Chapter Text
Deanna wakes up in a casket.
She shoves her way out, digs her way through the dirt, finds herself in a circle of flattened trees. The jolt of being in a body that is physical is sudden, and she wonders briefly if this is hell, dry dirt and the absence of God in God’s country. She remembers the baying of the hellhounds, the tearing in her chest. She stares at herself in a gas station mirror – is she her? Are her eyes black, or green? Her nose still crooked, her freckles still there? Her hair is a mess, like she’s been dead and buried, long and dirty blonde, and for a moment she touches it like it’s not her own. A trip six feet under did not, unfortunately, make her taller, and she’s still erring on the side of, oh, honey, are you sure you want those fries? That’s when she rolls her sleeve up, checking the edges of the tattoo that mark this body as hers, and she finds the handprint, burned, branded into her shoulder.
That’s also around the time the windows start shattering. She claps her hands over her ears and then screams without realizing she is screaming, wonders if her blood will sizzle when it hits the dirt and this will all be just another punishment –
(Bobby will ask her later. Do you remember? It will echo around the room – do you remember? Do you remember?
No, Deanna says, because she doesn’t. It’s a lie. She doesn’t know it’s a lie. She shifts her gaze back to her fingernails, free of black, and full-body flinches, hearing screams. The handprint on her shoulder throbs, and she wonders if she tears off her shirt, will the tattoo of wings on her back still be the same? Does she deserve it, anymore, or will it break through her skin? Is she alive, is she alive – do you remember?)
So Deanna goes to Bobby, because what-the-hell-else is she going to do. She gets a mouthful of holy water, finds Sammy in a hotel room with a girl, ganks a demon, and watches a woman’s eyes get burned out. And –
“My name is Castiel,” a girl proclaims, standing in the barn, the largest and the smallest thing in the room all at the same time. A roll of thunder, and a flash of light, and the understanding that there is something cosmic at work here. “I am an Angel of the Lord.”
(Someday, she will tell Deanna this – my name was once Cassiel. I was the angel of tears, and of temperance. I presided over the deaths of kings.
They will both close their eyes, and look to the dirt. Look to the ground. There is nothing holy about this end. There is nothing grand. Cas puts her hand on Deanna’s shoulder. I’m sorry, she will say. Apologies like this, apologies that are so general, are such a human thing – I’m sorry you had to do this. I’m sorry you had to survive this. I’m sorry that you did not see the sun on the flowers of the mountains in the spring. Such fragile words. Deanna thinks they make her beautiful.
Why, Deanna will ask.
You are still the Righteous Man, Cas says, and Sam the Girl King. It is ironic, is it not, that you are female. I think, in some way, that makes it worse.
Deanna doesn’t want to ask why.
Cas tells her anyway. Girls, I have found, are so full of hunger.
Deanna will think about crying. She and Sammy, all set to replay a cosmic battle. Because they, like all girls, ache for a place in the world that’s their own. Is this their fault? Or simply their predestined path?
It’s fine, she will say.
It never is.)
“Who are you?” Deanna asks again. There’s no such thing as angels, Sam.
“I’m the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition,” this Castiel says, and her gravelly voice is like the tolling of bells in the church-tower, like the cries of the hawks in the cold north, like the howling of the wolf in the wood that is not something monstrous but rather something wild.
“Yeah,” Deanna says. “Sure.”
She stabs the girl in the chest, straight through a nice white blouse and a pretty navy scarf and a tan trench coat. She ignores the mess of black hair, and the blue eyes that are clear like the morning sky at dawn, and she kills, because that’s what she’s been raised to do.
Castiel, terrifyingly inhuman, does not even react. There is no pain as she pulls the knife, buried up to the hilt, back out. One moment it is in, and the next it is not. She hands it back to Deanna, and Deanna has the sudden realization that this girl is not a girl but rather a thing. Then Bobby’s there, with a crowbar, and he swings it towards the girl with all the force he has. She turns, small and knobby-limbed, and puts a hand up. Yet again, there is no flinch. One moment it is moving, and the next it is not. Her fingers flash to his forehead, and then he is collapsing to the ground. Deanna makes a pained noise and rushes to him, and the girlthing steps back to let her pass.
“Your friend is not hurt,” Castiel says. “Merely sleeping.”
“Why should I believe you?” Deanna asks, because angels don’t exist, no matter what Sammy says, and this girlthing is no different from any other monsters they’ve hunted, even if she’s more powerful. “You burned Pamela’s eyes out!”
Castiel stares at her, and something flashes, and the lights that were not already broken pop and shatter with sparks and screams. In the not-darkness and the shadow, something flares up behind her, and then there are wings, beautiful and horrifying, and Deanna does not kneel to anyone but for a moment she can almost remember the words of the Bible that Sammy whispers, the screams and the herald of God saying do not be afraid.
Then the moment passes, and the girlthing is just a girlthing, still staring. “I warned her,” she says, quietly and intensely. “I warned her not to look. It is not my fault what the foolishness of humans brings down upon themselves.”
Deanna snarls, trying to cover how scared she is. “The foolishness of – she was a good person, you bastard.”
“I did not say she was not,” the girlthing says calmly. “Good is not dependent on the mistakes that are made. You are living proof of that.”
Deanna snorts.
Castiel tilts her head, and then says, almost curiously, “You don’t think you deserve to be saved.”
Deanna is – angry, and so very tired, and she pours it all out. “Why did you do it then?”
(Angels are watching over you, her mother used to say.
Thanks for that, Deanna wants to say. You didn’t have to, but thanks for that.)
“Because God commanded it. And because,” Castiel says, “we have work for you.”
They’re bad at talking, about things like this. They always have been.
“So a nose ring,” Deanna starts, because her sister’s still her sister and also because she can’t keep still. There’s something buzzing in her veins. “And, hey – didn’t know you did the queer thing. Like, girls? I mean, anything’s better than that Ruben dude, but he was a demon, so it’s really not about – uh, the gender, you know, it’s just that – demon.”
“Shut up,” Sammy says, and Deanna stills.
(Sammy had cried, one day, and said, how do I know if I’m fucked up, De? How do I know if I’m wrong? She’d held her copy of the Bible, the same one she’d always had since the fire, dog-eared and torn, and she’d said the word faggot the way John did, which was to say, casually and terribly.
Deanna hadn’t known what to do. But when her sister mumbled something about pretty girls, her stomach had dropped, and she’d turned red and sputtered something, and she tried not to make Sammy cry but this –
Figure it out, she’d snapped.
Later, Deanna will think that the worst thing John ever did to her was make her believe that Sammy had to figure these things out alone.)
Deanna looks at her sister then, really looks at her. Her hair’s cut closer to her chin, now, wavy and brown and kind of messed up. Her nails are still a chipped black, which is and has always been the only constant in Deanna’s life so she’s kind of glad for it. And Sammy’s tall of course, that runner’s build that she’s always harping at Deanna about, but more than anything she looks tired, and twitchy. She looks, Deanna thinks, far too much like she’s waiting on a fix.
“Where’s your Bible?” Deanna asks, because it’s not on hand, and normally if the case concerns it Sammy’s leafing through it.
“Burned it,” Sammy says, and her voice is sharp.
And maybe that’s the first time it occurs, this subconscious realization of the lines between them, fighting a war millennia in the making, demons and angels and Heaven and Hell – but she doesn’t know that, not yet.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have, though,” Sammy admits, softly, like an olive branch. Deanna blinks, and the darkness recedes from her nerdy little sister. “I mean, angels? The four Horsemen of the apocalypse? Holy shit, De.”
But that part doesn’t really hit home until Deanna’s laying on Bobby’s floor and trying to process Magnus’s ghost. That little girl's ghost. She stands up to get water, and there’s a small figure resting against the window. For a moment, Deanna looks at her, and she’s towering and glowing and swirling with eyes and rings like fire. And then Deanna blinks, and it’s just the girlthing. Castiel.
The fucking angel.
“Thanks for the help today,” Deanna says.
Castiel looks up at her. She does not, Deanna realizes, blink. Or breathe, it seems. Her hair is less windblown, more butch, cut close on one side and all wavy and short on the other. She is still and unmoving in the way that a snake is before it strikes, and if she weren’t standing on her own two feet Deanna would think she was a corpse.
“Is that – are you,” Deanna starts, and then takes a deep breath. “Is that a person?”
Castiel looks down at the body she’s wearing, like she’s forgotten about it. “She was very devout,” Castiel replies. “An elder sister, like you.”
The thought of this makes Deanna want to puke.
(Later, it will not. Later, she will contemplate it. What would she do, for her younger sisters? Would she do this?
We do all kinds of things for our family, Michael will say, voice soft and quiet, like Castiel’s, like Mary’s, like a friend. You understand, Deanna. You know how I feel.
She will, someday.)
“Why the holy secretary look, then?”
Here is where a human would shrug. Castiel does not react, in any way.
“I thought angels were supposed to help,” Deanna says instead, kind of angry. “Where were you when the – fuckin’ ghost, the rising of the witnesses? When he was trying to rip out my heart? Where was God, for that matter, when I was thrown into Hell in the first place? Where was God, where were all of you, in any of this?”
Castiel does blink this time, long and slow. “Angels,” she says lowly, voice like gravel, “are soldiers. We are the embodiment of the wrath of Heaven and the Lord. We are God’s weapons – ”
“Yeah, God,” Deanna scoffs.
“And we do not question what mortal affairs He involves us in,” Castiel continues. Her eyes flash, and Deanna wonders if this is what it’s like to be next to a bolt of lightning. “I took you from Hell, Deanna Winchester, and I can put you back.”
Deanna takes a deep breath and wonders what would happen if she stabbed Castiel with the kitchen knife in the corner. Deanna’s never been a saint, not ever, and this girlthing is just a monster, even if she’s an angel. Deanna’s good at killing; that may be all she’s ever been good at.
Castiel’s face is stony. “You have far more capacity for good than even you think.”
“Stop doing the freaky mindreading thing,” Deanna splutters. “You just said I deserved to go back to Hell!”
“No,” Castiel replies. “I meant that you should show me some respect.”
Deanna feels chills run up and down her spine and something crawl up her throat like terror, so they move the conversation to the impending apocalypse.
She wakes up terrified some days, now. She watches her father die, and watches her mother kick ass, and she thinks about confronting Sammy about the demon blood running through her veins, and she wonders who her mother even was if she was making deals with the Yellow-Eyed demon.
(But Deanna had done that too, hadn’t she – made a deal with a demon because Sammy’s body lay dead on the ground and she couldn’t handle that, couldn’t understand that, couldn’t live in a world where that was the only answer. Maybe they were too dependent on each other. Maybe it was an issue that they were each other’s lives. But they’d never had another choice, and they never, really, would.
Thanks, dad.)
And there’s Castiel. Castiel, who sends her back in time with the press of her fingers, and moves in and out of space like it is as irrelevant as a door. Sammy keeps asking to meet her, and Deanna keeps shrugging, but it’s not like Sammy’s telling Deana everything either, and the two of them are a fucked-up, matched pair like they’ve always been. Instead of talking to each other, they hunt down a vampire that’s preying on the homeless, because empty motel rooms are a special kind of prison. And that girl Sammy’s with – she sounds an awful lot like Ruben had, which Deanna hates, but when she tries to confront her sister that goes about as well as expected.
“I just got you back, De!” Sammy yells, and Ruben-Ruby-now-thanks ducks out of there as quick as she can.
“Doesn’t seem like you want me back!” Deanna snarls in return.
(They will have this argument many times. They are, always, saying the same thing.
I need you.
Please let me help you.)
In the motel room, something falls off a shelf. Things are shaking, but not in the cosmic way that they do around Castiel, just in the Sammy way that things have always been weird around her. “Look,” Sammy says, because if there’s one thing she got from their father it’s her stubbornness. “I have to make something good of this.” There’s an ocean of pain in her voice, but Deanna doesn’t want to look that closely. “I have to make something good. I have to try to be something good.”
"You are good,” Deanna says, far too late. The story of her life.
"I’m using these powers for good,” Sammy says. “For me.” Her eyes are too intense, not dark like a demon’s but bright and glittering, surrounded by smudged eyeliner. Her hands shake as she picks up a Bible stolen from a Target, purple highlighter throughout for Revelations research, the Rosary hanging around her neck.
(Oh, Sam, Deanna used to say, in the same tone John said it. When she noticed why Sammy flinched, she started saying, oh, Sammy.
Someday, Cas will look at Sammy and say, oh, Sammy, and they will both sit down and cry. Deanna will not know, because Deanna will not be there.)
“They should’ve told the truth,” Deanna says, even though she wants to punch Sammy. Wants to punch someone. “Angels are fucking assholes.”
They sit in a bar with Ruby, who’s pretty and dark and smiles like she wants to eat you. Deanna’s not into girls, not really, and while that might be a lie she’s definitely not into Ruby, at least not as much as Sammy is, so it’s a little strange even beyond the whole demon-in-the-room. Ruby eats her burger fast, same as Deanna, instead of talking. Sammy’s got a salad and a complaint about their latest dead end of Lilith-research, but Ruby interrupts her to say, “Fries.”
Sammy, surprisingly, takes some.
(Later, Deanna will say, even the worst things are good for us, in some way.
Cas will have sad, sad, eyes. No, she says, they aren’t.
Deanna chokes out a laugh that sounds like crying. Aren’t they? Mustn’t they be, in some way? Or was all that pain worth nothing?)
A hunter comes up to the table. “Winchester,” he says, nodding at Deanna.
“In the flesh,” she replies, smiling wolfishly at him, but there’s a warning in her eyes, and wariness in his. She doesn’t let other hunters fuck her, and they all know this – she never gives them that kind of power over her.
"Heard you were dead,” he says.
Maybe, she thinks, that wariness isn’t just because he knows her rules. For a moment, she thinks that wariness might just be because of her, and she’s just buzzed enough to enjoy it. “Didn’t stick,” she replies.
Across from her, Ruby shifts, shoving next to Sammy’s long frame.
The hunter leers, but it’s less a leer and more an examination, of Deanna’s flannels and messy bun, of Sammy’s goth-lumberjack vibe, of Ruby’s mascara and skintight jeans. They’re a motley crew, and Sammy’s narrowing her eyes at him in return – I’ll kick your ass right back, it means, because Deanna’s seen it far too many times in the mirror.
(The Winchesters, people whisper, are bad news. The younger one’s got the devil himself running through her veins. The older one’s been to Hell and came back swinging. They let the demons out, brought the angels back, made deals with gods.
The Winchesters, people say, don’t die.
Someday, monsters will yell and shriek and laugh that they have caught a Winchester. Deanna will sort of understand, in some ways, because she’s not humble. They’ll have saved and destroyed the world again and again. She’ll welcome the darkness, welcome the myths. Humans can be monsters too, after all, especially when they’re raised as killers. They’ll stand back to back: a girl who takes judge jury and executioner to a Biblical level, a girl holding a demon-killing blade with demon blood in her veins, a girl with a shotgun and a sneer and a duct-taped soul, a girl marked by Heaven who takes people apart better even than Hell’s worst –
Don’t fuck with the Winchester sisters, the hunters tell each other, between stakes in vampires and back alleys. You won’t live to tell the tale.)
Sammy pulls Ruby closer. It puts a bad taste in Deanna’s mouth, but the guy twitches, and Deanna notices that there’s more of them, crowding behind him, standing up from booths. She glances up, meeting Ruby’s eyes across the table. Deanna doesn’t like the demon, probably never will, but if worst comes to worst Deanna’s pretty sure right now they’ll be on the same side, which is to say, on Sammy’s.
She takes another sip of her beer.
“Hey, hold on, the other one’s here, too,” the hunter says, putting a hand down on the table, like he’s finally figured out this is Sam, John Winchester’s girl. Deanna doesn’t blame him. Sammy’s got a different feel about her now; she’s always been sharp, but now it’s dark and full of pain. “Samantha, right?”
Sammy flinches.
He keeps going, smiling in an uncomfortable way and glancing back at his buddies. “Heard about this one down the grapevine. Maybe we oughta put her down for good. Take another freak out of the world.”
Ruby, because she has no self-preservation and also because she and Deanna are itching for a fight that neither of them can have without Sammy crying, rolls her eyes black and says, sweet as can be, “That’s enough now, boys.”
The hunter steps back, going for his gun, and he’s not the only one.
Then Deanna’s slamming herself to her feet, and there’s the taste of alcohol in her mouth, but more than that there’s something buzzing in her veins. She didn’t used to be this blood-thirsty she doesn’t think, but now more than anything she wants to make people hurt. They’re all too slow to react to her, and she kicks the first one in the balls and takes a punch to the face. It feels good, it feels better than good, it feels alive, and there’s blood in her mouth but it just tastes like all she’s ever known.
Deanna grins, hopes her teeth are bloody too. “Anybody else?”
Ruby’s there then, and Sammy’s yelling at them to stop but Deanna can’t stop, not now. She loses herself in the exhilaration of it, the way it brings sharpness back into her world. She wonders what her dad would say, seeing her fighting alongside a demon, but then she remembers dad telling her that she might need to put Sammy down, too. She and the demon slam heads into tables, and Deanna loves this, loves knocking down men a foot taller than her who think because she’s a short girl that she can’t fight, loves the sting of it in her fists and loves the pain of it –
Then there’s a gun in her face. She freezes, and goes for the one in her waistband, and wonders why they haven’t been kicked out yet.
“Slut,” the hunter says, and spits.
Deanna just watches it, just watches him, which means she’s just watching when the entire gun explodes a foot from her face.
There’s a sharp breath from Ruby, to her left.
“De,” Sammy snaps. “We’re leaving.”
Deanna turns to her younger sister, sees the blood drip down her nose. She comes to the realization that was Sammy at the same time as the rest of the hunters do, as the few still standing draw their guns and start murmuring prayers, as they realize that this isn’t just a barfight, not anymore. One of them actually makes the sign of the cross, which is – fucking hilarious, and Deanna’s still laughing when Ruby and Sammy drag her out of there, still loose in the chest and loose in the fists, wondering where her guardian angel is.
They are quite literally chased out, one of the hunters and a bartender threatening to call the cops, and it’s Sammy who turns around. She’s imposing, standing there in the neon light of the flashing signs, red reflecting off her face against the night. She holds up a hand and the guy flinches.
"Leave us alone,” Sammy says, and twists her hand, and there’s the sound of his gun crumpling into a ball, easy as that. There’s blood coming out of Sammy’s eyes, dripping down her cheeks like tears, and Deanna’s still got enough sense to know that they need to get out of here, now, before the gaping hunter rallies his wits.
“Car,” Ruby says, and Deanna gets the keys as Ruby takes Sammy’s weight on her slender frame. She situates Sammy in shotgun and jumps in the back, and then Deanna’s slamming on the gas and pulling away, cackling like she’s losing it. Maybe she is.
“This isn’t funny,” Sammy says stuffily, holding a hand to her nose. She looks kind of like she might pass out.
“Don’t get blood on the seats, Samantha,” Deanna tells her, wired enough to jab.
Sammy glares. “This isn’t funny, Deanna Millie.”
“No, I’m sorry,” Deanna snaps back, “this is the funniest fucking thing that’s happened to us since I stopped being dead.” Maybe they would’ve started hitting each other but something catches her eye, lightning arcing across the sky in the rearview mirror except it’s just the angel, blinking into existence. “Motherfuck – ”
Ruby makes an aborted scream and Sammy twists around in her seat, eyes going wide and eager. “Are you Castiel – ”
“Get me out of here,” Ruby snarls, trying to unlock the doors.
“Hey, angel,” Deanna says. “Welcome to the party.”
Castiel is giving narrow-eyed looks to Ruby. “You reek of sin.”
Ruby’s eyes go black. “And you look like a whore.”
Castiel ignores her. “You should not have done that,” she says, voice low and rumbling.
(Forty years in Hell, they tell her. Four months were forty years in Hell, and you remember it all.
Deanna’s spent more time in Hell than she has alive. What does that make her, she wonders. What does that make her.)
Castiel says something about seals, about breaking them. A warning – more seals they’ve broken. “Turning on your kindred only furthers Lucifer’s plan.”
“Oh, great,” Ruby replies.
“Holy shit,” Sammy says, still staring at Castiel. “You’re – you’re a real angel.”
Ruby looks rebellious in the backseat. Deanna snickers. This is the first time the angel has come in handy at all, and of course it’s in order to make the demon jealous. Castiel tilts her head, looking at Sammy, and in the mirror Deanna sees eyes on her cheeks, eyes on her neck, eyes on her lips. She glances back to the road and swerves into her lane.
“You are unclean,” Castiel says, the angel filled with fire to the girl crying blood. “Yet you exorcised Samhain. We did not have to smite that town, thanks to you and your sister.”
Sammy seems struck speechless. Deanna, though, says, “You what?”
Ruby snorts. “Heaven’s mercy,” she says, catching Sammy’s eyes. “You see what Heaven’s mercy will do? Do you see it?”
“Hush,” Castiel tells her, dangerous and righteous.
“Look at the ruin they will bring,” Ruby spits, almost laughing. “Look at what their justice truly is.”
Anna raves.
(Deanna Winchester is saved, the angels had cried. Cas had sung to her in a thousand voices, a chorus all her own.
I shouldn’t have, Cas will tell her someday, bleak and alone. I should have left you there. This never should have happened.
Thanks, Deanna says, not sure whether she means it. Thanks for that.
There’s too much between the two of them. There will be a whole history, a decade of pain. The kind of pain that only the Winchesters could bring, and only to those they love.
Deanna Winchester is saved, the bell had tolled. The deaths of kings, how the red tears dripped down the Virgin Mother’s face.
If you can’t save her, John whispered before he died. Kill her.
No, Deanna told him. No, never.
There was always too much between them, her family. A lifetime of hardness, even after Sammy ran away to California. The kind of calluses that only pain wrought by those you loved could create.)
Anna is curling into themself, whispering and murmuring and tearing their red hair, and they slit their wrists and press their palms to sigils that banish even angels, and the first thing Sammy asks is how to write them again.
“Where is your third,” Anna asks, eerily still in how they exist. Deanna isn’t sure she’s seen them blink, either. They point to a branch on the sigil. “That’s wrong.”
“Our third?” Deanna asks.
Ruby looks equally curious.
“Good things come in threes,” Anna says. “They say there are three – maiden, mother, crone, father, son, Holy Ghost.”
“It’s just the two of us,” Deanna tells them. “Unless you mean demon-bitch back there.”
“Ruby’s not a bitch,” Anna says, eyes wide. “Ruby helped me.”
Deanna scoffs, and Ruby looks like the cat that got the cream. It occurs to Deanna that Ruby might be using Anna to make Sammy jealous, since Sammy’s whole falling-over-herself in front of Castiel. This makes Deanna want to vomit.
“It takes only blood freely given,” Anna is lecturing Sammy, swaying a little bit. “Be careful.”
When they find out Anna’s a fallen angel, things make more sense. They’re wearing their body like a vessel, even though it’s their own – they almost pass out from the blood loss, genuinely confused as to why.
(Someday, Cas falls – really falls.
She wears Deanna’s jeans and they hang off her hips, an empty house with nobody home. When she pulls off her shirt in the Impala, her ribcage juts out. Deanna’s eyes are drawn to her sports bra but when Cas turns away, Deanna can count every one of her vertebrae. Old ladies at the diner look at their former angel with true concern, look at the hollows under her eyes, ask you sure you don’t want anything to eat, honey?
Cas will shake her head and then look guiltily at Sammy and ask for something small, still not able to stomach the overwhelming taste of it all. She’ll forget to drink water for hours on end and then faint – God damnit, Cas, you need to give your body energy! – and some days she will sleep for two hours total and some days she will sleep from five am to midnight. She’ll throw herself at monsters with a feral viciousness, more akin to a wild animal than to a human, and forget that she can’t just heal her body anymore. She’ll grumble as Ada stitches up her wounds, but collapse like a tiny ragdoll in Sammy’s arms.
Deanna wants to rage at her, wants to rip into her and tear at her and be angry, but she can’t. Not when Cas looks so vulnerable. Not when she looks so horribly human and so horribly within reach.)
“Why do you think I fell, Deanna?” Anna asks.
Deanna answers honestly, and bitterly. “I have no fuckin’ clue.”
Anna leans in close, their red hair falling against Deanna’s face. “Because you humans are so beautiful in your freedom.”
Deanna kisses them, and then she yanks back like she’s been shocked. Anna might be fallen, might not have all their grace, but she still recognizes the fizzing taste of it behind her teeth, how sweet it is. She gasps something out, but Anna just laughs, and presses her back, which, holy shit, she didn’t know she was queer, or whatever Sammy calls it, but the taste of the grace is like a high and this one is so good and Anna is so beautiful –
(There will, always, be a choice like this one.
The world, they say, or Samantha.
Deanna knows what her answer, always, always is.
Here’s the catch, though.
It doesn’t have to be one or the other, Sammy reminds her.)
“Oh, Deanna,” Alistairs says in the barn. He’s in the body of an old white man, the kind who’d try and stick his hand up Deanna’s skirt when she was little. “Oh, Deanna, sugar. You looked so much prettier with razors in your hands. Such wasted potential.”
His face haunts her dreams, leering at her, and then Castiel is leaping at him and for the first time she sees the avenging angel that the Bible promised, the ones who razed the earth and fought the warriors of Satan. Deanna returns the favor and swings a crowbar into Alistair’s head when he chokes Castiel. And then Anna has their grace back, and the earth is shaking as Heaven and Hell match forces and then it is all over.
“I remember Hell,” Deanna tells Sammy, the words drawn out of her like rusty razor blades. “I remember it all.”
Things don’t get better just because Deanna was honest with Sammy. If it’s possible, they get worse. Sammy looks at her with regret and pain in her eyes, even more so than usual, and it makes Deanna want to punch her. Instead, she goes out and punches other people, drinking down bars and drinking up attention and slamming fists into faces that are attached to bodies with wandering hands.
(You know who you’re turning into, Bobby said to her once.
Say it, Deanna told him, exhilarated and nauseous all at the same time. It didn’t help that she was drunk off her ass.
He’d given her that exhausted look. I don’t need to.
Fine, sue her, so she was her father’s daughter. Wasn’t that all John had ever wanted?)
“Really,” Sammy asks, when Deanna pours some whiskey in her coffee. “You can’t run away from things forever, you know.”
“Sure I can,” Deanna replies. “So what’s up with this ghost?”
They drive down backroads in the dark, the silence as haunted as they are. Neither of them can handle the emptiness, and even their normal jokes, bitch, jerk, pass me that book, feel strained. Sammy disappears and Deanna knows she’s with Ruby, but every time she asks they just end up yelling at each other; the knowledge that they’re so outnumbered, with this apocalypse, with Sammy’s jewel-bright eyes and how Deanna doesn’t know how to help her. And now there’s this – thing, between them. Anna’s words pick at them both, and Alistair’s too, and Sammy keeps looking at Deanna like…like she’s ashamed. There’s so much between them, and maybe were they younger they’d be punching it out but instead it’s just sharp words and angry silences.
(Someday, Sammy will cry, and tell her the truth. I couldn’t help but be relieved.
That I, Dean stops, then forces the words out. That I broke?
Sammy’s eyes, imploring. They’re both so bruised and beaten. You’re the best person I know, De. If you did, then…then it makes it ok that I gave in, too.
Deanna swallows, and she’ll draw her sister into her arms, like they used to when they were little, before John trained the softness out of them. I’m sorry, Sammy. I’m so sorry.
For what?
For – for everything.
She can’t say any more.)
Deanna makes out with guys in restrooms and then gets kicked out of bars, stands in the parking lot and laughs, drunk and split-lipped and hating herself. She wants to hurt someone. Except that’s not true, is it. She just wants to hurt herself.
“Deanna,” comes the low voice. Girls’ voices shouldn’t be that low, but then again Castiel isn’t a girl.
“Hey, Cas,” Deanna says, and the nickname slides off her tongue easy as that. She glances up, at the trenchcoated angel who stands backlit by neon blue, unknowable and impossible. Deanna isn’t sure if her vision is doubling, or if there is actually more to Castiel in the darkness – gentle and inhuman, the small figure shadowed by wings and horns and those blue, blue eyes. They might be glowing. Does she have a halo, or is that just a trick of the light?
“You need to leave,” Castiel says.
“Leave?” Deanna responds. “Sweetheart, I’m just getting started.”
Castiel grabs her arm, and starts yanking her towards the car.
“What,” Deanna says, and the words come to her without even knowing what they mean. “Hate to see your righteous girl not acting so righteous?”
Castiel stops, and her eyes flare, and in them Deanna beholds galaxies. “You do a disservice to yourself, dirtying a soul so bright,” she says, which, thanks.
Deanna because she’s cruel and because she breaks everything she touches, replies, “So what about that poor girl’s soul? Sam was wondering, you know, and I was too, how different it was from demonic possession. What games do you play to make them say yes?” Castiel’s an angel wearing someone’s body like a spare shirt so it’s not like she ever reacts, not even the twitches or tensing that Deanna would go off with Sammy, and Deanna goads her, saying, “Heaven’s weapon, didn’t you tell me? Isn’t it funny that you guys have to do the same thing the demons do? Is it humbling, in any way? We get to walk around in these bodies, and you guys all just have to take them – Heaven and Hell aren’t so different here, are they? I feel like I’m uniquely qualified to – ”
Castiel slams her against the Impala, which, holy shit.
Deanna is, abruptly, very sober. Her bones ache but it doesn’t matter in the face of the grace-high hissing through her teeth and down her arms, and Castiel’s got a hand against her throat, looking at her so closely, with that tilted head.
“Do not compare us to them,” Castiel says very quietly. “You are different, Deanna. But you still know little of what you speak.”
“Then tell me.”
Castiel is still, in such a different way from Anna. It is so inherently wrong, so unfitting in the world, that Deanna cannot help but watch it. Watch her. She steps back, and Deanna drops to the ground.
Castiel says, “I can’t.”
Deanna rubs her throat and wonders if there will be bruises. “Why not?”
Castiel turns, all coiled power, and looks up towards the sky. It is empty, out in the Midwest, the stars so vast. She says, like she is trying not to be heard, “I have doubts, you know. But Heaven’s plan – I cannot.”
“What?” Deanna asks, limping over to her side. Her knee’s been out of sorts since a week after she got back from Hell.
Castiel looks back at her. There is no emotion in her face, but she reaches out a hand that is like a beam of sunlight and Deanna feels the grace sweep through her, gentler this time. “I suppose neither of us are the weapons we think we are.” Then, “You did well, capturing Alistair for us.”
“It wasn’t for you,” Deanna says, not happy to be reminded of Sammy, Sammy-and-Ruby, Sammy staring down Alistair with the demon blood bleeding from her nose, Sammy in a gas station bathroom murmuring to no one, Sammy curled up on a motel bed reciting patchwork passages of myths like they could ever save the two of them. Like anything could ever save the two of them.
Everything had been so much better when she was drunk.
Castiel blinks at her. “Oh, Deanna,” she says. “Everything you do is for us.”
Sammy winces as she swallows down her eggs.
“You good?” Deanna asks.
“Too much salt,” Sammy replies, which – makes no sense, but whatever. Deanna doesn’t want to fight with her, not this morning, not now.
Deanna turns to the blonde girl sitting with them, who had called John’s phone that was nearly dead and has so far reacted to neither holy water, nor silver, nor Sammy’s horrible jokes. “So your name is Ada.”
“Ada Milligan,” she says, and meets Deanna’s eyes unflinchingly, and oh. Oh, that’s Sammy’s glare, alright. “John was my biological father, like I said.”
“He’s been dead for a while,” Deanna tells her.
“I figured,” Ada replies. “Cause you’ve said.”
Sammy snorts. Deanna doesn’t want to hear it; Sammy’s already told her plenty how, actually, Ada Milligan is realer than we are. Yes, De, it might be a trap, but she actually checks out. “How come we didn’t hear about you earlier?”
“John barely showed up more than once a year. I’d show you the birth certificate but, you know, I wasn’t really expecting…this.”
“Why should we believe you?”
“Come on, we’ve gone over this already, don’t you have any trust – ”
“She’s telling the truth,” Sammy says. “I think I dreamt this, and remember what Anna said?”
Deanna closes her mouth. John always told them never to trust men. Deanna doesn’t know why she’s surprised that this should’ve included him, too.
“I get it,” Sammy says to Ada, surprisingly gentle. Jesus, the girl looks so young. “He was a shit dad.”
Deanna opens her mouth, but Ada scowls, quietly shell-shocked. “At least you got him.”
Sammy’s mouth purses. “Not really.”
Ada purposefully relaxes her shoulders. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter now.”
Deanna sighs. She looks so much like Sammy, sitting like that, and Deanna’s always known she’d do anything for her family. “What did you need?”
“I need to, uh, get away.” Ada looks like the whole talking thing isn’t her favorite either. Maybe it’s genetic. “My mom’s ex-boyfriend keeps checking on me but it’s, like, the kind that makes you want to put on a turtleneck shirt and never look in the mirror. And all my classmates look at me like I’m going to snap, and school is so dumb, like – nothing matters. Everyone I love is dead. I don’t care about fucking anatomy, you know.”
(At Stanford I was the freak with the knife collection, Jo yelled at his mother.
Sammy had looked at him with understanding in her eyes.)
“It’s fine. I thought that I could just – I don’t know, go live with him for a little while. John. It’s fine.” Ada looks like she might be about to cry, all of a sudden. “Fucking monsters. Why’d they have to take my mom, too?”
Sammy puts a hand on her shoulder. Ada leans into it and then away, blinking furiously. Apparently terrifying codependency is also a genetic trait.
“Look,” Deanna says. “Our lives suck. They’re dangerous, and they’re not pretty.”
Sammy glares.
“But,” Deanna says, and scrubs a hand over her face, and yanks her hair behind her ears. She and Ada have the same type of hair – same dirty blonde-brown, same tangled half-curls. “You’re family. It’s your own choice.”
(Someday, Ada will watch how she pushes everyone away. Why did you just let me in, easy as that?
You won’t like the answer, Deanna will tell her. Deanna doesn’t really cry, but her little sisters make her want to, sometimes.
Ada’s got hard, even eyes, nowadays. There’s pretty ribbons braided into her hair. Deanna wonders what would have happened to her, in another world. Would she have finished school? Would she be a doctor? Would she have a life? A family?
Tell me, Ada says.
I couldn’t take care of Sammy, Deanna will reply. But in that moment, I could take care of you.)
So now Ada stretches her legs out in the backseat, all just-past-teenage snark. She’s barely got anything with her other than a laptop and textbooks, but she managed to hold onto some leggings and tee shirts. “I don’t need to dress like a hobo along with being one,” she says, and looks disdainfully at Sammy and Deanna’s matching flannels and bootcut jeans. But she steals Sammy’s old Stanford sweatshirt when they’re not looking – which is blatantly unfair, since it’s the comfiest thing Deanna or Sammy own – and Deanna realizes one day that the tank top she’s wearing is actually Ada’s, not hers. Ada fits in, somehow, like she’s their missing piece. Like they’ve been looking for a third, and now she’s here, even when she doesn’t understand their jokes, even when her memories of John don’t match up with theirs, even when they bicker and yell.
Deanna lies awake at night, listening to Sammy and Ada murmur. They get along better than Deanna and Ada, probably because Deanna’s so much like John, but also because Sammy and Ada both like all that lore and shit, like reading the books and that moment of oh, so we’re hunting a shtriga – see here, where it makes sense? Deanna just needs someone to hand her a gun and tell her where to aim it.
(I suppose neither of us are the weapons we think we are, Cas had said.
Sure, Cas. Sure.)
Ada becomes a criminal in a small town in Nevada when a shapeshifter impersonates her. The shifter can’t seem to stop crying, and at the end of it all Ada’s name’s out there for vehicular manslaughter and Sammy’s looking at Deanna angrily when she calls the shifter a freak, and Deanna’s looking at the ground. Ada chops the shifter’s hair off, and Sammy steals them a car, and Deanna grits her teeth and wonders what John would say, seeing them helping the monster. Wonders, for a second, who’s actually the monster. Ada starts going by Ada Winchester, and Deanna wonders if she can trust anything John ever said.
She stitches up her arm, and Sammy leaves, muttering something about Walmart, so of course Ada and Deanna get into an argument.
“Not everything’s about you,” Ada says. “So would you stop being self-deprecating for one goddamn minute?”
Deanna closes her eyes. She is, possibly, drunk. “No, look, I’m just – I’m sorry. We shouldn’t have brought you with us.”
“Oh, great, you gonna leave me just like everyone else in my life? Was all that bullshit about sisterhood just – bullshit?”
Deanna starts, “There’s things here that you don’t know about – ”
“So tell me!”
“We’re fucked up!” Deanna might be yelling. “And we’re, like, thirty steps away from the apocalypse! And if you stay with us, you’re going to end up dead, Ada, just like dad and just like both our moms and just like Sammy and just like me!”
Deanna hates talking about her feelings. She hates it so goddamn much. She wonders if she can make this as short as possible. Wonders if she can make it vicious enough that Ada will leave. Does she want Ada to leave – no, she likes having another sister who doesn’t look at her like she’ll fuck everything up forever and ever, though Deanna’s rapidly changing that. She hasn’t known Ada her entire life, but it still hurts to watch her hurt.
Deanna needs to punch someone.
“Dad died,” she says, “long ago. My mom made a deal with a demon and brought him back. Mom died, and dad spent all that time hunting the demon down. Dad got killed by the demon. Sam got killed by the demon, and I made a deal at a crossroads with one to bring her back. I got a year. Sam got the rest of her life, although if she keeps hanging out with Ruby-the-demon-bitch, we’ll see if she doesn’t just throw it away.”
Ada’s watching her. She’s pretty good at the whole not-showing-her-emotions-behind-her-eyes thing. Or maybe Deanna just doesn’t know her well enough, yet. Christ, that’s scary, the knowing and the not-knowing.
“My soul went to Hell,” Deanna continues. “And then angels brought me back to life.” She twists the bottle in her hands. It’s cheap liquor, and it’s all gone. “There,” she says. “That’s why you shouldn’t be a fuckin’ Winchester. Everyone you love will just die.” And then she turns around and slams the bottle into whatever she can find, and the glass shards cut into her hands.
“Nice pity party. But you’re not leaving me.” Ada bites it out like it hurts. She bites it out like John used to bite things out, the few times he ever gave them praise. Hell, she probably learned that habit from John, just like Sammy and Deanna. “You said you wouldn’t.”
“Great,” Deanna says. “Just great.”
The door swings open, even though they locked it. Cas walks in, all five foot two of her filled with coiled power and a miffed expression like she can smell roadkill. Sammy’s hanging off her shoulder, high as a kite or drunk off her ass, either way completely out of it.
“Speak of the devil,” Deanna says, and then laughs. “Cas, meet Ada. Ada, meet Cas.”
Cas tilts her head at Ada. Ada steps back, and Deanna doesn’t fault her for it. The intensity of Cas’s eyes are not the only thing that shift her from heart-attack-attractive-secretary to Goddamn-angel-of-the-Lord, but the glow sure doesn’t help. “How curious,” Cas says. “Another Winchester.”
“Sure,” Ada replies. “Sure.”
Cas dumps Sammy on the floor. Deanna shoves forward to catch her, then winces when the pain across her hands puts bloody handprints on Sammy’s tee. She doesn’t even know how her palms can feel anything anymore; she’s sliced them open more times than she can count. Ada puts gentle fingers on Sammy’s shoulders. Ada actually likes Sammy, has taken a shine to her. Too bad she has to see the reality of them now – unable to talk to each other, high or drunk or angry all the time, so bloody-handed.
Cas takes Deanna’s palms, and light flares. Deanna’s spine straightens and she knocks her head back, gasping in a rattling breath as the grace goes screaming through her.
“Can you help her?” Ada asks, because Sammy’s out cold and apparently Ada’s not quite as fazed by the angel. Maybe she’s atheist. Deanna would find that funny. “Is she on something?”
"No,” Cas says coldly, but her fingers are gentle on Sammy’s face. “She is unclean. It will reject my grace.” She turns to Deanna. “You are vulnerable now, with Adamine too. Be careful, Deanna.” Her eyes shine with a horrible light, with grace. Deanna wants another taste of it.
Then Cas is gone.
“Your name is Adamine?” Deanna asks, looking around for water to force down Sammy’s throat, trying to remember what was so strange about how Cas spoke. “Who names their kid Adamine?”
“Why the hell do you think I go by Ada?” The girl grumbles, sounding like Sammy. “Nobody needed to know my name, until – that was the angel, wasn’t it? Until they showed up.”
“That’s the other thing the Bible doesn’t tell you,” Deanna says, and sighs. She’s sober now, and everything is horrible. “Angels are dicks.”
Alistair is on the rack, and Deanna’s holding the razor and the needle. It’s a reversal, but it’s also the fulfillment of a promise. Deanna wants to puke, but she’s good at this, just like all girls – good at forcing things down her own throat, bottling them up, keeping them quiet and storing the hurt for a glorious someday.
“For what it’s worth,” Cas says at her shoulder, so quietly it’s barely a breath. “I would do anything not to ask this of you.”
(I had a choice, Cas tells her someday. I didn’t need to ask it of you. But they knew I was getting close to you, and had I refused – well. I was getting too close to you. I didn’t want to let you go.
I guess we’re both selfish bitches, aren’t we, Deanna will say to her.
Cas looks at her with eyes that are mourning. Eyes that are empty. Yes, she says, but she doesn’t sound like she believes it.)
“Go find Sam and Ada,” Deanna tells her. “Don’t come back.” She doesn’t know what it means about her that she doesn’t want Cas to watch. Doesn’t want Cas – you have far more capacity for good than even you think – to look at her all ashamed, like Sammy does. Sammy thought Deanna was good once, too.
“She’s a pretty one, isn’t she,” Alistair tells Deanna. “Little angel in the trench coat – she still likes you, doesn’t she, Deanna?”
Deanna gets the needle under his fingernails. She whispers an apology to the poor soul whose body this used to be, but he’s not there anymore, whoever he was. One difference she’s noticed between demons and angels and how they wear their vessels – angels forget to take care of them. Demons just don’t care.
(Cas will show up in their motel room, many times. Deanna and Sammy both have guns under their pillows and trained on Cas before they’re even awake. Deanna, slightly more trigger-happy, shoots.
Cas’ll frown. She’s getting better at the whole vessel thing, except not really. She still doesn’t breathe. She misses a door and breaks her finger, and doesn’t bother to fix it until Deanna points it out. Sometimes her shoulders pop out of their sockets because she’s used to moving a back that has wings attached. She’ll stare at them, perplexed, and they just hang there until she realizes she needs to use an arm that’s gone mostly numb.
Maybe Deanna loves her because no matter how holy she is, she cannot help but be a monster too.)
Alistair starts laughing, and Uriel growls something when he realizes what Deanna’s doing.
“Stigmata,” Deanna tells Alistair, which she learned about during Sammy’s uber-Christian phase in high school. “You think it’s Heavenly enough for you to start burning?”
That’s the thing about torture, that Deanna also learned. It’s easier to do when it’s funny.
Alistair laughs, and laughs, and laughs. Deanna starts peeling the skin around his eyes with a knife dipped in holy water. She slides it under, layer by layer, slow and steady. She knows why she’s torturing him, but she also knows more than anything that this is for herself.
“What a monstrous little girl,” Alistairs tells her. “I enjoyed torturing your father, but none more than you. He didn’t break, didn’t leave part of himself behind in the pit – you did. Boys grow up to be men, Deanna, and you girls just grow up to be scared.”
Deanna puts a syringe next to his eyes, then changes her mind. Better just to dig them out, and let him choke on holy water instead. She’s so full of pain, and anger, at everything. At Alistair, at John – at both, for she knows Alistair is just repeating what John used to say to her, because Alistair knows how to get under her skin. Of course she’s a monster. They made her a monster, her and Sammy both.
“You were the first seal, Deanna,” Alistair tells her, the drawl dripping through his words. “This apocalypse is all yours, honey.”
“Maybe I’ll just kill you now,” Deanna says, and then a weight slams into her back and the world goes dark.
(Ada will be there when she wakes up. There’s something wrong with Sam. I thought demons couldn’t be killed, but she did it. She and the brunette.
What? Deanna asks.
Ada stands up. You think I don’t know the signs of addiction, De? There’s something wrong with her.
Deanna will not say, there’s something wrong with me, too. Instead she says, I’m sorry, Ada. I’m sorry you had to get dragged into this. Call Bobby, he might be able to help you. He might even be able to help you get back to school.
If you think I’m leaving now, you’re sorely mistaken. Ada’s face is hard. I don’t think I could even if I wanted to.
Another person Deanna’s fucked up. She closes her eyes, and when she opens them again she will see Cas.
Why me, Cas, Deanna asks, voice hoarse. Why me?
Uriel was a traitor, Cas answers, voice even and emotionless. You are the Righteous Man, and Alistair was right. You are the one who began this, and the only one who can finish it.
I’m tired, Cas. It hurts to admit it, but she’s always trying to hurt herself more. She deserves it. I’m tired and angry and I want my family to be safe. It’s more than just Sammy, now. It’s Ada too.
They can be, Cas says. They will be, once you do this.
Deanna’s full of anger. Deanna’s full of pride. Why are you here, Cas?
I – have doubts. About my superiors, about Heaven. But no matter my disobedience, you are still the Righteous Man, Deanna Winchester, you who we are meant to follow. Reverence in her voice. And your soul is so full of fire.)
Ada’s the only one acting sane, now. Deanna knows this logically, but she’s also angry and terrified. A Prophet of God? Lilith? The way Sammy flinches when Deanna touches her, because Sammy’s full of demon blood and half the time Deanna’s hopped up on grace keeping her sober –
And isn’t that funny. Isn’t it just, because Sammy has always been the only good thing in Deanna’s world, always. Deanna’s the fucked-up one, full of anger and rage and Hellfire spitting at her steps. Sammy’s the one who was going places, with her genius mind and her Rosary and all the books she absorbed on mythology and law before she was nineteen.
(Deanna never figures out when she realized, really, that Sammy always flinched when she touched the Bible. That her hands shook and there was a slight burn where the Rosary rested on her bare skin, that the exorcisms made her wince and that she sang the hymns anyway.
I have to try to be something good.
Deanna never figures out when she realized, really, that the boys she let fuck her never stayed long afterwards for a reason. They left with clawed red lines down their spines, and Deanna never wanted them to stay but sometimes she wished she didn’t feel the need to hurt everything that tried to love her.
When a Righteous Man spills blood in Hell.
Isn’t that funny.)
So they’re losing their minds. Ada dyes their hair blue, because they can’t find a hunt and they are all, quietly, going insane.
Scratch that, Deanna thinks. Ada’s another good thing in their world, now, no matter how acerbic and cynical and rude she is.
Sammy’s twitching, gesturing wildly with her hands as she talks about a Sumerian legend, about descending into the underworld. The dye isn’t really sticking in her hair, not with how dark it is. She’s not quite Sammy but at least she’s there.
“After this,” Deanna tells Ada, “we gotta get you all tatted up.”
“Oh, yeah,” Sammy says. “You really need an anti-possession tattoo.” At Ada’s raised eyebrow, she pulls up her shirt, showing where the ink sits along her ribcage right under her bra. Deanna nods; hers matches.
Ada grimaces. “Needles aren’t my favorite.”
Deanna laughs. It kind of grates out her throat, unused to the sound without cruelty. “Better get used to ‘em. Tattoos are sweet.”
“Yeah,” Sammy says. “There’s nothing more beautiful than putting art on your skin for the world to see, right?”
Deanna looks over at her sister, half-smiling. “I mean I guess. I just got mine cause they look cool, you know. Guys dig chicks with ink.”
Ada’s hand drifts over Deanna’s back. “Is that what this is?”
Deanna winces. “I got those a while ago,” she says. “Angel wings. Funny now, isn’t it.”
All three of them laugh a little, because really, fuck their lives. Then Sammy’s phone dings and the moment is broken, and she says abruptly, “I’ll be back in just a minute.”
Ada works the dye through the ends of Deanna’s hair. It’s unexpectedly gentle. “Your head is disgusting,” she says. “Bobby called.”
“Oh,” Deanna replies. “You talked to him?”
“Yeah. He didn’t seem that surprised to hear from me, but he says he needs to talk to us.”
Deanna hums. She’s got a hangover, and everything still hurts from tangling with demons and angels. She hasn’t seen Cas in a while – she thinks she might be worried by that.
“Did you hear what I said,” Ada repeats, and yanks Deanna’s hair.
“Yes, I heard what you said,” she yelps. “Jesus, I’m not into that!”
Ada laughs, and for a moment they are content, and then there’s a raised voice from the bathroom.
“Ruby!” Sammy snaps, and then lowers it. “Come on…please.”
Ada untangles her fingers, scowling. “The sooner the better.”
They get sidetracked, though, by Deanna’s dreams, and by Jamie Novak. She is Cas, and yet not. For one, she’s blatantly lesbian, and flirts with all three of them like there’s no tomorrow. Ada looks like she wants to shoot herself, Sammy carefully inches away, and Deanna is unwillingly intrigued. But more than that, Jamie moves so fluidly, obviously a dancer, and yet when Sammy asks what being possessed by an angel was like, she goes completely still.
“It was like,” she swallows some of her sandwich, “like being chained to a comet.” She turns to Deanna, those eyes so blue, and Deanna wonders if this girl will ever be fully human again. “She had something to tell you, I think, but I don’t know what it was.”
“Great,” Deanna says.
Outside, Jamie lights up a cigarette, and tells Deanna that she’s fucking with things she has no business to. Jamie’s human, and she holds herself so relaxed compared to how Cas had, but she is still unknowable and terrifying, and Deanna isn’t sure why. “You’re going to die, you know that, right? We’re all going to die.”
“Great,” Deanna says again, distracted by the way Jamie’s voice wrapped around the word fuck like a prayer. “That’s great.”
Everything goes to shit after that.
Jamie runs back to her family. Deanna feels like crying again when she sees Jamie’s little brother, Cliff, taken by Cas too. But here’s the thing. Ada still doesn’t have a damn anti-possession tattoo, and suddenly there’s demons, and Deanna’s grappling with her little half-sister whose eyes are black like jet. She doesn’t know where Sammy is but she’s pretty sure it involves Ruby, and she’ll deal with that after she’s figured out how to exorcise Ada cleanly. She gets a knife to the demon’s throat, and then –
Jamie’s dying, a gunshot wound in her stomach. “Take me,” she pleads with Cas, in little Cliff’s body. “Give Cliff a life, please. Let my little brother live.”
(Take me, Deanna tells Michael. Let Ada and Sam live. Take me, you fucker.
She will not say please.)
“It will hurt. You will never die,” Cas says, voice emotionless and yet far too high in the tiny blonde boy. Deanna’s enraptured, but Ada’s still struggling underneath her, and where the fuck are you, Sammy?
“Do it anyway,” Jamie tells her, and then all that lithe gracefulness is replaced by grace, as Cas throws themself in, as Jamie’s eyes light up unnaturally blue. She stands up then, the stab wound still in her stomach.
“Cas,” Deanna says.
“Move aside, Deanna Winchester,” Cas says – not Cas. This isn’t the angel who picked Deanna up off the floors of bars, not the one who dragged Sammy home even when she was high, not the one that made Anna tilt their head and wonder. This is Castiel, all rage and terror and because God commanded it. “There is nothing I need from you.”
“Oh, really?” Deanna asks, angry. “You told me you doubted – ”
“I have no doubts,” Castiel says peacefully. She throws back a shadow, and there are her wings and in the dark her eyes are glowing circles of blue. Sammy’s in the doorway, screaming like her own eyes are burning, like she can’t stand in front of the holiness of it. Castiel throws Ada against the wall, the last demon left standing, and Sammy makes a wounded noise and holds out a shaking hand. The demon swarms from their littlest sister, though not without dropping her on her arm with a crunch, and Castiel turns away, uncaring now, towards Sammy.
“Cas,” Deanna pleads, because she remembers those gentle fingers on Sammy’s forehead. “Cas, no, it’s Sam!”
“She is an abomination,” Castiel says, gently and madly. Her voice is hurting Deanna’s ears, rattling around at least three different sets of vocal chords. Sammy’s still crying, and Deanna doesn’t know if holier-than-thou Castiel has brought a contingent of more angels with her. Something blazes in her mind’s eye – the sigil Anna had shown them. Deanna tears open her palm because nerve damage doesn’t really matter anymore, and she draws it, gritting her teeth, and the maelstrom of which Castiel is the center flashes out of existence when Deanna slaps a bloody palm down the center.
“De,” Sammy groans.
Deanna glances around, stumbling to her feet and clutching her hand. She doesn’t know where Cliff went, but right now she’s more worried about her own sisters.
“De,” Ada says, sounding too much like Sammy, and Deanna wonders when she picked up that nickname. Wonders why it doesn’t sound wrong, like it does coming from everyone except Sammy.
“Yeah,” she says. And then, in her older-sister voice, “We’re going to Bobby’s.”
Sammy’s barely coherent, and Deanna kind of doesn’t want to know if her eyes are actually steaming or if that’s just a trick of the light, but she mumbles something when they move her. Ada’s quiet, face white and clutching her wrist.
“We really gotta get you that tattoo,” Deanna tells Ada, with nothing better to say.
Ada grits her teeth. “It was horrible.”
“You fought it, though.” I didn’t know you could do that.
Ada shrugs, but her shoulders straighten just a bit. They’re all so horribly codependent, living out of each other’s pockets, depending on each other to be happy.
Deanna says, “I won’t blame you if you leave.”
“Shut up,” Ada replies, kind of like she’s sick of their shit.
“I’m serious,” Deanna tells her. “You’d be better off if you just left us.”
“Would you – stop,” Ada says. “Look, asshole, everyone I’ve ever loved has left me. It sucks.” She winces, trying to wrap her wrist, but her face is set in the same stubborn lines that Sammy’s are, sometimes. “So no, I’m not going to leave you.”
“Good choice,” someone says from the backseat, and apparently Deanna’s body has adrenaline left to give, because it shoots through her veins. A car honks at them as they swerve and she instinctively checks that Sammy’s still asleep, which is how she notices that it’s Anna in their backseat.
“Helluva time, Anna,” Deanna snaps to them.
"Who the hell are you?” Ada asks.
“Anna,” Deanna says.
“Haniel,” the redhead corrects.
“The angel,” Ada catches on. “Joy?”
Anna-Haniel nods. “You are well read, Adamine.”
“Would you all stop – ” Ada starts, but Deanna holds up a hand.
“What’s up,” Deanna asks the angel in the backseat. It might be kind of aggressive, but whatever.
“Castiel was forcefully dragged back to Heaven,” Haniel says. “Before she could regain her vessel. There is something horribly wrong, Deanna.”
Sammy twitches as they hit a bump. Haniel turns to her. “Is she alright?”
“No,” Ada replies.
Deanna grits her teeth.
Haniel reaches forward, gentle. They rest an arm on Ada’s wrist and it glows, fractured but healing – reminds Deanna of something Sammy told her about, broken pots repaired with gold. It doesn’t quite work, though, and Haniel sits back.
“You’re, uh,” Ada motions towards Haniel’s head. “You’ve got…something.”
Deanna glances at the mirror, and recoils. The side of Haniel’s skull is caved in like somebody took to it with a crowbar, red hair sticky with blood and brain-matter. The angel in question frowns, perplexed, and then says, “Ah. This is not a vessel, you see. I pulled a few strings.” And then the injury is gone.
Ada whips her head back forward. Deanna doesn’t blame her.
“Be careful,” Haniel warns, though her voice is soft like it is an apology. “No longer do things sleep, Deanna. You must understand. No matter what, they are already awake, and you cannot stop them.”
Then they’re gone.
“I’m really starting to hate that,” Ada says.
Deanna grunts. “Welcome to the club.”
Ada’s…way too much like them.
“You two need to be safe,” she says, and through the door her voice is trembling just the slightest. “I can do this, ok? I can do this for you guys. You need to be safe.”
(Deanna’s heart will always jump into her throat when Ada says these things. It all comes down to this.
Please don’t leave me.
Dad, Deanna wants to say. You couldn’t even stick with fucking up one kid, could you. You really had to fuck up us all.)
“Ada!” Deanna calls, but her steps are receding. She wonders if this is a trap, if this has always been Ada’s plan – no. Ada’s their sister. No. Please, no. “Ada!” Deanna yells, and pounds on the door, but there’s no way out. She turns to Sammy, who’s finally waking up. There’s blood on her mouth, a little clumped in her dark hair. Deanna doesn’t want it to be what she thinks it might be.
“De,” Sammy says. The bags under her eyes are so bad. She looks more skeleton than girl.
(The Winchester sisters have been self-destructive since they were born. That was how it went, being raised in a household where you should’ve been a boy. Where your face just reminded your father of his dead wife. Because that was always how it was – my wife. My daughter. It was never your mother, or your sister. They were never allowed to have things their own.
Deanna learned to sleep with a gun under her pillow, and always took turns too fast. Sammy learned how to skip meals, and then Sammy learned how to leave.
Funny, that the pain was the only thing that could ever be theirs.)
“How long,” Deanna asks, after it’s been a few hours. She thinks she should go to sleep, but she can’t.
“How long what?” Sammy deflects, like Deanna can’t see right through her.
Deanna levels her a glare. “How long have you been getting that demon blood in your system?” She feels the ache in her bones, the wish for alcohol and maybe, deep within, for the grace Cas would use to get her sober. “What’re you even trying to do with it, Sam, level up or something? Gonna become more demon than human, at this rate, Jesus.”
Sammy’s angry. “I’m – I’m not trying to level up, De, I’m trying to kill Lilith!”
Deanna snorts. “Yeah, well, apparently Ada’s gonna do that for us.”
Sammy doesn’t even deign this with a response. She sits against the wall, shaking, and doesn’t look at Deanna. Time slides by as Deanna tries and gives up on getting out of there. Bobby’s a smart sonofabitch, when he wants to be. Apparently, so is Ada.
(She’ll ask Ada later. What the hell were you thinking?
Ada slumps. I don’t think I was, she’ll say bleakly. I wanted to prove myself. There was something twisting around in my head, and I couldn’t make it stop.)
Sammy goes ramrod-straight.
“Sam?” Deanna asks, hyper-attuned to her little sister. “Sammy?”
“Mom’s – mom,” Sammy says, her voice so very small. Deanna’s mad at her, so mad, but her limbs don’t even hesitate, carrying her over towards her sister. When she hugs her, they can both feel the sting. Sammy groans in pain, something burning, and the brand – Castiel’s handprint – on Deanna’s shoulder flares. Deanna just pulls Sammy tighter.
“Mom’s not here,” she says roughly. “But I am.”
“I’m sorry,” Sammy whispers.
Deanna doesn’t know if she can forgive her. But that doesn’t mean she’s going to leave her alone. She couldn’t, even if she tried.
Mom isn’t the only one who makes an appearance, as Sammy burns hotter, moving in Deanna’s arms and murmuring almost feverishly, talking to people who aren’t there. It’s terrifying, that Deanna can’t kill the things that are terrorizing Sammy. Then Alistair appears, which makes Deanna nauseous, and Jesse too.
(He sounds like a good one, Deanna told Sammy, so long ago. He…he respect you, and all that jazz?
Sammy’s mouth had curved in a genuine, happy smile. He’s…De, he gets it, he really gets it. And he’s so smart, like he can actually keep up with me, and he always listens when I need to talk. He’s…amazing. I never understood the idea that people could fit together like puzzle pieces, but I think we do.
You sap, Deanna told her. She was happy for Sammy, though. She really was.)
"Shh,” Deanna whispers into Sammy’s hair. She doesn’t know how many hours it’s been, and she’s so tired. “Shh, Sammy.”
When she wakes up, the door’s open. Sammy’s gone and Bobby’s out cold. Deanna curses herself, and curses herself again, and that’s that. Both her sisters, gone after Lilith. Both of them, going to die. She feels bad, leaving Bobby on the couch unconscious, but she knows what her priorities are right now, knows what they’ve always been and always will be.
“Castiel!” She yells at the sky. “Get your feathery ass down here!”
It’s mostly a blur, after that.
“Do you swear allegiance to Heaven?” Castiel asks. “To the Lord God, to the holy plan?”
“As long as my family is safe,” Deanna replies.
“Then speak,” Castiel intones.
When Deanna does, there’s a grace-kick in her lungs, all of a sudden. She’s starting to wonder if she’s any better than Sammy after all, in the department of addictions that should not be theirs.
The room they put her in is a glorified cage.
“You bastard son of a half-bred whore,” Deanna tells the horrible one – Zachariah, she thinks. “You said my family would be safe.”
“No,” Zachariah says, smiling. He’s just another well-dressed old white man, and he may be an angel but he looks at her all the same. “You said your family would be safe. We agreed to nothing of the sort. You need to learn to read the fine print, Deanna.”
But then Castiel. Cas.
“Is there anything more worth fighting for?” Deanna asks her. Begs her. She might be crying, just a bit, trapped in this gleaming box while her sisters are out there and damnit, Sammy, why? “Don’t you see? It’s not God, giving the orders. It’s just your bosses pulling the wool over your eyes, pulling strings so they can raise Lucifer. All they want is war, Cas. War, and suffering. Is there anything better to die for?” She hesitates. “Please, Cas.”
Castiel is a being of cosmic significance. Yet for some reason she looks Deanna in the eyes, and for a moment Deanna is drowning in them, in the splitting of the world – in how blue they are, pale and fracturing like a cold morning sky in some lights, deep and incomprehensible like constellations at night in others.
Cas asks, almost wonderingly, “How do you still shine so brightly?”
When they find Sammy, it’s too late. Cas tangles with an archangel to defend the prophet of God; Ruby’s got Ada all strung along. Seems like Sammy finally came to her senses, but Ada’s already stabbed Lilith and made her angry and Ada doesn’t have freak powers on her side so of course Sammy finishes it off, and it’s the final seal but they don’t have a goddamn choice.
Deanna’s starting to realize that they never did in the first place.