Title: Won't Get Fooled Again, Chapter 1
Author(s):
SafiyabatArtist:
evian-forkBeta: tumblr user parvasilvi
Characters & Pairing(s): Sam/Cas, brief Sam/Ruby
Rating: M, this chapter R
Word Count: 52,595
Warning(s): Graphic violence, sexual content, mentions of noncon, suicidal tendencies, depression
Summary: A grieving Sam trains with Ruby to get payback or rescue his brother. When a handsome stranger shows up at their motel room claiming to offer a better way, is he too good to be true?
This way to the masterpost....
Sam should have known that he couldn’t stop it. He’d tried so hard, for the full year, but when had that ever gotten him anything? Stanford? Up in smoke. Azazel? Gone, but that had been Dean (of course), for his own reasons and not Sam’s, and not before Dean had damned himself first. Hell, he could go back further. Flagstaff had been great for two weeks, before Dean and Dad had caught up to him and made him (further) regret being born in the first place.
Watching the hellhounds rip into Dean was like having a piece of himself shredded at the same time. He felt each bite, each tear, each severed artery and mauled tendon in his own soul. The one workable plan to avoid this had been rejected by Dean because in his view it would make him “not human,” and well that was the kicker wasn’t it? He was already going to Hell for something not human. When Lilith used her little ray-of-light attack more than half of him had been hoping that it would just obliterate him, wipe him from the universe and leave him with cold oblivion. Of course the universe hated him almost as much as he hated himself and he’d just stood up, grabbed the knife and stabbed down at the body he’d come to associate with Ruby, his ally.
Which left him to bury Dean. He and Bobby drove out to Pontiac, Michigan, which they chose because Dean had lost his virginity there and Sam figured that was about as sentimental a reason as Dean would ever feel. Then he and Bobby parted ways. The older hunter didn’t have to say anything to remind Sam that it was his fault that he’d lost his favorite. If he’d just been good enough, smart enough, strong enough to not get killed by Jake Freaking Talley back at Cold Oak none of this would be happening, and he hadn’t had much use for Sam since finding out about the visions. Good thing he didn’t know about the rest of it then.
After parting ways with Bobby Sam shut off his phone. No one was going to be calling, not anymore. He then prepared a tin Altoids box with the necessary ingredients and made his way to the nearest crossroads, sat back and waited.
He took the precaution of getting good and drunk before burying the thing. After all, he’d seen how the hellhounds had torn through Dean. He was willing to make the sacrifice but there was no real reason why he couldn’t numb up a bit. He didn’t have to wait long. It seemed like he was taking his sweet time while he stood there by the water tower waiting of course, but hindsight would show that it really wasn’t long. The crossroads demon was shorter than he was but that wasn’t exactly difficult. He was handsome. If it weren’t for the whole possession thing Sam would have thought about it, which he supposed was kind of the point - a crossroads demon was supposed to be attractive to the seller after all. Unfortunately for Sam he wasn’t selling. Sam didn’t even try to haggle. He didn’t want time after Dean’s resurrection. He didn’t want to have to face Dean’s suffering in Hell, all because of him. He just wanted what Lilith supposedly wanted - himself strung up in Dean’s place, dead as he ought to be while Dean was spared any further misery. Apparently that couldn’t happen because Lilith had a Plan. Not to say that he didn’t try. He tried arguing, he tried threatening, he even stabbed the asshole through the hand with Ruby’s knife but nothing worked. Nothing quelled the burning within him - the burning need to take Dean’s place, the burning need for revenge, the burning need to stop his brother’s suffering, the burning need to wipe the smirk off the smug bastard’s face as he denied Sam what he needed most.
So Sam staggered back to his motel where Ruby - in a whole new body - found him with two goons. He didn’t fight her; what would be the point? So he could live another day? Please. Only she turned around and stabbed the goons and tried to parade herself around like some kind of freaking savior. He wasn’t having any of it. Running around and possessing people like that - did she forget that he’d been possessed? He told her to let the secretary go or he wasn’t about to work with her and went and found someplace to squat. He honestly didn’t expect to hear from her again. He didn’t think he even wanted to hear from her again. He’d had enough of demons, if they couldn’t give him what he needed.
She proved him wrong. She showed up a few days later in a pretty, dark-haired body with the medical paperwork to prove that the host had been brain-dead before her possession. No soul, no brain activity, no problem, right? And then she’d told him what he so desperately needed to hear. She couldn’t get Dean back but she could teach him to get revenge.
So Sam started learning. It wasn’t easy - it was in fact acutely painful, leaving him with pain in his head that made him long for the skull-splitting migraines that accompanied his visions when they first showed up. That must mean that something was working, right? Or maybe it meant that his brain was actually short-circuiting. He didn’t care. Either way he was getting a result that worked for him.
Ruby’s premise was that just as Ava had been able to summon and control minor demons, Sam had power over demons too. His ability seemed to lean more toward expulsion and destruction than toward summoning, making him an actual weapon. Part of him shied away from the thought. He might be subhuman part-demon garbage but he was still a person damn it. At the same time, what was really left for him? Revenge against Lilith was the only thing that mattered, now that Dean was gone. He might not be able to rescue Dean but he could make sure that she couldn’t hurt anyone else.
The first thing he needed to do was to learn to see, and that was frustrating enough. It wasn’t like he didn’t already have talents in that direction - he could already sometimes see monsters’ true forms, and he could absolutely identify some demons just by instinct. Meg, for example. Ruby. But actually reaching out and mentally touching the essence of the creature, the writhing black (or red) smoke that was all that remained of a damned soul, to actually deliberately identify them - that was something else. Doing it on purpose was a lot like taking a linebacker, handing him a pair of pointe shoes and demanding that he go to town. It hurt, in ways that he couldn’t even describe using parts of his brain that he hadn’t even known he had. His nose bled, gushing like a leaky faucet. That didn’t stop him and Ruby from driving around looking for demons he could mentally card. At least they never seemed to notice that he was checking their IDs, an infernal NSA.
With time, he got better. At least the work helped keep his absolute misery at bay. It never really left him, and eventually Ruby noticed that he wasn’t sleeping properly and wasn’t eating at all. She objected, naturally. “You can’t half-ass this like before, Sam,” she snapped at him. “You’re never going to be able to take her on as a sleep-deprived anorectic.”
He shrugged, because what the hell did his body matter? “I’ve never slept well, Ruby,” he pointed out. “And I’ve never been on the best terms with food either.” For crying out loud his brother had only died a couple of weeks ago. But then again, he probably shouldn’t expect much of her in terms of emotional consideration. She was a demon. She wasn’t here to hold his hand.
Once the headaches from reaching out and touching someone got to be a dull ache he graduated to trying to pull demons out of their hosts and that - well, that sounded so much easier when Ruby said it. His first attempt ended in disaster. He managed to get a mental hold on the smoke and started to pull it out, but the thing just pulled back and laughed at him. “Let me guess, Sam,” he sneered. “Is it like, I don’t know, trying to catch smoke with your bare, fleshy little hands?” Ruby stepped into the devil’s trap to stab the man, killing the host and further proving that Sam couldn’t save a goddamn nickel if he were locked in a cell with no place to spend it.
She tried to console him when they went back to the place where they were squatting, telling him that he’d get better with time both in terms of his abilities and his grief. That hadn’t gone over well. And then suddenly she’d been right on top of him, straddling him and kissing him like there was something there. He’d pushed her away, objecting to the contact but she persisted. And he’d been drunk, washing some pills down with his whiskey because when you’re bleeding from your ears painkillers seem like a good idea and he’d finally given in. It was wrong, he knew that. He didn’t want it, but if it was what she wanted to help him go after Lilith then he guessed it was what he had to do. Besides, it wasn’t as though the body Ruby was riding had anyone else inside it. And it was just his body, which didn’t matter much in the greater scheme of things. He was tainted anyway, what would a little demon sex really hurt? And how long had it been, anyway, since someone had wanted to put their hands on him for any reason? Damn it, even Dean hadn’t wanted to get near him once he’d been convinced Sam had come back “wrong.” Maybe the only one who wanted him was a demon, but at least someone wanted to have contact with him. Asking him to keep to himself, to stay aloof from any kind of touch when literally anyone in the world who wanted that could at least have a hand to hold just wasn’t right. It wasn’t right. He’d hate himself even more later, but he could no more stop himself than he could hold back a river.
Later, when he went out in what was blatantly a suicide mission into what even a squid that had been raised in complete isolation could tell had been a trap, Ruby showed up to save him and he turned around and saved her by actually managing his first mental exorcism. It hurt worse than anything he’d ever experienced, including having his spinal cord severed, but he managed it.
For a few weeks after that it got easier. The exorcisms still tore through his brain like bullets but they hurt less each time. Maybe it was something like a callus building up, Sam didn’t know. Eventually even the nosebleeds dried up, and then the headaches went from blinding to just incapacitating to simply draining and then just excruciating. He could work with excruciating.
They settled into a routine of hunts, training and sex. Apparently sex, like French fries, was something that Ruby particularly missed about being human but that wasn’t necessarily unique to her. Meg, too, had enjoyed sex although part of the thrill in her case had been the fact that she’d been using his body against his will. And honestly, sex with Ruby wasn’t exactly a hardship once he got past the fact that she was a demon. Saving one another’s lives got him past the lack of emotional connection. Maybe it wasn’t love, but she was a demon and he was damned so whatever. It was some kind of comfort, it kept him connected to the world and his work instead of letting him wallow in his grief and finding new ways to join his brother in Hell.
The routine changed about five weeks after Dean’s death. He and Ruby were in an actual motel for once - no place fancy but he’d finally given into her importuning about squatting and showers and he had to admit that sometimes a bed was nice. They’d gotten takeout, mostly so she could get fries, and Sam had managed to choke down about a quarter of a sandwich before remembering that Dean couldn’t eat where he was and pushed it aside. They’d screwed and now they lay in a post-coital haze that seemed to be an important part of the experience for Ruby. That part he couldn’t figure out. She wasn’t human, it wasn’t like she needed to sleep or even to really rest, but she liked to lie there like having her head on his chest and his arm around her meant something. Maybe she was doing it for him - to make him feel like he wasn’t a monster, like he wasn’t a freak. Like there was part of him that was still human. Whatever. The place had a television, and they had the thing on for once and were idly watching a documentary about the Black Plague. She laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she scoffed.
“What?”
“Like anyone back in those days would have dressed like that! First of all, no one was that clean. Ever. Secondly, even prostitutes showed less skin than that woman is showing. I mean really, I get that they’re trying to get ratings up and like, get people to want to get educated about this crap but seriously. At least try to show what really happened.”
“Was it the plague that got you, Ruby?” he asked, stroking his fingers through her dark hair.
“Nah. Witch hunters. Charming folk, really. It didn’t stop the plague from getting them in the end, though.” She sneered and opened her generous mouth to say something else, but at that moment Sam felt a presence on the outer edges of his consciousness. It wasn’t a demon, but he couldn’t entirely identify it. Ruby’s borrowed flesh paled. “Do you feel -“
“What is it?” he demanded, grabbing her and trying to thrust her behind him.
The lights started to blink, not that Sam needed any kind of confirmation that whatever this was might be supernatural. Not with this… stirring at his mind, at his blood. Things on surfaces - a bottle of whiskey, the leftover takeout containers, the crappy prints hanging on the wall - started to vibrate. The bathroom mirror shattered, which was no great loss to the hunter. He grabbed Ruby’s knife from under the pillow and his Taurus from under the mattress and stood.
The television changed channels of its own accord, moving to a channel that didn’t exist and only displaying static. Ruby tugged her underwear on, coming to stand beside him. He tried to thrust her behind him again but she batted his hand away with a muttered, “You’re kidding, right?”
The door swung open like a hurricane had blown it in and a man followed. In a way it seemed to be anticlimactic - all this drama almost like an earthquake just to have a regular guy walk in. He looked kind of like an accountant, in a cheap suit with a backwards blue tie and a tan trench coat. His hair, though - there was nothing remotely debit or credit oriented about that hair. Maybe the wind had messed it around, or maybe he like Sam and Ruby had been interrupted post coitus. The guy was a little shy of six feet and he strode into the room looking straight ahead with the most intense blue eyes Sam had ever seen. There was nothing human about those eyes. The power radiating off this… whatever he was… it was the strangest thing he’d ever sensed in his life, like electricity and steam and ice and wind all at the same time.
“Sam Winchester,” the creature intoned in a deep, gravelly voice. “We need to speak.” He turned his head slightly to look directly at Ruby, who actually quailed at his gaze. “Privately.”
“Nuh-uh, buddy,” the demon retorted. “I don’t know who the Hell you think you are, but you’re not getting your hands on Sammy.”
“I don’t believe that there is much you could do to stop me, demon,” the stranger intoned. His voice lacked any kind of emotional indicator. Sam reached out with his mind, looking to get some kind of a read on the thing. “But I would prefer that Sam cooperated. I believe that he will want to hear what I have to say.”
Sam blinked. “Are you… possessing that guy?” he blurted, trying to sort out what he sensed from the creature.
“He’s not a demon, Sam,” Ruby pointed out.
“I am not. I’m an angel of the Lord.” He waved a hand and Sam’s gun disappeared. “Your gun would do you no good, but I am reluctant to risk accidents.” He eyed Sam down the length of his body, lingering near the hips to remind the hunter that his body at least was starting to see a fight or flight situation as a good enough reason for round two. “We have much to discuss, Sam Winchester.”
“And who are you again?” he demanded, not lowering the knife. Shame wasn’t something he was about to concern himself with. Not right now anyway.
“My name is Castiel. I’m an angel of the Lord.” He glanced around himself. “Perhaps we could go someplace less squalid?”
Ruby snorted, a show of bravado. “Buddy, you haven’t even begun to see squalid. This place is a palace compared to some of the places we’ve bunked down.”
“What, are you afraid you’re going to get tetanus?” Sam shot back. Adrenaline coursed through his veins, shortening his temper.
“She is not capable of becoming ill, Sam. She is a demon.”
“I know. I got the memo. So you are possessing that guy.” He reached out with his mind, intent on freeing the poor sap.
“Sam, stop.” He held up a hand as a light started to shine from inside the creature’s skin. “Jimmy is a devout man. He actually prayed for this.”
Sam paused for a moment and then released the creature he felt against his mind. He didn’t have the strength to pull it anyway; Ruby’s hand on the small of his back reminded him of that. “Why would I believe you’re an angel?”
“All of these years you’ve been praying and you’ve never once believed that an angel would appear before you, Sam Winchester?” A little smile appeared at the corners of his mouth. “Is your faith so small?”
“I believe in God,” Sam attested. “And I believe in angels. I just don’t think either of them has much of a place here.” He snorted. “So what are you really? Fae? Pagan god?”
The - whatever it was - tilted his head to one side. “You don’t believe. You have touched my grace, albeit briefly, and yet you don’t believe. Perhaps if you felt more…”
“No. Hell no,” Ruby objected, coming to stand in between Sam and the creature. “Whatever it is you are, no one is touching anything. The guy is too new, too young, too -“
“Valuable?” Castiel inquired, raising an eyebrow. “Indeed. I must concur with you there. But valuable to whom?”
“If you are what you say you are then you already know that. He’s valuable to me. To himself.”
“He hardly looks as though he’s valuable to himself, does he, Ruby?”
“He’s getting there. You should have seen him when I found him again.”
Sam cleared his throat. “Uh, guys? Right here.”
Ruby glared at him for a moment. “Sam, put some pants on for crying out loud.”
He passed her the knife and grabbed his jeans from where he’d left them next to the bed. “So you said I ‘touched your grace’, as you would call it.”
“Yes, just now when you attempted to exorcise me from Jimmy Novak’s body. I am not a demon - a demon is a human soul, of course, warped and twisted by its time in Hell until it becomes a monster.”
“Thanks,” Ruby sneered.
“I have never been human, but the principle is much the same. My grace, for your purposes at least, functions in much the same way. It is my… well, the best way to explain it is my energy, my essence. Like the black smoke of a demon or the soul of a human. Reach out with your mind and touch it, but do not tug. Just take hold.”
He glanced at Ruby, who by this point was as white as the corpse she was riding. “I don’t like this, Sammy,” she told him.
“It’s the only way,” he shrugged, and closed his eyes.
Light. Light and frost and ambient electricity crackling everywhere, neither form nor flesh. Castiel was thought, and intent and power. He had been since the beginning of time, since the Earth was a rock floating in the vastness of space, and he would be when the earth was a lifeless rock once again. There were others, also light and electricity but their colors were different in ways that Sam knew his human eyes might never be able to even see but here, with his mind he could perceive all of the minute variations between their shades.
And the wings! While the angels had no form they had shape, and that shape included wings that were an extension of that same thing Sam touched now. Castiel’s were blue, the same as his eyes, with black shading and magnificent. He glimpsed memories - Anael, with her shimmering red grace, and Balthazar with lavender and gold. Lucifer, and wasn’t that a funny thing? Because he was the purest and most beautiful of all in Castiel’s memory.
And the voices! They didn’t so much speak as sing, a sound that could probably break Sam’s soul right in two if he let himself hear it for any length of time. Perfect pitch, perfect harmony, none of it meant for human ears at all. That such a sound of pure beauty could carry such messages as it did - messages of war, of business, orders to “stand and watch,” to “interrogate.”
Sam withdrew, hands shaking, and opened his eyes. When he looked at Castiel he still saw the body of Jimmy Novak but if he didn’t actively try not to he could see the vague blue outline of Castiel’s grace radiating out from him. “Okay,” he breathed when he could speak again. “You’re an angel.”
Ruby grabbed her clothes. “Look, Sam, we need to run!”
“If I wished to smite you I would have already done so,” Castiel pointed out. “Nevertheless, I would prefer to speak with Sam privately.”
“Sam, you can’t trust angels,” Ruby pointed out, drawing her clothes on. “They are not on our side here.”
“All I want is to converse with you, Sam. I am not asking for your immortal soul.” The angel’s mouth quirked up.
“Yeah, no one’s got much use for that.” He helped Ruby find her purse and keys. “Look. I’ll talk to the guy. If someone wants to help us - well, we could use all the allies we can get, right?” He met her eyes and held them for a moment.
She looked away first. “Yeah. Right. You’re right, of course. Give me a call when you’re, uh, ready. I’ll go entertain myself for a little while.” She faked a little smile and gave him a peck on the cheek. Sam didn’t ask how she’d entertain herself. She was what she was and he didn’t really want to know much more.
“All right.” He turned back to Castiel and grabbed his shirt off the floor. “Don’t get me wrong. It’s… impressive… to actually meet an angel. I’m just… surprised.”
“You don’t think that angels are likely to take an interest in you, Sam?”
“I have demon blood in me. Angels and demons aren’t recorded as playing nicely together.” He drew his tee shirt over his head and sat down in one of the chairs.
“Your physiology is unique,” his companion admitted, sitting stiffly in the other chair. “Your soul is human. I would not have let your… companion… touch my grace. She could not have done so, in fact.”
“Is that so?”
“Some extremely powerful demons can directly confront an angel. Ruby is not one of them. Why are you in her company?”
“She’s helping me to learn how to fight Lilith.” He met the angel’s eyes. “I can’t do it by myself. Not yet.”
“And is sexual intercourse required for fighting Lilith?” He glanced at the messy bed before looking back at Sam.
Why should Sam be ashamed? “It makes her happy. It doesn’t make sense to antagonize the person who’s helping you. Can I get you anything? A beer? Do angels drink beer?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it again. “I have never tried to drink beer. Or anything else. Angels do not require sustenance. But I will try one.”
Sam got up and grabbed them beers. Dean would have hated these beers; he would have mocked the fancy bottles and the small brewery. He’d have loved the taste. “So I still don’t know what an angel would want with me and Ruby.”
The smaller man - creature - cleared his throat. “My business is not with Ruby, Sam. That’s why I asked her to leave - it’s not just that angels and demons tend to make a mess when we’re in each other’s space for any length of time. My business is with you. Sam, you mourn for your brother, yes?”
“How can you even ask that? You’re still mourning for Lucifer and he’s still alive!” Sam snapped.
Castiel blinked. Sam hadn’t realized that the guy wasn’t blinking until he did it now, his grace dimming slightly as he fell silent for a few seconds. “I didn’t realize that you had seen that far. I am sorry. It was inappropriate of me.” He recovered himself. “Nevertheless, you are mourning for him. And yet you are focused on revenge instead of rescue.”
“I only know of one way to rescue him,” Sam growled, “and I had nothing to offer.”
Now the angel smiled slightly. “What if I told you that I could offer you another way, Sam?”
He felt a corner of his own mouth twitch of its own volition. “I’d probably tell you to pull the other one.”
Castiel frowned and shook his head. “Pull the other what?”
“Never mind. It’s an expression. It means I don’t believe you.”
“Sam, Heaven has decided that your brother still has work ahead of him. And that he frankly deserves to be saved. We have weighed our options. I can lead a garrison of angels in to pull him out, but this would likely cost the lives of many angels and is not necessarily a guarantee of success. Or…”
He found himself leaning forward in spite of himself. “Or what?”
“Or I enlist the assistance of someone with a strong interest in getting him out. Someone who has the ability to fight demons on their own turf. Someone who is of Hell without actually being a demon. Someone who wants what we want.” He leaned forward and put a hand over Sam’s. “Someone like Sam Winchester.”
Sam let his eyes meet Castiel’s for another moment. It sounded plausible. It sounded beautiful, honestly. Even after his failure to prevent Dean from going to Hell in the first place, even after his soul had proved worthless, he could still find a way to save Dean. Then he shook his head. “I can barely exorcise a minor level demon, Castiel,” he objected. “And even one of those leaves me drained for the rest of the day. And all I do when I pull one is send it back to Hell. I want to do this. I really do - I mean, I’d give anything I had to be what you need - but I’m not the guy you’re looking for.”
“It will require a great deal more training,” Castiel nodded. “And it will not be without danger to you.”
He laughed out loud. “I’m not sure what part of me is giving the impression that I’m worried about myself.”
The angel grimaced. “You will need to be in better condition. You will need to actually eat food.” He gestured to the three quarters of a sandwich still on the table. “And I will need to help train you.”
Sam screwed up his face in what he knew was probably about his least attractive expression. “What’s wrong with the training Ruby’s giving me? I mean, you’re an angel. She’s teaching me to use my demonic side.”
He sighed. “Sam, not all of your abilities are entirely demonic. And I can… I can see the pathways in your brain better than she can, really. But have you not given any consideration to where Ruby gets her information? How she managed to escape Lilith’s clutches after Lilith took over her host and exorcised her back to Hell?”
Sam’s mouth went dry. “No. No, Ruby’s helping me.”
“Ruby is helping Ruby, Sam. You needn’t take my word for it. You can see right into her heart when she returns.”
“The reason for the sex,” Sam surmised, without even realizing that he was speaking out loud. He wished he could say that he was surprised, or that he didn’t believe the angel. Neither was true. He’d never given Ruby’s information sources much thought, and of course she’d managed to get out of hell somehow.
Castiel frowned again. “I thought you believed that it made her happy.”
“I’m sure it did. Does. Whatever. But there were other things she does. Like, um. You know what? You’re an angel. You don’t care about this kind of crap. Let’s just say I think it was to lull me into a false sense of security.” He felt his cheeks get hot. “Um… you know, trying to make herself seem more human. Or something. Like that’s important to me.” He rolled his eyes. “Let’s pretend, for a moment, that I believe you. What do I need to do to know if she’s telling the truth?” Yeah, Castiel. Tell me, how can I tell if I’m being used yet again by another demon - and while we’re at it, why don’t you share what it is that you’re getting out of this? He bit down on his cheek and avoided voicing those thoughts out loud. Maybe the angel was helping. Maybe he wasn’t. Letting his blood boil wasn’t going to get him answers.
“Work with me, Sam. I’ll help you to develop your abilities, and we’ll harrow Hell together. You seem to have no moral issue working with your abilities?” He raised an eyebrow.
“Dean never liked them - well, he never knew about these. But I… I know he wouldn’t like these. He didn’t like it when they were just visions that I couldn’t control, you know? He definitely didn’t want me using them or trying to get control of them.” He pressed his lips together. “But not using them didn’t make me less of a freak.”
“He may not be pleased by your surrender to them when he is freed.” The angel didn’t move any part of himself when he spoke, only his mouth. He didn’t blink, he didn’t wrinkle his nose. He didn’t move his hands and he didn’t twitch his arms.
“No, he’ll be furious. And that’s… something I’ll have to deal with. If he even finds out.” He sighed. “But I can worry about it when he’s out.”
“These abilities, they mark you as other, Sam. I want you to trust me and if you’re going to trust me you need to know that I’m not trying to hide anything from you. When you start developing these abilities you’ll grow farther apart from your humanity, become more ‘other.’ Is this a path you’re willing to take?”
Sam laughed a little, and even he knew that there was no humor in it. “Castiel, I’m screwing a demon. I’ve known that I’ve got demon blood in me for over a year. I may not even entirely know what I am, but I have to accept that whatever it is isn’t human. Not really. If that makes me more ‘fair game’ than I was when Gordon Walker and his buddies were hunting me, that’s fine.”
The angel paused. “You really don’t care, do you? Rest assured, Sam, that your soul should remain untouched by anything I would ask of you. Your soul is pure and human. The only thing that can condemn you is your choices.”
“Like screwing a demon.” He smirked.
Castiel’s dark head tilted to one side again. “If you believe that the choice damns you, why do you continue to do it?” Sam felt his own head tilt in response and fought the urge. The angel was handsome, he had to admit that, but it wasn’t his body. Not at all, and Sam shouldn’t be looking at him with lust in the first place.
“It has its good points. Besides, like I said before, she’s helping me.” He shrugged. “If I keep her happy she keeps helping me. It’s not exactly rocket science.” He took a swig from his beer.
“Do you feel compelled to enter into a sexual contract with me as well?” Sam choked on his beer. “I did not know that sex was a common way for human males to pay for assistance.”
“Is that something that you need from me, Cas?” Sam rasped, shocked into the nickname.
“I am an angel. There is no sexual requirement for angels.”
“Then why would you even ask that?”
“I was confused by your expectations.”
His stomach lurched. “That’s not something to expect of anyone, Castiel.” Should an angel really need to be told this? “It’s only okay if it’s freely given, you know? And your… meat suit… I guess… is very attractive. Yeah. But he’s still in there. So… kind of gross.” Okay. The host body was more than “very attractive,” he was hot, but he wasn’t the one choosing to use the body in that way. “Besides. That’s not what you need or what, so it’s not what we’re talking about here. Okay?” he tried to wrestle the conversation away from sexuality and toward Dean. “What exactly do you get out of the deal?”
“What do you mean?”
“I get my brother out of Hell, and I get to be part of what got him out of Hell instead of the dumbass who got him sent there in the first place. What do you get out of it? No one does something for nothing.” He shook his head.
“You don’t believe that even angels do something out of the goodness of their hearts?” He raised his eyebrows.
“You’re light and electricity and intent,” Sam retorted. “You don’t have hearts.”
Castiel gave an actual laugh then - a small one, to be sure, but an actual laugh nonetheless. “A valid point. Dean Winchester will be saved. It relates to an obscure prophecy, but that isn’t a concern. Will you work with me?” He held out a hand.
Sam took it without hesitation. “Of course. If I’ve got a snowball’s chance of saving Dean I’m taking it.”
Cas covered his larger hand in both of his and gave a genuine smile. Sam could feel the grace surrounding him, washing over his skin. “Excellent. Call your demon friend and we will prove her true faith.”
He withdrew his hand. “Torture?”
“Not necessarily. I hope that we will not need it. And Ruby is a survivor. She will not subject herself to such treatment if she need not do so.”
Sam obediently called Ruby, who returned to the motel within the hour. Neither male moved against her until she put her things down and closed the door behind her, at which point Castiel gestured and Ruby found herself unable to move. “What the Hell, Sam?” she seethed, eyes going black as she raged.
“Sam, I want you to reach out and touch her essence just as you touched my grace earlier. Don’t tug, just touch,” the angel directed, eyes on Ruby. The blue glow poured from his eyes more strongly now.
Sam obeyed. Ruby wasn’t exactly a revelation to him - he’d mentally touched demons before and she wasn’t substantially different from them, oily black smoke and seething power. Unlike with an angel he could feel that she had a form, or at least the echo of one: distinctly female, although she was capable of possessing a man, and unlike with the angel he could sense emotion. Again, this wasn’t exactly a revelation; he’d just never really poked around. Demons were kind of inherently emotional after all. He felt her rage, her pain, her hate and her fear. “Got her,” he said, opening his eyes. Ruby strained against the invisible bonds that held her, chest heaving even though she didn’t need to do petty human things like breathe. Guilt twinged at his heart. After all, she’d helped him, kept him alive, shown him how to go after the source of his problems and here he was violating her privacy.
“Ruby, who are you working for?” Castiel demanded in his calm, unflappable voice.
“I’m working for Sam, dumbass,” she spat. “Or I was before the two of you put me through this.”
“Then why did you just get more scared?” Sam wanted to know, bitterness rising in his throat. It tasted an awful lot like bile. “It was like… like a firework on the fourth of July.” He moistened his lips. “What kind of game are you playing here?” Yeah, he’d been played all right. All that remained was figuring out how badly.
More fireworks, more red. “Sam, I’m telling you. I’m just trying to help you get revenge on Lilith!”
“You’re desperate. It’s… kind of blue. Dark blue. You’re lying. And sweating, which your host body doesn’t usually do.” A flash of a name popped into his head, although he couldn’t quite tell if it was out of paranoia or from any kind of psychic cause. “Lilith. You’re working for Lilith.”
“No.” Now everything was red. She was terrified.
He tightened his grip slightly. “Tell the truth, Ruby.” He didn’t yell, he didn’t even growl.
She cried out. “Sam, stop! You don’t know what it’s like!”
“Enlighten me.”
Castiel put a hand on his shoulder. “You can let her go, Sam.”
He released his mental hold, not realizing until now that he had the beginnings of a dull headache. “Sorry. I had to… I had to know. I can’t believe this.” Except that he could. At least the last time he’d been forced by circumstance into dancing to a demon’s tune. This time he’d just gone along like a dimwitted baby goat.
“You were desperate,” the angel pointed out. His hand had not moved. “She was offering you something to hold onto.”
“I saved your damn life,” the demon spat. “You could try a little gratitude.”
“You’re working for the demon who’s been trying to kill me for over a year and you want gratitude?” He stepped away as she flopped down onto a chair. “That’s… that’s nice. How long, Ruby?”
“Sam -“
He slammed his hands down onto the table and spun around, face so close to hers that their noses were almost touching. “How. Long?” he yelled, and she jumped.
“Since I got back,” she sighed. “She forced me out of the blonde host body the night Dean… died. Locked me down nice and tight on Alastair’s rack, and let me tell you that Alastair is not the guy you want anywhere near you. He’s… there is no one better when it comes to torture, Sam. There is no one he can’t break. No one he hasn’t broken. He had your father.” She looked up and met his eyes for a moment, and he had to force himself to not look away. Another one of his failures, because John wouldn’t have been there at all if Sam had just killed Azazel when he’d had the chance. Yeah, it had made Dean happy that he hadn’t done it and killed John in the process, but the way things had turned out? The cost had been too high. “Anyway, she approached me after a couple of months of the best Alastair had to offer and made me an offer. I got to come back if I came to you and picked things up where they left off. Got you to start training.”
“Training to kill her? Why?”
“I don’t know. Yet. But it’s big. Like, Apocalyptic big. I know she wants to free Lucifer.” The name sent a crackle of something - electricity, terror, excitement, primal fear - down Sam’s spine. “I don’t know how she plans to do that, but it’s probably got something to do with that.” She sighed. “I honestly have no idea how you play into that, Sam. I don’t. She just told me to teach you to use your powers and get you to trust me. I’d learn the rest when I needed to and I guess that I just haven’t needed to yet. I mean, yeah. I know it’s probably something you’re not going to be real fond of but it’s not like she can kill you, right?”
He remembered back to being shunted off in his own body, watching his hands tying Jo to the post. “There are fates worse than death,” he pointed out, stepping back out of her space and running his hands through his hair. He’d trusted her. He didn’t need to know where he figured into Lilith’s plan to free Lucifer from his cage - the fact that he was part of that plan, in any way at all, made his stomach lurch.
She smirked up at Castiel. “So I suppose now’s the part where you smite me?”
“No.”
Both Sam and Ruby looked at the angel. “Seriously?”
“Losing you makes it obvious to Lilith that the mission has been compromised. You get to live, Ruby.” He smiled grimly. “You might prefer it to be otherwise, but you will live. And you will help us one way or another.”
“Look. I like you, Sam. I don’t want you to get hurt. But angels? No way.” She glared at Castiel, and Sam could tell that this wasn’t false bravado this time. She had nothing to lose. “They have the good PR, but it doesn’t matter how ‘helpful’ I am. I’m still what I am. They’ll use me up and throw me away when they’re done with me, and that’s assuming that my own kind don’t find out that I’m helping the other side and get me first. I’d rather you just killed me outright. At least then there’s just nothingness.
“And you -“ she smirked at Sam. “Don’t you even think you’re ‘special’ somehow. I don’t know what they’ve got cooking up, but if they’re trying to drag a part-demon kid into it it can’t be good. Not for you. They’re not going to be grateful. They’re going to throw you out like trash, Sam, and they’re not going to care about your pretty eyes or your pretty, pretty soul. As far as they’re concerned you’re one of us.”
He swallowed. He’d let himself hope that the presence of an angel might suggest that he wasn’t damned, but it had been foolish. “It doesn’t matter,” he shrugged. “If Castiel can help me get Dean out of Hell he can kill me after we’re done, I don’t care. He can send me to Hell, reduce me to ash, it doesn’t matter. As long as Dean is safe and not suffering.”
She laughed. “Sam - nothing can get Dean out!”
“No one thing,” Castiel agreed. “But Sam can. Working with an angel. It’s not going to be easy, but Heaven has decided that Dean Winchester does not merit Hell. These are my orders. Sam has chosen to join me. You are going to assist us.”
She rolled her eyes. “What makes you think I’m not going to betray you? I mean, him I’m kind of invested in. You? Not so much. We’re kind of diametrically opposed.”
“I will set a seal upon your heart, Ruby.” He smiled softly and stepped forward, splaying a hand out on her chest. The hand glowed briefly with white light, and her chest glowed red. She screamed. “You cannot betray us now,” he informed her, stepping back and wiping his hand on his trench coat as she sagged back gasping.
“You bastard,” she whimpered. Sam stepped forward and took her into his arms. “What did you do?”
“It’s an ancient spell. You will be unable to reveal our work, our knowledge or our purpose.” He glanced at Sam, seeming confused. “Her loyalty was questionable. Now it is assured.”
Sam frowned as Ruby buried her face in his chest. “You don’t think that interferes with free will just a little bit?”
He tilted his head to the side. “Free will is not a concept with which angels generally concern ourselves, Sam. We serve Heaven. We are agents of God’s will. We have orders. Mine are to get your brother out of Hell, using whatever means are necessary.”
The thought was more chilling for its matter-of-fact, almost gentle delivery. “All right,” Sam exhaled. “Where do we start?”
“We need to build up your strength,” the angel smiled. “You need to eat. And sleep. Tomorrow we go hunting - all three of us.”
Next