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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."

[always_enduphere]

"Tryin'," Dean whispers, but it's hard to remember what he's clinging to. There's a weight on his chest he's felt before, a heaviness sinking deeper than any demon could go. He's dying, or near to it, and it's so hard to get his hands around something to hang onto.

"Tired, Cas."

[godless_son]

"I know, Dean, I know," he murmurs, pressing his forehead to Dean's. It's reckless and dangerous but he can't hold back the little comfort he can offer, not now. "It will be over soon and then I will bring Annie to you. I'm a terrible pet owner, Dean. She needs you to come back to her. And you know that if you try and leave, I will just follow you."

[always_enduphere]

Annie. Dean misses her, just as he's missed all of them, but the ache is mixed with guilt, a need to make things right with her kindling, faint but there.

"Miss her," he says, and would laugh if he could, standing in the middle of all this ruin and missing his fucking dog. He lets Castiel take his weight, keep his head upright so Dean can open his eyes and look at him. "Don't you fucking dare. If I go anywhere, you stay. You look after all of them."

[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."

[always_enduphere]

Dean smiles, too, for the fingers, a barely there twitch of lips, but then his eyes open and he remembers. Where he is. What he's been doing.

"Should've," he agrees, but he means something different, and the thing inside him knows it, punching forward against Mike's solar plexus with a gargled laugh.

[forthedog]

He grunts hard, briefly pained. Otherwise he doesn't move, grips one end of the frame and hangs on. This is what this thing has been doing the whole time, drawing them in just enough to hurt them, to hurt Dean, to shove them all away from each other again. Away from Dean.

Not this time. Not here.

"It's okay," he breathes, hand still curved against Dean's scalp. "It's okay. We're here now. We're gonna fix this."

[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."

[always_enduphere]

"Neil, I can't," says Dean and stops, throat too full until he coughs it up all over himself, blood sliding down his chin in thick globs. The thing inside him laughs and laughs, squeezes until he chokes again, eyes streaming with tears.

"Can't stop it," Dean finishes with a wet breath. "Sick of hurting people. Please."

[likeaplanet]

"Okay," I say, stopping where I stand, only because of sharper pain in his voice, blood sliding wet and dark from his lips.

It won't be long, now. Whatever the fuck Sam and Cas are doin', they better hurry the fuck up.

"Just hold on for us a little bit longer, okay?" None of us are leaving this fuckin' chapel until this is over, one way or another. All of us know that.

[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.

[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.

[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."