Tʜᴇʀᴇ's ɢᴏɴɴᴀ ʙᴇ ᴀ ʜᴇᴀʀᴛᴀᴄʜᴇ ᴛᴏɴɪɢʜᴛ

[righteously]

Who: Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Jo Harvelle, Castiel, Ciri, Geralt, Jaskier, Sam Wilson, probably others that I'm forgetting
When: Last week and a half of May
Where: Cadens, the bad lands, and the Winchester-Harvelle house
What: Demon Dean triggers his master plan to snatch Ciri and take her to the singularity to portal him off-world. The gang catches up and things get violent before Dean is eventually subdued and cured.
Warnings: Demons trying to be as demonic as possible, with all the gross violence and mean language that entails. Also, needles.

𝑆𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑏𝑜𝑑𝑦 𝑖𝑠 𝑔𝑜𝑛𝑛𝑎 ℎ𝑢𝑟𝑡 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑜𝑛𝑒
𝐵𝑒𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑛𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑖𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ
𝑆𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑏𝑜𝑑𝑦 𝑖𝑠 𝑔𝑜𝑛𝑛𝑎 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑢𝑛𝑑𝑜𝑛𝑒
𝐼𝑡'𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛' 𝑤𝑒 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑑𝑜
𝐸𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦𝑏𝑜𝑑𝑦 𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑡𝑜𝑢𝑐ℎ 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑏𝑜𝑑𝑦
𝐼𝑓 𝑖𝑡 𝑡𝑎𝑘𝑒𝑠 𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑛𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡
𝐸𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦𝑏𝑜𝑑𝑦 𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑡𝑎𝑘𝑒 𝑎 𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑡𝑙𝑒 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑐𝑒
𝑀𝑎𝑘𝑒 𝑖𝑡 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑟𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡
𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒'𝑠 𝑔𝑜𝑛𝑛𝑎 𝑏𝑒 𝑎 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑎𝑐ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑜𝑛𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡
𝐴 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑎𝑐ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑜𝑛𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝐼 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤
𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒'𝑠 𝑔𝑜𝑛𝑛𝑎 𝑏𝑒 𝑎 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑎𝑐ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑜𝑛𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡
𝐴 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑎𝑐ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑜𝑛𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝐼 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤
𝐿𝑜𝑟𝑑 𝐼 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤

Comments

[righteously]

( His answer is a scoff; his gaze peels away from Geralt momentarily to affix it instead on the small, squat window across the room. Like most basements or cellars, it's built into the wall near the ceiling, practically more for ventilation than view. Practical, to keep folks from smothering to death underground in old places like this. He'd have to probably dislocate his own shoulders to squeeze through it at his size, but that's barely even an obstacle.

The bigger issue, of course, is the devil's trap beneath the chair, and the iron he's chained to. )

This is temporary. This won't hold me forever. Whenever your little experiment fails, whenever you people start to give up, pack it in, go home to regroup and try to brainstorm a plan C, or D, or F...

( He nods at the window. )

I'll slip through there. Or maybe I'll just head straight up the stairs and snap every neck on my way out. Either way, you're making the same mistake all over again by keeping me alive. We both know it.

[gynvael]

[ He doesn't say that there is no alternate plan. Not to him. It's this or nothing. The others feel different. He knows. If it comes to that, he'll contend with it then.

For now, they are waiting. He won't say he's seeing signs of success. Not exactly seeing signs of failure, either.

His thumb brushes the lip of the bottle. He lets Dean finish making his threats. They hang in the silence for a minute, two. That's the genuine problem: any decision feels like it could be a mistake. Whether that's another—possibly futile—attempt to destroy the demon or allowing the cure to continue.

So where does that leave them? With a creature they cannot truly kill or a cure that may prove worthless? Either one feels like a shit choice. But those are the ones he often finds on his hands, aren't they? ]

You hardly blinked at the bullet I put through your head. But this— [ His blood has been the only thing the demon isn't shrugging off as though it's a mere scratch. ] —it hurts you.

[ Whether that indicates it's working—fuck if he knows. But it does indicate a weakness of some kind. The first he's seen beyond the drawn sigil. ]

[righteously]

( He doesn't like the logic here. It's a sound conclusion, it makes him nervous in and of itself, but he also doesn't like the potential conviction it may give Geralt to follow through. He downplays it with an absent snort, flicking his eyes to some nowhere-spot on the wall. )

So does holy water. Doesn't mean anything. Pain's not gonna break me.

( His eyes flick pointedly back to Geralt again. )

You should know that. You've seen it. The place I was for forty years. ( There's a pause, heavy, considering. Those inky eyes searching for a hook, for something to latch onto. ) I didn't tell you much about it, did I? About how I only spent thirty of them on the rack. About what I did that last decade.

I was already this. You know that, right? All along, deep down, part of me was always a little bit... this. There's no cure that can fix me, you understand? I'm a monster. You kill monsters. Do your god damn job.

[gynvael]

[ No. Dean had not. Geralt never asked, and the revelation makes him pause. He is not interested in how far a man falters after decades of torment. That is a conversation he would have with Dean. Not a demon.

He considers in return. ] Not every monster dies from a blade.

[ Some of them die when a curse is lifted. And what remains when this is over—they'll see. Maybe Dean won't ever be the same. Maybe he will retain the demon's thirst for blood. He'll handle it then. All he knows is, he can't kill the demon in the state it's in now. Castiel's solution is the only thing that may change its state.

There's a silence on his end. He knows what the demon is doing. It's tiring to hear, and his patience wears thin. He takes another drink. ]

You mistake me for one of them. [ The hunters and the angel that sit outside this door. ] I am not. Save your breath.

[righteously]

( They've been at this for hours now, and the truth is... the truth is, the cure's having an impact. It's changing him. Fundamentally, chemically, it's working. It's debriding the charred, burnt scar tissue from his soul and revealing the screaming, healthy muscle beyond. It's painful, those exposed, raw, real pieces writhing underneath.

He knows from that place deep down underneath everything that if this continues, he will wake up. He will not have the haze, the cloud, the blindfold. He won't have the easy, conscienceless nothing to smother the guilt and pain that is to come. Something both the demon and the man do not want to experience, something they're united on.

It's that part of him that eventually speaks, his voice lower. Quiet, earnest, and too thick. )

Please. Don't.

( Don't do this. Don't finish it. Don't make him face all this.

Dying is so, so much easier. )

[gynvael]

[ Geralt wants to say he can distinguish between the demon's play pretend horseshit and Dean himself, but the truth is, he can't. Is it a case of not knowing his friend well enough? No. He doesn't think so. Maybe it's more that he doesn't entirely trust himself to separate what he wants to believe from what's real. It feels dangerous to let himself run too far ahead with what could be possible.

It makes no difference. Whether that's the man or the demon, his answer is the same. Soft, unhesitating. ] No.

[ They're seeing this through. Dean's heavy conscience is a problem for the future, an unavoidable consequence. None of them can foresee what things will look like when they finish. The trail forward will never be painless. ]

You're right. [ He's just about done here, frankly, but he finds himself adding one final word—not to the demon, but to what lingering subconscious lies beneath its surface. ] You didn't tell me what you did that last decade. But I know whatever it was, you found a way to live with yourself then.

[ So he trusts Dean will do the same here when—if—they cure him. However much time it might take, whatever broken shape it may resemble. ]