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He knows.
Those words repeat over and over in Dean’s head in an endless loop, a scratched record with the needle jumping back to play the same two words, seven letters, again and again and each time more demanding than the last.
He knows. He knows. He knows.
Lucifer is talking to Sam, going on and on about honesty and respect and offering Sam the chance to still accomplish what they’ve come to do. A chance for Sam to take in the devil, jump into the pit, and save the world, and as Dean looks at the supreme confidence on Lucifer’s face he knows without a doubt that they are completely and spectacularly boned.
When the idea of Sam letting in the devil, mentally over powering him, and leaping into a cage built by God and chained to the fiery bowels of hell for all eternity had been exactly that – an idea – it had seemed crazy and horrific but strangely feasible. Now, as Dean is facing the King of Hell barely confined in his disintegrating meat-suit, the entire idea is so far beyond insane Dean doesn’t know what in the apocalyptic world they had been thinking!
“So, what do you say, Sam? A fiddle of gold against your soul says I’m better than you,” Lucifer says, all mockery and teasing and Dean knows there’s no better way to speak to Sam to rile him into choosing the stupidest path.
Dean’s already shaking his head in denial as Sam proves him right by saying, “So he knows. Doesn’t change anything,” and Dean has to swallow his heart back down before he can manage to rasp out Sam’s name in a voice that tells just how shit scared he is.
“We don’t have any other choice.” Sam sounds breathless and frightened but determined, and Dean can’t let him do this!
“No,” he says imploringly, but Sam’s mind is already made up and as Sam straightens to his full, towering height, Dean turns his pleading gaze on Lucifer. It is utter desperation that would make him look to the creature they’re trying to destroy in a bid to save his brother, but it’s pointless because Lucifer only has eyes for Sam. Eyes that are as equally excited and determined as Sam’s.
“Yes.”
As soon as Sam’s consent is given, Lucifer doesn’t waste any time and Dean has to shield his face from the burning white light of the Morning Star.
No no no! But it’s too late and Dean’s powerless to stop it. There’s no take backs when dealing with the devil.
The flare of light dies down and when Dean can look again he sees that Lucifer’s old vessel is completely gone – likely burned to nothing the moment Lucifer stopped tyring to keep him together, the poor stupid bastard – and Sam’s lying on the floor, out cold.
God, no!
Even as Dean pleads denial in his head, he knows it doesn’t matter anymore. The plan still sticks and he has a job to do. His first, last, and most important job.
For Sam. Always for Sam.
Pulling the joined Horsemen’s rings from his pocket, Dean throws them at the wall. As soon as they connect, sticking there as if drawn by a powerful magnet, he starts chanting. The wall is torn inwards by an impossible void and Dean stares into the screeching black. His hands are shaking.
For Sam.
A groan comes from behind him and Dean turns, sees that Sam’s woken, and steels his resolve.
For Sammy.
There are no more questions in him, no more denials or tricks or escapes. He will do this. He must because not going through with it will destroy him. Dean just hopes Sam will forgive him.
He grips his brother under the arms and starts hauling him to his feet, useless encouragements falling unchecked from his mouth as Sam groans in pain and scrabbles to get his feet under him.
“C’mon Sammy, get up!” Dean yells over the howling, sucking wind and bodily drags Sam to his feet.
“Dean,” Sam grunts, his face screwed up and hands clasping at Dean’s jacket lapels, “I’ve got him. He’s so strong.”
“Come on!” Dean grips Sam’s upper arms to steady his younger brother and yells, “We gotta go.”
Sam takes a staggering step forward and then lurches to a halt, resisting Dean’s effort to drag him towards the gaping hole in the wall.
“What?”
“We gotta go,” Dean repeats over the screeching wind and yanks on Sam’s arm. “We don’t have time for this, hurry!”
But Sam’s not moving, he’s standing there and staring at Dean in confusion before demanding, “What do you mean ‘we’?”
Dean growls in annoyance. They don’t have time for this crap, and damn Sam for always wanting to talk things out at the worst possible time. He grabs Sam by the jacket and tugs him down nose to nose.
“Don’t be a moron!” Dean yells into Sam’s face, anger and fear bleeding out through his eyes even as he’s stubbornly set on his course of action. “This is the only way to save everyone and if I can’t stop you and I can’t bring you back then I’m going with you. Now come on!”
But Sam’s not moving. “You’re going with me? Into the cage, back into hell?”
“Yes!” Dean screams at him and yanks on his arm with all his might. Lucifer could break through Sam’s control any moment, their window of opportunity is already sliding shut and Dean knows they have to do this right now but Sam still won’t goddamn move!
Then it hits him… Sam won’t move.
Dean’s pulling on him hard enough that even if Sam were to resist him with all his strength, there would be at least a struggle, but Sam’s not moving at all. It’s like trying to move a boulder, a mountain.
An angel.
Dean freezes in place still clinging to Sam’s arm and for a long moment doesn't move. Like a wave, Dean feels the hot flush of dread pour from his scalp and down his body before the roar of blood in his ears drowns out even the lamentation of the cage mouth. Slowly, Dean lifts his gaze to his brother’s familiar hazel eyes. Hazel eyes that are calm, smug, and curious.
“No.” Dean’s voice comes out barely a rasp but Sam still hears him over the chaos surrounding them.
“Yes.”
“No,” Dean says, stronger this time and tightening his hold; gripping Sam until his knuckles are bloodless and aching. But Sam is looking at him in a way Sam never had before. There’s something different behind his little brother’s eyes, something foreign and wrong, and the truth of who it really is looking out at him claws at the inside of Dean’s heart and shreds it into bloody ribbons. “Sam? Sammy, please.”
“Sammy’s long gone.” Dean jerks back, away from the monster looking out of his brother’s eyes and speaking through his brother’s mouth. “But you, Dean… you’ve surprised me.”
Lucifer smiles with Sam’s lips and flashes Sam’s dimples, and Dean can’t breathe, can’t draw in air past the scream that’s lodged in his throat. The world has gone unfocused, slipped sideways and reformed in a way that Dean can’t endure.
“Look at you,” Lucifer says and circles around Dean, “you really were serious. You were fully prepared to voluntarily throw yourself back into hell for him. That’s really something, Dean.”
“Let him go.” Dean doesn’t recognise his own voice. It’s too harsh, scraped raw and dry as dust.
Lucifer continues to look Dean over, Sam’s eyes all amused curiosity. “Hmmm… no. Sam’s rather a good fit, really.”
“Give him back,” Dean growls and steps forward, fisting a hand in the jacket he remembers teasing Sam about when he bought it in Michigan (Haven’t you finished growing yet? Dude, you’re such a friggin’ yeti. The moment you start shedding in the car I’m dumping your ass at the nearest game reserve) and his hands don’t shake at all. “Give him back to me.”
Lucifer smirks and says, “He’s mine now, Dean. Mine forever. He was made for me, born for me. He’s always been mine; it was just a matter of time.”
“He’ll never be yours.” And Dean has never been so sure of anything in his life. Sam is Dean’s, has been Dean’s since dad thrust him squalling through blood-stained lips into Dean’s small arms and yelled, “Take your brother!”
Sam has been Dean’s through years of dirty diapers and first steps, scraped knees and instant noodle dinners, school bullies and first crushes. He was Dean’s when he went to Stanford and Dean would sneak away from dad to watch him on campus at every given opportunity. Dean’s through fire and pain and countless hunts and demon blood and death. Dean’s to resurrect. Dean’s to die and burn for.
“He will never be yours. Sam’s mine and you will give him back to me!”
A large, cold hand closes over Dean’s fist and it’s wrong, wrong, wrong. Sam’s skin should be warm bordering on hot, not cold like death. Dean will never let Sam be that cold for long. He couldn’t bare it when he started this whole mess and even after everything they’ve been through, everything he’s suffered and damaged and destroyed because Dean couldn’t leave his little brother in the cold clutches of death, after everything he’s learned and everything they could have avoided if he had just let Sam stay dead, Dean still can’t stand feeling Sam’s skin that cold.
“Yours?” Lucifer says sneeringly, and Dean tries to wrench his hand back but is held fast. “I don’t think so. He’s never been yours. All those years, Dean, all your life you’ve been running after him, looking after him, protecting him… Burning for him. Sam’s not yours, Dean.” Lucifer leans in close and Dean drops his gaze, turns his head to the side as cold breath fans his cheeks. It smells like blood. “You’re his. Which, really, through default, makes you mine as well.”
Dean breathes deep and takes in Sam’s familiar scent beneath the blood – gun oil, clean laundry, the Impala’s leather, and still that girly-ass shampoo.
Home.
“Screw you, you son of a bitch, you don’t get either of us.”
“If I can have both of you I might be persuaded to leave the rest of the populace alone.”
Dean’s eyes snap back up to the familiar and foreign hazel. “What?”
“I’m giving you a chance to prove yourself to me. Showcase your devotion, as it were.” And Lucifer’s pulling him over to the screeching void heedless of his struggles, standing Dean in front of the mouth of the cage where it tries to drag him in, large hands clamped over his shoulders and holding him in place. Now all Dean can smell is brimstone and ash and it’s so rank and familiar and terrifying that his eyes start to water. “A leap of faith is all I ask, Dean. Show me that you’re really willing to take that final step, to damn yourself again for all eternity to the fire and the suffering. Show me through your actions, big brother, that you’re truly prepared to give everything for your dear, beloved Sammy.”
Dean stands on the acies of the abyss and stares into its gaping maw.
“And if I do?” Dean’s breath absolutely does not hitch on a sob.
“Then we’ll be with you. From this moment until the end of creation, the three of us will be together.”
Dean squeezes his eyes closed and ignores how the chill from those hands – hands that have grasped at him and held him and also pushed him away more times than Dean can count – has seeped through his jacket and into his bones.
“Or, you can step back and call for Michael. I have no doubt that he will cast off Adam in an instant and come for you. If you’re lucky, Michael may even return your youngest brother to heaven first and then we can let destiny play out the way it was always meant to. We can all live up to our father’s expectations of us.” Lips brush Dean’s ear and Lucifer says just loud enough to be heard over the tearing of the void, “Remember what dad told you, man. That someday you might have to kill me,” in a tone so like Sam’s when he’s trying to be persuasive that Dean chokes on a ragged breath. “And you always knew I’d say yes eventually, that you’d have to be the one to stop me when I did. Well I have, so what’re you going to do about it?”
Sam, don’t say that, Dean thinks desperate and longing and takes a few breaths before managing to say, “Why should I believe you? You’re the father of lies, you two-faced dick.”
There’s a low, amused chuckle that makes Dean’s skin break out into goose bumps. “Scurrilous rumour. I’m an Angel, Dean, I don’t lie.” The cold hands lift from his shoulders. “Time to make your choice.”
Choice, what a joke of a word. Dean can see it all so clearly it’s like a movie playing out in his head in high definition. Running for the door, calling out to Michael while Bobby and Cas rush forward in confusion and concern. The bright light that will dive inside him while he’s screaming “Yes!” to the sky and then… Sam. Sam who will lie bloodied and beaten on ground laid to fire and waste in the aftermath of their battle and Dean kneeling by his little brother’s broken corpse and knowing that his hands dealt the death blow. The planet will be safe. Saved. The humans that survive the battle’s outfall will emerge from hiding and rebuild.
But Sam will be dead – his soul cast down or eradicated completely – and Dean will be alone and the angels will call it paradise.
Or, step forward. Forward into hellfire and endless torment and eternal imprisonment. Forward to a never-ending battle where he will fight Lucifer every moment of every day, but where Lucifer will be removed from Sam and Dean can stand between them once more. The enemy at his front and his brother at his back and all of them damned to blood and fire for eternity.
Choice. It’s the biggest lie of all.
Dean looks over his shoulder at Sam, not the thing riding inside him but at his brother. Floppy haired, towering, goofy smiles Sam. Dean stares into eyes that are a mix of his green and their dad’s sturdy brown and prays to a God that he knows isn’t listening that somewhere in there Sammy is looking back out at him.
There was never any choice.
And for Sam – for Bobby and Cas and Lisa and Ben and the people they’ve saved and for all the rest – Dean faces the sucking, screeching opening to hell and steps forward.
As if it has been waiting for his intent, the void catches hold of Dean and drags him inward. And Dean lets it. But before he’s pulled completely inside, an arm wraps around his stomach and he’s torn violently away, thrown clear of eternal damnation and hits the ground hard.
Lucifer is laughing. Head thrown back, teeth flashing, full bellied laughter of pure elation that Dean has never heard come from Sam before. It’s loud and bordering on maniacal and it makes Dean’s stomach clench with a sick mixture of shock, confusion, and denial.
“What the hell?” Dean demands, scrabbling to his feet and backing away from the manic creature wearing his brother.
The laughter cuts off abruptly and Dean is pinned with glittering hazel eyes.
“You are resplendent, Dean,” Lucifer proclaims, his tone exultant, and that is not a descriptor that Dean has ever wanted to have applied to him by the freaking devil. “No wonder Angels sing your name with such reverence.”
And Dean would argue that, considering how hard he’s been working at screwing up all the angels’ plans, but Lucifer has turned to the still howling hole in the wall and is chanting an incantation. The wall seals up and looks like it never supported a gaping tunnel to hell. Lucifer plucks the red hot connected rings off the chipping paint and slips them into his pocket.
“Wait, wait goddamn a minute,” Dean snaps, “this wasn’t part of the deal. We were all supposed to go down together!”
Lucifer laughs again, short and sharp and flashing Sam’s dimples, which he has no damn business doing. “Dean, you truly are the best of us. If Michael had been willing to make half the sacrifice you are then history would have greatly differed from where we stand today.”
Dean has no idea what to say to that so he ignores it and ploughs on with, “What about our deal, asshole?”
“Oh, the deal stands,” Lucifer says with a smug, triumphant shine to Sam’s eyes. “You, me, and Sam all one, big, happy family. Together, just the three of us, forever, exactly like Sam wanted.”
What? Just… What?
“No,” Dean denies vehemently. “Sam would never have wanted this.”
Lucifer just keeps smiling at him knowingly and the expression is so close to Sam’s patented ‘you should really try picking up a book and doing some research occasionally, Dean’ smile that Dean can’t handle it.
“What about the people?” he demands.
“What about the people?”
“They’re safe now, right?” Dean presses emphatically. “I walk into the cage, you come with me, and the people are left alone. That was what you said and you’ve already backed out of half the deal so you have to at least honour the other half.”
Lucifer chuckles. “When did I ever say I’d leave the rest of humanity – who are infecting my Father’s greatest creation like cancer – alone?”
Dean stares at him and for the second time that day feels the hot, prickling wash of dread.
“You,” Dean starts off shakily and has to swallow his madly beating heart back down before he can continue. “You said that if you got me and Sam you’d leave everyone else alone.”
“No, what I said was that if I got the two of you I might be persuaded to leave the rest of the populace alone.” Oh fuck, and now Dean can’t breathe again. “I asked you to prove your devotion by taking a step – one step – nothing about actually going into the cage itself.” Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck! “And you did, Dean. You did.”
Lucifer has Sam’s face stretched in a glorious smile and is walking towards him with Sam’s long strides. “I don’t go back on my promises. I will keep you with us just as you are, and safe from all the monsters in the world just as Sam wants. And you’ll get to be with Sam always, just like you want.”
“Except it won’t be Sam.” Dean’s voice is destroyed, too choked up and raw with emotions that he couldn’t name if he tried.
“I’ll let him out to talk to you on occasion, if you’re good.”
And there’s an emotion Dean can name: anger.
Before he thinks his actions through, Dean’s darting forward and has a fist flying at his brother’s face. Lucifer catches it easily, and then the other one, holding Dean still and impotent in his fury.
“You spineless, selfish, son of a bitch!” Dean screams in his face as Lucifer looks on impassively, cold hands burning Dean’s skin.
“I will kill Michael and rid this world of its monsters.”
“People aren’t monsters!”
“They are the worst kind of monster. They kill and destroy through desire instead of instinct, you’ve said as much before, Dean, just in different words. Sam remembers.”
“There are good people here!” Bobby, Lisa, Ben, and now Cas. All the children who haven’t had a chance to know what sin is let alone commit one. “Good, innocent people that are doing the best they can-”
“In a world full of violence, hate, and fear,” Lucifer interrupts. “If they’re as good as you say, then they will be welcomed into heaven and find peace.”
“They don’t deserve to die.” Dean tries to yell this, tries to sound fierce and strong, but it comes out imploringly and the plead for mercy shines bright in his eyes.
Lucifer softens Sam’s features into a cruel mimicry of sympathy. “They don’t deserve to live, Dean.”
Dean shakes his head in denial and stares into his little brother’s eyes. “Sammy, don’t give up on me. Fight him.”
“Sam wants this.”
“You lie!” Dean is trying to pull his hands free of Lucifer’s unrelenting grip, tugging until his muscles strain and his shoulder gives a cringe-worthy pop.
“I would like to allow you the last few hours with the old drunk and Castiel, but I can’t have you calling for Michael.” And Dean feels tired all of a sudden, all the adrenaline fuelled fight draining from his body leaving behind weak anger and crippling desperation. “I will come for you after the battle.”
There has to be something he can do to stop this! There has to be something, there’s always something! It can’t end like this, Dean won’t let it! He won’t, he can’t! Oh God, he can’t!
But his body is betraying him, muscles loosening and becoming heavy as Lucifer catches him in Sam’s strong arms and lowers him to a carpet that smells like brimstone and despair. There’s a scream in his mind that won’t make its way out of his mouth, and darkness is sweeping in at the edges of his frantic mental struggles.
“Sam,” he manages to croak with great effort that costs him, “fight.”
Long fingers smooth through Dean’s hair and Sam smiles down at him.
“We’ll see you soon, brother.”
~The End~