Fic: Set the fire to the third bar = episode 13
Fic: Set the fire to the third bar = episode 13
Author: Seraphim Grace
Fandom = Supernatural
Pairing = Castiel x Dean (god is love in all its forms)
Rating = NC17
spoilers = yes for season 4, set between Great pumpkin and the one after that I've forgotten the name of
AUish - set in the world of american gods and sandman but also the spn universe, I just stretched it a little
prompts - Dean wonders how much is too much when you've already past that line and just how changed he is from being in hell.
suggested by keire_ke
betaed by bellajayd who deserves more praise than me for this - she's certainly doing more work
Not enough coffee in the world
In the hotel dusk
tea with thrones
The House of Five aspects
The Banshee in the Bathroom
Time is never time enough
let the bodies hit the floor
I could sleep forever
The smell of hospitals in winter
Here be dragons
The Queen of Sheba
You can't count on me
Episode 13
In which Dean learns to ask the right questions, but doesn't always get the right answers.
Soundtrack:
From the edge of the deep green sea - the cure
-----------
Bilquis is pissed that he went off alone, “Reigert?” She yelled. “Reigert, it’s a wonder you’re not a pile of dust!” And that was that.
After that Dean is not allowed to go even as far as the bar alone.
It’s Wayne that explains it as the two of them carry towels from Lamia’s room where she’s managed to vomit what remains of the goose, which isn’t much, by dislocating her jaw. Dean's sure he could have lived without seeing that. It seems she wasn’t pregnant, just digesting. Dean keeps thinking of this book Sammy had as a kid at Pastor Jim’s, the Swiss Family Robinson, and there was this picture of this snake eating an onager, he only knows it’s an onager because Sammy was insistent it wasn’t a donkey or an, snicker, ass and the onager looked seriously pissed, then on the next page is the snake looking like someone tied a knot in it as the Robinson’s go forth to kill it.
That is what Lamia was like. She had swallowed the goose whole, including, judging by the mess that hits the towels with the broken bones, the small plastic bag with the giblets.
That is when Dean realises just why Wayne is so pissed. The whole scene is surreal, like something out of a horror movie where the goose remains would jump to life and attack Wayne- forcing Dean to kill it with the towel. In reality, it just lies there while Lamia heaves and her belly flattens before his eyes.
Afterwards they burn the towels and what remains of the goose. Dean stands next to the burning barrel, watches the flames lick, curl, and caress, and wonders if he put his hand into the fire could he lift it out in his palm. “You can’t go out alone, you know, not while you’re here.”
“Why?” Dean asks, he’s pretty sure it’s a valid question.
Wayne spreads his hands over the fire. It smells like dinner and the bones are popping and cracking in the heat. “It’s complicated,” he begins, “I mean if you stole some uranium where would you hide it?”
“Why would I steal uranium?” Dean has no idea where this is going.
Wayne’s answer is succinct. “To make a bomb, but they have these machines now that can find things like uranium, radiators or something.” Dean nods, “so where do you hide it? Where do you put it that their machines can't find it?”
Dean doesn't have an answer for that.
“Somewhere where the machines can’t find it. Somewhere where, when they go off everyone expects it. The best place to hide the makings of a nuclear bomb, Dean, is a nuclear power plant, or a hospital. Somewhere that’s already radiatoractive.”
Dean thinks he should point out that it’s radioactive but that would just mean more questions.
“You’re the uranium and we’re the power plant, Dean.”
“Tiger stripes,” Dean says finally understanding, “camouflage, hiding it in plain sight.”
“Yeah. We’re tiger stripes.” Wayne admits, “sucks don’t it.”
“Yeah,” Dean blinks the fire flares for a moment, “I’m sure Cas has his reasons.”
“Reigert is bad news, Dean," Wayne continues, “real bad news.” He rubs his hands as the bones continue to pop and crack. “He’s old school bad.”
And Dean can’t resist poking the beast so he asks, “How bad?”
“I,” Wayne starts, “well Death told me this, never make a deal with a psychopomp, she tells me all her gossip, that’s what I do, I listen.” Dean wants to say when, all you do is talk, you’d reveal the secrets of the universe over a coffee and cookies. “She told me about this guy and he finds the love of his life, this irascible, wonderful waif of a man, and they’re happy.” Wayne looks guilty but he continues to talk. “I mean really happy, happy ever after happy, and then there is an accident, a car accident and guy one is driving, and his lover is killed and he sees it happen. So far so human right? That’s when Reigert stepped in,” he takes a deep breath, “When the guy gets out of the hospital his lover, who he has buried, is there, alive and well in the kitchen. And he lives his life with the guy he loved.”
“That doesn't sound evil,” Dean tells him, “sounds kinda nice.”
“Yeah, except that the guy knows he killed him, he knows he’s dead and he’s responsible, and everyone can see him and talk to him and it’s like nothing happened but he knows he killed him, and the lover doesn’t, so you know what happens, you know what Reigert does?”
“Drives the man mad so he kills him again?” Dean can see where this is going, where these things always go.
“No,” Wayne corrects, “he stops the man going mad, so he has to live every minute of every day knowing he killed the man he loved and that he’s not dead, and when he tries to kill himself the lover saves him. The lover gets up every morning and goes to work like it never happened but he’s dead. They just carry on but one of them is dead and the other one knows it and yet he can't even drive the other away because it’s the true love of his life and he killed him and he’s still there.”
“That sucks.” Dean agrees.
“That’s what Reigert does, Dean, he takes what's there and twists it and turns it and then he doesn't let it break because it’s better that way, it takes longer. It’s like a work of evil art and that guy, when he dies he probably won't even go to hell, because that’s not the point, it’s the dilemma, the contradiction, the ‘why god, why him?’ that Reigert wants. He’s evil, Dean, old school big bad Ganondorf on the rag evil.”
“He has answers," Dean tells him.
“We all have answers, Dean,” Wayne looks magnanimous in the firelight, “the trick is to get the right questions.”
“Is it real?” Dean’s surprised that his voice is a whisper.
“It’s all true,” Wayne answers, “God’s an astronaut, Oz is over the rainbow, and Midian is where the monster’s live.”
Dean’s eyes widen for a moment and then he gets the joke, mock punching Wayne on the arm, “Dude, we nearly had a moment there.”
“I know, chick flicks sneak up on you when you’re not looking, must be all those girls.” He looks at the house, “And fire, Dean, it’s not a bad thing.”
Dean’s voice is small when he asks, “Do you know what’s happening?”
“I know what happened to me,” Wayne says, “Lamia knows what happened to her, and Smyrna what happened to her. We are all the main characters of our own films, Dean; the trick is to work out the plot to the one you’re in. Are you a nuclear bomb hiding in a power plant or a hospital? I don’t know the answer to that, sorry.” The fire is dying down between them, the towels and goose remnants gone. “I do know that it’s all true, everything. It might not be factual, but it's true. Now, we should get inside before my dangly bits decide they’re not going to dangle anymore.”
“What is Lamia?” Dean asks as they go inside.
“Regretting that goose,” Wayne answers and Dean decides not to push it, not now. Wayne has told him too much as it is and it rattles around in his head like a demolition derby. He wonders when it got so crowded in there, when everything became so complicated and he wants more than anything the simplicity of a hunt, and tries not to look back at the dying fire in the barrel behind them.
-------
Eventually it is Seiglinde who accompanies Dean on a hunt, which turns out not to be a hunt at all, just a blind corner and a very badly placed traffic post. It is obvious that there doesn't need to be a haunting here for it to be a death trap, as Dean wanders around with the EMF metre, hoping that there is something he can kill, Seiglinde sits on the post and waits for him.
A passing Nissan nearly clips him as it runs the corner too fast and is damn near another statistic. Seiglinde looks bored, pissed, and cold, and it's a total bust.
He has to remind himself that there is always one, and as the cars pelt pass, this one is slightly more dangerous than the others.
“Well come along, Brynhilde,” he tells the woman on the bollard, “we might as well call it a night.”
“I am not Byrnhilde,” Seiglinde informs him, “I Seiglinde, Brynhilde has bigger ass.” She turns around to show it to him and it’s just so ridiculous he wants to laugh but the laughter isn’t there anymore.
Instead, there is fire and rage.
Seiglinde, at least, has a pair of tweezers to take the CD out of the player of the anti-Impala, which is a great mercy. As they reach the Queen of Sheba Seiglinde climbs out, “I’ll just park her around back," Dean lies, and she grins and believes him, “I’ll be right behind you.” He thinks he should feel bad for this but he wants answers, or to kill something, preferably both but he’ll make do.
-----------------------------------
At the edge of one of the rougher suburbs is an abandoned mall. Before it was a mall it was a hotel and before that it was a mental asylum. The place is eerie.
Dean knows it’s where he’ll find Reigert.
He’s pretty sure that this “knowing” stuff is related to the mind whammy that Reigert gave him in the park, and he’s not nearly stupid enough to think he knows what he’s doing but Reigert has answers, if Dean knows the right questions.
Reigert is standing beside the main entrance. The whole place has gone to rot and ruin. It smells damp but there isn't a hint of any kind of animal or insect life about the place.
Reigert looks like he was waiting for him. His features are handsome, if a little blunt, but he has the off-putting angel stillness down. Dean has the knife in his hand but Reigert speaks first. “Tell me, Dean, do you dream of ice,” there is no reaction, “earth bearing down on you,” he watches Dean closely as he speaks, “or fire?” He smiles but Dean was sure he hadn't revealed a thing. “It doesn’t matter, I just wanted to know.”
“I want answers,” Dean says, fist clenching about the knife handle.
“You come here to my place and presume to make demands of me,” Reigert sounds amused, “Silly little creature. This place is mine,” he looks around in wonderment, “it had nothing to do with me, but the evil that happened here seeped into the very ground until the firmament itself rejected it and ceded it to me. Nothing happens here without my say so, Dean, nothing.” There is no threat in his tone, no bluster, he is as calm and collected as if he is memorising a line from a play. “I am not the kind of angel you want to make bargains with. You have nothing I want.”
Dean is almost whining. “I just want answers.”
“And knowledge is power,” Reigert answers, “Why would I give something like that away for free?”
“You helped me before.”
Reigert tilts his head in that strange animal gesture that Castiel uses, the one that suggests that someone has said something that makes absolutely no sense to him, “I told you the hierarchy of Hell for my own purposes. You want to get rid of Lilith and I want her out of my sandbox. Nothing else. If that is all, I’ll go.”
“Please,” Dean is surprised the word escapes his lips. This is a demon, one of the great fallen angels. You don’t beg favours from a demon.
“I suppose I could answer one question,” Reigert says, “if you will do one thing for me,” he adds the caveat, “nothing to risk your immortal soul of course, little Neville.” Dean blinks, he’s pretty sure that in all the names he’s ever used he’s never used Neville but Reigert calls him that anyway. “In the basement of this place is a chapel, consecrated and holy, in it is a chancel covered in votives, light them and I will answer a single question. Be quick, I tire of this already.”
Dean does as he’s asked. It is a chapel, stained glass and everything, and unlike the rest of the asylum-hotel-mall it’s immaculate and there are candles everywhere, some burned down past the stub into waxy puddles but hundreds maybe just waiting on a flame. Each one has a small coin embedded in it, in all sorts of currencies, Dean doesn’t question it because angels are strange, he takes out his lighter and starts.
He’s sweating from the heat of it when it’s done and Reigert lingers outside the door like a bad smell, hands in the pockets of his wool coat.
“Thank you. Your truth, Dean, is this, your mother made a deal with Azazel,” and Dean is about to say something about how he knows this, Castiel showed him this, “a bad deal and she knew it, but she was a hunter, a good one, better than you will ever be, and she knew more. She knew how to play the game fair and when to tilt the table. When you toss a coin there are two outcomes, heads or tails, your mother threw the coin and hoped it would fall on it’s side.”
“I know all this,” Dean postures.
“You only think you do. Thank you for the candles, now go.” The sudden wrongness of the place overwhelms him. He can’t leave quick enough because it's crawling through his skin and under it like the taint of Hell. His skin doesn’t fit anymore and his hair is itching and his stomach roiling.
The anti-Impala is sitting there, snow on the white hood and he knows he’s got gear in the trunk, because he’s not stupid enough not to, and as he settles in the passenger seat he thinks about what Reigert said, he doesn’t understand a word of it. He puts the car into drive and just goes.
When he turns on the radio, glad Seiglinde finally fixed it, a man’s voice goes “Dean, Dean, where are you?” It sort of sounds like Sam. He’s angry and pissed and driving too fast and the only answer he can think of is “Fuck Off,” and turning the volume knob down so the voice can talk all he wants because Dean’s not listening. All the rage and frustration of every little thing since he found Sam trying to get down Ruby’s throat is sitting there like bile in the back of his throat. The Hell visions, the fire, the sight of the coins in Reigert’s votives and his knowledge.
He’s worried he might be sick but instead he just pushes his foot down on the gas and lets the anti-Impala run.
Dean thinks of the man who lost his one true love and was given him back without asking. He wonders what that’s like.
He remembers something Pastor Jim said once, in hushed tones to his Dad when he was only a kid “How do you hurt someone who has nothing, John? That one’s easy, you give them back something broken.” Dean didn’t understand it then and wonders what John would have done if, after a year, Reigert had given him back his wife. After he had done those terrible things during that first year and then he’d get into the car and she’d just be there.
Then he gets angrier because Reigert didn’t give her back.
He’s angry because Reigert found this one man somewhere and fucked with him by giving him someone back and he didn’t return Mary.
Dean doesn't remember his mother, not really. He was too small, too young, and then Castiel sent him back to see her as a young woman, before she was his mother and that messed with things. The warm hands and soft words became a hunter’s hands and a hunter’s words and she sold her son.
He brakes hard, pulls into a field, and stumbles from the car.
The rage is out of control.
He can barely see.
It’s a winter field, empty apart from a birch tree heavy with snow and icicles.
They did this!
Azazel did this!
He conned them!
He manipulated them!
And he went to Hell!
And Lilith possesses little girls and just uses them to mess with other people’s heads and doesn't even want Hell for itself, she wants it to avenge some insult that only she gets.
And Sammy is bearing the brunt of it! His little baby Sammy, with his huge hands and his floppy hair. And Sammy won't listen because he’s too proud and they're all just lying to him. And Reigert saved someone else just because he could. And Castiel’s not here and it torments him. And it's too much, it’s too much, it’s -
“TOO DAMN MUCH.” The words force their way out of him.
Fire billows out, spreading around him in an explosion and reaching to the sky. Fire is him and he is the fire and it’s everywhere and the relief is palpable, like pissing after holding it in for hours. Fire is everywhere but it’s not burning him, it’s fire and it’s him and it’s peace and of all the things that surround him, the fire makes sense.
As he kneels there in the snow the birch tree burns.
Next episode
Author: Seraphim Grace
Fandom = Supernatural
Pairing = Castiel x Dean (god is love in all its forms)
Rating = NC17
spoilers = yes for season 4, set between Great pumpkin and the one after that I've forgotten the name of
AUish - set in the world of american gods and sandman but also the spn universe, I just stretched it a little
prompts - Dean wonders how much is too much when you've already past that line and just how changed he is from being in hell.
suggested by keire_ke
betaed by bellajayd who deserves more praise than me for this - she's certainly doing more work
Not enough coffee in the world
In the hotel dusk
tea with thrones
The House of Five aspects
The Banshee in the Bathroom
Time is never time enough
let the bodies hit the floor
I could sleep forever
The smell of hospitals in winter
Here be dragons
The Queen of Sheba
You can't count on me
Episode 13
In which Dean learns to ask the right questions, but doesn't always get the right answers.
Soundtrack:
From the edge of the deep green sea - the cure
-----------
Bilquis is pissed that he went off alone, “Reigert?” She yelled. “Reigert, it’s a wonder you’re not a pile of dust!” And that was that.
After that Dean is not allowed to go even as far as the bar alone.
It’s Wayne that explains it as the two of them carry towels from Lamia’s room where she’s managed to vomit what remains of the goose, which isn’t much, by dislocating her jaw. Dean's sure he could have lived without seeing that. It seems she wasn’t pregnant, just digesting. Dean keeps thinking of this book Sammy had as a kid at Pastor Jim’s, the Swiss Family Robinson, and there was this picture of this snake eating an onager, he only knows it’s an onager because Sammy was insistent it wasn’t a donkey or an, snicker, ass and the onager looked seriously pissed, then on the next page is the snake looking like someone tied a knot in it as the Robinson’s go forth to kill it.
That is what Lamia was like. She had swallowed the goose whole, including, judging by the mess that hits the towels with the broken bones, the small plastic bag with the giblets.
That is when Dean realises just why Wayne is so pissed. The whole scene is surreal, like something out of a horror movie where the goose remains would jump to life and attack Wayne- forcing Dean to kill it with the towel. In reality, it just lies there while Lamia heaves and her belly flattens before his eyes.
Afterwards they burn the towels and what remains of the goose. Dean stands next to the burning barrel, watches the flames lick, curl, and caress, and wonders if he put his hand into the fire could he lift it out in his palm. “You can’t go out alone, you know, not while you’re here.”
“Why?” Dean asks, he’s pretty sure it’s a valid question.
Wayne spreads his hands over the fire. It smells like dinner and the bones are popping and cracking in the heat. “It’s complicated,” he begins, “I mean if you stole some uranium where would you hide it?”
“Why would I steal uranium?” Dean has no idea where this is going.
Wayne’s answer is succinct. “To make a bomb, but they have these machines now that can find things like uranium, radiators or something.” Dean nods, “so where do you hide it? Where do you put it that their machines can't find it?”
Dean doesn't have an answer for that.
“Somewhere where the machines can’t find it. Somewhere where, when they go off everyone expects it. The best place to hide the makings of a nuclear bomb, Dean, is a nuclear power plant, or a hospital. Somewhere that’s already radiatoractive.”
Dean thinks he should point out that it’s radioactive but that would just mean more questions.
“You’re the uranium and we’re the power plant, Dean.”
“Tiger stripes,” Dean says finally understanding, “camouflage, hiding it in plain sight.”
“Yeah. We’re tiger stripes.” Wayne admits, “sucks don’t it.”
“Yeah,” Dean blinks the fire flares for a moment, “I’m sure Cas has his reasons.”
“Reigert is bad news, Dean," Wayne continues, “real bad news.” He rubs his hands as the bones continue to pop and crack. “He’s old school bad.”
And Dean can’t resist poking the beast so he asks, “How bad?”
“I,” Wayne starts, “well Death told me this, never make a deal with a psychopomp, she tells me all her gossip, that’s what I do, I listen.” Dean wants to say when, all you do is talk, you’d reveal the secrets of the universe over a coffee and cookies. “She told me about this guy and he finds the love of his life, this irascible, wonderful waif of a man, and they’re happy.” Wayne looks guilty but he continues to talk. “I mean really happy, happy ever after happy, and then there is an accident, a car accident and guy one is driving, and his lover is killed and he sees it happen. So far so human right? That’s when Reigert stepped in,” he takes a deep breath, “When the guy gets out of the hospital his lover, who he has buried, is there, alive and well in the kitchen. And he lives his life with the guy he loved.”
“That doesn't sound evil,” Dean tells him, “sounds kinda nice.”
“Yeah, except that the guy knows he killed him, he knows he’s dead and he’s responsible, and everyone can see him and talk to him and it’s like nothing happened but he knows he killed him, and the lover doesn’t, so you know what happens, you know what Reigert does?”
“Drives the man mad so he kills him again?” Dean can see where this is going, where these things always go.
“No,” Wayne corrects, “he stops the man going mad, so he has to live every minute of every day knowing he killed the man he loved and that he’s not dead, and when he tries to kill himself the lover saves him. The lover gets up every morning and goes to work like it never happened but he’s dead. They just carry on but one of them is dead and the other one knows it and yet he can't even drive the other away because it’s the true love of his life and he killed him and he’s still there.”
“That sucks.” Dean agrees.
“That’s what Reigert does, Dean, he takes what's there and twists it and turns it and then he doesn't let it break because it’s better that way, it takes longer. It’s like a work of evil art and that guy, when he dies he probably won't even go to hell, because that’s not the point, it’s the dilemma, the contradiction, the ‘why god, why him?’ that Reigert wants. He’s evil, Dean, old school big bad Ganondorf on the rag evil.”
“He has answers," Dean tells him.
“We all have answers, Dean,” Wayne looks magnanimous in the firelight, “the trick is to get the right questions.”
“Is it real?” Dean’s surprised that his voice is a whisper.
“It’s all true,” Wayne answers, “God’s an astronaut, Oz is over the rainbow, and Midian is where the monster’s live.”
Dean’s eyes widen for a moment and then he gets the joke, mock punching Wayne on the arm, “Dude, we nearly had a moment there.”
“I know, chick flicks sneak up on you when you’re not looking, must be all those girls.” He looks at the house, “And fire, Dean, it’s not a bad thing.”
Dean’s voice is small when he asks, “Do you know what’s happening?”
“I know what happened to me,” Wayne says, “Lamia knows what happened to her, and Smyrna what happened to her. We are all the main characters of our own films, Dean; the trick is to work out the plot to the one you’re in. Are you a nuclear bomb hiding in a power plant or a hospital? I don’t know the answer to that, sorry.” The fire is dying down between them, the towels and goose remnants gone. “I do know that it’s all true, everything. It might not be factual, but it's true. Now, we should get inside before my dangly bits decide they’re not going to dangle anymore.”
“What is Lamia?” Dean asks as they go inside.
“Regretting that goose,” Wayne answers and Dean decides not to push it, not now. Wayne has told him too much as it is and it rattles around in his head like a demolition derby. He wonders when it got so crowded in there, when everything became so complicated and he wants more than anything the simplicity of a hunt, and tries not to look back at the dying fire in the barrel behind them.
-------
Eventually it is Seiglinde who accompanies Dean on a hunt, which turns out not to be a hunt at all, just a blind corner and a very badly placed traffic post. It is obvious that there doesn't need to be a haunting here for it to be a death trap, as Dean wanders around with the EMF metre, hoping that there is something he can kill, Seiglinde sits on the post and waits for him.
A passing Nissan nearly clips him as it runs the corner too fast and is damn near another statistic. Seiglinde looks bored, pissed, and cold, and it's a total bust.
He has to remind himself that there is always one, and as the cars pelt pass, this one is slightly more dangerous than the others.
“Well come along, Brynhilde,” he tells the woman on the bollard, “we might as well call it a night.”
“I am not Byrnhilde,” Seiglinde informs him, “I Seiglinde, Brynhilde has bigger ass.” She turns around to show it to him and it’s just so ridiculous he wants to laugh but the laughter isn’t there anymore.
Instead, there is fire and rage.
Seiglinde, at least, has a pair of tweezers to take the CD out of the player of the anti-Impala, which is a great mercy. As they reach the Queen of Sheba Seiglinde climbs out, “I’ll just park her around back," Dean lies, and she grins and believes him, “I’ll be right behind you.” He thinks he should feel bad for this but he wants answers, or to kill something, preferably both but he’ll make do.
-----------------------------------
At the edge of one of the rougher suburbs is an abandoned mall. Before it was a mall it was a hotel and before that it was a mental asylum. The place is eerie.
Dean knows it’s where he’ll find Reigert.
He’s pretty sure that this “knowing” stuff is related to the mind whammy that Reigert gave him in the park, and he’s not nearly stupid enough to think he knows what he’s doing but Reigert has answers, if Dean knows the right questions.
Reigert is standing beside the main entrance. The whole place has gone to rot and ruin. It smells damp but there isn't a hint of any kind of animal or insect life about the place.
Reigert looks like he was waiting for him. His features are handsome, if a little blunt, but he has the off-putting angel stillness down. Dean has the knife in his hand but Reigert speaks first. “Tell me, Dean, do you dream of ice,” there is no reaction, “earth bearing down on you,” he watches Dean closely as he speaks, “or fire?” He smiles but Dean was sure he hadn't revealed a thing. “It doesn’t matter, I just wanted to know.”
“I want answers,” Dean says, fist clenching about the knife handle.
“You come here to my place and presume to make demands of me,” Reigert sounds amused, “Silly little creature. This place is mine,” he looks around in wonderment, “it had nothing to do with me, but the evil that happened here seeped into the very ground until the firmament itself rejected it and ceded it to me. Nothing happens here without my say so, Dean, nothing.” There is no threat in his tone, no bluster, he is as calm and collected as if he is memorising a line from a play. “I am not the kind of angel you want to make bargains with. You have nothing I want.”
Dean is almost whining. “I just want answers.”
“And knowledge is power,” Reigert answers, “Why would I give something like that away for free?”
“You helped me before.”
Reigert tilts his head in that strange animal gesture that Castiel uses, the one that suggests that someone has said something that makes absolutely no sense to him, “I told you the hierarchy of Hell for my own purposes. You want to get rid of Lilith and I want her out of my sandbox. Nothing else. If that is all, I’ll go.”
“Please,” Dean is surprised the word escapes his lips. This is a demon, one of the great fallen angels. You don’t beg favours from a demon.
“I suppose I could answer one question,” Reigert says, “if you will do one thing for me,” he adds the caveat, “nothing to risk your immortal soul of course, little Neville.” Dean blinks, he’s pretty sure that in all the names he’s ever used he’s never used Neville but Reigert calls him that anyway. “In the basement of this place is a chapel, consecrated and holy, in it is a chancel covered in votives, light them and I will answer a single question. Be quick, I tire of this already.”
Dean does as he’s asked. It is a chapel, stained glass and everything, and unlike the rest of the asylum-hotel-mall it’s immaculate and there are candles everywhere, some burned down past the stub into waxy puddles but hundreds maybe just waiting on a flame. Each one has a small coin embedded in it, in all sorts of currencies, Dean doesn’t question it because angels are strange, he takes out his lighter and starts.
He’s sweating from the heat of it when it’s done and Reigert lingers outside the door like a bad smell, hands in the pockets of his wool coat.
“Thank you. Your truth, Dean, is this, your mother made a deal with Azazel,” and Dean is about to say something about how he knows this, Castiel showed him this, “a bad deal and she knew it, but she was a hunter, a good one, better than you will ever be, and she knew more. She knew how to play the game fair and when to tilt the table. When you toss a coin there are two outcomes, heads or tails, your mother threw the coin and hoped it would fall on it’s side.”
“I know all this,” Dean postures.
“You only think you do. Thank you for the candles, now go.” The sudden wrongness of the place overwhelms him. He can’t leave quick enough because it's crawling through his skin and under it like the taint of Hell. His skin doesn’t fit anymore and his hair is itching and his stomach roiling.
The anti-Impala is sitting there, snow on the white hood and he knows he’s got gear in the trunk, because he’s not stupid enough not to, and as he settles in the passenger seat he thinks about what Reigert said, he doesn’t understand a word of it. He puts the car into drive and just goes.
When he turns on the radio, glad Seiglinde finally fixed it, a man’s voice goes “Dean, Dean, where are you?” It sort of sounds like Sam. He’s angry and pissed and driving too fast and the only answer he can think of is “Fuck Off,” and turning the volume knob down so the voice can talk all he wants because Dean’s not listening. All the rage and frustration of every little thing since he found Sam trying to get down Ruby’s throat is sitting there like bile in the back of his throat. The Hell visions, the fire, the sight of the coins in Reigert’s votives and his knowledge.
He’s worried he might be sick but instead he just pushes his foot down on the gas and lets the anti-Impala run.
Dean thinks of the man who lost his one true love and was given him back without asking. He wonders what that’s like.
He remembers something Pastor Jim said once, in hushed tones to his Dad when he was only a kid “How do you hurt someone who has nothing, John? That one’s easy, you give them back something broken.” Dean didn’t understand it then and wonders what John would have done if, after a year, Reigert had given him back his wife. After he had done those terrible things during that first year and then he’d get into the car and she’d just be there.
Then he gets angrier because Reigert didn’t give her back.
He’s angry because Reigert found this one man somewhere and fucked with him by giving him someone back and he didn’t return Mary.
Dean doesn't remember his mother, not really. He was too small, too young, and then Castiel sent him back to see her as a young woman, before she was his mother and that messed with things. The warm hands and soft words became a hunter’s hands and a hunter’s words and she sold her son.
He brakes hard, pulls into a field, and stumbles from the car.
The rage is out of control.
He can barely see.
It’s a winter field, empty apart from a birch tree heavy with snow and icicles.
They did this!
Azazel did this!
He conned them!
He manipulated them!
And he went to Hell!
And Lilith possesses little girls and just uses them to mess with other people’s heads and doesn't even want Hell for itself, she wants it to avenge some insult that only she gets.
And Sammy is bearing the brunt of it! His little baby Sammy, with his huge hands and his floppy hair. And Sammy won't listen because he’s too proud and they're all just lying to him. And Reigert saved someone else just because he could. And Castiel’s not here and it torments him. And it's too much, it’s too much, it’s -
“TOO DAMN MUCH.” The words force their way out of him.
Fire billows out, spreading around him in an explosion and reaching to the sky. Fire is him and he is the fire and it’s everywhere and the relief is palpable, like pissing after holding it in for hours. Fire is everywhere but it’s not burning him, it’s fire and it’s him and it’s peace and of all the things that surround him, the fire makes sense.
As he kneels there in the snow the birch tree burns.
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