(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

[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."

[godless_son]

"There is one brand on his right foot and the other on his lower back. I will take care of the salt water if you and Neil take the brands. Sam can perform the exorcism. It all must happen at the same time. We may only have one opportunity before it tries to kill him."

[forthedog]

He nods again. All at once. Go team. For a second it's hard to not smile, but he doesn't, because he's not sure how he would ever explain it.

"I know you can't know, but... You think this is gonna work? Can we kick it out of him?"

[godless_son]

"There is no other option, it will work," he states, voice hard and low. "I am an angel of the Lord. I will summon enough grace to do this and to keep him alive. If it doesn't work, I will go after him. I don't exist where he does not."

[forthedog]

He doesn't immediately respond to that. He just soaks in the tone, the determination, the kind of frayed solidity that comes when there's nothing else to hang onto. What it's like to love someone that much.

He knows.

"Then we'll make it work." He looks back at Dean again - Dean, burning like someone in the last grip of a ravaging fever - and does allow himself a smile, small and hard. "It's arrogant. It's sure it's won. That's why it won't."

[godless_son]

"It's also very powerful, more powerful than your average demon. Even if I were not injured it would be difficult for me to exorcise on my own."

He turns his head bike to Mike, voice still pitched low. "Tell Neil to be careful. It will snap any of your necks the second it gets the chance, if it doesn't snap Dean's first."

[forthedog]

"Yeah, well." His smile tightens. "Watching him getting tossed around like that's getting pretty fucking old, so yeah." But careful. How careful they can reasonably be here seems profoundly up for grabs.

"Why hasn't it, yet? Why aren't we all dead?"

[godless_son]

"I think because Dean is fighting very hard for control, for one thing. It tried to stab me in the heart. Dean stopped it," he says, taking a deep, steadying breath.

"It also knows that if it kills you all or it kills Dean, I will use every bit of grace I have left to burn it out of existence or at least send it back. Even demons fear Hell."

[forthedog]

"Yeah, about that." He looks more directly at Castiel again, eyes very slightly narrowed. He's not interested in vengeance, he's not even especially interested in making the thing suffer anymore. But he's still curious.

"Say we do get it out of him. What happens to it then?" He pauses, then, "Can you kill it?"

[godless_son]

"Most likely we will send it back to Hell, where it may not stay for eternity, but long enough to keep Dean safe," he says, eyes locking on Mike's.

"I won't risk healing Dean to waste the grace to destroy it fully. Once it is out, we send it back under and take care of Dean."

[forthedog]

He nods. Understanding. If he were more vindictive he might almost consider destroying it worth the risk, but...

No. Actually. If it's going back to Hell, that might be all manner of best. No matter how vindictive he is or isn't.

And he still has one more question.

"Does he know? How much you love him?"

[godless_son]

Castiel's eyes widen, steely concentration broken by the very unexpected question.

"I don't...I don't know how he could not," he says softly, hands unclenching. "Accepting it is quite another matter. But there is no condition to it. He does not need to love me back. It doesn't affect how I feel. I will always love him and only him."

[forthedog]

"That's not what I asked. I asked if he knows." He turns his attention back to Dean and pulls in a breath.

"I think... It matters that he knows. I think it might be all that matters. We can do all we want to try to save him, Cas, but it's not gonna make any difference unless he wants to be saved."

He looks at Castiel again, direct and open. "Unless he has something to come back for."

[godless_son]

"He knows," Castiel says with a frown, turning back to Dean. "I told him I was in love with him. He knows that I will always be with him, in whatever capacity he will allow."

[forthedog]

"Then don't let him forget it. Whatever happens. Keep telling him. Even if he knows. Even if you think he knows."

He thinks of Neil, pale and unconscious in a hospital bed, and everything in him clenches into something that's almost pain.

"I know you will. I know you do. I'm just... saying."