![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nightspear) wrote2008-03-24 07:11 am
Finding Home (20/21)
Title: Finding Home (Main Post and Chapter List)
Rating: PG-13/R for language, mostly
Disclaimer: Nothing you recognize is mine. I gain nothing of materialistic value from this.
Pairings: Gen.
XXXXXXXXXX
“We gotta find him, Dean. And I swear I’m gonna tear that son of a bitch apart.”
(“All Hell Breaks Loose Part 2”)
XXXXXXXXXX
Sam felt the crick in his neck before he opened his eyes. His face was pressed against a hard surface, and he knew he’d fallen asleep in front of the laptop again. He wondered what time it was and decided he should probably get up from where he was lying because the moisture was starting to soak through...
...Moisture?
Alarmed and fully awake now, he sat up quickly, blinking, and found himself sitting on damp ground in freaking Frontierland.
Dean, his father, his weapons...they were nowhere in sight. And neither was anyone else.
Rising to his feet, he backed toward the side of a house, not wanting anything to be able to sneak up behind him. Instead of the wood paneling, however, he stepped backward into flesh.
Jumping, he whirled away. A man stood there, dressed as a worker. There was something unsettling about how unperturbed the man was—by the emptiness of the surroundings as well as by the fact that someone had almost stepped on him. Still, since there was no one else around, Sam cleared his throat and said cautiously, “Uh, hi. I’m...kinda lost. Could you tell me where we are?”
The man raised an eyebrow, saying, “Oh, sure I could.” He blinked, and yellow suffused his eyes.
A spike of fear jolted through Sam. “You.”
The yellow-eyed demon smiled. “Howdy, Sam.” The smile, which had seemed so welcoming in his dreams, now looked only predatory.
“What did you do?” he snarled, taking a few steps backward. “Where the hell am I?”
The demon spread his arms. “Welcome to Cold Oak. D’you like it?”
Sam shivered despite himself. Cold Oak,
He opened his mouth to speak, only to close it again before he could say, ‘You lied to me.’ He shook his head in stunned disgust when he realized part of him actually felt hurt at the betrayal. “What do you want, demon?” he spat instead, then, “Christo!”
The demon tsked, his yellow eyes unblinking. “Sammy. You think silly tricks like that will work on me? I’m not just a demon, you know.”
Sam stiffened and resisted the childish urge to say ‘Don’t call me Sammy,’ because hadn’t the demon called him that dozens of times before in his dreams? “I know what you are. You’re one of the Grigori.”
“You can give me whatever mortal names you want, kid. Me? I go by Azazel.”
Azazel. The seducer of mankind himself.
“What do you want?” Sam asked again.
“Just what I’ve wanted all along,” Azazel told him. “Progress.”
What? Sam stared hard at him, as if he could read an explanation in the unmoving eyes. “Some progress,” he said. “Looks a lot more like murder to me.”
Azazel gave him a look of mock-disappointment. “I thought you were the smart one in the family, Sammy. Humans would have nothing without us. Medicine, technology, civilization...even those guns you wave around. Where do you think the inspiration for all of those came from? We made your race everything it is today.” He sneered. “And for that, you self-righteous people hunted us down. Made me your scapegoat.”
“So what do you need me for?”
“I can’t do it on my own, kid. I need a soldier. More than a soldier—a leader.”
Sam narrowed his eyes. “And that’s why you killed all the other psychics." He snorted in disgust. "I can’t even count how many lives you’ve ruined.”
“Who here hasn’t killed someone? You, of all people, want to cast the first stone?”
“I’ve never killed other humans.”
Azazel laughed. “Well, now, don’t you think that’s a little racist? Vampires are people, too. And how about werewolves? Most of them turn back after you shoot them in the heart—and then they have a few, last, confused moments to see you and wonder why the hell a young man like yourself is murdering them in cold blood.”
Sam’s jaw tightened, remembering the last werewolf they’d hunted—she hadn’t even realized what she was. But... “Even then, we only kill them because there’s no other way to stop the deaths they’d cause otherwise. Unlike you.”
“We’re not that different, kid. It’s just our reasons that are different, and you’d be surprised, Sammy, how much your justifications can change over a couple of millenia.”
“Bullshit.”
Azazel grinned. “Is it? You’re not sure, are you? ‘Psychics.’ You think you’re just humans with a gift?”
Licking his lips, he swallowed and said, “Then what?”
The grin became a mocking smirk. “Why, Sammy—you’re on your way to being a demon. Evolution, right before our eyes.”
“It’s not the same.”
“Mindreaders plant some of their consciousness into other people’s brains. That doesn’t sound a little bit like possession to you? And you...you’ve got the power to do almost anything demons can do, or you will once I’ve trained you. You’ve even had a taste of demon blood. And I’ve had a taste of your wrath, and, Sam...it burns hot as hell, doesn’t it?”
“I hope it burns you, you sonuvabitch!”
“Nope. Not a bitch. Haven’t you read your Bible? I’m a Son of God,” Azazel sneered, his lip curling scornfully. “You know I'm right, Sam. You have the potential—you just have to make the right choice. You can’t understand yet how much I’m offering you. You know that rush you feel when you use your power? That’s nothing compared to what you could have.”
“I’m a hunter,” Sam said, lifting his chin defiantly. “I’ll never follow you.”
The demon nodded condescendingly. “That’s right. You save people. Well, Sammy, here’s the thing. I’ve got a few more people for you to save. You just have to do a few things for me in return.”
“I’m not helping you,” he repeated flatly.
“We’ve had this conversation before.” Sam tilted his head, his mind whirring through what he remembered of the dreams.“Don’t you remember? ‘Is there nothing you want more than killing the demon?’ ”
Realization sank in, and he pushed a step closer, hissing, “What have you done to them?”
Azazel held out his hands.“Nothing...yet. But slow down, kid. You’re forgetting something else we talked about that night. You’re not the only one left standing.”
“Ava Wilson,” he said, looking around as if expecting to see the woman suddenly standing there. “You sent her to...”
“Ava?” Azazel chuckled. “Oh, she was close—surpassed my every expectation. But she’s been dead for weeks now—defeated by my reigning champ.” The demon shifted his gaze to something beyond Sam’s view. “Here he is now. Sam, meet Jake Talley. I’ve already told Jake who you are; hope you don’t mind.”
Sam turned and moved until he could see both figures at once. A tall man in military fatigues stood several feet away, looking tense but sharp.
“I thought Jake was...”
“Overseas? And where did you fall asleep last night?”
Shit. How powerful would something have to be to do something like that?
“Now that the introductions are over with,” Azazel continued, “I have an assignment for you, Jake. Once you leave here, you’re going to kill John and Dean Winchester.”
Sam stopped breathing.
Jake’s eyes fixed on Sam’s, and he thought he saw regret pass through them.
Azazel was watching him, too. “There’s a way to stop it, Sammy. Only one of you is getting out of here alive. Who’s it gonna be? If you win, I’ll let Daddy and big brother go free, as long as you take care of Annabel and Mary Talley for me.”
The name Mary struck an even more strident chord in Sam. He stared at Jake, and then swung his head back to Azazel. “You can’t...”
“Oh, I can. Let’s go, boys. Time’s a-ticking, and the clock starts...now.”
XXXXXXXXXX
“The laptop’s still here,” Dean said immediately, but John shook his head.
“If he found something, he might have left it when he took off. His bag’s gone.”
That had Dean scrambling out of the bed. No way. Sam hadn’t left, not again. After a year together—
But when he reached under the bed, his hand hit a familiar, canvas material. He frowned and he yanked it out, saying, “Dad, it’s right here.” As John looked up in surprise, Dean realized that the man hadn’t been with them long enough to learn that Sam always kept his bag under the bed so no one would trip over it. The dread he’d felt of Sam’s leaving on his own was quickly replaced by rising panic, because Sam might leave the laptop, but he wouldn’t go without any of his belongings.
Unless he knew where the demon was, and...
“Where’s the Colt?” he asked sharply. John froze for an instant, staring at him, before striding to the table and ripping open the bag that sat next to it.
When he emerged, though, it was with the Colt in one hand and the other holding the bag open to show that all their other weapons and flasks of holy water were still there. That was when Dean knew for sure that Sam hadn’t left. Something had taken him.
“Fuck,” Dean muttered. He fumbled with the zipper on Sam’s duffel bag and dug through. It was unquestionable—his brother hadn’t just gone out for groceries, not without his wallet, and he wouldn’t have left even for a walk without his knife.
He reached for his cell phone, still hoping he’d be able to reach Sam—but the other phone sitting right next to his killed that idea, too.
“Where could he have gone?” John asked.
“What do you mean?” Dean said, hearing the panic starting to creep into his voice. “He didn’t just leave.”
“Are you sure about that?”
Their father still thought, after everything, that Sam might abandon them, even now when they were so close to what they’d been hunting their whole lives.
“Jesus, Dad! His wallet, his weapons, his research, his clothes, his fucking cell phone—they’re all still here. Something happened to him; we have to find him!”
“Language,” John said absently, and Dean raked a hand once through his hair in exasperation before opening the laptop. “What are you doing?”
“He got up last night to look something up,” Dean said. “Maybe it’ll tell us where he is.”
A few windows were open on the screen, all of them about something in
Then the words ‘Samuel Colt’ caught his eye.
He bent in to read more carefully and then clicked through a few links, reading quickly through the information. Everything clicked into place as he pieced together Sam’s half-finished research, and he reached hastily for the map they’d been looking at before.
“Dean, what is it?”
“Hold on,” he said distractedly. He grabbed the pen and skimmed through until he found the name of the first church, marking its location on the map. When he’d hit all of them, he leaned back to study the map again.
Five churches built by Samuel Colt, all of them at the periphery of the area John had circled the night before. And connecting them...
“A pentagram,” John breathed.“Cold iron railroad tracks connecting points of consecrated ground. He built an enormous Devil’s Trap. That’s why the demons are stuck outside of it.”
As the words sank in, Dean thought aloud, “There’s a cemetery right in the middle. So the demons are trapped outside. But...”
“What?”
“Aren’t Devil’s Traps usually made to keep something in?”
XXXXXXXXXX
Azazel was gone. Sam and the other—Jake—were the only ones left in the ghost town.
“Jake,” he started warily, “you don’t want to do this. It’s just trying to turn us against each other. My family and I, we’ve been after this demon for years—if you help us, we can beat it together...”
“No,” Jake said, taking a step toward him. Sam moved automatically to keep him a safe distance away and in his line of sight. “I can’t risk it.”
“You don’t wanna kill two innocent people,” Sam said, hoping he could establish a connection with the other man. “You don’t want that on your conscience.”
“I don’t have anything against your family, but I got a mom and a baby sister to think about,” Jack said, almost apologetically. “They’ve got no one to protect them. From what I hear, your dad and your brother can take care of themselves.”
Sam tried a different tack. “He’s not going to stop with just De...just my brother and my dad. The way he’s been threatening us—you really want to be serving this thing? Don’t play its game, man. Come with me.”
Jake’s hands were coming up as he bent his knees, lowering himself into a fighter’s stance. “I’m getting out of here alive. I’m sorry, but if one of us has to die...it’s not gonna be me.”
Sam had a second to wonder what abilities Jake had before he was knocked flat on his back by a punch far stronger than anything a normal human could possibly unleash.
When his brain cleared enough to think, he found himself lying in the ruins of a fence he’d just been thrown through. Then he was staring up at the Jake’s impassive face and there was no time to wonder anymore. He shuffled back, further out of reach.
I’m doing this for Dean and Dad.
He’d never tried anything on this scale before—chairs in a motel room were one thing but this...
Keep it simple. Just knock him out and run.
He rolled aside to avoid the next kick and came to his feet. Focusing, he imagined the man in front of him spilling his brother’s blood and, with a cry, he pushed with all his might.
Eyes wide with surprise, Jake hurtled back, hitting the side of a building hard with a grunt.
Sam pushed himself up, seeing Jake do the same, though his movements were more wary now—less confident. He noted distantly that his head wasn’t even aching, and that he was more alert than he should have been after a blow like that. His own confidence lifted higher as he saw the wavering uncertainty on Jake’s face.
Looking around, he saw a thick, sharp plank of wood lying on the ground and, with a thought, it was rushing into his hand even as euphoric heat rushed through his core.
This was...good.
“Put that down,” Jake’s voice yelled across the distance they’d thrown each other.
“Like hell I will,” Sam called back.
Jake shook his head as if confused, and tried again, enunciating clearly, “Put. It. Down.”
This time, there was a tickle at the back of his head, and Sam realized what the man was doing. “Mind control won’t work,” he said. “You’re not the first person who’s tried it on me.”
“It will,” Jake said. There was no more regret left in his expression. “I’m gonna kill you,
Sam felt the cold fury of the hunt filling him. He drew on the ecstatic feeling that came with using his abilities, and he breathed, “Not if I kill you first.”
Kill him first. For Dean and Dad.
Jake was running toward him again. Sam bared his teeth, and as he prepared himself to fight, he forgot to think about the fact that, this time, his enemy was human.
XXXXXXXXXX
It took eight hours to reach the
It didn’t take five minutes to realize Sam wasn’t there.
“Dammit, where the hell...? Dad, what are you doing?” he called impatiently.
John was standing in front of a crypt, fingers tracing over the lines carved into the stone. His voice carried across the still cemetery. “I know what this is.”
I don’t care what the hell that is. “Sam!” he called. “Sammy!”
“Dean, stop.”
“What!”
“Sam’s not here,” John said, and the surety in his voice made Dean want to scream. “But this might be connected.”
Dean crossed the cemetery to his father, who said, “Look at the pattern here.”
He blinked. “Pentagrams are protective symbols. But...inverted?”
“Yeah. It’s like a Sigil of Baphomet.”
“That’s some pretty serious dark mojo, isn’t it? Dark-like-demonic, dark?”
“Not just that. Son, this is...this a Devil’s Gate. A damn door to hell.”
Dean reeled back in disbelief and loathing. “I guess we know what Samuel Colt was trying to keep in.” He frowned and leaned in closer. “What’s that, in the middle?” he said, looking at the hole in the middle of the sigil.
John snorted. “Use your brain, Dean. It’s a gate—what do you think that is?”
Ducking his head slightly in embarrassment, he said, “Oh. A keyhole.”
John nodded distractedly, then turned sharply. “You smell sulfur?” he asked.
Looking in alarm first at the gate to make sure it hadn’t somehow spontaneously opened, Dean then turned to squint in the same direction as his father. “There’s a lot of demonic activity,” he reminded John. “Probably right up to the perimeter of the Devil’s Trap.”
“Is that...?” John’s eyes were fixed in the distance. Dean followed them until he could see the silhouette of a figure standing casually next to his father’s truck.
“Possession?”
“Probably.”
“You’ve got...?”
“Yeah.” The Colt was already in John’s hands. “Come on. Watch my six.”
They stopped short of the car, still uncertain what to make of the shadowed figure. “What are you doing here?” John barked, raising the gun.
Dean cursed himself for not having brought holy water with him. The pistol he held wouldn’t do much good if it was a demon.
The figure stepped forward, and they had just enough time to see a flash of yellow eyes before they were both lifted off their feet and slammed into the side of the truck.
“Christo,” John managed.
Yellow-Eyes smirked. “John. Dean,” he said, bending down to pick up the Colt. “So nice of you to bring me this.”
“I’m gonna shove it up your ass,” Dean ground out, and the demon only laughed.
“What do you want with it?” John said, muscles cording as he strained against unseen restraints.
“Oh, I’m not going to go do anything with it,” the demon said. “But Sammy will.” The yellow eyes looked at each of them speculatively. “I’m going to need a new host.”
“Fuck you,” Dean whispered fiercely, swallowing his fear. If the bastard used his skin to hurt Sam...
"Dean. Sammy would never hurt his big brother, would he?"
"You're be surprised at what my brother could do," Dean breathed, hoping he was right. Sam was strong--he'd be able to do what was necessary.
The demon cocked his head to the side and frowned at him. “You’ve got some charm that's keeping me out,” it said. There was a moment when Dean wondered why it would keep demons out as well as psychics and then wondered whether it was so different after all. Hope rose, but he stayed silent. “You know, it wouldn’t be hard for me to just find it and take it away from you.”
Taking the chance that it was bluffing, Dean bluffed back, “Yeah? Then why don’t you?”
But then, it turned its yellow eyes to his father. “Because I know something that would be even more fun.”
XXXXXXXXXX
They were circling each other again, both breathing hard and battered, when Jake ordered, “Stop.”
Sam faltered, feeling the unnatural influence pushing at his mind. He wasn’t sure whether he was weakening or Jake was getting better, but the commands were getting harder to resist.
He recovered, but not fast enough to avoid being picked up like he weighed nothing at all, and then he was hitting something hard and slumping to the ground against the wall of whatever building they’d fought their way to now. The man was strong as all hell, but he was fast, too, and moved like the trained, experienced fighter he was.
Jake had an iron club in his hands now—Sam hadn’t seen many useful, loose metal objects lying around, but then, Jake could have just ripped it from something. Gasping for air, trying to stand without choking on pain from where he’d crashed against the wall, Sam snarled and yanked the iron bar toward himself.
Jake was ready this time, though, and he held on with impossible strength, planting his feet and gripping his weapon more tightly. As Sam managed to get upright again, Jake suddenly ripped the bar away, making Sam lose his focus for an instant.
Without warning, the foreign feeling of Jake’s anticipation washed over him, and an image flashed through his mind. Not taking the time to doubt a vision now, Sam threw himself back to the ground just as Jake drew a hidden knife, brought his hand back, and threw.
With a thunk! the blade buried itself nearly up to the hilt in the wood behind him. Jake took advantage of the distraction and dove toward Sam, who rolled out of the way just in time to avoid getting hit head-on. “Don’t move!” Jake screamed at him.
Now it was Sam who’d been prepared, and he drew on the seductive heat he associated with his abilities, pulling the warmth around his mind like a cloak. Jake grunted with effort and repeated the command. Sam felt his lips curl into a grin in return.
Scrambling back, he focused his eyes on the still-quivering knife, held out a hand, and pulled.
The hilt struck Jake in the cheekbone as the blade was dislodged from the wood, knocking the man aside but send the knife spinning off course. Desperate to have a weapon in his hands, Sam lunged, biting off a scream as his right hand closed on the sharp blade instead of the hilt. He quickly transferred the knife to his left hand, cradling the right against his chest, his stomach churning in anticipation as Jake found his feet again and attacked.
In the end, it was luck as much as anything else.
Locked together in close quarters and backed into a corner, Sam dodged a haymaker from hell and brought his elbow smashing hard into Jake’s carotid artery.
Jake’s eyes rolled up in his head and his limp weight collapsed onto Sam.
Sam went down, too, pinned under the other man’s weight. He heaved the still form off and onto his back, then looked more closely. As he watched, the chest rose and fell once, twice, and then again and again. Still breathing, then.
Not dead yet.
Without thinking, Sam knelt and used his uninjured right forearm to tip Jake’s head back. Still feeling the exhilaration from using his abilities so freely, he brought the knife in his left hand to touch the exposed throat and began to press.
At the first drops of blood, the reality of his actions crashed over him, and Sam reeled back, overbalanced, and scuttled back on all fours, gasping and shaking and horrified at what he’d almost done.
Kill him. Survival of the fittest.
God. Jake just was a victim, too. What had they become?
What had he become?
Kill or be killed! If Jake lives, Dean and Dad die, his mind screamed. Dean would do it. He’d be strong enough to finish the job. He’d do it for me.
Wavering, Sam stared at Jake’s motionless form and then at the bloody blade.
No. Dean wouldn’t want me to do this. Not to a human, not like this.
Dad would. If it was necessary. Even killing a man. To protect.
“I’m not like Dad,” he said aloud, not sure when he’d begun weighing his choices by his brother and his father.“It’s murder. I won’t.”
...Not even to protect them?
“It’s murder,” he repeated to himself. He forced the fingers of his left hand to uncurl. He let out a sigh of relief as the knife fell with a soft clatter.
A voice behind him said, “You’re not done yet.”
He twisted and stumbled to his feet. “Azazel.”
“You haven’t won yet.”
Glaring, he gritted out, “I will win. But not against Jake. He’s not the one I’m going to kill.”
The demon cocked his head in a twisted imitation of human gesture. “I’d rethink that, if I were you.”
Sam held his ground and didn’t answer.
The demon’s unnerving eyes searched his face. Then, he shrugged. “I’ll admit I’m a little disappointed. But what the hell. Congratulations.”
“You can shove your congratulations up your ass.”
Azazel threw his head back and laughed at that. “Oh, Sammy. You’re cute, you know—so much like your brother. That’s almost exactly how he greeted me, oh...ten minutes ago.”
Alarm spiked. “Where is he?” Sam demanded. “What did you do to them?”
“Not much,” the demon said. “You’ll see. That’s where we’re going now.”
As Azazel turned away and began walking, dizzying euphoria suffused him again, and he staggered blindly until his arms found the side of a building. An image flashed before his eyes, and Sam whirled around reflexively and sidestepped just as Jake barreled into the space he’d just vacated, the abandoned knife gripped in his hand.
Instinct took over, and he twisted the knife out of the still-stunned Jake’s hand and plunged it deep into the other man’s chest.
Sam stood panting, frozen, unable to move or think. Blood oozed from where his right hand had been laid open; blood flowed over his left hand as Jake crumpled to the ground.
He didn’t look away until slow clapping sounded behind him. Azazel’s face was gleeful and his voice satisfied when he said, “I knew you could do it, Sammy. You pass.”
Then Azazel snapped his fingers. Sam thought he saw the demon’s human host drop in a heap to the ground, and then Cold Oak dissolved around him.
XXXXXXXXXX