Smoke

His arms had passed through pain and turned numb. He barely felt them. The burn in his shoulders bit deep, but it was distant. Everything was distant.

He couldn’t look away from Cas.

The seeping light had petered out, until only a few dim filaments leached from Cas’ body into the air. Cas was nearly dark.

Dean swallowed, the pressure in his chest almost enough to stop his words, and closed his eyes.

“Please,” he said. “Please, if anyone is listening, anyone at all, you’ve gotta come help Cas. He’s your brother, damn it. And he’s fucked up, but only because your whole species is fucked up. Come on. He’s saved you. More than once. Don’t let him die like this just because you’re pissed he chose us over you. He shouldn’t have had to chose, and you know it. And…and just…please. Please help him.”

He hung in the dark behind his eyelids, suddenly sure that when he opened his eyes he’d see no light at all. That, worse, he’d see wingprints.

He couldn’t even remember the last time he saw wingprints after an angelic death, but some part of him had long thought that would be the sign, the way he knew Cas was really gone from him for good, and he can’t seem to update his mental file on that one.

“Don’t be dead,” he muttered, a more fervent prayer than any, and opened his eyes.

No wingprints. No light, either.

That pressure in his chest made it up to his throat, clogging it. It pressed behind his eyes.

“Cas?”

The name broke against the silence, and Dean couldn’t fool himself that there was even a hint of movement. But he’d know. Wouldn’t he? He’d know if Cas died. He’d-

The scrape of a bolt being drawn back dragged his attention to the door. It opened slowly, and in the pause before anyone walked in Dean had time to hope it was Sam.

Light hair and pale skin had the hope flaring out, and Dean fixed his face into stony impassivity before the guy’s eyes could fix on him. When they did, he saw a flash of nerves before whoever this was aimed for a sneer.

“Dean Winchester,” the man said, and there was dark smoke lingering in his words, in the real flesh under his skin.

It was something Dean saw, sometimes and faintly, ever since Amara vanished back into the Void. Whatever veil she drew between Dean and his time with the Mark, his time as a demon, her disappearance ripped it away, and Dean saw them now, the demons, even when their eyes weren’t black.

“Which pit did you crawl out of?” Dean asked. “Barely strong enough to make it, were you?”

The demon paused, just enough to tell Dean he’d scored a hit. Because that was another thing he’d learned, over the last few months: demon-kind needed a leader, and with Crowley and Lucifer both gone, some of them wanted Dean for the job. His opinion mattered, his view of their strengths, their value. To some of them.

Looked like this might be one of them.

“I have enough,” the demon said, his chin lifting. He flicked a look at Cas, and something like pride nudged onto his face. “I’ve done what Crowely and Lucifer and Heaven couldn’t do. I’ve ended that angel’s influence over you. You’re free to come back to us.”

Dean didn’t let himself look again. No way could he stare at Cas’…at Cas and keep up the steel he needed.

“The only thing you’ve done is sign your own death-warrant,” Dean said.

He let that drawl into his voice, the Kansas tang that came easier when he was a demon. Maybe just because he hadn’t cared about it’s associations then. Whatever the reason, it helped him get into the head-space.

“You want me back?” he asks. “You want me to take my place in Hell?”

The demon looked back at him. Nodded.

“Then I’ll be decorating it with your guts!”

Metal clanged as Dean tried to throw himself forward, not caring how it would jar through his whole body. In that moment, he meant it. He’d take the throne and coat the whole throne room with blood and flesh until all of Hell was empty.

“And I’ll be remembered as the one who brought you back,” the demon said, as though being threatened by the man who could be the Knight of Hell was an honor. “I have the spell to complete the transition. I can do it without your word, but if you agree you’ll be stronger.”

Creeping horror sank through Dean, but Cas was dead, and he was stuck in spell-work and iron, and more strength meant he could make them all pay. Except…except it would mean leaving Sam, would mean throwing every sacrifice Sam and Cas and others had made to bring Dean back from the black smoke before. They deserved more than that. Charlie and Cas deserved more than that.

“Bite me,” he said.

Nodding, the demon stepped back and turned to shout through the still open doorway.

“Get in here. We’re doing this.”

Still with his head turned from Dean, the demon dropped back to a normal volume.

“You can change your mind,” he said. “I hope you do. There’s time. We need to get the last ingredients together.”

Sounds from outside apparently satisfied him that his orders were being followed, and he met Dean’s eyes.

“You can think it over while we strip the angel down for parts.”