—Interlude—
It gets much weirder when Lucifer shows up.
Dean tries to refresh the wards again, but for some reason, it’s just not working, and he can’t figure out why. It feels like he’s been standing here for decades, surrounded in fading grass under the grey light of a sun forever dying behind so many layers of clouds it may never find its way out again. His right arm aches, tightly swollen skin crisscrossed with angry red lines that continue to leak fluid even after they stop bleeding. He’s got to finish this, but no matter how often he cuts his arm for fresh blood, the sigils vanish almost as soon as he finishes writing them.
Eventually, he figures he’ll feel dizzy from blood loss—at this point he thinks he should maybe be dead or something—but mostly, he’s thinking that Lucifer’s interruption is not helping him concentrate. That goddamn stare is annoying.
Tipping his head back, he glares into Lucifer’s smug face. “You want something?”
Lucifer smirks down at him from his seat at the top of the wall as the last sigil vanishes before Dean’s bloody fingers even finish drawing it. Frustrated, he wonders if Lucifer thinks wearing Sam’s body is supposed to make this harder. They don’t look alike at all.
“All I want is everything,” Lucifer tells him, like he thinks he cares or something. “I think I’ve waited long enough.”
“We had it first,” Dean tells him impatiently, slicing a new line along his forearm until he hits the elbow. Slicking his fingers through the fresh blood, he doggedly tries again. “What the hell gives you the right, anyway?”
“Spoils of war,” Lucifer answers, tapping each point against the top of the wall. “Possession is nine-tenths of the law. What is ours, we keep.”
“It’s not yours.”
“What you give up, you never get back.” Lucifer’s eyes flicker to the symbol vanishing even as Dean draws it. Frustrated, he pulls out his other knife with a jarring shriek of metal on metal and blinks down at it, startled. It’s familiar: sharp and dull, stained with old blood that still drips fresh and new, rotting flesh clinging to the edges and around the hilt, agonized screaming written so deeply into the metal that he can almost hear it now. “It was a lie, you know. You never left.”
Hand shaking, he shoves the knife back into its sheath and gets the first one out again. Watching the well of blood and pus, his entire arm throbbing in time with the fast beat of his heart, he bloods his fingers and turns back to the wall. The sigil’s absorbed like it’s being written into a sponge, gone almost before he starts.
Stepping back, he stares at the key, wondering what he’s missing. “Why the hell isn’t this working?”
“Blood is very powerful,” Lucifer observes, dropping to the ground. “Wards to keep out the supernatural generally require it be human. Maybe yours just isn’t human enough.”
Dean ignores him, making another cut and dipping his fingers into the still-bleeding wound as an image begins to form in his mind. It’s familiar, too, but in a different way; he draws it from memory, easy, and this time, it doesn’t vanish.
When he steps back, he recognizes the whorls that form Cas’s true name. “Oh.”
“I offered him a place in Hell,” Lucifer says in annoyance as he looks at it, like he’s continuing a conversation that hey, they aren’t having. “I offered him all the kingdoms of the world. I offered him all that he should want. He still refused.”
“And he told you to fuck yourself.” Lucifer scowls, crossing his arms, and Dean’s really seeing the resemblance to a spoilt kid. “It’s killing you, isn’t it? You have no idea what he wants.”
Lucifer gives him a dark look. “That he should even understand what it is to want anything is obscene. The Host certainly failed at discipline. When I was among their number, he would have been executed for his disobedience.”
“Kids these days,” Dean agrees absently, his attention riveted on Cas’s name. Something’s definitely happening now; thin lines of light emerge, absorbing the blood before spreading over the wall like living vines, and with a sense of growing anticipation, Dean watches them crawl toward the key.
He’s not disappointed; at the moment of contact, there’s an almost audible click, the key flashing into brilliant life, alight with the Grace of the last angel on earth.
Fascinated, Dean turns in a slow circle, following the edge of light as the sigils that protect the camp begin to light up one by one across the length of the wall. It’s fast, like watching summer lightning flash across a clear sky, glittering lines of gold zigzagging over the surface of the wall and back toward them, aiming right for the key and meeting it with a second flash of light.
Abruptly, the grey day is consumed with light so bright it’s almost blinding, joyous welcome he can feel all the way to his bones. Swallowing, Dean touches the key with one bloody finger and—
“Wait,” he says, startled. “You hear that?”
“I should have killed him when I killed Dean,” Lucifer mutters sulkily, apropos of fucking nothing. It’s like he doesn’t even notice he’s standing in a bowl of light. Like he can’t even see it. “What was I thinking?”
“Archangels tried; remember how that went? The whole Host tried, and he still came back.” He grins at Lucifer’s scowl while surreptitiously scanning for where it’s coming from. “He refused you, and you just let him walk away. Dude’s like the Terminator. Worried he’d just come back again?”
“My Father,” Lucifer grinds out, “isn’t here to care.”
“Think he’d tell you if he was?”
Lucifer rolls his eyes, skin washed to a sickly yellow in the light of walls, each sigil gleaming gold and bright enough to light up the whole world. “Maybe I don’t want to kill him. Maybe I just want him to give up.”
“On his dad, or on himself?”
“On you.” Dean stiffens, rubbing his arms restlessly, looking around again; it has to be pretty close. “Humans are always such a disappointment, he should know that by now. What makes you any different?”
That, he reflects, is a very good question.
Looking away, he blinks at the wall behind Lucifer; the light is moving again, the suggestion of a rectangle like a door forming before his eyes. Wiping the sweat from his eyes—when did it get so hot?—he tries to work out how to get Lucifer to leave; he’s pretty sure he shouldn’t see that.
“Fuck off, would you?” he says, concentrating on the shape of the door; so that’s where it’s coming from. “No, wait, you’re doing that now. Having problems with your army? Where is it, by the way?”
“What do you think you’re doing?” Lucifer asks softly, brown eyes boring into his. “You can’t fight me. You don’t even know where to start.”
He really wishes Lucifer would shut up already.
“You already lost, Dean. Humanity lost before you were even born.”
Conquest is much easier when the other side of the war can’t even step on the field and fight.
“You can’t win,” Lucifer says confidently, no room for argument; he says it like water’s wet and the end of the world’s already done, like prophecy foretold since the beginning of time. Dean really hates prophecy, and it says something that Lucifer’s the only thing he likes less. “It’s over, Dean. Surely you can see that.”
You assume you’d lose before there’s even a battle to be fought.
“I haven’t even stepped on the field.” Behind Lucifer, the door yawns open, spilling warm yellow light over them both and yeah, it’s definitely coming from there. Fuck Lucifer. Shoving him aside, Dean starts toward it. “It’s not over yet.”
“…isn’t responding, why isn’t he responding, this doesn’t even make sense!”
Someone, Dean reflects dazedly, is pretty pissed right now.
“Then we should try something else.” That’s Cas; no one monotones like that.
“Yeah, why didn’t I think of that?” the first voice answers tiredly—a woman, he thinks, but he can’t get his eyes open long enough to be sure. His first attempt to move sends a bolt of pain shooting up his arm and he almost blacks out. Desperate, he clings to the sound of her voice to keep conscious. “Okay, let me think, it’s been a while.”
“What are your options?”
“Not a lot, the infirmary doesn’t have…I need—” She laughs a little hysterically. “A hospital would be nice.”
“We can do that.”
There’s a long pause. “Yeah, right, okay. Uh, we need—Jesus, everything—”
“Make a list,” Cas says calmly. “Be specific, be thorough, and I’ll order a search of every major city in the state.”
“Okay, that’ll work. I also need some—” her voice cracks. “Reference books, the library in Kansas City’s still standing. Jesus, I searched it for Dean once, where were the fucking medical—I should go—”
“You can’t go.”
“I know,” she answers impatiently. “Send Alicia, she’s an EMT, she knows what to look for. She might think of something I wouldn’t.”
“How long do you need?”
“Um.” There’s a pause. “Thirty minutes, I need to check with Chuck on inventory first.”
“I’ll stay with Dean. Send Joseph and Alicia here before you see Chuck. They’ll coordinate the teams’ efforts so they’ll be ready when you finish your list. Go.”
“Got it.”
Her footsteps fade rapidly into the distance and he thinks he hears the sound of beads. Dean makes a massive effort and manages to get his eyes open; Christ, it’s like a furnace in here.
“What’s going on?” he wants to say; he has no idea if he managed to get it all out, but it must have been something, because abruptly, Cas is beside him. “Cas?”
“How are you feeling?” Dean struggles for an answer for a few seconds before Cas shakes his head sharply, blue eyes dark. “Never mind, I can guess. You should rest.”
Dean tries to look a question, even though he has no idea what to ask. He’s getting the idea that maybe something’s wrong.
“You’re currently running a rather high fever,” Cas states, and somewhere, that’s being written on a goddamn stone tablet or something. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, he touches Dean’s forehead, then something amazingly cool and wet makes an appearance, draped so gently against the sensitive skin of his forehead it almost doesn’t make the headache worse, though it’s doing shit for the nausea rolling through him in sickening waves. Two more somethings are tucked under his arms, chilly against his skin; the relief from the heat is almost painful. “You’ll be fine, but you might try to keep a minimal number of undamaged neurons to avoid brain damage. Your current temperature is making that somewhat of a challenge. A tub may be involved at some point, provided we can find one. And an industrial icemaker, I suppose.”
Dean wonders if you can convey ‘you’re such a fucking dick’ by staring really, really hard. Cas’s mouth twitches, which he takes as yeah, you can. The more you know.
“I suppose that means you’ll try.” To Dean’s shock, Cas’s fingers, surprisingly cool, brush against his hot cheek, lingering long enough for him to realize he kind of doesn’t want them to move anytime soon. “Get some rest. I’ll take care of everything.”
Dean nods, licking his dry, cracked lips frantically before saying, “I know.”
Before he can get a good look around, the door closes with a finality that makes him stumble off balance, hitting the floor with a muffled curse and a shock of pain up his arm. Scrambling to his knees, he swallows the nausea back with an effort, staring at the faded red carpet for a long moment before sitting back on his heels and looking around curiously.
Dark wood walls set with stained glass surround him: a church, he guesses, confirmed by the sight of worn, lovingly polished pews, air redolent with the smells of incense and wood oil and lemon. Faintly, he hears the sound of bells, but looking at the altar, there’s no priest beginning mass, no parishioners in the pews.
Standing up, he takes a few wary steps up the aisle, lined with clean, threadbare red carpet, and tries to work out where it’s coming from; it’s supposed to be here, that much he’s sure of, but it would really help to know what the hell that is and hey, why he’s looking for it.
Looking down at himself, he sighs: not to mention why the fuck he’s wet.
Patches of dampness are growing on his faded flannel shirt, trails of water dripping down equally damp jeans to streak across his bare feet and soak into the carpet around him. Where are his shoes, another question, equally pointless: apparently, this isn’t a day for answers.
Halfway up the aisle, a sound behind him jerks him around to scan the back of the church, surprised to realize he’s not alone. A woman is sitting on the back of one of the last pews, a stick with some kind of hook—he thinks he should know what that is—held loosely in one hand. She’s wearing a loose, sleeveless wool dress over some kind of leggings, belted with a knotted sash, and a white band just behind her hairline holds long, thick dreadlocks back from a round, dark face with sharp brown eyes.
She tilts her head, looking him over critically, and he’s hideously aware he’s not only getting wetter, but his sleeve’s also becoming soaked with blood.
“Hey,” he says, trying for casual and probably coming off creepy as well as wet and bloody, which come to think, isn’t nearly as uncommon as it should be when he meets hot women. A step toward her ends in an audible squelching sound in the soaked carpet, and he closes his eyes in sheer horror. This isn’t happening to him.
For some reason, that makes her grin.
“Hello, Dean Winchester,” she says in a warm contralto. “You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting to meet you.” Standing up, sandaled feet cross the seat of the pew before she jumps over the edge, landing on the carpeted floor without a sound. Setting her—pike?—against a nearby pew, she walks toward him, pausing a foot away before extending a hand. “This is how you do it now, right?”
“Yeah, sure.” He reaches out and fights not to wince at her strong grip, callused fingers closing over his hand enthusiastically. Gritting his teeth, he takes it like a man and doesn’t even clutch his hand afterward, which he feels definitely should get him some points here. “Nice to meet you,” he says politely, carefully not looking down, because there’s definitely a puddle forming around his feet. “And you are…?”
“We’ll get there,” she answers, eyes darting down to the puddle with a smirk before looking up at him, head cocked. “Yeah, no mistake here. You could burn the world alive or light it against the darkness for a thousand years. Your choice.”
Should’ve seen this coming. “Crazy, hallucination, dream, or psychic?” His life, in other words.
“Maybe,” she says firmly, and that damn head-tilt, who… “The stars are right, the moon’s in the right quarter, make a wish and spread your bread upon the water. It comes back, Dean. It always comes back.”
Maybe all of ‘em: again, his life. “You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?”
She makes a see-saw gesture, which he takes as yeah, she is. “You’re only getting half the conversation. The fever’s the only reason that you can hear it at all, though, so pay attention.”
Reaching for his not-bleeding arm, she pulls him helplessly toward the doors, grabbing her—staff?—on the way, and they emerge into an impossible summer day, all bright sunlight in a clear blue sky scattered with fluffy white clouds and rolling fields dotted with fluffy white—
He stops short. Sheep. Everywhere.
“You ever count them?” she asks. “I never did, because one was enough for me.” She gazes on the expanding flock with an expression he can’t quite read. “There’s so many, Dean.”
He starts to answer that—though with what, he has no idea, they’re sheep—but then remembers what she said earlier. “Fever?”
Looking down at himself, he takes inventory: soaking wet and getting cold enough to feel himself start to shiver, and while his arm’s not bleeding anymore, it doesn’t look good either, swollen round as a sausage and stretching the fabric of the shirt. Rolling the bloody sleeve up, he sees black ribbons running under the tightly swollen skin, stitches torn loose from the angry red rips of still-open wounds that ooze nauseating yellow-pink pus, and neat punctures he recognizes as drainage cuts.
Fuck his life again: he knows what happened. “It got infected after all.” And Cas is never gonna let him forget it, either.
“You’re dying,” she says, wincing sympathetically at his expression. “Sorry about that. The seizures aren’t helping either; maybe stop with those? You’re causing a lot of stress to a couple of very tired people, not to mention the rest of the camp. They’re practically sleeping on the porch.”
“Our porch isn’t big enough.” Yeah, that’s the important part here, but it’s just not. “I think some of the boards are rotten—”
“Dean,” she interrupts sternly. “No one wants anyone to collapse all their veins, you get me?”
“Did I say I wanted them to?”
“Well, let’s say it’s gonna be a close thing if you keep this up.” Reaching out, she touches his forehead before he can pull away, making a face. “Yeah, that’s not good. Bring that down a little, okay? That’s your brain you’re cooking right now.”
“I’ll get right on it.” Annoyed, he takes in the pleasant pastoral scene around them, sheep baaa-ing, the sun shining, the grass—being grass, he guesses, it’s green, anyway—and comes to a really unpleasant conclusion. “You’re dreamwalking me. Coma-walking me, whatever.”
“Kind of. Not an angel, promise: I just learned the tricks from one.” Patting his shoulder, she gathers her skirt and sits down on the stone steps, looking up expectantly. “Have a seat.”
It’s not like he’s got any better ideas, and the sun-heated wood of the porch looks warm. Settling down beside her, he shivers at a breeze cutting through his wet shirt and wishes to God someone would get his body a blanket or something, wherever it is. “So you’re…?”
“An unintended consequence,” she answers promptly, and yeah, straight answer, who needs ‘em? He does, but no one’s asking him what he wants. “I was born, and when I was seventeen years old, I was supposed to die. I didn’t, because when I called, I got an answer. And when I was asked, I said yes. No one says no, Dean, not if they’re worthy of the question. You—” She shakes her head, smirking at him. “You’d know. You never said no in your life.”
He nods; going with it seems like a pretty good idea.
“Forward and back,” she says, demonstrating with her hand in a left to right motion. “All that was, is, and will be, but they can’t see ‘could’ and ‘should’ and ‘almost’, and no one living can see ‘maybe’, not yet.”
“Whatever you say.” He tries not to grin at her sigh. “Come on, cut me some slack, I’m dying—somewhere.”
“Slack is the one thing you don’t have. You got a thousand miles to go before you sleep.” She frowns at him hopefully. “Did I get that quote right? English isn’t my first language.”
Dean looks at her solemn face and realizes something that should have been pretty goddamn obvious. “You’re really enjoying this.”
“Oh yeah,” she agrees cheerfully. “My teacher had a weird sense of humor. God knows it took him long enough to get one, so not really a surprise.”
When she reaches up to push a long lock back from her face, he stares at the small, strong hand, the thick calluses on fingers and palm, the narrow wrist, following the thin lines of old scars up her bare arms, some rising in thick ridges darker than her skin, others so old they’re barely even visible, twining between random patches of shiny, too-smooth flesh. Focusing on her shoulder, half-hidden by the unbleached wool of her dress, he traces the lines of her tattoo; it’s as familiar as if it was the one he wears on his own skin. Tucked against her elbow is a shepherd’s crook—got it, sheep—but the sash she wears holds a long knife as well, riding with easy familiarity against one hip, and the stoppered earthen bottle hanging beside it sloshes interestingly, the symbol burned into the smooth clay indicating it’s not just any kind of water in there.
And the sheep—the sheep spread out in front of them aren’t sheep at all.
He waves at a tall, middle-aged couple who note his attention and wave back with dignified expressions that indicate he’s being weird before they go back to their conversation with an older woman, unbound hair braided with leather and faceted beads that catch the summer sunshine in sparks like contained fire, hands and arms decorated with intricate tattoos that he almost recognizes from the oldest of Bobby’s manuscripts and books. Three among many: now that he knows what he’s looking at, he gets what she meant about counting, a stretch of smiling faces and murmuring voices and bright laughter all the way to the horizon.
“Yours?” he asks, glancing at her; the dark eyes are fixed on the growing crowd, bright with unshed tears. “Not bad.”
“I didn’t know.” Wiping her eyes impatiently, she grins at him. “How about you?”
“I never counted, either. One—” He swallows hard as a white-clad kid runs from restraining parental hands, shrieking laughter. “Yeah, one was enough.”
“Hunter to hunter: never trust a pixie. Fae are bad enough, but at least they don’t bite.” She leans her head on one hand. “Forward and back, Dean, and they didn’t see us. You’re impossible, which helped a lot, because that’s what hid us from them. We weren’t important to them, so we could make ourselves from the start. We had a choice.” Before Dean can ask who she’s talking about, her smile fades. “It took all time and space to make you, and they thought that meant you didn’t get one.”
That’s who she’s talking about. “I said no when they asked me.”
“It’s not a choice if there’s only one answer you’re allowed to give; it’s even less when there’s only one possible answer.” She shrugs at his expression. “Knowing the rules helps, but it works better when everyone’s following more than just the letter. You, though…”
Dean waits, and waits (and shivers: fuck the breeze), and waits, then gives up. “Me what?”
Reaching out, she takes his hand, lacing their fingers together, and the breeze changes, warm and smelling of sunshine and baked earth, the first days of summer in every breath, chasing away the bone-deep cold.
“Better?” she asks, then tugs his hand until he’s leaning against her shoulder. “You got a thousand miles to go before you sleep, Dean. It’s gonna be uphill both ways, but you can rest here for a little while.”
“I’m dying,” Dean protests half-heartedly, the soft wool smooth and warm against his cheek; his eyes are closing before he can stop them. “Remember?”
“Yeah about that.” She wraps her arm around his shoulders, and he’s falling into a welcoming woolen lap. For the first time in what feels like forever, he starts to relax, muscles loosening under his skin. Maybe he can rest here for a while before he starts looking again; he’s safe in the lap of a fellow hunter and under the eyes of an entire world of happy sheep. One was enough, that made it worth it; this is so much more. “You should stop doing that pretty soon.”
Reluctantly, Dean turns his head to squint up at her; it may be his imagination, but he thinks she just might be glowing. “You have any suggestions?”
“I have faith,” she answers thoughtfully, petting him like she might a dense pet who did a trick badly. “What’s happening right now is a miracle in progress. Try,” and she frowns at him, “not to make it too hard to pull it off, okay?”
He nods obediently; it’s not like he wants to die. “Tell me your name, at least.”
“My name is Amieyl,” she answers, smiling down with him, and his eyes are falling closed even as she adds, “Get some rest. I’ll keep it warm.”