SPN fic: "shades of gray" (5.22+, Sam, Castiel, PG)
Sam gritted his teeth in frustration. “I don’t like it.”
“It’s what you do. It’s what you were meant to do,” Castiel argued.
“Don’t start in on me with all that crap. Team Free Will, remember?”
“Yeah,” Castiel said with a slight smile. “We’ve come a long way.”
Sam was silent. Castiel was checking in on Dean regularly, and assured Sam he was doing well, but Sam still didn’t like not letting his brother know he’s escaped from Hell.
“Sam, you have a job to do. If it involves sending demons back to Hell, that’s just a bonus.”
“I don’t see it that way. If the torments of Hell made them demons in the first place, how does sending them back there do any good?"
“It means one less problem on Earth for us to deal with,” Castiel said placidly.
Sam heaved a sigh and tried again. “Cas, it’s just not that simple. I lived with a demonic influence swimming in my veins my whole life. I never even knew what it was that made me feel so angry, so desperate. The demons need help, Cas. I always felt like Ruby had some good in her, that she cared for me in her own way - and now I think that even more.
Castiel’s eyes hardened. “You mustn’t follow this line of reasoning, Sam. Demons are dangerous, evil creatures. Maybe Ruby cared for you, but that doesn’t change that you were a pawn in her plan to raise Lucifer - a plan that nearly ended the world. You start looking for shades of gray, and we risk going down that path again."
Sam’s rage didn’t boil up in him like it once had, but he was still annoyed.
“You can hint that I’m responsible for the Apocalypse all you want, Cas. I accepted that responsibility, and I ended it. Lucifer and Michael are locked up in that cage till God sees fit to let them out.”
Castiel nodded his acknowledgment.
“All I’m saying is, I’m not looking for shades of gray, I’m literally seeing them. You’ve gotta see it, too, Cas, right?”
Castiel’s brow knitted in stubborn disagreement.
“It doesn’t matter, Sam. We can’t afford-“
“Stop right there, Cas. It does matter. It has to! What did Dean’s soul look like when you found him in the Pit?”
Castiel hesitated, obviously reluctant. Sam knew he didn’t want to answer.
Sam stepped closer to Castiel, leaning in towards him. “Answer me, Cas!”
The archangel’s blue eyes widened, his mouth thinning to a dangerous line.
“Don’t push me, Sam,” Castiel warned.
As the days on Earth had passed, Sam had let his otherworldly awareness fall back, so that he wouldn’t constantly detect the supernatural aura of objects and people all around him. Talking with Castiel was so much easier when he was facing a slight, blue-eyed, scruffy guy in a trenchcoat. Looking a little deeper, Sam saw the tendrils of his own aura reaching toward Castiel, violet with intensity, while the archangel was braced, all eyes alert, his wings wide and high and crackling with electricity.
Sam stepped back and hung his head.
“I’m sorry, Cas. I just, I’m questioning these demons, and they’re so angry, so scared --- and then I just send them back to the Pit that made them. It doesn’t seem right. It was almost better before...” Sam remembered the destruction he had wrought on Alastair, Lilith, and countless other demons he and Ruby had drained. It wasn’t a one-way trip to the Pit, it was annihilation.
Castiel looked at Sam with compassion, his voice lowered. “Humans aren’t meant to wield that kind of power, Sam. To un-create is a right you don’t have.”
“But it’s okay to send a demon back to eternal torment? Castiel, I can see their desperation! They were human once - isn’t there any way to get them back from Hell?”
Searching for Crowley was like trying to find a needle in a haystack made of needles. Demons were everywhere. Most weren’t calling attention to themselves. They didn’t have a plan. They were living it up on Earth, reveling in the sins and pleasures of the flesh, but trying not to get caught by Hunters or the warriors Castiel had sent out.
Sam, though, was almost impossible to evade. His human/angelic senses were sharp, sensitive, and far-reaching. He could feel the low buzz of demon blood from miles away; he could smell it in a building, or even hear it across a crowded room.
Demons feared Sam, not because he could easily annihilate them - he still had that power, but without the rage the blood had triggered, he didn’t care to use it. But because, like an Angel, he could pull them from their bodies with a touch and send them shrieking back to Hell.
That was why Castiel was here. Last night, instead of sending a demon back to Hell, he had let it go.
***
Sam had a pretty girl tied to a chair. It was just like the year before Dean’s deal came up - except this time, Sam was way more familiar with demons, and demons were way more familiar with Sam.
“What are you planning to do with me, Winchester?” the demon in the pretty girl moaned.
Sam looked closely at the girl. He’d engaged with several demons since his return from Hell, and it was a fascinating yet horrifying sight, to see the evil aura roiling around and through the possessed body, the light of the human soul within glowing red and orange with terror and pain if the body was still alive, or horribly gray and dull if it wasn’t.
Sam hadn’t expected every demon to look different. With Azazel, and Lilith, and the Crossroads demons, he’d witnessed the various colors of their eyes, but he hadn’t realized the extent that the eyes reflected the aura. The demons he’d encountered so far in his search for Crowley had been mostly run-of-the-mill, lower level demons, but some were stronger, more dedicated to their evil - more like Alastair, or the demon in Brady, and their auras crackled with rage and bubbled with cruelty.
Other demons felt more human. It was the only way Sam could describe it. Sam remembered his stint with Dean in jail, and some demons reminded him of the guys he’d met in the lockup-tired, hopeless, angry, covering their fear with aggression, just looking for some way out of the horrible mess their lives had become.
The demon in the girl was like that. It wanted something from Sam, something Sam couldn’t figure out.
“I don’t have a plan. I just want information,” Sam said cautiously.
“Why should I give you anything? You sent our lord back to Hell,” the demon accused.
“Lucifer wasn’t your lord. He’s an Angel. He created you by accident - shredding the human souls in Perdition with his rage.” Sam said. “It wasn’t love for you - it was blind, awful hatred.”
“Why do you torment us so?” the demon cried.
Sam heard the real sorrow and pain in its voice, and looked deeper. The demon had shrunken in upon itself, dark blue and purple in its pain.
“I’m not - I don’t --- I’m not trying to torment you,” Sam protested.
“You punish us for our very existence. You tear us from these sweet, warm bodies and send us back to Hell,” the demon sobbed.
Sam saw that the demon was shot through now with red and magenta, its fear of exorcism weakening it before he had even threatened.
“I can’t let you stay in this body,” Sam said. “Look what you’re doing to the soul of this girl. She’s terrified. I’m not gonna just stand by--”
“You never exorcised our sister Ruby,” the demon said. For a second it flashed a resonant black, shiny and smooth as the Impala, but the flash of impudence faded again to purple and blue and red.
Sam was taken aback. The demons knew about Ruby. They knew all about him, too, then. He almost reached out by instinct to exorcise the demon- but something made him pause.
“Ruby found an empty body - the human spirit was already gone,” Sam said slowly. “I thought she wanted to help me.”
“If I helped you - if I took on such a body - would you spare me from Hell?” the demon pleaded.
Sam was astonished to see a tiny gleam of golden white light appear in the center of the demon. He knew what it was - it was a flicker of humanity. It was hopeful, maybe even good.
“Yes,” Sam said on impulse. “Help me - leave this girl -- and I won’t send you back to Hell.”
“Thank you, my lord! Thank you,” the demon said, and poured out of the girl more gently than Sam had ever witnessed.
The girl shook her head, coughed twice, and said, “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Untie me, you creep!”
She didn’t remember a thing, and Sam let her go.
***
“You never answered me, Cas. Tell me what Dean looked like after ten years as a torturer, and then tell me if you’d send him back to Hell if you caught him here on earth.”
Sam knew he was hitting Castiel in a soft spot. The archangel’s love for his charge, built on unchanging absolutes, was different from human emotion, but nearly transcendent in its strength. Castiel had pulled Dean writhing from the Pit, the grip of his holiness searing such a deep mark onto Dean’s corrupted soul that it remained even after the power of Heaven flowed through Castiel to bring Dean back to life.
Castiel glared at Sam, but grudgingly answered. “You know what he looked like. Stained, angry, bloodthirsty and violent. Heaven remade him, and what was too demonic went back into the Pit.”
Sam was shocked. He hadn’t realized... “You mean to tell me, all that time when we were wondering what was missing from Dean, it was pieces of his soul?”
Sam was horrified. Part of Dean’s soul was still in the Pit, still a demon?
Castiel shook his head. “Everything that makes Dean, Dean, is still intact. Very little of his soul was lost.”
“Very little?” Sam shouted. The anonymous motel room around them began to shiver and the temperature went up several degrees.
“Calm yourself, Sam,” Castiel said. Again, his wings flared and gave a mighty beat that thrummed through the room, setting it to rights.
Sam allowed his anger to dissipate.
“I’m just saying. What if a demon I send back is like Dean - someone who sacrificed himself to save a loved one? Or hell, what if it’s someone like Bela? She was only a kid when the crossroads demon got to her!”
“That’s a risk you have to take,” Castiel insisted.
“You just say that because you don’t like them,” Sam said peevishly, but Castiel flinched, and Sam knew it was as true as he’d guessed.
“The demon buzz grates on you. It stinks. It rankles your Angelic nerves. You don’t like being near them and want them gone as soon as possible. Right?” Sam pressed.
Castiel reluctantly nodded.
“Well, I’m not satisfied with that. I want to find a way to help them. If I could purge myself of the demonic influence, maybe I could still help some of the ones with a spark of goodness left in them.”
“You’d tear them apart. It’d be unendurable,” Castiel whispered.
Sam saw the archangel’s wings folding tight around his many faces, eyes turning inward in discomfort.
“And you know this how?” Horrified again, Sam already knew the answer.
Because Cas had done it to Dean. Dragged him out of Hell, purged his soul with a scourge of irresistible holiness, and threw the offensive bits back into the Pit.
“He begged me,” Castiel whispered.
“To stop?” Sam asked.
“No. To keep going. He begged me to wash him clean. You know how painful Angelic light is to demons. Dean clung to me, burning himself away. I had to pry him off. I was as gentle as I knew how to be. But I’m not surprised he still can’t remember our first meeting, or that he couldn’t bear to open his ears to my voice.”
Castiel’s human visage was averted, his archangelic form wrapped tightly aound itself so as almost to form a pillar.
Sam pressed on. “So, there’s really no way to help them?”
“I was successful with your brother. He is a truly remarkable human being. Even after so long off the rack, the core of his essential goodness was still strong. He thinks of himself as broken, but he has no idea how resilient and unstoppable he really is.”
“So, voluntarily, a demon could choose?”
Castiel’s wings gave a twitch, then began to unfurl. He finally understood. Even after so much time spent with the Winchesters, Cas still tended to think in black and white, but at least he was willing to examine the shades of gray.
“If a demon came to me and asked to be purged, I could do it.”
“Okay, Cas. That’s all I wanted to know.”
“It’s what you do. It’s what you were meant to do,” Castiel argued.
“Don’t start in on me with all that crap. Team Free Will, remember?”
“Yeah,” Castiel said with a slight smile. “We’ve come a long way.”
Sam was silent. Castiel was checking in on Dean regularly, and assured Sam he was doing well, but Sam still didn’t like not letting his brother know he’s escaped from Hell.
“Sam, you have a job to do. If it involves sending demons back to Hell, that’s just a bonus.”
“I don’t see it that way. If the torments of Hell made them demons in the first place, how does sending them back there do any good?"
“It means one less problem on Earth for us to deal with,” Castiel said placidly.
Sam heaved a sigh and tried again. “Cas, it’s just not that simple. I lived with a demonic influence swimming in my veins my whole life. I never even knew what it was that made me feel so angry, so desperate. The demons need help, Cas. I always felt like Ruby had some good in her, that she cared for me in her own way - and now I think that even more.
Castiel’s eyes hardened. “You mustn’t follow this line of reasoning, Sam. Demons are dangerous, evil creatures. Maybe Ruby cared for you, but that doesn’t change that you were a pawn in her plan to raise Lucifer - a plan that nearly ended the world. You start looking for shades of gray, and we risk going down that path again."
Sam’s rage didn’t boil up in him like it once had, but he was still annoyed.
“You can hint that I’m responsible for the Apocalypse all you want, Cas. I accepted that responsibility, and I ended it. Lucifer and Michael are locked up in that cage till God sees fit to let them out.”
Castiel nodded his acknowledgment.
“All I’m saying is, I’m not looking for shades of gray, I’m literally seeing them. You’ve gotta see it, too, Cas, right?”
Castiel’s brow knitted in stubborn disagreement.
“It doesn’t matter, Sam. We can’t afford-“
“Stop right there, Cas. It does matter. It has to! What did Dean’s soul look like when you found him in the Pit?”
Castiel hesitated, obviously reluctant. Sam knew he didn’t want to answer.
Sam stepped closer to Castiel, leaning in towards him. “Answer me, Cas!”
The archangel’s blue eyes widened, his mouth thinning to a dangerous line.
“Don’t push me, Sam,” Castiel warned.
As the days on Earth had passed, Sam had let his otherworldly awareness fall back, so that he wouldn’t constantly detect the supernatural aura of objects and people all around him. Talking with Castiel was so much easier when he was facing a slight, blue-eyed, scruffy guy in a trenchcoat. Looking a little deeper, Sam saw the tendrils of his own aura reaching toward Castiel, violet with intensity, while the archangel was braced, all eyes alert, his wings wide and high and crackling with electricity.
Sam stepped back and hung his head.
“I’m sorry, Cas. I just, I’m questioning these demons, and they’re so angry, so scared --- and then I just send them back to the Pit that made them. It doesn’t seem right. It was almost better before...” Sam remembered the destruction he had wrought on Alastair, Lilith, and countless other demons he and Ruby had drained. It wasn’t a one-way trip to the Pit, it was annihilation.
Castiel looked at Sam with compassion, his voice lowered. “Humans aren’t meant to wield that kind of power, Sam. To un-create is a right you don’t have.”
“But it’s okay to send a demon back to eternal torment? Castiel, I can see their desperation! They were human once - isn’t there any way to get them back from Hell?”
Searching for Crowley was like trying to find a needle in a haystack made of needles. Demons were everywhere. Most weren’t calling attention to themselves. They didn’t have a plan. They were living it up on Earth, reveling in the sins and pleasures of the flesh, but trying not to get caught by Hunters or the warriors Castiel had sent out.
Sam, though, was almost impossible to evade. His human/angelic senses were sharp, sensitive, and far-reaching. He could feel the low buzz of demon blood from miles away; he could smell it in a building, or even hear it across a crowded room.
Demons feared Sam, not because he could easily annihilate them - he still had that power, but without the rage the blood had triggered, he didn’t care to use it. But because, like an Angel, he could pull them from their bodies with a touch and send them shrieking back to Hell.
That was why Castiel was here. Last night, instead of sending a demon back to Hell, he had let it go.
***
Sam had a pretty girl tied to a chair. It was just like the year before Dean’s deal came up - except this time, Sam was way more familiar with demons, and demons were way more familiar with Sam.
“What are you planning to do with me, Winchester?” the demon in the pretty girl moaned.
Sam looked closely at the girl. He’d engaged with several demons since his return from Hell, and it was a fascinating yet horrifying sight, to see the evil aura roiling around and through the possessed body, the light of the human soul within glowing red and orange with terror and pain if the body was still alive, or horribly gray and dull if it wasn’t.
Sam hadn’t expected every demon to look different. With Azazel, and Lilith, and the Crossroads demons, he’d witnessed the various colors of their eyes, but he hadn’t realized the extent that the eyes reflected the aura. The demons he’d encountered so far in his search for Crowley had been mostly run-of-the-mill, lower level demons, but some were stronger, more dedicated to their evil - more like Alastair, or the demon in Brady, and their auras crackled with rage and bubbled with cruelty.
Other demons felt more human. It was the only way Sam could describe it. Sam remembered his stint with Dean in jail, and some demons reminded him of the guys he’d met in the lockup-tired, hopeless, angry, covering their fear with aggression, just looking for some way out of the horrible mess their lives had become.
The demon in the girl was like that. It wanted something from Sam, something Sam couldn’t figure out.
“I don’t have a plan. I just want information,” Sam said cautiously.
“Why should I give you anything? You sent our lord back to Hell,” the demon accused.
“Lucifer wasn’t your lord. He’s an Angel. He created you by accident - shredding the human souls in Perdition with his rage.” Sam said. “It wasn’t love for you - it was blind, awful hatred.”
“Why do you torment us so?” the demon cried.
Sam heard the real sorrow and pain in its voice, and looked deeper. The demon had shrunken in upon itself, dark blue and purple in its pain.
“I’m not - I don’t --- I’m not trying to torment you,” Sam protested.
“You punish us for our very existence. You tear us from these sweet, warm bodies and send us back to Hell,” the demon sobbed.
Sam saw that the demon was shot through now with red and magenta, its fear of exorcism weakening it before he had even threatened.
“I can’t let you stay in this body,” Sam said. “Look what you’re doing to the soul of this girl. She’s terrified. I’m not gonna just stand by--”
“You never exorcised our sister Ruby,” the demon said. For a second it flashed a resonant black, shiny and smooth as the Impala, but the flash of impudence faded again to purple and blue and red.
Sam was taken aback. The demons knew about Ruby. They knew all about him, too, then. He almost reached out by instinct to exorcise the demon- but something made him pause.
“Ruby found an empty body - the human spirit was already gone,” Sam said slowly. “I thought she wanted to help me.”
“If I helped you - if I took on such a body - would you spare me from Hell?” the demon pleaded.
Sam was astonished to see a tiny gleam of golden white light appear in the center of the demon. He knew what it was - it was a flicker of humanity. It was hopeful, maybe even good.
“Yes,” Sam said on impulse. “Help me - leave this girl -- and I won’t send you back to Hell.”
“Thank you, my lord! Thank you,” the demon said, and poured out of the girl more gently than Sam had ever witnessed.
The girl shook her head, coughed twice, and said, “What the hell do you think you’re doing? Untie me, you creep!”
She didn’t remember a thing, and Sam let her go.
***
“You never answered me, Cas. Tell me what Dean looked like after ten years as a torturer, and then tell me if you’d send him back to Hell if you caught him here on earth.”
Sam knew he was hitting Castiel in a soft spot. The archangel’s love for his charge, built on unchanging absolutes, was different from human emotion, but nearly transcendent in its strength. Castiel had pulled Dean writhing from the Pit, the grip of his holiness searing such a deep mark onto Dean’s corrupted soul that it remained even after the power of Heaven flowed through Castiel to bring Dean back to life.
Castiel glared at Sam, but grudgingly answered. “You know what he looked like. Stained, angry, bloodthirsty and violent. Heaven remade him, and what was too demonic went back into the Pit.”
Sam was shocked. He hadn’t realized... “You mean to tell me, all that time when we were wondering what was missing from Dean, it was pieces of his soul?”
Sam was horrified. Part of Dean’s soul was still in the Pit, still a demon?
Castiel shook his head. “Everything that makes Dean, Dean, is still intact. Very little of his soul was lost.”
“Very little?” Sam shouted. The anonymous motel room around them began to shiver and the temperature went up several degrees.
“Calm yourself, Sam,” Castiel said. Again, his wings flared and gave a mighty beat that thrummed through the room, setting it to rights.
Sam allowed his anger to dissipate.
“I’m just saying. What if a demon I send back is like Dean - someone who sacrificed himself to save a loved one? Or hell, what if it’s someone like Bela? She was only a kid when the crossroads demon got to her!”
“That’s a risk you have to take,” Castiel insisted.
“You just say that because you don’t like them,” Sam said peevishly, but Castiel flinched, and Sam knew it was as true as he’d guessed.
“The demon buzz grates on you. It stinks. It rankles your Angelic nerves. You don’t like being near them and want them gone as soon as possible. Right?” Sam pressed.
Castiel reluctantly nodded.
“Well, I’m not satisfied with that. I want to find a way to help them. If I could purge myself of the demonic influence, maybe I could still help some of the ones with a spark of goodness left in them.”
“You’d tear them apart. It’d be unendurable,” Castiel whispered.
Sam saw the archangel’s wings folding tight around his many faces, eyes turning inward in discomfort.
“And you know this how?” Horrified again, Sam already knew the answer.
Because Cas had done it to Dean. Dragged him out of Hell, purged his soul with a scourge of irresistible holiness, and threw the offensive bits back into the Pit.
“He begged me,” Castiel whispered.
“To stop?” Sam asked.
“No. To keep going. He begged me to wash him clean. You know how painful Angelic light is to demons. Dean clung to me, burning himself away. I had to pry him off. I was as gentle as I knew how to be. But I’m not surprised he still can’t remember our first meeting, or that he couldn’t bear to open his ears to my voice.”
Castiel’s human visage was averted, his archangelic form wrapped tightly aound itself so as almost to form a pillar.
Sam pressed on. “So, there’s really no way to help them?”
“I was successful with your brother. He is a truly remarkable human being. Even after so long off the rack, the core of his essential goodness was still strong. He thinks of himself as broken, but he has no idea how resilient and unstoppable he really is.”
“So, voluntarily, a demon could choose?”
Castiel’s wings gave a twitch, then began to unfurl. He finally understood. Even after so much time spent with the Winchesters, Cas still tended to think in black and white, but at least he was willing to examine the shades of gray.
“If a demon came to me and asked to be purged, I could do it.”
“Okay, Cas. That’s all I wanted to know.”