Fic: Those who favor fire
Aug. 17th, 2009 05:41 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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spn_summergenTitle: Those who favor fire
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
marinarusalka
Recipient: Keenir (rodlox)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: General apocalyptic unpleasantness, mention of torture.
Spoilers: Everything through the end of season 4.
Author's Notes: Huge thanks todotfic for the beta.
Summary: Once the Seals are opened, the Apocalypse isn't like the Book of Revelation says.
Most people know this, but few really think about what it means: Lucifer didn't fall because of anything that humans would consider truly evil. He wasn't struck down for murder or cruelty, for slaughtering babies or destroying harvests or raining fiery destruction on cities he didn't like. Lucifer fell for pride.
Sam and Dean were eighty miles west of St. Mary's before they slowed down enough to notice that no one was actually chasing them. Not demons, not angels, not ordinary human cops, nobody. By then, Sam was sweating bullets and tucking his hands into his armpits to keep them from shaking, so they didn't have the chance to stop and wonder at their good fortune. Dean pulled the Impala over at the first motel with a vacancy sign and maxed out Simon Kirke's credit card to prepay a room for two weeks.
Killing Lillith had drained Sam's powers more than anything he'd ever done; even Alastair had been a joke by comparison. Dean had to practically carry him the twenty paces from the car to the motel room. As soon as the door was shut, he collapsed onto the nearest bed and didn't react while Dean removed his shoes and socks and draped the covers over him.
Half an hour later, the shakes started in earnest.
Dean spent the next ten days unshakably convinced that they were both going to die any minute now. Sam was totally out of it, strapped to the bed with strips of cut-up motel towel while he thrashed and sweated his way through the demonic DTs, which made them both sitting ducks. Dean had no illusions about what he might accomplish with a couple of salt guns and Ruby's knife, if the armies of either heaven or hell decided to show up at their doorstep.
No armies came. No one came, except the pizza delivery and the cleaning staff, who knocked on the door every three days or so to timidly inquire if he really meant to keep the "do not disturb" sign out all this time. Dean slept in fits and starts, one hand always on a weapon, ready to fight at a moment's notice; but there was nothing to fight.
"Don't ask me to explain it," Bobby growled over the phone. "I could fire a load of buckshot at a map right now, and every pellet would hit a place with at least ten major demonic omens going on at once, everything from freak lightning storms to stars aligning that shouldn't have been aligning for another five hundred years. But omens is all there is. No suspicious deaths, no disappearances, not so much as a single mutilated cow anywhere I've looked. Whatever Lucifer is doing, he's doing it on the quiet."
Dean didn't find that thought especially comforting.
On the tenth day, Sam actually managed to keep down some solid food and use the bathroom by himself. He was weak as a kitten and terrifyingly thin, even skinnier than he'd been during those two years in high school when every bit of food he ate had seemed to go toward making him another inch taller. But his eyes were clear, and Dean allowed himself a tiny spark of hope. The world might or might not be ending, but at least it looked as if they'd both live long enough to leave their motel room.
"What's happening?" Sam asked. His voice was a barely audible rasp.
Dean shrugged. "Don't know. Nothing, as far as Bobby can tell. Seems the apocalypse is taking its sweet time."
"No, that's wrong..." Sam struggled to sit up. "Bobby must be missing something, Lucifer isn't going to just sit around and do nothing, we have to--"
"Dude." Dean planted one hand on Sam's chest and pushed him back down onto the bed. "The only thing we have to do right now is stay put until you're better. Also, stop talking about Lucifer like you know him personally or something, that's really disturbing."
He meant that as a joke, but Sam didn't smile, and when he thought about it, Dean decided that yeah, it really wasn't funny.
Sam buried himself in research as soon as he was strong enough to sit up with a laptop, but he found nothing that Bobby hadn't reported already. By then, their prepaid time on the room was running out and Dean was getting more and more antsy about staying in one place for so long, so they packed up the Impala and drove west, intending to personally check out some of the towns that were showing a high number of omens.
They stopped for dinner at a truck stop just past the Pennsylvania-Ohio border. The diner behind the gas station looked like a dump even by Dean's unexacting standards, but they'd been driving all day and weren't in the mood to be picky. This proved to be a mistake when the skinny teenaged waitress looked them over with an appraising expression that was far too old for her pimply face and drawled, "Well, well, if it ain't the Winchesters," just before her eyes turned black.
Sam and Dean were both on their feet, guns drawn, before she'd even finished speaking; but by then the old guy behind the counter was grinning at them, and the three truckers in the next booth over, and the young couple by the juke box, and the middle-aged woman at the cash register. Everyone's eyes were black, but no one was moving.
"All right," Dean said with a lot more bravado than he felt, "no one do anything stupid."
He had a Glock loaded with consecrated iron rounds in one hand and Ruby's knife in the other. Sam had his own gun and a flask of holy water with the cap off. It might be enough to get them to car, but he wasn't sure. There were people in the parking lot too, Dean could see them through the windows, had no idea how many of them were actually human at the moment. And Sam was already pale and swaying on his feet, he'd gotten winded just walking from the car to the diner, he was in no condition for a fight, and they were so screwed it wasn't even--
"Relax, boys." The waitress sounded amused. "Sit down, have some coffee. Would you like to hear our daily specials?"
Dean took aim at her face, but one of the truck drivers flicked his hand and the Glock went flying from Dean's grip. It landed on the floor with a clatter and slid out of sight beneath the counter. The knife followed a moment later, though Dean nearly dislocated his fingers in an effort to hold on as it twisted free of his hand. Sam actually got a shot off before his own weapons went flying, but his hands were shaking too badly, and all the bullet did was punch a hole in the old tin Coca Cola sign behind the counter guy's head.
The waitress raised her hand, and Dean slammed backward into the wall next to the jukebox. Sam yelled his name and lunged forward, only to drop to his knees on the grimy tile floor as if he'd been shoved down by an invisible hand.
"Pathetic, both of you." The waitress wrapped one bony hand around Dean's throat and squeezed, not quite hard enough to cut off his air but enough to make each breath a struggle. "Personally, I'd love nothing more than to make you eat each other's livers, but our Father says you are to live. So you can sit back down and have your dinner, or you can get your sorry asses out of here. You choose; I couldn't care less."
"And they just let you go?" Bobby sounded incredulous, as well he should. "That don't make a lick of sense."
"I know," Dean gritted out, hand tightening painfully around the phone. Two hours after they'd run from that truck stop with their tails between their legs, the humiliation still made his face burn. He was deeply grateful that Bobby wasn't there to see him. "She said their Father wanted it that way."
"Lucifer," Sam said in a dull voice. "She meant Lucifer."
"No shit," Dean said. "But why would Lucifer want us both alive?"
Neither one of them really wanted to know the answer to that question.
II
Ruby told the story true. Lucifer was jealous of God's love for humanity. He wouldn't bow to the humans when God demanded it, stood straight when the other angels bent their knees and dipped their heads. And later, after the fall, when it was time to seek his revenge, he went after the purest, most beautiful human he could find and he tempted and twisted her soul until she became the first demon. Lillith. It was then that Lucifer knew what his ultimate goal would be. Lucifer never wished to destroy the world.
He just wanted to take it away from God.
The worst thing about that day in the diner was, it turned out to be just the beginning.
"I don't get it," Dean said as they stood in the middle of a gas-station minimart in Wisconsin, surrounded by the wreckage of broken shelves and scattered junk food. There had been just one demon this time, wearing the body of the elderly station owner. They'd managed to complete an exorcism for once, but the victory had turned bitter when the host dropped dead at their feet. "It's like half the world is possessed all of a sudden, but they're not actually doing anything."
"I think possessing people counts as doing something," Sam muttered. He looked hollow-eyed and haunted, and Dean just knew that the kid was already beating himself up inside, thinking up a thousand new ways to convince himself that this was all his fault because he could no longer kill demons with his brain.
"Yeah, but what for?" Dean shook his head. "They're not killing anyone, they're not breaking seals 'cause there's no seals left to break, they're not torturing kittens or eating babies or whatever. They're just... going around their meatsuits' normal business. What kind of half-assed apocalypse is this?"
"Would you rather have them eating babies?" Sam asked.
Dean glared down at the dead man on the floor. "I'd rather not keep waiting for the other shoe to drop."
Five exorcisms and five dead bodies later, they called Bobby again.
"Yeah," he admitted, "I've heard from a few folks. Not many, mind you. Between that explosion at the Roadhouse and the Rising of the Witnesses last year, there's only a few hunters left alive and most of them are keeping a low profile. But from what I got... yeah, everyone's running into possession cases everywhere they go. And the only deaths are the hosts after the exorcism's done."
"Something's changed," Sam said. "Exorcisms were always dangerous to the hosts, but never like this. It has to be Lucifer."
"No shit." Dean scowled. "Question is, what do we do about it?"
Three days later, Dean jolted awake at two in the morning, convinced for no reason he could name that he and Sam were no longer alone in the room.
"Sam," he hissed as he sat up, knife in hand.
There was a rustle of bedclothes on the other side of the room, then a faint click as Sam tried to turn on the bedside lamp. "Light's not working."
"Let me get that for you," someone drawled in an amused, unfamiliar voice. A moment later, the room was flooded with a pale bluish light that seemed to have no source.
A slim blond man about Dean's age sprawled in an armchair next to the TV cabinet. Or rather, something wearing a slim blond man. The pale gray eyes looked normal enough, but Dean knew without a moment's doubt that he wasn't looking at a human. It was the same otherworldly vibe that he usually got off Castiel, only magnified by about a million times. Dean hesitated for a moment, because no demon he'd ever met had felt like that; only angels did.
"Lucifer," Sam said in a voice that could've iced over Death Valley.
"My reputation precedes me, I see." The bastard sounded pleased. "Relax, gentlemen. I'm only here to parley."
That was probably Dean's cue to make a pirates joke, but didn't have it in him at the moment. It was taking all the courage he had just to keep his hand steady as he continued to hold up the knife. "What do you want?"
"To correct a misapprehension." Lucifer held up one hand in a placating gesture, then let it drop again. "Not only on your part, mind you, but I thought you two might carry the message to the rest of your... community. You have all been performing an unusually high number of exorcisms recently."
"Yeah, well." Dean managed to shrug while keeping his knife hand still. He felt kind of proud of that. "Your demonic brood has been doing an unusually high number of possessions recently."
"Now, see there's the misapprehension right there." Lucifer shook his head, looking mildly disappointed, like a teacher with a pair of especially dim students. "None of the humans you've exorcised have actually been possessed."
"Yeah, right." Sam gave a short, bitter laugh. "Nice try, but the black eyeballs and the smoke billowing out the mouth are kind of a tipoff."
"Oh, I don't dispute that you've removed demons from human bodies." Lucifer's voice became cold and hard all of a sudden, and Dean had to suppress a shiver. "What you're failing to understand is that the demons were the rightful owners of the bodies in question."
"That's a--" Sam started to blurt out, then broke off abruptly before continuing in an entirely different tone. "They're not possessions. You're changing them. All those people. Turning them into demons the way you turned Lillith."
"Smart boy!" And now Lucifer looked like a teacher whose student, against all expectations, had produced a correct answer. "No wonder Azazel had such hopes for you. Yes, you've been expelling all those demons from their original meatsuits. Now, of course, they must find new ones if they wish to remain on Earth. But whose fault is that, really?"
"You're lying." Dean felt sick. Cold sweat beaded on the back of his neck and trickled down his spine. If Lucifer's power wasn't holding him frozen, he thought he'd be shaking by now. "It takes centuries to turn a human soul into a demon. It doesn't matter how you torture them, it's not enough to just break a person, it takes--"
"Dean." Lucifer rose to his feet and crossed the room in two quick, graceful strides. He cupped his hand around Dean's chin, his fingers cool and gentle against Dean's skin. "You don't really think I resort to torture, do you? Lillith came to me willingly, and so have all these new demons. I want all my children to come to me willingly, with love for their new father in their hearts. That's where the satisfaction lies. Torture is for the weak and the incompetent."
"Really?" Dean growled. "Explain Hell, then."
"I'm afraid you'll have to ask God about that one." Lucifer let his hand linger on Dean's face for a moment longer before stepping back. "Hell is his creation. He made it to punsih those who rejected him, starting with myself. But then, what would you expect from one who gave us Sodom, Gomorrah, and the great flood?"
"You're lying," Dean repeated. Lucifer shook his head.
"You know I'm not. You have the truth now, Hunters. Do what you will with it."
The room went dark, and by the time they got the lights turned on again, Lucifer was gone.
"I don't know if it's true," Bobby said. "I don't even know how the hell we could test such a thing. But if in case is true, then we can't just go around exorcising demons willy-nilly. We have to find another way."
"Like what?" Dean asked.
Bobby sighed into the phone. "I have no idea."
III
Nobody really knew what God thought about the whole thing, but as far as Lucifer was concerned, in the great war between Heaven and Hell, humans weren't the enemy; they were the prize. Angels were the enemy.
Sam wanted to do research, big surprise, and no public library in the world was going to have what he needed, so they headed to Bobby's place. They'd hoped to make the drive in one day, but the Impala got a flat tire in Bugfuckmiddleofnowhere, Minnesota and they ended up stopping overnight in a fleabag motel just north of Granite Falls. It was there that Anna and Castiel found them. Though really, it was Anna who did all the finding. Castiel was in no condition to contribute.
"What happened to him?" Dean demanded. It was an unnerving sight, watching an angel of the Lord huddle in a corner between the wall and the bed, rocking back and forth with his arms wrapped around his knees. The fact that the angel in question was kinda-sorta-maybe-a-friend only made it worse.
Castiel was barefoot, dressed in sweatpants and a threadbare New Jersey Devils hockey jersey. His feet were torn and bloody, and the sleeves of the jersey didn't quite hide the deep, ragged gashes on his arms. There was blood on the back of his neck too, and caked in his hair, and smeared on what little Dean could see of his face. Looking at the damage made Dean's throat go tight and dry, because he knew exactly what made injuries like that. He'd been on the receiving end himself.
"They ripped out his Grace," Anna said, "and destroyed it."
Castiel made a small, distressed sound and tucked his head down lower against his chest.
"Who?" Sam asked, and Dean thought about how much it sucked that they even had to ask this question, when the only two candidates were Heaven and Hell.
"Lucifer's lieutenants," Anna said. Dean felt a moment of sick relief that at least it wasn't Castiel's own side that did this to him. "It's what they do to all angels captured in battle: break them, then set the hellhounds on them. They like to send the bodies back to us, afterward. Castiel was the only one we've ever rescued alive."
"So much for Lucifer and his noble anti-torture stand," Sam muttered.
Dean crouched in front of Castiel and tapped him lightly on the shoulder. Castiel didn't react.
"Is Jimmy in there?"
Anna hesitated. "It's hard to say. But I don't think so."
"Well, that's just great." Dean sighed. "Why is he even here, Anna? Shouldn't he be in a nice angel hospital somewhere, being treated by nice angel doctors for angel PTSD?"
"We have no means to treat him," Anna said. "With his Grace gone, he's not even an angel anymore. And our superiors felt he'd be better off here, on Earth."
"You mean they dumped him." Dean wasn't sure why he still bothered to feel surprised or angry, given everything else he'd seen from the angels, and yet he still did. "He fought in their stupid war for them, and now that he can't fight anymore they dumped him."
"I didn't know where else to take him." Anna looked more lost and upset than Dean had ever seen her since she'd become an angel again. "A hospital wouldn't be safe. There are demons everywhere these days."
"Tell me about it," Dean muttered. He and Sam had gone through five motels in one night before they found one where the guy at the desk hadn't flinched at "Christo."
"He can come with us," Sam said. "We can figure out what to do once we get to Bobby's."
Dean really hoped that was true.
IV
Only four angels -- or archangels, rather -- have ever seen the face of God. Not many more demons had ever seen Lucifer. For millenia, the armies of both sides had to take the existence of their leaders on pure faith. That all changed, of course, when Lucifer walked free.
Bobby had been busy since the last time they visited. The house was covered top to bottom with protective sigils and runes -- walls, roof, porch, everything. There were hex bags hanging on strings in every window and door, and even some of the cars in the junkyard were sporting Solomon's Seals and Devil's Traps on their rusty roofs and warped doors.
"Great," he growled when Sam and Dean showed up on his doorstep with Anna and Castiel in tow. "Now I'm running a halfway house for wayward angels. Sit down, I'll get the coffee on."
"Thanks." Sam lifted one of the musty-smelling books that were piled several feet deep on top of Bobby's kitchen table. "So have you figured anything out yet?"
"As a matter of fact, I did find something." Bobby looked troubled. "Sit down, though. Coffee first. We'll probably need it."
"We've been going at it backwards," Bobby said once Castiel was asleep on the living room couch and the rest of them were settled around the table with their mugs. "All this time, we've been looking for deaths to go with all the omens and possessions, when it turns out we should've been looking at the births."
"What about the births?" Dean asked.
"There aren't any." Bobby shoved a few books aside and lifted up a thick manila folder full of newspaper clippings and computer printouts. "I've been going through the papers in the towns that are showing the highest levels of the demonic activity. Wasn't quite sure what I was seeing at first, so I had a hacker friend in Des Moines get at some of the hospital records. Looked at twelve towns. In the month since Lucifer was set free, the records show ten times the normal rate of stillbirths and miscarriages and not a single baby born."
"That can't be happening everywhere," Dean protested. "People would notice. It would be in the news or something."
"Not until somebody else looks at the numbers," Bobby said. "Probably not until it hits the larger population centers. It's been isolated rural towns so far, you'd have to be looking for a connection to begin with in order to find it."
"It makes sense," Anna said. "Angels and demons don't reproduce; it's the price of immortality. Only God can create new angels, and it takes a corrupted human soul to make a new demon. And God is... not in evidence these days. With every battle, our number grow fewer. Meanwhile, Lucifer is twisting more and more humans into demons. If no new humans are being born..."
"Eventually, there will be nothing left in the world but demons," Dean said. Just speaking the words made him feel sick. "He'll have won the war."
"Wait," Sam said, "That can't be right. Azazel called Meg his daughter, and that guy who was with her his son."
Anna nodded. "It means he directed their transformation from human to demon. That's how it works for them." She looked over at Dean, her face smooth and impassive. "If Alastair had had you long enough to turn you, he would've called you son and you would've called him father. It is said that Lucifer calls all demons his children."
"Okay," Dean said, "I could've happily gone my entire life without knowing that, but thanks for the intel."
"So what do we do about this?" Sam asked.
Before anyone could come up with a response to that, the entire house shook with a faint but unmistakable tremor; if they had been in California instead of North Dakota, Dean would've called it an earthquake. Bobby swore and grabbed a shotgun before edging over to the closest window to look outside. Dean stood behind him, his own gun at the ready, and peered over his shoulder.
Lucifer was walking across the yard, utterly unaffected by the acre's worth of Bobby's sigils all around him. He didn't even blink or turn his head when some of the cars burst into flame as he walked by them. The hex bag suspended over the porch stairs crumbled to dust when he approached it.
"Really now." Lucifer scuffed his foot through the little pile of dust. "Was that supposed to accomplish something?" He didn't shout, or even raise his voice, yet they could all hear him with perfect clarity.
"What do you want?" Bobby called out. Dean thought he was doing a pretty good job of sounding as if he wasn't about to wet his pants, which was a hell of an accomplishment under the circumstances.
"Only the angels." Lucifer paused near the middle of the steps. "Not so much to ask, is it? One of them has already fallen once, and the other's about as much use as a potted plant these days. Is either one of them really worth your lives?"
"Anna," Dean said without turning around, "take Cas and get into the panic room downstairs." He had no idea if the metal room would actually offer any more protection than the rest of the house, but it wasn't as if they had anything else left to try.
"I don't wish to harm you," Lucifer called out, "but if you don't hand over the angels, my friends and I will have to come in after them, and I don't think you'll enjoy that very much." There were no "friends" in sight, but when he took another step up the porch stairs, there was a faint, rustling stir in the gravel path behind him and a chorus of faint growls. Dean felt the shotgun tremble a little in his suddenly-clammy hands. Hellhounds.
"We're not handing anyone over!" He yelled. Sam gave him a worried look.
"Dean."
"I don't want to hear it, Sammy." Dean glared at him. "I'm not a big fan of the armies of Heaven either, these days, but Cas and Anna don't deserve whatever this bastard might do to them."
"I know," Sam said. "I'm not suggesting we hand them over. I'm suggesting we all get the hell out of here. The panic room isn't really going to keep him out, is it?"
"Too late," Bobby muttered. Dean turned back to the window just in time to see Lucifer reach the top of the stairs.
None of them could ever be entirely sure what happened afterwards. Lucifer reached out to open the front door. There was a flash of light, white and blinding like the sun. Dean's vision became a dizzying swirl of white spots. He stood there and blinked until it cleared and he could once again see the--
"Holy crap. Bobby, that's not your house."
"No, it's not," Chuck said from the doorway. "It's my house. What the heck are you all doing here? I didn't write this." He sounded sleepy and extremely put out. "Why do people keep doing things I didn't write? It's very confusing."
"Hey, we didn't do this." Dean frowned. "At least, I don't think we did this." He turned toward Sam. "Did you do this?"
"If I'd learned to teleport," Sam said irritably, "I would've mentioned it by now."
Yeah, like you mentioned all your other powers, Dean thought, but kept his mouth shut. This was not the time to have an argument with Sam. This was the time to figure out what the hell had happened. He turned to Anna. "Was it you?"
She shook her head. "I don't have the power to transport so many humans at once."
"What about--" Dean began, then stopped and shook his head. If Anna couldn't do this, then Castiel couldn't either. Especially not this Castiel, so silent and broken, currently huddled on the floor behind Anna. He didn't even seem aware that they had changed locations.
"Then who?" Sam demanded. "This is crazy. One minute we're in Bobby's kitchen with Lucifer coming up the porch steps to smite our asses, and the next--"
"Whoa." Chuck plastered his back to the wall and shuffled sideways toward the far corner of the room. "Lucifer's here?"
"No," Sam said in a tone of greatly exaggerated patience, "Lucifer's at Bobby's place. Or at least he was, as of two minutes ago. As were we. And now we're here and we don't know how or why."
"Was it God?" Chuck asked, then scowled and spread his arms when everyone turned to stare at him. "What? It's a perfectly reasonable question."
"I suppose," Bobby said slowly, "if anyone could do this, it would be--"
"No way." Dean felt a sudden, startling surge of anger at the thought. "God's not around anymore. He's retired or on vacation or something. Zachariah said so."
Sam raised one eyebrow in that really annoying way he had. "And we believe everything Zachariah says because..?"
Good point, that. Dean sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. "Okay, so maybe the slimy bastard was lying. But still, why would God start poking his head in now? He sat around with his thumbs up his divine ass the whole time Azazel was doing whatever it was with his special kids. He didn't lift a finger while Lillith was breaking seals. He didn't help Cas here." Dean waved one hand in Castiel's general direction. "But now he suddenly takes an interest? What sort of game is he playing?"
"I wouldn't know," Bobby said. "But I think you may be right -- it is a game, both to him and to Lucifer. That's why we're here. Lucifer threatened God's pawns, so God moved them -- us -- to a safer place on the board."
"Great," Dean muttered. "Just what I've always wanted -- to be a pawn in a cosmic chess game. This sucks."
"I don't know," Sam said. "Personally, I'm kind of glad to have confirmation that God doesn't want me dead. I mean, it was kind of an open question was the past couple of years, wasn't it? So maybe this is a good thing."
"Not if he's going to randomly move us around the country any time he feels like it! I mean, how are we supposed to-- fuck! My car! What's going to happen to my car?"
"I'm sure she's all right," Bobby said. "I don't think your car is what Lucifer's after."
"I'm not saying I like it," Sam qualified, even though he was saying exactly that ten seconds before. "I'm just saying maybe we could use this to our advantage. A pawn can become the most powerful piece on the board if it survives long enough. "
Dean smirked. He couldn't help it. "Wait, you're saying we have to try and turn you into a queen? That shouldn't be too hard, seeing as you're already such a sparkly princess."
Sam gave a dramatic sigh and rolled his eyes, and for a moment it was just like their old, pre-apocalyptic times, Dean teasing and Sam pulling bitchfaces at him. Dean decided to allow himself a moment of hope. Yeah, that whole cosmic-pawn thing sucked, but they were alive, and far away from Lucifer, and God didn't want his baby brother dead.
Maybe things were going to work out after all.
Author:
marinarusalkaRecipient: Keenir (
rodlox)Rating: PG-13
Warnings: General apocalyptic unpleasantness, mention of torture.
Spoilers: Everything through the end of season 4.
Author's Notes: Huge thanks to
dotfic for the beta.Summary: Once the Seals are opened, the Apocalypse isn't like the Book of Revelation says.
Most people know this, but few really think about what it means: Lucifer didn't fall because of anything that humans would consider truly evil. He wasn't struck down for murder or cruelty, for slaughtering babies or destroying harvests or raining fiery destruction on cities he didn't like. Lucifer fell for pride.
Sam and Dean were eighty miles west of St. Mary's before they slowed down enough to notice that no one was actually chasing them. Not demons, not angels, not ordinary human cops, nobody. By then, Sam was sweating bullets and tucking his hands into his armpits to keep them from shaking, so they didn't have the chance to stop and wonder at their good fortune. Dean pulled the Impala over at the first motel with a vacancy sign and maxed out Simon Kirke's credit card to prepay a room for two weeks.
Killing Lillith had drained Sam's powers more than anything he'd ever done; even Alastair had been a joke by comparison. Dean had to practically carry him the twenty paces from the car to the motel room. As soon as the door was shut, he collapsed onto the nearest bed and didn't react while Dean removed his shoes and socks and draped the covers over him.
Half an hour later, the shakes started in earnest.
Dean spent the next ten days unshakably convinced that they were both going to die any minute now. Sam was totally out of it, strapped to the bed with strips of cut-up motel towel while he thrashed and sweated his way through the demonic DTs, which made them both sitting ducks. Dean had no illusions about what he might accomplish with a couple of salt guns and Ruby's knife, if the armies of either heaven or hell decided to show up at their doorstep.
No armies came. No one came, except the pizza delivery and the cleaning staff, who knocked on the door every three days or so to timidly inquire if he really meant to keep the "do not disturb" sign out all this time. Dean slept in fits and starts, one hand always on a weapon, ready to fight at a moment's notice; but there was nothing to fight.
"Don't ask me to explain it," Bobby growled over the phone. "I could fire a load of buckshot at a map right now, and every pellet would hit a place with at least ten major demonic omens going on at once, everything from freak lightning storms to stars aligning that shouldn't have been aligning for another five hundred years. But omens is all there is. No suspicious deaths, no disappearances, not so much as a single mutilated cow anywhere I've looked. Whatever Lucifer is doing, he's doing it on the quiet."
Dean didn't find that thought especially comforting.
On the tenth day, Sam actually managed to keep down some solid food and use the bathroom by himself. He was weak as a kitten and terrifyingly thin, even skinnier than he'd been during those two years in high school when every bit of food he ate had seemed to go toward making him another inch taller. But his eyes were clear, and Dean allowed himself a tiny spark of hope. The world might or might not be ending, but at least it looked as if they'd both live long enough to leave their motel room.
"What's happening?" Sam asked. His voice was a barely audible rasp.
Dean shrugged. "Don't know. Nothing, as far as Bobby can tell. Seems the apocalypse is taking its sweet time."
"No, that's wrong..." Sam struggled to sit up. "Bobby must be missing something, Lucifer isn't going to just sit around and do nothing, we have to--"
"Dude." Dean planted one hand on Sam's chest and pushed him back down onto the bed. "The only thing we have to do right now is stay put until you're better. Also, stop talking about Lucifer like you know him personally or something, that's really disturbing."
He meant that as a joke, but Sam didn't smile, and when he thought about it, Dean decided that yeah, it really wasn't funny.
Sam buried himself in research as soon as he was strong enough to sit up with a laptop, but he found nothing that Bobby hadn't reported already. By then, their prepaid time on the room was running out and Dean was getting more and more antsy about staying in one place for so long, so they packed up the Impala and drove west, intending to personally check out some of the towns that were showing a high number of omens.
They stopped for dinner at a truck stop just past the Pennsylvania-Ohio border. The diner behind the gas station looked like a dump even by Dean's unexacting standards, but they'd been driving all day and weren't in the mood to be picky. This proved to be a mistake when the skinny teenaged waitress looked them over with an appraising expression that was far too old for her pimply face and drawled, "Well, well, if it ain't the Winchesters," just before her eyes turned black.
Sam and Dean were both on their feet, guns drawn, before she'd even finished speaking; but by then the old guy behind the counter was grinning at them, and the three truckers in the next booth over, and the young couple by the juke box, and the middle-aged woman at the cash register. Everyone's eyes were black, but no one was moving.
"All right," Dean said with a lot more bravado than he felt, "no one do anything stupid."
He had a Glock loaded with consecrated iron rounds in one hand and Ruby's knife in the other. Sam had his own gun and a flask of holy water with the cap off. It might be enough to get them to car, but he wasn't sure. There were people in the parking lot too, Dean could see them through the windows, had no idea how many of them were actually human at the moment. And Sam was already pale and swaying on his feet, he'd gotten winded just walking from the car to the diner, he was in no condition for a fight, and they were so screwed it wasn't even--
"Relax, boys." The waitress sounded amused. "Sit down, have some coffee. Would you like to hear our daily specials?"
Dean took aim at her face, but one of the truck drivers flicked his hand and the Glock went flying from Dean's grip. It landed on the floor with a clatter and slid out of sight beneath the counter. The knife followed a moment later, though Dean nearly dislocated his fingers in an effort to hold on as it twisted free of his hand. Sam actually got a shot off before his own weapons went flying, but his hands were shaking too badly, and all the bullet did was punch a hole in the old tin Coca Cola sign behind the counter guy's head.
The waitress raised her hand, and Dean slammed backward into the wall next to the jukebox. Sam yelled his name and lunged forward, only to drop to his knees on the grimy tile floor as if he'd been shoved down by an invisible hand.
"Pathetic, both of you." The waitress wrapped one bony hand around Dean's throat and squeezed, not quite hard enough to cut off his air but enough to make each breath a struggle. "Personally, I'd love nothing more than to make you eat each other's livers, but our Father says you are to live. So you can sit back down and have your dinner, or you can get your sorry asses out of here. You choose; I couldn't care less."
"And they just let you go?" Bobby sounded incredulous, as well he should. "That don't make a lick of sense."
"I know," Dean gritted out, hand tightening painfully around the phone. Two hours after they'd run from that truck stop with their tails between their legs, the humiliation still made his face burn. He was deeply grateful that Bobby wasn't there to see him. "She said their Father wanted it that way."
"Lucifer," Sam said in a dull voice. "She meant Lucifer."
"No shit," Dean said. "But why would Lucifer want us both alive?"
Neither one of them really wanted to know the answer to that question.
II
Ruby told the story true. Lucifer was jealous of God's love for humanity. He wouldn't bow to the humans when God demanded it, stood straight when the other angels bent their knees and dipped their heads. And later, after the fall, when it was time to seek his revenge, he went after the purest, most beautiful human he could find and he tempted and twisted her soul until she became the first demon. Lillith. It was then that Lucifer knew what his ultimate goal would be. Lucifer never wished to destroy the world.
He just wanted to take it away from God.
The worst thing about that day in the diner was, it turned out to be just the beginning.
"I don't get it," Dean said as they stood in the middle of a gas-station minimart in Wisconsin, surrounded by the wreckage of broken shelves and scattered junk food. There had been just one demon this time, wearing the body of the elderly station owner. They'd managed to complete an exorcism for once, but the victory had turned bitter when the host dropped dead at their feet. "It's like half the world is possessed all of a sudden, but they're not actually doing anything."
"I think possessing people counts as doing something," Sam muttered. He looked hollow-eyed and haunted, and Dean just knew that the kid was already beating himself up inside, thinking up a thousand new ways to convince himself that this was all his fault because he could no longer kill demons with his brain.
"Yeah, but what for?" Dean shook his head. "They're not killing anyone, they're not breaking seals 'cause there's no seals left to break, they're not torturing kittens or eating babies or whatever. They're just... going around their meatsuits' normal business. What kind of half-assed apocalypse is this?"
"Would you rather have them eating babies?" Sam asked.
Dean glared down at the dead man on the floor. "I'd rather not keep waiting for the other shoe to drop."
Five exorcisms and five dead bodies later, they called Bobby again.
"Yeah," he admitted, "I've heard from a few folks. Not many, mind you. Between that explosion at the Roadhouse and the Rising of the Witnesses last year, there's only a few hunters left alive and most of them are keeping a low profile. But from what I got... yeah, everyone's running into possession cases everywhere they go. And the only deaths are the hosts after the exorcism's done."
"Something's changed," Sam said. "Exorcisms were always dangerous to the hosts, but never like this. It has to be Lucifer."
"No shit." Dean scowled. "Question is, what do we do about it?"
Three days later, Dean jolted awake at two in the morning, convinced for no reason he could name that he and Sam were no longer alone in the room.
"Sam," he hissed as he sat up, knife in hand.
There was a rustle of bedclothes on the other side of the room, then a faint click as Sam tried to turn on the bedside lamp. "Light's not working."
"Let me get that for you," someone drawled in an amused, unfamiliar voice. A moment later, the room was flooded with a pale bluish light that seemed to have no source.
A slim blond man about Dean's age sprawled in an armchair next to the TV cabinet. Or rather, something wearing a slim blond man. The pale gray eyes looked normal enough, but Dean knew without a moment's doubt that he wasn't looking at a human. It was the same otherworldly vibe that he usually got off Castiel, only magnified by about a million times. Dean hesitated for a moment, because no demon he'd ever met had felt like that; only angels did.
"Lucifer," Sam said in a voice that could've iced over Death Valley.
"My reputation precedes me, I see." The bastard sounded pleased. "Relax, gentlemen. I'm only here to parley."
That was probably Dean's cue to make a pirates joke, but didn't have it in him at the moment. It was taking all the courage he had just to keep his hand steady as he continued to hold up the knife. "What do you want?"
"To correct a misapprehension." Lucifer held up one hand in a placating gesture, then let it drop again. "Not only on your part, mind you, but I thought you two might carry the message to the rest of your... community. You have all been performing an unusually high number of exorcisms recently."
"Yeah, well." Dean managed to shrug while keeping his knife hand still. He felt kind of proud of that. "Your demonic brood has been doing an unusually high number of possessions recently."
"Now, see there's the misapprehension right there." Lucifer shook his head, looking mildly disappointed, like a teacher with a pair of especially dim students. "None of the humans you've exorcised have actually been possessed."
"Yeah, right." Sam gave a short, bitter laugh. "Nice try, but the black eyeballs and the smoke billowing out the mouth are kind of a tipoff."
"Oh, I don't dispute that you've removed demons from human bodies." Lucifer's voice became cold and hard all of a sudden, and Dean had to suppress a shiver. "What you're failing to understand is that the demons were the rightful owners of the bodies in question."
"That's a--" Sam started to blurt out, then broke off abruptly before continuing in an entirely different tone. "They're not possessions. You're changing them. All those people. Turning them into demons the way you turned Lillith."
"Smart boy!" And now Lucifer looked like a teacher whose student, against all expectations, had produced a correct answer. "No wonder Azazel had such hopes for you. Yes, you've been expelling all those demons from their original meatsuits. Now, of course, they must find new ones if they wish to remain on Earth. But whose fault is that, really?"
"You're lying." Dean felt sick. Cold sweat beaded on the back of his neck and trickled down his spine. If Lucifer's power wasn't holding him frozen, he thought he'd be shaking by now. "It takes centuries to turn a human soul into a demon. It doesn't matter how you torture them, it's not enough to just break a person, it takes--"
"Dean." Lucifer rose to his feet and crossed the room in two quick, graceful strides. He cupped his hand around Dean's chin, his fingers cool and gentle against Dean's skin. "You don't really think I resort to torture, do you? Lillith came to me willingly, and so have all these new demons. I want all my children to come to me willingly, with love for their new father in their hearts. That's where the satisfaction lies. Torture is for the weak and the incompetent."
"Really?" Dean growled. "Explain Hell, then."
"I'm afraid you'll have to ask God about that one." Lucifer let his hand linger on Dean's face for a moment longer before stepping back. "Hell is his creation. He made it to punsih those who rejected him, starting with myself. But then, what would you expect from one who gave us Sodom, Gomorrah, and the great flood?"
"You're lying," Dean repeated. Lucifer shook his head.
"You know I'm not. You have the truth now, Hunters. Do what you will with it."
The room went dark, and by the time they got the lights turned on again, Lucifer was gone.
"I don't know if it's true," Bobby said. "I don't even know how the hell we could test such a thing. But if in case is true, then we can't just go around exorcising demons willy-nilly. We have to find another way."
"Like what?" Dean asked.
Bobby sighed into the phone. "I have no idea."
III
Nobody really knew what God thought about the whole thing, but as far as Lucifer was concerned, in the great war between Heaven and Hell, humans weren't the enemy; they were the prize. Angels were the enemy.
Sam wanted to do research, big surprise, and no public library in the world was going to have what he needed, so they headed to Bobby's place. They'd hoped to make the drive in one day, but the Impala got a flat tire in Bugfuckmiddleofnowhere, Minnesota and they ended up stopping overnight in a fleabag motel just north of Granite Falls. It was there that Anna and Castiel found them. Though really, it was Anna who did all the finding. Castiel was in no condition to contribute.
"What happened to him?" Dean demanded. It was an unnerving sight, watching an angel of the Lord huddle in a corner between the wall and the bed, rocking back and forth with his arms wrapped around his knees. The fact that the angel in question was kinda-sorta-maybe-a-friend only made it worse.
Castiel was barefoot, dressed in sweatpants and a threadbare New Jersey Devils hockey jersey. His feet were torn and bloody, and the sleeves of the jersey didn't quite hide the deep, ragged gashes on his arms. There was blood on the back of his neck too, and caked in his hair, and smeared on what little Dean could see of his face. Looking at the damage made Dean's throat go tight and dry, because he knew exactly what made injuries like that. He'd been on the receiving end himself.
"They ripped out his Grace," Anna said, "and destroyed it."
Castiel made a small, distressed sound and tucked his head down lower against his chest.
"Who?" Sam asked, and Dean thought about how much it sucked that they even had to ask this question, when the only two candidates were Heaven and Hell.
"Lucifer's lieutenants," Anna said. Dean felt a moment of sick relief that at least it wasn't Castiel's own side that did this to him. "It's what they do to all angels captured in battle: break them, then set the hellhounds on them. They like to send the bodies back to us, afterward. Castiel was the only one we've ever rescued alive."
"So much for Lucifer and his noble anti-torture stand," Sam muttered.
Dean crouched in front of Castiel and tapped him lightly on the shoulder. Castiel didn't react.
"Is Jimmy in there?"
Anna hesitated. "It's hard to say. But I don't think so."
"Well, that's just great." Dean sighed. "Why is he even here, Anna? Shouldn't he be in a nice angel hospital somewhere, being treated by nice angel doctors for angel PTSD?"
"We have no means to treat him," Anna said. "With his Grace gone, he's not even an angel anymore. And our superiors felt he'd be better off here, on Earth."
"You mean they dumped him." Dean wasn't sure why he still bothered to feel surprised or angry, given everything else he'd seen from the angels, and yet he still did. "He fought in their stupid war for them, and now that he can't fight anymore they dumped him."
"I didn't know where else to take him." Anna looked more lost and upset than Dean had ever seen her since she'd become an angel again. "A hospital wouldn't be safe. There are demons everywhere these days."
"Tell me about it," Dean muttered. He and Sam had gone through five motels in one night before they found one where the guy at the desk hadn't flinched at "Christo."
"He can come with us," Sam said. "We can figure out what to do once we get to Bobby's."
Dean really hoped that was true.
IV
Only four angels -- or archangels, rather -- have ever seen the face of God. Not many more demons had ever seen Lucifer. For millenia, the armies of both sides had to take the existence of their leaders on pure faith. That all changed, of course, when Lucifer walked free.
Bobby had been busy since the last time they visited. The house was covered top to bottom with protective sigils and runes -- walls, roof, porch, everything. There were hex bags hanging on strings in every window and door, and even some of the cars in the junkyard were sporting Solomon's Seals and Devil's Traps on their rusty roofs and warped doors.
"Great," he growled when Sam and Dean showed up on his doorstep with Anna and Castiel in tow. "Now I'm running a halfway house for wayward angels. Sit down, I'll get the coffee on."
"Thanks." Sam lifted one of the musty-smelling books that were piled several feet deep on top of Bobby's kitchen table. "So have you figured anything out yet?"
"As a matter of fact, I did find something." Bobby looked troubled. "Sit down, though. Coffee first. We'll probably need it."
"We've been going at it backwards," Bobby said once Castiel was asleep on the living room couch and the rest of them were settled around the table with their mugs. "All this time, we've been looking for deaths to go with all the omens and possessions, when it turns out we should've been looking at the births."
"What about the births?" Dean asked.
"There aren't any." Bobby shoved a few books aside and lifted up a thick manila folder full of newspaper clippings and computer printouts. "I've been going through the papers in the towns that are showing the highest levels of the demonic activity. Wasn't quite sure what I was seeing at first, so I had a hacker friend in Des Moines get at some of the hospital records. Looked at twelve towns. In the month since Lucifer was set free, the records show ten times the normal rate of stillbirths and miscarriages and not a single baby born."
"That can't be happening everywhere," Dean protested. "People would notice. It would be in the news or something."
"Not until somebody else looks at the numbers," Bobby said. "Probably not until it hits the larger population centers. It's been isolated rural towns so far, you'd have to be looking for a connection to begin with in order to find it."
"It makes sense," Anna said. "Angels and demons don't reproduce; it's the price of immortality. Only God can create new angels, and it takes a corrupted human soul to make a new demon. And God is... not in evidence these days. With every battle, our number grow fewer. Meanwhile, Lucifer is twisting more and more humans into demons. If no new humans are being born..."
"Eventually, there will be nothing left in the world but demons," Dean said. Just speaking the words made him feel sick. "He'll have won the war."
"Wait," Sam said, "That can't be right. Azazel called Meg his daughter, and that guy who was with her his son."
Anna nodded. "It means he directed their transformation from human to demon. That's how it works for them." She looked over at Dean, her face smooth and impassive. "If Alastair had had you long enough to turn you, he would've called you son and you would've called him father. It is said that Lucifer calls all demons his children."
"Okay," Dean said, "I could've happily gone my entire life without knowing that, but thanks for the intel."
"So what do we do about this?" Sam asked.
Before anyone could come up with a response to that, the entire house shook with a faint but unmistakable tremor; if they had been in California instead of North Dakota, Dean would've called it an earthquake. Bobby swore and grabbed a shotgun before edging over to the closest window to look outside. Dean stood behind him, his own gun at the ready, and peered over his shoulder.
Lucifer was walking across the yard, utterly unaffected by the acre's worth of Bobby's sigils all around him. He didn't even blink or turn his head when some of the cars burst into flame as he walked by them. The hex bag suspended over the porch stairs crumbled to dust when he approached it.
"Really now." Lucifer scuffed his foot through the little pile of dust. "Was that supposed to accomplish something?" He didn't shout, or even raise his voice, yet they could all hear him with perfect clarity.
"What do you want?" Bobby called out. Dean thought he was doing a pretty good job of sounding as if he wasn't about to wet his pants, which was a hell of an accomplishment under the circumstances.
"Only the angels." Lucifer paused near the middle of the steps. "Not so much to ask, is it? One of them has already fallen once, and the other's about as much use as a potted plant these days. Is either one of them really worth your lives?"
"Anna," Dean said without turning around, "take Cas and get into the panic room downstairs." He had no idea if the metal room would actually offer any more protection than the rest of the house, but it wasn't as if they had anything else left to try.
"I don't wish to harm you," Lucifer called out, "but if you don't hand over the angels, my friends and I will have to come in after them, and I don't think you'll enjoy that very much." There were no "friends" in sight, but when he took another step up the porch stairs, there was a faint, rustling stir in the gravel path behind him and a chorus of faint growls. Dean felt the shotgun tremble a little in his suddenly-clammy hands. Hellhounds.
"We're not handing anyone over!" He yelled. Sam gave him a worried look.
"Dean."
"I don't want to hear it, Sammy." Dean glared at him. "I'm not a big fan of the armies of Heaven either, these days, but Cas and Anna don't deserve whatever this bastard might do to them."
"I know," Sam said. "I'm not suggesting we hand them over. I'm suggesting we all get the hell out of here. The panic room isn't really going to keep him out, is it?"
"Too late," Bobby muttered. Dean turned back to the window just in time to see Lucifer reach the top of the stairs.
None of them could ever be entirely sure what happened afterwards. Lucifer reached out to open the front door. There was a flash of light, white and blinding like the sun. Dean's vision became a dizzying swirl of white spots. He stood there and blinked until it cleared and he could once again see the--
"Holy crap. Bobby, that's not your house."
"No, it's not," Chuck said from the doorway. "It's my house. What the heck are you all doing here? I didn't write this." He sounded sleepy and extremely put out. "Why do people keep doing things I didn't write? It's very confusing."
"Hey, we didn't do this." Dean frowned. "At least, I don't think we did this." He turned toward Sam. "Did you do this?"
"If I'd learned to teleport," Sam said irritably, "I would've mentioned it by now."
Yeah, like you mentioned all your other powers, Dean thought, but kept his mouth shut. This was not the time to have an argument with Sam. This was the time to figure out what the hell had happened. He turned to Anna. "Was it you?"
She shook her head. "I don't have the power to transport so many humans at once."
"What about--" Dean began, then stopped and shook his head. If Anna couldn't do this, then Castiel couldn't either. Especially not this Castiel, so silent and broken, currently huddled on the floor behind Anna. He didn't even seem aware that they had changed locations.
"Then who?" Sam demanded. "This is crazy. One minute we're in Bobby's kitchen with Lucifer coming up the porch steps to smite our asses, and the next--"
"Whoa." Chuck plastered his back to the wall and shuffled sideways toward the far corner of the room. "Lucifer's here?"
"No," Sam said in a tone of greatly exaggerated patience, "Lucifer's at Bobby's place. Or at least he was, as of two minutes ago. As were we. And now we're here and we don't know how or why."
"Was it God?" Chuck asked, then scowled and spread his arms when everyone turned to stare at him. "What? It's a perfectly reasonable question."
"I suppose," Bobby said slowly, "if anyone could do this, it would be--"
"No way." Dean felt a sudden, startling surge of anger at the thought. "God's not around anymore. He's retired or on vacation or something. Zachariah said so."
Sam raised one eyebrow in that really annoying way he had. "And we believe everything Zachariah says because..?"
Good point, that. Dean sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. "Okay, so maybe the slimy bastard was lying. But still, why would God start poking his head in now? He sat around with his thumbs up his divine ass the whole time Azazel was doing whatever it was with his special kids. He didn't lift a finger while Lillith was breaking seals. He didn't help Cas here." Dean waved one hand in Castiel's general direction. "But now he suddenly takes an interest? What sort of game is he playing?"
"I wouldn't know," Bobby said. "But I think you may be right -- it is a game, both to him and to Lucifer. That's why we're here. Lucifer threatened God's pawns, so God moved them -- us -- to a safer place on the board."
"Great," Dean muttered. "Just what I've always wanted -- to be a pawn in a cosmic chess game. This sucks."
"I don't know," Sam said. "Personally, I'm kind of glad to have confirmation that God doesn't want me dead. I mean, it was kind of an open question was the past couple of years, wasn't it? So maybe this is a good thing."
"Not if he's going to randomly move us around the country any time he feels like it! I mean, how are we supposed to-- fuck! My car! What's going to happen to my car?"
"I'm sure she's all right," Bobby said. "I don't think your car is what Lucifer's after."
"I'm not saying I like it," Sam qualified, even though he was saying exactly that ten seconds before. "I'm just saying maybe we could use this to our advantage. A pawn can become the most powerful piece on the board if it survives long enough. "
Dean smirked. He couldn't help it. "Wait, you're saying we have to try and turn you into a queen? That shouldn't be too hard, seeing as you're already such a sparkly princess."
Sam gave a dramatic sigh and rolled his eyes, and for a moment it was just like their old, pre-apocalyptic times, Dean teasing and Sam pulling bitchfaces at him. Dean decided to allow himself a moment of hope. Yeah, that whole cosmic-pawn thing sucked, but they were alive, and far away from Lucifer, and God didn't want his baby brother dead.
Maybe things were going to work out after all.
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