Use Your Illusions, Chapter Two
May. 2nd, 2011 10:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wanderamaranthFandom: Supernatural
Rating: R
Warning(s): blasphemy, violence, language
Spoilers: Up to and including the promos for 6x19, "Mommy Dearest"
Pairing(s): Dean/Cas, past Dean/Lisa, past Sam/Eve
Authors:
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wanderamaranth and quantum_witch Summary: In trying to defeat Raphael’s armies, Castiel has employed a desperate and dangerous gambit which backfired in the worst way, and now must turn to the Winchesters for help. Meanwhile, Dean slowly comes to understand he doesn’t have all the time in the world to accept his 'stupid girly feelings'. And Sam finds himself, quite literally. Every possible wall comes tumbling down, for everyone.
Chapter: 2/8
Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. No profit is being made from the creation, promotion, or publication of this work of fiction. We're not taking ourselves too seriously, and don't expect you to, either.
*~*~*~*~*
After the span of two heartbeats he realized there was no pain, no reason to scream. A cool wave of power washed through him, a sense of flight and freedom and joy beyond anything he’d every known. Or had known in this life. This human life.
With a dizzying rush, Sam knew everything. Not just what happened to his soul in the Pit, not just what he'd been doing for the past year, but everything. Instead of terror at the enormity of the knowledge, he felt calm. At peace. He wanted to luxuriate in the moment, take time to taste the epiphany on his tongue, but knew it simply wasn't wise. Wasn't practical.
He opened his eyes to see Dean rip himself from Eve's half-hearted grasp to crouch over him, shaking his shoulders and shouting his name. She made no attempt to stop him. Sam had difficulty focusing on her; one moment, she'd look like Mary Winchester, and the next, like the young brunette woman that was her vessel. They overlapped one another and flickered in and out of his vision.
“Damn it, Sam! Tell me you’re okay!” Dean's eyes were wide with fear. He lifted his face to the ceiling and bellowed, “Cas, if you don't get your ass down here-!”
So much for Dean's brief streak of independence, Sam thought wryly.
“I’m fine, Dean, I’m okay,” Sam grunted, sitting up and waving his brother’s hands away. “Seriously, I’m okay,” he said, in response to Dean's continued panic. Sam knew he shouldn’t be; his shirt was in tatters and his chest was blackened with soot, but he didn’t hurt at all.
The lights blinked, several bulbs shattered, and in the fresh gloom, Castiel arrived. His sword was in hand as he appeared. A delicate spray of blood arched up the sleeve of his jacket; his blade was smeared with it.
“Castiel!” Eve called out, sounding pleased. “So good to see you.” Whipping around to face Ziz, who made as if to move towards Sam and Dean again, she snarled, “Stay right where you are. You will not attack them again.” The disparity in tones was jarring, but it caused the phoenix to halt in her advance. Castiel paused, eyes moving from the Winchesters, to the women, to Bobby, and back again, assessing the situation.
Dean was still panicking over Sam. Using the sleeve of his jacket, he carefully swabbed at Sam's chest, muttering his concern over what he would find. Underneath the soot, though, there was only clean, slightly pinked skin. Definitely not the hideous mass of fourth-degree burns that Dean expected to find. Sitting back on his heels, Dean huffed in amazement. “Man, I thought for sure she’d toasted you.”
Sam rubbed at his skin, bemusement on his face. “Huh, I guess she wasn’t really trying to kill me, don’t know why…”
Ziz let loose a string of what were no-doubt colorful words in a language that was decidedly not English. She feinted towards the Winchesters again, but Eve and Castiel both stepped in front of her. They exchanged glances; Eve seemed amused at their show of solidarity, while Castiel appeared vaguely sickened.
“Was that Sumerian?” Sam asked.
“I don’t give a damn right now,” Dean sighed in exasperation. He touched Sam’s arm as they stood up together, and glanced around the room. Sam followed his gaze and saw Bobby, still laying by the booth he dove behind, but beginning to stir.
“You'll deny me my vengeance?” Ziz demanded, stomping her foot. “You, Eve, who does all in vengeance's name herself?” The name was spit mockingly.
Wrinkling her nose and narrowing her eyes, Eve said, “If I wanted them dead, their blood would already be decorating the ground.” Sam watched as Eve imperiously drew herself up to her full height. “Are you really going to fight me for the chance to kill them?”
Ziz did not look impressed. “Yes,” she said, then pulled back her fist and threw a punch. It landed with a loud crack, whipping Eve's head to one side. Sam watched as Castiel took a large step back from the combatants and shuffled towards the spot where Bobby was laid out. Instead of attacking the phoenix herself, Eve took a deep breath and said, in a sing-song that could have been heard in any nursery, “Children, I need you.”
Where before there had been no one there were now easily three dozen vamps; they crowded the small diner, pouring through the glass doors and jostling each other for the chance to be the first to reach the threat towards their Mother. They swarmed Ziz, pulling her to the ground.
Random limbs began flying through the air as the phoenix fought back. Ichor sprayed in an arch down Castiel's front; Sam saw him duck only to be struck in the forehead by what appeared to be a severed hand. Visibly annoyed, the angel reached down and tapped Bobby's forehead, waking him. He pulled the hunter (who at first only had eyes for the admittedly amazing melee in front of him) to his feet and began making his way back towards Dean and Sam, struggling through the rolling tumble of a fight in the middle of the diner's floor.
“That should keep her busy for a little while,” Eve said, turning around to face the Winchesters. “You,” she pointed at Dean, “are quickly becoming more trouble than you're worth to me.” She grinned. “I've heard that about you, but I chose not to listen. When others said that you were non-malleable I refused to believe them. Oh, don't get me wrong,” she added hastily, when Dean lifted an eyebrow, “I still think that you have great potential. But at what cost? More grudge matches with Ziz over there?” She jerked a thumb past her shoulder. “No thanks.”
The only indication of her intentions was a subtle shift of the shoulders underneath her uniform, and then Eve sprung. She attached herself like a lamprey to Dean's neck, her teeth slicing. Eve pulled him close to her, a macabre parody of a mother pulling her child to her breast. She suckled his blood, moaning pornographically, eyes rolling towards Castiel, the taunt clear.
Horrified didn’t begin to cover the feeling in Sam's stomach as he watched Eve feed from his brother's neck. He watched her hold him tight, saw the sheer pleasure she seemed to glean from Dean's struggle.
Sam leapt into action, finding a strength he hadn’t felt since he was soulless, tearing free a leg from a nearby stool and clubbing her with it until she released his brother. “Sam,” she gasped, teetering backwards, “sweetheart, these violent tendencies of yours are going to get somebody hurt. We're going to have to--”
In the midst of her sure-to-be riveting monologue, Castiel threw himself at Eve, winging from Bobby's side in an instant. They both tumbled to the ground. She bucked the angel's grip wildly, but Castiel held on. While they struggled, Eve laughed. “You don't have the power to stop me, you pathetic, lost, impotent child.” As she laughed, her skin began to melt. Thick, gooey globs of translucent gray sluiced from her body, and Eve continued to laugh as there became less and less mass for Castiel to cling to.
“Now's not the time, angel-face.”
With a final, shuddering distinctly wet sounding chuckle, Eve liquified. Castiel scrabbled to scoop up the goop, but it kept sliding through his fingers. A squelch, and Eve reformed behind the angel, shaking her head in a disappointed manner. At least, Sam thought, she had reverted completely back to the form of her vessel and no longer remotely resembled Mary Winchester; that was a relief. Sam briefly felt ashamed that he didn't even remember her name.
“All that study, Castiel,” Eve mocked, “and you still don't know the first thing about me. Don't you know it's important to read the instruction manual before playing with a new toy?”
From the still rolling fight behind them, Ziz gave out a low roar. It seemed as though her frustration had reached its peak, because as Sam watched, her skin began to glow. Where each creature touched her, flames burst into being; as a weapon against vampires, it was extremely effective.
Eve snapped her fingers and her creatures all stopped, like marionettes with their strings cut. A wave of her hand, and they took a step backwards. The smell of charred flesh filled the air as their skin and clothes continued to burn, but none made any attempt to put themselves out. A few of the weaker ones were already falling to their knees or crumpling to the floor, lifeless. Eve was using them to make a point, and if the look on his brother's face was any indication, Sam thought that she'd made it very well. White faced and shaking, the older Winchester pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and slapped it to the fresh wound in his neck.
“Make no mistake, Dean Winchester,” Eve said, “If you continue to try to stand in my way, those you hold most dear will die bloody. I've been birthing monsters since the dawn of time, and I'm still ripe with the seed of the damned. You'll never be able to stop me or my children.” She stared long and hard at the angel who still knelt on the floor, then focused on Bobby. Sam wasn't surprised when she didn't include him in this silent threat, but her excluding him made it less effective. Dean certainly looked confused by it,(to be fair, that could have been from the blood loss) but Castiel...Castiel did not. If anything, her lack of including Sam made him look...shifty. And Castiel never looked shifty.
Sam resolved that he needed to have a serious conversation with the angel, sooner rather than later.
Walking around the burning bodies of her children, Eve stepped close to Ziz and grasped her upper arm. “C'mon,” she said, gritting her teeth. Where her skin touched Ziz, a small plume of smoke rose. “You and I need to have some girl time, stat.” Flicking her vessel's brown eyes to Sam, she dropped a wink and said, “Until later, then?”
The two mothers vanished from the room. The few vamps still animated desperately threw themselves to the ground to put out the flames, but it was far too late. In a matter of mere moments they were engulfed. The force of their thrashing managed to do what even Ziz had not; one landed against a curtained window, and flames immediately flicked upwards. It spread with alarming speed.
“We need to leave, now!” Castiel shouted over the sudden roar of the flames. A shift of displaced air, and they were back in the kitchen of the abandoned house outside of town.
“Jesus! A little warning before you do that, Cas! We've talked about this!” Dean moaned, his hand still firmly pressed to the wound in his neck.
“No,” Castiel retorted, “You've stated your opinion and automatically expected me to agree. I wasn't going to allow you possibly perish just for the sake of your bowels.”
Sam silently agreed; they had needed to be out of the burning building, and any other method may have caused it to be too late. The action seemingly exhausted the angel, though, because he was teetering where he stood. Sam watched as Castiel stumbled on wobbly legs towards Dean. Swaying, the angel placed a hand on Dean's shoulder, healing him.
“I don't like seeing you injured,” the angel said, quietly. The low rumble in his voice would not have been out of place in the bedroom. Sam felt as though he were watching that proverbial train wreck: it was partly horrible, yes, but he also couldn't tear his gaze away. A bright flush crawled up the back of Dean's neck as Castiel slowly and carefully lifted his hand away from Dean's shoulder. Their eyes met in the uncomfortable silence for a long moment, and then Dean turned away, a frown tugging his bottom lip downward. The angel opened his mouth as if to say more, but then clearly thought better of it. Shoulders slumped in resignation, Castiel swallowed hard and turned as well, clearly forcing himself to focus his attention elsewhere.
Castiel glanced in Sam's direction, but Sam held out his arms in an “all is good” gesture. Unable to help himself, he looked back over at Dean and took in his brother's tense stance and wondered, not for the first time, what was going on between him and Castiel. Whenever they were in the same room together lately it was as if his tension level ratcheted up by several degrees. Sam couldn't decide where exactly Dean's anger was coming from.
And Castiel (also his brother, a part of him said—and if that wasn't as confusing as hell, Sam didn't know what was) looked...well, he looked out-of-sorts, shaken with more than just exhaustion. Pushing aside that particular ready-to-blow tinder box of emotional fuckwittery, Sam turned towards Bobby.
“That,” Bobby said truculently, “was a cluster-fuck.”
“At least 'Ziz,' or whoever that was, is gone,” Dean piped in as he dusted himself off. “And so is that Angela-Eve-whatever bitch. You all heard Ziz call her Lilith, right? I didn't just hallucinate that?”
“If you did, it was a mutual hallucination,” Bobby said, ambling towards the Winchesters and Castiel. “Because I heard it, too.”
“I mean, Lilith? Sam ganked her.”
Bobby lifted his trucker's cap to nervously run a hand through his thinning hair. “I don't know Dean. Hope not. 'Cuz the only way she was pulled before was from Sam here chugging demon juice, and the fallout wasn't exactly great, either.”
Sam cleared his throat; he wasn't ready for the direction the discussion was going yet, about Lilith or his role in Armageddon. “Yeah, well, thank God Eve wasn’t wearing mom’s face anymore. I'm glad to not see that.” It sounded like a weak redirection, even to him, but hopefully Bobby and Dean would allow him to change the subject. He didn't like playing on their concern over his sensitivity, but until he was certain what he was going to tell Dean about his revelation that night, he didn't want to talk about it at all.
Like a charm, it worked. Sam shoved down another wave of guilt as Dean shuddered in disgust at having seen their mom's form used like an evil puppet. Sam shuddered as well, and it wasn't affected. Although neither this time nor in Heaven had been real, it was close enough to make both Winchesters feel ill. Dean touched the side of his neck where Eve had slashed him with her teeth, where Castiel healed him.
“Speaking of things we're glad for, I'm glad I’m not infected with monster cooties.”
“Actually, you were,” Castiel said, and all turned to stare at him. “I fixed it,” he added, somewhat defensively.
Dean growled. “Sonovabitch. Why didn’t the damned ashes work? They were supposed to work!”
“I don’t know,” Bobby grouched as Castiel turned his attention towards him to heal a livid gash on his shoulder. “Lore said it would burn her. I guess burn doesn't equal kill. Or maybe it’s a delayed reaction.” He shrugged his healed shoulder and nodded his thanks to Castiel before continuing his train of thought. “I kinda doubt it, though. Balls.”
“Great, just great,” Dean snarled, pacing. “Back to square one.”
“What if the ashes are just part of a formula?” Sam interjected. “We should read the book again, maybe there’s more.”
“Yeah, all right. And where are we going to get more phoenix ash, genius?” Dean looked around exaggeratedly, as if he expected a bottle to appear before him. “We shot our load, Sammy. Phoenix ash is out. We need to figure something else out.”
During Dean's speech, Castiel stepped away from Bobby to double-check Sam’s condition. “Let me look, Sam,” he murmured. “I would like to be certain you're uninjured.”
The younger Winchester saw Bobby watching the angel's actions with narrowed eyes and a tightly drawn mouth. He must have overheard the Mother's jibes at Castiel during the fight, though it seemed that Dean was ignoring them entirely. Rejecting ideas that he disliked without consideration wasn't unlike Dean. If it weren't for the older hunter, Sam could almost convince himself that he'd been mistaken in what he heard; the angel sure wasn’t letting on that anything strange had been said.
Sam knew that Bobby wouldn't risk the chance that what he'd been mistaken in what he heard. The angel had been acting way too weird (even for him) over the last year. Bobby was going to want to demand answers from him, and soon. Either the war was tearing Castiel down or something really ugly was happening behind the scenes. With Sam's new (or old? he wondered—ah, semantics could come later) memories in place, he was guessing at both. Part of him ached; the old hunter's insistence on finding out what was going on was going to destroy one or the other of the males he now considered his brother, if not both.
“It seems we are safe enough to leave. There is nothing for us here; the Mother and Ziz have both fled, and the vampires that were created have all been destroyed.”
“Yeah, I guess you're right. She's done here, but Eve’s not done done, Cas. You heard her say she’d been ‘birthing monsters since the dawn of time’ and she was ‘still ripe with the seed of the damned’? Freaking gross,” Dean cringed.
“Yes, but it will not happen again here, nor anywhere in the next few days,” Castiel insisted, glancing restlessly around the room. “I will take you home. Call me if you learn more.” Without further time for questions, he tugged Dean and Sam forward by their sleeves in one hand, and touched Bobby on the arm. They were in Bobby’s study in the next breath. Castiel was not with them.
“Damn,” Dean swore, running his hands over his face. “He better have damn well remembered to bring my car!” A quick run outside and a shouted Thank fuck! from Dean told Sam that Castiel had, indeed, remembered the Impala. Sam flopped down on the sofa, limbs akimbo.
“What the hell do we do now?” he asked. Sam had a fairly good idea that Bobby knew what he was referring to.
Slowly, the man said, “We can't just let it go, Sam. Something major and possibly Mother-shaped is going on with that angel of Dean's, and I'm afraid if we don't find out what it is now, it's going to come back and bite us in the ass.”
Sam sighed and nodded. Bobby had not disappointed his expectations. This wasn't the time for him to divulge his own world-shattering secret, although part of him had been hoping he'd be able to at least confide something to Bobby, even if he hadn't been sure what, exactly, he could tell him.
Maybe it doesn't matter, Sam thought. He felt fine, relaxed, and even, if he had to quantify it, happy. He smiled slightly, but not enough for Bobby to notice. Maybe he didn't need to say a thing. Dean and Bobby had other things to worry about right now besides him and the state of the wall in his head: to put it as Bobby would, Cas-shaped things.
“Yeah.” Sam sighed again. “You heard her too, huh?”
Bobby snorted. “I don't why Dean isn't thinking this, too. Only thing I can figure is that he's developed a blind spot where that angel is concerned. You know what we gotta do, don't you?”
Sam nodded, resigned. “Let's give Dean a few minutes. A day, even.” At Bobby's noise of protest, Sam persisted, “What more will Cas do in a day? Even if we're right and he...” Sam trailed off, unwilling to say what they were both thinking aloud. “Look, one more day at this point isn't going to change anything, is it? And maybe Dean will be more willing to listen to reason once he's rested for a few hours.”
Bobby snorted in disbelief, but from the quality of the snort Sam knew he'd get his way. He grinned, and didn't bother to hide it this time.
“Well, I suppose it's worth a shot.” Bobby grumbled. “Although the longer we wait...”
Standing, Sam said, “Just...one day, that's all I'm asking. And then we can do whatever you want.” He met the hunter's eyes and waited for the older man to nod.
“Thanks, Bobby,” Sam smiled. “If you don't mind, I’m gonna wash off a little and change my shirt,” he shrugged off the charred tatters of his old one. “I’ll be back down in fifteen. Dean should be done inspecting the Impala for non-existent damage by then.”
“Yeah, go on,” Bobby waved him off. “I’m gonna do some research. Something about that Ziz creature. That name, just a little bit familiar…”
The old hunter moved to the shelves and prepared to bury himself in dusty old books. Sam smiled and moved to the stairs to shake off his own dust.
*~*~*~*
Sam hummed to himself as he stepped from the shower. Pausing to stare into the mirror, he turned his head this way and that, seeing no difference in his overall appearance. Moving closer, he gazed intently at his eyes. Yes. There.
It was a small change, something that Dean might not even see unless he was looking very closely. A ring of gold had appeared at the very inside edge of his iris, directly around the pupil. It wasn’t wide--hardly enough to be noticeable against the bluish-green he’d been born with—but it was there. With how distracted Dean had been—would continue to be for the foreseeable future--maybe Sam would have enough time to ease Dean into the truth. Hopefully before Armageddon happened, again.
He smiled again, his heart light; he knew it was strange to feel so happy, but he felt as though the hugest burden on earth had been lifted from his shoulders. His mind was finally clear and he understood what he'd always craved to know: who he was. Samuel Winchester was not just his father’s angry son, he wasn't demon-spawn destined for evil, nor Lucifer’s vessel, not even a simple blood junkie. And certainly not little Sammy, who would always be known as ‘Dean’s little brother’...the boy who Dean felt the need to protect even if he was strong enough to take care of himself. No, he wasn't any of those. He was simply...him.
Sam.
It felt so very, very good.
Hopefully, Sam thought, I can convince Dean this isn't the most horrible thing imaginable.
Chapter Three>>
