Chapter Text
It was an accident. A stupid fucking accident that came out of nowhere and blindsided everyone.
It was a drunk driver, some stupid college kid that had gotten a hold of a fake I.D. and went out with his friends in an attempt to get laid. He’d obviously failed in his quest and turned to alcohol to drown his woes. Then, he’d driven home with one of his friends passed out in the backseat and ran a four way stop at top speed.
He’d hit the Impala side on, flinging the sleek black car into a tree. Dean had gone through the windscreen and hit the tree head first, cracking his skull open like a raw egg. The two drunk idiots in the truck had rolled, the driver broke his neck on the steering wheel, the friend in the back had been crushed under the roof when they stopped rolling.
Sam had been in the truck behind the Impala and had stomped on the breaks so hard he might have broken something in his foot. He’d sat there in shock for a hand full of stunned seconds before he had tumbled out of the car and bolted over to the bloody mess that had been his brother. He’d struggled to get Dean’s body into the back of the borrowed truck and collected all of their hunting equipment from the Impala’s trunk. Dean would have killed him for leaving her behind but Sam had other things to worry about.
They were only half an hour away from Bobby’s and Sam felt every second of that time in the clench of his lungs and the heavy beat of his heart. He hadn’t called Castiel, not right then, not when there was still hope.
Ruby had once said that there was a time limit on how long a soul could stay away from its body before it didn’t recognize the vessel anymore. Sam had confirmed that with Cas, he’d been drunk when he’d asked and the falling angel had been struggling to manage tipsy. Crossroads demons had three days to snatch a soul from the holy gates before they were unable to retrieve it and Dean was earmarked for Heaven.
But the Crossroads had gone silent months ago. Hell was apparently on lockdown for the big event and was not accepting any new IOUs. So the only option was angels and Sam didn’t know if they were going to be any help.
He got to Bobby’s and carried Dean up the steps to a stunned Castiel and grim faced Bobby. Cas had cried, for the first time ever, and they weren’t pretty tears. He’d knelt next to Dean’s body for hours as great racking sobs shook his body. He’d passed out afterwards and that was when it really sunk in that Cas was mostly human now, with only the tiniest squib of grace left.
They waited a day, waited for Dean to wake up, waited for the angels to resurrect him. They didn’t and he stayed dead, stayed cold on the couch. They admitted defeat when rigor mortis visibly set in, if the angels were going to intervene the body would have remained perfectly preserved.
And why would the angels resurrect him, to be Michael’s vessel? Michael already walked the earth in the angel equivalent of a second best suit. They didn’t need Dean anymore so why would they bother with his life anymore than they would any other sack of rotting flesh.
Very few people came to the funeral.
Granted, Sam hadn’t really expected anyone to show up so the presence of what few people did was a shock in and of itself. Rufus and Sheriff Mills - who Bobby had to have read in on the whole situation by now - and a few hunters who had managed to get the full story rather than blindly following rumors.
Sam and Cas had spent the wee hours before dawn building the pyre, log by log, stick by stick. They’d drenched it in Holy oil after they were done and went inside to get Dean’s body.
The body was wrapped in cloth so white it nearly glowed where it wasn’t covered in the black scrawls of warding and the bloody enochian sigils that would in turn make it so that the corpse wasn’t able to be used by anything for anything. They’d carried it out, no mean feat but manageable with Sam’s strength and Cas’s fading grace.
They used a match to light the pyre ablaze instead of a lighter. And then they stood there while Dean’s body burned to ash. Cas sank to his knees after a the burial shroud caught and pulled back from Dean’s face.
One of Sam’s hands balled into a fist and the other came down to press against Cas’s shoulder. The body looked so peaceful, like it were asleep.
Sam could almost imagine his brother’s eyes opening as he sat up and yelled at them for being idiots for believing his ruse. The massive hole in his skull where he’d hit the tree ruined the illusion.
Slowly, one at a time, the other’s left. Jody had to go to work, the hunters had jobs to get back to, and the phone in the kitchen had started ringing insistently. Sam and Cas stayed where they were until the pyre burned to ash and all that was left of Dean were a few scorched bones.
“He’s really gone,” Cas rasped past a bone dry throat, not taking his eyes off of what was left of the elder Winchester, “And I can’t - I would if - but-”
“Yeah,” Sam interrupted, blinking back tears, “I know, Cas, it’s fine.”
“No, it is not, it is not fine,” Cas said.
“There’s nothing you could have done, Cas, even if you were there. I just-” Sam stopped and swiping angrily at the tears that were running down his cheeks.
“What?” Cas asked and looked up at Sam with those big, tear filled eyes. They were no less intense than they had been when Cas still had all of his grace and they seemed to pierce through Sam’s chest, straight into his soul.
“I wish I’d been with him.”
Silence followed that statement. Cas’s eyes had gone vaguely wide and terrified at that statement. Sam stared down at him as the words hung in the air around them.
The sun was rising in the east, the dawn was painted blood red across the sky and clouds were gathering in the west. They boiled over the horizon and stalked across the sky towards the sun like a great cat stalking its prey. Lightning flashed in those clouds, too far off to hear but lighting up the silhouette of a pair of massive wings.
Sam gazed at them with narrowed eyes, “That’s Michael.”
“Yes,” Cas said, “I think we should go inside, this will get worse before it gets better.”
“I thought we had more time,” Sam said, “I thought that he’d wait until Lucifer had me.”
“Michael has the upper hand, he’s a tactician Sam. He’s not going to sacrifice his advantage when Lucifer is in such a decrepit vessel.”
“Oh, little brother, you wound me,” a breathy voice said from their left.
Cas was instantly on his feet, blade drawn as Sam went for blade he’d tucked into the back of his jeans.
Lucifer smiled at them from behind faintly glowing teeth, blood welling up between the cracks, a wound on his side leaked a mixture of blackened, burnt blood and blue tinged grace. He was leaning against one of the old junkers that framed the area where the pyre had been, like his legs weren’t quite strong enough to hold him. The burns on his face were worst, the blistering skin had peeled back to reveal muscle and bone was poking through in some places.
“Last chance, Sammy,” Lucifer said, “Last chance. This shell is almost burnt through, will you be my vessel?”
“Cas, go inside,” Sam said.
“Sam-”
“Go inside, Cas, warn Bobby. You two need to get out of here,” Sam told him.
Cas opened his mouth to say something else but the look on Sam’s face made him stop. He took in the grim set of Sam’s jaw and hard eyes and seemed to think better of it, to realize that Sam was not going to turn back from the path he saw layed out in front of him.
The former angel sighed and seemed to diminish. He didn’t slump, he had too much muscle control for that. It was something internal, something just behind the eyes that was there then gone so quickly that Sam doubted it ever existed in the first place.
Cas nodded and turned towards the house, never taking his eyes off of Lucifer as he went.
Lucifer watched him go with an expression of sorrow that sat oddly on his face, like the half remembered sketch of a mask. It wasn’t fake per say but it gave the impression that the Fallen didn’t really know how to feel sorrow. But Sam got that impression with every emotion Lucifer displayed, like he had spent so long with just his own mind and demons for company that he had forgotten what emotions looked like on normal people.
When Cas passed out of sight Lucifer’s eyes wandered back to Sam’s face. Desperation sat in those eyes, so close to the surface that it was unnerving. And then Lucifer crumpled until he sat on his ass in the grease soaked dirt of the salvage yard.
It struck Sam how tired he looked, like if he went on standing for just one more moment he would pass out and not wake up for the rest of the millenia. His shoulders drooped and his head lolled to the side to thunk against the car’s wheel well.
“I wish I could help. He’s my brother, even if he hates me,” Lucifer whispered, just loud enough for Sam to hear, “When we Fell, I was able to hold my bond to Heaven wide enough to-”
Lucifer coughed, a great racking thing that sounded like his body was trying to bring up a lung. Sam watched in alarm as Lucifer bent at the waist and struggled for breath he didn’t need. It lasted for a few minutes before it stopped and the Fallen spat blood soaked grace onto the ground.
“My garrison is dead,” Lucifer said, still bent in two, “Azazel was the last, Heaven killed the rest a long, long time ago. My brother is dead, Gabriel, Gabriel… Michael, I don’t recognize him. He’s … cold, like frozen hellfire. Raphael has twisted himself into a mockery of what he was. It would have been nice to have one last brother to stand by my side at the end.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Sam asked and almost winced at his own tone but at this point cutting to the chase was probably more important than tact.
Lucifer laughed, a violent rasping thing that shook Sam to his core, “Nick’s about to pop like an overfilled balloon. I’m spending most of my grace holding him together.”
“He’s still in there?” Sam asked in horror, imagining what it might be like to feel your body slowly burning up from the inside out. If he said yes, would the same thing happen to him.
“No,” Lucifer chuckled and drew in a wet, shaking breath, “no, I sent him off to Heaven when I took his body. His wife probably welcomed him with open arms, his son, his son was reborn two days ago. Last chance Sam. I’m going to burst in a few hours and then it’ll be two archangels fighting in True Forms rather than vessels. The world will burn.”
Sam stiffened and thought of the two rings in the lock box under Bobby’s couch. There was no time to run back to the house to grab them and they wouldn’t even work without Death or Pestilence’s rings. He was standing in the middle of the junk yard with an angel that was so close to burning through its vessel that he was coughing up blood with no way out.
His hand still rested on the hilt of the blade resting against his spine. Sam slowly let his hand fall off of the hilt to hang by his side. He took a careful step forward, towards where Lucifer was slumped over.
As Sam got closer Lucifer carefully straightened, one hand going to steady himself against the side of the car. The smell of his burning blood hit the younger Winchester as he drew closer.
It smelled like fire and power and the scent of ozone that lingered just after a lightning strike. The scent tickled in his nose and Sam fought the urge to sneeze. His mouth was watering and his throat felt dry. There was no sulphur undertone, no meaty overtone that all blood had, no iron tang. There also wasn’t the smell of burnt flesh and scorched blood that Sam was overly familiar with.
How powerful was that blood? Demon blood had a kick to it but Sam had quickly discovered that the effect it had on his powers was dramatic. It enhanced them for a time but once the high wore off they were gone. He’d never considered what angel blood might do and he found himself wondering if it would do something completely difference.
“Why can’t you two just fight it out in Heaven? Why does it have to be on earth? Why destroy the prize that you both want to claim?” Sam asked as he got closer and closer to the bleeding archangel.
Lucifer laughed again, long and loud and grating. Blood bubbled past his lips and ran down his chin to drip into the dust between his legs. Sam swallowed heavily and hesitated on his next step forward.
“Oh, Sammy, Sammy, Sammy,” Lucifer said haltingly, “Father cast me from Heaven, I can’t go back. And Michael would never debase himself by going to Hell, even to cleanse it. A whole garrison descended upon Hell and the highest ranking member was a middle management grunt and he didn’t descend past the outer defenses. Castiel may have been well respected but he was created during the Fall, he is one of the youngest of us.”
“Cas isn’t cannon fodder,” Sam gritted out through clenched teeth.
“I agree, but does he see it that way? Does Heaven see it that way? Look how quickly they tossed him aside,” Lucifer said.
Sam’s eyes narrowed in anger and he opened his mouth to rip the devil a new one.
A gunshot rang across the junkyard.
Sam’s eyes went wide in horror and Lucifer’s manic grin went sad and somber around the edges.
“And that,” Lucifer drawled, “would be my little brother blowing his brains out all over Singer’s living room.”
The Winchester turned around and bolted towards the house. Lucifer watched him go, sighed, and dragged himself to his feet so he that could stumble after his True Vessel.