Fanfic - SPN: IDKMUIMY - Ch.10 - I Die for You and Stand for Me
Title: I Didn't Know Me Until I Met You
Author: eboniorchid
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Chapter 10: I Die for You and Stand for Me
[079.Rejected]
John woke Sam and Dean late the next morning with a ring on Dean's cell phone and a harsh tone in Dean's ear.
It looked like they would need to change their plans, again, because Joseph did not, contrary to his belief, have an original or even remotely accurate copy of the Nam Ek Yp Rynar, which was supposed to provide them with the protective runes they would need, in order to remain undetected by avenging Grigori clansmen after the battle. But John had some other plan that he thought might work and, being his paranoid self, he didn't want to explain it to them until he saw them in person. So, when Dean got off the phone, he said to pack up all the gear they thought they might need for the final battle, even though their commissioned replacement bullets for the Colt wouldn't be ready for another week. Apparently, John had just said to bring whatever they could find, because the battle had to happen sooner than they had originally planned.
They spent a few hours pulling together all the books and weapons that they imagined might even remotely be of help. Then, they grabbed a handful of sandwiches from the diner on the way out of town, and got on the road to drive the three and a half hours it would take them to get up to some farmhouse in Rutland, Vermont, that John had called in a favor to use as headquarters for the battle they were still hoping to win.
When they arrived, just after sunset, John was already settled in, his coat over a chair, his weapons on display, a map of some sort stuck on a wall, haphazardly scarred by thumbtacks, and he was calm, despite his earlier irritation. Sam had to admit, as they were taking inventory of everything they had on hand, that maybe … just maybe … John might not be so bad, as long as they didn't talk about massive demonic conspiracies or what exact methods Sam had considered for ending John's life. Dean seemed relieved that Sam and John were mostly getting along, which may have been why he looked more shocked than anyone when Sam's hand went for the Colt and aimed it at John.
"Sam?"
"He's not what you think he is, Dean."
"Sam, what are you talking about?" Dean's eyes flicked back and forth between Sam and John in a reenactment of the first time these two Winchesters had met.
"Repeat what you just said to me … Father." He was talking to the body of John, but he knew now that John was only playing host to someone much more sinister.
John was looking at Dean, though, as he spoke, trying to get his oldest son on his side, as always. "All I said to Sam was that he was probably better equipped to handle the fight we're about to go into, because of his demonic connection. They seem to be slower to break and quicker to heal. I swear, that's all I said, Dean. I told you this would happen, son. They've confused him so much he doesn't know who the good guys are."
Dean blinked slowly. Then looked at Sam, shaking his head. "I don't understand, Sam. What was wrong with what he said?"
"He …" Sam swallowed because talking about his family's abuse always made him feel dirty and he really wished Dean would just trust him, just this once. But he wasn't going to. "My father often said, after punishment … that it was good that I could take so much … that it meant that the part of me that was Grigori was strong enough to help my human body … help it be slower to break and quicker to heal."
Dean quirked his head, then, and looked, really looked, at John, and John's expression settled into something akin to annoyance and exasperation. "He doesn't know what he's talking about, Dean. I'm not possessed. Can't you see that? If there's anyone here who should have a gun aimed at his head right now, I can surely tell you that it's not me."
Turning back to Sam, Dean just shook his head, his brow creased, as he shrugged. "I just don't see it, Sam. Don't you think … maybe … it could just be a coincidence? I mean … 'slower to break and quicker to heal' isn't something I've heard much, but … it seems like a pretty reasonable description of what happens, right? Couldn't those have just been the words that worked right then, Sam?"
Sam shrugged, thinking, but his arm was still steady. If he shot John and there was some kind of supernatural light show, then he would have proven his point. But if he shot John and there was nothing, neither of the Winchesters would ever forgive him. And he'd only just kind of made up with Dean. Dean did have a point, too, about all of those words actually just working for the situation and not necessarily being some kind of sick catchphrase. So … maybe … fine.
He began to lower the gun. But his arm didn't make it back to his side.
He felt the rush of heat, too late, as his father's powers threw him and Dean each into a different wall of the room, with pained grunts ripping up from both their throats.
Suspended there, held by ghosting hands around his body and heart, Sam thought to draw on his powers, but his father had magicks pulsing lightly around his head and he felt dazed. He watched Azazel pick up the Colt, dropped when his body flew into the wall, and set it on the table with all the other weapons, now worthless, because neither he nor Dean could get to them.
"Well … that's done." His father was looking his way, the yellow-orange of his true eyes somehow right at home in John's face. It made Sam wonder if these two men had met before like this, twenty-four or so years ago.
"Is that how I ended up like this? Did you make him a host for you?"
"Oh, Sammy … you're not still having an identity crisis, are you? You know what you are and so does everyone here. You're my son … my good boy … and you're gonna make me proud tonight, aren't you?"
Sam could feel the way his father's magicks tugged at the flesh of his heart, but he didn't care about that pain right now. He wasn't going to be anyone's good boy ever again. "Fuck you! How'd you find us?"
Azazel laughed, deep and ominus. "You were a fool to think your money could ever go further than my money and my power, Sam, in Salem or anywhere. Even Joseph was on the payroll, there was a reason he'd given up Hunting and hunkered down with his books. He was really going to give John that book, though. So, I had him throw himself on his library's funeral pyre. It was a beautiful service … though, I admit, I usually like there to be more screaming."
His father was a sick fuck, he knew that. He knew it, but it still made him shudder, thinking that he'd almost become that, that he'd ever wanted to become that. "Where are the others, Father? Don't they usually do your dirty work for you?"
"Oh, I left them at home today, son. Figured I could handle your little temper tantrum on my own. But, don't worry, boy, I'll let them have their go with you, after you complete your mission. They'll give you a … proper … initiation into full membership in the clan."
Sam clenched his jaw, ignoring the flash of fear in his gut at the thought of being thrown back to the lions. He stood his ground, though, knowing that even if he and John didn't much like each other, he still wouldn't kill the man, and he definitely wouldn't even consider killing Dean, not even to end torture by Kane. Dean was his family and his handle on sanity, in spite of everything that was fucked up in his life. "It's not gonna happen. I won't kill them for you."
"You would stand against me, boy?"
"I do stand against you."
"For the lives of these worthless humans?"
"For a family you never allowed me to know."
"Because they would have slaughtered you when they learned what you were. They still will, Shemhazai. You are not of their line any more than mine and I, unlike them, have never sought your destruction. If you somehow survive battle with me, they will kill you. It was always the plan." Azazel turned his attention to Dean. "Wasn't it, Dean? And remember, boy, I'm in your daddy's head right now, so it's probably best not to lie to me."
Dean said nothing. No affirmation, but also no denial.
"Dean?" Sam's voice sounded so small, even to him.
Dean's head was bowed when he spoke, shamed. "We'd talked about … how you were torn … between worlds … and … dad thought … that the only way to help you … was to put you … out of your misery-" He cried out as Azazel raked spirit nails beneath his skin. "But I woulda stopped him, Sam. I swear, I-" This time the shout was louder and longer, Dean throwing his head back against the wall. He was being shredded from the inside out.
To Sam, though, it felt like he was the one being torn apart.
Dean wouldn't have risked losing his father for him. More than anything, Dean strove to be a good son. How would he have explained defending the life of a half-demon? How would he have explained caring for one at all, let alone wanting to bed one, a half-demon and half-brother? Maybe he would have tried, maybe not, but Sam knew his death would erase most of these potential conflicts from view.
It was too easy. It made too much sense.
"Lies. Tell the truth, boy." Azazel tugged at Dean's insides, blood soaking through his shirt. "Have you ever really gone against your father?"
"… No … but … I would … for Sam."
"Aw, well isn't that just sweetest, sickest thing I've heard all day." Azazel was right up close to Dean's face, smiling as his taunts stabbed into places where his magicks couldn't reach.
"I don't believe you." Sam looked across the room into Dean's eyes and saw guilt and pain and honesty, but it didn't matter how much Dean believed he would have tried. He'd had at least half a dozen chances to warn Sam that John wanted him dead and he'd never said a single word. He'd left Sam wide open, vulnerable, with a big fucking target on his forehead.
It was like he was some rare Hunting present for daddy.
His mother had died by his father's hand, so he never knew her. The father he'd admired turned out to be a walking, talking, breathing evil who had almost never been honest with him. The father he'd almost thought he might learn to respect wanted him dead, but only after using him up, just like everyone else. And the brother … the brother he'd loved … still loved … would have let him die to keep the peace.
Sam was alone in this, maybe alone in the world.
The flare of Sam's rage was immediate and powerful. Azazel lost his magickal grip on both the boys, leaving Dean as a blood-spattered heap on the floor. Sam, though, stood so tall and strong that it was like his powers had made him grow somehow.
"You understand now, don't you, son?"
"Yes, Father, I do."
"Good. Then complete your mission, end the Winchester line, and earn your Cloak and a place by my side."
"Yes, sir."
Sam's mind was fixed, perfectly in-tune with the energies in the room. The arsenal on the table flew his way before diverting in Dean's direction. His father's eyes followed the weapons with glee and smiled wide when the safeties on the guns clicked off. So, it was clearly a shock for him when he heard the report of only one gun and felt a lightning bolt of pain enter the back of his thigh, courtesy of a twice-blessed bullet from the consecrated Colt now back in Sam's hand.
The levitating weapons clattered to the floor, as John fell and fought to breathe through the pain, once again himself. "I can still feel him in me. You shoot me. You shoot me in the heart, Sam! This ends tonight!"
"NO!" Dean shouted, struggling to sit up on the blood-slick floor. "Sam, don't you dare! He was wrong about you. I know it. But don't, Sam, don't. Please."
All Sam could see was red and how easy it would be. Two worthless fathers: dead. One deceiving brother: dead enough.
"Don't you do this!" Dean's face was hard with promise, but then it softened to something closer to pleading and resolve. "You're better than this, Sammy. I know it."
Sammy.
The haze of rage rolled back enough for him to truly see the care for him that his brother hadn't completely thrown away. He was better than this. But this still had to end. Tonight. All of it.
Sam aimed the gun at John's heart and focused his magicks to pin him down. But he spoke, instead of shooting, the words coming to him like a record playing in his mind, making him a conduit for their path, flowing out of him and into John.
"Ne reminiscaris, Domine, delicta nostra, vel parentum nostrorum: neque vindictam sumas de peccatis nostris. Deus, in nomine tuo salvum me fac: et in virtute tua judica me. Deus, exaudi orationem meam: auribus percipe verba oris mei."
His arm was steady, but there were tears in his eyes.
"Exorcizo te, Azazel, omnis incursion adversarii, omne phantasma, omnis legio, in nomine Domini nostril Jesu Christi eradicare, et effugare ab hoc plasmate Dei."
John's body began to writhe on the floor at his feet.
"Ipse tibi imperat, qui te de supernis caelorum in inferiora terrae demergi praecepit. Ipse tibi imperat, qui mari, ventis, et tempestatibus imperavit. Illum metue, qui in Isaac immolatus est, in Joseph venumdatus, in agno occisus, in homine crucifixus, deinde inferni triumphator fuit."
John thrashed around mindlessly, sputtering curses that Sam drowned out with the rising righteous tone of his voice.
"Exorcizo te, Azazel. Exorcizo te, Asiz. Exorcizo te, Azael. Exorcizo te, Eblis. Exorcizo te, Rameel. Exorcizo te, Gadriel."
With every name John's body jerked, as if struck, and blood ran crimson from his nose and ears.
"Exorcizo te, princeps Grigoria, rector Se'iria, pater Nephilia. EXORCIZO OMNIS TE! Et constringo te ad Infernum Aeternus, a nunc ad finis temporia!"
A cloud of living black dust spewed up like a fountain from John's mouth with a shriek and Sam made the sign of the cross three times over John's shuddering chest.
"Recede ergo in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti: da locum Spiritui Sancto, per hoc signum sanctae Crucis Jesu Christi Comini nostril: Qui cum Patre et Spiritu Sancto vivit et regnat Deus, per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen."
And the essence of that evil flooded into the ground and disappeared, banished by his every name, to dwell in Hell for all eternity.
Chapters: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12
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Author: eboniorchid
Full Header for the Series
Additional Series Info
Chapter 10: I Die for You and Stand for Me
[079.Rejected]
John woke Sam and Dean late the next morning with a ring on Dean's cell phone and a harsh tone in Dean's ear.
It looked like they would need to change their plans, again, because Joseph did not, contrary to his belief, have an original or even remotely accurate copy of the Nam Ek Yp Rynar, which was supposed to provide them with the protective runes they would need, in order to remain undetected by avenging Grigori clansmen after the battle. But John had some other plan that he thought might work and, being his paranoid self, he didn't want to explain it to them until he saw them in person. So, when Dean got off the phone, he said to pack up all the gear they thought they might need for the final battle, even though their commissioned replacement bullets for the Colt wouldn't be ready for another week. Apparently, John had just said to bring whatever they could find, because the battle had to happen sooner than they had originally planned.
They spent a few hours pulling together all the books and weapons that they imagined might even remotely be of help. Then, they grabbed a handful of sandwiches from the diner on the way out of town, and got on the road to drive the three and a half hours it would take them to get up to some farmhouse in Rutland, Vermont, that John had called in a favor to use as headquarters for the battle they were still hoping to win.
When they arrived, just after sunset, John was already settled in, his coat over a chair, his weapons on display, a map of some sort stuck on a wall, haphazardly scarred by thumbtacks, and he was calm, despite his earlier irritation. Sam had to admit, as they were taking inventory of everything they had on hand, that maybe … just maybe … John might not be so bad, as long as they didn't talk about massive demonic conspiracies or what exact methods Sam had considered for ending John's life. Dean seemed relieved that Sam and John were mostly getting along, which may have been why he looked more shocked than anyone when Sam's hand went for the Colt and aimed it at John.
"Sam?"
"He's not what you think he is, Dean."
"Sam, what are you talking about?" Dean's eyes flicked back and forth between Sam and John in a reenactment of the first time these two Winchesters had met.
"Repeat what you just said to me … Father." He was talking to the body of John, but he knew now that John was only playing host to someone much more sinister.
John was looking at Dean, though, as he spoke, trying to get his oldest son on his side, as always. "All I said to Sam was that he was probably better equipped to handle the fight we're about to go into, because of his demonic connection. They seem to be slower to break and quicker to heal. I swear, that's all I said, Dean. I told you this would happen, son. They've confused him so much he doesn't know who the good guys are."
Dean blinked slowly. Then looked at Sam, shaking his head. "I don't understand, Sam. What was wrong with what he said?"
"He …" Sam swallowed because talking about his family's abuse always made him feel dirty and he really wished Dean would just trust him, just this once. But he wasn't going to. "My father often said, after punishment … that it was good that I could take so much … that it meant that the part of me that was Grigori was strong enough to help my human body … help it be slower to break and quicker to heal."
Dean quirked his head, then, and looked, really looked, at John, and John's expression settled into something akin to annoyance and exasperation. "He doesn't know what he's talking about, Dean. I'm not possessed. Can't you see that? If there's anyone here who should have a gun aimed at his head right now, I can surely tell you that it's not me."
Turning back to Sam, Dean just shook his head, his brow creased, as he shrugged. "I just don't see it, Sam. Don't you think … maybe … it could just be a coincidence? I mean … 'slower to break and quicker to heal' isn't something I've heard much, but … it seems like a pretty reasonable description of what happens, right? Couldn't those have just been the words that worked right then, Sam?"
Sam shrugged, thinking, but his arm was still steady. If he shot John and there was some kind of supernatural light show, then he would have proven his point. But if he shot John and there was nothing, neither of the Winchesters would ever forgive him. And he'd only just kind of made up with Dean. Dean did have a point, too, about all of those words actually just working for the situation and not necessarily being some kind of sick catchphrase. So … maybe … fine.
He began to lower the gun. But his arm didn't make it back to his side.
He felt the rush of heat, too late, as his father's powers threw him and Dean each into a different wall of the room, with pained grunts ripping up from both their throats.
Suspended there, held by ghosting hands around his body and heart, Sam thought to draw on his powers, but his father had magicks pulsing lightly around his head and he felt dazed. He watched Azazel pick up the Colt, dropped when his body flew into the wall, and set it on the table with all the other weapons, now worthless, because neither he nor Dean could get to them.
"Well … that's done." His father was looking his way, the yellow-orange of his true eyes somehow right at home in John's face. It made Sam wonder if these two men had met before like this, twenty-four or so years ago.
"Is that how I ended up like this? Did you make him a host for you?"
"Oh, Sammy … you're not still having an identity crisis, are you? You know what you are and so does everyone here. You're my son … my good boy … and you're gonna make me proud tonight, aren't you?"
Sam could feel the way his father's magicks tugged at the flesh of his heart, but he didn't care about that pain right now. He wasn't going to be anyone's good boy ever again. "Fuck you! How'd you find us?"
Azazel laughed, deep and ominus. "You were a fool to think your money could ever go further than my money and my power, Sam, in Salem or anywhere. Even Joseph was on the payroll, there was a reason he'd given up Hunting and hunkered down with his books. He was really going to give John that book, though. So, I had him throw himself on his library's funeral pyre. It was a beautiful service … though, I admit, I usually like there to be more screaming."
His father was a sick fuck, he knew that. He knew it, but it still made him shudder, thinking that he'd almost become that, that he'd ever wanted to become that. "Where are the others, Father? Don't they usually do your dirty work for you?"
"Oh, I left them at home today, son. Figured I could handle your little temper tantrum on my own. But, don't worry, boy, I'll let them have their go with you, after you complete your mission. They'll give you a … proper … initiation into full membership in the clan."
Sam clenched his jaw, ignoring the flash of fear in his gut at the thought of being thrown back to the lions. He stood his ground, though, knowing that even if he and John didn't much like each other, he still wouldn't kill the man, and he definitely wouldn't even consider killing Dean, not even to end torture by Kane. Dean was his family and his handle on sanity, in spite of everything that was fucked up in his life. "It's not gonna happen. I won't kill them for you."
"You would stand against me, boy?"
"I do stand against you."
"For the lives of these worthless humans?"
"For a family you never allowed me to know."
"Because they would have slaughtered you when they learned what you were. They still will, Shemhazai. You are not of their line any more than mine and I, unlike them, have never sought your destruction. If you somehow survive battle with me, they will kill you. It was always the plan." Azazel turned his attention to Dean. "Wasn't it, Dean? And remember, boy, I'm in your daddy's head right now, so it's probably best not to lie to me."
Dean said nothing. No affirmation, but also no denial.
"Dean?" Sam's voice sounded so small, even to him.
Dean's head was bowed when he spoke, shamed. "We'd talked about … how you were torn … between worlds … and … dad thought … that the only way to help you … was to put you … out of your misery-" He cried out as Azazel raked spirit nails beneath his skin. "But I woulda stopped him, Sam. I swear, I-" This time the shout was louder and longer, Dean throwing his head back against the wall. He was being shredded from the inside out.
To Sam, though, it felt like he was the one being torn apart.
Dean wouldn't have risked losing his father for him. More than anything, Dean strove to be a good son. How would he have explained defending the life of a half-demon? How would he have explained caring for one at all, let alone wanting to bed one, a half-demon and half-brother? Maybe he would have tried, maybe not, but Sam knew his death would erase most of these potential conflicts from view.
It was too easy. It made too much sense.
"Lies. Tell the truth, boy." Azazel tugged at Dean's insides, blood soaking through his shirt. "Have you ever really gone against your father?"
"… No … but … I would … for Sam."
"Aw, well isn't that just sweetest, sickest thing I've heard all day." Azazel was right up close to Dean's face, smiling as his taunts stabbed into places where his magicks couldn't reach.
"I don't believe you." Sam looked across the room into Dean's eyes and saw guilt and pain and honesty, but it didn't matter how much Dean believed he would have tried. He'd had at least half a dozen chances to warn Sam that John wanted him dead and he'd never said a single word. He'd left Sam wide open, vulnerable, with a big fucking target on his forehead.
It was like he was some rare Hunting present for daddy.
His mother had died by his father's hand, so he never knew her. The father he'd admired turned out to be a walking, talking, breathing evil who had almost never been honest with him. The father he'd almost thought he might learn to respect wanted him dead, but only after using him up, just like everyone else. And the brother … the brother he'd loved … still loved … would have let him die to keep the peace.
Sam was alone in this, maybe alone in the world.
The flare of Sam's rage was immediate and powerful. Azazel lost his magickal grip on both the boys, leaving Dean as a blood-spattered heap on the floor. Sam, though, stood so tall and strong that it was like his powers had made him grow somehow.
"You understand now, don't you, son?"
"Yes, Father, I do."
"Good. Then complete your mission, end the Winchester line, and earn your Cloak and a place by my side."
"Yes, sir."
Sam's mind was fixed, perfectly in-tune with the energies in the room. The arsenal on the table flew his way before diverting in Dean's direction. His father's eyes followed the weapons with glee and smiled wide when the safeties on the guns clicked off. So, it was clearly a shock for him when he heard the report of only one gun and felt a lightning bolt of pain enter the back of his thigh, courtesy of a twice-blessed bullet from the consecrated Colt now back in Sam's hand.
The levitating weapons clattered to the floor, as John fell and fought to breathe through the pain, once again himself. "I can still feel him in me. You shoot me. You shoot me in the heart, Sam! This ends tonight!"
"NO!" Dean shouted, struggling to sit up on the blood-slick floor. "Sam, don't you dare! He was wrong about you. I know it. But don't, Sam, don't. Please."
All Sam could see was red and how easy it would be. Two worthless fathers: dead. One deceiving brother: dead enough.
"Don't you do this!" Dean's face was hard with promise, but then it softened to something closer to pleading and resolve. "You're better than this, Sammy. I know it."
Sammy.
The haze of rage rolled back enough for him to truly see the care for him that his brother hadn't completely thrown away. He was better than this. But this still had to end. Tonight. All of it.
Sam aimed the gun at John's heart and focused his magicks to pin him down. But he spoke, instead of shooting, the words coming to him like a record playing in his mind, making him a conduit for their path, flowing out of him and into John.
"Ne reminiscaris, Domine, delicta nostra, vel parentum nostrorum: neque vindictam sumas de peccatis nostris. Deus, in nomine tuo salvum me fac: et in virtute tua judica me. Deus, exaudi orationem meam: auribus percipe verba oris mei."
His arm was steady, but there were tears in his eyes.
"Exorcizo te, Azazel, omnis incursion adversarii, omne phantasma, omnis legio, in nomine Domini nostril Jesu Christi eradicare, et effugare ab hoc plasmate Dei."
John's body began to writhe on the floor at his feet.
"Ipse tibi imperat, qui te de supernis caelorum in inferiora terrae demergi praecepit. Ipse tibi imperat, qui mari, ventis, et tempestatibus imperavit. Illum metue, qui in Isaac immolatus est, in Joseph venumdatus, in agno occisus, in homine crucifixus, deinde inferni triumphator fuit."
John thrashed around mindlessly, sputtering curses that Sam drowned out with the rising righteous tone of his voice.
"Exorcizo te, Azazel. Exorcizo te, Asiz. Exorcizo te, Azael. Exorcizo te, Eblis. Exorcizo te, Rameel. Exorcizo te, Gadriel."
With every name John's body jerked, as if struck, and blood ran crimson from his nose and ears.
"Exorcizo te, princeps Grigoria, rector Se'iria, pater Nephilia. EXORCIZO OMNIS TE! Et constringo te ad Infernum Aeternus, a nunc ad finis temporia!"
A cloud of living black dust spewed up like a fountain from John's mouth with a shriek and Sam made the sign of the cross three times over John's shuddering chest.
"Recede ergo in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti: da locum Spiritui Sancto, per hoc signum sanctae Crucis Jesu Christi Comini nostril: Qui cum Patre et Spiritu Sancto vivit et regnat Deus, per omnia saecula saeculorum. Amen."
And the essence of that evil flooded into the ground and disappeared, banished by his every name, to dwell in Hell for all eternity.
Chapters: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12
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