(no subject)

[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.

Comments

[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.

[always_enduphere]

his grip has lessened. i can feel him wriggling around inside of dean, seeking me out, but it's a pale shadow of the agony that came before it.

"Running out of juice?" i ask, and it's easier this time, the look on his face worth every indignity suffered here tonight. they've got me held tight, but i find strength enough to bare dean's throat. "How badly do you want the refill?"

[theprodigalson]

The demon goads him, stretches Dean's head back to show the length of his neck, blood pulsing under thin skin. The thing can sense Sam's weakening power, he's sure of it, and it only makes him angry, jaw clenched tight and the pain nearly enough to make him black out as he pushes through it, tries to cling to the last tendrils of the darkened soul that slip from his grasp.

A fresh spike of pain splits down his skull and Sam cries out again as he drops his arm, gasping and shaking, crumpling under the weight of defeat and failure.

"Dean," he breathes, knees nearly buckling once more as a drop of blood spills from his nose and onto the cold floor at his feet.

[always_enduphere]

"Nope," i say, my grip on dean's insides less than i'd like them to be, but if i'm on my way back downstairs, and i'm at least going to spend my last moments topside doing something worthwhile.

"Not Dean, not ever again. I check out tonight, I'm taking him with me." i yank dean's sickly features around in a too sweet mockery of regret. "Sorry."