Fic: In Country, Chapter IV
Jan. 27th, 2011 01:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oselleTitle: In Country, Chapter 4 of 5
Genre: SPN slash, AU based upon Episode 5:04, "The End"
Pairings: Dean/Castiel
Principals: Future!Dean, Future!Castiel
Rating: Hard R for Chapter IV
Warnings: Graphic violence, noncon (please check previous chapters for their ratings and warnings)
Spoilers: For SPN Episode 5:04
Word Count: 7,700 for Chapter IV (35,700 for the story so far)
Disclaimer: The Winchesters and all canon characters are the intellectual property of their creators. All original characters are mine. No money was made or sought in the writing of this story.
Summary: The world's gone to hell in the Croatoan apocalypse and Dean and Castiel have to put an end to it one way or the other.
The Story So Far: The turncoat demon Asmodeus (a.k.a. Asher) gives Cass a beating, a lecture and some heavenly bling, in that order, and ships him off to hell after Lucifer. Meanwhile Dean starves half to death and gets way too much unexpected attention from Lucifer down in hell. Unbeknownst to Lucifer, Sam makes a brief cameo appearance and offers Dean some much-needed advice and hope.
Author's Note: Inspiration for part of this chapter is owed to John Milton's great Biblical fic, Paradise Lost.
Need to catch up? Go back to Chapter III: River Rouge
IV. Fallen and Firstborn
The snow on his face was dry and not cold and Cass stopped and turned his palm up and saw it was not snow but cinders, pale and fine as dust. When he raised his eyes he no longer saw River Rouge. The landscape was the same yet all different. The veil was so thin here that he had passed through it with no sign. To his left now a vile river of gray sludge rolling in its courses. Before him a valley of ashes.
On the horizon under a featureless and louring sky lay Lucifer's city, raised up from these wastes when he was first cast out of heaven. Here he had reigned until restless he led his armies against God and it was Michael who drove him back and who struck the blow that wounded him, Michael who bound him with the chain that Cass himself now wore and imprisoned him beneath his own infernal city where he had festered for uncountable centuries until all the seals that held him were broken, the first by one unlucky brother and the last by another, neither of them knowing what he had done and yet both of them accountable for it before heaven.
Cass went on.
* * *
Since the one time that Sam spoke to him Dean had not seen Lucifer again. He began to think he had imagined it or that Lucifer had tricked him, or worse yet that Lucifer had realized Sam had come through for that one brief moment. He had time to think about these things because he was always alone. From time to time someone came to the other side of the door and shoved food under it and whoever or whatever that was he never saw nor did he want to see.
Finally he became so desperate that when he heard footsteps he went to the door and stood beside it where he could call out but not be grabbed like before.
"Hey," he said. The steps halted outside the door. "Tell your boss...tell Lucifer I want to see him."
He held his breath and listened. He heard a soft shuffling and then a joint of meat shot under the door and the steps passed away and it was quiet. Dean stood there and looked at the meat. He couldn't tell what it had come from. He picked it up and bent over and sent it flying back the way it had come.
"Tell him to get his fuckin ass down here!"
Yeah, that'll work, he thought, but he had nothing else. He had gone to Detroit expecting to fight and die and instead he had gotten this futile captivity in a shapeless gulf of time that could not be fought or outsmarted or escaped and he sat down on the floor and waited for Lucifer or Sam or whatever might come.
* * *
By the time Cass came out of the wasteland night had fallen. It didn't descend slowly the way night did on earth, rather the day such as it had been moved all at once from that shadowless sulfur light into darkness and just the same Cass did not so much enter the city as it seemed to rise up around him of its own accord and surround him as if he had always been there and nowhere else. The machines of commerce and industry ground away in this city in the service of hell's own monstrous enterprises. Cass made his way through a tangle of streets hemmed in by sooty walls and past doors that gaped open onto ugly hallways and flights of stairs glaring under lamps that reeked of sulfur and crude naphtha and whatever other fuels could be mined from hell's depths. In the streets and behind these walls damned souls and devils and hell's creatures toiled in bondage to infernal occupations or loitered in an anxious and idle despair that was nothing like leisure. Cass remembered none of this from before. He'd been an angel then and he had never walked these streets. Yet there was a dreadful familiarity to all of it and Cass realized that this city could almost have been Knoxville or Birmingham or Baltimore or any of the desperate places he'd been with Dean in these last years that Lucifer had made a hell of earth.
There was a terrific stench of filth and shit and all the corruptions of the body that remain in hell although the bodies themselves have long passed away and the damned ate and pissed and shat and puked and fucked and writhed in their own waste. Now and then one would pause and stare at him as he passed. Some of these still looked human and some were halfway to becoming demons themselves and some were almost entirely changed. Cass felt horribly exposed among them. The chain around him burned under his clothes and seemed to grow heavier from their presence.
"You're not you," a voice said to his left and he turned his head and saw something vaguely human but indecipherably male or female sitting on a stoop with its long and crooked hands dangling between its knees and he only glanced at it and kept walking and it called out again, "You're not you," and when he looked behind he saw that it had gotten up and was following him.
He turned down an alley that seemed empty and that stank of rotting meat. The brick walls on either side glistered with oily slime. He walked faster and stooped and pulled the knife from his boot and heard the thing coming up behind him and he turned around and faced it.
"Go back where you were."
"I was nowhere."
"Don't follow me."
"You stink," it said. "You stink like fresh meat and blood and it's so good."
It took a step forward. Cass stepped back.
"It's so good!" it repeated and then it launched itself at him like a spider and knocked him to the ground and its eyes were dead black and its teeth were sharp as if filed and it shrieked, "It's so GOOD! It's so GOOD!" and it was already inhumanly strong. It pinned Cass's wrist to the ground. "No knives, we have teeth!" and Cass got his knees up and shoved it off and staggered to his feet but it held on and threw down on him and they fell together again to the ground.
"Just a little fucking taste!" it panted and then it tore at Cass's shirt and then suddenly there was smoke and a stench of seared hair and skin and it fell back screaming and clutching its hand. "What is that? What the fuck is that?"
Cass rolled away from it gasping and looked down at himself and saw the chain exposed.
"What is that?!"
Cass buttoned up his shirt and his coat over that. He looked down at the demon still writhing on the ground.
"Get out of here," he said to it. "If you tell anyone what you saw I'll burn you to cinders."
"Fuck you!" it spat. It scrabbled up onto its feet. "Fuck you, I'm gonna tell everyone! You fuckin come down here with some shit! I'm gonna tell everyone!" It turned and began to sprint to the end of the alley screaming and Cass watched it go and almost let it go and then he ran after it and it heard him and turned around with its face twisted in fury and Cass stabbed it in the throat. Its eyes and mouth blazed orange and it stared at him for one astounded second and then it fell to the ground all black and burst apart like spent charcoal.
Cass stepped back. His boots were covered in soot. The chain weighed on him like cast iron.
"Dean," he said. He looked up at the greasy walls. The black coffinlid of sky. "Where are you?"
He stood there for another moment and then turned around and started walking. He had no scabbard for the knife so he put it in his belt. He looked back once and saw that the pile of ashes had begun to shift and blow away and then he didn't look again.
* * *
Dean waited for something to happen but nothing did and no one came. He thought about how he had asked Sam if he should say yes and let Lucifer have him for a vessel and Sam had said not yet, but now it seemed that he'd only had that one chance and had let it slip through his fingers. He wondered what had happened to the rest of the world and thought that by now it was probably gone. That no one had been saved. Giving in to Lucifer would not have destroyed or imprisoned him or changed anything but Sam at least would have been free. He could have done that, since he'd been able to do nothing else.
He began to see things. People who couldn't be there. He halfway knew that he was hallucinating but they all seemed real enough. His mother. Chuck. Amy from Dalhart. He waited to see Cass but he didn't and he was glad because he didn't think he could bear to see him. Sam did come and this Sam was still a little boy and he was barefoot and crying because he was so cold and his feet were all red, the toes already gone dead white with frost and when Dean reached out to him he simply melted away and left Dean sitting there in such helplessness and regret that he could do nothing but put his head down on his knees and weep.
He slept and woke and slept. He dredged up half-remembered song lyrics and recited them out loud. He walked the walls of the room over and over. He had almost nothing to eat. He waited to die and thought he might be so crazy by then that he wouldn't even know death when it came.
At last he heard something come to the door and stand there. It was so quiet Dean could hear its breathing but it made no other sound and after a while he thought he was hallucinating this too. Or that whatever it was had come to kill him or take him out into hell to finish off what was left of him. He pushed himself up the wall and watched the door and waited and then from beside him Lucifer said, "Dean."
Dean startled and stumbled backwards and Lucifer reached out and caught him and steadied him on his feet. His hand on Dean's arm was very real.
"We're going to take a little walk," Lucifer said.
Dean stared dumbly at him and didn't know if this was Lucifer or Sam or something he was imagining altogether. Finally he said, "Where?"
"You'll see." He held out his arm and there was a coat over it. "Put this on, you'll need it."
Dean took the coat and looked at it and Lucifer waited for him and Dean stood there and closed his eyes and then looked at Lucifer and said, "I know what you want."
"What do I want, Dean?"
"You want me," Dean said and Lucifer raised an eyebrow and a corner of his mouth twitched up in a smile and Dean said, "Not like that. You want me..." He made a gesture at himself. "This. What Michael wanted."
"Where did you get that idea?"
"From you. The last time you were here."
"When I fucked you."
"When you beat the shit out of me."
"Hmm," Lucifer said. He looked away and nodded thoughtfully and then looked back at Dean. "Well...will you give it to me?"
He hadn't expected anything so direct. He thought he'd lost his chance and here it was again. Asher had told him he'd have to get Lucifer out of his vessel to chain and imprison him but Asher wasn't here and the chain wasn't here. Sam was.
"Dean?"
Not yet. Sam said not yet and he said I'd know. I don't know anything but it's not going down like this. This prick doesn't get to leapfrog from Sam to me and just walk away.
"Nah," he said. "I'll pass."
"Yeah, I didn't expect you to cave that easy. Not even for Sam."
"Leave him out of it."
"Can't be done, Dean," Lucifer said and then he laughed and held out his arm and said, "Come on, brother. Walk with me."
* * *
It was the first time in God only knew how long that Dean had been out of that cell and the air felt shockingly fresh to him and very cold. Tree branches rose up bare and black against a dusky sky. Frozen snow hung from evergreen boughs. Dean felt ice and forest duff beneath his boots and the air was sharp with pine resin and frost and fire. A smell of meat, roasting.
He hadn't walked any real distance in so long that he couldn't keep up with Lucifer striding ahead on his brother's long legs. The frigid air sliced through his bony frame and burned his nose, his throat. He had no gloves and he stuck his hands into the sleeves of the coat. His breath steamed out before him. He heard Lucifer halt and he stopped and looked up and saw him at the top of a rise, silhouetted against the red winter sunset.
"Where are we?"
"Come up here and see."
The rise was low but he was out of breath and twice he had to bend over and grab some root or branch to pull himself up. He reached the top and stood beside Lucifer on a stone overlook above a wide river spanned by a steel-towered bridge. On the other side of the river lay a dark city whose banks were lined with barges and these were lit with floodlights and set with chimneys that fumed heavy black smoke into the cold air.
"Do you know where this is?"
"Yeah," Dean said. He was looking south and far down on the island across the river he could make out the spire of the Empire State Building reflecting the last wintry sunlight from the west but otherwise dark against the deepening sky. "New York," he said. "Manhattan."
"That's New York," Lucifer said. "But we're nice and safe up here. You wouldn't want to be down there." He pointed across the river. "Do you see those barges, Dean? Do you know what's happening in them?"
Dean nodded. "It's QC. They're burning people to keep the virus from spreading."
"No, they aren't," Lucifer said and Dean looked at him. "They're burning everyone."
"I know. They stopped trying to sort out the crotes a long time ago."
"No, Dean. They're burning everyone. There is no Quarantine Control. There is no National Guard. There's nothing. The demons are doing it on my orders and the people helping them know they're demons and they're going along with it anyway. They think if they side with the winning team they'll come out on top when it's all over. A whole new world with plenty of swag for whoever's left."
"That's..." Dean shook his head. "That wasn't happening before."
"This isn't before. You've been away a long time. You were there for the beginning of the end. This is the end of the end."
Dean looked out over the river. Barges lined up side by side and smoke churning from each. Too many to count. Now he could hear generators roaring away to keep those lights and crematories going. And screaming. Fainter than the generators, a thin sustained buzz that was almost insectile but hideously human. How many people would it take to make a sound like that audible from so far away?
Behind him, Lucifer said, "If you won't give yourself for Sam, will you do it for all of them?"
"You would stop this."
"I would."
Dean looked up at him.
"Letting the world off the hook isn't your endgame."
"Maybe the game's changed."
"Maybe you're a fucking liar."
"Even the damned don't lose all their virtue. I'd be open to a fair trade."
Dean stared at Lucifer, ruddy in the sunset, untouched by the cold. He looked down at the river and the smell of burning came up the river on a gust of wind. Burning meat, burning flesh. That high whine of screams.
"What's it gonna be, Dean?"
Dean closed his eyes. He shook his head.
"You can make me see anything you want," he said. "I remember that from when I was in hell. This could be...satanic CGI for all I know. Fucking smoke and mirrors..." he said and he opened his eyes and he wasn't up in the Palisades anymore and Lucifer wasn't with him and the screaming was not faint and the smell of burning flesh was not on the wind but all around him.
They were shoving people into the barges with payloaders and backhoes and some of the people were naked and some barely dressed and some so battered they were already dead and he was among them. Those who still had the strength were screaming wordlessly without prayer or entreaty, and others were trying to claw their way over the bodies as if they could find a way up and out but the machinery kept moving on and on, pushing a mountain of human meat into the incinerator.
He was swept up in a tide of weltering bodies. He tried to free himself but there was no way to do it. He saw the last of the sky and then he was in the barge with countless others and they were surging against the walls and weeping and howling in terror. He saw reinforced nozzles all along the ceiling of the barge and the other people saw them too and they began to crush down to the floor of the barge as if that would save them. There was a strong smell in the air. Butane gas and machine oil. The doors slammed shut and there was no light at all and he was lifted up and turned over and shoved under someone and tossed up again and all the while trying to grab onto something, anything, and then the nozzles came on in great gouts of flame and the noise reached a crescendo beyond anything he'd ever heard, even in hell. He tried to turn himself away but there was nowhere to go and then the fire covered him in a blanket of flame and he screamed and mindlessly twisted up like an animal to shield himself and then suddenly it was quiet.
It was quiet and he was lying in the snow contorted with pain. His whole right side was immolated. He was not screaming. He could hardly take a breath through his cooked lungs. He tried to roll his right side over into the snow and couldn't. The stench of his own burning hung around him.
"Did that feel like CGI to you?" Lucifer said softly and at that Dean lurched to his feet. Only his left eye worked and all he could see were the vague shapes of snow-crusted trees now in darkness and he didn't know what he was doing only that he had to get moving. He staggered blindly through the woods.
"Where are you going, Dean?" Lucifer asked conversationally.
He fell to one knee and pulled himself up on a tree trunk and pushed on.
"Dean," Lucifer laughed right behind him. "Come on, Dean. You should see yourself."
"God," Dean groaned through his teeth. "Get the fuck away from me."
"I think God got the fuck away from you a long time ago," Lucifer said and Dean turned around to see where Lucifer was and he overbalanced and fell against a tree. He wrapped his good arm around the snowy trunk and clung to it desperately as if it offered some supernatural deliverance. He thought he was crying but he didn't know. He didn't know anything.
"Dean," Lucifer said, not laughing now. "Enough playing around." He grabbed Dean's right arm and then Dean did scream. He felt the skin and muscle on that arm crumple down to his wrist like a sock. He turned his head and saw his bones white as chalk beneath the ruin of his own flesh and then he passed out.
* * *
It was full dark now but Lucifer could see. He squatted on his haunches and stared at Dean lying senseless in the snow. Dean's right eye was cauterized shut and the rest of him that was not against the ground was burned beyond recognizing. He wondered whether his own brother would have known him and knew that of course, he would.
Dean didn't come around. After a while he started breathing faster until he was hyperventilating. Lucifer could hear his pulse rise up in a rapid staccato and then sink and then speed up again. Everything inside him was shutting down, lungs, kidneys, guts, brain, but the heart was still furiously trying to salvage this body. This chosen vessel of Michael. Archangel of the Lord, prince of heaven, Michael of the thousand armies and the sword of adamant and the unbroken chain. In five minutes or less this vessel of the vengeance of God would be nothing but rotting meat.
Dean started to shudder and then to seize. Lucifer could feel him slipping away. Seconds now, only seconds, and Lucifer waited until the last one and then he reached out and laid his hand on Dean's head and Dean went still. When Lucifer took his hand away the place where it had been was healed. He came forward onto his knees and put his hands on Dean and moved from his head to his feet, picking off burnt scraps of clothing as he went and casting them aside. Then he sat back and looked at his handiwork. Dean hitched in a sudden breath and his eyes fluttered open and Lucifer touched him and said, "No, no," and he went out again. Lucifer sat for a while in deep meditation. The snow fell on them both, righteous and wicked alike.
Suddenly Lucifer bolted forward and turned Dean onto his back and straddled him and pulled him up to stare at his face. Dean's head fell back. His eyes were a quarter open and rolled up to white. He threw Dean down on his belly and tore off what was left of his clothes and when he was done he stood up and stripped until he was also naked and then he knelt down on the ground and shoved Dean's legs apart and fell on him and thrust into him. He grimaced and sawed his hips back and forth and then withdrew just as suddenly and sat back on his heels. He was panting and he threw his head up to the black sky and bellowed but felt no relief from that either. He lay down on Dean again and opened his mouth and pressed his teeth into Dean's shoulder until the skin broke and blood burst into his mouth. He closed his eyes and lay there and sucked and swallowed and then he just lay there. Then he stood up and wiped his mouth and stepped over Dean and went to the edge of the overlook. He stood there naked and gazed out at the dark river and doomed city for a long time.
* * *
Cass turned onto a street thick with fog that stank of low tide and damp rot. Heavy stone piers and a gaunt iron trestle rose up above him and Cass could hear a hollow sound like wheels passing ceaselessly over some roadbed that was lost in the mist. He came to a deserted avenue. A fire burned in the distance and a dripping streetlamp far down the avenue stuttered with yellow light and someone was standing below it watching him.
He stepped back into the shadow of the street with his hand on the butt of the knife and he stood there for a moment and listened and then he turned to go back the way he'd come.
From behind him: "Castiel."
He stopped and turned around. She was at the corner now. She was no more than a silhouette but he could see that she was tall and her hair was long and hanging over her shoulders and she was booted and dressed in some sort of belted coat and she stood with her hands in her pockets and waited for him to answer. When he didn't she said, "Castiel, I know who you are."
"Who am I?"
"You're the fallen angel. I've been waiting for you."
"Have you?"
She walked toward him. Her heels clicked on the wet concrete. He pulled the knife from his belt and shifted it in his hand and she stopped and laughed.
"That won't work on me. You think I'm some demon riff-raff?" She took something from her pocket and flicked it open and a blue flame sprang up in her hand and she held the light to her face. "Do you know me now? I'd think all angels would." She smiled. "Especially fallen ones."
Cass studied her and at last he said, "I know you."
"You're in the presence of royalty. Can I at least get a curtsey or something?"
"I would bow to you?"
"Angels," she said. "Fallen or not, always up on their high horse."
"What are you doing here?
"My father brought me. One of the first things the fucker did when he got out. "
"Where is he?"
"I don't know."
"Why don't you leave?"
"Where would I go?"
"Can he find you?"
"He could if he wanted to. But I've heard he has someone new to play with."
Cass took a breath and held it and then he said, "Do you know what Lucifer did with him? Do you know where he is?"
She shrugged. "He could be anywhere. Down in the mines. In the pit. But I think Lucifer's keeping him close. I know the story, Castiel. This friend of yours was supposed to be Michael's vessel, wasn't he?" Cass nodded and she said, "My father has a jealous streak and he always thought his brother got better toys than he did. Michael wanted your friend so now he does. It doesn't have to make sense. He's just going to throw tantrums until he gets what he wants."
"And if he doesn't?"
"He's a spiteful prick. He'll just break what he can't have." She shook her head. "I don't envy your friend. Attracting my father's attention is a terrible thing. I would know."
"You're really working against him."
"Oh, yes."
"I don't believe you."
"I've never been a liar, that's Lucifer's department. There's nothing more honest than Sin." She stepped closer and studied him. "I'm sure you learned that the hard way. I can tell so many of my boys have left their mark on you. Pride. Envy." She leered. "Lust."
Cass ignored her. "If you don't know where they are then how can you help me?"
"I've been watching you. You already had one throwdown, how many more do you think you can have before you really start getting noticed? This is my old neighborhood, I know it better than anyone and I'll get you through it."
"Why would you do this?"
She looked at him with the light phantom blue on her white face and then she snapped the flame shut and turned her back on him.
"Come with me," she said and began to walk away. She stopped at the corner and looked around and said, "Come," and then went on walking. Her heels echoed. Cass stood there for another moment and then he put the knife away and followed her.
* * *
Dean woke in a rictus of cold almost as painful as fire. He couldn't move. He could barely open his eyes. When he did he saw snow and pine needles. He lay there and made himself breathe and finally he forced himself up onto his forearms. He felt snow slide off his bare back. He didn't know where he was. He raised his head and saw Sam wrapped up in a great woolen coat before a campfire. Wood crackling and sparks whirling up into the night sky. He looked around for the car but he couldn't see it and he had no idea why they were camping out in the middle of winter. He thought he was naked and that made no sense at all. He almost called out to Sam but the idea suddenly terrified him and he stared at Sam and at the burning fire and his memory came back to him all at once and he closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against the cold earth. When he looked up Lucifer was standing over him and he moaned and turned his head aside.
"Easy, Dean," Lucifer said. "Come on, let's get you warmed up."
He tried to shove himself away but he was too cold to do it. Lucifer got him under the arms and raised him to his knees and then to his feet. He couldn't stand on his own. Lucifer put an arm around him and walked him over to the fire. His legs were insensate stumps. He stared down mutely at his right arm.
"No burns," Lucifer said. "I took care of that for you."
He was lockjawed from the cold. He could barely hold onto a thought. Lucifer brought him over to the fire and got him dressed. The clothes looked like the ones he'd been wearing in the fire but he couldn't tell. They were not burned. Lucifer sat him down on a rock and took off his own coat and wrapped it around Dean's shoulders and now that Dean's blood was moving again he began to shiver terribly.
"Drink this," Lucifer said and put something in his hands. A heavy mug of white china, a diner mug. He must have drunk out of hundreds of mugs like this in hundreds of diners. Black steaming coffee inside. He was shaking too hard to hold it and Lucifer knelt before him and wrapped his own hands around Dean's and then bent his head and blew on the coffee and looked up with a smile.
"It's hot," he said. "I don't want you to burn yourself."
He would have told Lucifer to go fuck himself but he was beyond any such bravado so he just closed his eyes and drank. It was the best coffee he'd ever had in his endless life. He sat spellbound by the warmth. A deep exhaustion seized him and he was nearly asleep when he was roused by the feeling of Lucifer drawing his bare feet into his lap. Lucifer's hands were very warm and Dean sat there and stared at him. He remembered Cass rubbing his feet in the cold room in Kentucky where they had first slept together. Months ago? Years?
At last he said, "Stop that."
"Remember when you did this for Sam? That winter in North Dakota when you missed the schoolbus? You were the best big brother."
"I remember," Dean said. "You don't. You stole that out of my brother's head."
"I'm still Sam, Dean."
"No you aren't."
Lucifer smiled kindly. He held Dean's feet between his warm hands.
"This isn't what you expected, is it? Let me guess, you thought there'd be a big showdown. Everyone going out in a blaze of glory, something like that?"
"I don't know," Dean said, "I sure didn't think I'd be in New Jersey getting a fuckin footrub from Satan."
Lucifer laughed and for a moment he looked so much like Sam that Dean felt a surge of hope that this was Sam again. Then Lucifer said, "I want you to listen to me, Dean. I'm going to tell you how it is," and Dean knew his brother was not here.
He said, "I think I've got a pretty good idea."
"No, you don't. I was going to kill you when Asmodeus first brought you to me in Detroit but I didn't. Now I know that I spared you because you were Michael's chosen. Of course he wanted the firstborn son for himself. But he didn't get you because I was meant to succeed where he failed. When I face him I'll be in the vessel that he chose but couldn't have. The firstborn son that I deserve. He'll know at last what I've always known. That I am better, and that he is nothing. That he was always nothing."
"Got some issues there?"
"Don't we all?"
"Well, I didn't say yes to Michael and better or not? I'm not gonna say yes to you."
"You will."
"You gonna set me on fire again?"
"I've kept you safe until now," Lucifer said and Dean snorted and Lucifer dug his fingers into the soft tendons behind his ankles and repeated, "I've kept you safe. If you don't say yes I have no use for you. I'll turn you out into the pit and they'll tear you to pieces."
"So I die. Big deal. About fuckin time."
"What do you think will happen to you when you die?"
"I don't know. I don't really give a shit."
"I do know. And so do you. You know what you deserve." Dean looked at Lucifer and Lucifer held his gaze. "You opened the first seal, Dean. Have you forgotten?"
Dean didn't answer. Then he said, "No."
"You started all this. You know that, right?"
Dean closed his eyes. He nodded.
"Then you were supposed to end it but what did you do instead? You said no to Michael and you abandoned your brother. You let him come to me."
"He called me once," Dean said. "Once, and then he went to Detroit and you were waiting for him, weren't you, you son of a bitch."
"You let him come."
"I went to Detroit for him. For him. I went for you, Sam."
"Too late, Dean. Too late."
Dean stared at Lucifer. A knot of wood burst in the fire and sent up a geyser of orange sparks that landed in his lap and winked out, one by one.
"The first seal. Your brother. And now the whole world. You see what's happening down there. I gave you a closeup look so you wouldn't forget it. Deny me and the blood of the whole world will be on your hands. No angel will raise you up from perdition this time. Do you understand, Dean?"
Dean nodded. "Yes."
"So what's your answer, Dean?"
He looked down at the river. At the barges. He bit his lip in desperation until he tasted blood. Not yet, Sam had said. The real Sam. Not yet.
"No," he said. He turned back to Lucifer. "No deal."
Such vicious hatred crossed Lucifer's face that Dean suddenly knew what he must look like stripped of his vessel and then it was gone and there was only the shell of Sam in front of him again.
"That's all right," Lucifer said. "For now. But I'm going to get what I want, Dean. I always get what I want."
"Did you get what you wanted down in the hole all those years?"
"Yes, I did. I got out." Lucifer smiled. "Thanks to you."
His smile widened into a grin and his teeth were white in the darkness and the fire reflected back coal red in his eyes and the wind came up off the river with the stench of burning flesh and the screams of the dying on it and then the Palisades and the city and the winter night were gone and Dean was back in hell. There was still snow in his hair and a taste of hot coffee in his mouth and his ankles were tattooed with the bloody crescents of his brother's nails.
* * *
She took him down the avenue where the fire in the distance had now dimmed to a gasworks smolder and they walked beneath streetlamps rusted from the damp and pitted with age and some that were lit and many that were not. She turned at last and went up the stairs of a brick building that reminded Cass of the freight office in Knoxville where Dean had nearly died. There were only runes scratched into the glass above the door where a name or address should have been. She held the door open for him onto the cold vestibule and then they went down a narrow corridor and up the stairs. On the third floor he followed her down a hallway with yellow walls and a floor tiled like The Cairo's plundered lobby. The doors on either side were painted black and had no numbers or other markings. A large cockroach ran along the floor and he could hear the papery brush of its body against the wall and then it turned and squeezed itself under a door and this was the door she opened to usher him into a decrepit room. She closed the door behind him and he looked at the place. In the center, an iron bed with a sagging mattress and tangled sheets. A black wooden dresser against the wall. A green wingchair. By the bed a lamp flared with that same oily stench and the wall above it was scorched black.
"As you can see, I'm much reduced in circumstances," she said and then she turned to look at him. "Let me see it."
"See what?"
"The chain."
"It's hidden."
"I need to know that you have it. I need to see it."
He said nothing and didn't move and then she said, "Show it to me or you're on your own."
Cass studied her. Neither of them spoke. After a moment he laid the machinegun down at his feet. He took off his coat and undressed and when he was stripped to the waist he stood there and looked at her and she stared at the chain and then she came over to Cass and raised her hand.
"Don't touch it. It'll burn you."
"I don't care," she said. She put up her hand and stroked the silver links and even that light touch seared her fingers. Cass could smell them burning as he could smell all of her.
"Is it heavy?" she asked. "Does it burn you too?"
"Yes," he said.
She smiled. "If you were still a true angel, it wouldn't. It would be as light and cool as water." Then she said, "I was there. I saw Michael strike him." She ran her hand up her own right side from hip to neck. "Sheared him open and chained him and locked him up. You should have heard him howl. I escaped into the world after that and man has never been rid of me. It was the least I could do, for all the help God gave me."
"That isn't what the angels say when they talk about Sin."
"Well," she said. "History is written by the winners, isn't it?" She smiled bitterly and said, "I was heaven-born. Lucifer made me in his own image, long before he fell. No angel had ever done anything like it. I was...wondrous. So much that he wanted me for himself and he hounded me and lied to me and spread me open and had me."
"You never asked for God's help."
"I had to ask for what should have been offered?" she said. "No. I wouldn't. Not then and not ever. When Lucifer fell he took me with him to this place. I was already huge with his first litter. His seven disgusting sons. They've done their father proud all these years, haven't they?"
Cass didn't answer. He knew this story, but had never heard it from its origin and first witness. He didn't think any angel ever had.
"Hundreds followed after those seven. Not all of them my father's, of course. I was always open for business." Her mouth twisted up in a smile. "The last four were the worst of all. You know them too. All angels do, and men. They run riot now over the whole earth and consume it at their father's will. Their father and mine."
She stepped back and turned away from Cass and crossed the room to the black dresser and she stood there with her back to him and poured herself a drink and Cass watched her and there was something so familiar in the scene. For a moment he didn't know what it was and then he did.
He'd been to earth only once before he was charged with Dean and he remembered the year and the place had been 1932 and Kansas City. There was a man who was going to be attacked by a robber and the robber had a knife and would have killed the man but Castiel had been sent to stop this. He didn't know then who the man was nor did he know to this day. He stood on the corner where this crime was going to take place and as he stood there he watched a woman get off a streetcar and go up into a place named the Hotel Coronet and then he saw a light come on in a third floor window and it was the same woman. She stood sallow-faced under the harsh electric bowl in the ceiling and took off her hat and went to the dresser and set her hat down on it and poured herself a drink, as this other woman was doing now. Then she just stood there. Castiel was able to see her back and her reflection in the dresser's mirror. She was wearing a dark blue dress with a frayed and shabby collar of some ruffled material and she stood there and stared at herself and Castiel watched her. Then it was as if he could see every room in that place and every resident and every one of them alone or as good as alone and he felt no pity. Only scorn that these creatures should so lack the grace of God. That they should be so bound to Sin. He had thought no more of it and he had saved the man and the man had laughed and called him his guardian angel and he'd had very green eyes even under the dim city streetlights of those days. It would not be for very many years that Cass would understand that men's kinship with Sin was their means to grace, and that as Anna had once told him this made them above the angels and closer to God and so uncommonly loved. Now here was Sin herself and her loneliness was so like all of theirs in this room not unlike those rooms in the Hotel Coronet in Kansas City in 1932. And Cass did pity her.
She turned to him with her drink in her hand.
"He ruined me and now I'll ruin him," she said. "I'll see him wear that chain again." She put her hand on her belly and for the first time Cass noticed that it was swollen beneath her belted waist. "And deliver him one last son to be a comfort in his exile and a companion through eternity. You'll help me do this?"
"Yes," Cass said. "I will."
She grinned ferally and then she downed the drink in one draft and turned to pour herself another and Cass picked up his shirt and put it back on and then his coat.
"What should I call you?" he asked. "Do you use the old names?"
"No," she said. "Call me Mary."
Her back was to him but still he could hear the mirth in her voice.
* * *
Dean was dreaming and in the dream he was up on a high place and Lucifer was at his side and he wasn't Sam but his true self. Dean knew that this was Satan as he had crawled up from prison when Sam had released him. He was covered in burns from the chain that had bound him for so long and he stretched out his fireblacked arm over the plain that lay below them and told Dean to look. They were so high that Dean could see for miles and for miles he saw people running in terror and a great shadow followed them as if some invisible hand were drawing a curtain down fast, and this was indeed what he was seeing, the end of time and the world, the eternal darkness, and the hand that drew it was not invisible but belonged to the one standing beside him.
"You've done this," Satan said. "Do you see?"
He looked at Satan and then he looked back at the plain and now he could see among all that multitude and even from this height one woman running with a little girl at her side and the woman was naked and bleeding and the little girl clung to her hand and together they looked back and saw the shadow descending and the woman fell to her knees and pressed the girl's face against her shoulder so that the child wouldn't see the end and in the dream the darkness covered them and the whole world with them.
Dean woke from the dream shuddering with his hands clenched into fists and he sat up and stared around himself and then turned to the wall and pressed his face against it so that he'd know he was awake, though it hardly mattered for the dream was not just a dream but what was to come. What was to come if he didn't stop it and he knew only one way to do that.
He sat in silence for a while longer and then he stood up and began to call for Lucifer.
Concluded in Chapter V: This Pendent World
Genre: SPN slash, AU based upon Episode 5:04, "The End"
Pairings: Dean/Castiel
Principals: Future!Dean, Future!Castiel
Rating: Hard R for Chapter IV
Warnings: Graphic violence, noncon (please check previous chapters for their ratings and warnings)
Spoilers: For SPN Episode 5:04
Word Count: 7,700 for Chapter IV (35,700 for the story so far)
Disclaimer: The Winchesters and all canon characters are the intellectual property of their creators. All original characters are mine. No money was made or sought in the writing of this story.
Summary: The world's gone to hell in the Croatoan apocalypse and Dean and Castiel have to put an end to it one way or the other.
The Story So Far: The turncoat demon Asmodeus (a.k.a. Asher) gives Cass a beating, a lecture and some heavenly bling, in that order, and ships him off to hell after Lucifer. Meanwhile Dean starves half to death and gets way too much unexpected attention from Lucifer down in hell. Unbeknownst to Lucifer, Sam makes a brief cameo appearance and offers Dean some much-needed advice and hope.
Author's Note: Inspiration for part of this chapter is owed to John Milton's great Biblical fic, Paradise Lost.
Need to catch up? Go back to Chapter III: River Rouge
IV. Fallen and Firstborn
The snow on his face was dry and not cold and Cass stopped and turned his palm up and saw it was not snow but cinders, pale and fine as dust. When he raised his eyes he no longer saw River Rouge. The landscape was the same yet all different. The veil was so thin here that he had passed through it with no sign. To his left now a vile river of gray sludge rolling in its courses. Before him a valley of ashes.
On the horizon under a featureless and louring sky lay Lucifer's city, raised up from these wastes when he was first cast out of heaven. Here he had reigned until restless he led his armies against God and it was Michael who drove him back and who struck the blow that wounded him, Michael who bound him with the chain that Cass himself now wore and imprisoned him beneath his own infernal city where he had festered for uncountable centuries until all the seals that held him were broken, the first by one unlucky brother and the last by another, neither of them knowing what he had done and yet both of them accountable for it before heaven.
Cass went on.
* * *
Since the one time that Sam spoke to him Dean had not seen Lucifer again. He began to think he had imagined it or that Lucifer had tricked him, or worse yet that Lucifer had realized Sam had come through for that one brief moment. He had time to think about these things because he was always alone. From time to time someone came to the other side of the door and shoved food under it and whoever or whatever that was he never saw nor did he want to see.
Finally he became so desperate that when he heard footsteps he went to the door and stood beside it where he could call out but not be grabbed like before.
"Hey," he said. The steps halted outside the door. "Tell your boss...tell Lucifer I want to see him."
He held his breath and listened. He heard a soft shuffling and then a joint of meat shot under the door and the steps passed away and it was quiet. Dean stood there and looked at the meat. He couldn't tell what it had come from. He picked it up and bent over and sent it flying back the way it had come.
"Tell him to get his fuckin ass down here!"
Yeah, that'll work, he thought, but he had nothing else. He had gone to Detroit expecting to fight and die and instead he had gotten this futile captivity in a shapeless gulf of time that could not be fought or outsmarted or escaped and he sat down on the floor and waited for Lucifer or Sam or whatever might come.
* * *
By the time Cass came out of the wasteland night had fallen. It didn't descend slowly the way night did on earth, rather the day such as it had been moved all at once from that shadowless sulfur light into darkness and just the same Cass did not so much enter the city as it seemed to rise up around him of its own accord and surround him as if he had always been there and nowhere else. The machines of commerce and industry ground away in this city in the service of hell's own monstrous enterprises. Cass made his way through a tangle of streets hemmed in by sooty walls and past doors that gaped open onto ugly hallways and flights of stairs glaring under lamps that reeked of sulfur and crude naphtha and whatever other fuels could be mined from hell's depths. In the streets and behind these walls damned souls and devils and hell's creatures toiled in bondage to infernal occupations or loitered in an anxious and idle despair that was nothing like leisure. Cass remembered none of this from before. He'd been an angel then and he had never walked these streets. Yet there was a dreadful familiarity to all of it and Cass realized that this city could almost have been Knoxville or Birmingham or Baltimore or any of the desperate places he'd been with Dean in these last years that Lucifer had made a hell of earth.
There was a terrific stench of filth and shit and all the corruptions of the body that remain in hell although the bodies themselves have long passed away and the damned ate and pissed and shat and puked and fucked and writhed in their own waste. Now and then one would pause and stare at him as he passed. Some of these still looked human and some were halfway to becoming demons themselves and some were almost entirely changed. Cass felt horribly exposed among them. The chain around him burned under his clothes and seemed to grow heavier from their presence.
"You're not you," a voice said to his left and he turned his head and saw something vaguely human but indecipherably male or female sitting on a stoop with its long and crooked hands dangling between its knees and he only glanced at it and kept walking and it called out again, "You're not you," and when he looked behind he saw that it had gotten up and was following him.
He turned down an alley that seemed empty and that stank of rotting meat. The brick walls on either side glistered with oily slime. He walked faster and stooped and pulled the knife from his boot and heard the thing coming up behind him and he turned around and faced it.
"Go back where you were."
"I was nowhere."
"Don't follow me."
"You stink," it said. "You stink like fresh meat and blood and it's so good."
It took a step forward. Cass stepped back.
"It's so good!" it repeated and then it launched itself at him like a spider and knocked him to the ground and its eyes were dead black and its teeth were sharp as if filed and it shrieked, "It's so GOOD! It's so GOOD!" and it was already inhumanly strong. It pinned Cass's wrist to the ground. "No knives, we have teeth!" and Cass got his knees up and shoved it off and staggered to his feet but it held on and threw down on him and they fell together again to the ground.
"Just a little fucking taste!" it panted and then it tore at Cass's shirt and then suddenly there was smoke and a stench of seared hair and skin and it fell back screaming and clutching its hand. "What is that? What the fuck is that?"
Cass rolled away from it gasping and looked down at himself and saw the chain exposed.
"What is that?!"
Cass buttoned up his shirt and his coat over that. He looked down at the demon still writhing on the ground.
"Get out of here," he said to it. "If you tell anyone what you saw I'll burn you to cinders."
"Fuck you!" it spat. It scrabbled up onto its feet. "Fuck you, I'm gonna tell everyone! You fuckin come down here with some shit! I'm gonna tell everyone!" It turned and began to sprint to the end of the alley screaming and Cass watched it go and almost let it go and then he ran after it and it heard him and turned around with its face twisted in fury and Cass stabbed it in the throat. Its eyes and mouth blazed orange and it stared at him for one astounded second and then it fell to the ground all black and burst apart like spent charcoal.
Cass stepped back. His boots were covered in soot. The chain weighed on him like cast iron.
"Dean," he said. He looked up at the greasy walls. The black coffinlid of sky. "Where are you?"
He stood there for another moment and then turned around and started walking. He had no scabbard for the knife so he put it in his belt. He looked back once and saw that the pile of ashes had begun to shift and blow away and then he didn't look again.
* * *
Dean waited for something to happen but nothing did and no one came. He thought about how he had asked Sam if he should say yes and let Lucifer have him for a vessel and Sam had said not yet, but now it seemed that he'd only had that one chance and had let it slip through his fingers. He wondered what had happened to the rest of the world and thought that by now it was probably gone. That no one had been saved. Giving in to Lucifer would not have destroyed or imprisoned him or changed anything but Sam at least would have been free. He could have done that, since he'd been able to do nothing else.
He began to see things. People who couldn't be there. He halfway knew that he was hallucinating but they all seemed real enough. His mother. Chuck. Amy from Dalhart. He waited to see Cass but he didn't and he was glad because he didn't think he could bear to see him. Sam did come and this Sam was still a little boy and he was barefoot and crying because he was so cold and his feet were all red, the toes already gone dead white with frost and when Dean reached out to him he simply melted away and left Dean sitting there in such helplessness and regret that he could do nothing but put his head down on his knees and weep.
He slept and woke and slept. He dredged up half-remembered song lyrics and recited them out loud. He walked the walls of the room over and over. He had almost nothing to eat. He waited to die and thought he might be so crazy by then that he wouldn't even know death when it came.
At last he heard something come to the door and stand there. It was so quiet Dean could hear its breathing but it made no other sound and after a while he thought he was hallucinating this too. Or that whatever it was had come to kill him or take him out into hell to finish off what was left of him. He pushed himself up the wall and watched the door and waited and then from beside him Lucifer said, "Dean."
Dean startled and stumbled backwards and Lucifer reached out and caught him and steadied him on his feet. His hand on Dean's arm was very real.
"We're going to take a little walk," Lucifer said.
Dean stared dumbly at him and didn't know if this was Lucifer or Sam or something he was imagining altogether. Finally he said, "Where?"
"You'll see." He held out his arm and there was a coat over it. "Put this on, you'll need it."
Dean took the coat and looked at it and Lucifer waited for him and Dean stood there and closed his eyes and then looked at Lucifer and said, "I know what you want."
"What do I want, Dean?"
"You want me," Dean said and Lucifer raised an eyebrow and a corner of his mouth twitched up in a smile and Dean said, "Not like that. You want me..." He made a gesture at himself. "This. What Michael wanted."
"Where did you get that idea?"
"From you. The last time you were here."
"When I fucked you."
"When you beat the shit out of me."
"Hmm," Lucifer said. He looked away and nodded thoughtfully and then looked back at Dean. "Well...will you give it to me?"
He hadn't expected anything so direct. He thought he'd lost his chance and here it was again. Asher had told him he'd have to get Lucifer out of his vessel to chain and imprison him but Asher wasn't here and the chain wasn't here. Sam was.
"Dean?"
Not yet. Sam said not yet and he said I'd know. I don't know anything but it's not going down like this. This prick doesn't get to leapfrog from Sam to me and just walk away.
"Nah," he said. "I'll pass."
"Yeah, I didn't expect you to cave that easy. Not even for Sam."
"Leave him out of it."
"Can't be done, Dean," Lucifer said and then he laughed and held out his arm and said, "Come on, brother. Walk with me."
* * *
It was the first time in God only knew how long that Dean had been out of that cell and the air felt shockingly fresh to him and very cold. Tree branches rose up bare and black against a dusky sky. Frozen snow hung from evergreen boughs. Dean felt ice and forest duff beneath his boots and the air was sharp with pine resin and frost and fire. A smell of meat, roasting.
He hadn't walked any real distance in so long that he couldn't keep up with Lucifer striding ahead on his brother's long legs. The frigid air sliced through his bony frame and burned his nose, his throat. He had no gloves and he stuck his hands into the sleeves of the coat. His breath steamed out before him. He heard Lucifer halt and he stopped and looked up and saw him at the top of a rise, silhouetted against the red winter sunset.
"Where are we?"
"Come up here and see."
The rise was low but he was out of breath and twice he had to bend over and grab some root or branch to pull himself up. He reached the top and stood beside Lucifer on a stone overlook above a wide river spanned by a steel-towered bridge. On the other side of the river lay a dark city whose banks were lined with barges and these were lit with floodlights and set with chimneys that fumed heavy black smoke into the cold air.
"Do you know where this is?"
"Yeah," Dean said. He was looking south and far down on the island across the river he could make out the spire of the Empire State Building reflecting the last wintry sunlight from the west but otherwise dark against the deepening sky. "New York," he said. "Manhattan."
"That's New York," Lucifer said. "But we're nice and safe up here. You wouldn't want to be down there." He pointed across the river. "Do you see those barges, Dean? Do you know what's happening in them?"
Dean nodded. "It's QC. They're burning people to keep the virus from spreading."
"No, they aren't," Lucifer said and Dean looked at him. "They're burning everyone."
"I know. They stopped trying to sort out the crotes a long time ago."
"No, Dean. They're burning everyone. There is no Quarantine Control. There is no National Guard. There's nothing. The demons are doing it on my orders and the people helping them know they're demons and they're going along with it anyway. They think if they side with the winning team they'll come out on top when it's all over. A whole new world with plenty of swag for whoever's left."
"That's..." Dean shook his head. "That wasn't happening before."
"This isn't before. You've been away a long time. You were there for the beginning of the end. This is the end of the end."
Dean looked out over the river. Barges lined up side by side and smoke churning from each. Too many to count. Now he could hear generators roaring away to keep those lights and crematories going. And screaming. Fainter than the generators, a thin sustained buzz that was almost insectile but hideously human. How many people would it take to make a sound like that audible from so far away?
Behind him, Lucifer said, "If you won't give yourself for Sam, will you do it for all of them?"
"You would stop this."
"I would."
Dean looked up at him.
"Letting the world off the hook isn't your endgame."
"Maybe the game's changed."
"Maybe you're a fucking liar."
"Even the damned don't lose all their virtue. I'd be open to a fair trade."
Dean stared at Lucifer, ruddy in the sunset, untouched by the cold. He looked down at the river and the smell of burning came up the river on a gust of wind. Burning meat, burning flesh. That high whine of screams.
"What's it gonna be, Dean?"
Dean closed his eyes. He shook his head.
"You can make me see anything you want," he said. "I remember that from when I was in hell. This could be...satanic CGI for all I know. Fucking smoke and mirrors..." he said and he opened his eyes and he wasn't up in the Palisades anymore and Lucifer wasn't with him and the screaming was not faint and the smell of burning flesh was not on the wind but all around him.
They were shoving people into the barges with payloaders and backhoes and some of the people were naked and some barely dressed and some so battered they were already dead and he was among them. Those who still had the strength were screaming wordlessly without prayer or entreaty, and others were trying to claw their way over the bodies as if they could find a way up and out but the machinery kept moving on and on, pushing a mountain of human meat into the incinerator.
He was swept up in a tide of weltering bodies. He tried to free himself but there was no way to do it. He saw the last of the sky and then he was in the barge with countless others and they were surging against the walls and weeping and howling in terror. He saw reinforced nozzles all along the ceiling of the barge and the other people saw them too and they began to crush down to the floor of the barge as if that would save them. There was a strong smell in the air. Butane gas and machine oil. The doors slammed shut and there was no light at all and he was lifted up and turned over and shoved under someone and tossed up again and all the while trying to grab onto something, anything, and then the nozzles came on in great gouts of flame and the noise reached a crescendo beyond anything he'd ever heard, even in hell. He tried to turn himself away but there was nowhere to go and then the fire covered him in a blanket of flame and he screamed and mindlessly twisted up like an animal to shield himself and then suddenly it was quiet.
It was quiet and he was lying in the snow contorted with pain. His whole right side was immolated. He was not screaming. He could hardly take a breath through his cooked lungs. He tried to roll his right side over into the snow and couldn't. The stench of his own burning hung around him.
"Did that feel like CGI to you?" Lucifer said softly and at that Dean lurched to his feet. Only his left eye worked and all he could see were the vague shapes of snow-crusted trees now in darkness and he didn't know what he was doing only that he had to get moving. He staggered blindly through the woods.
"Where are you going, Dean?" Lucifer asked conversationally.
He fell to one knee and pulled himself up on a tree trunk and pushed on.
"Dean," Lucifer laughed right behind him. "Come on, Dean. You should see yourself."
"God," Dean groaned through his teeth. "Get the fuck away from me."
"I think God got the fuck away from you a long time ago," Lucifer said and Dean turned around to see where Lucifer was and he overbalanced and fell against a tree. He wrapped his good arm around the snowy trunk and clung to it desperately as if it offered some supernatural deliverance. He thought he was crying but he didn't know. He didn't know anything.
"Dean," Lucifer said, not laughing now. "Enough playing around." He grabbed Dean's right arm and then Dean did scream. He felt the skin and muscle on that arm crumple down to his wrist like a sock. He turned his head and saw his bones white as chalk beneath the ruin of his own flesh and then he passed out.
* * *
It was full dark now but Lucifer could see. He squatted on his haunches and stared at Dean lying senseless in the snow. Dean's right eye was cauterized shut and the rest of him that was not against the ground was burned beyond recognizing. He wondered whether his own brother would have known him and knew that of course, he would.
Dean didn't come around. After a while he started breathing faster until he was hyperventilating. Lucifer could hear his pulse rise up in a rapid staccato and then sink and then speed up again. Everything inside him was shutting down, lungs, kidneys, guts, brain, but the heart was still furiously trying to salvage this body. This chosen vessel of Michael. Archangel of the Lord, prince of heaven, Michael of the thousand armies and the sword of adamant and the unbroken chain. In five minutes or less this vessel of the vengeance of God would be nothing but rotting meat.
Dean started to shudder and then to seize. Lucifer could feel him slipping away. Seconds now, only seconds, and Lucifer waited until the last one and then he reached out and laid his hand on Dean's head and Dean went still. When Lucifer took his hand away the place where it had been was healed. He came forward onto his knees and put his hands on Dean and moved from his head to his feet, picking off burnt scraps of clothing as he went and casting them aside. Then he sat back and looked at his handiwork. Dean hitched in a sudden breath and his eyes fluttered open and Lucifer touched him and said, "No, no," and he went out again. Lucifer sat for a while in deep meditation. The snow fell on them both, righteous and wicked alike.
Suddenly Lucifer bolted forward and turned Dean onto his back and straddled him and pulled him up to stare at his face. Dean's head fell back. His eyes were a quarter open and rolled up to white. He threw Dean down on his belly and tore off what was left of his clothes and when he was done he stood up and stripped until he was also naked and then he knelt down on the ground and shoved Dean's legs apart and fell on him and thrust into him. He grimaced and sawed his hips back and forth and then withdrew just as suddenly and sat back on his heels. He was panting and he threw his head up to the black sky and bellowed but felt no relief from that either. He lay down on Dean again and opened his mouth and pressed his teeth into Dean's shoulder until the skin broke and blood burst into his mouth. He closed his eyes and lay there and sucked and swallowed and then he just lay there. Then he stood up and wiped his mouth and stepped over Dean and went to the edge of the overlook. He stood there naked and gazed out at the dark river and doomed city for a long time.
* * *
Cass turned onto a street thick with fog that stank of low tide and damp rot. Heavy stone piers and a gaunt iron trestle rose up above him and Cass could hear a hollow sound like wheels passing ceaselessly over some roadbed that was lost in the mist. He came to a deserted avenue. A fire burned in the distance and a dripping streetlamp far down the avenue stuttered with yellow light and someone was standing below it watching him.
He stepped back into the shadow of the street with his hand on the butt of the knife and he stood there for a moment and listened and then he turned to go back the way he'd come.
From behind him: "Castiel."
He stopped and turned around. She was at the corner now. She was no more than a silhouette but he could see that she was tall and her hair was long and hanging over her shoulders and she was booted and dressed in some sort of belted coat and she stood with her hands in her pockets and waited for him to answer. When he didn't she said, "Castiel, I know who you are."
"Who am I?"
"You're the fallen angel. I've been waiting for you."
"Have you?"
She walked toward him. Her heels clicked on the wet concrete. He pulled the knife from his belt and shifted it in his hand and she stopped and laughed.
"That won't work on me. You think I'm some demon riff-raff?" She took something from her pocket and flicked it open and a blue flame sprang up in her hand and she held the light to her face. "Do you know me now? I'd think all angels would." She smiled. "Especially fallen ones."
Cass studied her and at last he said, "I know you."
"You're in the presence of royalty. Can I at least get a curtsey or something?"
"I would bow to you?"
"Angels," she said. "Fallen or not, always up on their high horse."
"What are you doing here?
"My father brought me. One of the first things the fucker did when he got out. "
"Where is he?"
"I don't know."
"Why don't you leave?"
"Where would I go?"
"Can he find you?"
"He could if he wanted to. But I've heard he has someone new to play with."
Cass took a breath and held it and then he said, "Do you know what Lucifer did with him? Do you know where he is?"
She shrugged. "He could be anywhere. Down in the mines. In the pit. But I think Lucifer's keeping him close. I know the story, Castiel. This friend of yours was supposed to be Michael's vessel, wasn't he?" Cass nodded and she said, "My father has a jealous streak and he always thought his brother got better toys than he did. Michael wanted your friend so now he does. It doesn't have to make sense. He's just going to throw tantrums until he gets what he wants."
"And if he doesn't?"
"He's a spiteful prick. He'll just break what he can't have." She shook her head. "I don't envy your friend. Attracting my father's attention is a terrible thing. I would know."
"You're really working against him."
"Oh, yes."
"I don't believe you."
"I've never been a liar, that's Lucifer's department. There's nothing more honest than Sin." She stepped closer and studied him. "I'm sure you learned that the hard way. I can tell so many of my boys have left their mark on you. Pride. Envy." She leered. "Lust."
Cass ignored her. "If you don't know where they are then how can you help me?"
"I've been watching you. You already had one throwdown, how many more do you think you can have before you really start getting noticed? This is my old neighborhood, I know it better than anyone and I'll get you through it."
"Why would you do this?"
She looked at him with the light phantom blue on her white face and then she snapped the flame shut and turned her back on him.
"Come with me," she said and began to walk away. She stopped at the corner and looked around and said, "Come," and then went on walking. Her heels echoed. Cass stood there for another moment and then he put the knife away and followed her.
* * *
Dean woke in a rictus of cold almost as painful as fire. He couldn't move. He could barely open his eyes. When he did he saw snow and pine needles. He lay there and made himself breathe and finally he forced himself up onto his forearms. He felt snow slide off his bare back. He didn't know where he was. He raised his head and saw Sam wrapped up in a great woolen coat before a campfire. Wood crackling and sparks whirling up into the night sky. He looked around for the car but he couldn't see it and he had no idea why they were camping out in the middle of winter. He thought he was naked and that made no sense at all. He almost called out to Sam but the idea suddenly terrified him and he stared at Sam and at the burning fire and his memory came back to him all at once and he closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against the cold earth. When he looked up Lucifer was standing over him and he moaned and turned his head aside.
"Easy, Dean," Lucifer said. "Come on, let's get you warmed up."
He tried to shove himself away but he was too cold to do it. Lucifer got him under the arms and raised him to his knees and then to his feet. He couldn't stand on his own. Lucifer put an arm around him and walked him over to the fire. His legs were insensate stumps. He stared down mutely at his right arm.
"No burns," Lucifer said. "I took care of that for you."
He was lockjawed from the cold. He could barely hold onto a thought. Lucifer brought him over to the fire and got him dressed. The clothes looked like the ones he'd been wearing in the fire but he couldn't tell. They were not burned. Lucifer sat him down on a rock and took off his own coat and wrapped it around Dean's shoulders and now that Dean's blood was moving again he began to shiver terribly.
"Drink this," Lucifer said and put something in his hands. A heavy mug of white china, a diner mug. He must have drunk out of hundreds of mugs like this in hundreds of diners. Black steaming coffee inside. He was shaking too hard to hold it and Lucifer knelt before him and wrapped his own hands around Dean's and then bent his head and blew on the coffee and looked up with a smile.
"It's hot," he said. "I don't want you to burn yourself."
He would have told Lucifer to go fuck himself but he was beyond any such bravado so he just closed his eyes and drank. It was the best coffee he'd ever had in his endless life. He sat spellbound by the warmth. A deep exhaustion seized him and he was nearly asleep when he was roused by the feeling of Lucifer drawing his bare feet into his lap. Lucifer's hands were very warm and Dean sat there and stared at him. He remembered Cass rubbing his feet in the cold room in Kentucky where they had first slept together. Months ago? Years?
At last he said, "Stop that."
"Remember when you did this for Sam? That winter in North Dakota when you missed the schoolbus? You were the best big brother."
"I remember," Dean said. "You don't. You stole that out of my brother's head."
"I'm still Sam, Dean."
"No you aren't."
Lucifer smiled kindly. He held Dean's feet between his warm hands.
"This isn't what you expected, is it? Let me guess, you thought there'd be a big showdown. Everyone going out in a blaze of glory, something like that?"
"I don't know," Dean said, "I sure didn't think I'd be in New Jersey getting a fuckin footrub from Satan."
Lucifer laughed and for a moment he looked so much like Sam that Dean felt a surge of hope that this was Sam again. Then Lucifer said, "I want you to listen to me, Dean. I'm going to tell you how it is," and Dean knew his brother was not here.
He said, "I think I've got a pretty good idea."
"No, you don't. I was going to kill you when Asmodeus first brought you to me in Detroit but I didn't. Now I know that I spared you because you were Michael's chosen. Of course he wanted the firstborn son for himself. But he didn't get you because I was meant to succeed where he failed. When I face him I'll be in the vessel that he chose but couldn't have. The firstborn son that I deserve. He'll know at last what I've always known. That I am better, and that he is nothing. That he was always nothing."
"Got some issues there?"
"Don't we all?"
"Well, I didn't say yes to Michael and better or not? I'm not gonna say yes to you."
"You will."
"You gonna set me on fire again?"
"I've kept you safe until now," Lucifer said and Dean snorted and Lucifer dug his fingers into the soft tendons behind his ankles and repeated, "I've kept you safe. If you don't say yes I have no use for you. I'll turn you out into the pit and they'll tear you to pieces."
"So I die. Big deal. About fuckin time."
"What do you think will happen to you when you die?"
"I don't know. I don't really give a shit."
"I do know. And so do you. You know what you deserve." Dean looked at Lucifer and Lucifer held his gaze. "You opened the first seal, Dean. Have you forgotten?"
Dean didn't answer. Then he said, "No."
"You started all this. You know that, right?"
Dean closed his eyes. He nodded.
"Then you were supposed to end it but what did you do instead? You said no to Michael and you abandoned your brother. You let him come to me."
"He called me once," Dean said. "Once, and then he went to Detroit and you were waiting for him, weren't you, you son of a bitch."
"You let him come."
"I went to Detroit for him. For him. I went for you, Sam."
"Too late, Dean. Too late."
Dean stared at Lucifer. A knot of wood burst in the fire and sent up a geyser of orange sparks that landed in his lap and winked out, one by one.
"The first seal. Your brother. And now the whole world. You see what's happening down there. I gave you a closeup look so you wouldn't forget it. Deny me and the blood of the whole world will be on your hands. No angel will raise you up from perdition this time. Do you understand, Dean?"
Dean nodded. "Yes."
"So what's your answer, Dean?"
He looked down at the river. At the barges. He bit his lip in desperation until he tasted blood. Not yet, Sam had said. The real Sam. Not yet.
"No," he said. He turned back to Lucifer. "No deal."
Such vicious hatred crossed Lucifer's face that Dean suddenly knew what he must look like stripped of his vessel and then it was gone and there was only the shell of Sam in front of him again.
"That's all right," Lucifer said. "For now. But I'm going to get what I want, Dean. I always get what I want."
"Did you get what you wanted down in the hole all those years?"
"Yes, I did. I got out." Lucifer smiled. "Thanks to you."
His smile widened into a grin and his teeth were white in the darkness and the fire reflected back coal red in his eyes and the wind came up off the river with the stench of burning flesh and the screams of the dying on it and then the Palisades and the city and the winter night were gone and Dean was back in hell. There was still snow in his hair and a taste of hot coffee in his mouth and his ankles were tattooed with the bloody crescents of his brother's nails.
* * *
She took him down the avenue where the fire in the distance had now dimmed to a gasworks smolder and they walked beneath streetlamps rusted from the damp and pitted with age and some that were lit and many that were not. She turned at last and went up the stairs of a brick building that reminded Cass of the freight office in Knoxville where Dean had nearly died. There were only runes scratched into the glass above the door where a name or address should have been. She held the door open for him onto the cold vestibule and then they went down a narrow corridor and up the stairs. On the third floor he followed her down a hallway with yellow walls and a floor tiled like The Cairo's plundered lobby. The doors on either side were painted black and had no numbers or other markings. A large cockroach ran along the floor and he could hear the papery brush of its body against the wall and then it turned and squeezed itself under a door and this was the door she opened to usher him into a decrepit room. She closed the door behind him and he looked at the place. In the center, an iron bed with a sagging mattress and tangled sheets. A black wooden dresser against the wall. A green wingchair. By the bed a lamp flared with that same oily stench and the wall above it was scorched black.
"As you can see, I'm much reduced in circumstances," she said and then she turned to look at him. "Let me see it."
"See what?"
"The chain."
"It's hidden."
"I need to know that you have it. I need to see it."
He said nothing and didn't move and then she said, "Show it to me or you're on your own."
Cass studied her. Neither of them spoke. After a moment he laid the machinegun down at his feet. He took off his coat and undressed and when he was stripped to the waist he stood there and looked at her and she stared at the chain and then she came over to Cass and raised her hand.
"Don't touch it. It'll burn you."
"I don't care," she said. She put up her hand and stroked the silver links and even that light touch seared her fingers. Cass could smell them burning as he could smell all of her.
"Is it heavy?" she asked. "Does it burn you too?"
"Yes," he said.
She smiled. "If you were still a true angel, it wouldn't. It would be as light and cool as water." Then she said, "I was there. I saw Michael strike him." She ran her hand up her own right side from hip to neck. "Sheared him open and chained him and locked him up. You should have heard him howl. I escaped into the world after that and man has never been rid of me. It was the least I could do, for all the help God gave me."
"That isn't what the angels say when they talk about Sin."
"Well," she said. "History is written by the winners, isn't it?" She smiled bitterly and said, "I was heaven-born. Lucifer made me in his own image, long before he fell. No angel had ever done anything like it. I was...wondrous. So much that he wanted me for himself and he hounded me and lied to me and spread me open and had me."
"You never asked for God's help."
"I had to ask for what should have been offered?" she said. "No. I wouldn't. Not then and not ever. When Lucifer fell he took me with him to this place. I was already huge with his first litter. His seven disgusting sons. They've done their father proud all these years, haven't they?"
Cass didn't answer. He knew this story, but had never heard it from its origin and first witness. He didn't think any angel ever had.
"Hundreds followed after those seven. Not all of them my father's, of course. I was always open for business." Her mouth twisted up in a smile. "The last four were the worst of all. You know them too. All angels do, and men. They run riot now over the whole earth and consume it at their father's will. Their father and mine."
She stepped back and turned away from Cass and crossed the room to the black dresser and she stood there with her back to him and poured herself a drink and Cass watched her and there was something so familiar in the scene. For a moment he didn't know what it was and then he did.
He'd been to earth only once before he was charged with Dean and he remembered the year and the place had been 1932 and Kansas City. There was a man who was going to be attacked by a robber and the robber had a knife and would have killed the man but Castiel had been sent to stop this. He didn't know then who the man was nor did he know to this day. He stood on the corner where this crime was going to take place and as he stood there he watched a woman get off a streetcar and go up into a place named the Hotel Coronet and then he saw a light come on in a third floor window and it was the same woman. She stood sallow-faced under the harsh electric bowl in the ceiling and took off her hat and went to the dresser and set her hat down on it and poured herself a drink, as this other woman was doing now. Then she just stood there. Castiel was able to see her back and her reflection in the dresser's mirror. She was wearing a dark blue dress with a frayed and shabby collar of some ruffled material and she stood there and stared at herself and Castiel watched her. Then it was as if he could see every room in that place and every resident and every one of them alone or as good as alone and he felt no pity. Only scorn that these creatures should so lack the grace of God. That they should be so bound to Sin. He had thought no more of it and he had saved the man and the man had laughed and called him his guardian angel and he'd had very green eyes even under the dim city streetlights of those days. It would not be for very many years that Cass would understand that men's kinship with Sin was their means to grace, and that as Anna had once told him this made them above the angels and closer to God and so uncommonly loved. Now here was Sin herself and her loneliness was so like all of theirs in this room not unlike those rooms in the Hotel Coronet in Kansas City in 1932. And Cass did pity her.
She turned to him with her drink in her hand.
"He ruined me and now I'll ruin him," she said. "I'll see him wear that chain again." She put her hand on her belly and for the first time Cass noticed that it was swollen beneath her belted waist. "And deliver him one last son to be a comfort in his exile and a companion through eternity. You'll help me do this?"
"Yes," Cass said. "I will."
She grinned ferally and then she downed the drink in one draft and turned to pour herself another and Cass picked up his shirt and put it back on and then his coat.
"What should I call you?" he asked. "Do you use the old names?"
"No," she said. "Call me Mary."
Her back was to him but still he could hear the mirth in her voice.
* * *
Dean was dreaming and in the dream he was up on a high place and Lucifer was at his side and he wasn't Sam but his true self. Dean knew that this was Satan as he had crawled up from prison when Sam had released him. He was covered in burns from the chain that had bound him for so long and he stretched out his fireblacked arm over the plain that lay below them and told Dean to look. They were so high that Dean could see for miles and for miles he saw people running in terror and a great shadow followed them as if some invisible hand were drawing a curtain down fast, and this was indeed what he was seeing, the end of time and the world, the eternal darkness, and the hand that drew it was not invisible but belonged to the one standing beside him.
"You've done this," Satan said. "Do you see?"
He looked at Satan and then he looked back at the plain and now he could see among all that multitude and even from this height one woman running with a little girl at her side and the woman was naked and bleeding and the little girl clung to her hand and together they looked back and saw the shadow descending and the woman fell to her knees and pressed the girl's face against her shoulder so that the child wouldn't see the end and in the dream the darkness covered them and the whole world with them.
Dean woke from the dream shuddering with his hands clenched into fists and he sat up and stared around himself and then turned to the wall and pressed his face against it so that he'd know he was awake, though it hardly mattered for the dream was not just a dream but what was to come. What was to come if he didn't stop it and he knew only one way to do that.
He sat in silence for a while longer and then he stood up and began to call for Lucifer.
Concluded in Chapter V: This Pendent World
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-01-27 08:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-27 08:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-27 09:07 pm (UTC)As gloriously bleak and horrific and desperate as ever. So thrilled to have an update! In a way, I'm actually almost looking forward to the end, so that I can go back to the beginning and read it through from start to finish. Or even better, wait until baylor gets a chance to podfic it... :)
no subject
Date: 2011-01-28 02:15 am (UTC)Yeah, it'll probably be one of those 3-part chapters.
I know
Thanks for reading!
no subject
Date: 2011-01-27 09:14 pm (UTC)I can't wait to see where you go with this. Whenever I see that you've updated I immediately go to read! You're a master!
no subject
Date: 2011-01-28 02:17 am (UTC)Thanks for reading!
no subject
Date: 2011-01-27 10:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-28 02:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-28 03:24 am (UTC)Just – scarily [and necessarily] bleak as always. What a fantastic description of Lucifer’s city, it actually made me think of Coketown, or some other city circa the industrial revolution: grime, filth, smoke, corruption and depravity, such a nightmarish vision. And the holocaust imagery – really disturbing, because we have a point of reference for seeing bodies bulldozed into incinerators. It makes the scenes you depict so easy to see in our heads, and the way Lucifer shows all of that to Dean reads to me almost like almost like a horribly twisted version of the temptation of Christ, with Lucifer taking Dean to a high place, from where all the kingdoms of the world can be seen. And what does he really crave from Dean? Seems to me like he wants more than just to wear him. Maybe he really does see Dean as the embodiment of Michael, and he loves his brother.
I’m trying to figure out who Sin/Mary is… Lilith? I’m probably off by a country mile, but anyway, don’t spoil me!
Oh, Dean. Oh, Cass. Your Cass is so devoted, and loyal, and stoic, and heroic, as he struggles on. I love him. I really want this to end with him and Dean in a hot bath with lots of bubbles and a bottle of Jack to share, but somehow I doubt that will happen.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-29 01:41 am (UTC)That's pretty much what I was going for. The notion of hell as a big pit where you're just burning all the time sounds more tedious than terrifying. To me, hell would be a mix of endless toil and the despair of eternal uselessness. In other words, not unlike real life, only without even the hope of death's release. LOL, I'm cheerful, aren't I?
I’m trying to figure out who Sin/Mary is… Lilith? I’m probably off by a country mile, but anyway, don’t spoil me!
Okay, then DO NOT read the comments downthread because I explain where this depiction of Sin came from.
I really want this to end with him and Dean in a hot bath with lots of bubbles and a bottle of Jack to share, but somehow I doubt that will happen.
N'aww, now that would be nice, wouldn't it? :)
Thanks for reading!
no subject
Date: 2011-01-28 04:54 am (UTC)I have to agree about the snarky demons. The best ones on the show are the demons or creatures that might have wit, but they're not just snarky.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-29 01:34 am (UTC)Thanks for reading!
no subject
Date: 2011-01-28 05:03 am (UTC)I love this story. It is not cute, or fun, and does not make me feel good to read it. It is searing and epic and I feel it in my gut. I'll read a thousand SPN stories, and forget them soon after, but I know this story will stay with me.
I actually went and read the Book of Revelations because of your use of the chain. And Sin being Lucifer's daughter, created in Heaven -- I have no clue if you are using an existing mythology or have spun it yourself, but it fits so well with your story.
Dean's stubborness, Cass's determination to find him, enthrall me, and I have to wonder if God's plan was to let things come to this pass, and that Cass is God's agent still, fallen as he is and without his angelic powers. He's like on a covert mission in Hell. The first time he came for Dean, he fought openly to reach him. I imagine his grace blazed as he descended down the depths to find Dean. Now, mortal,he must wearily trek through a damned cityscape to find Dean.
Thank you for writing this, and I will savor Baylor's podfic when she completes it.
Laurie
no subject
Date: 2011-01-29 01:31 am (UTC)LOL, precisely!
And Sin being Lucifer's daughter, created in Heaven -- I have no clue if you are using an existing mythology or have spun it yourself, but it fits so well with your story.
Credit for inspiration goes to Milton's Paradise Lost, whose invented (i.e., non-Biblical) depiction of the birth of Sin and her subsequent fate is one of the most lasciviously over-the-top revolting things I've ever read. It's also pure fanfic -- incorporating Greek mythology (in his version, Sin sprang from Lucifer's forehead the way Athena sprang from Zeus's) with his own gleefully grisly imagination. And it's all written with such fanfickish delight -- you can just tell how much Milton was enjoying himself.
I have to wonder if God's plan was to let things come to this pass
I think that it was.
Thanks for reading! I hope I can get the last chapter up sooner.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-28 05:21 pm (UTC)This story is terrifying, yet I can't look away. My heart aches for Dean so much. :(
no subject
Date: 2011-01-29 01:24 am (UTC)Thank you for reading!
no subject
Date: 2011-01-29 09:04 pm (UTC)You’ve built up such a stunning, complex, creepy and horrifying reality I find myself short of words to describe it, all of it with a mesmerizing writing that made me hold my breath all along. The way you’ve depicted Cas’ love and devotion towards Dean makes me ache, as well as Dean’s towards Sam.
I liked the representation of hell you've developed in this chapter, it was palpable, not only a distant place of eternal pain, but also a city plagued with the taint of human’s darkness and misery.
Sin herself choosing Mary as her name was, I don’t know… interesting.
I felt terribly bad for Dean here, the poor man has the weight of a whole agonizing world on his shoulders, how can he not break?
I have no clue how this will end for them, I mean everything is over, they can trap Lucifer and save Sam, but does it really matter anymore? The devil already won, what’s left? Denying him his whim of wearing Dean in front of Michael? If this is God’s big plan the guy is heartless.
Thank you very much for sharing this gorgeous work, I’ll be waiting for the final chapter.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-29 11:34 pm (UTC)O ye of little faith! Battles have been lost, but not the whole war! Though I'm delighted that you have no clue how this will end. Thanks for reading!
no subject
Date: 2011-02-09 06:45 am (UTC)And upsetting. The whole incinerator thing is so very vivid and horrifying. I felt nauseous while reading it.
Your writing style paints such an intense picture and spurs me along to continue reading, even through the gross stuff. Good on ya!!
Thanks for writing. Looking forward to reading the conclusion.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-15 04:10 am (UTC)*kow tows*