(no subject)

[always_enduphere]

Dean can't remember every soul he ever tortured in hell. After thirty years of waiting, he'd climbed down from the rack and cut into as many creatures as were brought before him, spent the next decade soaked in other people's agony and blood, and he can't remember them all, but he remembers the first.

He'd expected the blood of the soul on that rack to be black, to smoke, to curl in eddies, but it had flowed, thick and red and sweet. And ordinary.

Later, he would learn demons bled just as red topside as they did Below.

Ruby is like all the ones that came before her. Naked. Red in streaks and white in others where Dean's flayed down to bone. Past screaming and into choked begging, tied in salted chains to a pentagram the reaches halfway to the ceiling. She's just like all the rest, but Dean hates her more than any of them.

He's been at it for nearly an hour now. Dragging the holy water soaked edge of his dullest blade down the length of her thigh, Dean wishes he had days. Months. God knows she's earned more than one hour of pain, however much Dean's tried to make it count.

But time is up. There's a shadow in the doorway that will soon materialize as his brother. The time for foreplay is done.

Lifting the IV line stretched between Ruby's veins and a bag of holy water, Dean releases a fresh wave into her bloodstream, his face impassive through the ensuing screams.

"Come in, Sam."

Comments

[theprodigalson]

By the time Sam manages to finally shake Mike, he's practically vibrating out of his skin with adrenaline and fury and mounting dread. He gets lost in the labyrinthine halls of the library for twenty minutes before finally finding his way to the boiler room, helped in no small part by the familiar cries of agony resounding through the halls.

They're not Dean's at least.

As he makes his way down the steps, he's anticipating finding Ruby strapped to a chair, covered in holy water with her arms bound behind her back. Maybe bruising from where Dean had gotten a little carried away.

But what he finds is a scene straight out of Saw with Dean at the helm, eyes as cold and unaffected as Sam's ever seen.

"Jesus, Dean," he breathes, as he steps out of the shadows, a chill running up his spine. "What is this?"

[truthorwhatever]

A scream bubbles up in the back of her throat, a cry cut off as she chokes and writhes as another surge of agony courses through dead veins. Her head lolls to one side without any energy to lift it, dead weight, but her eyes still stay open. Throughout all of this, it's never been enough to make her close them, and she knows it's what Dean wanted all along.

"S - " she starts, and every movement has those chains tearing across her skin. She can't feel the blood run down her skin for the pain that stretches over limbs. It's in her mouth, the metallic tang on lips and teeth, and she coughs wet red onto the floor.

[always_enduphere]

Too much blood in the throat.

It tends to be a problem when they won't stop screaming. Dean smooths his palm over Ruby's forehead, clearing it of the dark hair tumbling into her eyes.

"It's Ruby's absolution," he replies, still watching her. He reaches again for his table of tools, but this time he returns with only a glass of cool, unblessed water. Respite can be worse than the torture that precedes it. Because it breeds hope, Alistair had told him. Makes the pain that much sweeter when it returns.

"Drink," he says, putting the glass to her lips. "My brother needs to hear you confess, and then this will be over."

[theprodigalson]

The coolness in Dean's tone is almost more terrifying than the rest of the scene, the way he calmly, almost delicately smooths the hair off Ruby's forehead before offering her a drink. There isn't a single flicker of hesitance in his movements, not a blink of remorse in his cool, green eyes.

The smell of blood and sweat and burnt flesh is sickening, worse with every step Sam takes and he tightens his grip on the knife.

"Dean," he says again, not bothering to hide the uneasy tremor as he looks from his brother (Is it his brother?) to Ruby, his stomach rolling at the sight of her strung up and nearly flayed to the bone. "Dean, stop. She's not what you think."

But even as he says it, it feels wrong. Everything feels wrong.

[truthorwhatever]

A laugh rises, cut off by another cough. She's drowning in this blood, in this useless meat sack of blood and bone from the inside out, and when she smiles, her teeth pull back to reveal pink teeth. The water in the glass turns pink, similarly, when she drinks and spits again, her breathing slow and ragged. There's fluid in these purposeless lungs.

"It's - never over," she grits out, her head lolling back against the wall as she puts both of them in her sights - Sam, hovering over Dean's shoulder in the distance.

"Shame you never got to see the power of your destiny, Sammy. What you could have accomplished. What we could have. Together."

[always_enduphere]

"I saw," Dean murmurs, finger light beneath her chin to draw her gaze. "Do you know how long you had to enjoy Sammy's destiny? One minute. Maybe two." He leans in. "He's the one who held your arms when I buried the knife in your heart."

Stepping back again, Dean picks up a scythe. "Tell him." Louder. "Tell him his destiny, Ruby. Tell him why he needs to drink so much demon blood." Over his shoulder, Dean lets himself look briefly on Sam, "Why you made him an addict."

[theprodigalson]

"No," Sam says, low enough that it's little more than a breath.

He walks closer as though pulled forward by some force, eyes wide as Ruby speaks, her voice somehow still clear through the sickening gurgle. And even that is better than the crisp, dead tone from Dean.

And Sam can feel when Dean looks back at him, can feel the stab of those pointed words and sharp low in his gut. There's a flash of defensiveness then, a knee-jerk reaction to argue, but it's just as quickly bowled over with a wave of... of shame.

Struck mute, all Sam can do is stare, the ground growing shakier and shakier beneath him by the second.

[truthorwhatever]

"You haven't even - you don't know how powerful you can be, Sam," Ruby croaks, her voice raw. She hangs limp against the chains that cross over her skin, every movement bringing with it another line of fire over this body.

"Lilith wasn't the end. She was - just the beginning," she manages, before her head droops low again, its weight heavy on her bruised neck.

[always_enduphere]

Dean tsks, laying down the scythe just long enough to retrieve a salted cord of leather. Pushing Ruby's head back against the pentagram, he ties the length of leather to the iron, wraps the rest around her forehead to keep her upright.

"Stay focused," he says quietly through the smoke rising off her skin, and pulls the cord tight. "The beginning of what? What happens when he kills her?"

[theprodigalson]

Sam already knows the answer to this one, their conversation from a over a week ago still playing loud in his mind. 'When she dies, it breaks, and he walks free. And then he takes you.'

Lucifer.

Sam becomes Lucifer's meatsuit. He becomes the devil himself.

The churning in Sam's gut grows hotter, tighter, and he shakes his head again, eyes stinging as his free hand balls into a fist. No. No.

[truthorwhatever]

She can't smell the scent of burning flesh as it sears, but the pain is enough to bring her back towards focus even as she grits back a scream, sinking teeth into the torn insides of her cheeks. She can't move, but her chest rises and falls erratically, labored.

"Lilith," she whispers, the name falling from her lips as if dragged.

"And it is written that the first demon shall be the last seal."

[always_enduphere]

"I was too late," says Dean, and for the first time in hours, his face is alive, his voice, but with regret. "Not this time."

Touching the type of the scythe to Ruby's belly, Dean pushes just hard enough to break the skin. And keeps pushing. "It's what you wanted all along. Why I died. Why you were there to find him when he was at his worst. Why you taught him exactly what to do. Who to bleed. Who to drink. Tell him."

[theprodigalson]

Seal. It's not the first time he's heard the word now, but it's different in Ruby's voice. Confirmed. And he still isn't sure he entirely knows what they are, but he gets the general idea. It all leads to the same conclusion. He started it all. He's the reason Dean is like this, hard and calculating and... and brutal.

This is his destiny?

Suddenly the knife Dean presses into Ruby's belly might as well be entering his own for as sharp as he feels it.

[truthorwhatever]

Suddenly she's almost giddy with the pain of it, a laugh doubling as a scream when the blade slides in so smoothly, and she's still breathing almost too hard to get the words out, her eyes dissolving into two black-ink pools.

"I gave him the choice," she gasps, her lips curving into a deep red smile as her gaze falls to rest on Sam. "And you did it right, every - single time. Such a long time coming, Sammy, but - it always had to be you. You were gonna be - the one who set him free."

[always_enduphere]

One turn of wrist will be all it takes to hook the scythe around her sternum, one turn in the opposite direction to spill her borrowed guts on the floor. Dean takes no pleasure in torture - in recent years, he can hardly take pleasure even in sex - but there's a comfort in this. Knowing exactly what he can do to her, precisely where to cut. Death and dismemberment and blood are all Dean is good at anymore, and he is very good.

Resting his forehead on the iron next to hers, Dean says, quieter still, "Is that enough, Sam? Next question's all yours."

[theprodigalson]

"Why?" Sam asks, the word choked through the tightness in his throat. He can feel his eyes stinging, can feel the darkness in his belly, in his blood, churning hot and heavy.

He can't move, rooted to the spot as he watches Dean hold the blade to her with a steady, cool hand. He can't move, but his mind is racing, whirling over every memory of the past several months, every instance where Ruby was there to pick him up an dust him off and keep him going. But it's more than that, stretches further, to the demons who wouldn't deal, to the moment Dean got ripped from his grasp, to the year he spent desperately trying to free Dean of his deal, to the moment he was dumb enough to turn his back on Jake and take that knife.

All of it. All of it was for this.

As badly as he doesn't want to believe it, he knows she can't be lying. He knows this is the first time she's told him anything honest since the moment they met.

The heat within him roils, his lips twitching into a snarl as his eyes darken. "Why? Why me?"

[truthorwhatever]

"You were so strong, Sammy," Ruby whispers, struggling towards each breath like the air is hovering just within her reach. She's beyond pain now, beyond suffering - beyond that, there's nothing but black behind her eyelids, black and red melding together until she can't tell where one starts and the other stops.

And the only thing she dwells in now is the missed possibilities, the fact that this came so close to being within her reach - for her, at least, even if Dean had admitted that all this had happened in his version of the world back home.

"You were the only one," she says, a raspy vow. "You were the only one strong enough. Azazel saw it in you from the very beginning, knew that you were gonna find a way to - to get to this point. And I was gonna bring you to him. He'd give you everything, Sam. Everything you ever w-wanted. All the power."

[always_enduphere]

It's the truth at last, naked and ugly, and for a moment Dean almost thinks he's sorry. That from her lips is the only way Sam would believe it, that their lives ever had to be this at all. That, no matter what they seemed to do, they always ended up right here, standing in blood and salt and iron.

Settling the scythe into her sternum, Dean steps away from Ruby, lifts his eyes from Sam's shoulder to his agonized face. "Did you bring the knife?"

[theprodigalson]

I have plans, Sammy. Plans for you...

The familiar voice in his mind makes his skin crawl, makes everything grow tighter and hotter and darker. This is it, right here. This is his whole purpose for living. All Sam has ever wanted to be is good, to help people and have a decent, normal life, and this whole time he's been groomed for this. To be a puppet for Satan himself?

No.

No.

Eyes stinging and throat too tight to even swallow, Sam barely registers Dean's voice, his focus entirely on the mangled, rotting corpse of the demon before him. He closes the space between them in three strides and plunges the blade right into her chest, the only place with enough meat still clinging to bone. Lips curled into a weak, pained snarl, he presses in close, watches the light inside her spark and flicker, watches the black of her eyes and wonders how much of him is already lost, how close he is already to falling into his apparent destiny.

How doomed he still is whether she's alive or not.

[always_enduphere]

Of everything he's seen and done in this short hour, this is what causes Dean's breath to quicken, his heart to race. There's hope when his brother hefts the blade, satisfaction when he drives it home. Dean pushes both aside as quickly as he can, but there's no questioning it, now. It might have been enough. Hearing it from Ruby's own mouth - it might have been enough.

"Sam?"

[theprodigalson]

He gives the knife one more shove even after the last flash of light has fizzled out, after the inky black of her eyes has receded, faded into nothing.

His own vision is blurry as he steps back, hands falling limp and useless at his sides, legs shaky beneath his weight. There's still a crawling under his skin, thick and sickening. He can't catch his breath. He wants to be sick.

Not for the first time, he thinks he should've just killed himself weeks ago. Better, he should've stayed dead the first time. He should've died in that fire with Mom.

[always_enduphere]

The last of the lightning fades from Ruby's eyes, and Dean waits for it, the elation, the relief he feels blooming in his gut and seeping outwards, waits to see it reflected in his brother, but Sam only stands there.

"Sam," he says again, and takes a step closer. There's something that the man he used to be would say; it takes Dean a very long time to remember it. "I'm sorry."

[theprodigalson]

Dean is as much a blur as anything else when Sam looks at him. And there's a part of him right now that wants nothing more than to curl into his brother's arms like he did when he was six and ten and twelve, when Dean was the only person in the world who could make all the pain go away for awhile.

Dean's not that person anymore. And Sam hasn't been a scared little kid for years.

Or has he?

"You should kill me," he says, but the words are choked and unsure. He doesn't know if Dean, this Dean, will argue with him or if he'll agree. He doesn't know which he wants more. He pulls the glock out of his pocket and holds it out. "You need to make sure, right? It could still happen, Dean. If it's my destiny, it could still happen."

[always_enduphere]

Dean had railed so hard against destiny. Even after buckling under it at last, he hated it, hated himself for accepting it, for leaving Sam to it. He doesn't know if they can turn in the cards they've been dealt for new ones, but Dean does know he's lost Sam twice already. He doesn't want him to see him killed, and he sure as hell doesn't want to be the one to do it.

Stepping forward, Dean takes the glock, stares at it in his hand. And tucks it into his belt. He'll give it back when Sam stops talking about killing himself.

"No, Sam." Dean sighs. "You stop with the blood. You stop trying to kill Lilith, and you never break the last seal. This place we're in...this time we're in, the seals haven't even begun to break yet, and they won't." He looks down at his fingertips, still tacky with blood. "Because this time, I won't break the first."

[theprodigalson]

"You don't know that," Sam says, shaking his head. "You heard her. It's my destiny. I can't-"

Uselessly, Sam looks around at the mess of dull, rusty knives and clots of wet salt, the smell of sulfur and burnt flesh still heavy in the air. This is what he'll become eventually. He's already halfway there.

"You remember what Dad told you before he died? If you- That you'd have to kill me." He doesn't know if Dean remembers, actually. It's been years for Dean and so much has happened. So much he's sure Dean hasn't even told him about. "You have to kill me, Dean. It's the only way."

[always_enduphere]

Of course he remembers. Short of the day Sam died in his arms, that day in the hospital was the worst of Dean's life. Kill his baby brother, the man he'd spent his every moment wanting to protect, who he loved more than anything, even their father.

Dean remembers, but all he does is nod.

"He told you that," he says, "but he didn't know the whole story. Azazel gave you a destiny, but I got one, too. I'm a vessel for an archangel, Lucifer's - " Dean's mouth twists. "His big brother. We're supposed to duke it out in some big battle, but Sam. I don't need him. We don't need any of that cosmic destiny bullshit. I'm supposed to stop you, and I stopped you."

Turning, Dean looks to Ruby's horrific corpse. "You're not going back to that."

[theprodigalson]

An archangel?

Sam's frown deepens, lips pulling with a new bout of confusion as he stares at his brother. So Sam is Satan and his brother's an angel? What is all this supposed to mean? The Dean he remembers doesn't even believe in God, much less the devil and angels.

And he has no idea how to fight against any of this.

"It's in me, Dean. The blood. I can feel it. Right now, I can feel it. What if it's already too late?"

[always_enduphere]

"I've seen too late, Sam. I've lived it, and it doesn't look like this." It looks worse, so much worse, and they're not going back. Somehow, they're together again, and even if Dean as no idea how to make up for the things he's done and hasn't, the places where he wasn't in time to save Sam, he'll do it here and now. Whatever else he's done, he can do this much.

"You don't know how bad it gets. This is the very beginning, and you can stop." Dean's eyes harden. "The first thing you can do is give me the flask."

[theprodigalson]

Sam has no idea how Dean knows about the flask, but he isn't surprised. It's the same way Dean knew he was smuggling books in the bottom of his duffel when Dad had specifically told him to throw them out and how Dean knew he was lying about having done his chores when he wanted to hang out with some friends from school. Dean just knows.

And there's still that petulant part of him that wants to play dumb, still a part of him stubbornly clinging to the idea that he may not be as doomed as he thinks he is, that the powers could still be used for good if he learns how to control it. That, no matter what Dean says, he isn't addicted. He isn't.

"How will that stop anything?" he asks, lips thinning into a line. "It's in me whether I drink the blood or not."

[always_enduphere]

"It will stop you drinking more," says Dean, and impossibly, his face grows harder. "It will be your choice to stop, if you want to make it."

And the thing is, Dean doesn't know if Sam does. If he will, even knowing all that he does, weighed down with so much horror that he's asking for death. And yet he still hasn't handed over the flask.

[theprodigalson]

"It's my destiny, Dean!" Sam says, the anger and hurt and humiliated betrayal boiling over. "It's already happened. I'm fucked whether I keep drinking or not!"

[always_enduphere]

Dean doesn't feel much these days, but anger's never left him, not once. Apart from Castiel, it's been his truest companion. "Would you shut the fuck up about destiny?" he roars. "It's not destiny, Sam, it's just bullshit! Ruby had a destiny, do you see how far hers got her this time? There's no such thing, Sam!"

Turning, Dean picks up one of his bone hammers, arm twitching like he means to throw it, at the wall, at Ruby, at Sam, at anything that dares to move. "It's all just contracts. Our mother made a deal, too."

[theprodigalson]

Somehow, Dean yelling is a comfort. Proof that he's feeling this, too. That he's maybe just as angry as Sam.

And when Dean reaches for that hammer, there's a part of Sam that desperately wants Dean to throw at him. It won't do much but maybe knock him out, but if he aims just right...

His gaze flickers up to Dean's face, anger freezing for half a second as his brow furrows. "What- What do you mean Mom made a deal? How?"

[always_enduphere]

"To save Dad." He'd seen part of it unfold for himself; the rest Castiel filled in when Dean had finally finished screaming for the angel to save his brother, long days and nights spent locked in a small cabin to prevent Dean hurting himself or others.

"Azazel killed him before we were born, before they were even married. Her Deal for his life was that in ten years time, Azazel got to enter her home." He wonders if Sam has put together when precisely those ten years were up. "That's when he found you, put his blood in your mouth. When he killed her, and I carried you out of the house."

[theprodigalson]

The more Dean tells him, the less Sam feels like any of it can be real. And yet, he knows it is. Because it's the only way any of this actually makes sense. His whole life, since the second he was born, before he was born even... He was destined for this. Azazel's blood, demon blood... Is that why he had those psychic powers, the ones that seemingly evaporated when Azazel was finally killed? Did he even need to drink Ruby's blood for the powers he now has or was that just part of her sick plot to make him believe he needed her?

How much of any part of his pathetic life has actually been in his control?

"This whole thing," Sam says, throat tight as he shakes his head again, stomach twisting as it all starts crashing in on him. "Fuck. Dean. My whole life. Everything leads to this, doesn't it? That's what she meant. It wasn't just her, it was all of them. They made me a monster. A freak."

[always_enduphere]

"They sure wanted everything to lead to this," Dean replies. "They wanted it to go well past this, and now half the major players are dead. You need to pull yourself together, Sam."

However well-deserved this breakdown might be, Dean can't afford to let his brother wallow. There's too much, enough to drown in, and seeing it take Sam once is more than enough. "You're going to get through this, but I need you sharp. You hear me? You're gonna feel better when you get dried up." He holds out his hand. "Give me the flask, Sam."

[theprodigalson]

Will he, though? If Azazel's blood has always been in him, will it matter if he stops drinking?

Still, there's just enough of an edge in Dean's voice that Sam can't help listening. He sounds like Dad, Sam realizes and, while Sam has spent the better part of his life railing against everything his father ever stood for, there's a part of him that still jerks to attention at that particular tone.

Sam lets out a huff of a breath, nostrils flaring as the rage and disbelief still churns hot through his veins. But he reaches into his jacket to pull out the flask, glancing down at it briefly as he places it into his brother's hand. "You really think it's gonna make any difference?" he asks, his own tone more than a little snide.

[always_enduphere]

"I think it's going to come down to you," Dean replies, cold in the face of his brother's scorn. "Our lives have always been hard, Sam. Always. The things we've been through..." Dead mother, dead father, destinies too huge to carry, hell, demon blood - it might never stop. "We keep going. It's all we can do."

Throwing the flask at Ruby's ruined feet, Dean moves back to his table of tools, pulls out a small bottle and douses the base of the pentagram in kerosene. "If - if I'm here," he says, haltingly as he tries to accept it. "If all this is real, and I was in time to kill her before things got worse. I'm not gonna watch you give up again, Sam. I'd rather die."

[theprodigalson]

Dumbly, Sam watches as Dean works, the flask dropping with a dull thunk at Ruby's shredded meatsuit before dousing the whole thing in kerosene. The whole scene seems more and more gruesome the longer Sam looks at it. More and more chilling.

His brother did that. Dean did that. And didn't even bat an eye.

He can't help but wonder who's the bigger monster.

"Okay," Sam says after a long moment. But it doesn't feel solid even to him, it doesn't feel like agreement so much as mollifying. "So what... we just stay here and wait for the bad things to come to us?"

[always_enduphere]

He doesn't mean it. It's been years since Dean had to listen to his brother lie, but he can tell. Maybe it's stupid to take this chance, and Dean can't find it in him to believe that either of them deserve a second one, but he doesn't care. He wants it.

"Now, you dry up," he says, lighting a match and setting it to the corpse. In the empty cement room, there's nothing else to burn but oxygen. "And we see how it looks in cold light of day."