Hᴇ ᴡᴀs ᴀʟᴡᴀʏs ᴀ ᴛʜᴏᴜsᴀɴᴅ ᴍɪʟᴇs ᴀᴡᴀʏ ( ᴄʟᴏsᴇᴅ )

[righteously]

Who: Dean Winchester & Co.
When: January
Where: Cadens; Horizon; Nocwich
What: Catch-all for January
Warnings: mark of cain shenanigans, violence, alcohol, self-loathing

I ᴡᴏᴋᴇ ᴜᴘ ᴛʜɪs ᴍᴏʀɴɪɴɢ
ᴅɪᴅɴ'ᴛ ʀᴇᴄᴏɢɴɪᴢᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴀɴ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ᴍɪʀʀᴏʀ

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[outwear]

One of Sam's least favorite topics here, but he's finding every moment that passes scratches an urge within him, like fingernails inside his skull scraping to get the words out. He shifts uncomfortably, feeling suddenly too large for chairs that once felt perfectly accommodating. He slouches some, finds it doesn't help, but doesn't readjust.

"New world, new set of rules. We've known Lucifer to run scared for less."

Perhaps more notable to Sam is that Lucifer would back down to Geralt. Looking at the man, appreciating his attitude that says nothing is surprising or new, Sam doubts Lucifer's concern over Geralt and yet here they are; either Geralt's more dangerous than suggested or Lucifer's more impotent than he'd like. Maybe both. Regardless, the picture painted between the two of them — a conversation Sam wishes very much to have been a fly on the wall to see — doesn't bode particularly well for what he already knows to be a harrowing situation.

Sam's attention is on Geralt once more. "You declined Lucifer's offer, fine; I'm sure it's the right choice. But what was the method of control he suggested?"

[righteously]

He believes it renders the bearer immortal.

Dean's silence is loud. It radiates off him, this possibility, the implications behind it. He spends a few seconds in stillness, the knuckle of one hand pressing against his lips as he contemplates it.

If Lucifer's right, if he can't die... if the Mark consistently gets stronger, steadily corrupts, makes him worse, and he can't even take himself out of the equation like he'd been planning?

Yeah, that's not a good eventuality. That's a real worst case scenario. Something he's going to have to address sooner rather than later. His eyes flicker from Jo to Cas, from Cas to Sam, and then finally they land and linger on Geralt.

They talked about it once in passing. After this, it's time for a more formal discussion — but somewhere away from the other participants in this conversation, because he imagines it'd go over like a lead friggin balloon.

Eventually, finally, he reels himself back into the present — murmuring softly after Jo's dismissive speculated theory, "Well, at least he's right about one thing."

He would spend his immortality hunting that son of a bitch down. That would be priority numero uno if he ever embraced going off the rails. Either Lucifer would find a way to end him thus solving the problem, or he'd kill Lucifer, which wouldn't really solve anything, but it sure would feel good.

Color him equally curious about Sam's question, though.
What method of control?

[gynvael]

Like Castiel, Jo receives a noncommittal half-glance before it returns to Dean. Gauging. He has the knowledge he has. Past that—no clear path exists. He can't blame anyone for their deep mistrust—he would no sooner lend credence to Voleth Meir—and Geralt's hardly about to defend Lucifer. Who both tried to kill Dean and actually killed him. 

Then whined at him about some bullshit. Fucked with his wolf. (The list is long.)

But it'd be remiss not to lay out what he's learned. The rest of them can decide or argue amongst themselves what they will or will not believe; it's Dean whose thoughts Geralt grants the most weight, Dean the one who faces becoming something he did not ask to be. Who is responsible for what happens next by his hand. The man deserves to know all there is to know. At least while his mind remains his own.

Before he can continue, the topic shifts. Geralt's gaze is sharp, though it isn't meant for Sam. If there's a point Lucifer crossed from irritating him to pissing him off in that conversation, it would be then.

"It was not an offer." It was a suggestion. "And I will not entertain it."

Insulting at best, demeaning at worst. Still, he looks at Dean—a silent question. Frankly, there's no purpose in giving voice to the notion, being what it is, but he does think Dean has the right to want to hear it.

[righteously]

Does he want to hear it? Probably not. Will he actually follow through with whatever it is? Even more unlikely.

But he probably should, just in case.

It isn't reluctance in his tone, but some fatigued, faintly annoyed distant cousin to it. A flat, unenthusiastic, "What did he say?"

Definitely the sound of a man prepared to immediately disregard whatever the answer is.

[gynvael]

Have an equally unenthusiastic sigh. For the first time, he moves forward, palms planted on the table.

"He believes I can leash you to me." Geralt's distaste over the thought is tangible, but underneath it is more, something almost protective when his eyes linger on Dean. "Like a feral hunting hound, pointed towards targets I would consider acceptable, to tame the effects of the curse."

Unspoken, obviously, is that he would not point Dean at Lucifer, though the fact that Lucifer never addressed it is something Geralt has silently noted. Isn't certain what to make of it yet.

Either way, Geralt's choice of I rather than we is deliberate; Lucifer clearly meant he and he alone. The reasons for that, Lucifer did not make a secret. Doesn't matter, either. It isn't a solution, even if he were to want to do it, even if they were to remove Dean or a pile of corpses from the equation. A curse cannot be tamed. Not forever. That's the first mistake anyone ever makes when faced with one.

[unwings]

Cas stiffens next to Geralt, an absolutely fucking not, over my dead energy wave caught in his throat, but Geralt was right in that it's Dean's call, and Dean's alone.

The fidgeting and anxious darting of eyes between Dean and Geralt doesn't do well to hide it, the angel looking like he's ready to crawl out of not-his skin and wave a giant STOP sign between the whole assembled party.

With great effort, he remains silent. Just being the squirmiest angel in existence and staring lasers at Dean.

[righteously]

The face Dean pulls can only be categorized as incredulous disgust. Like a feral hunting hound; the concept that he's an attack dog.

(The problem is that it isn't very far fetched, no pun intended.)

He can practically feel Cas vibrating out of his skin the instant the words are out of Geralt's mouth.

"Relax," comes the firm order lobbed in Castiel's direction, equal parts dismissive and reassuring. "Leashes aren't really my thing. I'm more of a cuffs and blindfolds guy."

No he isn't, but defusing the tension with a little irreverent bullshit is the Dean Winchester way.

And then to Geralt, a mild and completely unnecessary, "No offense. I'm sure you're great with those and all, but I'll leave that to Jaskier."

[outwear]

Sam places his face in his palm. That's right, an actual facepalm. Please, go on.

[gynvael]

About what he expected from Dean: plain revulsion, an immediate no. Geralt feels the same; nothing more needs to be added. An insult more than a solution, as he said.

A look greets that remark from Dean. Then he goes on. There's further to cover. Geralt already hasn't the patience for these round-table talks. Four voices chiming in is four too many.

"Supposedly, the mark was created to contain what Lucifer refers to as the Darkness. It belonged to him before he passed it onto Cain. Claims it's holding a cage shut." The Darkness's cage? He assumes. Fuck if he knows. Geralt absorbed a lot of shit in the space of minutes. He doesn't even come from these people's damn sphere. "By his time, the mark was removed, but doing so set the entity loose." A separate problem, if true. "What he does not know is how you came to have the mark again here. Kept hounding me about it."

Geralt has his suspicions, but Lucifer will not be the one he tells. Though he suspects, given time, Lucifer might come to a similar conclusion on his own. He glances at the knife on the table, then back at Dean.

"When you called on that, I could feel it. The magic." His medallion, he can sense it. It's not unlike when Julie summons her serpent or Jaskier grows some berries. "That mark came through the Singularity. Manifested alongside your memories. I'm sure of it. You must be summoning your blade through its magic, too."

[righteously]

It's for the best Geralt plows ahead instead of waiting for the peanut gallery to prompt him for actually useful information. It's the only way to really accomplish a debriefing around these parts. Exposition dumps.

The Darkness puts a furrow in his brow. Set the entity loose deepens it.

What the hell does that even mean? What the hell is the darkness? Jack didn't mention any of that in their admittedly brief, shell-shocked chat in the wagon, or in passing since then.

But it does seem like something worth mentioning.

"That kid that's been hanging around. Jack. We, um-" A pause. He chews his cheek. "Apparently we're raising him, a couple years down the road from the last thing I remember, I don't know, but he uh. He says by the time we pick him up, this thing's gone."

A flex of his forearm, an absent glance at the mark.

"I'm still alive and kicking, and he doesn't remember ever seeing me with the mark. How that stacks up against Singularity magic, or- timelines, or whatever, I don't know, but... Between him and whatever crap Lucifer's spewing, I think that means it's possible, right? That we figure something out, somehow. This thing comes off, and we deal with whatever the darkness is by then, so how bad could it be?"

[tobeclosetohim]

It's not a fact that's escaped Jo. It's a number that's been sitting in her head since she met Jack before anyone else in this room found him here, too. When it was a jarring—if painfully gut-relieving, knife in the stomach, the air to breathe when you never knew you'd been drowning, relief—that all three of the others in this room would make it to—

"A couple? Try at least—what?—half a decade up to 2020?"

—something that no hunter, except the Winchesters apparently, could have promised to them. Not the not-knowing if it would be the next hunt. Or a year from now. Or two, three, five. It's over a decade from when she died. They're safe for over a decade more from now (to her).

That's not the same, and Jo knows it even as she thinks it.

They're alive. They survive.
That's not the same as safe.

(Hunters are never safe;
it's one of the things they give up.

And it's one of the things the Winchesters have never been beyond that.
If there were even a sliver beyond that truth, her mother wouldn't have...)

Still, it sits with the echo in her head, make it later. Her last words, half joke, and half demand, to him before she died. It's a good deal of later, no matter how complicated the feelings accompanying the mess that wants to push up, weave through, and wrap around it. The ones she unceremoniously shoves back for later, much later, expression mostly unchanged even as it turns appealing. Moving forward to set her arms on the table and lean in toward his direction, only looking at Dean.

"Which means there is an answer. Somewhere. There's something that can be done. To deal with The Mark, the Blade, and whatever the hell this Darkness is. If Jack doesn't know about any of them, and he's been with all of you a good while, then they have to be fixed and behind you somehow at that point. Something can cure it. We just have to find it, or find someway to keep it in check until whenever you do out there."

[unwings]

How bad could it be, famous last words. But in this case, the argument's solid. Dean's still alive in Jack's timeline, enough that he's considered family, a caretaker. Jack didn't mention any current evil they're fighting (there's always something), it's distant enough for them to be child-rearing. No apocalypse world, no Mark, no primeval darkness.

"You're right. An answer exists, and we've dealt with the creature, at home." Cas breathes, almost disbelieving. Shaking his head, he looks up and around at the others. "The Mark is a seal on a cage, and it exists both here and there. But only you were brought through the portal, Dean. If we remove it here and not yet there, what difference would it make to the darkness in another dimension, that still has an intact seal?"

Cas pushes off from the wall, pacing as he brainstorms. This impossible problem has a solution, definitively, and it lifts an ominous cloud from the entire affair, like a gradually tightening noose cut free. Now, they get to work. "The spell to bring you here duplicated the seal, but the Darkness isn't inside Dean. When I possessed him, I would've sensed an ancient evil, but there was only the corrupting influence from the Mark."

Maybe not the best time or company to announce he'd possessed Dean earlier? Cas doesn't leave time for any questions there, quickly moving on.

"What about Abraxan magic? Do we have any allies in Thorne who'd be willing to check their resources for anything we can use?" He turns to Sam, because there's no point addressing this to Dean. "There's a whole world of research out there we haven't touched."

A deep inhale puffs out Castiel's chest, and he almost feels excited.

"We can fix this, Dean, we just need you to hold out against the Mark long enough."

[tobeclosetohim]

Jo's got a look for the shoe drop of possession, but it's less caustic than any number of her expressions can be. It's not the worst; she hadn't thought about it before. With Cas being an angel, though she was still picking up what all that could entail, there were ways Castiel could have probed the depths of what was going on inside Dean that none of them could.

It's weird. And it gives her several questions she wants to toss at Cas at a not-now-time, but then he launches into the rest, and Jo feels like they've ground back to months ago. Every word coming out of his mouth were the first ones that came out of hers. Not with such desperate, willing enthusiasm at the open floor as Cas—no, she'd shouted hers at him, angry for keeping her in the dark and not taking advantage of the options here for so long, exasperated concern at months lost where researching and reaching out to other sources might have been done—but it's the same sentiment. The same idea. The same one, she bets; everyone at this table has been footing around whether said or not.

This place may not have what home had to cure it,

but it also has a hell of a lot things home didn't, too.
"I've been looking into some of it. Picking up copies of books from Thorne in Nocwich on those weekends it's open. Anything that looked like it might have a parallel circumstance or symptom alignment." One to two, mixed in with others. Trying not to let it draw attention to her focus. Just because they needed to know more didn't mean they needed the whole world to know why. "I gave Sam the newest ones I found during The Dimming, too, for this."

There's no shame in her for the admission, too. It's more a press of eyebrows daring Dean to comment she went right ahead and did keep looking, even after he said it was impossible and unlikely. Just a done deal to be existed through. Something she refused to take as the law of god and not doing it alone either.

"We've got copies in the library here already of the ones I went through earlier." She's looking between Sam and Cas, more than at Dean for the moment. "On top of reaching out to people practicing in Thorne, we could also consider touching base with the academies and professionals here to see if there's anything that Dean might be able to do or take as a buffer while the effects are getting stronger."

At least three of them knew the town's main healer,
and she probably knew a ton of people there, too.

[gynvael]

The flurry of movement is not unexpected. Geralt remains out of the discussion now that he's said his piece—his only reason for coming in the first place. He's used to investigating alone, and while he's no qualms approaching Jo or Castiel or even Dean's brother on his own, he's disinclined to step into the matter as any part of a team effort when his mere presence increases the tension by several notches.

They can come to him if they want him or need him. He's made no secret the knowledge he holds or the connections he's made in this sphere. (Mostly.) Nor his willingness to help Dean.

Besides. The only solution foremost on his mind is sending the curse back, through the Singularity—not unlike how Ciri sent Voleth Meir back—and that is, in his mind, not a solution he wants to propose. No other potentially has that level of control over the Singularity. Abraxas would look much different if they did. Only Ciri does, and she is not a tool. She never will be. The Wild Hunt is still out there, circling. Waiting for her to open the door.

So it's in the midst of conversation that he catches Dean's gaze, then slips out the door. Dean can find him in elsewhere in the bunker if he wants to talk further. Geralt isn't one to overstay his welcome without good reason—though he does grant Castiel the briefest eye contact on his way out. An acknowledgement of the angel's earlier gesture, when he first came into the room.