(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

[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.

[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]

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.

[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.