Slipping Through Cinders (Gen, PG-13)
Title: Slipping through Cinders
Rating: PG-13
Category: Gen oneshot
Word Count: 2814
Characters: Dean, Sam, and a demon
Spoilers: S2: “Born Under a Bad Sign” and both parts of “All Hell Breaks Loose”
Summary: When Sam wants to save his brother and a demon wants its freedom, Dean becomes the one caught in the middle.
Warnings: None
Author’s Notes: Written for spn_halloween with the following prompt:“Demons love Hallowe'en. Even when they've been banished, they're allowed back into our world, just between midnight and sunrise. If they can kill the hunter who banished them, they win their freedom.” Thanks to equinox_blue for the beta. Any remaining mistakes are mine alone. Cross-posted around.
Disclaimer: The following characters and situations are used without permission of the creators, owners, and further affiliates of the television show, Supernatural, to whom they rightly belong. I claim only what is mine, and I make no money off what is theirs.
- - - - -
“Hell is like…Well, it's like hell. Even for demons.
It's a prison, made of bone and flesh and blood and fear.
And you sent me back there.”
--“Born Under a Bad Sign”
- - - -
He couldn’t sleep. Dean rolled over and threw back the bedcovers with a disgusted sigh, suppressing a shiver at the cold motel air. Across the room, Sam slept on peacefully unaware, bangs falling in his eyes and mouth slightly opened in easy sleep. It was good to see him rest uninterrupted, no longer plagued by the nightmares that had threatened to tear Sam down.
After pushing himself to his feet, Dean changed into a decent set of clothes and laced up his boots slowly in the darkness. Another night of insomnia that he couldn’t outrun and he refused to sit as a prisoner to the creeping minutes on his watch.
Dean shrugged into his jacket and gave a final glance back at Sam, who murmured in unintelligible dreams and shifted under his blankets. Dean slipped out the door soundlessly.
The air was sparse in its coldness, and he shoved his hands deeper in his coat pockets, squeezing his fingers into tight fists that searched for heat. Across the street, illuminated pumpkins smiled through crudely carved faces, and a big ghost balloon bobbed slowly in the cool wind.
Dean shook his head, snorted humorlessly to himself. Halloween. Even with his time alive so limited, he wasn’t about to go celebrating this fuck-up of a holiday.
He paced the parking in swift, even strides, enjoying the warmth that began to creep into his muscles. Perhaps, he thought hopefully, if he could physically tire his body, his mind would follow suit and allow him some reprieve for the remainder of the night. Anything was better than lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, and watching every second of his life fall away.
On his third time around the graveled lot as a car purred down the street, he heard someone distinctively say his name.
Instantly, he stopped walking and lifted his head in the direction of the voice.
“Someone there?” he called, reaching for his concealed switchblade.
He heard the crunch of gravel, the steady approach of footsteps, and a voice that hissed, “Happy Halloween, Dean. Let’s make it one to remember, hm?”
Pain came first before the blackness rolled over him and Dean was gone.
- - - - -
Sam awoke to the acrid, unfamiliar smell of smoke. He yawned heavily, limbs feeling drugged, and rolled over to see a shadowed figure perched on the window ledge with a glowing cigarette held between careful fingers.
“Hey…” Sam began, rising to his feet, still thickheaded and groggy. “Hey, what are you-”
“Ssh,” the man whispered before taking another drag of the cigarette. He exhaled, tilting his head toward the ceiling. “Go back to bed, Sammy.”
It was Dean’s voice, but Sam still reached for the light, stiff fingers fumbling over the drywall before connecting with the switch and turning on the ceiling light. The room now illuminated, Sam’s assumptions were confirmed when he saw Dean sitting on the windowsill and holding a lit cigarette that curled thin wisps of smoke up to the ceiling. Beside Dean, a pack of cigarettes lay opened and a bottle of beer was more than halfway finished.
“Dean?” Sam said warily, starting to cross the room.
“Sure,” Dean answered with a confident smile, a flash of brilliant teeth. “What d’ya want?”
Sam stiffened at the expression on the face staring at him, at the lilt and cadence of the words on his brother’s tongue. “You’re not Dean.”
“Oh? Who else would I be then?”
“I don’t know,” Sam replied cautiously, moving to their weapons bag while keeping his eyes fixed on Dean’s face. “But you’re not him.”
Dean frowned with a raise of dubious eyebrows then shrugged. “All right, believe whatever you’d like.” He jabbed his cigarette out on the windowsill, leaving a small black smudge on the red wood.
Pulling a gun from the bag, Sam leveled the weapon at the man who wore his brother’s skin. “What are you? Shapeshifter? Hm? Where’d you take him? I’ll kill you right now, you son of a bitch.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Dean said, hopping to the floor and coming closer in slow, even steps to Sam.
“Yeah? And why’s that?”
“Because,” Dean sneered into Sam’s face, a puff of the bitter cigarette, “you shoot me…” He trailed off as he looked away. When he turned back, his eyes were inky, endless black. “You shoot Dean.”
Sam snorted, a short, scratchy note of disbelief and underlying panic. “A demon.”
Dean’s normal eyes snapped back, and his grin was sharp. “Can’t put anything past you, can I? Huh, Sammy?” he mocked, slapping the side of Sam’s face playfully as he walked past.
“Who the hell are you?” Sam asked, instantly thinking of some way to trick this bastard, to trap him and free Dean. His heart was pounding frantically in his chest, and he struggled to keep his voice even and calm.
“Old friend of the family,” Dean-the demon-replied warmly, playing with one of the knives Sam had been cleaning before going to bed that night.
“Meg?”
The demon laughed, amused. “Not that old bag, honestly. So far below me, that one.” He picked up a knife, running his finger along the freshly cleaned blade. “No…No, John and Dean exorcised me years ago. Back when you ran off for college town and your little ‘self-discovery’ quest. How’d that go by the way? Heard about Jess. I would’ve sent flowers, y’know.”
“That can’t be possible,” Sam argued, ignoring the demon’s taunts. “You were exorcised. You can’t come back.”
“Ah,” the demon said, tossing the knife in the air and catching it deftly by the handle. “Apparently, you’ve never heard of the little bargain we demons get on Halloween. Daddy didn’t tell you that one before he took the big plunge.”
Sam swallowed, shifted uncomfortably, the gun feeling clumsy in his hands. He wondered if Dean was listening to this or if Dean was already too far gone inside the monster’s head.
“Bargain?” Sam echoed.
“Yeah. You see, every Halloween, a demon can come back. Just one demon-we all get our turn. If he can kill the man-or woman, I suppose-who exorcised him, he wins his freedom from Hell.”
“Dean’s dead?”
“Mm, not yet,” the demon mused. “See, most of the demons on their day, they come up here just a-swingin’. Lots of blood. Guts. That whole bad horror movie bit.” The demon waved his hand that held the knife idly as if he were discussing mere childish trifles. “But, I thought I’d try a different, more rational, approach, seeing as how I am dealing with the fabulous Dean Winchester and his younger brother who died and came back again…Sammy, our great leader.”
“How…different?” Sam reluctantly asked. He was standing in his pajamas while a demon wearing his brother’s face calmly explained its plans. He hated being led like this, hated being so out of control, but he needed to hear this demon to know how to save Dean.
“Well. Dean’s got a less than a year to live. That deal he made bringing you back, of course. We all heard about that, ‘course. But. Here’s how I see things. You let me stay in Dean, like this, till sunrise, your brother’s off the hook. He won’t go to Hell.”
“What’s the catch?”
“Always the cynic,” the demon said with mock disapproval. “All right, then. I get to be your brother. This body? It’ll be fine, unless, of course you shoot me. Not a mark on it. I won’t be dirtying it up any either. But, since I’ll be in here past sunrise, Dean will, well, he’ll technically be dead. So. I get my freedom, but you, Sammy, you get your brother around for longer than a year.”
“Dean’ll be dead,” Sam spat. “You aren’t him.”
“He won’t suffer,” the demon replied, setting the knife down on the table. “Think about it. He’s terrified now. Don’t you see it in his eyes? He lives every day in fear of what’ll happen because at the end of his year, when the hounds come for him, they’ll rip him to shreds, and he’ll scream.” The demon came closer, sidling up to Sam until it was whispering in his ear. It curled its fingers over his shoulder. “He’ll scream and wish he’d never made that deal. They’ll skin him alive. Make him bleed and taste his insides, and he’ll wish for death, but he won’t die just yet. No, no, they’ll make sure he’s crying, pleading, begging on torn vocal chords, before they take his miserable soul to Hell. And there?” The demon chuckled, a hot sigh of air against the shell of Sam’s ear. “There, he’ll burn. And no one will take pity on him. Not after all of us that he’s murdered in cold blood. His flesh’ll fall off in blackened chunks, and he’ll scream till his throat bleeds, and he can’t escape because he’ll be locked in a cage of human bone-his own bone-pieced together with flesh and hair. And he’ll stay like that for the rest of eternity.
“But,” the demon continued easily, now stepping away from Sam, “you let me stay here, and Dean? He’ll slip under. Like he’s sleeping. His soul’ll go to someplace that isn’t a land of hellfire and blood, and he won’t have to suffer because of you.”
The demon turned around and smiled with glitter in its eyes. “So, Sammy, what do you say to that?”
- - - - -
As he changed out of his pajamas into another set of clothes to kill time, Sam didn’t speak. The demon’s question lingered in the air, a stench that could not be removed and would not dissipate on its own accord. Meanwhile, the demon sat on the edge of Dean’s bed while Sam methodically folded his clothes and considered what he was planning to do.
He had no doubt that the demon was telling him the truth. Vaguely, unwillingly, he remembered the horrific glimpses of Hell he had seen when he had been possessed himself all those months ago. When he had killed that hunter and nearly raped Jo, when he had shot Dean and hurt everyone he had cared about. The sight alone, mere memories of the demon in him, had been enough to make him gasp and shake. Standing in the motel room and holding a shirt to his chest, Sam bent his head and closed his eyes at the images slipping through his mind again.
After he was finished dressing, he lifted his head and looked to the demon, who was reading Dad’s journal and wearing an amused smile on Dean’s lips.
Sam cleared his throat. “All right,” he said.
The demon raised its eyes. “All right, what?”
“Your deal.”
“I want you to say it.”
Sam inhaled sharply, fighting to keep his voice from quavering when he agreed, “You’re right. I-I don’t want Dean to suffer…I accept your deal.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“What?”
The demon closed John’s book and waved it at Sam like a display. “I want you to burn this journal with all of your daddy’s exorcism incantations. I won’t have you sneaking up on me before sunrise and getting rid of me like that.” The demon reached inside Dean’s jacket and pulled out his lighter. The demon flicked its thumb over the silver head to give life to a bright fierce flame. “If you don’t destroy the book, I’ll set these clothes on fire and then you can really watch Dean burn.”
“No, wait, please, I want something from you first.”
“I don’t think you’re in any place to be giving me directions,” the demon answered, as it set the journal off to the side and let the flame die. “I can kill Dean the old-fashioned way, y’know. Don’t have to keep this body all pretty for you to look at. There’s quite a lot you can do to the human body before it actually dies. Ever seen a man strung up by his intestines, Sam?”
“You’ll still be in control. I just…” Sam trailed off, loathing this and what he was preparing to do to Dean. “I want to say good-bye to him-Dean-before he…” This time, Sam could not bring himself to finish his sentence and say the final words.
The demon smirked, relishing in Sam’s pain. “That’s sweet, it really is. Want to tell Dean bye-bye before he’s gone forever. Yeah, I can do that. But, if you try tricking me, remember I can still hear you talking, boy. I’ll kill him from the inside out, I promise you that. He’ll hemorrhage before you can save him.”
Sam nodded. “I know.”
“Good.” There was a beat of silence as the demon’s piercing eyes remained fixated on Sam, and then its face shifted ever so slightly, the features softening and eyes widening. When the mouth spoke, it was Dean, only Dean and no one else, who said, “Sam, don’t-”
Sam didn’t let him get any farther than that. He hooked a brutal uppercut into Dean’s chin, hard enough to make Dean’s teeth bite into his tongue and eyes roll back in their sockets to reveal wet white underbellies. Dean’s body went limp, and he toppled off the bed into a twisted heap on the floor.
Shaking out the pain in his knuckles, Sam whispered, “I’m sorry,” and prayed Dean would forgive him.
He hurried to the unconscious body of his older brother. Outside the window, the blackness was blooming into layers of deep violet, and Dean would be waking soon. Sam did not have much time.
- - - - -
By the time the demon awoke, Sam had already tied it securely to a chair beneath a crudely drawn devil’s trap on the motel ceiling.
The demon regarded Sam and cocked its head in disapproval.
“Oh, Sam,” it chuckled. “You’re really going to go through with this?”
“You’re not my brother,” Sam snapped, holding his father’s opened journal close to his chest. “I won’t let you pretend to be.”
“Dean’s going to burn now because you were too damn selfish. Like you always are.”
“I’ll save him.”
The demon snorted disbelievingly. “The deal Dean made has no loopholes. She knew what she was doing when she bargained for your brother’s soul.” The demon leaned forward in his chair and hissed through bared teeth, “Your brother is going to die, writhing in agony, and he’ll be tormented for all existence, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.”
Sam bent down and brought his face close enough to see every line on Dean’s skin, to share the same air with this monster, and he bit, “Watch me.”
He stepped away and began, “Exorcisamus te, omnes in mundus spirtus…”
Before the demon cried its final curses to the heavens, it spat, “I want you remember that you’re murdering your brother. When the hounds come for him, remember that you could have turned them away but you didn’t. You’re a monster, Sammy. I hope you remember that.”
When the demon was gone in a cloud of black smoke, Dean shuddered and lifted his heavy eyes to Sam. As Sam scrambled to undo the knots holding his brother to the chair, Dean said nothing, only weakly spat blood from his mouth. The blood dribbled down over his lower lip and left small red blotches on the front of his shirt.
- - - - -
Outside by the Impala, the brothers packed their belongings below a vibrant scarlet sunrise that grew in the distance. Sam leaned against the car as Dean, head bent, finished arranging his weapons in the trunk.
“You okay?” Sam asked cautiously. The words seemed loud in the premature day. They had barely spoken since the demon had been exorcised less than a few hours ago, and there was so much that needed to be said.
“Never better,” Dean responded.
“Dean…” Sam began, seeing through the thin façade. “I couldn’t accept its deal, you know that.”
Dean frowned, pressing his lips into a tight line. “It was a good bargain. Probably the best I was ever going to get.”
“So you’re mad at me now?”
“No,” Dean replied, shutting the trunk harder than needed. “No. Look, let’s just-” He waved a weak hand at nothing in particular. “Let’s just forget it happened, okay? Done and over with.”
“I’m going to get you out of this,” Sam said, but Dean only stared at him with distant, sad eyes and went around to the driver’s side of the car.
As the engine came to life, Sam wiped a hand over his face and sighed. Moving to his door, his hands shook, and he could not rid himself of the demon’s final words.
End
Rating: PG-13
Category: Gen oneshot
Word Count: 2814
Characters: Dean, Sam, and a demon
Spoilers: S2: “Born Under a Bad Sign” and both parts of “All Hell Breaks Loose”
Summary: When Sam wants to save his brother and a demon wants its freedom, Dean becomes the one caught in the middle.
Warnings: None
Author’s Notes: Written for spn_halloween with the following prompt:“Demons love Hallowe'en. Even when they've been banished, they're allowed back into our world, just between midnight and sunrise. If they can kill the hunter who banished them, they win their freedom.” Thanks to equinox_blue for the beta. Any remaining mistakes are mine alone. Cross-posted around.
Disclaimer: The following characters and situations are used without permission of the creators, owners, and further affiliates of the television show, Supernatural, to whom they rightly belong. I claim only what is mine, and I make no money off what is theirs.
- - - - -
“Hell is like…Well, it's like hell. Even for demons.
It's a prison, made of bone and flesh and blood and fear.
And you sent me back there.”
--“Born Under a Bad Sign”
- - - -
He couldn’t sleep. Dean rolled over and threw back the bedcovers with a disgusted sigh, suppressing a shiver at the cold motel air. Across the room, Sam slept on peacefully unaware, bangs falling in his eyes and mouth slightly opened in easy sleep. It was good to see him rest uninterrupted, no longer plagued by the nightmares that had threatened to tear Sam down.
After pushing himself to his feet, Dean changed into a decent set of clothes and laced up his boots slowly in the darkness. Another night of insomnia that he couldn’t outrun and he refused to sit as a prisoner to the creeping minutes on his watch.
Dean shrugged into his jacket and gave a final glance back at Sam, who murmured in unintelligible dreams and shifted under his blankets. Dean slipped out the door soundlessly.
The air was sparse in its coldness, and he shoved his hands deeper in his coat pockets, squeezing his fingers into tight fists that searched for heat. Across the street, illuminated pumpkins smiled through crudely carved faces, and a big ghost balloon bobbed slowly in the cool wind.
Dean shook his head, snorted humorlessly to himself. Halloween. Even with his time alive so limited, he wasn’t about to go celebrating this fuck-up of a holiday.
He paced the parking in swift, even strides, enjoying the warmth that began to creep into his muscles. Perhaps, he thought hopefully, if he could physically tire his body, his mind would follow suit and allow him some reprieve for the remainder of the night. Anything was better than lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, and watching every second of his life fall away.
On his third time around the graveled lot as a car purred down the street, he heard someone distinctively say his name.
Instantly, he stopped walking and lifted his head in the direction of the voice.
“Someone there?” he called, reaching for his concealed switchblade.
He heard the crunch of gravel, the steady approach of footsteps, and a voice that hissed, “Happy Halloween, Dean. Let’s make it one to remember, hm?”
Pain came first before the blackness rolled over him and Dean was gone.
- - - - -
Sam awoke to the acrid, unfamiliar smell of smoke. He yawned heavily, limbs feeling drugged, and rolled over to see a shadowed figure perched on the window ledge with a glowing cigarette held between careful fingers.
“Hey…” Sam began, rising to his feet, still thickheaded and groggy. “Hey, what are you-”
“Ssh,” the man whispered before taking another drag of the cigarette. He exhaled, tilting his head toward the ceiling. “Go back to bed, Sammy.”
It was Dean’s voice, but Sam still reached for the light, stiff fingers fumbling over the drywall before connecting with the switch and turning on the ceiling light. The room now illuminated, Sam’s assumptions were confirmed when he saw Dean sitting on the windowsill and holding a lit cigarette that curled thin wisps of smoke up to the ceiling. Beside Dean, a pack of cigarettes lay opened and a bottle of beer was more than halfway finished.
“Dean?” Sam said warily, starting to cross the room.
“Sure,” Dean answered with a confident smile, a flash of brilliant teeth. “What d’ya want?”
Sam stiffened at the expression on the face staring at him, at the lilt and cadence of the words on his brother’s tongue. “You’re not Dean.”
“Oh? Who else would I be then?”
“I don’t know,” Sam replied cautiously, moving to their weapons bag while keeping his eyes fixed on Dean’s face. “But you’re not him.”
Dean frowned with a raise of dubious eyebrows then shrugged. “All right, believe whatever you’d like.” He jabbed his cigarette out on the windowsill, leaving a small black smudge on the red wood.
Pulling a gun from the bag, Sam leveled the weapon at the man who wore his brother’s skin. “What are you? Shapeshifter? Hm? Where’d you take him? I’ll kill you right now, you son of a bitch.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Dean said, hopping to the floor and coming closer in slow, even steps to Sam.
“Yeah? And why’s that?”
“Because,” Dean sneered into Sam’s face, a puff of the bitter cigarette, “you shoot me…” He trailed off as he looked away. When he turned back, his eyes were inky, endless black. “You shoot Dean.”
Sam snorted, a short, scratchy note of disbelief and underlying panic. “A demon.”
Dean’s normal eyes snapped back, and his grin was sharp. “Can’t put anything past you, can I? Huh, Sammy?” he mocked, slapping the side of Sam’s face playfully as he walked past.
“Who the hell are you?” Sam asked, instantly thinking of some way to trick this bastard, to trap him and free Dean. His heart was pounding frantically in his chest, and he struggled to keep his voice even and calm.
“Old friend of the family,” Dean-the demon-replied warmly, playing with one of the knives Sam had been cleaning before going to bed that night.
“Meg?”
The demon laughed, amused. “Not that old bag, honestly. So far below me, that one.” He picked up a knife, running his finger along the freshly cleaned blade. “No…No, John and Dean exorcised me years ago. Back when you ran off for college town and your little ‘self-discovery’ quest. How’d that go by the way? Heard about Jess. I would’ve sent flowers, y’know.”
“That can’t be possible,” Sam argued, ignoring the demon’s taunts. “You were exorcised. You can’t come back.”
“Ah,” the demon said, tossing the knife in the air and catching it deftly by the handle. “Apparently, you’ve never heard of the little bargain we demons get on Halloween. Daddy didn’t tell you that one before he took the big plunge.”
Sam swallowed, shifted uncomfortably, the gun feeling clumsy in his hands. He wondered if Dean was listening to this or if Dean was already too far gone inside the monster’s head.
“Bargain?” Sam echoed.
“Yeah. You see, every Halloween, a demon can come back. Just one demon-we all get our turn. If he can kill the man-or woman, I suppose-who exorcised him, he wins his freedom from Hell.”
“Dean’s dead?”
“Mm, not yet,” the demon mused. “See, most of the demons on their day, they come up here just a-swingin’. Lots of blood. Guts. That whole bad horror movie bit.” The demon waved his hand that held the knife idly as if he were discussing mere childish trifles. “But, I thought I’d try a different, more rational, approach, seeing as how I am dealing with the fabulous Dean Winchester and his younger brother who died and came back again…Sammy, our great leader.”
“How…different?” Sam reluctantly asked. He was standing in his pajamas while a demon wearing his brother’s face calmly explained its plans. He hated being led like this, hated being so out of control, but he needed to hear this demon to know how to save Dean.
“Well. Dean’s got a less than a year to live. That deal he made bringing you back, of course. We all heard about that, ‘course. But. Here’s how I see things. You let me stay in Dean, like this, till sunrise, your brother’s off the hook. He won’t go to Hell.”
“What’s the catch?”
“Always the cynic,” the demon said with mock disapproval. “All right, then. I get to be your brother. This body? It’ll be fine, unless, of course you shoot me. Not a mark on it. I won’t be dirtying it up any either. But, since I’ll be in here past sunrise, Dean will, well, he’ll technically be dead. So. I get my freedom, but you, Sammy, you get your brother around for longer than a year.”
“Dean’ll be dead,” Sam spat. “You aren’t him.”
“He won’t suffer,” the demon replied, setting the knife down on the table. “Think about it. He’s terrified now. Don’t you see it in his eyes? He lives every day in fear of what’ll happen because at the end of his year, when the hounds come for him, they’ll rip him to shreds, and he’ll scream.” The demon came closer, sidling up to Sam until it was whispering in his ear. It curled its fingers over his shoulder. “He’ll scream and wish he’d never made that deal. They’ll skin him alive. Make him bleed and taste his insides, and he’ll wish for death, but he won’t die just yet. No, no, they’ll make sure he’s crying, pleading, begging on torn vocal chords, before they take his miserable soul to Hell. And there?” The demon chuckled, a hot sigh of air against the shell of Sam’s ear. “There, he’ll burn. And no one will take pity on him. Not after all of us that he’s murdered in cold blood. His flesh’ll fall off in blackened chunks, and he’ll scream till his throat bleeds, and he can’t escape because he’ll be locked in a cage of human bone-his own bone-pieced together with flesh and hair. And he’ll stay like that for the rest of eternity.
“But,” the demon continued easily, now stepping away from Sam, “you let me stay here, and Dean? He’ll slip under. Like he’s sleeping. His soul’ll go to someplace that isn’t a land of hellfire and blood, and he won’t have to suffer because of you.”
The demon turned around and smiled with glitter in its eyes. “So, Sammy, what do you say to that?”
- - - - -
As he changed out of his pajamas into another set of clothes to kill time, Sam didn’t speak. The demon’s question lingered in the air, a stench that could not be removed and would not dissipate on its own accord. Meanwhile, the demon sat on the edge of Dean’s bed while Sam methodically folded his clothes and considered what he was planning to do.
He had no doubt that the demon was telling him the truth. Vaguely, unwillingly, he remembered the horrific glimpses of Hell he had seen when he had been possessed himself all those months ago. When he had killed that hunter and nearly raped Jo, when he had shot Dean and hurt everyone he had cared about. The sight alone, mere memories of the demon in him, had been enough to make him gasp and shake. Standing in the motel room and holding a shirt to his chest, Sam bent his head and closed his eyes at the images slipping through his mind again.
After he was finished dressing, he lifted his head and looked to the demon, who was reading Dad’s journal and wearing an amused smile on Dean’s lips.
Sam cleared his throat. “All right,” he said.
The demon raised its eyes. “All right, what?”
“Your deal.”
“I want you to say it.”
Sam inhaled sharply, fighting to keep his voice from quavering when he agreed, “You’re right. I-I don’t want Dean to suffer…I accept your deal.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“What?”
The demon closed John’s book and waved it at Sam like a display. “I want you to burn this journal with all of your daddy’s exorcism incantations. I won’t have you sneaking up on me before sunrise and getting rid of me like that.” The demon reached inside Dean’s jacket and pulled out his lighter. The demon flicked its thumb over the silver head to give life to a bright fierce flame. “If you don’t destroy the book, I’ll set these clothes on fire and then you can really watch Dean burn.”
“No, wait, please, I want something from you first.”
“I don’t think you’re in any place to be giving me directions,” the demon answered, as it set the journal off to the side and let the flame die. “I can kill Dean the old-fashioned way, y’know. Don’t have to keep this body all pretty for you to look at. There’s quite a lot you can do to the human body before it actually dies. Ever seen a man strung up by his intestines, Sam?”
“You’ll still be in control. I just…” Sam trailed off, loathing this and what he was preparing to do to Dean. “I want to say good-bye to him-Dean-before he…” This time, Sam could not bring himself to finish his sentence and say the final words.
The demon smirked, relishing in Sam’s pain. “That’s sweet, it really is. Want to tell Dean bye-bye before he’s gone forever. Yeah, I can do that. But, if you try tricking me, remember I can still hear you talking, boy. I’ll kill him from the inside out, I promise you that. He’ll hemorrhage before you can save him.”
Sam nodded. “I know.”
“Good.” There was a beat of silence as the demon’s piercing eyes remained fixated on Sam, and then its face shifted ever so slightly, the features softening and eyes widening. When the mouth spoke, it was Dean, only Dean and no one else, who said, “Sam, don’t-”
Sam didn’t let him get any farther than that. He hooked a brutal uppercut into Dean’s chin, hard enough to make Dean’s teeth bite into his tongue and eyes roll back in their sockets to reveal wet white underbellies. Dean’s body went limp, and he toppled off the bed into a twisted heap on the floor.
Shaking out the pain in his knuckles, Sam whispered, “I’m sorry,” and prayed Dean would forgive him.
He hurried to the unconscious body of his older brother. Outside the window, the blackness was blooming into layers of deep violet, and Dean would be waking soon. Sam did not have much time.
- - - - -
By the time the demon awoke, Sam had already tied it securely to a chair beneath a crudely drawn devil’s trap on the motel ceiling.
The demon regarded Sam and cocked its head in disapproval.
“Oh, Sam,” it chuckled. “You’re really going to go through with this?”
“You’re not my brother,” Sam snapped, holding his father’s opened journal close to his chest. “I won’t let you pretend to be.”
“Dean’s going to burn now because you were too damn selfish. Like you always are.”
“I’ll save him.”
The demon snorted disbelievingly. “The deal Dean made has no loopholes. She knew what she was doing when she bargained for your brother’s soul.” The demon leaned forward in his chair and hissed through bared teeth, “Your brother is going to die, writhing in agony, and he’ll be tormented for all existence, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.”
Sam bent down and brought his face close enough to see every line on Dean’s skin, to share the same air with this monster, and he bit, “Watch me.”
He stepped away and began, “Exorcisamus te, omnes in mundus spirtus…”
Before the demon cried its final curses to the heavens, it spat, “I want you remember that you’re murdering your brother. When the hounds come for him, remember that you could have turned them away but you didn’t. You’re a monster, Sammy. I hope you remember that.”
When the demon was gone in a cloud of black smoke, Dean shuddered and lifted his heavy eyes to Sam. As Sam scrambled to undo the knots holding his brother to the chair, Dean said nothing, only weakly spat blood from his mouth. The blood dribbled down over his lower lip and left small red blotches on the front of his shirt.
- - - - -
Outside by the Impala, the brothers packed their belongings below a vibrant scarlet sunrise that grew in the distance. Sam leaned against the car as Dean, head bent, finished arranging his weapons in the trunk.
“You okay?” Sam asked cautiously. The words seemed loud in the premature day. They had barely spoken since the demon had been exorcised less than a few hours ago, and there was so much that needed to be said.
“Never better,” Dean responded.
“Dean…” Sam began, seeing through the thin façade. “I couldn’t accept its deal, you know that.”
Dean frowned, pressing his lips into a tight line. “It was a good bargain. Probably the best I was ever going to get.”
“So you’re mad at me now?”
“No,” Dean replied, shutting the trunk harder than needed. “No. Look, let’s just-” He waved a weak hand at nothing in particular. “Let’s just forget it happened, okay? Done and over with.”
“I’m going to get you out of this,” Sam said, but Dean only stared at him with distant, sad eyes and went around to the driver’s side of the car.
As the engine came to life, Sam wiped a hand over his face and sighed. Moving to his door, his hands shook, and he could not rid himself of the demon’s final words.
End