishment outside Sin City limits.
They had fought a number of monsters, purged a number of demons, and exorcised a few more. They had gone up against Lilith’s minions in groups and severally, but not against the Power Herself.
Dean’s year was up.
They had a steak dinner, with porter, not wine. They went to the crossroads at midnight, together.
One mercy was that Dean wasn’t hearing or seeing hellhounds. It made him nervous anyways, wondering. Plus the whole leap year thing was damn confusing. Was February 29 a free day? Or did it make the anniversary come one day early?
Sam’s research indicated that the numerical day was the anniversary, as the leap day corrected the time lost by the reckoning of the solar year. Since the demon had promised him a year, he would get the calendar year, extra day and all.
Dean was perversely pleased about the free day.
He was also pleased that the moon was out, and the weather was clear. It was a fine night in late spring. A good night...
“It is a good day to die,” he intoned, elbowing Sam.
“Shut. Up.” Sam looked like he was about to hurl, but he was big and solid, literally pressed up against Dean’s left side, like when he was little and needed to cuddle after a scary dream.
This was no dream though. Five minutes to midnight. They wanted to be early. They didn’t want to be in the car and total it again. They wanted to be prepared, as ready as they’d ever be.
The wind moved lightly around them, and even with three layers on, they shivered. Too much adrenaline running through the system to really feel warm.
Dean heard a rustling, and tensed up. He tried to tone it down so as not to alarm Sam unduly, but he knew that it was a lost cause.
Still, he was not expecting a group of strangers to come stumbling out of some nearby bushes. Strangers, he was not really surprised to see, with eyes all black.
“Sam, I’m not sure this is the time...” Dean began.
Sam swallowed a few times (kid sure did have a weak stomach when he was nervous), but he ground out, “Actually, Dean, I kind of think this is just the time.”
“Time to give it up, Dean,” they heard a female voice pronounce. “Time to pay up on the account you owe, and I hold the ticket.”
“What? You?” Sam asked in astonishment.
It was Ruby.
“Son of a bitch!” Dean exploded.
“I told you not to call me that!” Ruby retorted.
“It’s just a good thing to shout,” Dean muttered. Somehow having Ruby show up to collect his soul seemed anticlimactic. He scratched the back of his neck and wrinkled his nose at her.
She squared off her stance. She was holding that wicked demon-killing knife, and they had never really figured out what it would do to a human - besides kill you by knife wound, which seemed bad enough.
“You mean you held Dean’s contract that whole time and never told us?” Sam asked incredulously.
“Why would I tell you? I schemed hard for that contract. I want Dean out of the picture so you can lead the demon army and we can take our rightful place in this world.” Ruby still had eyes all for Sam, but it was a look of ownership, not devotion.
Sam scoffed, at a loss for words. “I’m not your King, or your - anything! And I’ll never let you take him!”
The demon-possessed strangers, five or six of them, had ranged themselves around Dean and Sam. Ruby took notice of them and lifted her blade.
“Dean’s soul is forfeit to me. Without him, you’ll do as I say. We’ll rule together!”
“Stop where you are!” Sam shouted, taking a few steps toward her and lifting his own knife.
Ruby looked amused. “You can’t hurt me with that!”
“I don’t need to,” he said, and before Dean could stop him, Sam slashed his own throat.
Dean leapt for him, trying to apply pressure to the gushing wound.
Ruby stood frozen in astonishment, face contorted in confusion. As she hesitated, the demon strangers moved in, and with superhuman strength, they pulled Dean off Sam. Kneeling, they pressed their hands to his wound and lapped up the blood, smiles of bliss on every face.
Dean was racked by sorrow and rage. Sammy was dead again, despite everything-the demon strangers feeding on his corpse like ghouls - and Ruby, with her crazy plans, stupefied, in shock.
As if she felt his eyes upon her, she came back to herself. “You!” she cried, leveling the blade at him. She took one step, but with her other hand she made a yanking gesture toward Dean’s chest, her grimace of anger mixed with a bitter triumph.
Dean felt his tattoo burn as the mystical gesture made claim on something inside him. The defensive charm resisted Ruby’s incursion after his soul, but he knew it couldn’t hold long. The demon wasn’t trying to possess him, she was taking what the contract said belonged to her.
Then, as before, the light of the purging demons began to build around him, and he felt the uncanny pull slacken away to nothing.
Ruby’s face held nothing of triumph now, and she cried out in fear.
“No! I don’t ... I don’t believe in him!”
The light billowed up around the enraptured demons, pouring out of them and turning the crossroads brighter than day. The darkness in Ruby’s eyes faded to nothing, and the girl she’d inhabited was left standing there, a strange blade dangling in her unskilled hands.
Dean crawled over to Sam’s limp body. The pain in his chest had nothing to do with Ruby’s failed claim. Sammy’s body was covered with blood and the handprints of the demons he’d saved.
Still the light played over them and Dean seemed to hear a rushing of wings. For a second the light grew so bright he couldn’t see anything. Then, as it faded away, he felt Sam draw a shuddering breath.
He looked down. Sam was whole. The wound on his neck was gone as though it had never been.
As the light faded away to a calm, moonlit spring night, Dean grabbed Sam and squeezed the living daylights out of him, right there on the gravel road, sobbing out loud, and repeating his brother’s name over and over. Sammy just hugged and hugged him back, face covered with snot and tears, totally unashamed of it.
Fandom: Supernatural
Rated: Gen
Pairing: none
Characters: Sam, Dean, Ruby
Summary: Sam figures out who the demons think he is.
SPOILERS: up to and including 3.12
Disclaimer: The characters and basic premise within are property of Warner Bros, Eric Kripke, etc. No money is being made off this work of fiction. Special thanks to the actors, writers, directors, and the whole creative team who make Supernatural so great! No offense intended. Thanks as well to the whole, crazy, SPN fandom. How is SPN fandom like AC/DC? AC/DC salutes rock with a cannon, and fandom takes canon and rocks!
Notes: 7,500 words. Thanks so much to my supercool beta,
susannaheanes, for her comments and encouragement on this.
Who Do You Say that I Am?
Sam had always thought of it as Dean’s Ratio of Howling to Scowling. That is, whenever Sam wanted a bit of introspection as the Impala crossed a seemingly endless, flat, featureless stretch of their home territory (the middle third of the United States), Dean would put in AC/DC. Then when Sam began to twitch and scowl after the auto-reverse had flipped the tape three or four times, Dean would put in Ride the Lightning. And soon Sam would have a blinding headache, which would precipitate the dreaded Motörhead.
Currently the Impala had been cruising at 70mph since daybreak, they were beyond the middle of nowhere, and Dean was gruffly shrieking along with Lemmy, “It’s only Rock and Roll! It satisfies my soul! If that’s how it has to be, I won’t get mad! Cause I got Rock and Roll to save me from the cold! And if that’s all there is, it ain’t so bad! Rock and Roll!!” Over and over and over again. Dean had progressed to not being able to imagine growing old with anyone, and marching to a different drum, when Sam reached over and violently ejected the tape.
“Listen, Dean,” he said, “I’ve got a really important question and you have to answer it. No bullshit.”
Dean, for his part, rolled his eyes. Sam was naturally gifted with the looks of utter, scornful disbelief, hurt disappointment, supercilious astonishment, and downright disdain. But Dean also had the emerald depths of “I couldn’t give a rat’s ass” that he could slowly bat his eyelids across, aim at you, then slide off you as though he were right back into his umpteenth contemplation of the Doublemint twins without a hitch.
“Dean,” Sam whined, and let’s face it. It was a whine. It’s the exact same whine he had perfected at age 18 months, the same time he perfected the final consonant in Dean’s name.
“Ok, Sammy, goddamn it. What.”
Sam chewed his lip a minute. Now that he’d got Dean’s attention he had to milk it because this is serious. Dean kept his attention on the road.
“When you were in that basement in Elizabethville, and that demon priest had you by the throat,” Sam began. He fidgeted a bit, licking his lips nervously.
“Yeah,” Dean said.
“And I shot him with the Colt. And then I shot the girl.”
“Yeah,” Dean said again. “What about it?”
“Why did you yell ‘no’?” Sam turned the eyes on him, the bleak looking ones like a kid whose ice cream has just fallen onto the asphalt.
“What do you mean, ‘no.’ I didn’t yell no. They were demons. Better them than me.” Dean still didn’t look at Sam, though, and Sam saw that his right shoulder was deceptively relaxed. Dean was never relaxed. He was tense as all hell. Whenever he deliberately relaxed, he was covering something.
“Dean, I mean it. You yelled ‘no’ just as I was shooting that bartender. Now tell me why.” Sam would’ve liked to think that Dean was just full of regret for the loss of life. Of course Dean did regret the loss of life, but he was always about the job first. If he had tried to stop Sam from killing the second demon, there was something more to it.
“Did she you tell you something, Dean? While the two of you were in that basement alone that whole time?”
Sam saw Dean begin to crack. He was terrible at keeping shit from Sam. He knew that as soon as Sam latched on to something he would worry at it until it cracked, whatever it was, including himself. So he usually gave in pretty quickly.
Dean tilted his chin away from Sam. That was his move while he sifted through what information he would pass on.
“Well, you know, we were just shooting the shit. She was trapped, but so was I. It doesn’t matter anyway. Demons are just full of lies, so whatever she said, it doesn’t mean anything.”
“But what did she say, Dean,” Sam pressed. “Did you ask her about the deal?”
Dean scoffed. “She didn’t know anything about the deal. You ever notice how the Crossroads Demon had red eyes? It’s the older, more powerful demons that show through their eyes like that. Casey was just a temptress. She didn’t even tempt that many people, just encouraged them to tempt each other.”
“Huh,” Sam responded. “So you two had a big heart to heart, all sharing and what not?”
“No!” Dean objected. Sam just waited.
“Ok, well, maybe a little bit. She was kind of cool for a demon. You didn’t have to dust her so quick.”
“Dude, her partner was strangling you,” Sam pointed out.
“Lover,” Dean corrected.
“What?” Sam asked.
“The one in the priest was her lover. She said they’d been lovers for whatever, eons or some shit. Makes you think,” Dean offered.
Sam pounced on it. “So you didn’t want me to shoot her because she chatted you up and told you about her boyfriend?”
“No,” Dean replied uncomfortably. “I mean, she was a demon. She had it coming. But, you know, we kind of thought alike about some stuff.”
“Like what,” Sam asked. Now we were getting to the point, he thought.
“Well, she didn’t think I should believe in God, which I don’t,” Dean said defensively, “but she believed in her own God. Lucifer, the bringer of light, she said.”
Sam knew that for their exorcisms to work, Dean had to have a certain base level of belief in God, but understanding Dean’s cold shoulder towards the Almighty, he let it slide.
“Wait,” he said, “there really is a Lucifer? Like, the fallen angel? Is he like hanging around with them in hell?”
“No,” Dean said, “and that’s kind of what had me curious. I didn’t want you to shoot her cause she was willing to talk to us, to me I mean, about what things are like down there. Well, you know, she said I’m not gonna like it, which I kind of guessed...” Dean tried to pass that off with a smirk but Sam didn’t return a grin. That kind of joke just wasn’t funny to him in the slightest.
“But Dean,” Sam continued, and this was the hard part. He cleared his throat. “Did she talk about me? Cause I get the feeling, you know, that a lot of them have, kind of opinions about me. Who I’m supposed to be, you know.”
Dean was silent a second, so Sam knew they had talked about him.
“Come on, man, spill. I deserve to know the truth,” Sam demanded.
Dean glanced over. “It was pretty vague, coming from her point of view. She just said that when we killed old Yellow Eyes, Azazel she called him, then all the demons who came through the gate had no one to follow. They were supposed to follow you. But no worries about that now, I guess.”
“Azazel? Are you kidding me, Dean?”
“What.”
“Haven’t you ever even cracked a look at any of the demonology texts I’ve had coming out my ears the past two years? Azazel’s like one of the Lords of Hell, so to speak. I mean, as far as demonologists can tell, he’s one of the really powerful old demons, up there with Lucifer himself. If we killed him, we have really decimated the leadership!”
Sam was triumphant for a second while Dean repeated “decimated the leadership” in a high-pitched tone of mockery. Dean knew his vocabulary words perfectly well, he just had a grudge against them.
“But wait, man,” Sam said, returning to the problem. “Why were they supposed to follow me? Just because I was the last one standing? You know, that Pride demon called me the Boy King. That doesn’t sound like a contest winner to me.”
“Boy King, shit. He was Pride incarnate, Sammy. He was blowing smoke up your ass.” Dean gave him the lowered eyebrows and pursed lips of don’t believe a word these demons say.
“But Dean. There’s something to it, you know? These demons take an interest in me. First Azazel, then Meg, then Pride - they all seem to have opinions. Who do they think I am? Was Dad right - am I still going to turn out bad?” Sam didn’t have any more answers after learning what the demon had told Dean, but he had suspicions.
“Well, I know who you are, Sammy. You’re Sam Winchester, and you’re my little brother, so stop worrying.” That was Dean’s answer, and he was sticking to it.
“Who do you say that I am?” Sam repeated under his voice, as though to himself. Next, he would have to ask Ruby.
Not long afterwards, the opportunity arose to do just that.
Sam had gone to lunch by himself while Dean scouted locations on a series of disappearances they were looking into. He soon found himself in not-so-welcome company. Ruby had shown up, plopped herself down and ordered fries, a half-pounder cheeseburger and an enormous chocolate milkshake on his tab. Demons, as she never tired of telling him, never pay. They only collect, she had told him, which he was really beyond tired of being reminded of.
Sam and Ruby argued about the Colt. Sam had shot the Crossroads Demon, then the demons inhabiting that bartender girl and the priest. Once that can of worms had been opened, Dean had given Sam the accusing eye about wasting another demon that could’ve given them information, maybe, and god damn if Ruby didn’t back him up on it.
“You would have had allies in them, Sam, if you hadn’t shot them on sight. So rude!”
Ruby slurped down her fries with an inordinate amount of ketchup.
“Allies. Demon allies. In a war where I’m trying to get rid of all the demons.” Sam pressed his eyebrows together in the look of utter disdain.
In response, Ruby rolled her own not inconsiderable glistening orbs. She and Dean should have a contest.
“Listen,” she said. “Yes, a whole bunch of demons made it out of hell. Who can blame them for wanting out? It’s hell. But now what are they gonna do? Well, a lot of them, if you’ll notice, are just here and there in bodies, kind of low-level making mischief, you know, live and let die.” Ruby chuckled a bit at her own appropriation of Ian Fleming’s somewhat lame canard.
“Ok, yeah, but I’ve still got a problem with that. The human body’s not meant to hold a demon. They can’t just take up residence like that in innocent humans. Whatever you all are made of...”
“Brimstone and treacle!” Ruby interjected with another Dean-like chuckle; God, why didn’t she torment his brother instead of him. With the gross eating habits and the pop culture references, the two of them would have a blast. Not to mention the weapons expertise. Unless they got in some kind of duel and killed each other simultaneously. Sam could see them both grandstanding from slouched positions on the ground in protracted death scenes. He shuddered.
“Whatever demons are made of,” Sam repeated through gritted teeth, “it eats away at the host whether the demon intends it to or not. Like a fever... it seems like most of you are usually glistening with sweat.”
“Attractive, isn’t it,” Ruby grinned. “All hot and bothered,” she pouted at him.
Sam physically recoiled. “Please don’t flirt with me. There’s not a chance...”
“In hell?” Ruby interjected with a wide grin. “Come on, baby, show a little love. A girl can’t get a little action from her own messiah?”
“What?” Sam blanched. He felt the blood drain away from his face as his eyesight focused in on Ruby. The rest of the diner seemed to fall away.
For the first time Ruby’s gaze faltered. She lowered her eyes. “Uh, ha!” she gave a laugh, but it was a bit forced. She went for the milkshake and sucked hard on the oversized straw, concentrating on the level of milkshake going down behind the thick, frosty glass.
“Why did you say that?” Sam reached out and grasped Ruby by the wrist. Yeah, he’d noticed in their previous encounters that she ran a little hot. Her skin was moist and fevered to the touch.
“I don’t know, Sam, why would I say such a thing.” Ruby’s face had lost all trace of humor. Sam watched in horror as the blackness swam up across her eyes.
“But... but... but I don’t even have any powers now that Azazel is dead! I’m just another kid! Not even psychic! Just because he fed me a few drops of blood...” Sam felt sick even as he mentioned what he had seen in the memory Azazel had given him of the night of his mother’s murder.
“No, Sam. He did that to all the children. That was the binding that gave you the visions, the powers. That didn’t affect who you are. In fact, it’s pretty ironic that he wanted to bleed into you...” Ruby gave a strange inflection to the pronouns.
“Why,” Sam demanded. Ruby had fallen silent. She crammed another enormous bite of cheeseburger into her mouth and then stood up. She reached out and touched Sam lightly on the cheek, then strode out of the diner.
Sam was too stunned at this new information to try to detain her. A couple of things clicked into place in his head. Demons.... blood.... his blood in particular..... shit. How was he going to explain this hunch to Dean? If Sam was right, Dean was not going to like this at all. But if it was true, then Ruby had given him the key-maybe -- to getting Dean out of the deal.
Sam couldn’t figure out how to broach the subject of his new theory with Dean without sounding insane. Instead, he resolved to put it into action at the next opportunity.
The series of disappearances proved to be the result of having the ass end of nowhere for a hometown -- despite the tasty cheeseburgers at that one diner. Bobby called to tell them about some omens a couple states over, so Sam and Dean got their stuff together and loaded up the Impala.
Sam wouldn’t really admit it, but he found something cleansing in stowing his gear, cleaning out the motel room, packing everything neatly away in its place in the trunk. Growing up, he’d envied other kids their seemingly endless supplies of stuff-toys, books, video games, the lot. But there was something clean about reading a book and leaving it behind. Mending a torn shirt, or discarding it as a loss. Truth be told he didn’t travel much heavier than Dean, who didn’t seem to own anything beyond weapons, clothes, and a box of cassette tapes. Well, the first aid kit, and the forgery kit, which was kind of part of the first aid kit, scalpel and all.
When Sam had left for Stanford, he’d felt sure that he’d start to accumulate stuff the way other people did. But that hadn’t happened. He had no desire to save his term papers; they were on his laptop anyway. He sold back his textbooks at the end of every semester. He’d moved in with Jess carrying the same duffel Dean had put him on the bus with. Everything he’d had in the apartment - his favorite coffee mug, a few novels, his potted plant - he left behind after the fire. It was easy to leave stuff behind. It was harder to deal with the traces of yourself that other people carried away.
He would never again be the charming boy Jess’s parents had welcomed into their home on holidays and over breaks. In their hearts, he knew, he would forever be just another tragic facet of their daughter’s loss; his potential, as far as they knew, gone to waste by his inability to complete his four years at Stanford. Sam knew his own potential; it had come between him and his family his whole life. He couldn’t live up to his potential as a hunter; neither, in fact, could Dean, but Dean spat out hopes and future plans like they were last night’s left-open beer. Better to ignore them.
Sam left the motel room with his worldly goods in a couple of bags. His potential, his gift to the world, was something hidden, riding along deep inside of him.
As Bobby’s information usually did, the omens panned out, and soon enough, Dean and Sam had a pretty girl tied to a chair. Sam tried not to think about it too hard. He’d tied Meg to that chair, and then Bobby and Dean had tied Meg to that chair again, only she was inside Sam that second time. Torturing demons for information was not something only Gordon did. At least, Sam justified to himself, the torture was inherent in the ritual that sent them back to hell. It wasn’t something they could get around; therefore, they might as well use it to their own benefit. It wasn’t something he condoned; it was something that blackened his soul a little more every time, something he repented; still, he went ahead and did it again and again.
The pretty girl on the chair was weakening. As Sam had begun to notice, having a demon was like having a bad flu. As the demon weakened, the stresses on the human body began to show. The fever increased, the sweating became more pronounced, as the body tried to help expel the demon, and the demon desperately tried to keep its hooks in its earthly host. Like a tapeworm, Sam’s mind helpfully supplied, and he tried to swallow back his disgust.
“Are there any more demons here?” Dean was asking. “Friends of yours, or like, co-workers?”
“I wouldn’t tell you if there were. We have just as much right to be here as you do,” the demon said from inside the girl.
“That’s not true,” Sam said. “God gave this world to us. You and your kind fell from grace and were expelled into hell.”
The face of the pretty girl twisted. Her eyes went black at Sam’s words. She opened her mouth, and a horrible echoing voice came out of it -- just like in a horror movie --but unlike THX or Dolby Surround, this voice not only shook the air around Sam but rattled his heart in his chest. It seemed to call out to his blood.
“What business do we have with each other, Samuel Winchester? Have you come here to torment us before the time? I beg you, don’t torment me."
Sam seemed to hear a rushing in the room, like in the theater when the audience is waiting for the action to begin. Or in the park, when a large flock of birds is just alighting on the cold ground.
He recognized the words. He knew what he had to do. But Dean would never, in a million years, let him do it. It was time for Dean Distraction #1, with backup plan A already in force.
Sam turned to Dean with all the earnestness he could muster. He put on his most hopeful yet confused looking face. “Dean, listen, I need Dad’s journal,” he whispered, seizing Dean by the arm.
Dean was instantly confused, and therefore belligerent. “What? What for? Hell, no, Sam, I’m not running you a little errand out to the car with a demon tied to a chair right there! There’s nothing in that journal we don’t have better right here.”
They had transferred all the information on demons from John’s journal into a new journal, which they had begun to fill with newer information and all the variants on exorcism they could find.
“No, it’s like I’m trying to remember something really important. If I could just flip through the journal I’m sure it would come to me.” Sam thought Dean would buy this. Sam, himself, was an eidetic learner and remembered almost everything he looked over as though he had taken a picture. Dean, however, was more of a kinesthetic learner and he mediated knowledge through his hands. Sam had learned to read with Dean following the text with his finger, and owed it to him not to smirk when he still did it.
Sure enough, Dean nodded, and dashed out to the car. Of course, Sam had hidden the journal back in their motel room. Quickly Sam crossed the room and drew his favorite buck knife from his pocket.
The girl’s eyes widened. “What are you going to do?” she asked. The demon allowed the real girl’s fear to shine through. Of course the demon had nothing much to fear from a regular, three-and-a-half-inch stainless steel blade.
Sam ignored the girl’s plea. Stepping closer, he said to the demon, “Do you know who I am?”
“Yes,” the demon gasped. Something like devotion rose up in its eyes, though Sam didn’t know how he could discern this through the blackness. “I know who you are, Samuel Winchester. You are the messiah, the anointed one,” the demon stated, pain and triumph mingling in its voice.
“But do you know what I’m meant to do?” Sam demanded.
The demon’s brow wrinkled. “You will lead us out of hell,” it whined, hopefully.
“No,” Sam replied. “I’m not the king you expected. The kingdom of hell won’t come on earth.”
The demon laughed, and the sound was like the wailing of the bereaved. “I was born in hell, I have survived an eternity in hell. This earth you humans are wasting - this is paradise.”
“You long for paradise, but you’ll never get there. You can’t -- you’re sin, embodied.” Sam watched the demon closely, and was rewarded when again it nodded, tears flowing down the pretty girl’s face.
“I think there is a chance,” Sam offered.
“You will lead us!” the demon cried, the hope in her voice heartrending.
“No,” Sam replied. “I will wash you white as snow.”
Sam stepped into the pentacle with the demon. He spat on the girl’s pretty face, and rubbed the spit across her eyes with both hands.
The girl’s body seized up. The blackness of the demon’s eyes roiled and a terrible scream came from it. The girl’s throat arched back, her mouth opened up, but the demon did not pour out. The girl began to convulse.
Sam cut across his hand and dripped blood into the girl’s beautiful mouth.
“Come out,” Sam whispered, and the whisper echoed in the rushing room.
The girl’s mouth abruptly closed and the demon’s howling ceased, leaving the room ringing. Her eyes opened wide.
Light began streaming out of her eyes. This was something new. Sam remembered the priest, Father Gregory, and his delusion that he was an angel. Sam had longed to believe in him, and had been devastated to learn that he was just another vengeful spirit. The light of this being made Father Gregory’s apparition look like a failing flashlight.
“Sammy!” Dean yelled, suddenly charging into the room, but Sam paid no attention.
“I’m not the light of the world,” Sam whispered. “You will be. Tell the others I’ll be waiting for them.”
“Sammy!” Dean yelled again. “What the hell! Get out of that circle! What’s happening?”
The light pouring out of the girl’s eyes became more and more intense. It seemed to solidify into a cloud, or a pillar of fire. As it coalesced it took on a form with what looked like wings. It hovered for a second, then darted at Dean.
Dean had hurt his shoulder in the fight with the girl, before they had gotten her securely tied. The cloud came at him and went for the shoulder.
Dean flew back against the wall, terror distorting his face. Then suddenly, he relaxed, the expression of terror replaced by a gentle smile. With a flash, the shining thing was gone.
Letting out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding, Sam went over to Dean and pulled him off the wall. Dean was still smiling. In fact it was a lot like when he’d had all those purple nurples.
“Shit, Sam,” Dean said, utterly relaxed. “What the hell was that? What in holy crap did you do?”
Sam felt a huge grin spread across his face at Dean’s words. “I destroyed that demon, Dean. But I think I might’ve made an angel.”
Dean was silent for a second, the cogs turning behind his eyes. Then a matching grin spread across his own face, a little bit looser and more nurple-ish though. Dean’s language was terrible when he was drunk, whether it was spirits or angels that got him that way. But he seemed to be feeling no pain.
“Jesus Christ, Sammy. You did, and I saw it with my own two eyes.”
As the pretty girl began to make confused noises behind them and feebly struggle against her bonds, Dean fell against his brother, and even in his altered state, managed to give Sammy a rib-crushing hug.
Part Two
Sam’s new status as the messiah of demons was worth three loads of bullcrap when it came to saving Dean from the Trickster. Sam’s mechanized, ritualistic existence had not been much affected by the demons who sought him out during the time without Dean. His ability to help demons purge their darkest nature did nothing to alleviate the power of circumstances to trip up, puncture, impale and otherwise mutilate his brother, again and again, like Wile E. Coyote, only not nearly so amusing. He purged them at their request, but still Dean was dead and the newly purified beings couldn’t change that. Unwilling to manipulate the bodies of humans as their evil brethren did, they were seemingly powerless.
The Trickster gave up trying to teach him a lesson, but Sam had to admit he’d learned one thing. There were plenty of monsters out there - monsters, powers, old gods, whatnot - that couldn’t be concerned about Sam’s purifying blood or the possibility that he was a demon’s messiah. Sam was helpless if a demon, like a backslider from a twelve-step program, didn’t really want to change. It was only the demons who were sick of hell and had clawed their way out for a chance at something better who sought him out as Messiah. The ones who were satisfied with the scope of their own power and were copacetic about the prospect of a coming hell on Earth usually just tried to strangle him, as per usual. Plus, there was the new Power Rising in the West to worry about.
Ruby’s mood had changed pretty abruptly when she got wind of the new Power. She had gone from being Sam’s biggest cheerleader to being a neurotic, backbiting naysayer, and her advice became panicky and dubious. Sam could tell she had spoken with Dean about something, and ever since their ordeal in the dream world, Dean had been more subdued about his fate. Sam could dislike Ruby for jerking him around, but he could hate her for doing the same thing to Dean. The showdown at the police station brought the difficulties between Ruby and Sam into focus. She wouldn’t commit to purification, preferring to retain her demonic personality and powers, so she was still saddled with the torments of her demon nature. After she accused them of botching the whole battle in Monument when Lilith hit the station after they left, they didn’t hear from her for a while.
It took Dean several days of silence to process the deaths of the friends he’d made while under siege -- Henricksen, Nancy-- but he finally had it out with Sam one afternoon over lunch.
“You know, Sam, you gotta be more careful about taking these demons at their word.”
Sam actually heaved a sigh of relief. A pensive, closed-mouth Dean was like a crime against nature. At heart, Dean was open and optimistic, but when he was really upset about something he shut up tight as a clam. Once he got to talking again, it meant that he had worked through the most part of what was troubling him.
“What, in particular, are you referring to, Dean?”
Dean was enjoying an enormous bacon cheeseburger that was dripping with a truly disturbing pile of fried onions and mushrooms. He had to finish chewing before even he could get his next sentence out.
“Well, you know, that sacrificing the heart of a virgin thing. That was so not cool.”
Dean looked at Sam with his own version of puppy dog eyes. Sam valued his life and all four limbs and he would never in a million years let on to Dean that Dean had puppy dog eyes that made his own look narrow and squinty - and he knew the value of his own sad eyes, using them without qualm as needed - but it would just piss Dean off, or worse, shut him up. Besides, Sam deserved it… to an extent.
Sam dipped his chin a bit and looked up at Dean, admitting his mistake.
“In my defense, you know, Nancy did volunteer.”
Dean, lowering his eyelids, nodded back. “Girl did have it in her. Still doesn’t mean we go along with whatever. Besides, doesn’t this crazy power of yours count for something?”
That, as they used to say, was the $64,000 question. Dean crammed in another sickening amount of burger.
Sam let him chew for a while, thinking about the seemingly endless time he’d spent on the road alone. One good thing, he’d learned the exorcisms by heart and could recite them now at top speeds. And the reflexes he’d honed in the months alone had come in handy when the possessed FBI guy had shot Dean.
But the thing Sam couldn’t get over was how, even with his new power, things still looked pretty bleak. It wasn’t as though Lilith was going to volunteer to be redeemed. None of her thirty-odd followers at the station had come forward for a drop of Sam’s blood.
“I’m not sure, Dean. I mean, I gotta keep hoping it does amount to something. Every demon that comes to me for redemption is one less that ends up back in hell to claw its way out again, and so far, every human those demons have vacated has survived.”
Dean looked up and gravely nodded. They both knew that whoever owned the contract wasn’t liable to come forward for redemption. If it was someone higher up, the demon was likely to be hungry for whatever power it could get.
“Ok, that’s all good. But what I don’t get, is what happens to the demons, once they’re cleansed. That one healed my shoulder, then we never see it again.”
They wouldn’t use the word “angel.” Whatever the cleansed demons became, they were the very opposite of messengers, vanishing with nary a sign or portent.
Sam lowered his gaze, and dove in. If Dean was up for talking, now was the time. “You have kind of a personal stake in knowing what happens to them, right?”
The thunderclouds rolled right in. “Sammy...” Dean sat scowling and wouldn’t meet his eyes.
Sam leaned across the table and grabbed for Dean’s arm. “I won’t let that happen to you, Dean. In fact...”
“Whoa, Sam. Stop right there.” Dean jerked his arm away from Sam as though he’d been scalded.
“Hear me out, Dean,” but Dean interrupted him.
“La la la, can’t hear you.” Dean even covered his ears with his hands.
Sam could wait him out, even though he knew his lips were pursed together in that particularly unattractive way.
Sam enjoyed his milkshake until Dean gave up, opening one eye like the six-year-old he essentially still was.
“I can save you, Dean. If I can save a demon, I can save anyone.” Dean might’ve ignored him, but Sam said it anyway, and they both knew he meant it.
Part Three.
Demons coming up to Sam freaked Dean right out. His protective instincts went all haywire. One time Sam, after a bit too much tequila, had pointed out that he was much larger than Dean, a lot more muscle mass, and perfectly able to defend himself, thank you very much; if he hadn’t been wasted he would possibly have had better judgment than to compare Dean’s urge to protect his younger bother to a yappy little dog, perhaps a min-pin, some kind of angry little dog that doesn’t know how small it is - all it knows is that if you’re near its yard, it will rip your throat out. Sam had woken up the next morning with his shoes still on, laces in knots, and all the fastenings of his clothing sewn together in Dean’s tidy chain stitch.
Case in point: Diner, somewhere in Pennsylvania near the mountains. Sam and Dean, tired out from banishing a pretty rude poltergeist (but not as bad as the one in Lawrence, neither one of them said out loud), were enjoying a refreshing Greek salad and pot roast special, respectively, when a trucker at the counter swung around and his eyes went over all black.
Dean bristled, Sam tensed up. Dean had taken to wearing his Taurus 9mm in the back of his pants at all times, loaded with silver, iron, and blessed rounds alternating in the magazine. He drew, keeping his gun under the table. Sam, for his part, had his hand on a very illegal eight-inch concealed blade threaded with veins of silver and iron and like Dean’s rounds, blessed with holy water and engraved with banishing runes.
Sam and Dean both knew that the demon had shown itself because it wanted to parlay, but they also knew better than to lower their defenses. Still, better not to open fire in a crowded diner at suppertime.
Dean threw down some money and they stood. Dean walked casually to the door, but his gun was drawn under his jacket. The line of Sam’s shoulders was tense as he turned his back to the demon, and they walked across the parking lot to the Impala.
Redbuds and sarvisberry trees were incongruously beautiful in the scrub woods around the parking lot, the tiny flowers picked out in the light of sunset. The Impala was parked nose toward the lot exit, tail to the scrub zone.
Dean’s mouth drew into a tight line. They had a defensible position - and behind the car, visibility from the diner was low - but this shit pissed him off no end. Out in the open, the only devil’s trap a small one painted inside the trunk - the only surefire way to go up against a demon without the Colt - but they couldn’t just get the Hell out of Dodge since the demon had probably shown itself because it wanted something from Sammy. Something Dean, though he’d like to, couldn’t in good conscience walk away from without acknowledging. His brother was the demon’s messiah, and it just wanted to drink a little of his blood.
He could feel his teeth grinding between his jaws.
The trucker came out of the diner and walked over toward Sam.
Dean felt every muscle in his body tense to spring. He held himself as casually as he could. He hand was still on the gun though, and he knew Sam had an equally good hold on the eight-inch blade.
Sam and Dean were leaning against the trunk of the Impala. The demon in the trucker probably didn’t know about the trap inside it. Dean had unlocked the trunk and left it ajar just a tad.
The trucker came up to them, eyes still all black. He went down on his knees, actually lowered his forehead to the ground, and touched Sam’s shoes with his fingertips.
Sam had been reading the New Testament, as it were, religiously. He reached down and lifted the man’s shoulders (two hands, Dean noticed -- he’d sheathed his knife) and spat in the man’s face. The man convulsed and the demon began its purge. Just as Sammy reached back to get his blade, a car sped into the parking lot spraying gravel toward the Impala.
Dean put himself between Sam and the commotion. The trucker was at his back too but the demon was incapacitated once the purge started. Dean watched, horrified, as a couple of high-school age boys got out of a family car and started toward them, eyes gone black, and not looking to parlay.
“Sam,” Dean said warningly, but Sam didn’t reply. He cut his finger and dripped blood into the postulant’s mouth. The change would take a second. The light began to shine out -
The boys were almost upon them, and Dean had his gun trained on the older one - brothers it looked like - his finger was on the trigger - headshot - just like that time when Dad was possessed, before -
The light poured out of the demon behind him, brighter than the fading sunlight all around them. The demons in the two kids froze, their blackness showing in their eyes, their faces full of fury. But as the light increased, the blackness faded away. It wasn’t like anything Dean had ever seen before - not an exorcism’s roiling pain and fury- not a transformation into purity and joy. Just the banishment of darkness as light was poured into it. The demons were gone. The boys shook their heads, then stumbled backwards as they registered the big gun Dean was pointing at the older one’s head.
Dean hurriedly put away the gun. The light was back to normal -- just a fading spring sunset, almost night.
Sam was helping the bemused trucker to his feet, telling him he must have drunk too much Red Bull and given himself a fit (and Dean rolled his eyes and thought, “Whatever, Sammy”). Dean wasted no time putting himself behind the wheel. Sam climbed in and in less than a minute they were out on the highway, getting some distance between themselves and the crazy scene in the parking lot.
“Jesus Christ, Sammy,” Dean finally said.
“Yeah, it does seem like it,” Sam replied with a bit of a smirk.
Part Four.
They had gone to see the Grand Canyon. They had won a good bit of money in Vegas (Dean was actually just as good a gambler as he thought he was), and Sam had looked the other way for a couple of days when Dean spent a weekend at a perfectly legal establishment outside Sin City limits.
They had fought a number of monsters, purged a number of demons, and exorcised a few more. They had gone up against Lilith’s minions in groups and severally, but not against the Power Herself.
Dean’s year was up.
They had a steak dinner, with porter, not wine. They went to the crossroads at midnight, together.
One mercy was that Dean wasn’t hearing or seeing hellhounds. It made him nervous anyways, wondering. Plus the whole leap year thing was damn confusing. Was February 29 a free day? Or did it make the anniversary come one day early?
Sam’s research indicated that the numerical day was the anniversary, as the leap day corrected the time lost by the reckoning of the solar year. Since the demon had promised him a year, he would get the calendar year, extra day and all.
Dean was perversely pleased about the free day.
He was also pleased that the moon was out, and the weather was clear. It was a fine night in late spring. A good night...
“It is a good day to die,” he intoned, elbowing Sam.
“Shut. Up.” Sam looked like he was about to hurl, but he was big and solid, literally pressed up against Dean’s left side, like when he was little and needed to cuddle after a scary dream.
This was no dream though. Five minutes to midnight. They wanted to be early. They didn’t want to be in the car and total it again. They wanted to be prepared, as ready as they’d ever be.
The wind moved lightly around them, and even with three layers on, they shivered. Too much adrenaline running through the system to really feel warm.
Dean heard a rustling, and tensed up. He tried to tone it down so as not to alarm Sam unduly, but he knew that it was a lost cause.
Still, he was not expecting a group of strangers to come stumbling out of some nearby bushes. Strangers, he was not really surprised to see, with eyes all black.
“Sam, I’m not sure this is the time...” Dean began.
Sam swallowed a few times (kid sure did have a weak stomach when he was nervous), but he ground out, “Actually, Dean, I kind of think this is just the time.”
“Time to give it up, Dean,” they heard a female voice pronounce. “Time to pay up on the account you owe, and I hold the ticket.”
“What? You?” Sam asked in astonishment.
It was Ruby.
“Son of a bitch!” Dean exploded.
“I told you not to call me that!” Ruby retorted.
“It’s just a good thing to shout,” Dean muttered. Somehow having Ruby show up to collect his soul seemed anticlimactic. He scratched the back of his neck and wrinkled his nose at her.
She squared off her stance. She was holding that wicked demon-killing knife, and they had never really figured out what it would do to a human - besides kill you by knife wound, which seemed bad enough.
“You mean you held Dean’s contract that whole time and never told us?” Sam asked incredulously.
“Why would I tell you? I schemed hard for that contract. I want Dean out of the picture so you can lead the demon army and we can take our rightful place in this world.” Ruby still had eyes all for Sam, but it was a look of ownership, not devotion.
Sam scoffed, at a loss for words. “I’m not your King, or your - anything! And I’ll never let you take him!”
The demon-possessed strangers, five or six of them, had ranged themselves around Dean and Sam. Ruby took notice of them and lifted her blade.
“Dean’s soul is forfeit to me. Without him, you’ll do as I say. We’ll rule together!”
“Stop where you are!” Sam shouted, taking a few steps toward her and lifting his own knife.
Ruby looked amused. “You can’t hurt me with that!”
“I don’t need to,” he said, and before Dean could stop him, Sam slashed his own throat.
Dean leapt for him, trying to apply pressure to the gushing wound.
Ruby stood frozen in astonishment, face contorted in confusion. As she hesitated, the demon strangers moved in, and with superhuman strength, they pulled Dean off Sam. Kneeling, they pressed their hands to his wound and lapped up the blood, smiles of bliss on every face.
Dean was racked by sorrow and rage. Sammy was dead again, despite everything-the demon strangers feeding on his corpse like ghouls - and Ruby, with her crazy plans, stupefied, in shock.
As if she felt his eyes upon her, she came back to herself. “You!” she cried, leveling the blade at him. She took one step, but with her other hand she made a yanking gesture toward Dean’s chest, her grimace of anger mixed with a bitter triumph.
Dean felt his tattoo burn as the mystical gesture made claim on something inside him. The defensive charm resisted Ruby’s incursion after his soul, but he knew it couldn’t hold long. The demon wasn’t trying to possess him, she was taking what the contract said belonged to her.
Then, as before, the light of the purging demons began to build around him, and he felt the uncanny pull slacken away to nothing.
Ruby’s face held nothing of triumph now, and she cried out in fear.
“No! I don’t ... I don’t believe in him!”
The light billowed up around the enraptured demons, pouring out of them and turning the crossroads brighter than day. The darkness in Ruby’s eyes faded to nothing, and the girl she’d inhabited was left standing there, a strange blade dangling in her unskilled hands.
Dean crawled over to Sam’s limp body. The pain in his chest had nothing to do with Ruby’s failed claim. Sammy’s body was covered with blood and the handprints of the demons he’d saved.
Still the light played over them and Dean seemed to hear a rushing of wings. For a second the light grew so bright he couldn’t see anything. Then, as it faded away, he felt Sam draw a shuddering breath.
He looked down. Sam was whole. The wound on his neck was gone as though it had never been.
As the light faded away to a calm, moonlit spring night, Dean grabbed Sam and squeezed the living daylights out of him, right there on the gravel road, sobbing out loud, and repeating his brother’s name over and over. Sammy just hugged and hugged him back, face covered with snot and tears, totally unashamed of it.