Nihil Inherit, Chapter 6: Unsealed
Chapter 5
Master Post
Chapter 6: Unsealed
*
Castiel is waiting for Sam in his dreams, and somehow Sam finds he isn't surprised. They're sitting on a park bench with flaking brown paint, watching a playground where small children are chasing each other around the bars of a swing set, shrieking and giggling as their feet kick up a spray of sand.
“What, no fishing off the dock this time?”
“No. You need to wake up now.”
“I don't really have control over that,” Sam points out. “Humans don't work the same way as angels.”
“So I've noticed,” Castiel says drily, and Sam can't tell whether it's meant to be a joke.
“You didn't just raise me from the dead, did you? There's more to it than that. It's why I keep remembering things differently.”
“Yes.”
“Please don't tell me I need to remember on my own. Every time I try I end up puking, bleeding from the nose, or passing out.”
“That's because the human mind isn't designed to withstand the kind of stresses that have been imposed upon you. An ordinary human wouldn't have survived as long as you have. You are... exceptional,” the angel says, and Sam isn't sure if what he's hearing in the tone is disgust or admiration or a strange mixture of both.
“The demon blood?”
“Your psychic ability,” Castiel says, and Sam gets the impression that the two may not be interchangeable after all.
“I need to tell Dean.”
“Do you?”
“I'm done lying to him. Look what that got us before.”
“Do you remember?”
Sam watches as the kids keep playing, heedless of his presence or the angel's, and wonders if he's really dreaming or if Castiel somehow brought him here. He thinks this might be somewhere Castiel used to bring Dean.
“I think so. I don't remember all of it, but I remember how it ended. I remember the angels, the lies. I... I remember Lucifer. In the end, it didn't matter what I did.” He laughs bitterly. “The song remains the same, isn't that how it goes?”
“Yes.”
“I still need to try.”
*
“He's been out for hours. I can't keep doing this. I can't watch him like this anymore, it's killing me,” Dean's voice is fraught with emotion that Sam can't quite identify.
“Look, I know it's hard, but you have to look at the bigger picture, here,” Sam is pretty sure he knows the voice of the woman speaking, but he can't quite place it, his mind still bogged down. “You know he hasn't been the same since... he got back. You just have to keep faith, okay? Sam is the key, the only one who has a snowball's chance in hell of stopping Lilith.”
“So you keep saying. You're not the one who watched him levitate an entire shed out of my way. Remind me again why I should trust you?”
“Hey, I've pulled your asses out of the fire a hell of a lot, and nearly got myself killed in the process. Have I led you wrong yet?”
“I guess not,” Dean sounds doubtful, and the reply he gets is scornful.
“You guess not? Look, short bus, I don't have to do this. It's not like I'm backing the favoured horse here, and the way you two chuckleheads have been going about this whole thing, the LA Dodgers have a better chance of winning the World Series than you have of preventing Lilith from breaking all the Seals.”
The voices are muffled, even though Sam can hear them clearly, as though Dean and whoever he's speaking to are in a different room. Opening his eyes proves to be a mistake, as the light from the lamp by the bed threatens to blind him. A whimper escapes him before he can stifle it, and he hears shuffling from further away.
“He's coming around.”
“Right. Well, I'm done babysitting, I guess. See you around, Dean.”
Dean doesn't answer, and Sam feels a hand clasp his wrist loosely. “Hey, Sleeping Beauty, you coming back or what?”
He doesn't open his eyes. “I think I might be setting a record for the number of times a person can be unconscious in a ten-day period.”
Dean huffs a laugh. “We'll call Guinness tomorrow. Drink this,” he props Sam up, ignoring his protests, and presses a glass to his lips. Whatever is in it, it tastes vile, and Sam sputters and nearly chokes. “Yeah, I bet if it tastes half as gross as it looks, it's gotta be pretty nasty, but you have to drink it all, okay? It'll help, I promise.”
Sam grimaces, manages to choke the stuff down, and blinks blearily at Dean, shielding his eyes from the worst of the glare of the light with one hand. “What is that stuff?”
His brother shrugs, doesn't quite meet his eyes. “Got the recipe off Bobby. It's supposed to help.”
“You talked to Bobby?” Sam feels the knot of anxiety that had formed in his chest begin to dissolve.
This time Dean does look him directly in the eye, and his laughter is genuine, from the gut. “Would you believe the wily old bastard built himself a ghost-proof panic room? He locked himself in there when he figured we wouldn't get there in time.”
Laughter bubbles up in Sam's chest, relieving the last of the tension. “Bobby built a panic room?”
“A ghost-proof panic room,” Dean confirms, his eyes sparkling. “Is that awesome, or what?”
Sam tilts his head in agreement, pushes himself upright, and winces as he rubs the lump on the back of his head. “So where are we? Motel? The spell worked?”
“Yes, and yes.”
“Who were you talking to just now?”
“What, Bobby?”
“No, the girl.”
Dean narrows his eyes at him. “Sam, there's no one here.”
As if to bely his brother's words, there's a rush of air in the room, and Castiel is standing just behind Dean's shoulder, making both brothers jump in spite of themselves.
“Hello, Dean.”
*
“Jesus!” Dean sputters. “Give a guy some warning, would you?”
Sam could swear the corner of Castiel's mouth twitches into something resembling a smirk. “Personal space?”
“Yes, exactly!”
“Why are you here, Cas?” It seems odd to find the angel there only moments after they've talked, but Sam is learning not to try to make sense of everything.
“I wished to congratulate you. Stellar work with the Witnesses.”
“Wait, you knew about that?” Dean turns on the angel, tension radiating from him.
“I was, uh, made aware,” Castiel manages to look uncomfortable and unaffected at the same time.
“Well, thanks a lot for the angelic assistance,” Dean doesn't bother masking his sarcasm. “You know, I nearly got my heart ripped out of my chest!”
“But you didn't,” Castiel points out.
“That's hardly the point. Why are there angels even around? I thought you guys were supposed to be, I don't know, guardians or something. Fluffy wings and halos, Michael Landon and Roma Downey, and all that. You know: not dicks.” Sam snorts in spite of himself, earning a reproving glance from both his brother and the angel.
“Read the bible,” Castiel rejoins evenly. “Angels are warriors of god. I'm a soldier.”
“Then why didn't you fight?”
“Dean...” Sam puts a hand on Dean's shoulder, only to have it angrily shrugged aside.
“I'm not here to perch on your shoulder. We had larger concerns.”
“What larger concerns? I don't know if you noticed, but people were getting ripped to shreds down here! Where the hell is your boss in all this? Is there even a God?”
“There is a God,” Sam murmurs.
“Oh, really, Sam?” Dean rounds on him. “Then what's he waiting for to intervene? Genocide? Monsters roaming the earth? The apocalypse?”
“Precisely,” Castiel says.
“The Witnesses are a sign, Dean. End of the world kind of stuff. Isn't that right?” Sam looks at the angel, who nods.
“That's why we're here. Big things afoot.”
Dean backs up, seemingly instinctively, goes to peer through the window into the darkness. “Do we want to know what kind of big things?”
“Probably not, but you need to know anyway. Sam already knows.”
Sam winces as Dean's head snaps back toward him, his expression guarded, wary and accusing. “I know part of it. It's like a puzzle with the pieces missing. I keep getting flashes, bits and pieces...” he trails of lamely.
“The Rising of the Witnesses is one of the sixty-six Seals,” Castiel explains. “And no, it is not a ride at Sea World.”
Dean snorts. “Sounds like one. Can you read minds or something?”
“No. The Seals are being broken by Lilith and the demons who are under her leadership.”
“She's the one who rose the Witnesses.”
“And not just here. Twenty other hunters are dead.”
“Oh, God,” Sam feels sick. “She did it on purpose. Picked people the hunters didn't save so they would home in on us.”
“Fucking twisted sense of humour,” Dean mutters. “At least we put the spirits to rest.”
“It doesn't matter,” Sam realizes. “The Seal was broken.”
“So why break it? What's so important about these Seals you've both been going on about?”
“Think of the Seals as locks on a door,” Castiel says.
“Okay... last one opens and?”
Sam feels his blood run cold. “Lucifer walks free.”
Dean blinks. “I thought Lucifer was just a story they told at demon Sunday school. There's no such thing.”
“A week ago you were sure there was no such thing as me. Why do you think we're here walking among you now for the first time in two thousand years?”
“You're going to stop Lucifer,” Dean says flatly.
Sam shakes his head, his earlier dizziness returning along with a flurry of images that flash behind his eyes so quickly he can't make heads or tails of them. “I don't... it's happening faster than before. The Seals. That's why you couldn't be here for the Witnesses.”
“Our numbers are not unlimited, and more than half a dozen of my brothers have fallen on the field of battle this week. There are other Seals to defend, and the onslaught of the demons has been... fiercer than we anticipated.”
“But you know where the Seals are, right?” Dean is making a visible effort not to pace. “Why not just figure out the ones that are left and just post guards there or something?”
“There are too many for that to be possible.”
“What, you can't defend sixty-six Seals? That's pretty lame.”
“There are more than that, Dean,” Sam breaks in, trying to get the flood of images in his mind to stop, or at least slow down. “Anna said there were six hundred and sixty-six, remember? They only need sixty-six of them to break. 's a stupid rule, if you ask me.”
“Sam, what the fuck are you talking about? Who's Anna?”
He feels sick again. “God... uh... I don't―”
“Anna does not exist here as you knew her,” Castiel leans over and places a hand on Sam's shoulder in the first genuine gesture of concern he's shown since Sam first saw him in that diner in Wyoming, blue eyes staring so intently into his face that Sam finds himself flushing under the scrutiny. “Try to focus, Sam. You cannot allow yourself to conflate your realities this way.”
“Sam, what the fuck?”
Castiel glances over his shoulder at Dean. “He is seeing two realities at once, and his mind cannot cope with it. If he doesn't learn to control this, he will lose his mind, or worse.”
“Worse?”
Sam laughs mirthlessly. “I think he means it'll kill me.”
*
The problem with demanding explanations from angels is that, well, angels aren't really accountable to anyone but themselves, and Castiel leaves them with more questions than ever. Dean spends the next hour pacing and asking questions that Sam can't answer, and finally grabs his coat and yanks it over his shoulders.
“Where you going?” Sam is still sitting cross-legged on the bed, cradling his now-throbbing head in his hands. The concussion isn't helping matters, but he's pretty sure it's not the main cause of the pain. The short burst of adrenaline that kept him mostly functional while Castiel was there is fading fast, leaving him drained and shaky and desperate to just go to sleep and not wake up for the next week.
“Out. I need to clear my head.”
“Dean, it's late, we're both exhausted...”
“I know that. You think you can manage not to lapse into a coma while I'm gone, or do you need me to hold your hand?”
“I don't ―fine!” he scrubs a hand through his hair. “Just... if you're going to get drunk, don't take the car.”
“I'm not an idiot, Sam!”
“Whatever.”
There's part of him that knows he shouldn't be giving up these arguments so easily, but he can't muster up the energy to fight Dean on this now. Besides, he thinks they can both use the space at this point. He flips his pillow and curls up with his face pressed into it.
“Take your phone,” he mutters, and doesn't wait for Dean's answer before letting himself fall asleep.
*
“Where the hell is your brother at?” Bobby hands Sam a bottle of water, and comes to sit next to him on the porch outside his house, holding a bottle of beer by the neck between his knees.
Sam shrugs. “No idea. Got up this morning and he was gone. Won't answer his phone. I don't think he's far. His stuff's still here.”
“You with us today?” the question is hesitant, and Sam has to clamp down hard on the anger and resentment that bubbles up in him. He reminds himself that Bobby is perfectly entitled to ascertain if Sam's having a good day or a bad day, if whatever's going to come out of his mouth will make sense for once. He offers Bobby a small smile that he hopes looks reassuring.
“Yeah, no worries: lights are on, everyone's home. Not even a headache to speak of today. I'm counting it a win. Turns out lowering your standards is a good thing. Didn't Dean leave you a note?” He doesn't bother trying to hide the fact that he's obviously changing the subject away from himself. “ It's not like him to go off without a word.”
Bobby rolls his eyes. “A paper with 'back later' written on it ain't exactly my idea of a note.”
He nudges Bobby's elbow with a quiet laugh, earning himself a glare as he nearly causes the older man to spill his beer. “Come on, Bobby. Dean catches you acting like an old woman about him, he'll never let you live it down. He left a note, even if it doesn't meet your expectations. He just... needs some time to stop freaking out about everything. ”
Bobby snorts at that. “You gonna tell me what's eating at him? I don't like this new habit of his of sneakin' around.”
“I might if I can switch out the water for a beer,” Sam's attempt to lighten the mood falls a little flat. “Right. Look, I don't know for sure, but I don't think it's a stretch to figure it's got to be this whole apocalypse thing.”
“Nothing to do with you, then?” Bobby asks pointedly, and he sighs, because Bobby's right.
In typical Winchester fashion, Dean decided that they were, in his words, 'taking a break from the apocalypse,' and all but hogtied Sam in order to get him back to Sioux Falls, where he and Bobby ganged up on Sam until he reluctantly agreed to go back to the hospital. That was nearly three weeks ago. Since then it's been nothing but tests and more tests and taking blood and CT scans and more things that they probably can't afford and that Dean insists he submit to anyway. He wants to resent Dean for the hovering, the fussing, but mostly he knows that his brother is right, which might be even more frustrating.
No matter how they look at it, he's getting worse. The seizures have mostly tapered off, but the near-blinding migraines and the nightmares haven't ―more often than not he wakes up screaming and shaking, unable to shake the image of Dean broken and bloody on the ground. Some days he finds he can't sure whether what he's seeing is happening now or happened (or didn't happen) in that future that's now unlikely to take place. On those days he's dimly aware of Dean and Bobby watching him wander like a zombie through the house, unable to concentrate enough even to bury himself in one of Bobby's books, trying to decipher the garbled sentences that spill from his lips. He wants to reassure them that he's not crazy, that there's a good reason for the way he's acting, but he's beginning to doubt it himself.
When Dean isn't acting like Sam's second shadow, or working on one of the cars in Bobby's yard, then he's nowhere to be found. If Winchesters are good at anything, Sam reflects, it's pulling disappearing acts. He's never gone for more than twelve hours, and comes back smelling of cigarette smoke and alcohol and sometimes of sex, and Sam very carefully doesn't push him on it. He's the very last person who should be complaining about a brother who keeps secrets from him. He finds Castiel's absence more troubling than Dean's occasional outings, anyway. While he's always reasonably sure his brother is close by, the longer the angel stays away, the more anxious he becomes. If he weren't so worried, he thinks he'd probably be amused by the role reversal. In another lifetime, it would have been Dean wearing a hole in the carpeting worrying about Castiel's absence.
“Six of one, half a dozen of the other, isn't it?” he tries not to sound bitter as he answers Bobby's question, and thinks he's probably failed. “I can't tell if he's more worried that I'm going to die again or turn evil while his back is turned.” He yelps when Bobby swats him behind the head. “Ow!”
“Boy, there are days when I can't tell which of you two is a bigger ass than the other. You say anything like than again, don't think I won't kick your ass from here into next week.”
He raises his hands in mock-surrender. “Come on. You wouldn't do that to an invalid, would you?”
Bobby rolls his eyes. “Invalid my ass. Speakin' of which, them new pills working?” he asks, trying to be casual about it and taking another pull from his beer.
“Which ones? I feel like a damned drugstore, and for all I know they could all be useless and it's just that really disgusting crap Dean keeps making me drink. And before you ask, I haven't had any yet, but I will, I promise. I'm just enjoying a few hours' worth of not having my mouth taste like ass,” he says, wishing he didn't sound quite so defensive.
“It does smell pretty nasty. But you're doin' better, right?” Bobby asks again, and Sam shrugs.
“Hard to say. I mean, the only way to know is if I have another seizure, and then all we know is that they're not working. The doctor says it's not good to switch up too soon anyway. I'm just lucky they haven't locked me away for acting crazy yet. Besides, I don't think it's something the meds can help with, you know that.”
“You tell your brother that?”
“Yeah, and that went about as well as you would expect. It's hard on him, you know? He lost me, and I know how close that came to destroying him. I know what it's like... ” He takes a drink from his water bottle, lets the water sit in his mouth for a moment in a futile attempt to relieve the feeling of dryness the newest pills have been causing. “And then, I came back broken. I know how hard it must be for him, seeing me like this.”
“You ain't broken, kid,” Bobby's tone is gruff, gentle. “A little frayed around the edges, maybe, but who ain't these days?”
Sam shakes his head, feels a smile tug at his lips anyway. “Thanks, Bobby.”
*
“Dean!”
The light is brilliant, blinding, the air filled with white noise that shrieks and whines, bursting every pane of glass for miles around as the archangels descend on Detroit. Sam feels the earth vibrating, shaking beneath his feet. He's blind, deaf and dumb. Rooted to the spot.
I agreed to this, he reminds himself. It was the only way. It'll only take a moment, and then it'll be over.
The noise grows in intensity, impossibly loud, and the universe catches on fire all around him. The ground falls away, and he's filled with light, with sound and fury. He feels Lucifer's presence like a nuclear explosion, and all he can do is cling to the feeling like a drowning man to a piece of driftwood, and he prays the circle of holy fire is enough to keep him contained.
When he can see again he's lying on broken asphalt. He sees Dean lying crumpled on the ground, so far away he seems tiny, like looking down at the street from the top of a tall building. He tries to call out, but there's nothing left. Lightning arcs through him. His body is wracked with pain, but the sensation is distant, as though it's somehow outside of him, and he can't bring himself to care one way or the other. A moment later his vision goes dark once more
Dean is dead.
It was all for nothing, because his brother is dead.
A hand closes over his wrist, the grip gentle, but firm, and for a moment hope flares in him, the sensation fluttering like a moth before a flame.
“Dean?”
“No, it's not Dean. I am sorry.”
“Where is... did he make it? Tell me he made it.”
“I am sorry.”
“He promised. He promised he would spare Dean. Why would Michael lie, Cas?”
“Angels lie.”
There's a pause, and then Sam begins to laugh.
*
They take out a coven of witches in Wichita (and the irony isn't lost on Sam). After another two fruitless weeks of scans and tests and doctors simply shaking their heads in bewilderment, Dean reluctantly agrees that there's not much more to be gained by sitting around and waiting. Besides, a woman spitting out her teeth and then drowning in her own blood on the bathroom floor while her husband pounds on the door sounds like the perfect way to get back into the game without having to take on the apocalypse.
Sam hasn't seen hide nor hair of Castiel since they parted ways in Illinois, and secretly he's rather relieved. It's not that he doesn't trust the angel, but there's something to be said for 'out of sight, out of mind.' If he doesn't think too hard about it, he can almost pretend to himself that the Seals aren't breaking even as they wait around, that the end of the world isn't just around the corner. When he does allow himself to think about it, he tells himself that the angels are all simply busy defending the other Seals, that if they truly needed the help of two mortal hunters ―one of whom was having trouble keeping reality separate from delusion on a good day― then they would come and ask for it.
Somehow he's not surprised when Dean doubles over in pain in their motel room. It doesn't prevent him from quietly freaking out while he tries to find the hex bag that must be secreted away somewhere in the room. It's been two days of food turning into maggot-riddled filth and decapitated rabbits and people spitting up sewing needles, and the feeling of having seen it all before is so strong that Sam ends up losing his lunch more than once. The hex bag is nowhere to be found, and blood is beginning to bubble at the corners of Dean's mouth. He clutches at Sam's arm, mouth working soundlessly, his face contorted in pain, and Sam feels a wild flutter of panic against his ribcage.
“Stay here,” he says, smoothing a hand over Dean's forehead, already beading with sweat. “I'm going to go find her, make her stop this.”
“What? Who?” Dean coughs, and blood drips down his chin. “Sam... don't―”
Sam doesn't listen, knows he can't afford to stay. The math is simple: if he stays, Dean dies. So he leaves him curled in a ball on the bed, choking on the pins that have materialized in his stomach, and tears off back toward the witch's house. He finds the coven magically negotiating a better mortgage rate for 'Renée,' of all the stupid uses for magic he's heard of. Two of the women shriek and try to scramble away from him, but he's not interested in them: he already knows who's behind all of this. He can smell the demon blood pumping through Tammi's veins even from where he stands.
“I know what you are,” he tells her.
“Nice dick work, Magnum,” Tammi smirks, her eyes flicking black.
Sam just rolls his eyes. “Renée, Elizabeth, go now. Run, and don't look back, you hear me?”
“Tammi... what's wrong with your eyes?” Elizabeth stammers from where she's cowering on the floor. Luckily for her, Renée has a better sense of self-preservation, and grabs her by the arm, pulling her away and out the front door.
“Come on, Elizabeth!”
They're not even through the front door before Tammi's arm comes up in a sweeping motion clearly meant to casually toss Sam into the wall across the room. He stands his ground, calmly tucks his handgun back into the waistband of his jeans. Her head jerks up in surprise, and he feels a cold smile spread over his face.
“Yeah... that demon trick? Doesn't work on me, Tammi. You're not nearly powerful enough,” he says, advancing on her slowly, relishing the sudden fear coming off her, so strongly he can smell it. “Not even Lilith can match me, you know,” he continues quietly, backing her up against the wall.
“H-how do you know about Lilith?”
He traces a finger along the line of her throat, feels a thrill run through him that he hasn't experienced in a long time. Power surges through him, thrumming in his veins.. “I know about a lot of things, Tammi. You're too low on the totem pole, no matter what you think. You're a medium-sized fish in a tiny, tiny pond. Barely worth noticing.”
“Lilith will have your head on a plate,” she spits, and the scent of fear, heady and powerful, grows even stronger.
“But not before I end you,” he murmurs.
It would be simple enough, he thinks, just to slice open her throat, laid bare before him already. He can almost taste the blood, feel it slide over his tongue, warm and familiar, copper and sulphur blending together. The demon whimpers, and he shakes himself, pulls back, just as footsteps sound from behind him.
“Sam!”
He brings up his hand, clenches it into a fist ―the gesture at once alien and familiar. A terrible choking, coughing sound comes from the demon's throat, and slowly, inexorably, smoke begins to trickle from her mouth. The trickle becomes a flood, and the air fills with the smell of brimstone as the smoke dissolves into the floor. Tammi ―or what's left of her― crumples in a heap, and Sam staggers, has to put out a hand to brace himself against the wall so as not to follow her example. There's something warm and wet running over his mouth and chin, and when he brings up his fingers to touch it he's not surprised when the tips come away crimson.
“Sam!” Dean ducks in front of him, hands on his shoulder. “Sammy, talk to me!”
“I'm okay, Dean. It's just a nosebleed.”
“Sam, what the fuck was that? How did you do that?”
He grins, and knows how ghastly he must look. “Turns out I didn't need the magic feather after all.”
*
Dean half-drags him back to the Impala, doesn't bother so much as checking to see if Tammi is still breathing. He shoves Sam into the back seat, presses a handful of diner napkins from the glove compartment to stem the flow of blood.
“Hold that there,” he says curtly. “Keep your head back.”
He does as he's told, trying to keep his hands from shaking. His head hurts, but not nearly as much as he thinks it should. His mouth is filling with blood, and he leans out the open door to spit on the ground.
“You okay?” he asks, spitting again.
“Yeah, I'm okay. Whatever that bitch did, seems to have stopped now.”
“How'd that happen?”
“I thought it was when you, uh, did ―whatever that was. Stopped her mojo, or whatever.”
Sam shakes his head. “I heard you come in before that. Couldn't have been what I did,” he looks up, and Dean looks away, stares at nothing in particular.
“Huh. Well, I dunno. Whatever it was, it stopped. I don't know about you, but I'm thinking this is a gift horse and I'm not gonna look it in the mouth.”
“We should get you checked out, just in case. See a doctor. Make sure there's no permanent damage.” He knows Dean is lying to him ―Dean's never been able to lie convincingly to anyone in their family― but calling him on it now is going to lead to the kind of argument that he doesn't have the energy to deal with. At least, that's what he tells himself.
“Yeah, okay.” If nothing else, the ease with which Dean agrees to medical help should be an indication of his state of mind. “I'm taking you back to Bobby's. Whatever's going on with you, it's obviously not over.”
*
“You're strong, but not that strong yet,” Lilith says. She looks different from the last time Sam saw her ―all gussied up in Ruby's borrowed body. It's all grown-up and pretty, she'd said. He thinks maybe she got a taste for possessing people other than little girls from that moment.
“So why don't you throw me around, then?” he challenges her.
“Because I can't, and you know it.” She steps toward him, with a smile that reminds him of nothing more than a young girl mimicking her older sister's seduction technique in the mirror. “You're immune to my charms. Seems we're at a stalemate.”
“Why are you here?”
“To talk,” she says simply, and sits on the bed, crossing one shapely leg over the other.
He scoffs. “Yeah, well, I'm not interested.”
“Even if I'm offering to stand down? From the Seals, the apocalypse, all of it?”
“You expect me to believe that?” But he's already wavering. He wants this all to be over, desperately, and he knows she can tell. The bait is there, and in a moment she'll have him: hook, line, and sinker.
“Honestly? No,” she smirks. “But it's the truth. You can end it, Sam, right here, right now. I'll stop breaking Seals, Lucifer keeps rotting in his cage. All you have to do is agree to my terms.”
He's missing something. Something crucial.
“Why would you back down? Why now?”
*
They make it back to Bobby's in record time. Dean doesn't so much as hint at seeing a doctor, and Sam doesn't push. Figures he ought to pick his battles, and since Dean isn't puking up blood anymore, he's going to count this one as a win. Dean pointedly doesn't mention the fact that Sam just exorcized a demon using only his mind, and Sam lets it go, feeling an inexplicable pang of loss at his brother's lack of fury.
He isn't sure why he's surprised to find a hex bag sewn into the lining of one of his jackets the next day. He sits cross-legged on his bed, holding it in the palm of his hand. Wonders just what the hell to do next.
*
The migraine hits in the late afternoon, and by the time the light dwindles into evening, Sam thinks that there's a very real possibility that his head is going to split right open, kind of like that time Dean didn't aim his machete right at that vampire. He's curled into a tight ball on his bed in Bobby's spare room, both arms wrapped around his head in a futile attempt to block out what little sound and light there is, which is already precious little. Even the sound of his breathing ratchets up the pain levels to the limits of his endurance. The one pill he did manage to take before collapsing on his bed is doing absolutely nothing, and right now even the thought of moving to try to get another one is laughable. Well, it would be laughable if it didn't hurt so much to laugh.
The door creaks on its hinges and he flinches, sending another stabbing pain lancing through his skull. He swallows, willing himself not to be sick. The whole room is throbbing in time with his heartbeat, red spots pulsing behind his eyelids. Rubber-soled feet scuff lightly across the threadbare carpet of Bobby's guest room.
“Sam?” the voice is whisper-quiet. “You asleep?”
“D'n?” Distantly he recalls that slurring his words is a bad sign.
“He ain't back yet.” Bobby, then. More scuffing sounds, and then fabric sliding against wood as Bobby pulls the chair closer to the bed. “You take anything?”
“Pill. Couple hours 'go, th'nk,” he tries to curl up tighter, but there's nowhere to go. Even talking hurts, the words bouncing off the inside of his skull.
“It ain't helpin', I take it?”
“No' s'much.”
“You bad enough for a hospital?”
“No. 's okay.”
“Stubborn idjit.”
He hears Bobby get up and fuss with something on the top of the small chest of drawers in the room ―where all his medications are sitting, lined up in the order in which he's supposed to take them. A moment later and the bed sinks under Bobby's added weight, and Sam can't quite bite back a moan at the unexpected movement.
“Sorry, kid, I know it hurts. Gonna give you one of them injections, okay?” Like Dean, Bobby talks him through the process, keeping his voice to a low murmur as he pulls up the sleeve of Sam's t-shirt and carefully swabs his arm with a disinfectant wipe. “Easy does it. You're gonna feel a little prick ―don't even think of jokin', boy― and you're done,” he rubs Sam's arm once, careful to avoid the injection site.
“Wh'r's D'n?”
“I don't know. He's been gone all day, remember? Don't you worry about him, all right? I'll get him to come in and see you the minute he's back.”
“'kay. 's not us'lly gone th's long...” Sam tries to look up, which turns out to be a spectacularly bad idea, and he has to press his face back into his arms and breathe through the flare-up of pain. He almost misses Bobby's next words through the haze of crimson that settles over him.
“I know. You just sleep off that headache, and I promise Dean'll come as soon as he's back ―right after I kick his fool ass for makin' me worry. Okay?”
“'kay... Bobby?”
“What?”
“Uh... we need to look up...”
“It can wait.”
“No, it can't. Vessels. For archangels. C'n you do that for me? Can't c'ncentrate for shit... Dean an' me... s'pposed t'be in our blood. In case we can't stop Lucifer now. Look it up for me?”
A hand drops softly on his shoulder, and even that small contact is enough to make him want to throw up. “Okay, Sam, sure. I'll see what I can find about vessels. But you better sleep, you hear me?”
“'Kay. Bobby?”
Bobby can't quite mask the exasperation in his voice. “Go to sleep, boy.”
“You'll look after 'im, right?”
“Who, Sam?”
“D'n. Wh'n I'm not 're 'nymore. Needs lookin' after.”
Bobby sighs, rubs his shoulder with his thumb. “Ain't no call to talk like that. We're gonna figure this out, boy. Don't you worry.”
“Y'need to l'k after 'im. Pr'mise me?”
“Sure, kid. But you know I would anyway. Now sleep before I knock you out and make you.”
“Righ'. Sleepin'.”
He drifts halfway to sleep after a while as the pain recedes, only half-rousing when he feels something warm being pressed to the back of his neck. He murmurs a protest at the contact, feels himself being gently pulled over to lie on his back.
“Easy, boy,” Bobby's gruff tone comes from far away, and a cold gel pack is laid over his eyes, leeching away some of the remaining pain. Sam sighs quietly, feels the muscles in his shoulders and neck unclench, settles back into a deeper sleep than before.
*
The room is still dark when he awakens to the sound of the front door opening and closing stealthily downstairs. Carefully he reaches up and pulls off the now-warm gel pack, gingerly opens his eyes, one at a time, waiting for the clenching, thrumming pain to return. He's pleasantly surprised when it doesn't, and he risks slowly turning on his side. When that doesn't hurt either, he pushes himself to a sitting position, feet flat on the floor, and takes a moment to catch his breath, to make sure the room won't start spinning. He feels light and heavy at the same time, as though his head might float clear of his body if he moves too fast. Voices drift up the stairs in loud whispers.
“Oh! Uh, Bobby. Hey. Uh, you weren't waiting up, were you?”
“Boy, I ought to take the skin off your backside. Do you know what time it is?”
“Hey now,” Sam can almost hear Dean bristling. “I don't know if you noticed, Bobby, but I'm not sixteen years old anymore. Last I checked, I ain't accountable to you, or anyone else for that matter.”
Bobby blows out a breath. “No, you ain't, but I'd still consider it a courtesy,” he stresses the word with as much irony as he can muster ―and for Bobby, that's quite a lot, “if you'd do more'n leave a cryptic note before you disappear for almost twenty-four hours and leave me and your sick brother to worry if you're okay. Or at least turn your damn cell phone on!”
“I did! The battery just ran out, okay? Is Sam okay?”
“He's okay. Got one of them headaches, but he's been sleepin' fine for the past few hours.”
“Shit, another migraine? That's the second one this week.”
There's a pause, then Bobby speaks again, more softly. “Come on, boy. Let me get you a beer. Then I'll let you go and check on your brother.”
Sam gets to his feet, testing his balance, makes his way to the top of the landing, the tips of his fingers brushing against the wall as a precaution. Even the dim lighting in the hallway makes him squint, but compared to before the discomfort barely registers. He slips down the stairs in his bare feet, grateful that he's still able to move quietly even after everything that's happened, then hesitates about two-thirds of the way down as the stairs start to tilt alarmingly in a way that stairs are not meant to tilt, ever. He shuts his eyes, grabs onto the stair railing with one hand, eases himself to a sitting position and puts his head between his knees, wonders when exactly it became an insurmountable chore to descend a flight of stairs.
“You gotta talk to your brother,” Bobby's saying from the kitchen. “He's worried about you, and that ain't helpin' him get better.”
“Yeah, well, he doesn't have a monopoly on worrying.”
“Boy, sometimes I just want to shake you until your teeth rattle. You've been sneaking in and out of here like a cat in heat, and don't tell me you're just out drinkin'. I know who you're going to see. I may be old, but I ain't blind, and I sure as hell ain't stupid.”
Dean sighs, and Sam can picture him dropping his gaze to stare at his beer, rubbing a hand over his mouth the way he always does when he feels guilty. “She's been helping, Bobby, you know that. Look at what she did with the Colt. Without her, it'd be useless.”
Sam's head snaps up in surprise at that ―another mistake, as the room lurches again. He knew Dean and Bobby were working on the Colt, trying to see what made it tick, but without the special bullets, it was just a regular revolver again, less useful than any modern handgun with a clip, deadly to humans but certainly not to anything like a demon.
“She did us a favour, I'll grant you that, but you can't tell me she's not playing some sort of game of her own. I don't like how much she's messing with you, Dean. She's using Sam to get to you, you know that.”
“I know, I know! It's just... she's helping. Whatever it is, he's hasn't had a single goddamned seizure in weeks, and right now that's good enough. I just... I can't watch him go through that anymore, Bobby, I can't!”
“Because the way he is now is so much better? The boy can't hardly function!”
“But at least he isn't dying!” Dean snaps. “You saw what was happening to him, Bobby. You honestly think he can survive much more of that? The MRIs showed more lesions than last time. Lesions, Bobby! His brain is fucking tearing itself apart. Whatever else Ruby might be up to, she's helping him.”
“So you're willing to let her lead you by the nose right into hell?”
“If that's what it takes.”
“Dammit, Dean,” Bobby exclaims, though he keeps his voice quiet. “You and your Daddy... you're just itchin' to throw yourselves into the Pit. Do you really value yourself so little?”
“That's not it.”
“Then enlighten me, please.”
There's a scraping sound, from where Dean is presumably twisting his beer bottle between his fingers on the table top. “He already died once, Bobby, and, uh... I thought... I just... it's worse this time. I thought nothing could be worse than that, but now I have to watch him go, piece by piece, you know?” There's a pause, during which neither man says anything. Sam can picture Bobby waiting patiently while Dean fumbles for unfamiliar words. “It ―he barely makes sense anymore. He keeps going on about things that sound crazy, even by our standards... He thinks I died, Bobby. Wakes up screaming from those nightmares, and nothing I can say makes him think any different. What the hell am I supposed to do? Just sit by and let him fall apart?”
“No, of course not... but this?”
Dizzy or not, Sam realizes with a pang of guilt that he's been eavesdropping, and that's not exactly the kind of thing that builds trust with your brother. He takes a breath, pushes himself back to his feet, praying that the floor stays where it's supposed to, and manages to make it down a couple more steps before he stumbles again.
“Sam?” Dean is in the kitchen doorway in a flash, hurries over to put a hand on Sam's arm. “Bobby said you had a migraine. What're you doing up?”
He looks up at Dean, squinting against the light from the ceiling fixture, and manages a sheepish grin. “Felt better. Heard you come in, thought I'd come down, 'xcept I'm kind of dizzy now.” It's not a lie.
Dean squats in front of him, puts up a hand to feel his forehead. “You got a fever?” It's a legitimate question, Sam reminds himself as irritation surges through him in a brief flash. He does get fevers sometimes, with the really bad migraines. He shakes his head.
“No, maybe before, but I'm okay now. Just a little dizzy.”
“Think food would help? I can make soup.”
“C'n I have a sandwich instead?” Sam grins again, trying not to let on just how quickly he's started to feel sick again. “Tired of soup. It's like I never have anything else these days. Soup's for sick people.”
Dean rolls his eyes. “Yeah, 'cause you're obviously healthy as a horse. Fine, I'll make you a sandwich, princess. Come on, can you stand if I help you?”
“Sure. Was doing pretty good on my own there, too, for a minute. Baby steps,” Sam mutters, letting Dean hoist him to his feet and half-drag him to the kitchen, where Bobby is still sitting at the table, two half-empty beer bottles standing at either end of the table. “Hey, Bobby.”
“Should you be up?”
He shrugs. “Better'n being down.”
“Smartass.”
Sam pulls out of Dean's grasp, slides into a chair at the table and leans his elbows on it, resting his head in his hands. “Dean promised me a sandwich. And I figure now's a good a time as any to tell me why you've been lying to me for weeks, right Dean?”
*
“Sam, what are―”
Sam holds up a hand to interrupt. “Dean, come on. I know I haven't exactly been on the ball lately, but I'm not an idiot. Please don't treat me like one.”
“Sam...”
“Okay, I'll start. Communication's a two-way street, right?” he promised himself he wouldn't get angry, but it looks like that's yet another promise he's going to break. He reaches into his jeans pocket and pulls out a small cloth packet, one that fits easily in the palm of his hand. “So I found this earlier today. After you left, but before the migraine started. I was going to ask you about it, but, well, you weren't here. Were you planning on telling me that you planted a hex bag in my clothing? 'Cause, y'know, I'm curious.”
Bobby's eyes are wide, but at a look from Sam he bites his tongue.
Dean is leaning against the counter, gripping the edge with both hands, staring resolutely at the floor. “It's not like that.”
“Oh no?” Sam tosses the bag on the table. “Then what is it like, Dean? You're always bitching about witches and bodily fluids and sacrificing rabbits, and the next thing I know, you're squirrelling goddamned hex bags into the seams of my clothing. What the fuck?”
“I'm just trying to keep you safe.”
“By using witchcraft? That's the goddamned opposite of safe, Dean!”
Dean shoots Bobby a desperate look. “You want to weigh in here, now would be a good time.”
Bobby raises his hands palm-outward. “You're doin' a fine job of digging your own grave, son. You don't want me helping you, trust me.”
The migraine is gone, but Sam's already starting to feel the familiar creeping sensation coming back, of seeing two realities at once. The last time he saw a hex bag like this one, he's pretty sure he's the one who made it. He stares at the small bundle, trying to remember what it does, what would happen if he tore it apart right here on the table. He keeps his voice down, but it cracks with anger anyway.
“You going to tell me where you've been going? Or do I have to guess? I've always been good at charades.”
That's good, Sam. You keep fanning that fire in your belly. All that pent-up rage. I'm gonna need it.
“Sam―”
“How about you start with the girl you've been meeting? The one who helped you put the Colt back together. The one who probably showed you how to make this cute little thing,” he flicks a finger at the hex bag. “What's her name?”
Dean blows out a slow breath. “Ruby.”
He isn't surprised. “How long?”
“Since Illinois. Peoria.”
If there was anything left in his stomach, Sam is pretty sure he'd be throwing it up right about now. Looks like the sandwich isn't such a great idea after all. “She's a demon, Dean.” He doesn't know how he knows this, but he does, with the same certainty he knows his own name.
“She's helping us.”
Sam scrubs a hand through his hair, barks out a bitter laugh. “God, I should be on the other side of this conversation. You know she's a demon, right? Demons lie, Dean. They lie like they breathe.”
Dean pushes away from the counter, paces the length of the kitchen. “I know! I know all that, you think I don't? I just... I don't see too many options, here, Sammy. She's got knowledge that'll help you, that's been helping you, and you can't tell me to just ignore that and let you―” he stops abruptly.
“Let me what? Die? I'm not going to die, Dean. Not from this.”
“How do you know?” Dean snaps, looking up at Sam for the first time since this argument started. “How can you possibly know that? You're not the one who has to sit back and watch every time you collapse and seize and practically choke on your own spit, Sam! Whatever the hell that guy did to you, it's ripping you apart, and I won't stand by and let it just happen.”
“Castiel didn't do anything to me, Dean.”
“That's not what he said.”
Sam grinds the heel of his hand into his eye in frustration. “I mean, he didn't do anything bad. This... this isn't his doing. It's... I guess it's like a side-effect of what he did. He brought me back, that's all.”
“That's all,” Dean repeats, his expression indecipherable.
“Yes, that's all!” he says irritably.
“You really want to pick a fight over this, Sammy?”
Just as Sam feels the last thread of his temper snap, Bobby gets to his feet, motions to both of them to be quiet. “We got company,” he says, jerking his head in the direction of the front door and reaching for one of the shotgun he keeps by the kitchen door at all times.
Instantly Sam is on his feet, all thoughts of the argument brewing with his brother forgotten, and he manages to stay upright without wavering, adrenaline surging through him. He bolts through the kitchen door on Bobby's heels, Dean right behind him.
“Guys, wait!”
Sam comes to a halt a few paces away from the front door, mouth agape in an expression he's quite sure is mirrored on Bobby's face. Ruby is standing there, hands on her hips, one hip jutting out at a saucy angle. She glances down at the devil's trap on the floor, arches an eyebrow at them, and smirks.
“Are you guys just going to stand there, or are you going to let me in?”
*
“Sammy, long time no see,” Ruby drapes herself over the arm of Bobby's sofa. After a heated argument about the merits ―or lack thereof, rather― of breaking the devil's trap, Dean eventually won out, and Bobby is now carefully touching up the paint job, shooting them all baleful glares as he does so.
“It could have been longer, for all I care.”
Ruby places a hand over her heart. “Oh, Sammy, you wound me!”
“Don't call me that.”
Her face grows serious. “Fine. You can thank me for saving your life later.”
He snorts. “I seriously doubt that.”
Dean physically interposes himself, stepping between where Sam is leaning against a table and the demon. “I'm assuming you're out of your self-imposed witness protection program for a reason, right?” he says to Ruby. “What's going on?”
“Lilith,” she says tersely. “The Seals are breaking faster than ever ―faster than anyone thought possible. The demons are working overtime.”
“What do you care?” Sam asks, feeling his face heat up in spite of himself.
“I care. If I didn't, would I be helping you?”
Sam snorts at that. “Sure you would. Demons lie all the time. You can't expect me to believe you're doing this out of the kindness of your heart. What's your angle? What do you want?”
“I want you to stop Lilith.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Look, believe me if you want to, I don't care,” Ruby rolls her eyes as though asking some unseen power for the patience she doesn't possess. “I don't really give a damn about you two chuckleheads. If I had any choice in the matter, I'd be avoiding your particular brand of self-sacrificing crazy, but right now you're the only game in town. The angels are losing this war.”
Sam feels himself grow cold. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, in the past week, twelve Seals have broken. Dozens of angels are dead, destroyed or sent back to where they came from. Every day is one day closer, and if someone doesn't do something...”
“Then the Devil goes free,” Dean finishes quietly.
“Wait a minute,” Bobby breaks in. “If all this is happening the way you say it is, how come we ain't heard about it. Sam, you're supposed to have an in with that angel, ain't you? How come he ain't said anything?”
Sam shakes his head. “I haven't heard from him in―” he stops, then reaches in his pocket and pulls out the hex bag. “That's what this is,” he breathes. “I knew I'd seen it before. You've been keeping us hidden. From the angels, from everything.”
“Someone had to do it.”
“And the stuff Dean's been giving me... that was never Bobby's recipe.” He doesn't need to see the shocked expression on Bobby's face to know he's right. “What was in it?”
She shrugs. “Nothing harmful. Just something to keep you from flopping on the ground like a dying fish. I know a thing or two about this stuff ―which is why your brother isn't currently dead from a stomachful of needles, I might add.”
“You've been drugging me.” He turns to Dean, eyes burning, feels his throat closing up. Finds himself wishing he wasn't so damned weak, for once. “Why? Why would you do that?”
Dean still won't meet his gaze. “It's not like that, Sammy. She's just trying to help. You can't see what this vision shit is doing to you ―you can't see it the way I do. It's killing you, Sammy, and I... I just―”
“What, you did it for my own good? Like the―” he almost says 'panic room,' chokes on the words before they can come out of his mouth. The panic room was for his own good, but it never happened, or hasn't happened. Bile burns at the back of his throat, and he swallows hard.
“Okay, can we just skip over the melodrama?” Ruby says impatiently. “Every day is one day closer, and if someone doesn't do something...”
“People are gonna die?” Sam says sarcastically. “And you said I was being melodramatic. People die every day. How is drugging me going to help that?”
“It's not just that people are gonna die, Sam. It's hundreds of thousands of people. Oceans of people. Lilith breaks the final Seal, and Lucifer's gonna bring hell to earth. And you're the only one who can stop her, Sam. You and Dean, but mostly you. Destroy Lilith, and it all goes back to the way it was.”
“Cut the head off the snake, is that it? The problem with that line of reasoning is that the snake has a thousand heads. You know that, Dean, you're the one who said it to me.”
Dean's head jerks up, and he meets Sam's gaze for the first time since Ruby walked in. “What? What are you talking about?”
“In Sioux City, the death transference spell...” Sam trails off, headache spiking again. “Shit.”
“Sam?”
“Never mind. Hasn't happened. Different timeline.”
“More of your déjà vu that isn't déjà vu crap?”
“It's not crap. I should've figured something was wrong when Castiel stopped showing up. It was all too convenient: you decided to 'take a break' at the same time as he disappears? I should've known.”
“Sammy...”
“No!” Abruptly he pushes away from the table. “I've had just about enough crap, from the both of you. You can't see it, Dean, but she's manipulating you. She's rotten to the core, and you can't trust her. I'm ending this, now.” He uncurls his fist from around the hex bag.
“No!” It's Ruby's turn to yell. She throws herself at him, reaching for the bag, but it's too late.
With a twist of his fingers, he rips the packet apart, sprinkling its contents onto Bobby's carpet.
*
“You're a fool, Sam Winchester,” Ruby spits. “A damned fool. I ought to kill you where you stand, and I'd be doing us all a favour.”
“I'd like to see you try.”
“Woah!” Dean whips around to face her, and Sam can practically see realization dawning as his body language changes. “No one's killing anyone! I've been letting you hang around because you've been helping, but you change the deal, and all bets are off, sister.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Sam sees Bobby slip from the room with a surreptitious nod in his direction. He keeps his gaze trained on Ruby and Dean, careful not to betray his movements.
“I don't know what lies she's been feeding you, Dean, but I can guarantee you they're lies.”
“Look, I never thought we should trust her―”
“Hey!”
Dean ignores the outburst. “But she's been useful, Sam. She's kept you from having those goddamned seizures, for one. And she wants Lilith iced as badly as we do.”
Sam folds his arms across his chest, leans back against the table. “Do you?”
Ruby cocks her head to the side. “Let's just say she's not my biggest fan. Not since I cheated her of you. It's not too late, Sam. You can still beat her, still prevent her from breaking the final Seal. You kill Lilith, and things go back to the way they were.”
What do you want?
For it to go back to the way it was. Before I had angels to deal with twenty-four/seven. When it was all baby blood all the time.
“All baby blood, all the time,” he mutters, pinches the bridge of his nose, eyes screwed shut.
“What?”
“I know you.”
“You said that before, but I'm telling you, I'd remember if we met. I haven't been on earth in... well, a very long time.”
I know it's hard to see it now... but this is a miracle. So long coming. Everything Azazel did, and Lilith did. Just to get you here. And you were the only one who could do it.
Sam clutches at the table with his free hand, trying to keep his balance as memories superimpose themselves. “Fuck...”
“Sam?” he senses rather than sees Dean edging toward him, slip a hand around his elbow, grounding him.
Because it had to be you, Sammy. It always had to be you.
“She's working for Lilith. Or she may as well be working for her,” he forces his eyes open, blinking even in the dim light of Bobby's living room. “I saw her, Dean.”
“You mean you saw her, saw her?” Dean asks, and he nods, swallowing hard, as his vision blurs and doubles again.
*
“You think I want to do this? This is the last thing I...” he's avoiding Ruby's gaze. “But I need to be strong enough.”
“It's okay. It's okay, Sammy, you can have it.”
She draws the knife from her ankle sheath, draws it across her arm, and he's moving, gripping her tightly, mouth clamped over the cut, sucking at the blood welling there as she murmurs reassurances and lies.
“It's okay, Sam. It's okay.”
*
“It's not okay...” he chokes, thinks he might vomit. He can smell the blood in her, and he wants it. God, he wants it. He comes close to doubling over, hand over his mouth to keep from puking.
“Sammy?”
“It's blood. Demon blood. God. I remember.”
*
“Monster, Sam. You're a monster.”
“Dean, no!”
“And I tried so hard to pretend that we were brothers. That you weren't one of the filthy things that we hunt. But we're not even the same species. You're nothing to me.”
“Don't say that to me. Don't you say that to me.”
He's talking to an empty room.
*
Sam forces himself to straighten, to keep the dry heaves under control. “Demon blood. So I could kill Lilith. In the drink. I remember,” he looks up at Ruby, whose expression is unreadable. “You were different, then, but you never changed. The long con. Two years, and you lied and fed me the blood and told me it was the only way.”
“You're confused,” she says calmly. “The potion's meant to help, that's all.”
He turns back to Dean. “Did you ever watch her make it? See what she put in it?”
Dean shakes his head, eyes wide, frightened at the yawning chasm of possibilities that's opening before him. “No,” he whispers. “I never did.”
“Demon blood. What the Yellow-Eyed Demon wanted all along. 'S how I can do all of this.”
“The demon stuff?” Dean asks, and he nods. “Fuck. Sammy...” Unable even to finish his sentence Dean steps forward, blocking Ruby's access to Sam, and Sam finds himself smiling. Dean's always been better at action than words.
Ruby's face becomes a mask of anger. “You ungrateful bastard. After everything I've done for you, for weeks, for weeks now ―after putting my ass on line and pulling yours out of the fire more times than I'd like to count, you're just going to turn on me on his say-so?”
Dean shrugs, the fury on his features matching her own. “Pretty much. Lying bitch.”
Sam sees it coming before his brother, and barely has time to launch himself forward before, with a flick of her arm, Ruby throws Dean across the room. Sam catches hold of him before he can land too hard, and the two of them roll several feet across the floor before coming to a halt in a tangle of arms and legs. She strides toward them, throws her head back in a laugh.
“Pathetic. I should have known neither one of you had the balls to take on Lilith. I should have cut my losses a long time ago.”
“Coulda woulda shoulda,” Bobby steps up behind her, levels his shotgun, and empties both barrels full of rocksalt point-blank into her back.
She staggers, trips, lands hard on the floor as Bobby pulls a flask of holy water out of his belt, and Sam guesses he's trying to drive her backward into his study, where there's another devil's trap painted on the ceiling. It seems that Ruby is no one's fool, either, because she stops moving back.
“This isn't how it ends,” she says.
Then she throws her head back and screams loud and long. Smoke pours from the mouth of the body she was occupying as she deserts it, leaving it sprawled lifeless and cold on Bobby's floor.
*
Chapter 7 (Part A)
Master Post
Chapter 6: Unsealed
*
Castiel is waiting for Sam in his dreams, and somehow Sam finds he isn't surprised. They're sitting on a park bench with flaking brown paint, watching a playground where small children are chasing each other around the bars of a swing set, shrieking and giggling as their feet kick up a spray of sand.
“What, no fishing off the dock this time?”
“No. You need to wake up now.”
“I don't really have control over that,” Sam points out. “Humans don't work the same way as angels.”
“So I've noticed,” Castiel says drily, and Sam can't tell whether it's meant to be a joke.
“You didn't just raise me from the dead, did you? There's more to it than that. It's why I keep remembering things differently.”
“Yes.”
“Please don't tell me I need to remember on my own. Every time I try I end up puking, bleeding from the nose, or passing out.”
“That's because the human mind isn't designed to withstand the kind of stresses that have been imposed upon you. An ordinary human wouldn't have survived as long as you have. You are... exceptional,” the angel says, and Sam isn't sure if what he's hearing in the tone is disgust or admiration or a strange mixture of both.
“The demon blood?”
“Your psychic ability,” Castiel says, and Sam gets the impression that the two may not be interchangeable after all.
“I need to tell Dean.”
“Do you?”
“I'm done lying to him. Look what that got us before.”
“Do you remember?”
Sam watches as the kids keep playing, heedless of his presence or the angel's, and wonders if he's really dreaming or if Castiel somehow brought him here. He thinks this might be somewhere Castiel used to bring Dean.
“I think so. I don't remember all of it, but I remember how it ended. I remember the angels, the lies. I... I remember Lucifer. In the end, it didn't matter what I did.” He laughs bitterly. “The song remains the same, isn't that how it goes?”
“Yes.”
“I still need to try.”
*
“He's been out for hours. I can't keep doing this. I can't watch him like this anymore, it's killing me,” Dean's voice is fraught with emotion that Sam can't quite identify.
“Look, I know it's hard, but you have to look at the bigger picture, here,” Sam is pretty sure he knows the voice of the woman speaking, but he can't quite place it, his mind still bogged down. “You know he hasn't been the same since... he got back. You just have to keep faith, okay? Sam is the key, the only one who has a snowball's chance in hell of stopping Lilith.”
“So you keep saying. You're not the one who watched him levitate an entire shed out of my way. Remind me again why I should trust you?”
“Hey, I've pulled your asses out of the fire a hell of a lot, and nearly got myself killed in the process. Have I led you wrong yet?”
“I guess not,” Dean sounds doubtful, and the reply he gets is scornful.
“You guess not? Look, short bus, I don't have to do this. It's not like I'm backing the favoured horse here, and the way you two chuckleheads have been going about this whole thing, the LA Dodgers have a better chance of winning the World Series than you have of preventing Lilith from breaking all the Seals.”
The voices are muffled, even though Sam can hear them clearly, as though Dean and whoever he's speaking to are in a different room. Opening his eyes proves to be a mistake, as the light from the lamp by the bed threatens to blind him. A whimper escapes him before he can stifle it, and he hears shuffling from further away.
“He's coming around.”
“Right. Well, I'm done babysitting, I guess. See you around, Dean.”
Dean doesn't answer, and Sam feels a hand clasp his wrist loosely. “Hey, Sleeping Beauty, you coming back or what?”
He doesn't open his eyes. “I think I might be setting a record for the number of times a person can be unconscious in a ten-day period.”
Dean huffs a laugh. “We'll call Guinness tomorrow. Drink this,” he props Sam up, ignoring his protests, and presses a glass to his lips. Whatever is in it, it tastes vile, and Sam sputters and nearly chokes. “Yeah, I bet if it tastes half as gross as it looks, it's gotta be pretty nasty, but you have to drink it all, okay? It'll help, I promise.”
Sam grimaces, manages to choke the stuff down, and blinks blearily at Dean, shielding his eyes from the worst of the glare of the light with one hand. “What is that stuff?”
His brother shrugs, doesn't quite meet his eyes. “Got the recipe off Bobby. It's supposed to help.”
“You talked to Bobby?” Sam feels the knot of anxiety that had formed in his chest begin to dissolve.
This time Dean does look him directly in the eye, and his laughter is genuine, from the gut. “Would you believe the wily old bastard built himself a ghost-proof panic room? He locked himself in there when he figured we wouldn't get there in time.”
Laughter bubbles up in Sam's chest, relieving the last of the tension. “Bobby built a panic room?”
“A ghost-proof panic room,” Dean confirms, his eyes sparkling. “Is that awesome, or what?”
Sam tilts his head in agreement, pushes himself upright, and winces as he rubs the lump on the back of his head. “So where are we? Motel? The spell worked?”
“Yes, and yes.”
“Who were you talking to just now?”
“What, Bobby?”
“No, the girl.”
Dean narrows his eyes at him. “Sam, there's no one here.”
As if to bely his brother's words, there's a rush of air in the room, and Castiel is standing just behind Dean's shoulder, making both brothers jump in spite of themselves.
“Hello, Dean.”
*
“Jesus!” Dean sputters. “Give a guy some warning, would you?”
Sam could swear the corner of Castiel's mouth twitches into something resembling a smirk. “Personal space?”
“Yes, exactly!”
“Why are you here, Cas?” It seems odd to find the angel there only moments after they've talked, but Sam is learning not to try to make sense of everything.
“I wished to congratulate you. Stellar work with the Witnesses.”
“Wait, you knew about that?” Dean turns on the angel, tension radiating from him.
“I was, uh, made aware,” Castiel manages to look uncomfortable and unaffected at the same time.
“Well, thanks a lot for the angelic assistance,” Dean doesn't bother masking his sarcasm. “You know, I nearly got my heart ripped out of my chest!”
“But you didn't,” Castiel points out.
“That's hardly the point. Why are there angels even around? I thought you guys were supposed to be, I don't know, guardians or something. Fluffy wings and halos, Michael Landon and Roma Downey, and all that. You know: not dicks.” Sam snorts in spite of himself, earning a reproving glance from both his brother and the angel.
“Read the bible,” Castiel rejoins evenly. “Angels are warriors of god. I'm a soldier.”
“Then why didn't you fight?”
“Dean...” Sam puts a hand on Dean's shoulder, only to have it angrily shrugged aside.
“I'm not here to perch on your shoulder. We had larger concerns.”
“What larger concerns? I don't know if you noticed, but people were getting ripped to shreds down here! Where the hell is your boss in all this? Is there even a God?”
“There is a God,” Sam murmurs.
“Oh, really, Sam?” Dean rounds on him. “Then what's he waiting for to intervene? Genocide? Monsters roaming the earth? The apocalypse?”
“Precisely,” Castiel says.
“The Witnesses are a sign, Dean. End of the world kind of stuff. Isn't that right?” Sam looks at the angel, who nods.
“That's why we're here. Big things afoot.”
Dean backs up, seemingly instinctively, goes to peer through the window into the darkness. “Do we want to know what kind of big things?”
“Probably not, but you need to know anyway. Sam already knows.”
Sam winces as Dean's head snaps back toward him, his expression guarded, wary and accusing. “I know part of it. It's like a puzzle with the pieces missing. I keep getting flashes, bits and pieces...” he trails of lamely.
“The Rising of the Witnesses is one of the sixty-six Seals,” Castiel explains. “And no, it is not a ride at Sea World.”
Dean snorts. “Sounds like one. Can you read minds or something?”
“No. The Seals are being broken by Lilith and the demons who are under her leadership.”
“She's the one who rose the Witnesses.”
“And not just here. Twenty other hunters are dead.”
“Oh, God,” Sam feels sick. “She did it on purpose. Picked people the hunters didn't save so they would home in on us.”
“Fucking twisted sense of humour,” Dean mutters. “At least we put the spirits to rest.”
“It doesn't matter,” Sam realizes. “The Seal was broken.”
“So why break it? What's so important about these Seals you've both been going on about?”
“Think of the Seals as locks on a door,” Castiel says.
“Okay... last one opens and?”
Sam feels his blood run cold. “Lucifer walks free.”
Dean blinks. “I thought Lucifer was just a story they told at demon Sunday school. There's no such thing.”
“A week ago you were sure there was no such thing as me. Why do you think we're here walking among you now for the first time in two thousand years?”
“You're going to stop Lucifer,” Dean says flatly.
Sam shakes his head, his earlier dizziness returning along with a flurry of images that flash behind his eyes so quickly he can't make heads or tails of them. “I don't... it's happening faster than before. The Seals. That's why you couldn't be here for the Witnesses.”
“Our numbers are not unlimited, and more than half a dozen of my brothers have fallen on the field of battle this week. There are other Seals to defend, and the onslaught of the demons has been... fiercer than we anticipated.”
“But you know where the Seals are, right?” Dean is making a visible effort not to pace. “Why not just figure out the ones that are left and just post guards there or something?”
“There are too many for that to be possible.”
“What, you can't defend sixty-six Seals? That's pretty lame.”
“There are more than that, Dean,” Sam breaks in, trying to get the flood of images in his mind to stop, or at least slow down. “Anna said there were six hundred and sixty-six, remember? They only need sixty-six of them to break. 's a stupid rule, if you ask me.”
“Sam, what the fuck are you talking about? Who's Anna?”
He feels sick again. “God... uh... I don't―”
“Anna does not exist here as you knew her,” Castiel leans over and places a hand on Sam's shoulder in the first genuine gesture of concern he's shown since Sam first saw him in that diner in Wyoming, blue eyes staring so intently into his face that Sam finds himself flushing under the scrutiny. “Try to focus, Sam. You cannot allow yourself to conflate your realities this way.”
“Sam, what the fuck?”
Castiel glances over his shoulder at Dean. “He is seeing two realities at once, and his mind cannot cope with it. If he doesn't learn to control this, he will lose his mind, or worse.”
“Worse?”
Sam laughs mirthlessly. “I think he means it'll kill me.”
*
The problem with demanding explanations from angels is that, well, angels aren't really accountable to anyone but themselves, and Castiel leaves them with more questions than ever. Dean spends the next hour pacing and asking questions that Sam can't answer, and finally grabs his coat and yanks it over his shoulders.
“Where you going?” Sam is still sitting cross-legged on the bed, cradling his now-throbbing head in his hands. The concussion isn't helping matters, but he's pretty sure it's not the main cause of the pain. The short burst of adrenaline that kept him mostly functional while Castiel was there is fading fast, leaving him drained and shaky and desperate to just go to sleep and not wake up for the next week.
“Out. I need to clear my head.”
“Dean, it's late, we're both exhausted...”
“I know that. You think you can manage not to lapse into a coma while I'm gone, or do you need me to hold your hand?”
“I don't ―fine!” he scrubs a hand through his hair. “Just... if you're going to get drunk, don't take the car.”
“I'm not an idiot, Sam!”
“Whatever.”
There's part of him that knows he shouldn't be giving up these arguments so easily, but he can't muster up the energy to fight Dean on this now. Besides, he thinks they can both use the space at this point. He flips his pillow and curls up with his face pressed into it.
“Take your phone,” he mutters, and doesn't wait for Dean's answer before letting himself fall asleep.
*
“Where the hell is your brother at?” Bobby hands Sam a bottle of water, and comes to sit next to him on the porch outside his house, holding a bottle of beer by the neck between his knees.
Sam shrugs. “No idea. Got up this morning and he was gone. Won't answer his phone. I don't think he's far. His stuff's still here.”
“You with us today?” the question is hesitant, and Sam has to clamp down hard on the anger and resentment that bubbles up in him. He reminds himself that Bobby is perfectly entitled to ascertain if Sam's having a good day or a bad day, if whatever's going to come out of his mouth will make sense for once. He offers Bobby a small smile that he hopes looks reassuring.
“Yeah, no worries: lights are on, everyone's home. Not even a headache to speak of today. I'm counting it a win. Turns out lowering your standards is a good thing. Didn't Dean leave you a note?” He doesn't bother trying to hide the fact that he's obviously changing the subject away from himself. “ It's not like him to go off without a word.”
Bobby rolls his eyes. “A paper with 'back later' written on it ain't exactly my idea of a note.”
He nudges Bobby's elbow with a quiet laugh, earning himself a glare as he nearly causes the older man to spill his beer. “Come on, Bobby. Dean catches you acting like an old woman about him, he'll never let you live it down. He left a note, even if it doesn't meet your expectations. He just... needs some time to stop freaking out about everything. ”
Bobby snorts at that. “You gonna tell me what's eating at him? I don't like this new habit of his of sneakin' around.”
“I might if I can switch out the water for a beer,” Sam's attempt to lighten the mood falls a little flat. “Right. Look, I don't know for sure, but I don't think it's a stretch to figure it's got to be this whole apocalypse thing.”
“Nothing to do with you, then?” Bobby asks pointedly, and he sighs, because Bobby's right.
In typical Winchester fashion, Dean decided that they were, in his words, 'taking a break from the apocalypse,' and all but hogtied Sam in order to get him back to Sioux Falls, where he and Bobby ganged up on Sam until he reluctantly agreed to go back to the hospital. That was nearly three weeks ago. Since then it's been nothing but tests and more tests and taking blood and CT scans and more things that they probably can't afford and that Dean insists he submit to anyway. He wants to resent Dean for the hovering, the fussing, but mostly he knows that his brother is right, which might be even more frustrating.
No matter how they look at it, he's getting worse. The seizures have mostly tapered off, but the near-blinding migraines and the nightmares haven't ―more often than not he wakes up screaming and shaking, unable to shake the image of Dean broken and bloody on the ground. Some days he finds he can't sure whether what he's seeing is happening now or happened (or didn't happen) in that future that's now unlikely to take place. On those days he's dimly aware of Dean and Bobby watching him wander like a zombie through the house, unable to concentrate enough even to bury himself in one of Bobby's books, trying to decipher the garbled sentences that spill from his lips. He wants to reassure them that he's not crazy, that there's a good reason for the way he's acting, but he's beginning to doubt it himself.
When Dean isn't acting like Sam's second shadow, or working on one of the cars in Bobby's yard, then he's nowhere to be found. If Winchesters are good at anything, Sam reflects, it's pulling disappearing acts. He's never gone for more than twelve hours, and comes back smelling of cigarette smoke and alcohol and sometimes of sex, and Sam very carefully doesn't push him on it. He's the very last person who should be complaining about a brother who keeps secrets from him. He finds Castiel's absence more troubling than Dean's occasional outings, anyway. While he's always reasonably sure his brother is close by, the longer the angel stays away, the more anxious he becomes. If he weren't so worried, he thinks he'd probably be amused by the role reversal. In another lifetime, it would have been Dean wearing a hole in the carpeting worrying about Castiel's absence.
“Six of one, half a dozen of the other, isn't it?” he tries not to sound bitter as he answers Bobby's question, and thinks he's probably failed. “I can't tell if he's more worried that I'm going to die again or turn evil while his back is turned.” He yelps when Bobby swats him behind the head. “Ow!”
“Boy, there are days when I can't tell which of you two is a bigger ass than the other. You say anything like than again, don't think I won't kick your ass from here into next week.”
He raises his hands in mock-surrender. “Come on. You wouldn't do that to an invalid, would you?”
Bobby rolls his eyes. “Invalid my ass. Speakin' of which, them new pills working?” he asks, trying to be casual about it and taking another pull from his beer.
“Which ones? I feel like a damned drugstore, and for all I know they could all be useless and it's just that really disgusting crap Dean keeps making me drink. And before you ask, I haven't had any yet, but I will, I promise. I'm just enjoying a few hours' worth of not having my mouth taste like ass,” he says, wishing he didn't sound quite so defensive.
“It does smell pretty nasty. But you're doin' better, right?” Bobby asks again, and Sam shrugs.
“Hard to say. I mean, the only way to know is if I have another seizure, and then all we know is that they're not working. The doctor says it's not good to switch up too soon anyway. I'm just lucky they haven't locked me away for acting crazy yet. Besides, I don't think it's something the meds can help with, you know that.”
“You tell your brother that?”
“Yeah, and that went about as well as you would expect. It's hard on him, you know? He lost me, and I know how close that came to destroying him. I know what it's like... ” He takes a drink from his water bottle, lets the water sit in his mouth for a moment in a futile attempt to relieve the feeling of dryness the newest pills have been causing. “And then, I came back broken. I know how hard it must be for him, seeing me like this.”
“You ain't broken, kid,” Bobby's tone is gruff, gentle. “A little frayed around the edges, maybe, but who ain't these days?”
Sam shakes his head, feels a smile tug at his lips anyway. “Thanks, Bobby.”
*
“Dean!”
The light is brilliant, blinding, the air filled with white noise that shrieks and whines, bursting every pane of glass for miles around as the archangels descend on Detroit. Sam feels the earth vibrating, shaking beneath his feet. He's blind, deaf and dumb. Rooted to the spot.
I agreed to this, he reminds himself. It was the only way. It'll only take a moment, and then it'll be over.
The noise grows in intensity, impossibly loud, and the universe catches on fire all around him. The ground falls away, and he's filled with light, with sound and fury. He feels Lucifer's presence like a nuclear explosion, and all he can do is cling to the feeling like a drowning man to a piece of driftwood, and he prays the circle of holy fire is enough to keep him contained.
When he can see again he's lying on broken asphalt. He sees Dean lying crumpled on the ground, so far away he seems tiny, like looking down at the street from the top of a tall building. He tries to call out, but there's nothing left. Lightning arcs through him. His body is wracked with pain, but the sensation is distant, as though it's somehow outside of him, and he can't bring himself to care one way or the other. A moment later his vision goes dark once more
Dean is dead.
It was all for nothing, because his brother is dead.
A hand closes over his wrist, the grip gentle, but firm, and for a moment hope flares in him, the sensation fluttering like a moth before a flame.
“Dean?”
“No, it's not Dean. I am sorry.”
“Where is... did he make it? Tell me he made it.”
“I am sorry.”
“He promised. He promised he would spare Dean. Why would Michael lie, Cas?”
“Angels lie.”
There's a pause, and then Sam begins to laugh.
*
They take out a coven of witches in Wichita (and the irony isn't lost on Sam). After another two fruitless weeks of scans and tests and doctors simply shaking their heads in bewilderment, Dean reluctantly agrees that there's not much more to be gained by sitting around and waiting. Besides, a woman spitting out her teeth and then drowning in her own blood on the bathroom floor while her husband pounds on the door sounds like the perfect way to get back into the game without having to take on the apocalypse.
Sam hasn't seen hide nor hair of Castiel since they parted ways in Illinois, and secretly he's rather relieved. It's not that he doesn't trust the angel, but there's something to be said for 'out of sight, out of mind.' If he doesn't think too hard about it, he can almost pretend to himself that the Seals aren't breaking even as they wait around, that the end of the world isn't just around the corner. When he does allow himself to think about it, he tells himself that the angels are all simply busy defending the other Seals, that if they truly needed the help of two mortal hunters ―one of whom was having trouble keeping reality separate from delusion on a good day― then they would come and ask for it.
Somehow he's not surprised when Dean doubles over in pain in their motel room. It doesn't prevent him from quietly freaking out while he tries to find the hex bag that must be secreted away somewhere in the room. It's been two days of food turning into maggot-riddled filth and decapitated rabbits and people spitting up sewing needles, and the feeling of having seen it all before is so strong that Sam ends up losing his lunch more than once. The hex bag is nowhere to be found, and blood is beginning to bubble at the corners of Dean's mouth. He clutches at Sam's arm, mouth working soundlessly, his face contorted in pain, and Sam feels a wild flutter of panic against his ribcage.
“Stay here,” he says, smoothing a hand over Dean's forehead, already beading with sweat. “I'm going to go find her, make her stop this.”
“What? Who?” Dean coughs, and blood drips down his chin. “Sam... don't―”
Sam doesn't listen, knows he can't afford to stay. The math is simple: if he stays, Dean dies. So he leaves him curled in a ball on the bed, choking on the pins that have materialized in his stomach, and tears off back toward the witch's house. He finds the coven magically negotiating a better mortgage rate for 'Renée,' of all the stupid uses for magic he's heard of. Two of the women shriek and try to scramble away from him, but he's not interested in them: he already knows who's behind all of this. He can smell the demon blood pumping through Tammi's veins even from where he stands.
“I know what you are,” he tells her.
“Nice dick work, Magnum,” Tammi smirks, her eyes flicking black.
Sam just rolls his eyes. “Renée, Elizabeth, go now. Run, and don't look back, you hear me?”
“Tammi... what's wrong with your eyes?” Elizabeth stammers from where she's cowering on the floor. Luckily for her, Renée has a better sense of self-preservation, and grabs her by the arm, pulling her away and out the front door.
“Come on, Elizabeth!”
They're not even through the front door before Tammi's arm comes up in a sweeping motion clearly meant to casually toss Sam into the wall across the room. He stands his ground, calmly tucks his handgun back into the waistband of his jeans. Her head jerks up in surprise, and he feels a cold smile spread over his face.
“Yeah... that demon trick? Doesn't work on me, Tammi. You're not nearly powerful enough,” he says, advancing on her slowly, relishing the sudden fear coming off her, so strongly he can smell it. “Not even Lilith can match me, you know,” he continues quietly, backing her up against the wall.
“H-how do you know about Lilith?”
He traces a finger along the line of her throat, feels a thrill run through him that he hasn't experienced in a long time. Power surges through him, thrumming in his veins.. “I know about a lot of things, Tammi. You're too low on the totem pole, no matter what you think. You're a medium-sized fish in a tiny, tiny pond. Barely worth noticing.”
“Lilith will have your head on a plate,” she spits, and the scent of fear, heady and powerful, grows even stronger.
“But not before I end you,” he murmurs.
It would be simple enough, he thinks, just to slice open her throat, laid bare before him already. He can almost taste the blood, feel it slide over his tongue, warm and familiar, copper and sulphur blending together. The demon whimpers, and he shakes himself, pulls back, just as footsteps sound from behind him.
“Sam!”
He brings up his hand, clenches it into a fist ―the gesture at once alien and familiar. A terrible choking, coughing sound comes from the demon's throat, and slowly, inexorably, smoke begins to trickle from her mouth. The trickle becomes a flood, and the air fills with the smell of brimstone as the smoke dissolves into the floor. Tammi ―or what's left of her― crumples in a heap, and Sam staggers, has to put out a hand to brace himself against the wall so as not to follow her example. There's something warm and wet running over his mouth and chin, and when he brings up his fingers to touch it he's not surprised when the tips come away crimson.
“Sam!” Dean ducks in front of him, hands on his shoulder. “Sammy, talk to me!”
“I'm okay, Dean. It's just a nosebleed.”
“Sam, what the fuck was that? How did you do that?”
He grins, and knows how ghastly he must look. “Turns out I didn't need the magic feather after all.”
*
Dean half-drags him back to the Impala, doesn't bother so much as checking to see if Tammi is still breathing. He shoves Sam into the back seat, presses a handful of diner napkins from the glove compartment to stem the flow of blood.
“Hold that there,” he says curtly. “Keep your head back.”
He does as he's told, trying to keep his hands from shaking. His head hurts, but not nearly as much as he thinks it should. His mouth is filling with blood, and he leans out the open door to spit on the ground.
“You okay?” he asks, spitting again.
“Yeah, I'm okay. Whatever that bitch did, seems to have stopped now.”
“How'd that happen?”
“I thought it was when you, uh, did ―whatever that was. Stopped her mojo, or whatever.”
Sam shakes his head. “I heard you come in before that. Couldn't have been what I did,” he looks up, and Dean looks away, stares at nothing in particular.
“Huh. Well, I dunno. Whatever it was, it stopped. I don't know about you, but I'm thinking this is a gift horse and I'm not gonna look it in the mouth.”
“We should get you checked out, just in case. See a doctor. Make sure there's no permanent damage.” He knows Dean is lying to him ―Dean's never been able to lie convincingly to anyone in their family― but calling him on it now is going to lead to the kind of argument that he doesn't have the energy to deal with. At least, that's what he tells himself.
“Yeah, okay.” If nothing else, the ease with which Dean agrees to medical help should be an indication of his state of mind. “I'm taking you back to Bobby's. Whatever's going on with you, it's obviously not over.”
*
“You're strong, but not that strong yet,” Lilith says. She looks different from the last time Sam saw her ―all gussied up in Ruby's borrowed body. It's all grown-up and pretty, she'd said. He thinks maybe she got a taste for possessing people other than little girls from that moment.
“So why don't you throw me around, then?” he challenges her.
“Because I can't, and you know it.” She steps toward him, with a smile that reminds him of nothing more than a young girl mimicking her older sister's seduction technique in the mirror. “You're immune to my charms. Seems we're at a stalemate.”
“Why are you here?”
“To talk,” she says simply, and sits on the bed, crossing one shapely leg over the other.
He scoffs. “Yeah, well, I'm not interested.”
“Even if I'm offering to stand down? From the Seals, the apocalypse, all of it?”
“You expect me to believe that?” But he's already wavering. He wants this all to be over, desperately, and he knows she can tell. The bait is there, and in a moment she'll have him: hook, line, and sinker.
“Honestly? No,” she smirks. “But it's the truth. You can end it, Sam, right here, right now. I'll stop breaking Seals, Lucifer keeps rotting in his cage. All you have to do is agree to my terms.”
He's missing something. Something crucial.
“Why would you back down? Why now?”
*
They make it back to Bobby's in record time. Dean doesn't so much as hint at seeing a doctor, and Sam doesn't push. Figures he ought to pick his battles, and since Dean isn't puking up blood anymore, he's going to count this one as a win. Dean pointedly doesn't mention the fact that Sam just exorcized a demon using only his mind, and Sam lets it go, feeling an inexplicable pang of loss at his brother's lack of fury.
He isn't sure why he's surprised to find a hex bag sewn into the lining of one of his jackets the next day. He sits cross-legged on his bed, holding it in the palm of his hand. Wonders just what the hell to do next.
*
The migraine hits in the late afternoon, and by the time the light dwindles into evening, Sam thinks that there's a very real possibility that his head is going to split right open, kind of like that time Dean didn't aim his machete right at that vampire. He's curled into a tight ball on his bed in Bobby's spare room, both arms wrapped around his head in a futile attempt to block out what little sound and light there is, which is already precious little. Even the sound of his breathing ratchets up the pain levels to the limits of his endurance. The one pill he did manage to take before collapsing on his bed is doing absolutely nothing, and right now even the thought of moving to try to get another one is laughable. Well, it would be laughable if it didn't hurt so much to laugh.
The door creaks on its hinges and he flinches, sending another stabbing pain lancing through his skull. He swallows, willing himself not to be sick. The whole room is throbbing in time with his heartbeat, red spots pulsing behind his eyelids. Rubber-soled feet scuff lightly across the threadbare carpet of Bobby's guest room.
“Sam?” the voice is whisper-quiet. “You asleep?”
“D'n?” Distantly he recalls that slurring his words is a bad sign.
“He ain't back yet.” Bobby, then. More scuffing sounds, and then fabric sliding against wood as Bobby pulls the chair closer to the bed. “You take anything?”
“Pill. Couple hours 'go, th'nk,” he tries to curl up tighter, but there's nowhere to go. Even talking hurts, the words bouncing off the inside of his skull.
“It ain't helpin', I take it?”
“No' s'much.”
“You bad enough for a hospital?”
“No. 's okay.”
“Stubborn idjit.”
He hears Bobby get up and fuss with something on the top of the small chest of drawers in the room ―where all his medications are sitting, lined up in the order in which he's supposed to take them. A moment later and the bed sinks under Bobby's added weight, and Sam can't quite bite back a moan at the unexpected movement.
“Sorry, kid, I know it hurts. Gonna give you one of them injections, okay?” Like Dean, Bobby talks him through the process, keeping his voice to a low murmur as he pulls up the sleeve of Sam's t-shirt and carefully swabs his arm with a disinfectant wipe. “Easy does it. You're gonna feel a little prick ―don't even think of jokin', boy― and you're done,” he rubs Sam's arm once, careful to avoid the injection site.
“Wh'r's D'n?”
“I don't know. He's been gone all day, remember? Don't you worry about him, all right? I'll get him to come in and see you the minute he's back.”
“'kay. 's not us'lly gone th's long...” Sam tries to look up, which turns out to be a spectacularly bad idea, and he has to press his face back into his arms and breathe through the flare-up of pain. He almost misses Bobby's next words through the haze of crimson that settles over him.
“I know. You just sleep off that headache, and I promise Dean'll come as soon as he's back ―right after I kick his fool ass for makin' me worry. Okay?”
“'kay... Bobby?”
“What?”
“Uh... we need to look up...”
“It can wait.”
“No, it can't. Vessels. For archangels. C'n you do that for me? Can't c'ncentrate for shit... Dean an' me... s'pposed t'be in our blood. In case we can't stop Lucifer now. Look it up for me?”
A hand drops softly on his shoulder, and even that small contact is enough to make him want to throw up. “Okay, Sam, sure. I'll see what I can find about vessels. But you better sleep, you hear me?”
“'Kay. Bobby?”
Bobby can't quite mask the exasperation in his voice. “Go to sleep, boy.”
“You'll look after 'im, right?”
“Who, Sam?”
“D'n. Wh'n I'm not 're 'nymore. Needs lookin' after.”
Bobby sighs, rubs his shoulder with his thumb. “Ain't no call to talk like that. We're gonna figure this out, boy. Don't you worry.”
“Y'need to l'k after 'im. Pr'mise me?”
“Sure, kid. But you know I would anyway. Now sleep before I knock you out and make you.”
“Righ'. Sleepin'.”
He drifts halfway to sleep after a while as the pain recedes, only half-rousing when he feels something warm being pressed to the back of his neck. He murmurs a protest at the contact, feels himself being gently pulled over to lie on his back.
“Easy, boy,” Bobby's gruff tone comes from far away, and a cold gel pack is laid over his eyes, leeching away some of the remaining pain. Sam sighs quietly, feels the muscles in his shoulders and neck unclench, settles back into a deeper sleep than before.
*
The room is still dark when he awakens to the sound of the front door opening and closing stealthily downstairs. Carefully he reaches up and pulls off the now-warm gel pack, gingerly opens his eyes, one at a time, waiting for the clenching, thrumming pain to return. He's pleasantly surprised when it doesn't, and he risks slowly turning on his side. When that doesn't hurt either, he pushes himself to a sitting position, feet flat on the floor, and takes a moment to catch his breath, to make sure the room won't start spinning. He feels light and heavy at the same time, as though his head might float clear of his body if he moves too fast. Voices drift up the stairs in loud whispers.
“Oh! Uh, Bobby. Hey. Uh, you weren't waiting up, were you?”
“Boy, I ought to take the skin off your backside. Do you know what time it is?”
“Hey now,” Sam can almost hear Dean bristling. “I don't know if you noticed, Bobby, but I'm not sixteen years old anymore. Last I checked, I ain't accountable to you, or anyone else for that matter.”
Bobby blows out a breath. “No, you ain't, but I'd still consider it a courtesy,” he stresses the word with as much irony as he can muster ―and for Bobby, that's quite a lot, “if you'd do more'n leave a cryptic note before you disappear for almost twenty-four hours and leave me and your sick brother to worry if you're okay. Or at least turn your damn cell phone on!”
“I did! The battery just ran out, okay? Is Sam okay?”
“He's okay. Got one of them headaches, but he's been sleepin' fine for the past few hours.”
“Shit, another migraine? That's the second one this week.”
There's a pause, then Bobby speaks again, more softly. “Come on, boy. Let me get you a beer. Then I'll let you go and check on your brother.”
Sam gets to his feet, testing his balance, makes his way to the top of the landing, the tips of his fingers brushing against the wall as a precaution. Even the dim lighting in the hallway makes him squint, but compared to before the discomfort barely registers. He slips down the stairs in his bare feet, grateful that he's still able to move quietly even after everything that's happened, then hesitates about two-thirds of the way down as the stairs start to tilt alarmingly in a way that stairs are not meant to tilt, ever. He shuts his eyes, grabs onto the stair railing with one hand, eases himself to a sitting position and puts his head between his knees, wonders when exactly it became an insurmountable chore to descend a flight of stairs.
“You gotta talk to your brother,” Bobby's saying from the kitchen. “He's worried about you, and that ain't helpin' him get better.”
“Yeah, well, he doesn't have a monopoly on worrying.”
“Boy, sometimes I just want to shake you until your teeth rattle. You've been sneaking in and out of here like a cat in heat, and don't tell me you're just out drinkin'. I know who you're going to see. I may be old, but I ain't blind, and I sure as hell ain't stupid.”
Dean sighs, and Sam can picture him dropping his gaze to stare at his beer, rubbing a hand over his mouth the way he always does when he feels guilty. “She's been helping, Bobby, you know that. Look at what she did with the Colt. Without her, it'd be useless.”
Sam's head snaps up in surprise at that ―another mistake, as the room lurches again. He knew Dean and Bobby were working on the Colt, trying to see what made it tick, but without the special bullets, it was just a regular revolver again, less useful than any modern handgun with a clip, deadly to humans but certainly not to anything like a demon.
“She did us a favour, I'll grant you that, but you can't tell me she's not playing some sort of game of her own. I don't like how much she's messing with you, Dean. She's using Sam to get to you, you know that.”
“I know, I know! It's just... she's helping. Whatever it is, he's hasn't had a single goddamned seizure in weeks, and right now that's good enough. I just... I can't watch him go through that anymore, Bobby, I can't!”
“Because the way he is now is so much better? The boy can't hardly function!”
“But at least he isn't dying!” Dean snaps. “You saw what was happening to him, Bobby. You honestly think he can survive much more of that? The MRIs showed more lesions than last time. Lesions, Bobby! His brain is fucking tearing itself apart. Whatever else Ruby might be up to, she's helping him.”
“So you're willing to let her lead you by the nose right into hell?”
“If that's what it takes.”
“Dammit, Dean,” Bobby exclaims, though he keeps his voice quiet. “You and your Daddy... you're just itchin' to throw yourselves into the Pit. Do you really value yourself so little?”
“That's not it.”
“Then enlighten me, please.”
There's a scraping sound, from where Dean is presumably twisting his beer bottle between his fingers on the table top. “He already died once, Bobby, and, uh... I thought... I just... it's worse this time. I thought nothing could be worse than that, but now I have to watch him go, piece by piece, you know?” There's a pause, during which neither man says anything. Sam can picture Bobby waiting patiently while Dean fumbles for unfamiliar words. “It ―he barely makes sense anymore. He keeps going on about things that sound crazy, even by our standards... He thinks I died, Bobby. Wakes up screaming from those nightmares, and nothing I can say makes him think any different. What the hell am I supposed to do? Just sit by and let him fall apart?”
“No, of course not... but this?”
Dizzy or not, Sam realizes with a pang of guilt that he's been eavesdropping, and that's not exactly the kind of thing that builds trust with your brother. He takes a breath, pushes himself back to his feet, praying that the floor stays where it's supposed to, and manages to make it down a couple more steps before he stumbles again.
“Sam?” Dean is in the kitchen doorway in a flash, hurries over to put a hand on Sam's arm. “Bobby said you had a migraine. What're you doing up?”
He looks up at Dean, squinting against the light from the ceiling fixture, and manages a sheepish grin. “Felt better. Heard you come in, thought I'd come down, 'xcept I'm kind of dizzy now.” It's not a lie.
Dean squats in front of him, puts up a hand to feel his forehead. “You got a fever?” It's a legitimate question, Sam reminds himself as irritation surges through him in a brief flash. He does get fevers sometimes, with the really bad migraines. He shakes his head.
“No, maybe before, but I'm okay now. Just a little dizzy.”
“Think food would help? I can make soup.”
“C'n I have a sandwich instead?” Sam grins again, trying not to let on just how quickly he's started to feel sick again. “Tired of soup. It's like I never have anything else these days. Soup's for sick people.”
Dean rolls his eyes. “Yeah, 'cause you're obviously healthy as a horse. Fine, I'll make you a sandwich, princess. Come on, can you stand if I help you?”
“Sure. Was doing pretty good on my own there, too, for a minute. Baby steps,” Sam mutters, letting Dean hoist him to his feet and half-drag him to the kitchen, where Bobby is still sitting at the table, two half-empty beer bottles standing at either end of the table. “Hey, Bobby.”
“Should you be up?”
He shrugs. “Better'n being down.”
“Smartass.”
Sam pulls out of Dean's grasp, slides into a chair at the table and leans his elbows on it, resting his head in his hands. “Dean promised me a sandwich. And I figure now's a good a time as any to tell me why you've been lying to me for weeks, right Dean?”
*
“Sam, what are―”
Sam holds up a hand to interrupt. “Dean, come on. I know I haven't exactly been on the ball lately, but I'm not an idiot. Please don't treat me like one.”
“Sam...”
“Okay, I'll start. Communication's a two-way street, right?” he promised himself he wouldn't get angry, but it looks like that's yet another promise he's going to break. He reaches into his jeans pocket and pulls out a small cloth packet, one that fits easily in the palm of his hand. “So I found this earlier today. After you left, but before the migraine started. I was going to ask you about it, but, well, you weren't here. Were you planning on telling me that you planted a hex bag in my clothing? 'Cause, y'know, I'm curious.”
Bobby's eyes are wide, but at a look from Sam he bites his tongue.
Dean is leaning against the counter, gripping the edge with both hands, staring resolutely at the floor. “It's not like that.”
“Oh no?” Sam tosses the bag on the table. “Then what is it like, Dean? You're always bitching about witches and bodily fluids and sacrificing rabbits, and the next thing I know, you're squirrelling goddamned hex bags into the seams of my clothing. What the fuck?”
“I'm just trying to keep you safe.”
“By using witchcraft? That's the goddamned opposite of safe, Dean!”
Dean shoots Bobby a desperate look. “You want to weigh in here, now would be a good time.”
Bobby raises his hands palm-outward. “You're doin' a fine job of digging your own grave, son. You don't want me helping you, trust me.”
The migraine is gone, but Sam's already starting to feel the familiar creeping sensation coming back, of seeing two realities at once. The last time he saw a hex bag like this one, he's pretty sure he's the one who made it. He stares at the small bundle, trying to remember what it does, what would happen if he tore it apart right here on the table. He keeps his voice down, but it cracks with anger anyway.
“You going to tell me where you've been going? Or do I have to guess? I've always been good at charades.”
That's good, Sam. You keep fanning that fire in your belly. All that pent-up rage. I'm gonna need it.
“Sam―”
“How about you start with the girl you've been meeting? The one who helped you put the Colt back together. The one who probably showed you how to make this cute little thing,” he flicks a finger at the hex bag. “What's her name?”
Dean blows out a slow breath. “Ruby.”
He isn't surprised. “How long?”
“Since Illinois. Peoria.”
If there was anything left in his stomach, Sam is pretty sure he'd be throwing it up right about now. Looks like the sandwich isn't such a great idea after all. “She's a demon, Dean.” He doesn't know how he knows this, but he does, with the same certainty he knows his own name.
“She's helping us.”
Sam scrubs a hand through his hair, barks out a bitter laugh. “God, I should be on the other side of this conversation. You know she's a demon, right? Demons lie, Dean. They lie like they breathe.”
Dean pushes away from the counter, paces the length of the kitchen. “I know! I know all that, you think I don't? I just... I don't see too many options, here, Sammy. She's got knowledge that'll help you, that's been helping you, and you can't tell me to just ignore that and let you―” he stops abruptly.
“Let me what? Die? I'm not going to die, Dean. Not from this.”
“How do you know?” Dean snaps, looking up at Sam for the first time since this argument started. “How can you possibly know that? You're not the one who has to sit back and watch every time you collapse and seize and practically choke on your own spit, Sam! Whatever the hell that guy did to you, it's ripping you apart, and I won't stand by and let it just happen.”
“Castiel didn't do anything to me, Dean.”
“That's not what he said.”
Sam grinds the heel of his hand into his eye in frustration. “I mean, he didn't do anything bad. This... this isn't his doing. It's... I guess it's like a side-effect of what he did. He brought me back, that's all.”
“That's all,” Dean repeats, his expression indecipherable.
“Yes, that's all!” he says irritably.
“You really want to pick a fight over this, Sammy?”
Just as Sam feels the last thread of his temper snap, Bobby gets to his feet, motions to both of them to be quiet. “We got company,” he says, jerking his head in the direction of the front door and reaching for one of the shotgun he keeps by the kitchen door at all times.
Instantly Sam is on his feet, all thoughts of the argument brewing with his brother forgotten, and he manages to stay upright without wavering, adrenaline surging through him. He bolts through the kitchen door on Bobby's heels, Dean right behind him.
“Guys, wait!”
Sam comes to a halt a few paces away from the front door, mouth agape in an expression he's quite sure is mirrored on Bobby's face. Ruby is standing there, hands on her hips, one hip jutting out at a saucy angle. She glances down at the devil's trap on the floor, arches an eyebrow at them, and smirks.
“Are you guys just going to stand there, or are you going to let me in?”
*
“Sammy, long time no see,” Ruby drapes herself over the arm of Bobby's sofa. After a heated argument about the merits ―or lack thereof, rather― of breaking the devil's trap, Dean eventually won out, and Bobby is now carefully touching up the paint job, shooting them all baleful glares as he does so.
“It could have been longer, for all I care.”
Ruby places a hand over her heart. “Oh, Sammy, you wound me!”
“Don't call me that.”
Her face grows serious. “Fine. You can thank me for saving your life later.”
He snorts. “I seriously doubt that.”
Dean physically interposes himself, stepping between where Sam is leaning against a table and the demon. “I'm assuming you're out of your self-imposed witness protection program for a reason, right?” he says to Ruby. “What's going on?”
“Lilith,” she says tersely. “The Seals are breaking faster than ever ―faster than anyone thought possible. The demons are working overtime.”
“What do you care?” Sam asks, feeling his face heat up in spite of himself.
“I care. If I didn't, would I be helping you?”
Sam snorts at that. “Sure you would. Demons lie all the time. You can't expect me to believe you're doing this out of the kindness of your heart. What's your angle? What do you want?”
“I want you to stop Lilith.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Look, believe me if you want to, I don't care,” Ruby rolls her eyes as though asking some unseen power for the patience she doesn't possess. “I don't really give a damn about you two chuckleheads. If I had any choice in the matter, I'd be avoiding your particular brand of self-sacrificing crazy, but right now you're the only game in town. The angels are losing this war.”
Sam feels himself grow cold. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, in the past week, twelve Seals have broken. Dozens of angels are dead, destroyed or sent back to where they came from. Every day is one day closer, and if someone doesn't do something...”
“Then the Devil goes free,” Dean finishes quietly.
“Wait a minute,” Bobby breaks in. “If all this is happening the way you say it is, how come we ain't heard about it. Sam, you're supposed to have an in with that angel, ain't you? How come he ain't said anything?”
Sam shakes his head. “I haven't heard from him in―” he stops, then reaches in his pocket and pulls out the hex bag. “That's what this is,” he breathes. “I knew I'd seen it before. You've been keeping us hidden. From the angels, from everything.”
“Someone had to do it.”
“And the stuff Dean's been giving me... that was never Bobby's recipe.” He doesn't need to see the shocked expression on Bobby's face to know he's right. “What was in it?”
She shrugs. “Nothing harmful. Just something to keep you from flopping on the ground like a dying fish. I know a thing or two about this stuff ―which is why your brother isn't currently dead from a stomachful of needles, I might add.”
“You've been drugging me.” He turns to Dean, eyes burning, feels his throat closing up. Finds himself wishing he wasn't so damned weak, for once. “Why? Why would you do that?”
Dean still won't meet his gaze. “It's not like that, Sammy. She's just trying to help. You can't see what this vision shit is doing to you ―you can't see it the way I do. It's killing you, Sammy, and I... I just―”
“What, you did it for my own good? Like the―” he almost says 'panic room,' chokes on the words before they can come out of his mouth. The panic room was for his own good, but it never happened, or hasn't happened. Bile burns at the back of his throat, and he swallows hard.
“Okay, can we just skip over the melodrama?” Ruby says impatiently. “Every day is one day closer, and if someone doesn't do something...”
“People are gonna die?” Sam says sarcastically. “And you said I was being melodramatic. People die every day. How is drugging me going to help that?”
“It's not just that people are gonna die, Sam. It's hundreds of thousands of people. Oceans of people. Lilith breaks the final Seal, and Lucifer's gonna bring hell to earth. And you're the only one who can stop her, Sam. You and Dean, but mostly you. Destroy Lilith, and it all goes back to the way it was.”
“Cut the head off the snake, is that it? The problem with that line of reasoning is that the snake has a thousand heads. You know that, Dean, you're the one who said it to me.”
Dean's head jerks up, and he meets Sam's gaze for the first time since Ruby walked in. “What? What are you talking about?”
“In Sioux City, the death transference spell...” Sam trails off, headache spiking again. “Shit.”
“Sam?”
“Never mind. Hasn't happened. Different timeline.”
“More of your déjà vu that isn't déjà vu crap?”
“It's not crap. I should've figured something was wrong when Castiel stopped showing up. It was all too convenient: you decided to 'take a break' at the same time as he disappears? I should've known.”
“Sammy...”
“No!” Abruptly he pushes away from the table. “I've had just about enough crap, from the both of you. You can't see it, Dean, but she's manipulating you. She's rotten to the core, and you can't trust her. I'm ending this, now.” He uncurls his fist from around the hex bag.
“No!” It's Ruby's turn to yell. She throws herself at him, reaching for the bag, but it's too late.
With a twist of his fingers, he rips the packet apart, sprinkling its contents onto Bobby's carpet.
*
“You're a fool, Sam Winchester,” Ruby spits. “A damned fool. I ought to kill you where you stand, and I'd be doing us all a favour.”
“I'd like to see you try.”
“Woah!” Dean whips around to face her, and Sam can practically see realization dawning as his body language changes. “No one's killing anyone! I've been letting you hang around because you've been helping, but you change the deal, and all bets are off, sister.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Sam sees Bobby slip from the room with a surreptitious nod in his direction. He keeps his gaze trained on Ruby and Dean, careful not to betray his movements.
“I don't know what lies she's been feeding you, Dean, but I can guarantee you they're lies.”
“Look, I never thought we should trust her―”
“Hey!”
Dean ignores the outburst. “But she's been useful, Sam. She's kept you from having those goddamned seizures, for one. And she wants Lilith iced as badly as we do.”
Sam folds his arms across his chest, leans back against the table. “Do you?”
Ruby cocks her head to the side. “Let's just say she's not my biggest fan. Not since I cheated her of you. It's not too late, Sam. You can still beat her, still prevent her from breaking the final Seal. You kill Lilith, and things go back to the way they were.”
What do you want?
For it to go back to the way it was. Before I had angels to deal with twenty-four/seven. When it was all baby blood all the time.
“All baby blood, all the time,” he mutters, pinches the bridge of his nose, eyes screwed shut.
“What?”
“I know you.”
“You said that before, but I'm telling you, I'd remember if we met. I haven't been on earth in... well, a very long time.”
I know it's hard to see it now... but this is a miracle. So long coming. Everything Azazel did, and Lilith did. Just to get you here. And you were the only one who could do it.
Sam clutches at the table with his free hand, trying to keep his balance as memories superimpose themselves. “Fuck...”
“Sam?” he senses rather than sees Dean edging toward him, slip a hand around his elbow, grounding him.
Because it had to be you, Sammy. It always had to be you.
“She's working for Lilith. Or she may as well be working for her,” he forces his eyes open, blinking even in the dim light of Bobby's living room. “I saw her, Dean.”
“You mean you saw her, saw her?” Dean asks, and he nods, swallowing hard, as his vision blurs and doubles again.
*
“You think I want to do this? This is the last thing I...” he's avoiding Ruby's gaze. “But I need to be strong enough.”
“It's okay. It's okay, Sammy, you can have it.”
She draws the knife from her ankle sheath, draws it across her arm, and he's moving, gripping her tightly, mouth clamped over the cut, sucking at the blood welling there as she murmurs reassurances and lies.
“It's okay, Sam. It's okay.”
*
“It's not okay...” he chokes, thinks he might vomit. He can smell the blood in her, and he wants it. God, he wants it. He comes close to doubling over, hand over his mouth to keep from puking.
“Sammy?”
“It's blood. Demon blood. God. I remember.”
*
“Monster, Sam. You're a monster.”
“Dean, no!”
“And I tried so hard to pretend that we were brothers. That you weren't one of the filthy things that we hunt. But we're not even the same species. You're nothing to me.”
“Don't say that to me. Don't you say that to me.”
He's talking to an empty room.
*
Sam forces himself to straighten, to keep the dry heaves under control. “Demon blood. So I could kill Lilith. In the drink. I remember,” he looks up at Ruby, whose expression is unreadable. “You were different, then, but you never changed. The long con. Two years, and you lied and fed me the blood and told me it was the only way.”
“You're confused,” she says calmly. “The potion's meant to help, that's all.”
He turns back to Dean. “Did you ever watch her make it? See what she put in it?”
Dean shakes his head, eyes wide, frightened at the yawning chasm of possibilities that's opening before him. “No,” he whispers. “I never did.”
“Demon blood. What the Yellow-Eyed Demon wanted all along. 'S how I can do all of this.”
“The demon stuff?” Dean asks, and he nods. “Fuck. Sammy...” Unable even to finish his sentence Dean steps forward, blocking Ruby's access to Sam, and Sam finds himself smiling. Dean's always been better at action than words.
Ruby's face becomes a mask of anger. “You ungrateful bastard. After everything I've done for you, for weeks, for weeks now ―after putting my ass on line and pulling yours out of the fire more times than I'd like to count, you're just going to turn on me on his say-so?”
Dean shrugs, the fury on his features matching her own. “Pretty much. Lying bitch.”
Sam sees it coming before his brother, and barely has time to launch himself forward before, with a flick of her arm, Ruby throws Dean across the room. Sam catches hold of him before he can land too hard, and the two of them roll several feet across the floor before coming to a halt in a tangle of arms and legs. She strides toward them, throws her head back in a laugh.
“Pathetic. I should have known neither one of you had the balls to take on Lilith. I should have cut my losses a long time ago.”
“Coulda woulda shoulda,” Bobby steps up behind her, levels his shotgun, and empties both barrels full of rocksalt point-blank into her back.
She staggers, trips, lands hard on the floor as Bobby pulls a flask of holy water out of his belt, and Sam guesses he's trying to drive her backward into his study, where there's another devil's trap painted on the ceiling. It seems that Ruby is no one's fool, either, because she stops moving back.
“This isn't how it ends,” she says.
Then she throws her head back and screams loud and long. Smoke pours from the mouth of the body she was occupying as she deserts it, leaving it sprawled lifeless and cold on Bobby's floor.
*
Chapter 7 (Part A)