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[always_enduphere]

The chapel is small.  Built for mourners on the edge of the dead, its walls are clean and white, sturdy, meant for shelter.  Wood and brick, not meant to contain the darkness now held within them, twitching in the form of the body strapped prone to a hasty trap made of splintered pews.

It's quiet inside, removed enough from the city that the only sounds are rattling breaths from the body in chains, snatches of anxious voices and the occasional rumble of the floor, creaking and groaning from unseen onslaught, but holding.

There's an energy in the air, an electricity that raises hackles along with hairs, pouring from the ravaged body in an angry throb, but within the trap it can't do more than rattle walls, beneath the chains that smoke its skin, it can't do more than hiss curses on borrowed breath, and promise agonies yet to come.

In the center of the trap, the thing wearing Dean Winchester bares its teeth, blinking black towards any with stomach left to look at him.

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[always_enduphere]

It's all he can do to breathe. His arm is fire from the shoulder down, an ache that speaks of deep breaks, but Dean can find no comfort in fidgeting. He's held fast, head too heavy to lift from where his sharp chin digs into his sternum, lashes clumped with exhausted tears. He's come to the end of something, and the darkness inside him knows it, roiling up like a storm and stopping his breath for long moments.

But the storm breaks, and Dean gasps as he's released, bloody throat sucking down air through the respite he knows will be only temporary. There are bodies scattered near him, faces he's craved for long, muddled weeks, even as he resisted the dark thing inside of him carrying him anywhere near them. But they stand steadier than he does now, and in his exhaustion, Dean finds room to be grateful.

Something will die tonight. But it won't be them.

[godless_son]

Castiel circles the crude structure Dean has been carefully but firmly strapped to, stepping within the trap itself to study his face.

"Dean," he breathes, in the rare moment of still and silence. "Can you hear me?"

He reaches out, cautiously to gently cup the side of his face.

[always_enduphere]

In the rare and fleeting moments left alone in his head, Dean's thought of him, closed his eyes and seen Cas hanging there, ragdoll limp and bleeding out. Said he was sorry a dozen times, but never expected anyone to hear it.

"Hurt you," he says now, pushing the words out of his ruined throat. Always hurting him, comes the gleeful reminder inside his head, and Dean closes his eyes. "Sorry, Cas."

[godless_son]

"Don't," Castiel chokes out, face pained as he leans in close, hiding Dean's face from the group for a moment.

"Please, don't. It wasn't you. I owe you the deepest apology for allowing this to happen and I will make it up to you, Dean. I'm going to save you, I promise. You must hold on, alright? You can't leave me here."

[forthedog]

At first he says nothing. Just looks. The truth is that there's a great deal about this scene that's familiar, a twisted, obscene echo of something that was meant to be a strange kind of comfort. He stands just outside the circle and he looks and he feels no pity, no anger. He moved past feeling pity for anything after the ash, and he doesn't have any anger left. And he can't be angry at this thing anyway. Like him, it is what it is and it does what it does. The scorpion stings and drowns itself.

What he's feeling is calm, and certainty, and love so strong it makes him ache. Because you don't hurt someone the way he's hurt Dean without passing through knowledge and arriving at something very much like love, something deep and diamond-hard, emerging from fire.

And what he knows - and it's not stupid, and it's not facile, and he doesn't doubt it for a moment - is that love will save them all. One way or the other.

"Dean."

either/both is yesssssss

[always_enduphere]

That voice is enough to make Dean forget where he is. It's not hell, but it's somewhere like it, the air too close, the fire not only on his skin but down his throat, in his lungs. He's stretched wide but stoppered up, can feel the darkness inside him but can't get it out.

It's too much. He longed for hell and got its shadow, and that's enough. He can't take much more.

Dean parts his blood smeared lips and croaks, "Red."

[forthedog]

He smiles, very small, half twisted with something he doesn't even have a name for, except it's the final grown end of something that started in a place and a time he can't even identify. And he steps forward, because something else he's always known since they went into that room together is when to keep his distance and when to close the distance up.

"Soon." He lifts a hand and combs his fingers through Dean's hair. Familiar now. Almost ritual. "I'm so fucking sorry, Dean. I didn't see it in time. I should have."

[likeaplanet]

When I move toward him, there's a knife in my hand, but I'm still too tired to be afraid. I've run on adrenaline for two fuckin' weeks, now. I've got just enough left to see this through. No more to spare.

"Dean," I say, pitched low and quiet, listening to the wet rattle of his breath and willing him to hold on just a little longer.

[Either or both, I'm cool with whatever works.]

[always_enduphere]

He hasn't heard that voice in weeks, maybe longer, everything between here and there an ugly tangle, and Dean's grunted answer is lost to a groan, so weak it doesn't even make it out of his throat.

"Don't," he says when he can, because Neil's boots are closer than when he last looked, and what Dean does remember is seeing his body crunched up against a wall. Twice.

[likeaplanet]

"Fuck you," I mutter, taking one more defiant step, and maybe I'll get hurt this time-- maybe it'll fucking man up and kill us all. It's not gonna scare me away.

"'m not goin' anywhere."

[theprodigalson]

There's a moment when Sam is sure he has it. He can feel the slick, sick tendrils of the demon's essence curling unseen around his fingers, pressure pulsing, winding, clawing at Sam's insides as he pulls and pulls. His head is pounding, every muscle in his body drawn tight and he holds on, grits his teeth and holds on.

Before him, Dean is arching under Castiel's hold as a thick rope of grey smoke spews upward from his mouth, flooding out. Sam twists his wrist and holds on, ignoring the steady poundpoundpound behind his eyes. The demon is fighting, of course, writhing and twisting in Sam's hold.

But it's working. It's working.

And then it's not.

The demon seizes in Sam's grip, slithers and slips, and Sam bites down and holds on as best he can, sweating with the effort and straining. The ache in his head is suddenly unbearable, splitting, and with a horrified, defeated gasp, Sam crumples forward, arm falling as he drops to his knees in pain, demon smoke sucking right back into his brother like a vacuum.

[always_enduphere]

"You know," i say when we can breathe again, my words more rattle than proper speech pushed up through dean's tortured lungs, "If I don't kill him, this will. Little brother, falling off the wagon again? And all because of him?"

i'd laugh, but neither of us have the energy for it, so i settle for a bloody grin. "Ouch."

[theprodigalson]

Sam's head feels like a boulder as he tries to lift it, his vision blurry as he sees Dean smirking back at him, bloodied and-- No.

No, it's not Dean. Just his body, his features pulled into a twisted grin, eyes dark pools of black because, once again, Sam has failed him.

"You won't," Sam says, his voice shaky and winded as he stumbles back to his feet, every muscle in his body aching, every nerve on fire. The blood in his veins is still pumping, still swirling. But he can tell he's weakening. And fast. "I won't let you."

Lifting his arm again feels like lifting the Impala one-handed, Sam grimacing through the pain as he calls up the power inside him again, searches for those dark, slimy tendrils coiled tight inside his brother's body, desperate to pull them apart one by one. Desperate to save his brother.

[jianhuo]

She has to stay outside the trap. She knows this, and yet it's all she can do to not go to him, take his face in her hands the way she used to do when their surroundings were much more tropical and he knew - he remembered - the truth about her. Saffron's there to help, to do what she can though she knows her knowledge of all this pales in comparison to Castiel's and Sam's despite all the reading up she's tried to do since being in Darrow and especially since encountering the ghost with Dean and agreeing to take this on.

She just needs him to make it out of this.

A sob almost escapes her, but Saffron pushes it down. She's tough, always has been, and now can be no exception. Baby, she wants to say. It's not what comes out. "Hang in there, Dean. You're going to get through this." Her voice is steadier than she expected it to be.

[always_enduphere]

Bound though he is, Dean twitches at the sound of a familiar voice cutting through the dull roar of pain. He's dying, he can feel it, a weight behind his eyes and bearing downward, sitting on his chest. It makes it easier, somehow, to be kind, knowing that he's almost at the end.

"Cherry," he says, barely getting the word past cracked lips. "I do, I want cherry pie."

[jianhuo]

Saffron lets out a small laugh that sounds more like a sob, the distance between where she stands at the edge of the trap and where he's tied in the chair feeling like miles.

"You can have as much cherry pie as you want," she promises, and by God, he's going to be around for her to make good on that. "I won't even make you help fix them. All you'll have to do is eat."

[likeaplanet]

The space of time between when I lay crumpled on the floor of that dirty alleyway, and bursting through the doors of this chapel, is a jumbled mess of fragments. I know that I got up and ran, I know that Mike was there with me. I know that I called Sam-- there's even proof of it on the call log of my phone. I know that I doubled over and puked behind a gravestone just yards from the front door. That was probably disrespectful or something.

I'll be sorry later.

It's quiet now. The murmur of voices are barely a hum, and all that rot and profanity spewing from him, sitting there in the middle of all this, has died down. I sit down on a pew, knife in hand, and think about what Cas said: There's a brand that has to be cut. We're gonna have to find it.

Luckily, I gotta little bit of strength left. I look up at him and I know this is gonna be over, soon. We'll make this right, 'cause if we don't... by the look of things, he's not gonna be able to hold out much longer.

[forthedog]

He's been moving, because staying still is difficult. Making slow, wide sweeps around the edge of the chapel, watching everything, feeling the hum in the air, the potential release of energy. But there's a center that always draws him back and it does now, and it's not Dean.

He stops in front of Neil, drops into a crouch and lays his hands over the knife. He doesn't say anything. There's only so much he could say.

[likeaplanet]

I didn't even hear him coming. It's like, all the sudden he's just there, filling up my entire field of vision, his hand warm and solid atop my own.

I blink, shaking myself out of whatever the fuck daze I just settled into, clearing my throat and pressing my lips together into something I hope looks reassuring.

"He doesn't look good," I croak, my free hand lifting to cover Mike's. "He's so fuckin' thin. I just... What the fuck is it even doing?"

[forthedog]

It should scare him, but it doesn't, because nothing does anymore. Not demons, not Hell, not the very real possibility - the probability that he's looking at something that might be himself. He watches Castiel, Sam, watches the rise and fall of the thing under Dean's skin, feels Neil close and draws strength from the closeness. Watches all of them, waits to see if he's needed. Aware that being here to witness this is a thing in itself.

All of them standing together. They haven't abandoned Dean, would never abandon him. This thing needs to know it. Will know it.

Will know that it had already lost the instant it invaded.

[godless_son]

"We need to weaken it further," Castiel murmurs softly, moving back to stand next to Mike, jaw clenched tight at the knowledge of what it will do to Dean. "Before we make the move to cut the brands and the actual excorcism. I cannot keep you all safe if it's not weakened."

[forthedog]

He nods, doesn't look away. It's daring them all to look at it, using the horror of what it's doing to Dean as a weapon. So fine, he'll look. And he won't be made to look away.

"Just tell me what to do." He does look at Castiel then, not hiding anything now. "I won't hurt him unless I have to, Cas. I swear it."

[theprodigalson]

Sam's knee-deep in demon guts when he gets the call. A sweep of his thumb spreads blood across the screen of his phone when he answers and he barely gives a second thought to the crumpled mass of what, at one time, was a human being. There's a part of him, down there somewhere, that feels bad for him. The person that once was.

But they haven't been human for awhile now, he reminds himself. And now they've fulfilled a larger purpose.

Wiping the back of his hand across his mouth, Sam pockets his phone. Looking down at the wrecked carcass before him, he feels a pang of... of something. Guilt, maybe. Remorse.

And fear for what's to come. He's already failed his brother once. Failed this one many more times than that.

What if he fails here, too?

No.

No. He won't. The blood running hot through his veins tells him so. He's been practicing. He's not as strong as he was before he got here, but he'll be strong enough for this. Because he has to be. Because this is Dean and he has to be.

When Sam finds them inside a chapel on the city's edge, Dean strapped to splintered pews with Castiel, Mike, and Neil surrounding, he wastes no time. They only have minutes here. Less. Sam doesn't know enough about this demon to know what it wants with Dean specifically. If anything. He doesn't know if he's using him for other purposes, if the plans of the pit extend beyond the world Sam left behind a year ago. He doesn't know and there isn't time to find out.

The door slams behind Sam as he marches in, gaze focused on the his brother's form, arms bound behind him.

Gritting his teeth, Sam stands, legs part and lifts one arm. He breathes. Centers himself. And then calls up the blood running through him, the darkness and power that crawls and itches and slithers inside him. And he feels it react, curling up his spine little by little, a pressure that builds from the pit of his stomach outward, unseen but working all the same. Working. It's working.

[godless_son]

Castiel's lips pull back in a snarl as he realizes what Sam is trying to do. What he has clearly been doing despite knowing what it led to the first time. There is no time for that now as he splays a hand on Dean's forehead, shaking with the effort of keeping the demon still inside him.

"Now!" he shouts, knowing Mike and Neil will be right behind him.

[always_enduphere]

It hurts. Attention too divided to hold him under, the demon lets Dean feel everything, every hot scrape against his insides as the thing digs in, bears down, anchors itself against removal. Dean feels full with it, every part of him invaded, and Sam...Sam is in front of him, body held in a stance Dean knows well, and a look in his eye Dean knows even better.

"Sammy," he mouths, screaming through another ineffectual tug, "Not like this."