Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sam closed his eyes and fell back on the bed, home at last, safe, the taste of one of Jess’ fresh baked cookies still lingering in his mouth. He allowed himself to relax, to breathe in Jessica’s familiar scent infusing the pillow, to listen to the soft spray of the shower as it lulled him to the brink of sleep. He’d missed Dean and he was glad they’d reunited and mended fences, but now he was back to the life he’d built for himself and the woman he wanted to spend the rest of that life with. He was finally home.

Something wet touched his face once, twice, three times and he opened his eyes to the too-familiar sight of his recurring nightmare: Jessica above him, pinned to the ceiling, a red stain spreading across her abdomen, ruby droplets falling towards him like a delicate spring rain. He thought it had to be the dream again, it had to be, as flames exploded around her, licking at her hair, the delicate fabric of her nightgown, her soft skin. But he felt the heat singeing the hair on his body, the grit of the smoke in his lungs choking him from the inside, and he knew with sickening certainty that this time it was real. His only thought was of getting to Jess, having to save Jess, but he was dragged against his will back from the conflagration devouring the woman he loved, away from the woman who was dying in agony because he’d ignored the warnings he’d been shown. The warnings he had dismissed in his denial of the life he’d been trying to escape.

In that moment, he wanted so desperately for the flames to take him too.

FROM: AMELIA RICHARDSON

Sam I need your help

Come quick

The first thoughts that flash through Sam’s mind are the vision of Jess on the ceiling, and that the same thing could be happening to Amelia right now. And that it would be his fault, again.

He left Amelia ignorant, unprepared, vulnerable. He should have told her about the things out there that would take revenge on him through anyone he was close to. He should never have fallen for her in the first place, knowing what happens to people he cares about. Knowing that it always ends this way. Now he’s condemned yet another person he loves to a horrible death because he was stupid enough to think that he could have anything but a life of violence and desperation and loss.

Sam’s heart is hammering in his chest, his foot pushing the gas pedal to the floor but the ancient beast of a car refuses to respond. He takes his frustration out on the steering wheel, points the car in the direction of civilization to try to get a decent signal on his phone. Fifteen minutes after taking off in Martin’s car, abandoning the guy at Benny’s former camp site in the woods, he pulls over to open Amelia’s message again. With shaking hands he stabs at the buttons, missing once, twice, and he has to force himself to take several deep breaths to subdue the panic. A very deliberate, controlled motion lets him pop up the contact details of the text with the intention of auto-dialing the number, and he does a double-take because the number associated with the text isn’t Amelia’s.

But he does know whose number it is.

A sob born of the release from suppressed terror escapes him because it means she’s okay. Amelia is okay, she’s not pinned to the ceiling dripping blood from an ugly gash across her stomach. She’s not being consumed by flames, suffering the most painful death imaginable at the hands of forces she doesn’t know exist. Then the implication sinks in, rage displaces relief, and Sam damned near smashes his phone to pieces against the dashboard but reins in his fury at the last second. He inhales deeply, exhales his anger out, and despair rushes in to fill the void.

Amelia is alive and well, thank God. He wants so badly to drive out there, to confirm that she’s okay, but he also knows it’s just an excuse to see her again. Nothing good would come of him showing up at her door and interfering with her life with Don; it would just be self-torture. Or worse, she could ask him to stay. He made the tough choice once to do what was best for her and walked away, and he’s not at all sure he could do it again.

Now he has to come to terms with the fact that Dean was not only willing to blindly take the word of a vampire, but that he would betray his own brother to let that monster walk. It goes so far against Dean’s nature that Sam has to wonder if he might be under some unnatural influence, and the memory of Ruby’s exultation at how well she manipulated Sam gnaws at his stomach. The other possibility isn’t any better: that Sam really has sunk so low in Dean’s estimation that Dean would exploit his grief and fear to send him hauling ass in another direction rather than try to get his buy-in with tangible proof. He’s honestly not sure which explanation is worse; he’s only sure that he has to know, no matter what it costs.

Sam never removed the Lo-Jack Dean had installed in the Impala when they had been forced off the grid and had left her slumbering in a barn in another state. It doesn’t take him long to get her current location.

******

“Guys like us, we don’t get a home. We don’t get family.”

Benny blinks at the sentence Dean drops on the floor like a wet sandbag. It’s a jarring pronouncement after the months Dean spent going on and on about his little brother, almost to the point where he was damn near ready to forgo the ride out and shove Dean through the portal by himself. He doesn’t need to be human to recognize that something’s not right between them.

“…You got Sam,” Benny probes tentatively, taking a sounding to see how deep the rift really goes.

Dean hesitates, which is an answer in itself. “Yeah,” he says halfheartedly, and Benny concludes that the schism goes down far enough for a man to drown.

“Benny, you got to go deep underground, where nobody knows who you are.”

And now Benny suspects that it’s likely because of whatever Dean did to get Sam off his back.

Grateful as he is for Dean’s help, he wonders if his friend has only created a bigger problem. The way Dean tells it, his brother isn’t exactly a slouch in the hunting department, and now Dean just might have gone and given Sam a personal reason to come after him. Not that he thinks for a second that Sam is any particular threat to him, but if push comes to shove and he has to defend himself… well. Regardless of whatever falling out the two of them had, Dean probably wouldn’t take kindly to his little brother being dead.

Benny watches Dean walk to the Impala, the other object of his devotion that he wouldn’t shut up about, and Dean gives him a half-salute in farewell before dropping into the driver’s seat. He turns back inside the boathouse, listening to the low rumbling purr of the Impala fading into the distance as he stands over the pieces of Desmond’s corpse. He gives the head a nudge with his toe, and it rolls so the sightless eyes are staring at the wall instead of the ceiling.

“You stupid bastard. That’s what you get for messin’ with someone who has Dean Winchester for a friend.”

He’s about to stoop down to drag Desmond’s remains to the dock for disposal when he picks up the heartbeat behind him, recognizes the scent from their first meeting. It confirms that his worry was justified.

Benny turns around slowly. “And to what do I owe the pleasure of Sam Winchester’s company?”

Sam’s six-foot-four figure fills the door frame, silhouetted by the lights from the shipyard beyond. Vampiric nocturnal sight plus the scant light filtering in through the grimy windows reveals the gun Sam is pointing in his direction, and Benny barks out a laugh. Apparently, this mighty hunter doesn’t know much about going after his kind.

“Well, don’t you got a steel pair on you. You think that peashooter’s gonna do more than tickle?”

“Seventeen rounds filled with dead man’s blood,” comes the cool reply, “will do a hell of a lot more than tickle.”

Benny does a quick reassessment of the situation. Clearly Dean’s little brother is half as cocky and twice as dangerous as he gave him credit for, year-long vacation from hunting notwithstanding. But seeing as how dead-man’s bullets haven’t already reduced him to a quivering heap on the floor, there must be something more to Sam’s visit than a straight-up execution. Either that, or he’s bluffing.

“So why am I still standing? You waitin’ on an engraved invitation to shoot?”

“You haven’t given me a reason to,” Sam’s eyes flick to the decapitated corpse lying on the wooden planks and then back. “Yet.”

“And why else would you be here, if not to put down the big, bad monster?” Benny languidly extends, then retracts his fangs in a display of intimidation. “Should’ve taken the shot when my back was turned. You lost the advantage,” he says in a patronizing tone, crossing his arms.

Sam’s impassive bearing shows no sign of cracking. Benny takes in the relaxed but firm grip on the gun, the unwavering barrel, the utterly calm demeanor, hears the slow, steady heartbeat.

Better go with not bluffing, then.

“I’m here for the truth. I’m not a murderer; I don’t kill unless there’s a damned good reason.” He tilts his head slightly. “But don’t mistake me for a pushover, either. Dean might take you at your word, but I need more than blind faith. I’m willing to listen to your side, I’ll cut you that much slack for getting Dean out of Purgatory. But if it comes down to it, if I think for a second that you killed those people… I won’t hesitate to put you down.”

Sam talks like he’s the one who holds all the cards, like he’s got the right to be judge, jury, and executioner.

“Well, aren’t you just a peach,” Benny says, his voice coated in honey smooth sarcasm. “Here’s your truth.” He gives Desmond’s head another shove with his foot, rolling it back over to face Sam. “Like I told Dean, he’s a rogue vamp come to start up a nest. I said no, and that’s why he started leaving bodies around. Tryin’ to force me to go underground with him.”

Sam is quiet for a few heartbeats.

“Or,” he says, eyes narrowing, “maybe you threw the other vamp under the bus to snow Dean and throw him off. Maybe, because Dean lets you go, you decide to kill someone else, and their blood ends up on his hands.” Sam shakes his head slowly. “I won’t let that happen.”

Stalemate.

Benny takes a moment to appraise his adversary, trying to come up with the right tactic that will get him out of this in one piece. Sam could have pumped a clip full of poison into him before he turned around if he had chosen to, but he didn’t. It’s possible it was just a tactical error, but he won’t make the mistake of taking the giant hunter for a fool again.

He knows what kind of a man Dean is: honorable, ruthless but loyal to a fault, ready to go to the mat for anyone who proves their worth. He’s hoping Sam doesn’t fall that far from that tree. Dean had insisted that Sam was ready to kill him on sight, and apparently went to lengths to keep the two of them apart. Yet here they are, and Dean’s little brother still hasn’t put any extra holes in him. It makes sense, though; if it comes down to it, if one of them dies tonight, Dean won’t likely forgive the one left standing. Maybe Sam wants a reason to walk away.

Decision made, Benny drops his brazen, arrogant front with an exhale and holds his palms open in sincerity. “Look, I can’t give you proof I don’t have. All I can say is, there’s somethin’ about your brother… makes me never want to let him down, you know? I use that to help keep myself straight. So either believe me, and we part on amicable terms. Or don’t, and shoot.” He shrugs in resignation. “Your move, chief.”

Sam is absolutely still for several seconds, and Benny tries to calculate whether he can close the gap and take Sam out before a barrage of hot metal tears into his flesh and he’s left mewling on the floor like a kitten. He’s got the advantage, though; he can see Sam clearly in the darkness, whereas Sam only has his limited human sight. Benny tenses, a compressed spring ready attack.

Then Sam’s expression softens, the barrel of the gun wavers, and Sam redirects it to point away from Benny. A corner of his mouth ticks up for a moment. “Yeah. Dean tends to have that effect on people.”

Apparently, Benny’s hit the one button that could get Sam to stand down. That’s his way out of this. He moves slowly over to a crate and sits down, deliberately putting himself in a non-threatening position, a gesture of good faith in response to Sam relaxing his stance. Sam hesitates for a moment, then takes a seat facing Benny on another crate a few feet away, gun still in hand but pointing down and to the side. Finger off the trigger.

Benny picks up the thread of the conversation. “He talked about you, back there, you know. All the time. His smart-as-a-whip baby brother with the puppy dog eyes. Tell you the truth, when we met at the dock, I was expecting a nerdy little guy, ninety pounds soaking wet.” He chuckles, low and deep. “Imagine my surprise.”

“Huh. Funny how reality never seems to match our expectations.” Sam says with a flicker of a smile, and Benny wonders if Sam might be starting to thaw to him. He opens his mouth to press, but Sam cuts him off and changes the topic abruptly.

“So how are you managing? Not a whole lot of livestock besides chickens around here. How do you… uh… keep yourself fed?”

“Donations. Not from the tap, though.”

“But still human?”

“Yeah, human. For now,” Benny admits. “I was in a bad way, and human blood’s the only way to fix some things. Good thing Dean knows his way around a blood bank, I’ve been able to stretch it out a fair bit.” It’s a deliberate prod to test Sam’s reaction to how far Dean has gone for him. Sam’s brows furrow slightly; obviously not thrilled, but not outright angry either.

“What was it like,” Sam continues the interview, “coming back here after so long in Purgatory? Having to fight that craving again? Couldn’t have been easy.”

Benny thinks he knows where this is headed, searches Sam’s face for an accusation, but it’s hard to get a read. “You mean did I tear into the first person I saw like a starving man at a pie-eating contest?”

“Uh, that’s not how I would’ve—” Sam shifts uncomfortably.

Benny can’t hold back a small laugh at Sam’s discomfiture—a hint of the little brother that Dean went on about peeking through the armored exterior of a hunter. He flashes Sam a grin to set him at ease. “No offense taken; I prefer candor. I’m not gonna lie, it damned near overwhelmed me the first day. You’re right, controlling the hunger ain’t easy. But I made a promise to Dean.” He pauses, then adds, “I’m guessin’ you appreciate what that means, or we wouldn’t still be here talking.”

“Yeah. Believe me, I get that.” Sam nods. Then he looks down. “More than anyone.”

There’s something about the tone, the haunted look on Sam’s face… Benny plays a hunch. “You ever have your own cross to bear?”

Sam’s eyes lock back onto him for a few seconds, his eyebrows shooting up in surprise, and Benny has his answer. Sam’s face reverts to its former guarded, neutral state, and Benny thinks he might have pushed too far. He lifts his hands in apology. “Sorry, didn’t mean to pry. Just… thought we might share something in common, is all I meant. I’m guessing your human drugs might feel like this, too.”

The quiet stretches uncomfortably, and Benny starts wondering if he’s just shot his chances to hell.

“It wasn’t a drug. Not a human one, anyway. It was… worse.” And now it’s Benny’s turn to be surprised. “I’ve been clean for years, but…” Sam trails off and shrugs.

“It never lets you go, does it?” Benny finishes. Sam’s admission must have been difficult for him, and it explains a little about why he didn’t shoot first and decapitate immediately thereafter. Benny seizes the opportunity to steer them further towards common ground. “Guess we’re both lucky we got Dean to help us through it.”

But Sam’s reaction is all wrong.

His heart rate spikes for a few beats and his face falls for a brief moment before he closes up again like a wound healing over.

“Yeah,” Sam says in the same tone that Dean used earlier, and he looks away.

“Oh.” Benny feels like he’s just blundered into a trip wire. He senses his carefully cultivated, tenuous connection with Sam snap, and he casts another line hoping to salvage the situation. Give them both one last chance to leave without blood being spilled. “Maybe… maybe he’s changed. Maybe he regrets what he couldn’t do for you.”

“Changed?” Sam huffs out a bitter laugh. “Yeah, he’s changed alright. But not for—” Sam cuts himself off.

“Hey man, I’m sorry. It was never my intention to come between the two of you.”

Sam’s tone is clipped. “Don’t apologize. He made his own choices.”

Benny eyes the gun that Sam is still holding, now in a tighter grip. “Have you made yours?”

Sam runs a hand down his face. “Look Benny, I’ve known of monsters who were able to control themselves, find other ways to live without hurting people. I know it can be done. But I also know how hard it is to stay on track, from… personal experience. No matter how much you don’t want to let Dean down.”

“So, what now?”

Sam sighs, and it sounds genuinely regretful. “I don’t know you. Dean only knew you in Purgatory when you didn’t have to fight for control all the time. I want to trust you… but the last time I trusted a monster, a lot of people got hurt. A lot of people died. If I give you the benefit of the doubt and I’m wrong...” Sam’s eyes harden. “I can’t leave without knowing who you really are.” He stands, drawing his machete, and Benny’s hope disintegrates.

Benny rises as well, once again on alert, once again coiling himself for attack. “And what if I kill you instead?”

“Then I guess I’ll know.” Sam looks him dead in the eye. “And so will Dean.”

Chapter Text

Dean hasn’t felt this good since—he’s not sure when. Probably since his feet touched the ground on the other side of the portal from Purgatory.

Benny’s long gone by now with Sam tearing ass in the opposite direction, and as far as Dean’s concerned, the more distance between them, the better. And yeah, Sam will be pissed, but that’s a problem for tomorrow. Right now, he’s earned a fucking break. He cranks the tunes, rolls the window down to let the breeze ruffle his hair, and inhales the sweet scent of a warm Southern night. He taps his thumbs against the steering wheel in time to Feel Alright.

“Just you and me, Steve Earl, you and me.”

Dean belts out his own vocal backup to the song. “I feel all right… I feel all right tonight…”

The buzzing of his phone interrupts his performance, and he’s tempted to let it roll over to voicemail when he sees that the incoming call is from Benny. He reaches across the seat, snags the phone with outstretched fingers, and picks up.

“Yo, miss me already?”

“…Dean?” There’s a shakiness to Benny’s voice that jolts Dean to full attention.

“Benny?” Dean jabs his finger at the power button to silence the radio. “What’s wrong?”

“Dean… you gotta get back to the docks. Now. Your brother…”

Sam should have been halfway to the Texas border by now. What the hell did he do?

“Benny, what’s going on?”

“Just get here. Quick.”

Benny’s end goes dead, and Dean drops the phone, slams on the brake, and pulls Baby into a one-eighty.

Dean skids the Impala to a halt outside the building where he and Benny had ganked Desmond less than an hour ago, makes for the entrance at a dead run, gun drawn, dreading what he’s going to find inside. Praying that it isn’t Benny with his head already separated from his shoulders, because if Sam’s killed him, he swears he’ll—

He charges through the open door, then comes to a standstill as he takes in the nightmare scenario before him that’s been playing out in his head ever since Sam found out about Benny. But it’s not the one he’d expected, not the one he’d prepared himself for; it’s the other one. It’s the one where Sam is sprawled on the floor, machete and gun lying to either side of him, blood pooled on the floor next to him.

Benny is crouching over him, dark stained hand holding a dark stained rag to Sam’s neck.

“Oh God. Benny, what happened? Did Sam try to—?"

Benny looks up at him, and Dean can just make out the guilt-ridden expression on Benny’s blood-smeared face. “He didn’t— it ain’t what you think, Dean. He drew that blade and I thought he was gonna—but the dumb bastard cut his own neck open. To see if I would resist, I guess. Took me by surprise, I didn’t mean to—” Benny shakes his head. “By the time I came to my senses, it was almost too late.”

His brother-in-arms, his friend, the only one who’s never let him down, squeezes his eyes shut and lowers his head in misery. “Dean, I’m so sorry.”

Benny’s confession barely registers before Dean drops to his brother’s side, holding his breath while he tries to find a pulse, then sags with relief when he feels the steady rhythm beneath his fingers. Then he tenses in alarm when he realizes that it’s too fast, it’s much too fast, that Sam’s heart is fighting too hard to keep his blood flowing.

“How much?” Dean grits out, panic barely contained.

Benny just looks at him blankly, and Dean clamps down hard on the urge to pummel him. He grabs Benny’s jacket instead and shouts in his face, “How much did you fucking take?”

It seems to snap Benny back into focus and he barks back angrily, “I don’t know. Ain’t like I used a damn measuring cup!” He jerks free from Dean’s grip, takes a shaky breath, and regains his composure. “Not enough to kill him… but a lot,” he says quietly. “And it’s not stopping.”

Dean sheds his jacket, takes off his outer shirt and balls it up. “Move,” he commands through clenched teeth instead of shouting get the fuck away from my brother, because Benny didn’t mean to do it, it’s not his fault. It can’t be his fault.

“Dean…” Benny says tentatively, “You know we produce an anticoagulant, right? That’s why pressure isn’t helping. I was hoping it would have been flushed out by now, but…”

And that’s just fucking great. His brother is on the ground bleeding out while his friend gives him a lesson in vampire biology. Dean presses the shirt to the ugly wound on Sam’s neck anyway, grateful all over again for Castiel’s miraculous return from Purgatory.

“Cas. Cas, you got your ears on? We need you.”

Benny looks at him in surprise. “Castiel? Your angel made it out?”

“Yeah. Don’t ask me how, he just showed up one day.”

Seconds tick by, but there’s no gentle breeze from the rustling of wings heralding his appearance.

“Cas! C’mon, it’s Sam, he’s hurt. Please!”

Silence.

“Damn it, Cas!”

Dean has to fight to rein in his frustration at the angel, his terror at Sam’s life draining before his eyes. “Where’s the nearest hospital?”

“’Bout 30 minutes away. But I don’t know if he can—”

“Don’t say it. Don’t even think it.”

A soft moan emanates from Sam, and his eyes flutter open but they’re unfocused, drifting. “Dean…?”

“Sam, it’s okay, it’s okay. I’m here. Don’t… don’t move.” Benny’s right, the bleeding isn’t stopping, and the dark stain on the makeshift bandage keeps spreading.

Fuck. Fuck. Damn Sam for not being in Texas like he was supposed to be. He’d be safe. Sam might not ever speak to him again, but he’d be safe. He doesn’t know how long Sam’s got—seconds or minutes—and there’s only one thing they can do that he can think of.

Dean looks at Benny, pleading. “Turn him.”

Benny pulls back, appalled. “You can’t be serious.”

“It’s okay, I can turn him back as long as he doesn’t feed. You turn him, he gets fixed, I cure him, he’s good as new.”

“Dean…” Benny’s expression turns to pity.

“What?”

“That’s… that’s not the way it works. Turning him will keep the lights on, but it’s the blood that’ll fix him up. You cure him before he feeds, he goes right back to where he is now.”

“Dean…” comes from Sam between quick, panting breaths, his fingers clutching weakly at the front of Dean’s T-shirt.

When Dean looks back down at his brother’s face, he sees eyes wide with fear.  “Not… not... monster.” The last word comes out as an imploring whisper. “Please.” Sam’s grip goes slack and his arm drops back down. His eyes roll back and close, and then he’s still.

They’re out of time.

“Do it. Just keep him from dying, I’ll figure the rest out later!”

“But Sam doesn’t—”

Dean looks Benny in the eye, something deadly and feral taking him over, and each syllable drops from his mouth like a hammer. “Do it. Now.”

Objection is plain on Benny’s face, but he obeys. His fangs descend, he bites his own arm, and he lets the blood drip into Sam’s mouth like sacramental wine at a christening.

******

The first thing he’s aware of is a sound pounding in his ears, head throbbing in time to the thump-whoosh, thump-woosh, thump-woosh that should be synchronized with a pulse in his extremities or his heart beating within his chest, except he can’t feel either. Then comes the enticing scent of something metallic and rich. Ambrosial. Heavenly. It awakens a burning need in him that he hasn’t felt since—since—

Sam opens his eyes and realizes that he’s no longer in the boathouse. The room he’s in is mostly empty, with a mildewed dresser that’s missing a drawer standing in one corner and a couple of plain, wooden chairs against a wall, sitting on the water-warped hardwood floor. The wall is adorned with wallpaper that has a pattern of twining branches and pink blossoms. It might have been bright and cheerful at one time, but it’s yellowed with age and now curls inward at the seams. It strikes Sam that there is no sunlight coming through the spaces between the boards nailed across the windows. He shouldn’t be able to make any of this out in the gloom of a single, dim lantern, yet he can see it all as plainly as if it were midday.

And then he sees the source of the incessant sound assaulting his ears, a cold lump of fear forming in his chest as he realizes that it’s a heartbeat that isn’t his own. It’s coming from across the room.

From Dean.

A wave of overpowering hunger washes through him and all he can think about is sinking his teeth into living flesh, tasting the warm liquid, feeling the life coursing into him, making him strong and whole again. Making him feel alive. Powerful.

He remembers that feeling, and it conjures an image of Dean looking at him in horror and disgust as he knelt over a drained demon. He sobers instantly. Memories wrap him in shame, smother him in self-loathing.

No. God, no.

“Dean…” Sam’s voice creaks out painfully, broken.

“Sam?” Dean breaks off from whatever intense conversation he’s having with Benny that Sam can’t hear over the rhythmic contractions of his brother’s heart and the rush of blood through his veins. There’s a look of relief on his face as he takes a step towards him, but Benny holds him back with a hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t.” Benny’s tone carries a warning.

It comes back to Sam then: his conversation with Benny. One final test to dispel any lingering doubts about whether humans were really off the vampire’s menu, to know that he could walk out of there with a clear conscience. The fangs tearing at his flesh and his surprise and genuine disappointment warring with relief that maybe Benny wasn’t a better brother after all. A flash of Dean kneeling over him, telling him it would be okay. He’d thought it was just a dying hallucination.

The last thing he expected was to wake up.

No. The last thing he expected was to wake up a vampire.

“What did you—” Sam chokes and takes a shuddering breath, focusing on his brother’s face. “You let him do this to me?”

A flicker of guilt crosses Dean’s face before it hardens defensively. “I told him to, Sammy. You would have died. There was no other way. We’ve got the cure, remember? We’ll fix this.”

Again, Dean starts moving closer and before he knows what he’s doing, Sam finds himself instinctively trying to lunge towards his deliverance from starvation. A rattle of metal on metal and a pull at his wrists reveals that he’s restrained, hands cuffed to the frame of the bed he’s lying on. Dean flinches back away from him, failing to hide his revulsion as Sam realizes that his fangs are on display. Mortified, he retracts them with an effort.

Benny is suddenly between Dean and him. “Dean. Go get what you need. I’ll stay with him.”

“I can’t leave him like this—”

“You’re not doing him any good here. You told me you’d been turned before; you remember what that was like?”

Dean relents, nodding reluctantly. “Yeah. I remember. Just don’t let him… you know.”

“I know.”

Dean leaves without looking at Sam again, and the barely controllable longing recedes with Dean’s footsteps until Sam is left with just a gnawing emptiness. It’s not pleasant, but it’s manageable, and Sam sags back against the bare mattress.

Benny’s back is to Sam while he continues to stare at the doorway through which Dean just left. He takes his cap off and runs his hand over his short-cropped hair. “I’m sorry, Sam. Truly. I didn’t want this.” His shoulders slump, then he turns and drags a chair closer to the bed. Benny sits, elbows on knees, eyes glued to the floor between them. “Looks like you were right about me after all.”

Sam can’t reconcile that statement with the fact that he’s not dead and that Benny didn’t just take off. He starts to question his former conclusion. “Why did Dean come back?”

Benny looks at him for a moment, puzzled. “I called him. I couldn’t just let you…” He falters, wringing his hands. “I was hoping he could patch you up, and if not… at least he deserved to know what happened. And that it was my fault.”

The admission stuns Sam, and he shakes his head in disagreement. “Benny, if I had been right about you, you would have let me bleed out on the floor and been a hundred miles away by now. You sure as shit wouldn’t have stuck around to try to keep me alive.”

Benny looks up in surprise and gives him an uneasy smile. “Dean wasn’t lying about you bein’ too forgiving.” His smile fades into remorse.

Sam studies Benny’s face for a moment and it brings back memories of Lenore, begging them to kill her, ashamed of being driven past her control by Eve’s presence. It brings up the memory of his own failure under the influence of Famine. “You were able to stop yourself. That counts for something.”

 “I never should have attacked in the first place. Your blood, it just—” Benny cuts himself off and shakes his head. “I don’t understand why I lost control. I shouldn’t have.”

A memory breaches the surface, of two ghouls standing over him licking their fingers. His blood—it tastes different. Sam mentally curses himself for a fool.

“I know why,” Sam replies, and lets out a bitter, self-deprecating laugh, redirecting his gaze to the ceiling. “Because I’m an idiot.”

Benny sits back and stares at him in confusion. “Far be it from me to argue with you, but would you do me a solid and connect those dots for me?”

“It wasn’t a fair test. I wanted to know if you could resist human blood.”  Sam’s throat tightens. “Benny, I haven’t been fully human since I was six months old.”

“What?”

“When a demon fed me his blood. And I’ve downed gallons of the stuff since then.” Sam turns his head to look directly at Benny. “I told you my addiction was worse than drugs.”

“Oh.”

“Where did Dean go?” Sam asks, mostly as an exit ramp from the awkwardness of the current topic.

“Supply run. I turned you to buy us some time to patch you up before we give you the cure. Dean tried to call for your angel, but I guess it didn’t go through.”

Sam nods in understanding and would feel some measure of relief, but there’s an unmistakable hesitancy in Benny’s voice. “So what’s the catch?”

“Problem is, you lost a lot of blood, and it won’t do any good to try to put it back in without a heart pumping to circulate it.”

“So I have to take the cure first.”

“Right. And as soon as you take it, you’re gonna start bleeding like a stuck pig again. The plan is to pack the wounds, give you the cure and then start blood flowing through an IV to try to keep your blood pressure up until the bleeding stops.”

It seems like a reasonable plan, but there’s a distinct lack of confidence coming from Benny. “What’s the part you’re not saying?”

“We don’t know exactly what kind of shape you were in before I— before. If your organs started shutting down... You need to know, plugging the holes and putting blood back in you might not be enough. Turning you back human could kill you.”

The news isn’t encouraging but doesn’t come as a surprise. “It’s not like I have another option.”

There’s a pause before Benny says tentatively, “You could just… stay a vampire.”

Sam looks at Benny sharply, unsure if he’s being serious, but detects nothing but earnestness. He lets his gaze drift away. “I can’t. I can’t stay like this. I don’t know how the hell you were able to stop yourself once you started. The last time I fell off the wagon, I drained two demons. Completely. I couldn’t control it.”

“We both know it ain’t easy, but the vamp thing isn’t as bad once you get used to it. Especially if you got someone else to help you through it.”

Sam laughs a little, skeptical. “What, like an AA sponsor?”

“Sure. We help each other stay clean. It’s a smoother ride when you got someone else pulling you through the rough spots.”

It’s almost tempting.

Almost.

“Even if I thought I could handle it, Dean would never go for it.”

“Why not? Hell, if he thinks I can do it… it beats maybe losing his own brother for good, don’t it?”

A memory of a voice that once floated down through the floor, amplified by salt infused iron, says otherwise.

At least he dies human.

Sam dismisses the notion that Dean’s recent open-door policy on bloodsucking freaks could ever apply to him. He still has the recording of Dean’s voice mail saying as much.

“This isn’t exactly the first time he’s faced a decision like this,” Sam says, carefully keeping any emotion out of his voice. “I’m pretty sure he hasn’t changed his mind.”

Benny sits back in the chair and tilts his head slightly. “Sam… why would this be Dean’s choice at all?”

Sam remains silent. He doesn’t know how to put the answer to that into words.

A soft, pink-hued light filtering through the spaces between the two-by-fours reveals that dawn is imminent when the pounding of a beating heart precedes Dean into the house, rousing Sam from a dreamless sleep. Despite Sam’s restraints, Dean keeps his distance as he sets down the load of supplies he’s obtained: an IV stand, first aid kit, and a couple of coolers. Sam doesn’t have to guess about the coolers’ contents; the smell hits him like a wall, rekindling his hunger like a lit match to gasoline, and he has to fight for control. He keeps his fangs retracted with some difficulty.

Which makes him wonder how in hell Dean is proposing to patch him up when he can barely keep a lid on himself even from a distance.

Dean provides the answer. “Sorry I took so long. Had to make an extra stop for some, uh…” Dean’s eyes flick to Sam momentarily in apology, then back to Benny. “Dead man’s blood. Your stalker crushed my last vial.”

They’ve used dead man’s blood on vamps plenty of times before, he’s seen the effect it has, but Sam has never stopped to consider what it actually feels like. Not pleasant, given the sympathetic expression on Benny’s face.

“You sure you need to do that? He’s not that strong yet, I can hold him.”

“No, Benny, it’s alright,” Sam interjects before his trepidation can get the better of him. “It’ll be easier that way. But—” Sam eyes the hypodermic in Dean’s hands, and he’s not at all sure that he won’t fight him. “Dean… you’d better let Benny do it.”

While Dean arranges the medical supplies, Benny obliges, sliding the needle into his arm gently. It turns out to be worse than Sam thought. An excruciating burning sensation crawls through the veins in his arm, his muscles involuntarily tightening in response, and Sam can’t prevent grunts of pain from escaping. But the torment quickly fades to discomfort, and he’s left feeling so weak he can’t even lift his head. Benny looks over at Dean and nods.

“Let’s get this done before it wears off.” Dean approaches the bed quickly and lays out what he needs on one of the chairs, as Benny holds Sam’s head tilted away from the wounds on his neck. Anything Dean says after that is drowned out by the sound of his rushing blood promising euphoria, and Sam decides that the dead man’s blood was a good call.

Dean is well-practiced at patching up wounds and Sam has no doubt he’s working as quickly as possible, but to him it feels like an eternity of trying to hold back a tsunami of instinctual need, the closeness of the overwhelming smell sending him to the edge of his sanity. It’s a relief when he finally withdraws. Dean passes the prepared cure over to Benny to administer to Sam, then his hand hovers by the clamp below the IV bag that will start the blood flowing.

Benny hesitates, his eyebrows raised in silent question, giving Sam a final opportunity to reconsider the alternative they’d discussed, not understanding the depth of Dean’s rejection Sam would be faced with down that path. Sam simply nods, and Benny helps him hold his head up as he swallows down the mixture. Benny makes a hasty exit out of mutually agreed upon caution, having previously expressed concerns about holding himself back once the blood spigot opened.

For several seconds there’s nothing, and Sam wonders if the dead man’s blood was a mistake after all, if it somehow counted as “feeding”. Then he feels like something is bludgeoning his chest as his heart kickstarts, and Dean releases the clamp on the IV and blood is running both into and out of him at the same time. He struggles to breathe, sucking in air in short frantic gasps, and his heart is jackhammering like it’s trying to burst free. Agony sears through him as his muscles cramp, his vision starts to dim, and the reality of his situation kicks him in the teeth in slow motion.

It was already too late.

He wants to say something to Dean instead of leaving things like they are between them, but the pain robs him of his voice. All he can do now is try to find some comfort reflected in his brother’s face, try to express everything he wants to say with his eyes in his last moments of consciousness.

I wish I could have been the one you believed in.

Chapter Text

I need to go to him.

No. Stay on task.

But Sam will—

It’s just one human, they aren’t important. Stay. On. Task. Or do you need another session to get your priorities straight?

…I was merely considering that they can be of use to us. They can infiltrate places with angel warding.

You only need one of them. Dean should suffice.

If one dies… the other will be useless to us. I know this from experience. We need both.

…Fine. Do what you must. But you didn’t hear his first prayer. You won’t remember that it was during our last session.

******

The rays of full morning light pierce the gloom, and Dean is still jacked with adrenaline, bouncing his leg in an attempt to dispel the remnants of barely suppressed panic. He sits vigil next to the stained mattress where Sam lies in the throes of the cure, finally free from the restraints, thrashing side to side and trembling, his hair matted to his face with sweat.

The moment Dean had lost Sam’s pulse, everything became a blur of white-hot desperation and unenforceable threats hurled at every being in existence to get their asses down there and fix his brother Or Else while he applied chest compressions over and over. Every second of silence stretched into eternity, despair eclipsing Dean’s anger as his arms began to tire and shake with the strain, watching Sam slip away. Knowing there was fuck-all he could do to stop it, kicking himself for his own smugness at pulling one over on Sam like it was just some stupid prank.

And then came the soft flutter of wings and the gentle healing glow from Castiel’s hand over Sam’s heart and neck. Sam had sucked in a gasping breath and then his pulse strengthened, his chest rose and fell with deep, regular breaths, and just like that it was over. Sam would live.

Dean’s weariness is bone-deep; he can’t remember how many hours or days it’s been since he last slept. As if reading his mind, Castiel says, “Dean, there’s nothing more that needs to be done. Why don’t you get some rest?”

But Dean’s brain is buzzing, reverberating with the nightmare that had been a hair’s breadth away from becoming reality. If Castiel hadn’t finally bothered to acknowledge his prayer…

Dean fixes Cas with a glare. “Rest? Sam almost died, Cas. Would have been a hell of a lot easier if you’d shown up the first time I called.”

Cas has the decency to look sheepish. “I’m sorry, Dean. I don’t understand why I didn’t hear your first prayer; please believe that I would have come if I had. But I’m here now, your brother will recover, and I will keep him asleep through the worst of his symptoms.”

He doesn’t know whether it’s because of fatigue or Castiel’s deep, calming voice, but Dean can’t hold onto his anger. He relents, sagging in the chair and running a hand over his stubble. The remaining adrenaline dissipates, and Dean feels its absence like a marionette with its strings suddenly cut.

“Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

He stands up and stretches, joints and muscles aching, but hesitates on his way out of the room. “You’ll let me know the second he’s awake.” He makes it clear that it’s not a request.

“Of course.”

Down the abandoned house’s creaky flight of stairs and to the right is what used to be a living room, which is dominated by a couch with a hideous floral pattern and that smells like a sewer. Dean has no intention of lying on the thing; he’s pretty sure that under a black light, it would look like a murder scene.

He’s surprised to find Benny occupying the floor. Dean assumed he would have been putting as much distance between himself and the Winchesters in case the worst happened, but he’s stretched out on top a sleeping bag, lying on his back with his hands behind his head. His eyes are open and staring at the water-stained ceiling.

“How’s your brother? Is he…?” Benny asks, eyes still glued above him, the tension in his voice belying his relaxed pose.

A reflexive, sarcastic response fortunately breaks down before it reaches Dean’s mouth, sabotaged by weariness. Instead, Dean sinks onto a second sleeping bag laid out on the floor and exhales a deep sigh.

“He’s okay. Cas came and got to him in time.” Dean nods to himself. “He’s gonna be okay.”

Benny closes his eyes and visibly deflates with relief. When he turns his head to look at Dean, he seems genuinely pleased. “Good. I’m glad he’s alright.”

Dean is grateful for Benny’s reaction but also puzzled. Curiosity temporarily beats out the prospect of sleep and he says, “You know, you could have been long gone by now in case it didn’t go well. Why’d you stick around?”

“The thought crossed my mind,” Benny says matter-of-factly. “I guess I needed to know for myself if Sam was gonna be okay.” He turns his gaze back to the ceiling. “You know, he’s not what I expected.”

Now that he has a moment to think without an imminent crisis looming, Dean wonders what exactly transpired between Benny and his brother.

“How’s that?”

“I thought he’d be just another muscle-for-brains grunt bent on killing monsters, shoot first and ask questions never. But he’s not like that at all. And turns out, we got some things in common.”

Dean opens his mouth to ask what, then thinks better of it. The situation reminds him absurdly of when two of his high school conquests got together to compare notes, and he remembers how well that ended.

Benny rolls onto his side and props himself up on his elbow. “Tell you one thing though, I should have taken your warning about your brother more seriously. I underestimated him and he got the drop on me with a clip full of dead man’s blood.”

That’s news to Dean. They’d thought about the possibility of filling hollow point ammo with dead man’s blood before, but never got around to trying it. No way Sam would have had time to make any.

“What are you talking about? All we had were a few syringes of the stuff.”

Benny sits up fully, brows knit in confusion. “What? He said—" His face registers dawning understanding, then he grins and shakes his head. “Well I’ll be damned. The son-of-a bitch was bluffing.” A low chuckle rumbles in Benny’s throat.

 “Wait. You seriously fell for that?”

“Yeah. Remind me never to play poker with him.”

Dean’s torn between swelling with pride for his little brother and wanting to shake him until his bones rattled for recklessly betting his life on a lie. With the crash from the adrenaline high taking its toll, he decides he’ll deal with it later and allows exhaustion to finally claim him.

“Dean.”

His knife is in one hand and his other has a death grip on a lapel before Dean fully makes the transition to wakefulness and realizes the shadow hovering over him isn’t actually a threat. He disentangles his hand from the trench coat and sheaths the knife, trying to bring himself down from red alert.

“Jesus Cas. Maybe keep a little distance next time you wake me up?”

“You asked me to inform you when your brother was awake,” Cas says, completely unruffled.

“What? Oh. Yeah.” Dean rubs his eyes while he shakes off the fog of sleep, then reaches for the camping lantern and turns it on.

In the dim glow, he notices that they’re alone. “Where’s Benny?”

“He said he was going to find some sustenance for you and Sam.”

Dean’s stomach growls on cue. It’s been at least a day and a half since he’s eaten, and now that Sam’s out of the woods hunger is finally catching up with him.

“How’s Sam—” Dean starts, but Cas disappears in a flutter. “—doing,” he finishes to an empty room. “Freakin’ angels,” he mutters as he makes his way upstairs to the room where Sam is recovering.

He reaches the top of the stairs and hears Sam’s voice coming from the room. “I’m fine, Cas. Really.”

Dean has to stop when he hears it. It’s normal, strong, like he hadn’t just been pulled back from the brink a few hours ago. For a moment, Dean can pretend the last twenty-four hours didn’t happen, that they’re just on a normal hunt together, that everything is fine. Then a dim memory of the nightmare Cas interrupted claws at him from behind his eyes: Benny’s severed head at his feet, Sam’s sightless eyes staring at him accusingly as a river of blood pours from a gaping wound in his neck, forming a bottomless pool that Dean is drowning in.

Dean has to take a beat to compose himself before he goes in.

Sam is whole, up and moving around, squinting a bit at the glow of the lantern. But just a bit, like a normal human instead of a severely light-sensitive newborn vampire. Cas has even cleaned the blood out of Sam’s clothes, erasing all evidence of the near catastrophe. Dean wishes he could scrub it all out of his mind as easily.

“Dean,” Sam says when their eyes meet, his tone grateful but his face guarded. His gaze slides over to Castiel and Sam clears his throat awkwardly. “Cas. Don’t you have somewhere else to be?”

“I do not.”

Dean wonders if Cas will ever get the hang of social cues. “Cas. That’s your hint to go away.”

“Ah. Of course. I’ll just… wait downstairs, then.”

Castiel opts to use his legs this time, and Dean turns to shut the door behind him. His back still to Sam, he asks, “You sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Tired… but I don’t feel like I’m switching between a freezer and an oven anymore. I think I’m past the worst of it.”

“Good. That’s good.” There are things that Dean wants to say, things he means to say, but the fear of what might have happened crawls out of his gut, contorts and boils over into anger, and he rounds on Sam.

“You mind telling me what the fuck were you thinking, going off to confront Benny like that? Were you trying to get yourself killed? Or were you trying to set Benny up so I’d have to take him out?”

It’s an absurd accusation, he knows it is, but it comes out of his mouth like he has to purge himself of a toxin.

Sam flinches back like he’s avoiding a blow, his expression incredulous at first, then ironic. “Set him up?” He barks out an ironic laugh, nodding as he looks away. “Oh, that’s funny coming from you, after you send me a fake text to send me hauling ass out of the state. When did you replace Amelia’s number, by the way? How many seconds did you wait after I got that call from Martin?”

The fact that Sam’s way off with his estimation makes Dean hesitate a second too long, his expression frozen just for moment. Sam picks up on it instantly, and there’s no mistaking his outrage.

“Before that? Are you kidding me? Exactly how long ago did you come up with this plan to use my feelings for Amelia to fuck me over?”

Dean shakes his head, trying to deflect the guilt. “It doesn’t matter—”

“When, Dean?”

“After Kearny, okay? After you told me you were gonna be the one to ice him!” Dean throws out his own recrimination before Sam can respond. “What did you think I’d do? You’ve been hell-bent on killing Benny since you met him!”

“Was I? How do you know that—because that’s what you would’ve done? Because that’s what you did do, to Amy? Remind me again, Mr. If-it’s-supernatural-we-kill-it, which one of us wanted to kill Lenore and which one of us wanted to hear her out? I told you I might be the one to ice him, and Benny’s still kicking!”

“You sure as hell seemed gung-ho about ganking him when you cuffed me to the damn radiator! I knew he didn’t kill those people, and you just couldn’t accept that. You should have trusted me!”

“You blindly take the word of a vampire that you met a year ago, who used you to get a ride out, and you think I’m being unreasonable for being skeptical?” Sam scoffs as he gathers himself to his full height. “Come off it, Dean! We both know exactly what’s going on here.” He stabs a finger at Dean’s and his voice crescendos. “You didn’t pull that stunt on me because you ‘knew’ Benny was innocent. You did it because you didn’t want to know if he wasn’t!”

Sam pushes past Dean, wrenches the door open, then hesitates with his hand on the knob. His shoulders slump and his voice is low and tight. “And you just couldn’t handle finding out that someone else might have let you down, could you?”

Then Sam is through the doorway leaving Dean in his wake, staring dumbfounded at the empty space.

******

The reverberations from the door slamming behind Sam on his way out are still echoing through the house as Benny sets the pizza box down on the rickety kitchen table. He settles into a chair and exchanges an uncomfortable look with Castiel.

“They always like this?”

The angel lets out a long-suffering sigh. “Not always. But often enough to be annoying. They’ll come around sooner or later.” He indicates the door with a tilt of his head. “In the meantime, I’d better keep an eye on him.” Castiel disappears with a rustle of feathers.

Dean comes into the kitchen, his face thunderous, and drops into the chair across from Benny. Eyes on the door through which Sam recently left, he works a slice of pizza loose and lifts it towards his mouth. He stops just short of taking a bite and, with a look of horror, drops it onto a paper plate like it’s burned him.

He looks across at Benny in dismay. “Seriously dude, broccoli on pizza?”

Benny’s lips quirk up in amusement as he watches Dean pick vegetables off like they’re a personal affront to him. “Not like we had a lot of pizza joints around in my day. I wasn’t sure what to get on it, so I just asked for everything.”

Dean gives him a serious stare. “Okay, if you’re gonna blend in, here’s rule number one: it’s heresy to put anything green on pizza.”

Apparently satisfied that he’s gotten rid of the last of the offending non-meat toppings, Dean takes a large bite, but he chews mechanically while his eyes linger once again on the door, brows knit. Benny would never accuse Dean of subtlety when it comes to expressing his mood.

“Cas is looking out for him. I’m sure he’ll be back.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I know.”

Dean sets the slice down again and rubs a hand over his three-day-old stubble, an awkward silence falling between them. Having caught the tail end of the brothers’ argument, in Benny’s opinion it would be best for all concerned if he took his leave. He pushes his chair back, stands up, and adjusts his cap.

“You’re taking off?” Dean asks, and while his tone is mostly flat, there’s an undercurrent of disappointment that Benny didn’t expect.

“Didn’t want to overstay my welcome. I mean, I did almost kill your brother. I’m not sure what kind of small talk you follow that up with.”

Dean waves a dismissive hand. “Yeah, well, it’s not entirely your fault. Sam was an idiot for doing what he did. He was wrong about you, and he knows it now, and that’s that.”

“Dean… Sam wasn’t entirely wrong about me.” At Dean’s skeptical look, Benny sighs and lowers himself back down into the chair.

“Look, I appreciate your faith in me… it means more than I can say. But staying clean isn’t as easy as I remembered, and a lot harder than I let on. When we were taking out Desmond, there was a moment there when I…”

The confession is more difficult than Benny thought it would be, and he fixes his eyes on the table. “I saw the blood on your neck after Desmond took a chunk out of you, and the fangs came out. I almost couldn’t put ‘em away.”

He looks back up at Dean, expecting dismay, disgust, something, but he sees only determination.

“But you did,” Dean says emphatically, without hesitation, and leans forward. “Sam should never have baited you like that, not when you weren’t ready for it.”

Benny is grateful for his unwavering belief, but at the same time he finds it somewhat disturbing. “Life doesn’t play by my rules. What about the next time someone just happens to bleed in front of me? And the next? I have to be able to control it, ready or not, every time.”

“C’mon, Benny, people aren’t gonna deliberately taunt you with it like Sam did. It wasn’t fair.”

“Huh. Funny, Sam said the same thing. He thinks I lost control because his blood’s tainted.”

Dean’s eyebrows arch in surprise, then furrow in concern. “He said that?”

“Thing is… there’s nothing different about his blood from anyone else’s, as far as I can tell. But even if there was, it shouldn’t matter. You’re both bending over backwards to make excuses for me, when all it comes down to is… I messed up. And I honestly don’t know that I won’t screw up again at some point.”

The attempt to get Dean to see him realistically only seems to make Dean dig in his heels more. “You’re overthinking it. One day at a time, right?” Dean leans back, wipes his mouth on his sleeve. “It’ll get easier.”

Benny wishes he could share in Dean’s naivete, that his fears could all be swept away with one-line platitudes, but he knows better. He tries one more time to break through, to get Dean to see the situation pragmatically.

“No, Dean. It won’t. This ain’t a battle I can ever win, it’s just one I have to keep fighting as long as I’m here. It was different when I had someone by my side to remind me what I’m fighting for, when I had Andrea to wake up to every day.” Benny shakes his head. “I guess I underestimated how hard it would be to do this without her.”

“It was one mistake, Benny. I’m not cutting off your head just for one mistake.”

“What about two? Or five? You gonna keep making excuses for me until a body drops?”

“What are you saying, Benny? You want to bail ‘cause you think you might not stay on the wagon? ‘Cause I know you, and I think that’s crap.”

“What I’m saying is… I can’t do this on my own, without someone to keep me on the right path. I know I gotta stay away from Lizzie; it was a dumb idea to come here in the first place. If Desmand had—” Benny yanks his mind back from imagining what Desmond could have done to her if he’d decided to use her as leverage.

“Point is, without someone like Andrea or Lizzie in my life, I need the next best thing. I need someone who’s willing to do what needs to be done before I cross a line I can’t come back from. Can you do that, Dean? Or if it comes down to it, are you just gonna find another reason to let me walk?”

The last time Benny saw Dean this angry was when Castiel suggested that they leave him behind to make it easier for them to get to the portal.

“Stop right there and listen to me. You could have let a Leviathan tear Cas apart and gotten out of Purgatory sooner, but you didn’t. You could have let Sam die and gone underground to save your own skin, but you did everything you could to keep him alive and you’re still here. Every time you get a chance to take the easy way out of a situation, you choose to stick it out instead. Now I don’t want to hear any more crap about how you might go bad someday. No way I’m gonna kill you until you do something to deserve it. And you won’t, ‘cause that’s not you.”

Benny thinks that feeding on Sam should have more than qualified, but he keeps it to himself. After witnessing Dean’s stubborn refusal to leave Castiel behind despite the angel’s well-reasoned arguments, he probably shouldn’t have expected anything else.

It strikes him in that moment that Dean wears denial like a coat of armor, believing that everything will go the way he wants, that people will become what he wants them to be, simply because he wills it. Every time things happen to work out for him after a rash decision, it only gets reinforced. And the thing is, his overconfidence is contagious, enticing. Dangerous. Benny can almost believe him, wants to believe him, wants to live up to the image of himself Dean carries, but he’s no longer certain that faith and promises alone will be enough. It’s only going to get more difficult to resist his nature, and he dreads the day when Dean’s illusions about him come crashing down and he has to face the disappointment in Dean’s eyes.

Something slots into place, and it suddenly makes sense why Sam would turn down his offer, cede a decision about his own life or death to Dean. Sam has faced Dean’s disappointment before. And he’d rather die than risk facing it again.

Chapter Text

Sam walks along the deserted road that runs past the house where they’d set up shop, the darkness broken up by the waxing three-quarter moon peering between clouds. It feels good to move again after the hours he’d spent restrained, and the delicate scent of the night air freshened by a gentle rain helps to clear his head, distance himself from the anger and hurt. He savors the absence of the overwhelming assault on his senses and unrelenting agony that he’d thought would only end one way, and tells himself once again that it’s over, really over. With the exception of one loose end to tie off.

Sam calls Martin and assures him that the vampire problem has been taken care of permanently, and that he’s sorry he took off on him and he can find his car at the dock, and no, he and his batshit brother won’t ever call him again. He snaps the phone shut, closing out this chapter of his life, and wonders what the hell is next for him.

Despite the absolute cluster fuck the whole ordeal turned into, Sam tries to count his blessings. He’s still alive, and he doesn’t have to face an eternity of being a vampire on top of already being a freak. Amelia was never in danger, and had he rushed back to Kermit he probably would have found her laughing over dinner or snuggling on the couch with Don, and the twinge of loss he feels at the thought makes him glad he didn’t go back. And Benny… Benny turned out to be everything Dean claimed he was. And everything Sam wasn’t.

Dean’s betrayal is still a distant ache in Sam’s chest, and he still hasn’t come to terms with the fact that when it came right down to it, Dean chose to cut him out. Again. Just like he did when he ran off to say yes to Michael. Just like he did when he lied to Sam’s face about trusting his judgment, agreeing to let Amy go, then murdered her anyway. Stone number one.

There was a time when, even if they didn’t see eye to eye, Dean would at least be willing to listen to him, at least try to see his point of view. He remembers the first time in his life that Dean took his side and stood up to their father. The moment that Dean supported him in going after Yellow Eyes as a family, saw that they were stronger together. I think maybe Sammy's right about this one. And after everything he’d gone through in Hell, he thought he could have that again, that his slate was clean. Hell, Dean had said exactly that after learning about the unresolved bad blood between Bobby and Rufus. Blanket apology for all the crap that anybody's done all the way around.

Sam supposes it’s his own fault for allowing himself to believe it. The fact is that Dean has been making unilateral decisions and lying about it since well before Purgatory, and Sam kept writing it off by selling himself on excuses: it was because Dean wanted to protect him, or because he needed to feel like he had some control after being pushed around by forces playing them like chess pieces. It was only natural for Dean to be cynical, to have difficulty trusting anyone.

He knows now that it’s a comforting lie he’d been telling himself to avoid a painful truth: it’s not that Dean can’t trust anyone, because he can trust Benny.

It’s past time that he faces the harsh reality that no matter how much penance he’s done, there is no coming back from his mistakes, not in Dean’s eyes. There is never going to be a clean slate between them, and he can either move on gracefully, or he can spend ten hours a day in the car with Dean knowing that he’s not the brother Dean chose, he’s just the one Dean’s stuck with. Dean’s responsibility.

A soft flutter behind him startles Sam out of his thoughts, and he expels an exasperated sigh as he turns around. “Cas, I’m really okay. You don’t need to babysit me.”

“You suffered organ failure a few hours ago. I believe that continued monitoring of your physical well-being is warranted. I can remain invisible if it would make you feel more comfortable.”

“No, Cas, that would just make it… creepy.” Sam resigns himself to accepting the intrusion on his solitude, waits for Cas to draw even with him, then continues walking with the angel at his side.

They walk together for a while, but the silence from Cas seems uneasy, heavy with tension. Then Cas says abruptly, “Are you certain you’re feeling well?”

Sam throws a glance towards Cas and is confused by the worry he sees there. He’s not used to being on the receiving end of the angel’s concern, and it throws him for a moment. He stops walking and turns to face the angel directly.

“Cas, seriously, what’s up with the helicopter Mom thing? What’s going on with you?”

Castiel meets his gaze, then looks down briefly and lets out a sigh. “While I was in Purgatory, I had a great deal of time to reflect on the things I’ve done. Some of them to you. Leaving your soul in the Cage when I tried to bring you back, ignoring your prayers for answers, breaking your wall… I never apologized to you for my actions.”

“It’s okay. You don’t need to apologize.”

Castiel tilts his head slightly, the way he does when he’s trying to understand something. “Why? It’s customary, is it not, to acknowledge when one has wronged another? I assure you that my regret is sincere.”

“It’s not that I think you don’t—” Sam stops, only now realizing that it’s exactly what he assumed. He’s uncomfortable by how relieved he is to hear Cas repudiate it, and stumbles through a deflection. “Look, it—it’s just water under the bridge. No point in dredging it up.”

Castiel’s eyes narrow for a moment, wheels turning behind the ice blue eyes. “You’re a difficult man to apologize to. Are you somehow under the impression that the suffering I caused you was acceptable?”

Sam shrugs it off. “You thought you were doing the right thing. I’m the last person who has any right to hold that against you.”

 “Sam… no ends can justify the pain you went through at my hands. Please accept my apology.”

“Will it make you feel better?”

“I believe so.”

“In that case, apology accepted.” Sam is surprised at how good it feels to say that, and he finds himself smiling. “Thanks, Cas.”

“Sam, not to keep being a—” Cas says, making air quotes with his fingers, “’helicopter Mom’—but I believe you require nourishment. Benny picked up some pizza for you both; you should partake of it. I understand that it’s better when eaten before the cheese fully re-congeals.”

Sam is about to make a snarky comment about how appetizing he makes it sound when Cas suddenly raises a hand to his head as if in pain.

“Cas? You okay?”

“I’m receiving a distress call from an angel. His screams, they’re—” Castiel cuts off and looks at Sam, clearly distressed. “Sam, you should head back. I need to investigate this.”

“Wait, Cas—” Sam starts, and finds himself talking to empty air. He heaves a sigh and retraces his steps back the way he came.

When he finally reaches the back door to the house, Sam hesitates at the thought of facing Dean again, of having to inform his brother that he thinks it might be best for both of them to part ways. In his head, he pictures two ways this could go: the first is Dean, wounded and angry, letting his emotions coming out in bitter, sarcastic accusations aimed unerringly at a nerve root; the second, more painful version, is Dean simply nodding, relieved that Sam was the first one to say what he’d already been thinking.

He braces himself for the worst and opens the door.

******

At the turning of the doorknob, Dean’s entire body snaps to attention, reminding Benny of nothing so much as a German shepherd eagerly awaiting the return of its family, ears perked at attention and tail wagging in anticipation. As the door opens to reveal Sam, Benny watches Dean hastily don a facade of indifference in real time, slouching over and shoving another slice of pizza into his maw not ten seconds after proclaiming himself to be stuffed. With some effort, Benny restrains himself from rolling his eyes at the theatrics.

Sam’s eyes flick to the pizza and the pile of picked-off vegetables in the box, and a faint smile sparks on his face but quickly flickers and dies. With his eyes on the food, carefully avoiding his brother, Sam takes a seat at the table and pulls a slice of the now-lukewarm pizza towards himself. He proceeds to unload the sausage and pepperoni toppings, replacing them with the pile of discarded vegetables.

Dean chews like he’s trying to grind the pizza into dust, and Sam’s eyes keep flicking over to his brother surreptitiously. Benny crosses his arms and makes a silent bet with himself as to which brother will break the silence first. He gives it twenty seconds before one of them caves and starts a mental countdown.

Turns out he overestimated by ten. Sam puts his slice down and leans back with a resigned exhale. “Dean, listen. I think—” Sam starts but doesn’t get any further, because right then Castiel appears in a rustle of invisible feathers.

“Sam, Dean, I need your help.”

Castiel’s tone is clipped and insistent, and whatever it was that Sam was about to say is forgotten as Cas launches into an overview of the situation.

“The angel Samandriel—”

“Saman—you mean Alfie, the wiener-on-a-stick kid?” Dean asks.

“Yes. ‘Alfie’,” Cas scowls at the interruption. “He’s being held and tortured by Crowley in the general vicinity of Hastings, Nebraska. No doubt Crowley has the place warded against angels. I lack the skills to track down the exact location, and I’ll require assistance getting in.”

“Crowley doesn’t set up anywhere without a full entourage. Cas, we need to hit up Kevin on the way, get the kid to whip us up another batch of demon whoopass,” Dean says and then looks at Benny. “You want in? We could use some extra muscle on this one. Be just like old times.”

If not for the slight elevation of Sam’s heart rate, Benny would have missed the deflated look that flits across his face. Wary of once again becoming a source of friction between the brothers, Benny tries to decline gracefully.

“I don’t exactly have a lot of experience with hunting anything but my own kind. I’m not sure I wouldn’t just be getting’ in the way.”

Dean waves off his reluctance with a scoff. “You’ll do fine, there’s not much to killing demons other than using the right pointy thing to stab them with.”

“Then I guess I’m in…” Benny looks to Sam to gauge his reaction and offer him a chance to object. “That is, if Sam don’t mind a third wheel tagging along.”

“Fine with me,” Sam responds evenly, his face once again unreadable. “Like Dean said, we could use all the help we can get.”

After an interview with a flambeed witness who had been caught in the ripple effect of the angel’s screams and a reconnaissance of the ninth abandoned factory, the search finally pans out when Castiel identifies a group of demons posing as derelicts. The plan is for Cas to wait in the car while the trio infiltrates the building and destroys the angel warding keeping him out. Then Cas will fly in to rescue his—comrade? Brother? Benny’s not sure what angels are to each other.

Sam, Dean, and Benny get in without raising an immediate alarm and manage to disrupt most of the sigils before a dozen or so demons come at them. The two demon-bombs they’d obtained from Kevin improve the odds considerably before they need to engage the enemy at close range. As Sam destroys the final sigil, Dean and Benny take on the remaining guards with the demon-killing knife and an angel blade on loan from Cas.

Dean wasn’t wrong about old times; Benny drops into sync with him easily after their year-long partnership facing near-constant combat. He had expected Dean to lose a step in the intervening months since they got out, the constant violence and desperation to survive replaced by relative safety and comfort, but the marks left by Purgatory don’t seem to have washed off. Dean’s fervor reveals that his lust for the fight and his hunger for the kill haven’t waned as he drops bodies.

Benny finds it a bit unsettling to watch Dean; it reminds him of himself, of what he used to be before Andrea. The way he savored the thrill of the hunt, the taste of the blood, the power over his victims. The euphoria of life flowing into him as the light fled from his prey’s eyes. But that’s not him anymore, and the memories are shaded in sorrow and guilt over the lives he took. Exacting revenge against his former nest at least gave him a temporary feeling of satisfaction, but skewering demons now just leaves him numb. It gives him about the same level of gratification as cutting up chicken for gumbo at Lizzie’s restaurant.

Sam joins the melee after he finishes with the sigil, deftly catching the knife Dean tosses toward him hilt-first. He’s cool and competent, holding his own just fine, but there is clearly no pleasure in it for him either. His expression is neutral as he slashes and stabs and drives the blade home through the chest of the final demon. He doesn’t react at all to the blood that sprays across his shirt, and Benny wonders how Sam manages to suppress his longing for the substance.

At the end of it all, their efforts come to nothing. Castiel kills the unfortunate Samandriel himself claiming self-defense, rendering the mission pointless. While Benny doesn’t know much about angels, Cas seems oddly detached about the outcome given his urgency at mounting the rescue in the first place. Castiel tells them he needs to bring Samandriel’s remains to Heaven and is gone without another word, leaving the three of them in confusion.

The long miles pass by with Dean’s outdated music playing to keep silence at bay. The brothers both seem tense, but they keep their thoughts to themselves as they pull up to a remote cabin instead of heading back to Louisiana.

“What’s with the det—” Benny starts to ask, then cuts himself off as Dean raises an index finger to his lips, signaling for quiet.

Once inside, no one speaks as Sam and Dean cover every wall and window in sigils, some of which Benny recognizes from the building they had just stormed. Apparently he’s not the only one who found Castiel’s actions strange. Sam puts his spray can down and assesses the finished work, then nods in satisfaction.

“Okay. That should do it. Cas can't see or hear us now.”

The brothers exchange concerned looks, and Dean says what everyone is thinking. “What the hell was that back there?”

“I know.”

“I told you something was off with him since he got back from Purgatory.”

Benny chimes in, “Either of you know exactly how Cas got out of there?”

Sam shakes his head. “He said he didn’t know. I don’t think he was lying about that.”

“You sure?” Dean says, a furrow forming between his eyebrows. “Not like he hasn’t screwed us over before.”

“I dunno. He seemed pretty sincere about trying to make up for all of that. And the look on his face after he killed Alfie… you think someone’s messing with him?”

“Who’d even be able to mess with him?” Benny asks.

“Angels?” Sam suggests.

Dean still seems skeptical. “Why would the angels have him kill another angel?”

Sam just shrugs and shakes his head. “No idea.”

The conversation stalls out, the three of them no closer to having any answers. Dean goes to the fridge, takes out a single beer with a disapproving look, and tosses it to Sam.

“Well, what I do know is that we’re dangerously low on beer and grub, so I’m making a run. Benny, you got enough, uh… you know?”

Benny nods the affirmative, indicating the cooler he’d brought in from the trunk with a tilt of his head. There was plenty left over from what they didn’t end up using for Sam. The less said about that, the better.

Dean twirls the car keys around one finger and heads for the door.

“Hey,” Sam calls after him, “grab something without ingredients that read like a chemistry textbook.”

“Right. Cardboard for Sam.” With that, Dean’s gone, leaving Sam’s eyeroll in his wake.

The mention of food reminds Benny of his own immediate needs. He grabs one of the bags out of the cooler and stashes the rest in the cabin’s fridge. As he turns with the bag in hand, he notices Sam’s eyes on him and can’t help feeling a bit self-conscious.

“Uh, I’ll head outside if this bothers you,” he says, lifting the bag slightly.

“No, it’s okay.” Sam replies, shifting over to make room for Benny on the couch.

Benny takes a seat, pokes a straw into the bag and takes a tentative sip, gauging Sam’s reaction, but Sam genuinely doesn’t seem to mind. He’s completely unphased, just as he appeared to be back at the abandoned factory.

Benny makes an appreciative noise. “I gotta say, I thought you’d be more rattled by the demons back there.”

A corner of Sam’s mouth lifts wryly. “Uh… thanks, I guess?”

“What I mean is—with what you told me about the demon blood, I thought it might be a problem for you to be in close quarters with them with a pointy object. You seem to have a better handle on things than you let on.”

“Oh. Um. Honestly? The blood was—is—a physical addiction, but the sight and smell don’t bother me so much anymore. What gets to me is remembering how it made me feel, the control it gave me over my powers—”

“Come again?”

Sam hesitates and glances at Benny, belatedly realizing his slip, then shrugs and decides to forge ahead. “I used to be able to do things with my mind. Prophetic visions at first, telekinesis once, then later… I learned how to exorcise demons. Gave me migraines that made me feel like my head was gonna explode, but it got better with practice. Until I tried it against something at a higher pay grade.”

He pauses to take a sip of his beer. “Someone I should never have trusted convinced me to try the demon blood so I could go after the really big fish. And she was right, it worked. It made it so much easier, and without any of the pain. After a few hits, I could even kill demons outright, almost effortlessly. And it felt… good.”

Staring at the bottle, Sam twists it around in his hands as Benny waits patiently for him to continue.

“The hardest part for me now isn’t the blood itself. It’s looking at the hosts’ faces, knowing they were just innocent people once who had their bodies stolen by demons. Wondering if they might still be alive in there, being forced to watch everything. Remembering what it was like to be able to save them.” He takes another drink, then says, “Sometimes I wonder if I still could.”

“You’ve never tried since you quit the blood?”

Sam shakes his head slowly. “No. ‘Cause it’s not the blood I can’t be trusted with.” He takes a deep draught from the bottle, then puts it down on the table in front of them. “It’s the power.”

Benny supposes the subject is closed when Sam clears his throat and gets up to turn on the ancient TV, then sits back down on the couch.  The show looks like some sort of soap opera, but with all the characters speaking Spanish. The volume is probably too low for a human to make out clearly, but Sam doesn’t seem too interested in it anyway.

He turns to Benny and asks, “So, what’s next for you?”

It’s a good question, one that he hadn’t really considered much.

“I truly don’t know. The only reason I wanted out of Purgatory was to get revenge on my old nest. Day and night it was all I could think about, getting them back for what they did to my Andrea. But now that it’s over…” He trails off and shrugs.

“You feel empty?” Sam suggests.

“Yeah. Guess I never really thought through what I’d do afterwards.”

“That’s the problem with revenge. It feels like the most important thing in the world at the time, and it keeps you going when nothing else will. But it never fixes anything.”

“You sound like a man speaking from experience.”

Benny lets the invitation sit, and the way Sam closes over, he’s not surprised that Sam waives it off.

“Yeah, you could say that. My advice? Find something else to focus on, another purpose. Something that makes you feel like you’re helping instead of hurting, even if it’s just one person at a time. The world will never run out of people who need help.”

“You mean hunting?”

“Well, that’s one way. It’s not the only one, though.”

“That why you and Dean do it?”

“Mostly Dean. I guess I do it because we’re family, and that’s what my family does. He shouldn’t be doing it alone.” Then Sam looks at him directly and asks, “You thinking about hunting? You fought pretty well back there.”

The question catches Benny by surprise, especially coming from Sam. He frowns, mulling it over for a moment, but the prospect doesn’t hold any appeal for him.

“Honestly, I don’t know if it’s for me. I just don’t have a taste for killing anymore… and I really don’t want it back.”

Sam nods in understanding. “I get that.”

Benny hesitates a moment, reluctant to pry too much, but his curiosity gets the best of him. “So what keeps you going now if it’s not hunting? If you don’t mind me askin’.”

Sam’s eyes drop to the floor. “I don’t know. Redemption, maybe. I guess I’ve still got some things to make up for.”

“How’s that going for you?”

Sam huffs out a bitter, self-deprecating laugh. “I’ll let you know if I ever find it.”

Chapter Text

The sun is just setting on the frigid Montana day as Benny packs his replenished stash of AB- in the cooler. He steps out of the cabin into the frozen silence, taking a moment to admire the beauty of the last rays of the day glinting off of the snow, which is a rare sight for him. Despite the fact that the cold doesn’t affect him, he’s always been drawn to the constant hum of life of more temperate climes. He can appreciate how the hushed quiet here lends itself to a certain tranquility, but it also makes the world seem muted, passionless. Empty. Nice place to visit, wouldn’t want to live here.

The Impala is packed and ready to go for the road trip to get Benny back to his camper they’d left behind in Louisiana, and he finds himself a bit disappointed that Sam will be staying put to keep an ear to the ground for their wayward angel. There’s no denying his deep friendship with Dean, what with their shared foxhole and all that, and Lord knows the elder Winchester has gone above and beyond for Benny time and again. But Sam seems to get him on another level, and it turns out they have a lot more in common than he’d imagined. He supposes it’s also a shared foxhole thing, just a different kind of foxhole.

Benny reaches out to shake Sam’s hand one last time. “Sam, next time we meet, I hope it’ll be under better circumstances.”

Sam takes his hand with a firm grip, this time with a genuine smile and without reaching for a machete. “Same. So did you decide what you’re gonna do now?”

“Yup. Figured I’d try my hand at making a living off the sea for a spell.”

Dean stares at Benny with a look of incredulity. “What, you’re gonna go fishing?”

“Hey, don’t judge. That stop to visit your prophet friend reminded me of just how much I missed bein’ on the open water. ‘Sides, I can’t think of a better way to go underground than spending most of my time away from land. Who knows, if I do well enough and things cool down, maybe I’ll even open my own seafood restaurant. Bring some old-fashioned Cajun cooking to the poor, deprived masses.”

Sam eyebrows go up in amusement. “You have a boat lined up?”

“The Old Man may have been a dick with delusions of godhood, but he did run a slick operation. Always had a new identity set up and named in a will. Every once in a while, he’d ‘die’ and pass down everything he owned.”

“So what’s your new handle?” Dean asks.

“Um…” Benny pauses, not looking forward to the reaction he knows is coming. “Promise you won’t laugh.”

“Hey, I don’t make promises I can’t keep. Spit it out,” Dean goads with an anticipatory grin.

Benny sighs in resignation. “Ian.”

The brothers both look at him in an I don’t get it sort of way.

“Ian Peter Freely.”

Sam purses his lips, visibly trying to stifle a laugh, and looks away. Dean doesn’t even bother trying to stop the guffaw that bursts from him. “Seriously? He do that sort of thing with every alias?”

Benny rolls his eyes. “Yeah. Every damn time. Why do you think we called him Old Man?”

The three days Dean and Benny spend on the road together pass by largely in a blur, one state bleeding into the next, mountains diminishing to hills that give way to plains. It’s an easy ride with Dean’s companionable banter, always ready with stories about his and Sam’s various exploits when they pass near towns where their migratory life took them. Dean brags about his high noon gunfight against a Phoenix in Wyoming back in 1861 and the Wendigo he flambeed in Colorado. He talks about the most incredible view they ever saw of the Milky Way in the middle of nowhere, Oklahoma. He’s got Benny damn near snorting his dinner out of his nose as Dean tells him about Sam getting glitter-bombed by exploding clowns in Wichita.

Eventually the trees they pass off the side of the highway begin to include cypresses and magnolias, and Benny knows they’re nearing the end of their journey together. Both are reluctant to acknowledge the fact, but when Dean turns off of the highway and onto the back road that will take them towards Benny’s camper, they can’t avoid the subject any longer.

Dean says, “Sure you won’t change your mind? Always good to have someone around I can count on.”

“C’mon, Dean. A vampire hunting with the Winchesters? What would the neighbors think? Besides, you already got someone you count on.”

Dean looks away to check his sideview mirror despite the fact that they haven’t seen another car for the past fifteen minutes.

“Hey, you and Sam gonna be okay?”

“We’ve been doin’ this for a while, Benny,” Dean responds with an amused smile. “I think we can handle ourselves.”

“I ain’t talking about the hunting, Chief,” Benny retorts. “It was kinda hard not to overhear the row you two had.”

Dean’s mouth presses into a line. “Is that why you’re leaving? ‘Cause Sam’s being pissy about me having a friend that’s not him?”

Benny marvels at how dense Dean can be for such a quick-witted guy.

Dean continues on with a forced smile, “But why shouldn’t he be upset? I mean, it’s not like he took a whole year off and ditched all his responsibilities for a girl or anything.”

Benny mentally kicks himself for broaching the subject at all. The easy thing to do now would be to just bite his tongue and let it pass. But then, he’s never been one to take the easy way out.

“Really. He stopped hunting? For a girl? Say it ain’t so.”

“Yeah.” Dean shakes his head, completely missing the sarcasm. “Unbelievable.”

Rolling his eyes heavenward at having to spell out the obvious, Benny says, “You realize you’re talkin’ to the vampire who abandoned his own nest for a girl, right?”

Dean has the grace to look sheepish. “C’mon Benny, that’s different. You left—”

“—a life of murder and mayhem?” Benny finishes to Dean’s obvious annoyance. “Why is that such a sin for Sam and not for me?”

Dean’s face darkens into a scowl. “Why don’t you ask all the people who died because Sam took a vacation?”

The last thing Benny wants is to argue with his friend, when who knows how long it might be before they see each other again. But like it or not, Dean dragged him into the middle of their spat. He feels like he owes it to both brothers to try to mend what he can between them.

“Dean, how many people do you suppose die every year because of us monsters?”

“I don’t know. Hundreds, probably.”

“Thousands died during a single outbreak of polio before the vaccine. What if Salk had become a hunter instead of going to college?”

The scowl melts away as Dean mulls over an angle he’d clearly never considered. Then he throws a curious look at Benny. “Polio? Were you…?” He leaves the question hanging.

“We all had our reasons for signing up with the Old Man. Didn’t much care to spend the rest of my life in an iron lung.” Had he known then what he knew now, though, Benny thinks he might have made a different choice. “Dean, people need saving from more than just monsters. You ever consider that maybe hunting just ain’t for Sam? You sure he’s doing it for the right reasons?”

Dean’s tone is firm, but his expression is regretful instead of angry. “Once you’re in this life, there’s no getting out. Sam should’ve known that by now.”

“Funny.” Benny says softly, “that’s exactly the same thing the Old Man told me before he had me beheaded.”

Dean checks his mirror again and stays quiet for a while. Eventually they come to a T intersection and the Impala’s headlights illuminate a sign pointing the way to Carencro. They make the turn, and Dean takes it easy on the gas pedal for a change.

“I tried it once, you know,” Dean says. “Getting out of the life. Lived in the ‘burbs for a year.”

Benny’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “Really? You?” He lets a chuckle escape at the image his mind conjures.

“What?”

“Nothin’. I’m just trying to picture you with a spatula in your hand instead of a machete.”

Dean joins Benny with his own laugh. “Yeah. Man, I had a grill, a lawnmower, golf clubs, the whole nine. Backyard barbecues and little league baseball.” He shakes his head as if the idea is absurd.

“So what happened?”

For a few seconds Dean is quiet, a smile still frozen on his lips, but a hardness commandeers his eyes. “Didn’t take,” he says tightly. Then his familiar nonchalant façade shutters back into place. Benny takes it as his cue to leave it be, tempted as he is to ask Dean if ever misses it.

They turn another corner, the camper comes into view, and their time is up.

******

Looking back, Benny has to admit that he really, really should have thought this through better.

It all started out well enough. He got himself a 50-foot wet fish trawler, a fishing license, and established himself with some local mom-and-pop restaurants looking for fresh catches. Not having expenses like rent and food kept his overhead low and let him undersell the corporate competition. He even got friendly enough with some of his customers to swap a few fish stories over an occasional beer, enough interaction to stave off any loneliness from his long hours on the water where it was just him and the smell of the salt spray, the cries of gulls, and the occasional dolphin popping up to ack-ack-ack at him.

Hunters weren’t a problem; being strictly on donated blood, somewhat responsibly sourced from blood banks, there were no bodies or missing people to draw their attention. If anyone ever came poking around, Benny figured he could pull up anchor and leave at the first sign of trouble. What he didn’t count on was how fast and far the tale spread of him wiping out his own nest. Or the fact that the more recently made vampires knew how to find out what slips at which docks had been rented out by the Old Man. Or that they would be able to find him through the modern surveillance systems currently in use even at small marinas.

He still remembers the overpowering smell of gasoline, the searing heat of the flames as he dove over the side. He still remembers the shouts of “Traitor!” and the sounds of their cheers when the fuel tank exploded. He still remembers breaking through the surface of the water far from the pier, seeing the life he’d spent months building destroyed in an instant.

Now, Benny sits against the concrete wall of a burned-out factory as cold rain drips through the deteriorated roof onto the crumbling cement floor. He looks down at the rat struggling in vain in his grip, and a flea emerges from within its fur and crawls across its face before leaping onto his hand. He grimaces in disgust but doesn’t let go because it’s been days since he’s eaten last. His stash of blood burned along with most of his cash weeks ago, and the dead livestock he left behind after his last meal brought more attention than he cared for. He’s low on gas and low on options, so he closes his eyes and sinks his fangs into the small, wriggling body.

It’s barely enough to even whet his appetite.

He laughs bitterly at how stupid he’d been to think he had it all figured out, at how simple it seemed. And just look at him now, at what he’s become, how low he’s had to sink just to barely survive. Hunting rodents in a condemned building in the middle of nowhere, fleeing from his own kind and hunters alike, not daring to go anywhere near the temptation of humans.

All of it—the squalid conditions, the vile stuff he’s been forced to consume, the relentless craving for human blood beyond his means to obtain—all of that might be bearable if it weren’t for the endless hours of unbroken isolation. Vampires, like humans, just aren’t meant to be alone, and this isn’t the first time he finds himself mourning the life he had with Andrea. Hell, as much as he hated his Maker, he even misses his old nest because at least, back then, he felt like he belonged somewhere.

A thought surfaces unbidden, infects him with hope in the way an angler fish lures its prey: maybe he can have that again. He can find people to turn, people who, like him, thought there was no hope left for them. People he could save.

People who would be forced to scrape out a meager existence, perpetually on the run. People who would be torn apart in front of him by his enemies if they were ever found out.

What remains of Benny’s ability to reason laughs once again at his own naiveté. How the hell would he take care of a bunch of newborns when he can’t even take care of himself? The fact that he considered it at all tells Benny how far gone he is.

Something’s gotta give.

After Dean had dropped him off, they’d texted back and forth at first, but they’d gradually tapered off and eventually stopped altogether. He’s reluctant to call now, figuring the brothers are probably up to their eyeballs in their own problems without adding his own on top of it. On the other hand, he can’t keep going like this. Sooner or later, the hunger’s going to get to him. Sooner or later, he’s going to give in and betray Dean’s belief in him, and that’s the thought that makes up his mind and spurs him into action.

His phone isn’t getting any bars out here, so Benny risks heading for a more populated area with better coverage. He needs to hear a voice again, needs to be reminded of why he swore off hurting humans, of why he betrayed his own kind in the first place. It’s full dark when he pulls into the empty parking lot of a closed mall and parks the camper, leaving the engine idling in case the police show up and he needs to make a hasty exit.

Benny brings up Dean’s number and types out OK to call you now?, his finger hovering over the send button, when he hears a heartbeat growing steadily louder. He looks up to see a man approaching the camper, hugging a tattered, filthy coat to himself. And the only thing that Benny can think about is putting an end to the growing, gnawing hunger.

The man taps on the window, peering inside with eyes that are hollow and desperate.

The man is clearly alone in the world, resorting to begging from others just to keep himself barely alive for one more day. There would be no one to miss him, no one to ask questions or demand answers. Honestly, he’d be doing the poor guy a favor. His suffering would be over, and Benny would be long gone by the time the body was found. It would be a gift for both of them.

He rolls down the window.

“Please,” the man says through missing teeth. “Can you help a fellow out?”

He leans closer, and Benny’s ears ring in in time with the pounding heartbeat as the smell of the blood washes over him, overpowering the stench emanating from the man. Something feral deep inside wakens and snarls, and his fangs must have descended because the man recoils, eyes wide with fear. Benny shoves the door open, knocking him to the ground. In another second, he’ll put an end to the derelict’s misery. In another second, he’ll mollify the savage hunger breaching its long-enforced containment.

The sound of a ringtone sends a shock through Benny, disrupting the feral haze that clung to him like a shroud, jolting him back to himself. He looks down at his phone and sees Brother on the caller ID.

Dean.

He must have hit the button to send the text, and a wave of relief-tinged shame overcomes the wakening beast and sends it back to its dark corner, tail between its legs. Benny slams his door shut, throws the camper into drive and stomps on the gas pedal, not caring where he’s going as long as it’s away.

Sometime later, he pulls over to the shoulder of a highway, prays no one will pull over to offer assistance, and plays back the voicemail Dean left.

“Benny.” The way Dean says his name, his voice tight and strained, tells Benny immediately that something’s wrong. “I’m glad you texted me, man. I’m sorry I haven’t— things have been—” There’s a pause and an exhaled breath. “I could really use your help. Call me back.”

He hits redial, dreading to hear whatever Dean has to say, but at the same time relieved at the prospect of ending his isolation. Of being needed.

Dean picks up immediately. “Benny?”

“Yeah, Dean. Sorry for the phone tag.”

Dean is silent for a moment, then his voice is tinged with regret. “Look Benny, I should have checked in before now. I’m sorry.”

“It’s just good to hear your voice again, brother. I mean that. What’s going on?”

There’s another brief silence. Then, “I gotta ask you for a favor. It’s a big one, and I can’t tell you over the phone. How fast can you make it to Kansas City, Missouri?”

Benny burns through the last of his cash to fill up the camper, then makes a side trip to a local farm to tap a sheep. It’s not nearly as satisfying as human blood, but it’s enough to stave off the pangs and keep himself under control for a while.

Even with the stops, he manages to make it to Dean before sunrise.

******

It’s too much. He knows it’s too much. He’s got no right to ask this of Benny, not after months of barely acknowledging his existence. Dean knows he should have been doing more for his friend, checking in on him, making sure he was okay. Shit, having a god damned cup of coffee with him at least, to hell with discretion.

Dean paces back and forth, guilt and worry tearing him in two, hating himself for having to ask this, even knowing it’s his—Sam’s—best hope. And every moment he stalls lowers Sam’s chances of making it back alive.

“I’m guessing you didn’t bring me here to watch you wear a hole in the pavement. Whatever this favor is, you know I got your back, right? All you gotta do is ask.”

Benny’s reassurance loosens the knot of reluctance tightening Dean’s chest. He forces himself to stop the pacing, runs a hand through his hair, exhales, and launches into an explanation.

“Sam’s in trouble, Benny. Long story short, he’s trying to jailbreak a soul from Hell, and he had to go through Purgatory to get in. His would-be mule just got himself ganked, and now he’s got no way out.”

“And you’re proposing I go in and fetch him.” Benny whistles through his teeth. “Wow. When Dean Winchester asks for a favor, he's not screwing around.”

“The only way in for me is a lunar eclipse or finding another reaper on the take, and I don’t know how much time Sammy’s got. He’s a magnet for everything with claws and teeth down there, and now he’s a sitting duck waiting for a ride out that isn’t coming. Benny, you’re the only one I know who’s got access.”

“And by access, you mean getting beheaded.”

Dean is brought up short hearing it put that bluntly, and his resolve wilts, guilt winning out. If he had been thinking clearly, he would have seen that asking this of Benny was way out of line from the jump. He shakes his head, wishing he’d never called Benny for help, wishing he’d never let Sam insist on taking on the Trials, wishing for a lot of things he can’t change.

“No, you know what? Forget it, it’s too much. It wasn’t fair to put this on you.” He turns away, his brain already formulating a plan to summon another cross-roads demon to shake down for a line on another shady reaper. He can’t afford to waste any more time; it took them days to find Ajay.

“Now hold on, Dean. I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it.”

Hope flutters back to life in Dean’s chest as he faces his friend. “You serious?”

“For you and Sam, of course I’ll do it. Guess I still feel like I owe him after almost making him a main course.” He laughs weakly. “Hell, it’ll do me some good to change things up. Who knew fishing could be so boring?” Benny tries to come off as flippant, but the waver in his voice and the weariness in his eyes tells Dean that life hasn’t exactly been rosy for Benny.

“Man, I know we haven’t been there for you like we should have, but we’re gonna fix all that when you get back.”

“When I get back?” Benny says it like the possibility of a round trip never occurred to him.

“Yeah, you find the portal, and you ride out of Purgatory with Sam just like you did with me, okay? As soon as I send you back, I’ll haul my ass up to Maine, and I'm gonna be waiting there for you when you get topside.”

“Yeah. That sounds like a plan,” Benny replies with a half-hearted smile. He doffs his cap and holds it in both hands. “Well, clock’s ticking chief. Let's save your brother.”

******

News of Sam’s arrival in Purgatory travelled fast, especially now that the denizens have learned about the existence of a human escape hatch. Benny’s only been there for a few minutes before he can sense the disruption caused by a human soul for himself. It’s less than an hour before he gets a more precise location for Sam out of an overly trusting ghoul on the promise of a shared ride out. He thanks the ghoul kindly before relieving it of its head.

Time and distance in these parts are different than topside, and the tricks and shortcuts across folded space come back to Benny easily. Most new arrivals don’t last long enough to figure it out. Good thing, too, because he figures that at least half the population is homing in on Dean’s little brother right about now.

He finds Sam in a clearing fighting for his life, three-on-one, bruised and bloody, shirt and jeans torn, breathing heavily from his exertion. He’s seen Sam fight before; dispassionate, focused solely and completely on the task at hand, movements efficient and precise. But there’s something in Sam’s eyes he’s never seen before now, a barely controlled fervor bordering on viciousness as he slices through flesh. Then he sees the glow in Sam’s forearm, and he understands. Sam’s not fighting for himself now, he’s protecting someone else. But he’s tiring, his reactions slowing, and it won’t be long before the remaining two wear him down.

Benny takes his cue to dive in, taking the one at Sam’s back by surprise and tackling it to the ground. He wastes no time tearing its throat out. The last of them has the sense to try to turn tail and run, but not fast enough to outrun Sam’s reach. Its head rolls a good ten feet as the body folds to the ground.

“Benny?” Sam says, clearly dismayed by his presence, wiping at the blood dripping into his eye and smearing it across his forehead. “What are you doing here? Don’t tell me a hunter—”

“It’s okay,” Benny interrupts, stooping to pick up a weapon its former owner won’t need anymore. “Dean sent me. Seems your taxi ain’t gonna make it.”

Now that he’s had a chance to get a good look at the younger Winchester, Benny’s stricken by how thin he’s gotten compared to what he remembered. How sunken his eyes look, how weak he seems with the adrenaline of the fight spent. How his arm trembles as he holds his weapon.

“Sam, what happened to you?” he blurts out.

Sam shrugs. “Purgatory. Hell. Purgatory again.” He looks around the general vicinity. “It’s every bit as nice as Dean said it was.”

“Just how many things did you had to fight through on your own?”

“Enough,” he says with a faint smile. “The fighting is the easy part.”

Benny snorts. “I hate to ask what the hard part is.”

The smile fades, leaving behind a haunted expression, and Sam turns away. Benny was being rhetorical; he didn’t really expect an answer.

“It’s the memories,” comes his quiet response.

Dead or not, the statement sends a chill through Benny. Apparently this wasn’t Sam’s first tour of Hell, and he’s guessing that Sam wasn’t just a visitor the last time. He also bets that it’s not the kind of thing Sam wants to talk about, so he turns his attention to getting his bearings. Hopefully finding the portal will go a lot quicker this time around, what with not having to spend months tracking an angel all over creation. Not to mention more weeks circling around the portal trying to circumvent the Leviathan drawn to Castiel.

It seems like most of the population has decided to give them a wide berth now that there’s the two of them; those that don’t learn the hard way. But Sam’s still corporeal and very much mortal, and the occasional skirmishes continue to take their toll on him. By the time they reach the ridge where the portal is, Sam’s nearing exhaustion, bleeding from a score of fresh gashes, limping and barely able to keep his feet. He’s clearly relieved when they spot the flickering distortion.

Sam unsheathes his knife and holds out his arm. “Alright, let’s do this.”

“Benny,” a voice calls from behind them, and they both spin around to see a vampire approaching, languidly extending its fangs. “Still working with the Winchesters? You’re a disgrace to your own kind, you know.”

Four more emerge from the brush to join the first, and Benny knows they’re not going to make it. Not both of them, anyway.

“You gotta go, Sam. It’s me they want.”

Sam stares at him, appalled. “Benny—”

“Go on. You just make sure you tell Dean I said goodbye. I never fit in up there anyway. Hey, if I’m lucky, I’ll get to kill my Old Man all over again.” He flashes a grin, fangs on full display, and turns to attack.

The first one is all swagger and no skill. He goes down easy with one swing of Benny’s blade.

He takes down another with somewhat more difficulty, and then the rest are on him in a flurry of fangs and snarls. He doesn’t go down easily; it costs one of them an eye before they finally get him pinned on the ground. One of the vamps stands over him sneering, and Benny supposes he’s about to find out the answer to Castiel’s metaphysical question of where monsters go after they die in the afterlife.

But the fang doesn’t swing his blade. “Oh, you thought you were gonna get off easy, did you? Seems you got a friend down here who’s anxious for a reunion. Sorrento’s sure gonna love taking his time with you, and he’s got eternity.”

Benny can’t see whether Sam’s made it through yet; he can only stall as long as possible and hope for the best. “Well, that’s mighty hospitable of him. Why don’t you run along and tell him he can come over here himself and I’ll be happy to show him how we do things here in Purgatory, mano a mano. That is, if he’s not too much of a chicken shit.”

The vampire snarls and opens his mouth for a retort that he never gets to make, because that would require still having a head.

The weight holding Benny’s arms down is suddenly gone, and he immediately rolls sideways and to his feet as another head goes flying. And there’s Sam Winchester standing there, eyes ablaze with purpose, strength dredged up from God know where, blade slicing through One Eye’s neck as he tries to run.

Glancing around at the carnage, Benny shakes his head in disbelief. “Didn’t peg you to be as dumb as your brother. You and that soul you’re ferrying should have been safe on the other side by now.”

“If you haven’t… figured it out by now,” Sam says, doubled over and gulping down air between words, shaking from the overexertion, “Winchesters… don’t give up… on family.”

Benny is left speechless for a moment, stunned at the declaration, grateful beyond words. But he can’t go back. He knows now that he won’t make it on his own, and he can’t saddle the brothers with his topside problems.

“Sam…” Benny shakes his head sadly. “I appreciate the effort, but I meant it. There just ain’t anything up there for me. I tried. Running from place to place, every hunter and every vamp on the planet out for my head? It’s no life.”

“Look, things are different. We’ve got this place now, it’s completely off the grid. No one can find it unless we want them to. You won’t have to run anymore.”

For a moment Benny entertains the possibility, but the memory of how close he came to breaking, how easy it was for him to rationalize taking a human life, is too fresh and too raw.

“I think it’ll be easier for everyone concerned if I just stay here. Truth is… I’ve been having a rough go of it lately. Maybe it’s better that I quit before I do something to let you and Dean down.”

Sam’s jaw sets as he looks him in the eye. “That won’t happen. Not if you let us help you.” He gives Benny a lopsided smile. “Someone once told me it’s a smoother ride when you got someone else pulling you through the rough spots.”

Benny has to laugh. “Now that’s just fightin’ dirty, throwing my own words back at me,” He retrieves his cap from where it fell off during the fight and slips it back on. “Well. Far be it from me to turn myself into a hypocrite.”

Sam reaches for his knife once more, extends his arm and makes the cut. “Ready?”

By all rights, Sam should have high-tailed it through that portal without a second thought, but he came back and risked everything to fight for Benny. It’s been a long time since he’s felt like he belonged anywhere. It’s been a long time since he’s known what hope feels like. He thinks that maybe it suits him.

Benny holds out his own arm. “Let’s go home…. brother.”

Chapter Text

The Bunker, as Sam and Dean call it, is everything they said it was and more. Benny pauses for a moment at the top of the stairs just inside the entrance to take in the cavernous space that looks like a time capsule from the 1930’s. Everything from the wall sconces to the overhead lights to the metalwork in the faux windows screams Art Deco, the only exception being the large map-of-the-world table that dominates the center of the vast room. As he descends, another, even larger room beyond the first reveals itself, punctuated by an enormous telescope sequestered and illuminated in an alcove scooped out of the furthest wall. Benny gives a low whistle, genuinely impressed. For once, Dean wasn’t exaggerating.

Dean is practically giddy with excitement at the chance to show off their new digs, and God only knows how he can have that kind of energy after the drive from Maine to Kansas, made even longer by the detour to check in on their Prophet friend Kevin, only to find him mysteriously missing. Sam, on the other hand, looks understandably and literally beat to hell, and heads straight to his bedroom somewhere in the bowels of the place. Dean watches him go, face beaming with pride but tinged with concern, then turns to Benny and indicates a hallway with a tilt of his head.

“C’mon, I’ll give you the tour.”

Benny breathes out an apologetic sigh. “Appreciate the offer Dean, but truth be told, after a decapitation, a resurrection, and an eighteen-hundred-mile drive, I’m about done. Raincheck?”

Dean nods in acquiescence, looking slightly disappointed but understanding. “Right, yeah, I get it. Just the highlight reel for now.”

He covers the essential areas—a guest room for Benny and the shower room, wrapping up with the kitchen, where Dean cracks open a beer for himself. He starts stowing away the bags of blood they’d liberated from a donation center near Kalamazoo, then turns to Benny with the final bag in hand.

“Nightcap?”

Benny opens his mouth to decline, but then reconsiders. This is the first time he’s seen Dean with his guard down since Sam ferried Benny and himself back from Purgatory. Dean had been on edge ever since patching up Sam’s various injuries in the middle of the 100 Mile-Wilderness, checking his little brother over at every stop along the way with Sam swatting his hands away and rolling his eyes at the mother-henning. It’s obvious that Dean is too wired to sleep yet, and Benny figures the least he can do is provide some company in return for the brothers opening their new home to him.

“Guess a little top-off wouldn’t hurt,” Benny replies, accepting the bag and taking a seat opposite Dean at the kitchen table. Dean doesn’t seem to be phased at watching him drink now, and Benny supposes it’s a consideration he’s earned for letting Dean behead him to retrieve Sam.

Apparently satisfied that Sam’s not in imminent danger of spontaneously expiring within the safety of their heavily warded “bat cave”, Dean leans back in the chair and props his feet up on the table. Benny’s lips quirk up in amusement.

“What?”

“Last time I saw you in a mood this good was after we made it back from Purgatory the first time.”

“Hey, you’re back. Sam’s safe. Bobby’s in Heaven where he belongs and we’re two down and one to go with the Trials. Been a while since we’ve had a win this big; gotta celebrate them when they happen.”

“Things have been good between you two, then?”

“Yeah… they really have,” Dean says with an emphatic nod, and Benny’s glad for that. His query about Castiel on the drive back had been met with a much less enthusiastic response from Dean and an apologetic shrug from Sam.

Dean looks thoughtful for a moment, takes a pull on his beer. “You know, I thought about what you said about Sam, that maybe he’d be better off with a girl and a dog and a slice of normal. But ever since I got back from dropping you off, he’s been different. He’s more dedicated than ever, chasing hunts one after the other, so gung-ho about it even I had a hard time keeping up.”

Benny has to wonder whether that’s actually a good thing. “And now he’s doing these Trials.”

“Yeah.” Dean’s contented smile falters.

“You think he can’t finish them?”

“Honestly… I don’t know,” Dean says hesitantly. “I wasn’t sure about this one, but damn if he didn’t prove me wrong.”

Then his brows pull together and his eyes drift down to the bottle. “Thing is, it was supposed to be me doing them. It should have been me, but I screwed the pooch on the first one, and Sam had to finish it. And watching him go through this, knowing what they’re doing to him…” Dean looks away for a moment, his jaw working. “I just wish I could take it for him, you know?”

Benny nods, but more for Dean’s benefit than in actual understanding. There was a time when he would have been able to comprehend the sentiment, having been a parent at one time, but his ability to empathize has faded over the long years since giving up his humanity. He certainly was never on the receiving end of that kind of concern in his time with the Old Man, where any sign of distress or weakness was met with derision instead of sympathy. Listening to Dean now, he realizes it’s a quality about humans he admires from a distance, the instinct to care for those who are vulnerable instead of casting them out for the benefit of the rest. He supposes that being forced to watch his nest mates tear out Andrea’s throat obliterated any lingering sentimentality he might have once had. Frankly, if it means not having to go through that kind of pain again, then good riddance.

Sam finally emerges from his room that evening, just after Dean finishes giving Benny the promised full tour of the place. If Benny thought Sam was in rough shape in Purgatory, it’s nothing compared to what he looks like now despite the sixteen hours he slept. He shuffles into the map room and stands at the entryway to the library, looking around with heavy-lidded eyes blinking in disorientation. His noticeable overnight deterioration is almost shocking, his skin even paler than it was in Purgatory, emphasizing the bruised color ringing his eyes, his hands shaking as he runs them through his hair. Benny finds it hard to believe that not forty-eight hours ago this same man took out three vamps single-handedly to save his sorry ass.

A crease of concern forms between Dean’s brows as Sam stumbles on his way up the steps into the room. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m—I’m fine,” Sam responds before leaning heavily on the table.

“I admit I’ve been out of the loop for a while now,” Benny interjects, “but is there some new definition of that word that I missed?”

Sam shoots him a half-hearted scowl. “I’m gonna get dressed. We should go find Kevin.”

A ping-pong match ensues between Dean’s deepening worry and Sam’s increasing denial of his debilitation, with Benny recusing himself to silent observation despite wholeheartedly disagreeing with Sam’s self-assessment. The argument comes to a head when Dean challenges Sam to hit a target in their gun range and the bullets go a couple of feet wide of their mark, which is unsurprising given how Sam looks like he can barely even hold the weight of his Taurus. Sam’s face falls in the aftermath of his failure, and Dean’s smug I-told-you-so look morphs into pity.

Putting a hand on Sam’s shoulder, Dean says placatingly, “Look, man, this second trial hit you a lot harder than that first one. I don't know whether it was just more intense or what.”

“It felt the same as the first,” Sam says reluctantly. “Until the next day.”

Sam shrugs off Dean’s hand, puts his gun down, and slowly shuffles his way out of the room.

******

Contrary to Sam’s hopes, a long, hot shower does absolutely nothing to help soothe the flu-like aches permeating his joints or to recharge his failing batteries. But a surprise visit from Charlie reinvigorates him somewhat, her smile and infectious energy keeping the toll of the second trial at bay for a little while as they catch up with each other’s lives. She also brings them a case, a perfect antidote to take Sam’s mind off of languishing in his misery. Or it would be, until Dean proclaims that Sam’s on the bench for this one and takes Benny along instead, leaving Charlie and him to sit in limbo in the map room without much to do.

Charlie was never one to tolerate quiet for very long. Within seconds of the door closing, she asks, “So… how did Captain Cajun come into the picture?”

“Um,” Sam pauses to consider how to explain Benny’s presence without revealing too much in the way of details. “He’s a buddy of Dean’s. Benny helped him out when Dean dropped out of circulation after the Leviathan thing. He’s a good guy.”

“Wait… ‘dropped out of circulation,’ like the way you ‘dropped out of circulation’ after the almost-Apocalypse?”

Charlie’s reference to Sam’s time in the Cage catches him off guard and he flounders for a moment. He’s not sure what exactly Dean told her about Purgatory when they worked the case with her at the Moondoor gathering, or what sort of details about the Cage were in Chuck’s books that Charlie had apparently read. Having been through it once, he’d rather not have to read about it as well.

“Sort of. He was in another plane of existence.”

“Is that your fancy way of saying dead?”

“It’s… complicated.” Charlie rolls her eyes and Sam clears his throat. “Anyway, Benny was there for Dean when I—when I couldn’t be. And then he risked everything to get me out of a jam. Like I said, he’s a—”

“Good guy. Right, got it.” Charlie takes a sip of the tea Dean had made for both of them before he left. “And it doesn’t bother you at all that he’s out there with Dean while you’re stuck here.”

Sam shifts uncomfortably. He’d forgotten how perceptive, and even more blunt, Charlie could be.

“It’s not… I’m not—” jealous, he almost says, which he’s not entirely sure would be truthful, but he wouldn’t exactly be lying either. He welcomed Benny into the bunker and into their lives for a reason; he’s got no right to begrudge him partnering with Dean on a hunt.

“Let me guess: it’s complicated,” Charlie replies with a playful smirk.

It makes Sam smile and chuckle at his own awkwardness. “I guess I feel like I should be out there having Dean’s back, instead of sitting around here being useless.”

Charlie frowns. “Useless? You?” she scoffs. “Sam, you’re the guy that beat Lucifer. I think you’ve earned a little downtime.”

Sam feels himself blush in embarrassment and his eyes drop to his mug, feeling like he doesn’t deserve her praise, yet loathe to dispel her illusion.

“Hey.” She leans toward him as if reading his mind. “Those books portray you as like, one tough customer. If anyone can get through the Trials… it's you.”

He looks up, and the expression on Charlie’s face is pure, unadulterated admiration, without a hint of reservation. It feels good to know what it’s like to have someone believe in him again, and Sam can’t help but allow her contagious optimism to supplant his self-doubt.

Sam and Charlie are only two-thirds of the way through watching The Hobbit when the groaning of the bunker door announces Dean and Benny’s return, much earlier than expected. Charlie fairly leaps off Sam’s bed from where she’d been watching, while Sam has to slowly coax his muscles into obeying his intent to join everyone in the map room. By the time he gets there, Dean is already recapping the hunt.

“…turns out it was the coroner and her son. Took Benny all of two seconds to peg her as the monster,” Dean boasts. “Gotta be a record for the fastest hunt ever. Wham bam thank you ma’am.”

The earlier boost to Sam’s ego bursts like a soap bubble inevitably losing its war against gravity and surface tension. He slumps under the weight of reality, once again wondering if he’s really up to the task looming before him when he can’t even help on a cakewalk hunt.

Benny just shrugs, looking almost sheepish. “Ain’t a big deal. Djinn don’t smell like humans.”

Charlie’s smile lessens slightly as her eyes flick between Dean and Benny. “You, uh… didn’t mention that your friend has superpowers. Like Wolverine or Daredevil or something?”

“Vampire, actually,” Benny responds matter-of-factly.

The smile freezes on her face and flees from her eyes and Charlie goes speechless for a few seconds, possibly the longest Sam has ever seen her at a loss for words.

Benny gives her a pleasant smile, sans fangs. “You don’t have anything to worry about from me. Everything I imbibe is—what do you call it these days? Responsibly sourced.”

Charlie crooks an eyebrow. “So, what… you’re like Blade or Angel or something? Fight evil, brood a lot?”

“Mostly I cook. Worked in a diner for a time; best damn gumbo you ever tasted, or I’ll eat my own hat.” Benny answers in his slow, Southern drawl. “Used to fish some, too.”

Charlie visibly relaxes, and the smile touches her eyes again as his natural charm puts her at ease. Not for the first time, Sam is envious of how easy it seems for everyone else to form connections so quickly when, for him, it’s like he’s looking at everyone through a window, hand pressed against glass inscribed with the names of the dead he’s left in his wake.

“Well, I guess I should get back to the con. Gotta get my cosplay on, you know?” Charlie gathers her things and heads for the stairway, turning back to look once more at the three of them. “Benny, nice to meet you. I’ll have to come back and judge your gumbo for myself. Dean, I’m gonna hold you to that promise to help me stomp the shadow orcs at the mid-year jubilee. Sam…” Charlie’s smile softens and her voice is filled with a confidence Sam wishes he felt. “You got this.”

With that, she springs up the stairs to the exit at the top, leaving them with a Vulcan salute and a final “Smell ya later, bitches!"

******

Over the next couple of weeks, they have no luck tracking down Kevin, the only person who can decipher the writings on the demon tablet that holds the information about the third Trial. Benny can only watch as Dean’s optimism gradually fades, replaced by mounting frustration as it becomes clear that Sam’s condition is getting worse instead of better. Sam, for his part, responds with annoyance to Dean’s insistence on treating him like an invalid along with his continuous attempts to make him eat, and Dean grows increasingly perturbed by Sam’s rejections of his ministrations. The ensuing friction is enough to make Benny wonder how hard it would be to chop his own head off to go back to Purgatory for some peace. He opts instead for the less drastic solution of retreating to the kitchen, where he can at least put some of his real skills to use.

Since Dean’s been keeping up with the supply of blood on top of taking care of Sam, Benny reckons it’s only fair that he contributes to the human meal preparation. After the atrocity of a stew that Dean cooked up with enough cayenne pepper to drop a rhino—which Sam had had the good sense to push away—he figures he’ll treat the brothers to some real down-home New Orleans cooking. His only reservation is Dean potentially being affronted if he succeeds in getting Sam to eat where Dean failed, but that particular worry turns out to be needless. Sam pushes Benny’s best effort away after swallowing an obligatory morsel, apologetically explaining that everything, even the best jambalaya known to humankind, smells like rotting meat to him.

The arrival of an e-mailed video from the missing prophet only adds to the mounting stress. It’s anything but good news, opening with if you get this it means I’m dead and only getting worse from there. Benny’s not sure what he was expecting—a grizzled old man with an unkempt beard, maybe—but Kevin turns out to be just a kid, wild-eyed and angry, on the brink of hysteria, now gone along with their hopes of completing the Trials.

The brothers’ reactions to his loss are a study of contrasts, with Dean exploding outwardly in rage and denial, alternately making frantic calls to everyone he knows in the desperate hope of any word that the kid is still alive, kicking himself over having not brought the kid to the bunker when they had the chance. Meanwhile, Sam turns inward, wordlessly printing out Kevin’s notes and burying himself in the tedious task of trying to glean anything useful from them, which Benny thinks must surely be an exercise in futility to avoid confronting his own grief and guilt. But Sam manages to surprise him once again; his single-minded diligence pays off in a possible lead.

The change in Sam is noticeable, an energy bubbling in him that borders on mania. He shoots up out of his chair and strides across the room, his normal shuffling gait gone, to pull a book from a shelf. He makes a connection between a repeated symbol in the notes and a possible location of Metatron, the Scribe of God and author of the demon tablet, based on some hazy recollection from a class he took years ago. Much to Dean’s dismay, there’s no talking Sam out of a road trip to Colorado to chase down his hunch.

“You can barely function!” Dean exclaims in exasperation, then looks to Benny for backup.

Seeing a glimmer of the old, healthy Sam pulls at something in Benny’s chest, and he shrugs in response.  “Seems to me like getting Sam out of the bunker might do him some good.”

Outnumbered, Dean huffs in surrender. “Fine,” he says tightly, then points a finger at his brother. “But you’re gonna eat first. And I mean a whole meal, not just a nibble!”

When Sam picks Benny’s jambalaya over Dean’s fiery stew, a look of hurt betrayal flickers across Dean’s face at the rejection. “Really?”

Then he inhales a sniff from each container, wrinkles his nose at his own cooking, and nods his head in capitulation. “No, yeah, you’re right,” he admits, then stows his stew back in the fridge and scoops out a generous helping of jambalaya for himself as well. After they finish eating, it takes the brothers another ten minutes to pack before they’re ready to hit the road.

Dean pokes his head into the kitchen from where Benny hasn’t moved during the preparations for the journey. “Benny, get the lead out, wheels up in two!”

Truth be told, the idea of another all-day road trip crammed in the Impala’s back seat listening to the brothers butt heads over what Sam is or isn’t capable of holds about as much appeal to Benny as dining on rats, and he shakes his head.

“Seeing as how they don’t make SPF 1000 sunscreen for a trip across the wide-open plains, I figure it’d be more comfortable if I stayed here.”

Dean opens his mouth to protest, but Benny cuts him off. “Besides, it’ll give me a chance to work on my pecan pie recipe while you’re gone.”

Dean shuts his mouth abruptly, the prospect of homemade pie shutting down whatever argument he was about to make. When the bunker’s door clangs shut behind Sam and Dean, Benny blows out a sigh of relief, the tension in his shoulders he’d been unaware of until now leaving with it. While he’s grateful for the hospitality they’ve shown him, he can’t help but feel some relief at having a couple of days to himself. He just hopes, for the sake of Sam’s health and everyone’s sanity, that the trip pays off.

Chapter Text

It takes an hour of Bob Seger before Dean is able to relax his stranglehold on the steering wheel on the drive back from Two Rivers, Colorado. He glances once again at Sam next to him, staring tranquilly out of the passenger window at the passing landscape, his features growing less distinct in the failing light. The sharpness of Dean’s tension fades along with the sun as he gradually settles into hesitant acceptance of adding a notch to the W column, finally daring to trust that the other shoe isn’t in imminent danger of stomping out everything they’ve accomplished. He even allows himself to believe that Sam’s health really is improving, which is a miracle given the fact that Sam had come within spitting distance of death earlier just that day. Not once, but twice, Dean’s heart had jackhammered against his chest after concrete demonstrations of just how tenuous Sam’s grip on surviving the final Trial could be, each occurrence dousing him in harsh reality like the ice bath into which he’d dumped Sam.

The mere thought has Dean’s brain regurgitating the events all over again: finding Sam lying unconscious on the floor, heat rolling off of him in waves with a fever high enough to cause brain damage if Dean hadn’t gotten to him soon enough. Sweating through near panic as he sprinted back and forth between the ice machine and the tub that wouldn’t fill fast enough no matter how much he swore at it. Dragging and fighting and straining muscles as he dragged Sam’s 200 pounds of dead weight into the bathroom and over the side of the tub at last.

Dean’s relief after Sam came to and bolted upright and out of the tub was short-lived though, replaced by a vise tightening his chest as Sam led him towards Metatron’s room, calmly wondering out loud if he’d already known, as a child, about the evil polluting his blood. The thing that got to Dean though, really got to him, that twisted his insides and made him nauseous, was the beatific smile Sam wore on his face after concluding his monolog of shame with the Trials – they’re purifying me. The fevers and chills wracking him, the weakness from being unable to eat, the blood he was coughing up as he was being torn apart from the inside, Sam didn’t view those as tests to be endured. Some dark, screwed up part of him welcomed it, felt like maybe he even deserved it as penance for having been infected as a helpless infant, and the revelation left Dean feeling physically ill.

But for all of that, the second time was worse. Because at least the first time wasn’t deliberate.

That fucker promised that he wanted to make it through this alive, which was the only reason Dean ever agreed to let him take on the Trials at all, and there he stood, pressing Metatron’s gun to his own chest while he goaded the angel to pull the trigger. Thank fuck Metatron wasn’t like Uriel, whose contempt for humanity would have made him only happy to immediately comply. Instead, the Scribe of God was momentarily taken aback, allowing Dean to insert himself between Sam and the barrel and redirect both Metatron’s and Sam’s attention to Kevin, the prophet the angels were supposed to be protecting. It wasn’t until Sam’s bout of grim fatalism evaporated with Kevin’s appearance and subsequent healing from Metatron that Dean felt like he could finally breathe again.

Dean finds himself white knuckling the wheel once again and, with a concentrated effort, loosens his grip.

He’s fine now, he tells himself over and over like a mantra as each streetlight dotting the highway washes an incandescent glow through the Impala’s interior and then leaves it to darkness once more. He forces himself to focus on the positive, to take the win for what it is: Kevin is alive and safe thanks to Metatron, they have both halves of the Demon Tablet once more, they know what the final Trial is, and Sam’s health genuinely seems to be returning now that they have a direction to go in. For the first time, Dean can see Sam’s light at the end of the tunnel and feels like it just might actually be within their grasp.

He's fine.

Sam squints and turns away from the light of the next streetlamp flooding through the window, then his face smooths out, finding solace in the darkness when it recedes.

He’s fine.

******

Desperate and at a loss for what else to do, Castiel drops down hard and fast in a barely controlled landing, trusting Dean’s reflexes and his scrupulous maintenance of the Impala’s brakes to prevent him from being flattened by the 3500 pounds of steel bearing down on him. The squeal of tires skidding against pavement pierces the quiet, and he’s grateful when a full two feet separate him from his faith from being misplaced.

“What the hell happened to you?” comes Dean’s predictable question as he and Sam help him up off the pavement. From experience, Castiel knows that this question pertains to two different pieces of information: how he got injured, and why he’s failed to contact the brothers for an extended period of time.

Castiel answers the former with difficulty. “Crowley.”

He trusts that the name and the large blood stain drenching his shirt will provide enough of an explanation.

“And the Angel tablet?” Dean says tightly.

He hesitates, knowing that Dean’s reaction will not be favorable. “Also Crowley,” he admits with a defeated sigh.

Dean swears loudly and Castiel winces only partly because of the damage done to his abdomen.

Sam and Dean assist him with getting into the back seat, and Castiel turns inward to begin healing his wound from the angel-blade bullet Crowley had fired into his gut. Much of the drive after that is a blur to him, save for occasional scraps of conversation. From what little information registers, he gathers that they are now aware of what the third Trial entails, and that Dean is once again angry with him. The latter, regrettably, seems to be a recurrent and apparently unavoidable occurrence.

Several hours of rest in the bunker allows Castiel to make enough progress with healing himself that he is able to tour the place without much discomfort. He wanders the dimly lit hallways, peering into the occasional room and admiring the systematic and utilitarian structure of the place. He finds the orderliness soothing. Eventually he comes across the brothers in the library poring through dozens of files scattered across multiple tables, all seemingly related to demons and demonic possessions. As Castiel draws closer to the table, Dean brushes past him wordlessly, sending a clear message that his anger has not diminished overnight as Castiel had hoped.

He understands, to a point, Dean’s displeasure with his decision to leave with the angel tablet; Dean has never reacted well to actions taken without his consent and approval, even when those actions are in his own best interests. Unfortunately Dean does not appear to be in a mood that would leave him receptive to a reasonable discussion, so Castiel settles for attempting to make amends with a blanket apology for every possible offense he’s ever committed, hoping to mollify Dean at least somewhat.

If anything, it makes it worse.

Dean barely tolerates Castiel’s presence as they watch an experimental exorcism filmed decades ago, hoping to find information on how to fulfill the final Trial’s task to cure a demon. Providing a useful Latin translation of the altered exorcism in the film is only met with derision, and Sam gives Castiel a sympathetic look and shrugs apologetically behind his brother’s back.

Finally, Dean pointedly rejects his offer to accompany them to chase down their lead on the full cleansing ritual and Castiel is left behind to wander the bunker alone once again, at a loss as to how to get himself back into Dean’s good graces, his echoing footsteps through the empty corridors making the place seem even bigger. Or perhaps it’s that he feels smaller.

When he gets to the kitchen and finds it occupied, he’s so surprised that he blinks.

“Benny?” A human might typically follow up by asking what he’s doing here, but it’s immediately apparent to Castiel that Benny is currently engaged in washing dishes, so he refrains from voicing the question.

“Well, look what the cat dragged in!” the vampire says, wiping wet hands on a dishtowel and leaning back against the counter.

“Did Sam and Dean acquire a feline?” Castiel asks, glancing around for telltale signs. “I thought Dean was allergic.”

“Figure of speech,” Benny responds with a shake of his head and a chuckle. “So, you just passing through or you planning on sticking around for a while this time?”

“That depends on Dean.” Castiel sinks into a seat with a sigh. “I’m not certain I’ll be welcome here for very long.”

“Now what makes you think that?” Benny asks, skepticism coloring his tone.

“Dean is at odds with a decision I made.” Castiel flounders for a moment at how much to disclose about the angel tablet, then decides in favor of discretion, at least for now. “We located an… artifact of considerable power which, if misused, could result in catastrophic consequences. Dean wanted me to entrust it to him, but I did not believe that to be a wise course of action. I fled with it instead.”

“I see,” Benny nods in understanding. “Yeah, Dean’s a lot more comfortable calling the shots than bein’ on the receiving end. So what brings you here? You change your mind?”

“No.” Castiel leans back, slumping with the weight of his failure. “I was unable to protect it, and I nearly lost my life attempting to do so. I’m still recovering. Perhaps Dean was correct after all, that I should have left it with him.”

Benny straightens up and raises his eyebrows. “Now let me get this straight: you’re an angel. You can fly, and human weapons don’t do squat to you which makes you one tough son-of-a-bitch to kill. You really think a mortal could have done any better at holding onto this thing?”

“Perhaps not. But I didn’t know about this bunker at the time. With the warding—” Castiel starts, but Benny shakes his head.

“Ask me, even if you knew about this place you did the right thing. I mean, I love the man like a brother, but sometimes I don’t think Dean’s got a lick of sense when it comes to people he cares about.”

While Castiel agrees with the sentiment, he’s not sure how it applies to the situation. “How do you mean?”

“I mean, like tracking you down and dragging you all over Purgatory trying to get you out when you and I both knew you were never gonna get through that portal. Like sticking his neck out to help me take down my former nest when it wasn’t his fight. And while I admire the hell out of that kind of loyalty, it’s also his Achilles’ Heel.

“Let’s say you did let Dean keep whatever it was. You think your enemies wouldn’t know how to get to him? You think Dean wouldn’t have traded it away in a heartbeat to save you or me… or Sam?”

Given that Castiel himself had shattered Sam’s mind to prevent Dean from interfering with his bid to amass enough power to defeat Rafael, he can hardly argue with Benny’s assessment.

“You do have a point. But right or wrong, I have offended Dean and am still at a loss as to how to repair our friendship. He seems unreceptive to apologies.”

“Maybe he’ll come around on his own. I mean, you did save Sam. That’s gotta count for something, doesn’t it?”

Castiel leans back and mulls over the statement. Healing Sam, like many of his divine actions performed for the benefit of the brothers, seems to have become more expectation than favor, as if Dean felt himself entitled to use his angelic powers at his own convenience. And with how much he owes the brothers for his past mistakes, with how severely he’s hurt Sam in the past, he can’t begrudge Dean for feeling that way. It would likely take a much grander, more meaningful deed to change Dean’s mind at this point, but what that might be, Castiel cannot guess.

“It seems that merely exercising my grace on Dean’s behalf is an insufficient gesture for reconciliation. I believe my presence here will only antagonize Dean further, so it’s best that I leave until I can find a way to demonstrate my friendship to him. Benny, thank you for your insight.”

“I don’t think that’s—”

He doesn’t hear the rest of Benny’s response, having already taken flight to seek out solitude while he considers what sort of act might earn Dean’s faith back.

When Metatron approaches Castiel with a proposal, he recognizes it as exactly the opportunity he needs to prove himself and eagerly seizes it.

******

“Lucy, we’re hoooome!”

Benny takes Dean’s cheerful announcement of his and Sam’s return to the bunker as a sign of a successful mission and makes his way into the map room to greet the brothers.

Dean pauses halfway down the stairs and sniffs, then looks at Benny with wide eyes. “Is that…?”

“Yup. Apple pie. Fresh baked and cooling on the counter,” Benny replies. He’d baked it in anticipation of either consolation or celebration, figuring it couldn’t hurt in either case. He’s just relieved that it’s the latter.

As Sam follows Dean down the steps, Benny wonders if it’s just his imagination that he seems a fair bit better than when they’d left. He’s standing tall instead of slouching over with fatigue, his eyes glittering with determination instead of dully echoing his constant suffering. Pleased as he is by Sam’s apparent improvement, Benny’s optimism slides towards concern as he takes a longer look at Sam’s face and sees something else there, something that goes beyond purposefulness, almost bordering on mania. As Sam reaches the bottom of the staircase, he greets Benny with an absent nod and then strides past, disappearing into the bowels of the bunker with his duffel.

“I take it you’re coming back with good news?” Benny prompts unnecessarily. Dean’s expression is almost enough of an answer; the perpetual worry that’s been living on his face for months has been all but erased, replaced by a confident resolve.

“He’s gonna do it, Benny,” Dean says as he drops his duffel on the floor. “I’m almost afraid to believe it because we’re fucking Winchesters, and since when does anything ever go right for us.” He shakes his head, but in pleased disbelief instead of denial. “But damned if Sam wasn’t right about this. He’s gonna pull it off, and he’s gonna get better, and every demonic motherfucker that ever screwed us is finally gonna pay.”

The last is said with an intensity that reminds Benny of when he finally took his revenge on the Old Man, how good it felt in the moment. And then how empty he felt afterwards.

“You see Castiel lately?” comes Sam’s voice from the doorway into the map room. “He was here when we left.”

Shrugging, Benny replies, “Your angel flew the coop.”

Dean scoffs. “Yeah, sounds like him.” Derision bleeds through his tone.

Benny pauses at the casual dismissal and crosses his arms. “He said he wasn’t feeling particularly welcome here. Can’t imagine why.”

Sam gives Benny a knowing look, then shoots an irritated one towards his brother, but Benny’s dry sarcasm is lost on Dean.

Pulling a tape reel out of a large envelope, Dean nods to Sam. “Set up the player. Father Simon gave us all the recordings of Father Thompson’s demon-cure tests. This was the last one – two days before he died. If there’s an answer here, this has gotta be it.”

He takes two steps toward the library and pauses. “Benny—”

“Right, I’ll get the pie.”

Dean grins in response.

Fifteen minutes later, they reach the end of the recording, Sam switches the player off, and they look at each other in awed silence for a few moments.

Hesitantly, as if he’s afraid he misheard, Sam asks, “Did he just… cure a demon?”

“Sounds that way to me,” Benny offers in confirmation.

Leaning forward with eyes sparking, Dean says, “Could we take this hoodoo on a test drive?”

“Um, I mean. I have the exorcism right here,” Sam replies, indicating the notes he’d taken while the recording played. “All we need is the blood, consecrated ground, and a demon.”

Dean spreads his hands, exclaiming, “Damn, this is it! We could put Hell out of business tonight!”

Benny’s reluctant to douse Dean’s enthusiasm, but he wonders if he’s being entirely realistic.

“I get where you might come up with the blood and the consecrated ground, but how you gonna get your hands on a demon? You got one lying around?”

Dean just looks at him, and there’s that grin again.

“You’re serious. You got one lying around?” Benny rolls his eyes and wonders what else went on while he was off on his boat, then thinks maybe it’s better he doesn’t ask.

“Sam, we’re gonna need Dad’s field surgeon’s kit.”

Yup. Definitely better that he doesn’t ask.

Twelve hours after that, everything goes to shit.

Their sewn-together demon is in the wind, Crowley issues his mocking ultimatum, and his latest victim on his list of people the Winchesters have saved stills with sightless eyes staring at the ceiling. Dean shatters a phone against a wall and takes his frustrations out on other inanimate objects, but Sam just sits there in the midst of the wreckage, unable to look away from the dead woman he couldn’t save.

Benny can only stand by uselessly and watch as Sam’s optimism and perseverance, the will to fight that’s gotten him through two Trials and months of suffering, gutters and dies.

Chapter Text

Sometimes good people gotta die for the greater good.

The phrase still echoes in Sam’s mind, long after Dean had turned his back on him and strode angrily out of the library, leaving him alone to stare at the sole content of the manilla folder in his hands: a picture of Mary holding a baby Dean.

You don’t know these people? Well hell, maybe you know this one. Tell me, what’d she die for?

Every instinct in him screams that it’s not right, turning people into unwitting sacrifices for the sake of their mission, but Sam feels his resolve collapse just as Dean must have known it would. There was a time when Sam could have pushed back, would have steadfastly held to his convictions, but the disastrous consequences of past failures have his moral compass spinning, directionless. There’s no real point in sitting here pretending to deliberate any longer, he knows the decision has already been made. He’s going to attempt the third Trial even as Crowley carries out his threat to kill everyone they’ve ever saved, and their faces will haunt him every night for the rest of his life.

He’s just not quite ready to face that reality yet.

“Sam?” Benny’s quiet voice pulls him away from his mental preparations to yield to Dean, and he looks up into eyes divided by a crease of concern.

“I guess you overheard.” Sam says, a corner of his mouth twitching up.

“Ain’t a room in this place where I couldn’t hear Dean,” Benny replies, taking a seat across from him. “You gonna go through with it, then?”

Sam drops his eyes, nodding reluctantly.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but you don’t seem like you’re entirely on board. Something eating at you?” The vampire freezes, realizing the irony of the question, and barks out a sheepish laugh. “I mean, besides me.”

Sam finds himself smiling, and who would have thought that they would be able to laugh about their ill-fated confrontation from months ago? Something loosens in his chest, and he realizes that he’s willing, eager even, to voice his misgivings to someone who’s not Dean.

“It’s just… I’ve been here before. Letting a good person who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time die for everyone else’s sake. Or at least that’s what I thought I was doing. I told myself back then that the ends justify the means, you know? But doing that, it turned me into something—something I never wanted to be, something Dean never wanted me to be, and now… I guess I’m having trouble seeing how the line I was so wrong to cross back then is supposed to be the right move this time.”

“You want to back off, then?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” Uncertainty usurps his decision again, the echoes of a nurse begging for her life, a bartender slumping to the floor with his bullet lodged in her gut reverberating in his head. If it were just him, he’d choose to stand down and live out whatever time he had left in his self-destructing body before he’d allow one more innocent bystander to die in the name of the ‘greater good’. The versions of himself that were capable of doing that—the black-eyed junkie, the cold-blooded hunter without a soul to keep his ruthlessness in check—weren’t the brother that Dean wanted, the one that he deserved. But this isn’t just about him.

Dean is so certain that they need to go forward no matter the cost, needs this win badly enough to invoke Mary’s name once again, something he hasn’t done since their quest for vengeance against Azazel. Something he hasn’t done ever since Sam tried to make a suicidal run into an inferno just to get one more shot at the demon, and Dean had to hold him back.

It means that this is important enough to Dean that he wouldn’t hold Sam back this time.

“I don’t know if I can trust my own judgment. It doesn’t seem to matter what I feel or—or what choices I make… they always turn out wrong anyway,” Sam says at length, knowing even as he says it that it’s just an excuse.

“Letting Dean decide is still making a choice, isn’t it? If you go against your gut and let those people die, you gonna kick yourself any less no matter the outcome?”

Sam looks at Benny sharply; he’s just voiced exactly what Sam was trying not to acknowledge. “Probably not,” he’s forced to admit.

But the thought of denying Dean this victory amounts to betrayal. He promised this to him, and for more than just to get back at the demons that ruined their lives. He promised to show Dean that there’s something out there for him other than an early grave, that there can be something for them after hunting. Which will be a whole lot more believable if he can wipe all the demons off the board.

His mind made up, Sam sighs in resignation. “Look, this is bigger than me just having to live with my own conscience. Dean’s got it in his head that he’s just a… a soldier, a disposable grunt or something. He’d throw his life away in a heartbeat on an opportunity half as big as this, go out in a blaze of glory or some stupid shit just for the chance to try, because he’s convinced that’s all there is for him.”

Sam looks down at the picture again, guilt welling up in his throat. “I guess it’s my fault. Moving on with my life when I thought he was dead sure as hell didn’t help any. I just don’t know how else to get through to him that his life matters, that he’s worth so much more than the job.”

“You ever consider just telling him? Last I checked you both got working mouths and functional ears.”

Sam scoffs. “I’m sure you’ve figured out by now that Dean’s more of an ‘actions speak louder than words’ kind of guy. I have to do this for him. It doesn’t matter what it costs, I can’t let him down this time.”

You didn't need the feather to fly, you had it in you the whole time, Dumbo.

Ruby’s words from four years ago reach across time to remind him of the consequences of his choices. She was right, it was never the demon blood, it was always him. His choices. He wonders what crossing that same line again will do to him this time—reawaken his long-dormant powers? Destroy the part of him that kept the soulless persona in check? He wonders whether Dean will still accept him afterwards. But in the end it won’t matter, because hundreds of more lives will be saved than lost, and Dean will still have a brother that he wants.

He’ll have Benny.

******

At first, Benny’s not sure why it bothers him so much, Sam giving into Dean and going along with something that so obviously goes against his grain. The reality is that it’s a no-win situation, and sometimes in life your only choices are bad or worse. But Sam’s capitulation had sent a pang through him, a dim echo of some emotion waking from a coma, like he was watching a piece of him die in real time.

It finally occurs to him that it’s a feeling he’s already acquainted with. It’s the same feeling he got the moment he realized that everything he loved about his Andrea was gone, leaving behind an obscene mockery of the woman she had been. The pain of that eclipsed even watching her being torn apart, because it meant that nothing of her survived the corruption, not even her soul.

It’s obvious that not only does Sam know in his heart that what he’s preparing to do is wrong, he’s doing it for entirely the wrong reasons, and Benny can’t just sit by and watch him destroy himself over it.

Benny isn’t surprised to find Dean in the kitchen, one empty beer bottle on the table in front of him, another half-drunk one in his hand.

“Sam come to his senses yet?” Dean asks without looking up.

“If you mean, ‘is he going through with it,’ the answer’s yes. But it’s got nothing to do with sense.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Dean asks, obviously annoyed, but taking the bait.

“You and me, we’re alike. We’re survivors, soldiers. We’ll do what’s gotta be done without a thought to anything but the end game. But Sam’s not like us, is he? What you’re asking him to do—condemning innocent people to death for the chance of winning a battle… that don’t sound like the puppy-eyed baby brother you kept going on about while we were stuck in Purgatory.”

Dean takes a pull from the bottle he’s holding and shakes his head. “I wish we had the luxury of letting Sam take the high road, I really do. But we’re not talking about one demon, or a few, or a hundred. We’re talking all of them, every single one in existence, trapped in Hell forever. Do you even get what that means?”

“You sure that’s what this is about? A numbers game of a few dying now so more might live later?” He looks directly into Dean’s eyes, challenging him. “Or is this really about getting revenge for that woman in the picture?” Benny narrows his eyes and says quietly, “You sure that’s what she would want?”

Something cold and threatening sparks in Dean’s eyes as he thumps the bottle onto the table and slowly stands, and Benny knows that look, knows he’s wading into dangerous waters.

“Oh, that’s rich coming from someone who hitched a way back from the monster afterlife to wipe out his entire nest over a girl.”

The jab hurts as intended, but it also tells Benny that that his aim was true, he’s exposed a nerve. That he needs to help Dean take his blinders off and see past his thirst for vengeance, get his emotions out of the way of his rationality.

“You can call me a hypocrite, call me whatever you want, but we’re not talking about me. We’re talking about Sam, and you need to listen. When you sent me to go fetch Sam back from Purgatory, we were ambushed at the portal, and I swore there was no way we were both making it out. By all rights he should have left me behind, but he risked everything—his own life, the second Trial, all of it—to convince a miserable son-of-a-bitch like me to give life one more shot. That’s the Sam you told me about, and that Sam wouldn’t do this. Tell me I’m wrong.”

Dean’s expression softens and he blinks doubt-clouded eyes. An internal struggle plays out on his face, and for a moment it seems like Dean is about to relent. Then his expression hardens again, but it’s more resolve than anger.

“Look, I know how hard this is gonna be on Sam. Trust me, I know. And no, it’s not just about revenge. Monsters? There’s a reason they hunt humans, it’s all about instinct and survival, predator and prey. That I get. But demons? With them, there’s no other purpose besides cruelty and suffering for its own sake. Because they like it. We’ve finally got the chance to put an end to that, right here, right now, and no one else can do it but Sam.”

Dean looks suddenly exhausted, scrubs a hand down his face. “We’re so close, Benny. We can’t just take a knee on the one-yard line, whatever line we’ve gotta cross to do it. This is too important.”

A vision of the husk masquerading as Andrea falling to the floor replays behind Benny’s eyes, and he has to turn away from Dean. He’s never gone against his friend before, knows exactly where that leads, but he’ll be twice damned if he’s going to stand by and watch the best part of Sam get snuffed out of existence without a fight. He adjusts his cap and takes a breath.

“Dean, you need to hear something.” Benny turns back, knowing that he’s about to push the limits of Dean’s friendship with what he needs to tell him.

“After I turned Sam, while you were off getting supplies before we gave him the cure, I couldn’t lie to Sam about his chances. He knew damn well he was worse than we let on, and he deserved the truth. And I didn’t think I could live with you losing your brother, so I… I offered to make the change permanent.”

“You what?” Dean’s explosive reaction is predictable, and Benny holds up his hands and speaks quickly to forestall his impending tirade.

“Look, you seemed perfectly okay with me being a vampire as long as humans were off the menu. He told me about the demon blood, and he was able to kick that. Hell, he’s still kicking it, every damn day. I never would have made the offer if I thought for one second he couldn’t handle the hunger without losing himself.”

Dean’s gaze bores into Benny. “He said no?”

“Obviously. Didn’t even consider it for a second, but not because it was his choice. He said no because it was yours, because he’d rather die than become something you didn’t want him to be.” Dean’s eyes soften, and he visibly relaxes. “You might want to think on that before you push Sam into this, cause if you trade away the lives of everyone you saved, that little brother you couldn’t wait to get back to?” Benny shakes his head slowly. “That ain’t who he’ll be anymore. You sure he’s still gonna want to make it through the last Trial?”

Any residual anger drains out of Dean as he sinks back into his chair, leaving behind simmering frustration, and he throws his hands up. “So, what? We let Crowley win? We let demons keep making their deals for souls, possessing people, ruining lives?” There’s the faintest flicker of fear before Dean finishes, “And what about Sam? If we don’t finish this, we don’t know if he’s ever gonna get better.”

“Are those really the only choices you got? Sacrifice people to finish the Trials or surrender to Crowley? Hey, me and my old nest, we dealt with plenty of hunters in our day, and you and Sam are the best damn ones I ever met. I watched you outsmart monsters so dangerous that God created Purgatory just for them. You telling me you can’t think up another way out of this, chief?”

Dean pinches the bridge of his nose as if warding off a headache and lets out a sigh bordering on hopelessness. “We’ve got six hours before Crowley offs his next victim. The ritual takes at least eight hours, not counting how much time it takes for us to find a demon to cure, and we can’t even get near any of them. Crowley’s taken them all off the board.”

“Dean…” comes Sam’s voice from the doorway. Benny’s not sure how long he’s been there. “They’re not all off the board. Who do you think is planting the hex bags?”

The comment draws Dean up short, and his head snaps towards his brother.

Sam drops his gaze and shakes his head. “We have no way to know who he’ll go after next. Sorry, it was a dumb idea.”

“No,” Dean says, his eyes unfocusing to the far distance. “No, it wasn’t. We know that bastard, we just need to think like him.”

Some circuit seems to trip in Dean’s brain and he takes out his phone. “If it’s who I think it is,” Dean says, his mouth bending into a savage smile, “Crowely’s gonna wish he’d stayed in Hell.”

******

There’s a method to the way Crowley chooses his victims.

The chronological order in which the Winchesters had saved them didn’t matter, but they had to be memorable, and each subsequent death needs to hurt with increasing intensity. Needs to hurt Sam, in particular, since he’s the one carrying out the tasks.

The first was chosen for being the first one the Winchesters saved after reuniting from years of estrangement, just enough of a zing to be an emotional shot across their bow. The next was for her pure kindness and guileless innocence. There wasn’t a mean bone in Jenny Klein’s body, exactly the kind of person who didn’t deserve such a horrific death, exactly the kind of person to trigger both brothers’ deep-seated protective instincts and maximize the sting of their failure.

The last had the extra bite of being the first woman Sam had made a connection with after the demonic murder of his first love. That one took more careful planning; they had to get there in time to watch her die in front of them, but without giving them time to find the hex bag. He’d really thought that would have been the one to break Sam, that he wouldn’t need to up the stakes by going after someone they maintained contact with, someone they currently considered a friend. But he hasn’t heard back from them yet, the clock is running out, and so here they are.

With smooth, practiced circles of his wrist, the King of Hell swirls the dark red wine to coat the inside of the glass, then savors the rich aroma released by the agitation. It’s very much like the way he appraised his target, gave her a little stir to open up her loneliness, her vulnerabilities, her desires. He knows exactly what she’s looking for, and in her desperation to fill the void that has haunted her for so long, he’ll find his opening.

“We do share something, you and I,” Crowley says softly to the short-haired brunette across from him, catching and holding her eyes in his intense but understanding gaze.

“What?” Jody asks, entranced, a shy smile playing at her lips.

Crowley takes a sip, relishing the smooth, full-bodied flavor before he swallows.

“Loss.”

Her smile fades, and delicious pain flickers across her face and her eyes go distant, reliving a horrible memory. “My son and my husband.” Her eyes, now saturated with sadness, seek his again. “How did you know?”

He reaches across the table to place a hand over hers, squeezes lightly, and becomes what she needs.

“I’ve lost someone too.”

Gathered tears overflow, and he knows she’s his. She blinks rapidly, looking away, and fails to notice him sliding the hex bag into her purse.

She laughs nervously, more an outburst of pent-up emotion than mirth. “It’s not a date till I’ve cried,” she says self-deprecatingly, sniffs, and wipes at the corners of her eyes in embarrassment.

He smiles and says gently, “So now you’ve cried.”

She reaches for her purse and excuses herself, as women do when they need to make sure the makeup they’ve applied so carefully to make that first, critical impression hasn’t smudged. After she leaves, Crowley reaches into his pocket for the small bundle he’s prepared for the ritual.

It’s all too easy.

“May I refill your wine, sir?”

He pauses at the voice, about to send the waiter away, but reconsiders. He has a full three minutes before the appointed time to carry out his latest promise to the Winchesters, and the wine is surprisingly good. He holds out his glass.

Click.

It takes him a moment to register the fact that there is metal encircling his left wrist, having been locked there by the now-grinning waiter. His would-be victim who was supposed to be putting herself together in the ladies’ room has returned to the table, looking not the least bit distraught. She dumps the burnt remains of the hex bag onto the table in front of him.

Unexpected as this turn of events is, it’s merely a temporary setback. Crowley calmly brings his free hand up to snap his fingers in a fatal gesture. It’s a cleaner death than he would have liked; Crowley has always found prolonged suffering to be a far better motivator than simple termination. But there’s a set timetable, and he has a reputation to uphold.

He snaps.

Nothing happens.

He snaps again. Again, nothing.

“What—” he gets out just before the wine glass is snatched from his fettered hand and its contents are dashed in his face.

“That’s for being a lousy date.” Jody’s erstwhile vulnerability has vanished, replaced by smug derision. “Did you really think I was stupid enough to fall for your cheesy accent and fake sympathy?”

Red liquid drips down his face and onto his very expensive, hand-tailored suit.

“What—” he starts again just before a fist smashes into his nose.

“And that’s for screwing with my friends.”

A different red liquid joins the first, and his nose actually hurts. A lot. And not in a way that he enjoys.

As his right hand reflexively flies to his abused face, the waiter locks the other half of the handcuffs around that wrist.

“Thank you kindly for your assistance, ma’am,” says the waiter in a honeyed Southern drawl, giving Jody a small bow.

“My pleasure. You can head out the back door through the kitchen, I’ve cleared the staff out for ‘official police business’. Anything else I can do for you, Benny?”

“You done plenty, chère, I can take it from here.”

Jody collects her coat and strides towards the front, a distinct bounce in her step.

Concern begins to seep around the edges of his tightly controlled composure as Crowley takes a closer look at the cuffs locked around his wrists, sees the finely engraved symbols.

“What the bloody Hell is this?” Crowley spits out, his indignation and consternation at his plan going awry momentarily getting the better of him.

“Mighty powerful Enochian spellwork, I do believe. Your demonic powers ain’t gonna help you out of this, so you might as well behave and make it easier on yourself.”

Crowley clamps down on any further unseemly emotional outbursts and allows himself to be roughly manhandled out of his seat. He may have been caught off guard, but he certainly wasn’t caught unprepared. He didn’t get to be the King of Hell, after all, without having contingencies for any eventuality.

Crowley finds himself being propelled out the back door of the restaurant and into an alley, which is ripe with the smell of rotting food emanating from a nearby dumpster. Stumbling, he narrowly avoids stepping into something unsavory on the ground, gathers his dignity, and spins to face Benny-the-obviously-not-waiter. He opts to start with his go-to tactic of trying to flip this interloper against the brothers.

“So… you’re a friend of the Winchesters, I take it? You do know how their friends usually end up, don’t you… or did they neglect to mention that part? I can offer you so much more than a grisly death.”

Benny just smiles. “Heh, given my past associates, the Winchesters are a big step up. I’ll take my chances with them, thanks anyway.”

Obviously the carrot approach isn’t going to work, so Crowley proceeds to option two. He gathers himself and summons his King of Hell glare and a deep, menacing tone.

“Do you even know who I am, or what they’ve gotten you into? Do you have any idea what I could do to you?”

Now Benny laughs outright. “Oh, I’ve heard plenty about you. And from the looks of it, about the worst you could do right now is spit at me.”

“Only while these cuffs are on.” Crowley replies smoothly. “And, trust me, they’ll be coming off soon. If you know anything about me at all, you should know that I’m always several steps ahead of those flannel-wrapped morons.”

Right on cue, the three members of Crowley’s backup plan make their entrance. They approach from out of the shadows, shining eyes reflecting the single dim light in the alleyway, fangs bared and gleaming. He didn’t dare risk using his own demons as muscle with the Trials all having a common Hell-related theme, but a few handsomely paid vampires are just as good. Better, even; unlike the unimaginative underlings he’s surrounded himself with lately, they actually understand the power of theatrics.

Crowley steps back to observe as the trio closes in on his would-be captor.

When Benny reveals his own set of sharp-and-pearlies, Crowley’s eyebrows reach for his hairline. He hadn’t anticipated the pair of infamous hunters allying themselves with a vampire, but it’s still three against one.

“I’ll double the pay for whoever takes his head,” Crowley offers, still unruffled. The odds may be with his hired thugs, but it never hurts to sweeten the pot for extra motivation.

The attack is swift and brutal, a flurry of teeth and fists and snarls, and Benny is bloodied first. Then he manages to land a blow that sends one of the thugs careening into another and both go down in a tangle of limbs. Meanwhile the third has drawn a large, vicious looking blade. He narrowly misses decapitating Benny, who ducks under the swing, but then catches him in the face with the pommel on the backswing. As Benny stumbles back, the other presses his advantage and swings at Benny’s torso. Benny turns, trying to avoid the slash, but it still catches him in the side and a blood stain blossoms across the white button-down shirt.

The other two, having regained their feet, press in as Benny backs against the door, one hand pressing protectively over the ugly wound and the other one held up defensively, and Crowley looks on with eager anticipation of the kill. His death might not be as devastating as Jody’s, but he’ll do as an acceptable substitute for now.

Then Benny lets out a low chuckle as a grin spreads slowly across his face. “You three know who it is you’re really working for?”

The odd reaction to his own impending death is enough to give the others pause, and they halt momentarily. If there’s one thing Crowley’s learned, it’s that you never, ever, give them a chance to talk.

“I’ll triple the pay for all of you,” he shouts, desperate to bring a hasty conclusion to the skirmish. “Just cut off his head and get me out of these bloody things!”

But his henchmen hesitate, giving Benny his opening. “This here is Crowley. Thee Crowley.”

The one with the blade narrows his eyes. “King of Hell Crowley?”

His patience wearing thin, Crowley bites out, “Yes, yes, I’m Crowley, thee King of Bloody Hell. This is Benny, who is definitely not a waiter and definitely is a good buddy of your enemies, the Winchesters, and these are Larry, Curly and Moe, who I would remind are all being very well paid for their service. Now that we’ve all had a formal introduction, can we please get on with this!”

But the tip of the blade lowers slightly, and the vampire asks, “You mean, the Crowley who imprisoned and tortured our Father a couple years back? That Crowley?”

Three pairs of eyes swing venomously to him.

Crowley feels the situation slipping out of his control, but he hasn’t lost, not yet. He holds on to his composure with an iron grip. “I can do well more for you than just money. Surely there must be something more you want? A lifetime supply of virgin blood, perhaps? Kill him, and I can make that happen for you.”

Benny continues as if Crowley hadn’t spoken. “One and the same. You walk away, I promise he’ll get what’s coming to him.”

“Hard to imagine what could be worse than us tearing him limb from limb right now,” says the one Crowley had dubbed Curly.

Crowley has never enjoyed the sensation of panic.

“We’re aiming to conduct an experiment of our own on him,” Benny replies. “Should take a long, long time. You’re welcome to look him up when we’re done with him... after he’s human.”

The three traitorous henchmen look at each other and grin as Crowley’s stomach drops.

“Take pictures,” says Moe as the three fade back into the shadows.

Bollocks.

“Word of advice,” Benny says, grabbing the back of Crowley’s jacket collar and all but lifting him off the ground. “You might want to keep better track of everyone you’ve pissed off. You never know how long they might hold a grudge.”

As Benny frog marches him through the alley, Crowley takes what satisfaction he can in the vampire’s grunts of pain.

******

Dean slams the trunk of the Impala slams shut, locking the King of Hell inside and cutting off his stream of impotent threats, as Sam approaches Benny.

“We can’t thank you enough,” Sam says, then worriedly eyes the wicked cut across Benny’s midsection, shaking his head. “You gonna be alright?”

“Oh, this?” Benny tries to say nonchalantly, but the truth is that it hurts like hell. “I’ve had worse, but I’ll admit the car ride won’t do me any favors. You two go on, you don’t have time to waste waiting for me to get road ready. I’ll hole up here, be right as rain in a few hours. I’ll see you back at the bunker to help you celebrate.”

Sam nods and half-turns away, then pauses. “Hey, I’m sorry, I feel like we threw you into a meat grinder,” he says.

“Nah, we talked about this, remember? It had to be me, no way you two would have made it anywhere near Crowley without giving up the game. It’s my own damn fault for laying around the bunker so much. I guess all that soft living slowed me down some. Remind me to start joining you on some runs.”

“Yeah. Sure thing.” Sam gives him a final, oddly sad, smile of thanks and heads for the passenger side of the car.

 Dean pulls a cooler out of the back seat and hands it to Benny.

“This’ll help get you back on your feet. Thanks man, we couldn’t have done this without you.”

“You’re the ones who smelled something fishy about Jody’s mystery date, and Jody pulled off a hell of a con.”

“Yeah, wish I could have seen that.” A grin lights up Dean’s face, and Benny’s glad to see it. “We’ll be sending her about a million fruit baskets after this is over. Hey, you take care of yourself.”

“You just worry about pulling Sam through this.” Benny touches his cap in salute. “I’ll see you and Sam on the flip side, brother.”

Chapter Text

“I'm just spit-balling here, but if I were you, uh… Ruby, killing Lilith, letting Lucifer out, losing your soul, not looking for me when I went to Purgatory… for starters.”

It pours out of Dean’s mouth easily, reflexively, the list of Sam’s past crimes in a stream of consciousness spilling over from his brain. It’s not like this is anything new, he always has a jab or two at Sam within easy reach to remind his little brother of his place in the pecking order, older sibling prerogative and all that. But as the expression on Sam’s face clouds over from hesitant attentiveness to the blank mask that appears whenever Dean strikes a nerve, he wonders if he may have taken it too far. Then again, Sam needs legitimate fodder for the confession to work, for his blood to be purified, or all of this will have been for nothing. And it’s not like any of it wasn’t true. Or undeserved.

Still, Sam’s optimism has taken an obvious hit from moments before when he’d been brimming with confidence, his shoulders now slumped as he carries a load from the Impala towards the dilapidated church. Dean’s conscience twinges and he tries to soften the blow a bit by bringing up a prank from their youth that turned a twelve-year-old girl’s face bright red.

“Or hey, how about what you did to, uh, Penny Markle in the sixth grade? Why don’t you lead with that?”

Sam stops and turns around with an odd look on his face. “Well, that was you.”

Thinking back on it, Dean’s not sure that Sam’s wrong. “Carry on.”

With a final shake of his head, Sam disappears inside the church with the supplies he’s gathered from the trunk. Dean returns to the Impala to stow the equipment they’re finished with and feels that tug of guilt once again. He brushes it aside, tells himself that Sam will shake it off just like he always does. Once all of demon kind is finally wiped from the planet, he’ll be too busy celebrating to care.

Dean starts putting some supplies away when a rustle behind him followed immediately by “Dean, I need your help,” causes him to startle, bumping the back of his head against underside of the trunk lid. Rubbing the abused spot, he turns around to find the Angel of Impeccable Timing looking at him with imploring eyes. Because it wouldn’t be his life if every critical thing imaginable didn’t happen at exactly the same time.

******

As Sam closes the door of the cramped confessional, he’s immediately assaulted by the smell of decay that surrounds him. Dim light filters through the hole in the screening, illuminating the moldy velvet on the bench, the rot eating away at the damp wood paneling. He can appreciate the irony. It’s only fitting that this deteriorating booth should be the receptacle of his confession for the litany of failures enumerated by his brother moments ago. Things that he had thought long forgiven, or that he didn’t realize even required forgiving. Resentments which had merely been pushed under the surface, left to fester over the intervening months and years, eating away at what little belief Dean had ever once had in him.

It had been months since Dean’s ghost-fueled tirade of accusations, and things between them had been considerably better since Sam started the trials. Dean had even finally stopped constantly voicing his doubts about Sam’s abilities to finish them after he’d freed Bobby from Hell. It was almost as if Dean had accepted his efforts as amends for the past, had finally put his old grudges to rest. For a while, it was almost as if Dean dared to have faith in him again. Dean’s reiteration of everything that the Confederate ghost had hurled at him smothered that delusion.

Sam says the words he’s expected to say, but in his heart he knows they’re rote, hollow. Inadequate. Because what good is a confession about sins for which he’d thought he’d already done penance? The horrors he’d endured in the Cage, the hallucinations that tore apart his mind when his soul was restored, the weakness and deterioration of his body from the trials. He had assumed that his voluntary acceptance of suffering had been sufficient apology for Dean’s list of grievances.

Apparently not.

Sam runs a shaky hand down his face. What more could he possibly offer up that would cleanse his soul and purify his blood enough for the ritual? What does he even have left to give?

He already knows the answer. Has known it for a long time; just has refused to admit it. He repeats his confession, knows that he means it this time, knows what has to happen. An orange glow coupled with a burning in his forearms confirms it, and he steps out of the booth with an ache in his chest, but also a rekindled determination.

As Sam leaves the church, he can hear the deep gravel of Castiel’s voice from the far side of the Impala.

“But I'm the only one who can. I can't fail, Dean, not on this one. I need your help.”

“Look, Cas, that's all well and good, okay, but you're asking me to leave Sam, and we've got Crowley in there tied and trussed. Now, if anybody needs a chaperone while doing the heavy lifting, it's Sam.”

And there it is, laid out plainly for Sam. All of Dean’s doubts about him that he’s kept buried for the past month risen to the surface when he thinks Sam’s not in hearing distance.

To Dean’s back he says quietly, “You should go.”

Sam can tell by Dean’s sudden straightening, his head tilting skyward, that Dean never meant for him to hear the last part. Dean turns, no longer bothering to hide what he really feels, his lack of confidence in Sam carved into his expression. “Oh, what, and leave you here with the King of Hell? Come on.”

“I got this,” Sam replies, masking his discouragement with a veneer of certainty. “If you guys can lock the angels up, too… that’s a good day.”

Dean takes off with Cas, but not before leaving Sam with a parting instruction to finish the trial no matter what. His stinging lack of trust hardens Sam’s resolve not just to finish this, but to do it on his own. Nothing less would change Dean’s mind about him.

******

Dean and Cas appearing out of thin air in the middle of the map room was unexpected, but then, Benny’s learned to take a certain amount of the unexpected in stride. He’d be unconcerned about their sudden, unconventional entrance if it weren’t for the fact that there’s only the two of them.

“Dean, what happened? Aren’t you supposed to be with Sam?”

It’s Castiel who answers. “There’s been a change of plans. Dean and I are on a different mission now.” Clutching the stone tablet they’d found tucked in Crowley’s coat after Benny had captured him, Cas brushes past Benny and strides into the library where Kevin has been resting in one of the plush chairs. Benny surmises that this must be the artifact that had caused the rift between Cas and Dean, and this new mission is Castiel’s means to make amends.

Dean rolls his eyes in an angels, what can you do kind of way and supplies a more informative summary. “Cas is trying to do the Angel trials, ‘cause apparently Metatron said those are also a thing. They’re supposed to ‘fix Heaven’, or whatever, by evicting all the halos from Earth and locking the door behind them. We need Kevin to translate Heaven’s user guide pronto to figure out what the last one is.”

“What happened to sealing Hell?”

“Sam’s still working on that. Don’t worry, he’s got a good eight hours to go. I’m planning to be back for the finale.”

The sound of glass shattering pulls their attention to the library, where Castiel has hauled Kevin out of his chair and is holding him up by the front of his shirt.

“Get the hell off me!” Kevin yells, pushing at Castiel.

Dean bounds up the stairs ahead of Benny with a shout of “Cas!”

Castiel hisses in clipped, over-enunciated syllables, “There. Is. No. Out. Only duty.” He pulls Kevin even closer until their faces are inches apart. “You are a Prophet of the Lord, always and forever.”

Benny looks back and forth between Dean and Castiel, taken aback by the angel’s none-too-gentle treatment of Kevin, who’s clearly still exhausted from his recent ordeal in Crowley’s captivity. Castiel releases the handful of the teenager’s shirt that was clenched in his fist, allowing Kevin to stumble backwards. Eyes wide and fearful, he slumps into a chair, and Castiel plunks the stone tablet on the table in front of him.

Benny’s never seen the angel like this before, angry blue eyes burning with a singular, almost fanatical, purpose. The awkward, gentle, downright nerdy Cas is nowhere to be seen, replaced by a fervent Warrior of Heaven fixated on a crusade. Benny can practically feel the power sparking behind those eyes and has no doubt that Castiel could smite him without working up a sweat. Still, he feels like he has to say something.

“Look, I get how important this mission of yours is to you, but maybe you could go a little easier on the kid? He hasn’t exactly had an easy time of it. Prophet or not, he’s still human.”

Castiel turns his fierce gaze on him, eyes blazing, and Benny can’t help but take a step back. He looks to Dean for some sort of support for reasoning with the angel, at least getting him to ease up, but Dean’s looking down, checking his watch anxiously.

“He is an agent of Heaven, and that’s all he is until the day he dies and is replaced by another.” Castiel turns back to Kevin, who shrinks even further into his seat. “Now, are you clear to as to the task before you?”

The kid just nods meekly.

“Then do it, and let’s go.”

Dean and Castiel are gone in a flurry of flapping, leaving Benny to look at the empty space in dismay, worried that he’d underestimated the angel’s determination to get himself back into Dean’s good graces. He wonders just what else the angel’s desperation will drive him to do, if he thinks nothing of terrifying the bone-tired teenager into a task that’s pushing him past his endurance.

Not knowing what else to do, Benny stoops to pick up the pieces of the broken glass from the floor. He pauses before he goes to get a broom to sweep up the rest of the slivers and looks at Kevin, who’s staring miserably at the tablet.

“Anything I can get you?”

“Yeah. Caffeine and painkillers.” Kevin pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs in resignation. “Lots of them.”

******

Sam reaches into his hair and tugs at yet another piece of the stained-glass window through which Abaddon had thrown him. Dried, tacky blood glues it to some hair near his scalp, and a few strands come away along with it when he pulls. He grunts more in annoyance than pain; it figures she’d pick the only intact window to chuck him through. He pulls his cellphone out of his back pocket to find that it’s now cracked and lifeless, because of course it is. He tosses it onto the altar and shrugs off the inconvenience. He won’t need it anyway.

He’s aware of the dried blood tracks on his face from the myriad cuts he’d received from the broken glass but doesn’t dare leave Crowley alone long enough to clean himself up. Who knows what else might come walking through the door if the King of Hell manages to send out another distress call. Granted, he’d been a lot more cooperative since Abaddon had turned out to be more interested in ending Crowley than releasing him, but Sam knew better than to allow himself to let his guard down again, no matter how agreeable he seemed.

Sam couldn’t help the little flare of hope that sputtered into existence after Crowley received the previous injection willingly, wondering if it might be a sign that the ritual was already working. It’s something that’s been clawing at him from the back of his mind ever since learning about the cure—not knowing whether enough of the demon blood had been burned out of him to cleanse a demon’s soul. Crowley’s change in demeanor happened much earlier than Sam had expected; it wasn’t until the seventh injection when the demon in the experiment gave the first indication of its transformation. Crowley had only been on his fifth. It could all be an act, of course, just Crowley playing along and biding his time, lulling him into a sense of complacency and waiting for Sam to make another mistake.

Crowley accepts the sixth injection as calmly as he did the last. Once it’s done, Sam replaces the hypo back on the altar, then braces himself for the familiar burning pain that shoots through his veins with an intensity and duration that has been increasing with every dose. That, more than anything, bolsters his confidence that the remaining corruption in his blood won’t sabotage the cure. When the agony subsides and he can breathe again, Sam finds Crowley’s eyes on him.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Crowley says, and Sam hopes he’ll stay quiet.

The King of Hell disappoints him. “Just… that was quite the entrance, Moose. The look on Abaddon’s face when she realized it was holy oil just before you flambeed her… priceless. Almost worth the cost of admission.”

Crowley chuckles with an exaggerated mirthfulness of a drunk. “’Nice suit,’” he says in a voice that Sam assumes is supposed to be an imitation of him, and laughs again, shaking his head. “We really do need to work on your one-liners.”

“Really not in the mood, Crowley,” Sam says, his irritation increasing. He wants nothing more than to get through the rest of this in silence.

Sam turns his attention to checking the still-throbbing bite wound he’d received courtesy of the King of Hell before Abaddon showed up. He kicks himself mentally again for not immediately realizing that there was a purpose to it other than defiance.

When Sam glances back up, Crowley’s still staring at him. “No one thought you could beat Lucifer,” he says for no discernable reason.

Sam gives him a sardonic snort. “Thanks for the newsflash.”

“I certainly didn’t think you could take on a Knight of Hell. Clearly, neither did Abaddon.”

“Yeah, I already know all about everyone’s low opinions of me,” Sam replies, exasperated. “Can you please just shut up now?”

“That’s your greatest advantage, you know. People keep underestimating you, even knowing what you’ve done, the things you’re capable of. Only a fool would do that. I was a fool to do that.”

It sounds like an attempt at a compliment, or maybe a hint of an apology. The Crowley Sam knows would rather stick hot pokers in his eyes than let any sort of admission like that slip past his lips, unless it’s to gain himself some sort of advantage.

“Save it Crowley.  Kissing my ass isn’t going to get you out of this.”

Crowley smiles, but with none of his characteristic smugness. “I know that, Sam,” he says serenely. “And I would prefer to go by Fergus now.” He lets his eyes close and starts humming some nameless tune to himself.

That little spark of hope flares again, and Sam tries to tamp it down, afraid that he’s jinxing himself by even acknowledging it. He distracts himself by cleaning the bite wound again, sucking in his breath at the sting of the alcohol. He welcomes the pain; he can’t afford to lose his focus now, and it will keep him alert.

Failure is not an option.

******

Kevin’s been staring at the tablet, unmoving since he’d slammed back a handful of acetaminophen tablets hours ago, when his phone rings with Dean’s name showing up on the screen. Kevin leans back and rubs at his eyes before reaching for the phone, then fumbles it in jittery hands. Benny answers it for him and puts it on speaker.

“We’re here, Dean.”

“Tell me you’ve got something.”

Kevin sighs wearily. “Yeah… maybe. I think I found the Angel trials, but there’s nothing about a nephilim or a cupid’s bow or anything like that.”

“You sure?”

Kevin gives the phone a look that could curdle milk. “No, I’m not sure. It took me six months to translate the Demon Tablet. I’ve only had this for a few hours.”

“Come on man, we’re at the two-minute warning here. We need something we can use!”

“Dean, this is it. Let’s move!” comes Castiel’s voice in the background.

“Look, I gotta go. Call me back when you’ve got something useful.” Dean ends the call before either of them can respond.

“Typical,” the Prophet of the Lord says and flips off the phone.

The kid is a picture of abject misery, rubbing his temples against a headache that is clearly worsening.

“Anything I can I do to help?” Benny asks, hating the feeling of being useless.

“Sure. Get me my life back,” Kevin says, dropping his head into his hands.

Benny genuinely feels for him, having his entire life being dictated by others because an ability was forced upon him that he didn’t ask for or want. He makes a sympathetic noise.

“Anything I’m actually capable of doing?” he prompts gently.

Kevin says into his hands, “More pills.”

Since Kevin had kicked the last of the painkillers he’d found earlier, Benny goes in search of another bottle of anything to help get the teen through his task. He finds some unexpired ibuprofen at the back of a medicine cabinet and heads back to the library with it along with a glass of water. He shakes out two and hands them over, suspecting that Kevin would probably down another handful without thinking about it, which probably isn’t a good idea for humans.

Partly out of curiosity, and partly to distract Kevin from his obvious discomfort, Benny asks, “So what does this thing say about the Angel trials?”

“Nothing good. They make the Hell trials look like Disneyland, and look what those are doing to Sam.”

“Maybe this is a dumb question, but if these things are supposed to be the Word of God, why isn’t Castiel reading them himself?”

“He can’t read them. He said they weren’t meant for angels.”

Something about that doesn’t add up for Benny. “But if these things weren’t meant for angels… then why would Castiel be able to do Angel trials at all? Shouldn’t a human be doing those?”

Kevin straightens up and his mouth opens, closes, then opens again. “That’s… actually a good question. You think Metatron lied about that?”

“Might explain why you can’t find what you’re looking for.” Another, equally concerning thought hits Benny. “Didn’t you say it was Metatron who told you about Sam’s last trial? Did you ever read that for yourself?”

Kevin’s face mirrors Benny’s concern. “Maybe… maybe I should double check that.”

He sprints off to retrieve the Demon tablet from wherever they’re keeping it as Benny hits Dean’s contact number.

The second Dean picks up, Benny starts talking. “Dean, listen. Whatever Cas is doing, we don’t think it’s part of the Angel trials. Metatron might be—”

“—screwing us, just like every other feathered dick we’ve ever made a deal with?” Dean finishes for him. “What else is new?”

“There’s more. We don’t know if what Metatron said about the third Demon trial is true either. Kevin’s checking right now.”

“Okay. You call Sam and get him to hold up until we know what’s what. I’m gonna head for the church as soon as I’m done here.”

Kevin plunks the Demon tablet down next to the Angel tablet as Benny hangs up and tries Sam’s number, but he doesn’t pick up. Benny frowns in concern and tries Sam again. And again. He finally gives up, wondering whether Sam was occupied with the ritual or if there was some reason for concern.

It takes Kevin only a minute to find the relevant section.

“Okay, it’s right here: cure a demon. Metatron wasn’t lying about that much at least. But…” Kevin squints and leans in closer to the tablet.

“What?”

“The end of the trial—” Kevin shakes his head. “Metatron didn’t tell us everything…” Kevin rubs at his eyes, then frowns in concentration. Kevin’s hand, seemingly of its own accord, scribbles something on a notepad. When he picks it up and reads back what he’s written, Kevin’s face blanches. “Call Dean back. Now.”

Benny hits Dean’s number again, his raised eyebrows asking the question.

Kevin doesn’t look at Benny, just hands him the translation without a word.

Dean’s phone rings several times, then finally goes to voicemail. Benny reads what Kevin wrote, swears loudly, and sprints for the exit.

******

“Where are we?”

Crowley’s voice rouses Sam from an exhausted near-drowse that’s had him floating in and out of almost-dreams, a series of random abstract images that break apart as he stirs into full consciousness. Sam checks his watch and sees that a lot more time has passed than he realized. He disables the alarm he’d set, which was about to go off anyway.

“It’ll all be over in less than five minutes.”

Crowley nods in acknowledgement, then tilts his head towards the altar where the final syringe, the demon blade, and the more recent addition of Sam’s Taurus are lined up and waiting.

“The syringe, I get. The knife,” Crowley says, then frowns and looks questioningly at Sam. “What's with the peashooter?”

Sam hesitates, then says quietly, “It's for when you're human.”

“Hmm. Of course. Smart, Moose. Should have seen that.” There’s a rustle of clothing as Crowley shifts in his seat. “I expect that putting a bullet in me will give you some sense of satisfaction. I suppose I owe you that much for your songbird.” Crowley gives an amused grunt. “Fitting end, isn’t it, going straight to Hell to be tortured by the demons I used to rule, eh Moose?”

At the beginning of the ritual, Sam would have agreed with Crowley. But looking at him now—docile, broken, resigned—he can’t summon the hatred that had broiled in his gut ever since he’d watched Sarah die. It was Crowley the Crossroads Demon, Crowley the King of Hell who did that. The man in front of him now, with the tracks of dried tears clinging to his cheeks, with the resigned hopelessness and bottomless well of guilt hollowing out his eyes—Sam knows in his heart that this man before him isn’t that anymore.

People can change. There is reason for hope.

Sam allows the last embers of his dying anger to extinguish, allows himself to feel the sympathy he’d stubbornly held at bay for the past few hours. What kind of hypocrite would he have to be to ask for forgiveness for the things he’s done, but then refuse it to someone else?

“That’s not what I…” Sam shakes his head. “This ritual, it’s supposed to purify your soul. Once that happens… maybe it’ll even reopen a path to Heaven for you.”

“Sam.” Crowley—Fergus—says with a dismissive shake of his head. “Even you can’t be naïve enough to believe that’s a possibility. Not for me.”

“Even for you. If you’re truly repentant.” Sam looks to the remains of the pierced hands and feet that denote where the life-sized crucifix used to hang on the wall. “It has to be. Otherwise… what’s even the point of all this?”

Fergus seems to mull on that for a bit, then repeats his question. “Why the gun, then, if not for retribution?”

Sam takes a breath, remembering the horrific moment in the convent when he’d realized what he’d unleashed. Remembering the memories that flooded back to him of what he’d done when he came back from the Cage without his soul.

“Once you’re human again, you’ll still remember everything you’ve ever done, but you’ll see it all without a demonic filter. It’s going to be…” worse than Hell, he decides not to say. It seems too inadequate. “The gun’s for mercy.” Sam regards Fergus again, watching for a reaction. “If you want it.”

The almost-not-demon goes silent for a time, and Sam closes his eyes and listens to the rain patter down through an empty window frame. He remembers missing the sound during his interminable imprisonment in the Cage.

“And this…” Fergus lifts his shackled hands, inclines his head towards the confessional. “Is all this part of your atonement for whatever it is you confessed?”

Sam huffs out an apathetic breath. “What does it matter to you?”

Fergus shrugs. “I would have thought that whatever two bored, pissed off archangels did to you would more than account for any sin you could have possibly committed. If that didn’t suffice for you… I can’t imagine what would make up for the things that I’ve done. Taking the easy way out hardly seems like it would earn me a seat in the balcony.”

“It’s up to you. But if I’ve learned one thing, it’s that suffering isn’t atonement. There’s nothing noble about it, it doesn’t fix anything. It’s just… suffering. It didn’t—” Emotion catches Sam’s voice on barbed wire, and he has to turn away and clear his throat. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

Sam checks his watch again. Two minutes to go.

Chapter Text

The residual echo of flapping wings in the wake of Naomi’s departure has barely faded when Castiel rounds on Dean.

“Naomi’s lying, Dean. We can’t trust anything she says. Not about the trials, certainly not about Metatron. She’ll say or do anything that will help her cling to power.”

But her words are still bouncing around in Dean’s skull, drowning out Castiel’s repudiation. To complete the trials, Sam will have to make the ultimate sacrifice. I saw it in Metatron’s head.

He shakes his head. “I’m not willing to take that chance. Not with Sam’s life on the line.”

Uncharacteristically agitated, Castiel turns and paces away for a few steps before turning back, levelling his intense blue gaze at Dean. “Are you really naïve enough to believe that she would put the life of a single human over the opportunity to seal off Hell? Listen to me. She had me under her control for months, making me lie to you, making me manipulate you, almost making me kill you to get the Angel tablet. She’s doing the same thing to every angel in Heaven as we speak. I can’t let that continue. I won’t. She’s just trying to distract us from putting an end to her tyranny! For all we know, Sam could die if he doesn’t finish the trial.”

Castiel’s argument makes him pause, and doubt begins to cloud Dean’s otherwise clear course of action. He, better than anyone, knows that the angels as a general whole view humans as little more than ants, and maybe Cas is right to take Naomi’s claim with a dump truck full of salt. But Dean’s brain is still twitching about Benny’s call, about how easy the supposed “Angel trial” was. The Cupid didn’t even put up a fight, just handed its damn bow over without so much as an argument, whereas Sam’s been put through a meat grinder for months with the Hell trials.

It just doesn’t sit right in his gut.

“Take me to Sam.”

“Dean—”

“I said take me to Sam. Now!”

It comes out of Dean with a ferocity that makes Castiel recoil, even though they both know he can’t possibly hurt the angel physically. His face reflects his frustration, but Castiel relents and places a hand on Dean’s shoulder. The world tilts and spins, nausea roils in Dean’s stomach, and then they’re standing next to the Impala in front of the abandoned church where Sam’s been carrying out the final trial on his own for hours.

In clipped words, Castiel says, “I’m not wrong about this. I’m going to help Metatron take down Naomi and fix Heaven.” Then his face deflates into sadness. “Dean, I wish you could see… I’m doing this for you.”

He’s gone before Dean has a chance to respond.

It leaves him feeling unsettled, like he’s watching his friend run headlong towards disaster with no way to pull him back, but he doesn’t have time to spare any more thought about it. He sprints to the front door of the church and shoves his way through just in time to see Sam holding up a bleeding hand, ready to say the final words that will put an end to Hell’s influence on Earth. And probably put an end to Sam as well.

“Sammy, stop!” bursts out of him.

Sam looks up at him, startled by the sudden outburst, and Dean is momentarily taken aback by his appearance. His skin is sallow, emphasizing the dark, sunken circles around his eyes and the streaks of dried blood that track down his face from his hairline, making Dean wonder just what in the hell happened here during his absence. The shattered window that had previously been intact hints at nothing good. Sam’s eyes are wide, manic, lit with feverish intensity, and his gaze wanders around in confusion, his concentration having been broken by Dean’s unexpected interruption.

Now that he has his brother’s attention, Dean makes his voice gentle. “Easy there. Okay. Just take it easy. We got a slight change of plan.”

“What? What's going on? Where's Cas?”

Dean takes a breath and loads his voice with warning. “You finish this trial, you're dead, Sam.”

Sam frowns, looking more perplexed than concerned, and Dean waits for understanding to penetrate, for his brother to give him a relieved smile and a nervous laugh and an oh, thank God you got here in time or maybe a snarky what took you so long, you stop for pie?

But Sam just looks at him and shrugs. “So?”

It takes a moment for Dean’s brain to absorb and process Sam’s response, which should have been surprise, or shock, or dismay. It should have been fear of what he almost did, relief that he didn’t. It should have been anything but what he just said, anything but this nonchalant acceptance, as if he already knew. As if he’d already done the math and decided that his life wasn’t part of the equation. Dean stands there, his mouth silently hanging open, trying to summon the right words to bridge the gulf between them.

Sam throws Dean’s own arguments across the chasm. “What about the people who’ll die if I don’t do this? What about the promise we made to Kevin, to give him a chance to have a real life? What happened to doing this for Mom? ‘Sometimes good people gotta die for the greater good’, right?”

Dean wishes fervently right now that he could go back in time and deck himself before he said something so stupid. Yeah, maybe he meant it at the time, but he didn’t mean it about Sam. He could never mean that about Sam.

“Look, I was wrong about that. You don’t need to do this. We’ve got enough from the tablet to turn the tide and save more people than we ever could before.”

“Dean…” Sam stares at him, incredulous. “You’ve wanted this since the night Mom died when you were four years old. To avenge Mom, to make sure no one else ever has to go through what we went through. I can stop it all right now.” He holds up his hand, illustrating just how close Dean is to losing him.

Panic forms in Dean’s stomach, rises through his throat, and exits as anger. “Sam… this isn’t worth your life!”

“But it’s worth Sarah’s? Or Jodie’s?” Sam plants his fingertips against his own chest, over his heart, exactly where he’d placed the barrel of Metatron’s gun. “My life isn’t worth any more than the people we were ready to sacrifice, and I’m willing, so yeah, it’s damned well worth it!”

Breathing angrily, Sam squeezes his eyes shut. An unheeded tear leaks out of the corner and cuts a path through dried blood as he takes a deep, calming breath. He opens shining eyes to look at Dean again.

“It’s worth it to me,” he says in a quieter voice, “to not let you down again.”

A wave of cold washes over Dean, stunning him to silence, while the memories of every disappointed look, every snide comment about his inadequacies from Dad assaults him from the darkest corners of his mind. He understood the purpose behind it all; it made Dean push himself that much harder to try to reach his father’s ever-moving goalposts. It hammered Dean’s edges to lethal sharpness, honed him into a perfect weapon for hunting, kept him and Sam alive in a life of chasing down other people’s nightmares.

But that’s not what it did to Sam. For Sam, their father’s constant disparagement seemed to accomplish exactly the opposite, made him care that much less about pleasing him, made him push back that much harder and question everything they did even more. At the time, he’d resented Sam for not taking hunting seriously enough, for undermining the unity of the family, for threatening the bond that kept them together. For finally rejecting it – him – and leaving.

It wasn’t until after John died that Dean realized how unfair he’d been to both of them, and then Dean had cringed at himself, at the lengths he was willing to go to for every scrap of approval from the man. It was only then that Dean realized it wasn’t resentment he harbored against Sam for his stubborn refusal to simply follow orders that fueled the near-constant arguments. It was jealousy.

God, how Dean envied Sam’s strength to stand up to the man, to be able to define himself outside of John’s opinion of him, to seize control of his own life.

What the hell happened to that version of Sam? When did Sam turn into him, and when did he turn into—

Dean recoils from a harsh realization, rejects it in denial.

He’s not John.

He’s not.

Words have only ever been a weapon to Dean, a means to intimidate, to compel cooperation. A shield to prevent others from seeing too much of what he fears, exposing vulnerabilities that he can’t afford to show. And when he’s at his worst, when his emotions and guilt threaten to overwhelm him, they’re his ammunition to turn defense into offense, to deflect away from his weakness, to wound in a counterattack with pinpoint precision. He’s never learned how to use them to soothe, to comfort, to reassure, and so they betray him now when he needs them the most. Dean gropes for the magic combination that will sway Sam away from his obsessive course, but he flounders like a drowning man grasping at splintered wreckage. He reaches instead for something that worked once, eight years ago in the middle of the night outside Sam’s apartment.

“I can’t do this without you.”

“Yes you can.” Sam’s response is too quick, too ready. Premeditated. “You’ve got Benny. He’s the one you listen to, the one you turn to when you need someone you can trust at your back, not me.”

The deflection is instinctive. “Hey, I killed Benny to save you—”

“Knowing he had a way back.” Although there’s no accusation in Sam’s tone, the words still hit like a fist. “It’s okay, Dean.” Sam’s eyes shift to look past Dean’s shoulder. “I’m glad he came back. I might not have been able to do this knowing you’d be alone.”

“No, Sam,” comes Benny’s voice from behind Dean, sounding almost panicked. “This is anything but okay. Kevin translated the last trial, and—”

“I die, I know,” Sam says with a detachment that makes Dean ill. “So I’ll be in Heaven, so what? It’s not the worst place to end up.”

Benny moves forward into the sanctum, pulling even with Dean. “That’s just it, Sam. You won’t. You do this, and you become the seal. You’ll be trapped in Hell, damned forever along with all the demons you lock down there. And every single one of them will spend eternity trying to claw their way out. Through you.”

Finally, something seems to get through to Sam, who looks back and forth at them in wide-eyed fear-infused shock, and the silence hangs thick and tense between all of them. It stretches on for a minute, or maybe a year, as Dean stands transfixed, mentally willing Sam to abandon his headlong rush towards self-destruction.

Sam finally relaxes his stance, blows out a shaky breath, nods in acquiescence.

Dean lets himself breathe again, feels his own muscles uncoil, the tension draining out of him now that Sam finally has the sense to stand down. He looks over at Benny with a smartass remark at the ready, but the vampire’s mouth goes slack and his eyes go wide. Snapping his head back to Sam, panic seizes Dean as he realizes that Sam had no intention of backing off; his still bleeding hand is once again reaching for Crowley, the final spell of the last trial on his lips.

He had one chance to stop Sam, and he blew it. He misread his own brother, refusing to believe that sacrificing his soul was a line Sam wouldn’t cross for Dean’s sake. As if Sam hadn’t done it before. Anguish rips through Dean, knowing even as he starts toward Sam that he’s already too late.

Thank fuck Benny isn’t.

The vampire is a blur of movement, and his hand clamps around Sam’s wrist with his palm less than an inch from Crowley’s mouth, an orange glow pulsing in his forearms. Sam looks at Benny, stunned, and Dean has never been so thankful for preternatural vampiric speed.

“Benny, let go. Let me finish this.”

“Why, Sam? You were so damn eager to show Dean that there’s something more out there for him than a bloody end. Throwing your own soul away seems like kind of a dumb way to make the point, no?”

Sam shakes his head. “Dean needs this more than he needs me, even if he doesn’t see it. You can pick up where I left off, Benny. You’re more of a brother to him than I can be anymore.”

At first Dean can’t fathom where the hell Sam would have ever gotten that idea from, but something about the statement rings oddly familiar. A circuit closes in his brain, a blurry memory snaps into focus, and Dean suddenly knows what he said, remembers the blinding rage induced by the Confederate specter, remembers how deeply he had wanted to hurt Sam. But it’s like an echo from a dream that only makes sense while asleep and seems absurd after waking. How could Sam not see that?

“Hey, I know I’ve said some things that set you back on your heels, but come on—" Dean says dismissively, his indignation mounting at Sam for taking things he’d carelessly spat out seriously instead of for the obvious bullshit they were.

“You were right to say them. Ruby, Lucifer, my soul, Purgatory… there’s no fixing the past, I get that now. But I can still give you a future.”

“Sam, you’re an idiot.”

Dean and Sam both stare at Benny, who gives Sam a light shove, forcing him to stumble backward, then inserts himself between Sam and eternal damnation.

“I may have gone back to Purgatory for Dean,” Benny says, his voice taught with emotion, then shakes his head. “But he ain’t the reason I came back.”

Sam’s face twists into confusion. “Benny?”

“Do you honestly think Dean, or me, or anyone else for that matter, would be better off without you? Let me tell you something: there’s plenty of people out there who can get folks to kill for them, even to die for them. Believe me, I know the type all too well. But there’s too damn few who can make someone who’s hit rock bottom want to live. You’re a rare one, Sam Winchester, and I say a world crawling with demons is still better than a world without you. And I’ll tell you something else: the things Dean told me about you in Purgatory… I ain’t half the brother that you’ve been for him. No one can replace you, Sam. And anything Dipshit over here’s said or done to make you think otherwise is on him, not you.”

Dean’s heart contracts. It's everything that should be said, it’s everything that needs to be said, but it shouldn’t have come from Benny. It should have come from him.

Sam’s eyes shift over to skewer Dean’s.

He knows what Sam is waiting for, but the things Dean wants to say just spin incoherently around in his brain, failing to coalesce into language, and he doesn’t understand why it’s so easy to say these things to everyone but Sam. He doesn’t know why it was so easy to brag to Cassie about Sam getting a full ride to Stanford, why it was so easy to gush about Sam to Benny in Purgatory, why it was so easy to tell Father Simon how much he believes in Sam, how his little brother has done things he never thought possible. He doesn’t understand why the only things that come out of his mouth when Sam is right there in front of him are the hurt and the pain from things that should have been put to rest long ago.

Move on or I will.

It wasn’t just an empty, flippant remark. It was a promise, a warning that Dean ignored at every opportunity.

It would be so much easier for him and Benny to just physically force Sam to stop, bodily drag him away from that church, and worry about getting him to come to his senses later. But there’s a question in Sam’s eyes demanding an answer, and it holds Dean rooted in place. Without that answer, Dean would spend the rest of his life wondering if Sam regretted not finishing the trial. Or if Sam would have chosen to stop because of Benny, not because of him.

He has to say something.

“Sam… just… don’t do this. Please.”

It’s the only thing he can choke out past the lump clotting his throat, and he curses the waver in his voice, the moisture blurring his vision. Ashamed as he is for letting weakness bleed through in front of Sam, he doesn’t dare to even blink, praying that Sam can somehow see everything Dean can’t express with some lame-ass speech. Sam’s gaze holds him pinned for a long moment, like he's putting Dean’s soul under a microscope, and it’s all Dean can do to not look away.

Then Sam blinks. His expression softens, tempered by some sort of revelation. Hope sputters to life in his eyes as if he’s considering for the first time a future that extends beyond the end of the ritual.

“Okay,” Sam says, and Dean thinks maybe he’s witnessed a miracle.

The barest hint of a smile sneaks its way onto Sam’s face, and Dean is wholly unprepared for how it makes him feel to have Sam want to live for him, how it’s a fuck of a lot better than knowing that Sam was willing to die for him. He doesn’t waste any time pulling Sam in and holding onto him, partly because he’s afraid that Sam might change his mind and partly because he doesn’t want his little brother to see him lose control under the wave of relief crashing over him.

“But I don’t… I’m not sure how to stop,” Sam says uncertainly over his shoulder.

“Just let it go. I’ve got you.”

Sam slowly returns his embrace, and it’s a good five seconds before Dean feels like he can trust himself to pull back. He wraps a handkerchief around Sam’s hand to staunch the bleeding, sees the orange glow fade, and allows himself to believe that everything is actually going to be okay for once.

He’s caught completely off guard when Sam grunts, pain contorting his face as he collapses to the floor.

“Sam!”

“Dean—” Sam looks up at him, his forehead crinkling in distress, then pauses as another wave of agony washes over him and the orange glow returns, pulsing, even brighter than before. “I can’t—I can’t stop it. It’s burning,” he hisses through clenched teeth and doubles over.

Between ragged, gasping breaths, Sam huffs out a bitter laugh. “Finish the trial, don’t finish the trial… it doesn’t matter. I should have known it was never—it was never gonna end any other way for me. I’m sorry, Dean.”

It's not fair. It’s not fucking fair. Dean’s mind becomes a whirlwind, coming up with option after option only to reject each one as requiring time that Sam doesn’t have, until he lands on the only remaining one he thinks will give Sam a snowball’s chance.

“Sam, Benny can turn you again. We’ll figure out how to fix you, we’ll turn you back, just like before—”

“You heard Castiel. The trials changed me in ways even he can’t heal.”

“If I may—"

“Then we make it permanent!” Dean knows it’s just desperation speaking before the words are even out.

Sam calls his bluff gently. “You know you don’t mean that.” A stronger pulse of orange pulls another grunt from Sam. “I should just finish the trial, at least some good will come of it.”

“Damn it, Sam!”

“IF I MAY.”

Crowley’s chain-smoker baritone finally breaks through Dean’s wall of despair. “Maybe your angel can’t fix Sam, but there are others who can. That is,” Crowley adds, “if you’re willing to deal.”

Crowley’s interjection transforms Dean’s desperation into ire and draws it like a lightning rod. “Sure, we’ll deal,” he snarls. Dean retrieves the demon killing blade from the altar and presses the jagged blade to Crowley’s throat. “Cure Sam, and I’ll kill you quick. Don’t, and I’ll make it last for a good, long time.”

Crowley meets Dean’s glare unphased. “Please,” he says in a patronizing tone, “you know that’s not the way it works. I need a soul for collateral against the power required. And you and I both know who holds all the cards here. I’m your only hope. Kill me, Sammy dies. The price is one soul and my freedom.”

Seething with hatred, Dean reluctantly pulls the knife away with an effort and plunges it into the backrest next to Crowley’s head. It accomplishes nothing aside from dulling the blade, and he yanks it back out, turning away and growling in frustration. But he knows Crowley’s right, he’s got all the leverage; Dean won’t play chicken with Sam’s life. Dean turns to face Crowley, intending to take the deal.

“Not you, you prat.” Crowley says curtly, then nods towards Benny. “I want him. He’s the one that got me into this.”

“Benny, don’t—” Sam and Dean say simultaneously, but Benny’s already got his mouth planted over Crowley’s before either can finish.

Benny pulls back, spits dramatically, and wipes his mouth. “Uh, that is how we’re supposed to seal the deal, right?” he asks belatedly.

“A little sloppy, but it’ll do,” Crowley responds, then lifts his manacled hands towards Dean. “If you would. I’d wager Samantha doesn’t have much time left.”

As if on cue, Sam lets out another poorly suppressed grunt of pain. Dean swallows his anger at Crowley, his grief over Benny’s reckless gesture, and reluctantly lets Crowley out of the cuffs. The King of Hell stands, eyes glowing red, and makes a show of rolling his shoulders and tilting his head back and forth to unkink his neck while Dean can only stand by imagining his hands around his throat.

“Get on with it!”

“No need to be rude,” Crowley responds, then says to Benny, “I’ll see you… well, whenever.” He brings a hand up, snaps his fingers, and is gone.

For a moment Dean wonders if he’s just doomed Sam by letting Crowley go, but his brother’s breaths begin to slow and even out as evidence that Crowley has held up his end of the bargain. He just doesn’t know exactly what kind of price Benny has paid yet.

“Sam?”

“I’m fine,” Sam responds with a hint of disbelief in his voice, and Dean knows he actually means it. He extends his hand and helps his brother off the floor.

Dean turns to Benny, simultaneously angry at his foolish sacrifice and grateful beyond words for it. “Benny…”

Benny adjusts his cap and sticks his hands in his pockets. “Now let’s not get maudlin, Chief.”

“We’re gonna get you out of this, I swear.”

“Why?” Benny seems genuinely, maddeningly, unconcerned. “My soul’s marked for Purgatory, not Heaven or Hell. Crowley wants it, he’ll have to go through the Leviathans to get it. I’d pay for a front row seat to see that.”

“I don’t trust it,” Dean counters. “Crowley’s a giant bag of dicks and he’s not stupid. No way he’d deliberately make a deal he couldn’t collect on.”

“Well, I guess we’ll just have to burn that bridge when we come to it. That is standard operating procedure for you two, isn’t it?”

Dean looks at Sam, who gives him an unhelpful don’t look at me shrug, and that’s just great. Not that he can deny Benny’s statement; lately it seems like the only way they can solve one crisis is by creating another. He just hopes nothing else goes wrong while they try to fix this one.

Sam’s brows suddenly draw together, as if remembering something.

“Dean… what happened to Cas?”

Chapter Text

It was a very near thing.

Had Metatron been able to drain all of his grace, the repercussions could have been devastating. As it is, Castiel was forced to expend most of his remaining grace escaping Heaven and healing himself from Metatron’s attack. He castigates himself again for being blinded to the Scribe’s duplicity by his own need for revenge, by his desperation to win back the only friends he has left. It was only a seed of doubt, a modicum of Dean’s cynicism that he must have picked up from him somewhere along the line that caused Castiel to suspect and avoid the brunt of Metatron’s angel blade strike at the last second. Now, standing alone in a field somewhere on Earth, he has to face the bitter disappointment of a failed mission—indeed, it had never been so much a ‘mission’ as it was a farce—and he can only hope that Metatron didn’t get enough of his grace to finish whatever he intended to do with it. Castiel knows now that the Scribe never had any good intentions towards Heaven, or towards him, and he feels like a fool for having been played so easily.

More than that, he’s at a complete loss as to what to do next.

His first thought was to find Sam and Dean, his concern for Sam escalating with his newfound understanding of Metatron’s agenda. Yet how can he possibly face Dean again after such a near-catastrophic failure? It would serve only to underscore that, as Dean has previously insinuated, his presence tends to do more harm than good. For the first time in the long millennia since his creation, Castiel feels completely alone, utterly directionless, without purpose. So he stands in silent darkness as he contemplates the pointlessness of his existence.

The buzzing of the phone in his pocket rouses Castiel somewhat from his lassitude. Pulling it out, he sees Dean’s name on the display and surmises that Dean requires the use of his powers again. His thumb hovers over the button to answer the call, but in his weakened state he has nothing to offer. He finds himself loathe to disappoint Dean again, so he silences the device instead and returns it to his pocket.

Castiel, where’d your feathery ass get to? Pick up your damned phone!

The familiar reverberation of Dean’s prayer echoing in his head surprises him. The anger that resonates there does not.

Listen, whatever Metatron’s up to, it’s not good. I get why you thought you needed to do this, but… just don’t. Metatron was never on our side, and Sam almost—

There’s a pause as Dean’s prayer goes silent. Then:

Damn it Cas, call me back!

Castiel will be the first to admit that he doesn’t have the best grasp of human emotion, but he’s fairly certain that the last part, at least, sounded closer to fear than anger. He finds it difficult to tell the difference where Dean is concerned, and wonders whether Dean himself knows.

Look, man, maybe you think I’m still pissed at you, or maybe you’re pissed at me for ditching you, but… I—I just need to know if you’re okay. If you can’t call, get back to the bunker.

Another silence.

You’re always welcome there. No matter what.

It wasn’t at all what Castiel was expecting to hear, and he finds himself perplexed by Dean’s apparent concern for him, but also grateful for the invitation. It’s been a long time since he’s felt like he truly belonged anywhere.

He pulls out his phone once more.

“Hello, Dean.”

******

Benny scoops the last batch of beignets out of the hot oil and applies a liberal dusting of powdered sugar to the heaping pile. For everything that’s changed over the course of his long life, one of the few constants is the remarkable ability of Southern comfort cooking to lift the human spirit. Heaven knows the rest of the bunker’s inhabitants could use some of that right now. Even with the net-positive outcome from the events of the last few days, a palpable tension had settled into all of them, and he figures it’s about time to pull out the big guns with a fried dough intervention.

Dean and Sam have been making a mountain out of a molehill over Benny’s contract with Crowley, and Dean in particular has been making it everyone’s problem. Benny’s assurances that he’s overblowing the situation have served only to make Dean double down on his determination to find a way out, and a growing pile of books and empty coffee mugs strewn around the library stand as testament to his fruitless efforts. Dean’s resulting over-caffeinated irritation isn’t doing anyone else any favors.

Kevin, for his part, began scrupulously avoiding Castiel as soon as the angel showed up. At first he’d been understandably gun shy about becoming the target of the angel’s wrath again, until Castiel started doting on the teen in apology. Kevin enjoyed it at first, but Castiel, being Castiel, was a bit overzealous with the execution to the point where Kevin took to hiding out in his room for some peace and quiet. And while Kevin is openly relieved that Sam avoided a horrible fate, he can’t completely hide his disappointment over having his dream of a life snatched away from him once again. Something Sam, no doubt, also picked up on.

And Sam…

Physically, Sam improved noticeably over the past few days, but there’s still an undercurrent of unease about him, evident in the way he throws himself into repetitive, menial tasks and the forced smiles that fade too quickly whenever Benny tries to engage him in conversation. Benny hopes it’s just his way of coping with months of mental and physical stress he’s had to endure and not guilt over having abandoned the final trial. He took it as a good sign, though, when Sam had suddenly announced earlier that he was off to run some vague errand; he figured it would do Sam good to get outside for a while.

Benny eyes the finished pile of beignets, judiciously adds an extra dose of powdered sugar, picks up the loaded plate, and sets off on his mission.

******

Sam stands in the center of an isolated clearing deep in the woods near the bunker, taking a moment to breathe in the clean scent of the warm spring air and admire the beauty of sunlight glistening off of dew-laden leaves. A brass bowl containing the ingredients he’d prepared stands before him, ready for a lit match to activate the spell. He hesitates, and not just to savor a few of life’s small pleasures he’s vowed to make more of an effort to appreciate. There are two purposes for the summoning he’s about to perform, one of which he’s not sure he wants to go through with.

Screwing up his determination, Sam strikes the match, tosses it into the bowl, and watches as crackling flames shoot up. Almost immediately, a gruff, obviously annoyed voice comes from behind him.

“What do you want, Moose? I’ve got a kingdom to run.”

Sam is surprised at the quick response; he’d half-expected Crowley to be a no-show. He turns to see Crowley looking at his Rolex in a deliberate advertisement of impatience and wastes no time getting straight to the first item on his agenda. “Benny’s contract. I want you to tear it up.”

“And why would I do that?”

“Because, Fergus, after everything we went through together in that church, I know you’re not a complete douchebag.”

“It’s Crowley,” the King of Hell growls back. “And don’t insult me, I assure you everything I do is purely out of self-interest.”

“If that’s true, why’d you even insist on Benny’s soul? We both know it’s useless to you. Unless you want to fight every Leviathan in Purgatory to collect it?”

 “Well, if you must know the answer to that, you can go look it up in the Demonic Tome of It’s None of Your Fucking Business.”

Acknowledging the futility of appealing to any humanity that may have lingered in Crowley after the nearly completed demon cure, Sam moves onto Plan B.

“You owe me.”

“Owe you?” Crowley’s eyebrows reach for his hairline. “Did you forget the part where I saved your life? As far as I’m concerned, we’re square.”

“I’m sorry, which one of us got thrown through a window and flambeed the challenger to your throne? Oh, right, that was me.”  He makes a thoughtful face. “Huh. I wonder what your subjects would say about their King not only being captured by the Winchesters but then having to be saved by one.”

Sam pauses for effect. And to enjoy the disgusted look on Crowley’s face.

Small pleasures.

“Unless…”

Crowley rolls his eyes and makes a long-suffering face, but he takes the bait. “Unless?”

“Unless a demon just happens to overhear a conversation about how the King of Hell single-handedly defeated Abaddon after luring her with a fake distress call.”

“Hmmm.” Crowley’s eyes narrow in thought. “Perhaps you’re not as much of an idiot as I took you for.”

“Thanks,” Sam says, lacing the word with sarcasm. “So what’s it gonna be?”

Crowley sighs in reluctant capitulation. “Fine. I’ll void the contract… after the rumor gets back to my court.” He waggles his fingers at Sam, making the gesture condescending in a way that only Crowley can. “Toodles.”

Sam almost doesn’t go through with the second reason he summoned the King of Hell. But the suspicion has been burning in the back of his mind, and afraid as he is of the answer, he’ll always regret it if he doesn’t ask. “Crowley, wait…”

“Sorry Moose, you don’t get a kiss for a quid-pro-quo.”

He lets the quip go unacknowledged. “It was the demon blood in me, wasn’t it?” Sam says quietly. “The reason why stopping the final trial almost killed me.”

There’s a moment of hesitation from Crowley, and Sam is convinced he’s about to blip out, leaving his question permanently unanswered. Then the perpetual air of smugness drops, and Sam almost swears there’s a hint of sympathy in Crowley’s expression as he nods.

“It was incompatible with the sanctification your soul had gone through. The reaction was like a body responding to an infection by inducing a fever.”

Sam nods numbly, his worst fear confirmed. Had the purification run its full course and killed him, at least the taint running through his veins would have been gone. It took a direct intervention from God to get him into Heaven last time; he’s not sure he’ll be so lucky twice.

“So I’m… back to the way I was? Before I started the trials?”

Crowley rolls his eyes again. “I take back what I said about you not being an idiot.”

“What?”

“Of course I couldn’t reverse the effects of the trials, are you dense enough to think I can override the Word of God?” Crowley sniffs disdainfully. “Much easier to simply remove the source of the infection.”

It takes Sam a moment to comprehend the implication. “Wait… you mean I’m—”

“A git? I think that goes without saying.” With that, Crowley’s gone.

“…clean,” Sam whispers to empty air, and laughs softly to himself.

******

In a deliberate ploy to lure everyone out from the far corners of the bunker, Benny takes a circuitous route to the library with his plate full of beignets, allowing the aroma to waft around the place. It works like a charm, and it’s not long before Kevin puts in an appearance, inhaling deeply.

“What is that? Oh my God, it smells like—”

“Heaven,” Castiel finishes for Kevin in a wondering tone from where he’s sitting across from Dean.

Benny plunks the plate down on a table within Dean’s reach, hoping to drag his attention away from the book in front of him. Dean does a double take, and his perpetual scowl of late disappears from his face. He reaches for the plate and stuffs a warm pastry into his mouth, leaving a ring of powdered sugar around the perimeter. While Dean makes a sound like a character from one of the porno flicks he likes to watch, Kevin pops a pastry into his mouth and ‘mmmm’s appreciatively.

Castiel holds one up like he’s examining a specimen before hesitantly trying it. His eyebrows raise in pleasant surprise. “It doesn’t taste like molecules.”

High praise from the angel, Benny supposes.

The groan of the bunker’s door announces Sam’s return from whatever errand he’d needed to attend to, and he fairly bounces down the steps with a lightness that Benny’s never seen in him before, his expression brighter than what Benny has come to believe was normal for him. Sam makes his way into the library, skipping several steps on the way up, and snaps the book in front of Dean shut.

“You don’t have to worry about Benny’s contract anymore. It’s taken care of.”

Dean looks up at him sharply, confused at first, then suspicious.

“Sam, tell me you didn’t—” he says around a mouthful of beignet, a fine mist of powdered sugar accompanying his dismay.

Sam leans back to avoid the spray and holds up his hands. “Relax, my soul’s safe.” He smiles in a way that makes Benny think there’s some other meaning behind it, but he holds his tongue because he doesn’t want to see that smile end. “We just need to start a rumor about Crowley being the one to defeat Abaddon to make him look good.”

Dean’s stops chewing abruptly, apparently catching something that Benny missed. “Wait, Abaddon showed up the church? And you didn’t call?”

“Um,” Sam responds eloquently, clears his throat, then reaches for a beignet. “Uh, you make these, Benny?”

“Fresh out of the fryer,” Benny replies, playing along with the change in subject. “Best to eat them while they’re still warm.” He pushes the plate even closer to Dean, who is noticeably torn between interrogating Sam further and occupying his mouth again with another dose of melt-in-your-mouth, fluffy fried heaven.

It’s a short contest, and the beignets win.

Like Dean, Benny’s dying to know what happened, but he has the sense to lead with the fact that it worked out. “Obviously you got the best of her, or you wouldn’t be here to tell the tale. How’d you pull that off?”

Unlike his brother, Sam manages to finish his pastry without leaving any evidence on his face. “Fortunately she threw me through a window.”

Another spray of powdered sugar spews forth from Dean as he makes a choking sound. From the look on Dean’s face, he’s engaged in some sort of internal crisis, no doubt misplaced guilt over having left Sam on his own.

Sam follows up quickly, “I guess she didn’t think I was much of a threat. It gave me a chance to get to a weapon while she was busy pounding on Crowley. Turns out Knights of Hell don’t like to be deep fried holy oil.”

Dean’s face goes through an entire range of emotions in quick succession, from distress to disbelief to amusement like a roulette ball bouncing around a wheel, finally settling down on pride. He wipes a sleeve across his face and takes a pull from his ever-present beer.

“Benny, I ever mention how much my little brother kicks ass?”

Benny obliges Dean with a bark of a laugh and an eyeroll. “I lost count after the first hundred times.”

Sam looks down with an embarrassed flush, and Benny can’t reconcile this version of him with the man who bluffed his way through a confrontation with a vampire. Or, for that matter, with the man who stood toe to toe with a demon and fricasseed the thing. Benny recollects both Dean’s initial description of his puppy-eyed, nerdy little brother and his dubious boasting about Sam’s exploits and decides he wasn’t exaggerating on either count after all.

“But I’d love to hear all about it again.”