multifandomshorts - Tumblr blog

multifandomshorts · 3 months ago

Text

It was eery, now, to look upon the Jedi Temple.

The Temple continued to stand still, like it was suspended in time, and if Bail let himself dream, sometimes, he could almost make himself believe that nothing had changed at all.

It was just a dream, of course. The Temple was never empty, with soldiers and all the new Imperial Officers trying to get inside its secrets on the behest of their new Emperor. Bail found it sickening.

Still, he forced himself to look.

Sateen had stopped asking if his intel was correct, by this point. They could all see it, how the Guard had gathered outside the Temple, ready and awaiting orders.

Sateen lowered his binoculars.

"No sign of Master Nu, yet", he said. His tone was grim. "Fox is leading the troopers."

Bail tried not to feel sick once more.

"Does he seem alright?" He asked. He didn't know if he had the strength to look, himself. He had not spoken to Fox since the order had been given, and had barely even seen him. At first, it had been by Bail's own choice. He had been too confused and too angry to face Fox after all that had happened, not trusting himself to be able to handle being told that everything had been a lie.

Now, it just hurt to look at him, to know that it had all been true, and Fox and his brothers were made to betray themselves, without having any choice in the matter.

It hurt to look at him and know how badly Bail and everybody else had failed them.

"As far as I can tell", Sateen answered. "No visible injuries. He's on the left."

Bail didn't need binoculars to see him when he finally turned to look. They were close to the Temple, in order to be ready to move if needed. Perhaps way too close, close enough to be discovered and found out. Bail knew that he was risking entirely too much.

He could not stand down, though. Even the thought of doing so made him sickened of himself. The Jedi had been betrayed by the Galaxy once already. Bail was not about to let it stand.

He couldn't betray Fox again, either. It did hurt to look at him, yes, but all the love was still there, and Bail wanted nothing more than to just walk up to him and take him with him, away from Coruscant, back home to Alderaan, where he really belonged.

Back home, where he could finally start to heal from all of this.

Then the explosion happened.

Suddenly the air was full of dust and smoke, and Bail could barely even see the bright red of Fox's armor in the mids of it. The air cleared just in time for him to see the glow of a lightsaber and the flashes of blaster bolts being shot, as Master Nu made her way out of the Temple.

So did Vader, right behind her.

Bail didn't know if he was ever going to be able to look at him without the feeling of dread. He would have to, he knew, but it would more than likely prove to be extremely difficult.

Vader raised his lightsaber, ready to battle Master Nu once more, when the was forced to deflect a rain of bolts shot at him. This gave Master Nu an opportunity to make some headway, and she dashed towards the Temple wall.

"What are they doing?" Sateen hissed. "They're shooting at their own."

Bail wanted to snap at that. Vader was not their own. He certainly was not someone whose side Fox was on, truly. He stayed quiet, though, as his eyes found Fox again.

It was impossible not to see him. Not with Vader now standing right in front of him.

There was something else that Bail felt as he watched them, other than simple dread.

It was fear.

Fox was the Commander. Whatever mistakes there were, Fox would be held accountable for them.

Bail had no idea what the consequences for those mistakes would be.

He found out before even having properly finished the thought.

Vader lifted his hand. Fox's head snapped to the side, too fast, too violently for the movement to be natural. His body went lax, his arms dropping down to his sides, and then he fell onto the ground.

Unmoving.

Lifeless.

Bail's heart stopped.

"No." He didn't feel himself speak. "No!"

He was moving before he realised it, and the only reason he realised it was because there were hands pulling him back.

"You can't!" Sateen was speaking to him. "Vader is still right there!"

Bail didn't see Vader anymore. He didn't see anything what was happening.

The only thing he saw was Fox, still laying on the ground, still unmoving.

Still lifeless.

Bail felt sick.

He couldn't look away.

Then, the hands holding him back suddenly let go, and Bail was running.

Fox was still laying there, unmoving and lifeless as Bail got to him.

"Fox." He did not react to Bail calling him. "Fox!"

Nothing. Bail wanted to grab him, to do something, to make sure that he was alright, he wanted to shake him and hold him at the same time, and-

Fox wasn't breathing.

Bail had learned a long time ago how to look at someone with an armor on, how to see even the smallest things in how they moved beneath it, and right now, he couldn't see anything.

Fox wasn't breathing.

"Don't!" There were hands on him again, pulling Bail's hands back from Fox. Sateen was next to him, on the ground, his face still grim. "Don't move him. We need to stabilize his head and neck first."

Bail tried to understand what he was talking about, but he couldn't concentrate on them. Fox wasn't breathing. Bail needed to-

He needed to do something.

Fox wasn't breathing.

Bail wasn't sure if he was breathing, either.

"Bail!" There was a stinging feeling on his face all of a sudden, and Bail turned to look into Sateen's furious eyes. "Focus! You need to focus, or he will die!"

Bail's thoughts rushed back to him at that point.

Fox wasn't breathing. He had seen the way his neck had snapped. That was the biggest injury. Serious neck injury would most likely mean that they had a spinal injury on their hands.

Bail was not a medic, but he knew enough.

Enought to know what that meant.

"Pulse?" He asked. "Does he have a pulse?"

Sateen had ordered him to focus so Fox wouldn't die. That had to mean that Fox wasn't dead yet.

That he was still alive.

"Yes", Sateen said. "Weak, but it's there. We need to stabilize his neck and then get the armor plate off. Can you do that?"

It was a stupid question. Of course Bail knew how to do that.

There were more people around them, then.

"Senator Organa." Bail tore his eyes away from Fox to look at another clone, kneeling down on the other side of Fox. "I'm gonna have to ask you to move away."

The fear was back.

If Bail moved, it meant that he would be leaving Fox. If he left Fox, he couldn't help him. If he couldn't help him, Fox would die.

He didn't know what refusing the order would mean to him, but that wasn't what Bail was afraid of in the slightest.

"No", he said.

He was expecting the other clone to pull out his blaster, like what had happened once before, but the clone did not reach for his weapon. Instead, he simply reached for Fox's head and grabbed it, firm, his hands steady.

"Remove the chestplate and begin compressions", he ordered, in the calm, assertive way that Bail recognised as the way medics spoke, and he briefly wondered who was under the armor, if it was Index or Bullet or Saw, or even young Pinch, the chip stripping their personality away from them, leaving only the detatched soldier behind.

He didn't wonder for long. Instead, he got to work.

It was almost bittersweet, the way removing the armor came like a second nature to him. This time, Bail did not bother to carefully place the piece down. As soon as it was off, he just tossed it aside and put his hands on Fox's chest.

Bail was not a medic, but he knew enough.

He pushed down. Fox was still just as unmoving and lifeless under his hands.

He pushed down. It felt like he was laying his hands on something much frailer than Fox ever was. Bail hated that feeling.

He pushed down. Fox's body gave in underneath him, and for a short, horrifying moment, Bail could only think about how much he was hurting him.

He couldn't stop, though. That would mean something much worse.

He pushed down, again and again and again and again. Bail's world narrowed down to simply moving his arms. He pushed down, again and again and again and again.

His arms were starting to burn. Bail ignored it. He was strong enough to do this. He would have to be. He would not leave Fox ever again.

He pushed down, again and again and again and again.

Bail didn't know if it was enough.

He still did it.

Then, in a blink of an eye, they were surrounded.

Before Bail could realise it, he was pulled back and pushed away as people rushed between them, and his heart stopped once again.

"Bail, stop." Sateen was holding him by the shoulders. "We need to move him before Vader or anyone else comes back."

That was the moment when Bail remembered where they still were. He looked at the people between him and Fox, and felt a rush of relief when he recognised the colors of the Royal Guard.

There were not other clones, all of the troopers having left. Vader and Master Nu were nowhere to be seen, either. Had they received new orders, ones that didn't include seeing if their Commander was still alive, orders that had meant that he was to be left dying there on his own?

Bail swallowed tightly. He felt weak, all of a sudden, but couldn't collapse onto the feeling yet, as suddenly everyone was moving again, and Sateen moved to pull him up from the ground.

"Let's go."

Bail didn't need to be told twice. He got his legs underneat him and pushed himself to his full height.

It was easy to see over the Guards while he was standing, and to look at Fox in the middle of them. They had managed to lift him up to the emergency medical gurney they kept in their ships, the portable compressor attached to his chest continuing to push and pull, forcing the lungs and the heart to work, as much as was possible.

Bail didn't know if it was enough. He wanted to reach over, to get his hands back onto Fox, to make sure that his heart was still beating, to feel it himself.

No one waited for him to do so, and so, he could only follow as they rushed him away.

Bail felt unreal. Untethered. Fox was right in front of him but he could be just as gone anyway. He had no way of truly knowing. He could only put one foot in front of another.

His guards had landed their ship right around the corner from the Temple. Way too close, but entirely too far already. Everything was too far at the moment.

Bail followed, still not real, his guards as they pushed Fox onto the ship and to the small medical bay they had. They closed in around Fox again, all of them moving too quickly for Bail to decipher what was going on.

He needed to-

Bail didn't know what he even needed to do, anymore, other than to be there. He pushed his way through, once there was even the slightest of an opening.

Fox didn't have his helmet on anymore.

Bail had not realised that it had been removed already. He couldn't see it anymore, and with how fast everything had moved, he could deduce that it had most likely been simply cut off of his head. There was an actual brace around Fox's neck now, and half of his face was covered by a ventilation mask, one that Bail knew covered up the fact that Fox had probably already had the tube pushed down his throat to keep him breathing.

He was breathing.

Fox was breathing.

He also had his eyes open. Bail didn't know if they had been open the entire time, and he had not just been able to see it because of the helmet.

They were open now, nevertheless. Only slightly, and they looked unfocused from what Bail could see of them, but they were still open, and when Bail moved in next to him, they moved towards him, ever so slightly.

Fox wasn't moving, otherwise, but he was breathing and his eyes were open, and he was looking at Bail.

Bail reached for his hand. It was warm, and his pulse was a jumping live wire under Bail's fingers.

That was when Bail noticed the other clone standing on the other side of Fox.

He still had his helmet on, the dark visor giving no expression for Bail to read. He wasn't looking at Bail, though, that much he could still tell.

He was looking at Fox.

Suddenly Bail was afraid again.

Vader had meant to kill Fox. Fox was supposed to be dead. Yet, he wasn't, and that was something that went against what Vader had wanted.

What would happen, if someone knew?

Bail held onto Fox's hand, desperate.

"Please." There was nothing else he could ask.

The clone looked up at him. Bail still didn't know who it was, under the armor, but he could still hope that whoever it was, they were still there.

They had been there, still, enough to not leave Fox when everyone else had.

That had to mean something.

"Please."

The clone looked at him. Then he looked back down at Fox, and even though Bail couldn't see their expression, he could still see some sort of resolve settle in on him.

"CC-1010, time of death seventeen-zero-eight", the clone said. "The report will be filed during the following week."

He turned around then and started walking out of the medbay. He did stop, once more, just as he was about to step through the door.

"Have a pleasant journey home, Senator Organa", he said. Then, without waiting for a single word out of Bail, he was gone, the door closing behind him.

Bail stared at the door for a moment, before he could finally start to breathe again.

That was when his legs started to finally falter, and he hurried to sit down before they could give out from beneath him. Bail leaned his head to his free hand, trying his best to get his breathing to calm down and his heartbeat to slow, but neither seemed to be working.

Fox's pulse was still hammering underneath his grip. Bail gulped down a mouthful of air, and turned back towards him.

Fox was still looking at him, his eyes barely open and hazy, but he was there, looking at Bail. His chest kept rising as the machine continued to push air into his lungs for him, despite the fact that the rest of his body was still just laying there, motionless.

There were tears running down his face.

Bail wasn't sure if he had been crying this whole time.

"Fox." He barely got his voice to carry. "My love. You'll be alright. I promise."

Something fell onto Bail's lap, softly, quietly, like a single raindrop falling from the sky.

Bail realised, just a little belatedly, that it was just his own tears.

Bail wasn't sure if he had been crying this whole time.

It didn't matter.

Fox was still alive, and Bail held onto him for all that he had.

#bail/breha/fox #<- ohhh op your mind #star wars #fanfiction #others' writing

94 notes · View notes

multifandomshorts · 3 months ago

Text

Last chapter: What Adults Do (Sirry fic)

It's finish your shit December! And it's done. Uhhh, and it's probably unsatisfying. Sorry.

Snippet:

“There’s a line we’re about to cross,” Sirius warned. “This is where you tell me to stop.” “But you want it,” said Harry. “Tell me to stop, Harry.” Please tell me to stop. Tell me you never want to come back here. That Harry should wear such a fierce, dangerously curious expression struck Sirius as infuriatingly alluring. He threaded fingers in Harry’s hair and gripped hard enough to elicit a short yelp of surprise. He leaned in close to feel a hot exhale on his mouth. “Last chance,” Sirius whispered. But it was too late.

And...

Done.

#hello?? no one alerted me??#harry potter #sirry #others' writing

34 notes · View notes

multifandomshorts · 3 months ago

Text

Ummm, Professor Harry Potter accidentally stumbles back in time to March 1994 and bumps into a familiar face in the Shrieking Shack. And Sirius is not exactly pleased...and he's not convinced that Harry is who he says he is...

#nom nom nom #harry potter #others' art #sirry

429 notes · View notes

multifandomshorts · 4 months ago

Text

Rules: you will be given a word. Then you share one sentence/excerpt from your wip(s) that starts with each letter of your word.

Thanks for the tag @moosemonstrous :>

My word was: GLAD

Goromi’s mouth twisted into another cruel smile, and she scolded, “Louder, princess. Like ya really want it.” She returned to gently petting Grelle’s head. “Ya do want it, don’t ya?”

Ligaments from high school biology become known to me in ways they shouldn't be. The tiny, rubbery frog stretches through my calves. The fish thrashes down my spine, convulsions that send the frog's legs jumping. My shoulders pull apart to spread the pigeon's wings. I hear the cries of my mother. My mother? No, that's not right. We didn't dissect her in class. Still, her cries echo in my ears, my skull. I can't tell where they're coming from. They're everywhere, reverberating throughout the room, but it sounds like she's in my ear. The convulsions stop. The screaming stops.

“Are we running or fighting?” Bobby asks. So loyal. So ready to bleed and die for him. Bleeding and dying. Blood coats his hands, paints the nearby surface in protection. He stands. Needs Bobby to know him. Know he bleeds so Bobby won’t have to. Needs…

Down the hall, he could hear clattering coming from the front of the house. Robbie rounded the hall corner into the living room and looked around frantically, seeing nothing. The clattering sounded again, louder, coming from his left. He took a few steps forward and sagged in relief. Gabe was in the kitchen making food.

No pressure tags: @darkfromday, @quietwingsinthesky, @dorian-is-dying, @necesitotequila, @irhen07, and anyone else who wants to play

Your word is: SLIP

#reblog from main #tag game #wip #fanfiction #yakuza #rgg #the mandela catalogue #tmc #supernatural #spn #ghost rider #one of each- like a little cheese platter

18 notes · View notes

multifandomshorts · 4 months ago

Text

Dean’s minding his own business, sipping on a beer and leering at the bartender, when a guy that admittedly has about four inches and a good twenty pounds of muscle on him storms over and shoves him in the arm.

He tenses, getting to his feet and preparing for a fight even as he’s wondering what he did to piss him off. Maybe the bartender’s his girl? Jesus, Dean was just looking, he can’t get mad at just looking when his girl look likes that.

“Dude, what the hell?” the guy demands. “I know you’re pissed at me right now, but just leaving me back there – do you know how many bars it took to find you? You’re a jackass.”

He’s not taking a swing, instead standing with crossed arms – fuck, this guy is huge, he’d really like to avoid a fight here – and scowling at him, his long hair falling into his eyes as he looks down at him. Dean wishes he had any idea what was going on right now. “Look, man, relax.” The guy’s eyes narrow, his shoulders lifting and expanding as he takes in a deep breath, as if he needs any help to look bigger. Before he can say anything, Dean adds, “I think you’ve got me confused with someone else.”

He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, okay. Fuck off.” He presses his lips together, somehow appearing smaller in the next moment without actually moving. “Look, I know you’re mad about heaven, you’ve made that pretty fucking clear, but you can’t just walk off and turn off your phone. I figured you were just being an ass, but something could have happened to you. If you’re ignoring me, at least let me know you’re ignoring me.”

The guy doesn’t look like he’s tweaking, or suffering some sort of head injury. His eyes are clear and his voice is steady. But Dean has no idea what he’s talking about. “Dude, you’ve really got me confused with someone else.”

“Dean!” he snaps, which woah, okay, he wasn’t expecting that. “This isn’t funny.”

“I’m not laughing,” he says. “How do you know my name?”

He stares at him, uncertainty entering his eyes for the first time. “Are you feeling okay? You didn’t come across Zachariah or a witch or something in the past couple hours?”

He doesn’t know who Zachariah is, but the casual mention of witches makes him frown. Is this guy a hunter or something? He figures he’d remember meeting him, but maybe not.

“Everything okay over here?” Dad’s hand lands heavily on his shoulder, and Dean shifts enough to see him giving the guy a hard stare that has sent more than one man running in the other direction.

Dean almost rolls his eyes – he’s thirty one years old, he doesn’t need his dad coming over to save him – but he makes the effort so rarely that Dean can’t help but be warmed by it.

The guy pales, mouth dropping open as he stares at Dad like he’s seen a ghost. “You – Christo.”

Okay, definitely a hunter. Dad raises an eyebrow. “I’m not a demon.”

The guy grabs for Dean, yanking on his hand. Dean jerks back, but he’s already gotten his long fingers around his ring. He pulls it off and Dean is about to break his jaw to get it back, but he tosses it to Dad, who catches it on instinct. Dean doesn’t get it until he does. His ring is silver. He’s checking if Dad is a shifter, which okay, that’s one thing. Dean’s more concerned about how he knows his ring is silver. The guy’s voice cracks when he says, “Dad?”

Dad raises an eyebrow. “I think you’re a little confused.”

“Dean, what’s going on?” he asks, grabbing onto the sleeve of his jacket. Dean should push him off. “What,” his gaze drops down, and if possible he goes even paler. “Oh. Oh, fuck.”

Dean looks down, sees the guy’s eyes stuck on his amulet. “What?”

“I don’t understand,” he says, biting on his lower lip. “Is this some sort of – but you’re still hunters. Is Mom alive?”

Dean flinches.

“Okay,” Dad says. “That’s enough. You walk this off or whatever, but you do it somewhere else–”

“Dad, it’s me,” he says plaintively. “It’s Sam. Your son.”

Dean doesn’t remember moving, only that the next moment his hands are fisted in the front of this asshole’s shirt, his blood thrumming under his skin. “Shut up. Shut the fuck up.”

He puts his hands on Dean’s wrists, stupid earnest and soft and Dean’s going to kick his ass. “Dean. It’s me. I have to exist in this world, right? The demon was after me, if I wasn’t here then there wouldn’t have ben a fire, Mom wouldn’t have died, you guys wouldn’t be hunters. I have to be around somewhere.”

Dean tries to shove him away, but he won’t let go of his hands. “Shut up! You don’t – don’t talk about my family.”

The worst thing he ever did, his biggest failure. Sometimes the weight of it gets to be so heavy that it feels like it should be cracking his ribs, pressing his heart until it bursts. Sometimes he wishes it would.

He swallows before letting go with one hand and reaching into his pocket to pull something out. It takes Dean a moment to see it’s his amulet, the one he’s worn since he was twelve years old, back when Bobby still talked to them. “My name is Samuel Winchester. I was named after my mother’s father. I was born on May 2, 1983. When I was eight years old, Bobby gave me this amulet. He said it was a protection charm. I was originally planning to give it to Dad for Christmas, but he didn’t show up. Another in a long line of disappointments, right? So I gave it to you instead. Because even when you’re being a jerk, you’ve never let me down.”

Dean’s eyes are burning. He tries to shake off his grip, but he won’t let go. Why is Dad just standing there? “Stop! Stop. I don’t know what game you’re playing–”

“No game,” he says, gentle voice a counterpoint to the grip that’s absolutely going to bruise. “I need you to believe me, Dean, please–”

“My brother died when he was six months old,” he cuts him off. “Samuel Winchester is dead. He’s been dead for twenty six years.”

His fault, his fault, all his fault. If he’d just listened to Dad –

“Not where I’m from,” he says, and it’s crazy, it’s all crazy. “Please. Ask me anything. I’ll prove it. Hell, let’s go to a clinic, we can take a DNA test. I’m Sam. I’m your brother. And I need your help.”

“You mentioned a demon,” Dad says quietly.

The guy, who’s not Sam, who can’t be Sam, tears his eyes away from Dean to look at Dad. “Yeah. Azazel. The yellow eyed demon.”

Dad rubs a hand over his mouth. “I never told anyone about that.”

Dean snaps his head towards Dad. “What? You said you didn’t know what killed Mom! That we were searching for it!”

“We are,” Dad says. “It never resurfaced again. I’ve been looking for the signs.”

The guy frowns. “He started up again when I was twenty two.”

“Not here,” Dad says, looking him up and down, something hungry in his eyes.

Dad believes him. Dad thinks that this is Sammy.

“Let’s discuss this back at the room,” Dad says. “Come on.”

He heads towards the door, sure that he’s going to be followed. The – Sam, maybe Sam, he rolls his eyes, but goes after him. He only stops when his grip on Dean’s wrist jerks him back, because Dean’s not moving, can’t make himself move. He flushes, letting go of Dean finally, but he takes a step closer. His eyebrows pull together in concern, and now that Dean’s looking, he sort of sees it, sees the planes of Dad’s face and his eyes in this stranger with his brother’s name. “Hey, are you okay?”

No.

“Let’s go,” he says, striding forward, shoulders hunched.

Sam falls into step beside him easily, matching his strides like it’s second nature. Dean swallows around the lump in his throat and tries to pretend it means nothing.

#hell yeah #supernatural #fanfiction #others' writing

1K notes · View notes

multifandomshorts · 5 months ago

Text

Apocalypse Never

They help Dad into the cabin, more coherent than he was when they first broke him out, and Sam heads back to the car for their bags, for the Colt, and tries not to think about how everything has gone so quickly to shit. Mom and Jessica’s killer got away, again, but they’re all alive. That’s not nothing, that’s –

The pain hits him so completely and suddenly that he has no chance to brace himself for it. Usually it builds, first prickling pain then greater, but this is something else. It feels like nails are being shoved into his skull, images coming almost too fast for him to follow. He doesn’t realize he’s screaming until it stops, until he comes to with his head in his brother’s lap, Dean’s arms pinning him down and his face white and terrified above him. “Sammy? Sammy, you’re bleeding. What’s wrong?”

His throat is too raw and tight to speak even if he wanted to. He does want to, but he can’t, he can’t say a goddamn thing.

I saved the world for you, he thinks wildly, and I didn’t even get to keep you. How fucked up is that?

He doesn’t know if his future self couldn’t send it all back any further, or if he thought that this would give Sam less time to fuck things up.

For a couple terrifying minutes, Sam had taken control of Lucifer. For a couple exhilarating minutes, Sam had the power of an archangel.

That sending the knowledge of the future back four years in the past was the best thing he could think to do with it leaves Sam with a poor opinion of the man he became. Then again, he had saved the world, so. There’s that.

He doesn’t want to think of the him that had fallen into the pit with Lucifer and Michael. He hopes he can save him by making different choices, but maybe he can’t. Alternate universes, or parallel ones, or whatever. Maybe that Sam is damned for good and the best he could do was save a different version of himself, a different version of his brother.

There’s not much point in wondering about it. He’ll never know either way.

It’s memories with no emotions, thank fuck, because just the knowledge of it all is enough to drive him to his knees, to edge him to weeping and whimpering and slitting his wrists if he lets it.

He’s not going to. He has work to do. There will be time to fall apart after, when the world is safe. When Dean is safe.

Dean after Dad had died and given him that ultimatum had been bad enough. Dean after forty years in hell had been nearly unrecognizable.

He wipes the blood from his face, ushers Dean back inside, and tries not to think too hard about what he’s about to do.

Dean figures out it’s Azazel in Dad’s body and they’re pinned to the wall and Sam waits until Azazel is hovering over him, hand next to his head as he tilts his head back and breathes over Sam’s lips. It’s a torture and a powerplay, to let the want in his eyes come out in his father’s face, to make it John’s body that’s pressed so nauseatingly close to his own.

Sam isn’t the same person he was four years ago, ten minutes ago.

Breaking out of Azazel’s hold is easy. He’s using the equivalent of a single finger to keep them down, like pinning down a butterfly, and it's only enough until it isn’t.

He grabs Azazel’s face and pulls him close, hears the beginning of his laughter before Sam seals their mouths together. He’s making a deal here, selling his soul sure as anything, just not with Azazel.

Azazel leans into it, just like Sam knew he would, shoving his tongue in Sam’s mouth and getting off at his instinctive flinch of disgust, of the way Dean’s screaming bloody murder behind him. Azazel hasn’t hurt Dean yet. Sam’s going to make sure he never will.

He bites down hard. Blood fills his mouth and he sucks on his tongue, drinking as much as he can. It doesn't tase like iron, not like it should, instead it's sweet and thick like honey. He thought Azazel would pull back now, but he’s still laughing into Sam’s mouth, even bites the inside of his cheek to add to the blood from his tongue, and he just lets Sam drink his fill. Of course, he doesn’t know what Sam knows. If Sam had done this the first time, the only thing the blood would have done would be to get him high and useless.

It means he gets more than a mouthful, that it’s long minutes of keeping his eyes closed and swallowing and trying not to think too hard about how it’s Dad’s hands on him and Dad’s hard on at his thigh and Dad’s tongue he’s sucking on. He’s already got four years’ worth of nightmares in his head. No need to add more than necessary.

His skin is buzzing, feeling stretched out over him like his body is too big for it suddenly, almost like the aches of growing pains but more electric. Azazel pulls back and licks up the side of his face, leaving blood and spit behind, and breathes into his ear, “If you missed me feeding you, boy, all you had to do was ask.”

Yeah, that’s enough of that.

He shoves Azazel back without moving his hands, hard enough that he stumbles, and he has to move fast, before he gets a smart idea like snapping Dad’s neck or bursting his heart. He raises his hand and he’d settle for an exorcism, but power is lying heavy and thick in his veins. Destroying Lilith nearly killed him and Azazel is more powerful than Lilith and the blood he drank shouldn’t be nearly enough.

But fear sparks in Azazel’s yellow eyes and he starts choking, black smoke leaking from his ears and out his mouth. “How-”

Sam doesn’t let him finish. He remembers killing Samhain, killing Alastair, killing Lilith. He knows what to do.

Azazel dies screaming. Mom and Jessica are avenged. It’s not as satisfying as he thought it’d be.

Dad is on his hands and knees, taking in deep lungfuls of air. Sam knows from experience that being possessed isn’t pleasant.

“Sammy?”

He forces himself to look over, sees his brother approaching him with hands outstretched. The fear hasn’t gone anywhere even with Azazel dead, even with Dad alive, even though he doesn’t have any of the devastating injuries he sustained last time.

He doesn’t have the emotions to go along with the memory of the first time Dean saw him drinking demon blood, but he imagines it was something like this. “I’m sorry.”

“Sammy,” Dean says again, but Dad’s getting to his feet, Dad’s looking at the Colt, and Sam can’t die yet. He still has work to do.

It’s not a conscious thought, not something he actively tries to do, it’s just one minute he’s there in a cabin with his father and brother and the next he’s in the middle of a field, the night air crisp and clear and a million stars shining above him.

He couldn’t do that before.

There’s something wrong, he thinks, because he doesn’t remember what drinking demon blood felt like, but he remembers describing it, and this isn’t right. He should be drained after that, should feel almost normal again, but instead it’s like there are bees pinging around inside him, like there’s molten lava in his veins, like he’s dying.

He’s dying, he realizes suddenly, the power threatening to eat him alive. He looks down at his arms, like he’s expecting to see them crisping up beneath moonlight, but they look normal, like skin. Of course it’s not killing him, no matter what it feels like. He’s Lucifer’s perfect vessel. There’s no power his body can’t contain, none except God’s, maybe, and it looks like he’s long past making house calls.

It won’t kill him, but it hurts like hell, and he can’t think, he needs to burn it off somehow. He’s never had this problem before, not even when he drank all that blood for Lucifer.

He’s standing in Bobby’s living room and he doesn’t understand why until he sees the body on his kitchen table wrapped in a white sheet. He doesn’t know how Bobby got rid of the paramedics, if he’s maybe holding the body for her family, but Sam thinks he knows how to get rid of some of the itching along his skin.

Sam died a lot, in those weeks he and Dean were apart. Lucifer was true to his word. Sam came back every time.

He pulls down the sheet, sees the ways Meg’s face has settled into death in the past day, how decay has started to take hold and left her blue and cold and her skin slack. He leans down, presses a kiss to her cheek, and thinks that this is the least he owes her, for what she endured because of him, for trying to help him even at the bitter end.

She gasps to life beneath him, warmth flooding her skin and air stuttering into her lungs. “Sam?” she asks, fear and confusion and a pain that’s not physical.

Maybe she won’t want to live, considering everything she’s been through, but at least now the choice is hers and not a demon’s. There are footsteps and he turns to see Bobby standing in the doorway, gun pointed to the ground and mouth open in shock. Sam doesn’t have time to worry about it, instead he’s gone, the same burning still clawing its way out of his bones.

Caleb lies slumped in the chair Meg had tied him to, throat slit and eyes empty. Sam puts his hands on his shoulders, presses his lips to his bald head, and feels the moment his heart starts beating again. He sends the ropes falling with barely a thought and he’s gone the moment he hears his first confused groan.

Pastor Jim is laid out in his home, church workers Sam vaguely recognize huddled around him in prayer, his final send off. He’s just glad he got here before they burned him. They start screaming when they see him but he leans down, internally wincing at how Jim’s going to explain his way out of this one, and kisses his forehead, a reversal of the paternal tenderness Jim had shown him as a child.

His chest rises and his eyes open and his eyebrows push together. “Sam, what-“

He doesn’t stick around to hear the end of that question, figures it’s not anything he can answer anyway.

It takes him a long moment of staring out at the snow covered peaks and too close sky and the brilliant sun hitting his face even though it was just the middle of the night for him to place himself, even though it shouldn’t be enough, but he knows where he is even though he shouldn’t.

The air’s too thin and he’s going to give himself altitude sickness if he lingers and he should probably be freezing to death but his blood is still running too hot. Not burning, not like it was before he brought three people back from the dead, but still far from comfortable.

Still. He can’t say he ever thought he’d ever get to see the view from Mt. Everest.

“Castiel,” he says. “It’s Sam Winchester. We need to talk.”

Nothing. Typical.

“I know about God’s plan, about Lucifer and Michael, about my role as his vessel. I know about you, Cas. You’re going to want to hear me out.”

There’s the rustle of wings behind him and he turns to see Cas, younger than he looked before. Jimmy Novak younger than he’d been before. He wonders about that for a moment. He’d half expected Cas to show up as a sherpa rather than nip to America for a vessel, but Cas had kept the shape of Jimmy Novak even after his physical body perished, so maybe there’s a deeper preference there than just convenience.

His face is as cold as their surroundings. “You have strayed from God’s light.”

“Yeah, well, what good has he ever done me?” he asks tiredly. He used to believe. He believed yesterday. He prayed this morning. Even when he met Cas the first time, he believed. “I can’t explain. Can you just read my mind? We don’t have time.”

His eyebrows push together, but Cas has to be curious, otherwise he wouldn’t have said anything. He steps forward and presses two fingers against Sam’s forehead. He doesn’t feel any different, but when Cas lowers his hand, he’s lost his stoicism. Shock, despair, and anger chase themselves across his feature and Sam can’t blame him.

He’s not the only who lost his faith in the future.

“You said there were thousands of seals,” he says. “How many exactly?”

His eyes snap to Sam’s. “What?”

“God loved Lucifer,” he says. “It’s why he imprisoned him rather than destroying him. It’s why he left him a way out. Maybe it’s why he set up the apocalypse in the first place. I don’t know, I don’t care. All I know is that I’m not letting him out, ever. So we’re going to destroy every seal we can.”

Some can’t be undone, like the first one, a righteous man torturing an innocent soul in hell. But there are plenty that can, hopefully enough, hopefully most. If there are less than sixty six seals available, then Lucifer is never getting out of his cage.

“There were originally ten thousand seals,” Cas answers and Sam gets lightheaded for reasons that have nothing to do with thin air. “Only two thousand and thirty four seals are still viable.”

Okay, that’s better. Not great, but better. “Let’s get that number down to sixty five.”

“You are different,” Cas says.

Of course he’s different. His father’s alive. His brother never went to hell. Sam has never known the utter desolation of being completely alone, of grief and guilt so heavy he’s surprised it didn’t break his spine as surely as Jake’s knife in his back. He doesn’t actually remember feeling it, which is no small mercy, but he saw the effects of living with it, which is almost as bed. He'd thought what he’s feeling because of Jessica is as low as he could get. It’s not even close.

He wants to dig up her bones and breathe life into them, but at almost a year dead he thinks that’s beyond even this strange new power. Even like this, he’s failing Jessica one more time.

“Got any ideas?” he asks. “It wasn’t like this before. With the blood.”

He’d drank Ruby nearly dry more than once. It had been a high and then a crash and never did it give him access to this type of power.

“Azazel is – was a prince of hell,” Cas answers.

Sam frowns. “I thought he was king?”

“He was regent,” he corrects, “but to be a prince is separate from being ruler of hell. Lucifer created Lilith from bone, as Adam and Eve were made. The princes were created from his blood. Azazel’s blood is, in a way, Lucifer’s.”

Lucifer’s blood. Sam, his vessel, drinking down Lucifer’s blood, as a baby and now. Except as a baby he’d only had a few drops. He’d consumed a lot more than that back at the cabin.

Demon blood always wore off. The few drops of Azazel’s blood he’d gotten as a baby never had. He probably should have taken that into consideration, but there hadn’t been any time.

“Lucifer is evil but he is not a demon,” Cas continues.

Sam realizes suddenly that he did have power like this once. When he locked away Lucifer inside of him and took his power for his own. It’s not the same, not even close, but it’s similar. “This is what angel blood does?”

“No,” he says. “This is what Archangel Lucifer’s blood does to his perfect vessel. I believe. This has never happened before, so I cannot be certain. You are, as always, one of kind, Sam Winchester.”

It’s not quite a compliment, but it’s not as combative as he remembers Castiel being in the beginning. He’ll take it. “Guess we’ll figure it out together, then. If you’re sticking around to help prevent the apocalypse.”

If he’s not, this is going to be more than difficult. Tracking down all the seals without an angel on his side isn’t going to be impossible, but pretty damn close. And he doesn’t know how much time he has. Hell is going to be pissed about him killing Azazel. Heaven is probably going to take notice once he starts destroying seals so they can never be opened. Not to mention, he’s definitely going to be on hunters’ radar. Even if Dad can keep his mouth shut about him drinking demon blood, which he knows better than to rely on, him bringing back people from the dead is going to spread quickly. He’s going to be hunted at all sides, just like last time.

At least last time he had Dean, even broken, even when he was broken himself. He still had his brother.

But this is the price for saving him. For making sure that Dean is never in the position to kick off the apocalypse in the first place, to make it so Lucifer never again walks the earth even if heaven and hell reincarnate him and Dean and try and start this all over again.

He’s going to be killed for it, he knows, by demons or angels or hunters. But that doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things.

“Yes,” Cas says. “It is better for us all if the future you saw never comes to pass. I will help you.”

He grins, clapping Cas on the shoulder, and only laughs at the glare he receives in return. They have to get out of here before the altitude makes him loopy. Maybe it already has.

He’s going to save the world for his brother and he’s not even going to get to keep him.

How fucked up is that?

#grarrgrggrgrghrghr i was hoping to find a fic like this last night #brain to feed wavelength real #supernatural #spn #others' writing

709 notes · View notes