SpN: Come The Night, 22/?

[roxy]

Title: Come The Night, 22/?
Author: roxy
Pairings/Characters: Sam/Dean, Dean/Angel
Rating:NC-17
Word Count: 3201

Spoilers: oblique reference to events in s5

Summary: this is (now) an AU treatment of season five, where Sam doesn't escape his fate and Boy King means just that. Dean once again enters hell to save his brother—not entirely voluntarily. When he returns to the world, everything's changed. He's lost Sam, the new world is difficult to navigate, and he finds himself saddled with an angry young man who elects himself to be Dean's guide.

Notes/Warnings: rape, dubious consent, extreme power imbalance. Some scenes are graphic. Feel free to ask if you'd like more info.


one ~ two~ three ~ four ~ five ~six
seven ~ eight ~ nine ~ ten ~ eleven ~ twelve
thirteen~fourteen~fifteen~sixteen~seventeen
eighteen~ ninteen~twenty~twenty-one











icon by pandavirus


The dirt tracks slowly become a road, and the road gets wider, trees start to crop up alongside it here and there, green fields full of some plant Dean can't identify—broccoli, Brussels sprouts, some bumpy, disgusting green thing that Sam was always after him to eat. Farms are everywhere, spreading out around the wall, and he wonders why the farmland's not behind the wall too. Some sort of weird, giant silver ladders, tall and spindly like they're on stilts, spray water over the fields—a type of irrigation system that he's never seen before. The sun catches the water and makes rainbows but that just kind of pings him in an unsettling way…the rainbows, the arcs of water showering the earth….

Outside of the fields, there's nothing else on the road, no houses, no little outlying buildings, no suburbs. When they get to the point he can just start to make out the wall, the kind of places he's been expecting start to pop up. The roadside becomes dotted with food carts, lean-to's, which give way to canvas tents and food stands and when they're at last in full sight of the wall, tents and stands become cafés, hostels, markets. The landscape becomes less Mad Max sci-fi and more regular urban blight.

~o0o~

The Edgers take the little bridal party right to the gates of Chronopolis, mixing in with the other petitioners. The buildings and business outside of Chronopolis might be ugly, crowded and squat but the wall itself puts Dean in mind of a castle's walls with the arches and turrets breaking up the long length of it. No cleared area or moat outlines the wall, the buildings lean right up against them and make him think that maybe the wall aren't for keeping things out.

In between the flag topped turrets studding the wall huge, arched openings are set at seemingly random points, high above the ground. In fact, much too high for foot traffic access, and way too wide to be windows. It's weird. He wonders what the hell they're for…decoration? All around the openings, the stone is overlaid with what looks like colorful mosaics, like he'd seen in one particular old church Dad had dragged him to in his endless pursuit of the thing that had ended up destroying them all anyway—Dean shakes his head, hard. Thoughts like that are less than useless—

He looks up to see something like a glass bubble peeking over the top of the wall, organic-looking metal struts holding the glass in place. Flags whip in the breeze and the breeze chases the sound of Chronopolis to them…it sounds like a city. It's the only word he has to describe it. Loud, noisy…familiar. More like the world he'd grown up in, in sound if not in looks.
All around them, it was colorful, active; it was nothing like he'd imagined. He'd been picturing a place like the mining towns only maybe bigger, busier. Chronopolis looks like Newark had fucked a Disney palace and this was its bastard child.

The rest of the tribe peels off when they get to the gates, heading for one of the dozen or so places to bunk for a night. Shem snags a pack off the back of cart, then helps Dean and Angel down to the ground before the cart heads off with the rest.

"Try and walk a little less like a would-be killer, will you? You all the most ungainly brides ever," he complains to Dean and Dean kicks him in the ankle.

"Dude, bru, I'm not a damn girl—"

"Ow, shit—and shhh," Shem hisses, "Act like…Nomine Dei, try to act like somethin' to fuck, not fight off. We got to get you two through the gates, first."

~o0o~

The petition moves slowly through a large set of gates, armed and uniformed troops giving them a lazy once-over as they move by. They're bored; their stance is too casual by far. It's obvious that they think of themselves as window-dressing more than anything else—more than likely they've never raised their weapons in a defensive way. Dean takes it all in, the way the uniforms bullshit with each other, yawn, pick at their collars and cuffs and don't ever really see the people that aren't in uniform. The crowd keeps moving forward in quiet orderly lines, clumped into groups mostly, some alone. The guards herd them all into the proper places, never raising their voices. No one complains, no one tries to jump a line, or drop out…they don’t speak outside of their groups, they look at no one outside of their groups.

A line of people in dark gray pajamas, hooked together at the ankles and strung to a long chain, shuffles past them, the lines of their body advertizing defeat. Angel whispers, "Conscripts. Prisoners." Dean nods his understanding and watches them go, something about the muffled click of the chain, the steady 'shuff, shuff' their feet make as they go by makes his gut lurch. For a split second he's terribly, terribly afraid and it takes a few breaths to make the fear fade.

They're passing into the last set of gates, and just before they step out beyond the walls, Dean looks up. The inner gates have ceilings like cathedrals. Back when he still traveled with Dad, in that time right after Sam fucked off on his search for normal, he'd been in a few old stone churches, helping his dad look for books, documents, or whatever information they could get from some of those old-fashioned priests. It was amazing what those old guys knew. Dad would get gallons of holy water from those places, snatches of lore, and no fucking around, deadly ass exorcisms.

In some ways Dean liked being in those old churches, though they'd also scared him. He'd felt the weight of decades—all that prayer, all that yearning for something more, their vaulted ceilings and stone arches felt like they were filled to bursting with it. Always made him feel kind of small, in awe of heavy, blocky stone transformed into something beautiful, something graceful. Here in the gateway he has that feeling again, under the huge wings carved out of black granite laced together across the ceiling, animals and faces and things he doesn't recognize woven through the worked stone. It's beautiful and frightening. Dean tries to keep one eye on the ceiling and the other on Angel's back and almost misses the moment they pass through into Chronopolis. Dean drops his eyes, looks straight ahead and—

"Holy flying fuck…"

Through one of those too wide, too high arches, comes flying something that looks like an ornithopter but outfitted with an engine, trailing puffs of smoke as it flicks past.

"Okay," Dean mutters and blinks hard. They're inside what looks like a train station built by someone who'd never actually seen a real train station. Half the colored glass roof is cut away to the clear blue sky, giving full view to a whole flight of those smoke-belching ornithopters, flittering away beneath the big, round belly of a dirigible—like dolphins swimming guard with a whale—

It's loud; the air vibrates with the constant hiss of expelled steam, a PA system shouting what sounds like gibberish non-stop, the screech of steel wheels against steel rails, and people, hundreds of people talking, shouting to each other over the din. Dean shivers, pulls the nearly useless robes and scarves around him. Cold, cold and hollow and the filtered light makes the world look like it's underwater, reminding him of that lake lifetimes ago where Sam and he fought a killer ghost boy.

Angel notices Dean slow down and sidles closer to him, not quite touching, just being there, offering support if Dean wants to take it. The warmth Angel gives, the good warm smell of him, helps to ground Dean. He takes a deep breath, and keeps on moving. Angel makes a small approving sound that, if Dean wasn't so oddly shaken by the city, he'd kick Angel in the nads for.

"Shake it, pretty," Shem smirks, and they filter into the appropriate line. There are a couple other figures covered from head to toe in material, their handlers send speculative looks towards Shem. Everywhere Dean looks, there's machinery that looks oddly familiar but slightly skewed. Overhead, clinging to the underside of the glass roof, a monorail runs, little cars hanging from the rail like tricked out shoeboxes. Apart from the huge trains lumbering out of the station on multiple tracks, there's a thin rail line running right over the station's granite floor, the slim tracks sunk into the granite and strangely beautiful, delicate brass and wooden cars sitting upright and sailing on the steel length of it. Dean keeps blinking, shakes his head once or twice. The fucking place looks like maybe a crazy Disney cousin did design it, like a seriously schized-out Disney….

There are lines leading up to checkpoints, chock full of more uniformed mooks separating people into the different lines. The chain-gang of demon fodder gets loaded on some wagon/bus hybrid, Dean jerks when he realizes the thing is steam driven too. "Fuck me..."

Every mook they've seen so far is tricked out in the same dark grey, stiff blue collared uniform. They look a bit like cadets or something, except all heavily armed and sporting odd leather caps topped with goggles. They remind him of something, something right on the edge of his brain…Dean narrows his eyes at them, racks his brain and then—he gets it. Fucking Flying Ace Snoopy. He stifles a giggle, and Angel stares at him. "Behave," he hisses and Dean rolls his eyes.

"Bitch…" he mutters but his heart's not in it. There's too much happening, too much.

"Okay, we're comin' to a checkpoint. Remember, keep your eyes down, don’t speak unless I tell you, right?"

"Yes, fuckin' yes," Dean mutters and he's surprised when instead of giving him shit, Angel snorts and rolls his eyes at Shem, before winking at Dean, hazel eyes all he can see of the kid. For a hot crazy minute, all Dean wants to do is kiss Angel stupid.

~o0o~

They stop in front of a series of long counters, manned by more guards. In this section, the uniforms are black with green collars, and every guard is busy, shifting paper, handling petitioners, tending to mysterious machines that do…something. Little lights blink, and dials whir and the uniforms tap buttons and something happens though Dean's damned if he can figure out what. Every few minutes the machines stop blinking and whirring. Instead, they click, beep, and spit out streamers of paper that seem to feed directly into wastebaskets. Dean shrugs. Government work. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

There's a constant flickering of light at the corner of Dean's eye, and that's when he notices the uniforms are taking pictures at the end of the run of counters.

"Just travelers getting temp ID," Shem explains. "They won't take your picture but you'll get an ID and a scan, supposed to be once you're sold, your owner—I mean spouse, send the ID to back—but don't worry about that shit. Scan's comin' up, ain't gotta worry 'bout that neither. I don't think…" and contrary to what he tells Dean, Shem looks plenty worried.
Fuck…Dean tries hard to keep his head down and not just sprint for some exit some where. What happens if the scan reveals what they're not? How the hell do they get out—he doesn't even have a penknife thanks to Angel's paranoia and he really wants to ask Angel how he was liking that instance on being unarmed now. But they keep moving forward and it's not long before they're in front of a U shaped section of the counter and the guard on duty there. He's holding a wand and he gestures them forward.

"We got papers, we're—" Shem starts, but the mook shakes his head, he doesn't give a shit, it's not his job to care. He sweeps them with the wand, hesitates over them. "Wait here." Dean starts cursing—this is it, fuckin' shit has hit the fan now. He's seen they're not brides, he's going to call up more uniforms and they're going to be in deep, deep shit—

The guard walks back behind the counter, leans over one of the machines, frowning as he presses levers and twists dials and the thing blinks and whirs and spits out paper and it must mean something to the mook, he turns away and picks up an old-fashioned looking phone with a rotary dial. Dean blinks at it—it looks like a 1940s relic but under the dial, a tiny TV screen's attached to it…"fucking weird."

"Is everything okay? Why'd he stop?" Angel asks Shem, who frowns a little but shrugs, crosses his arms.

"Eh. I don't think it's anything important. They stop folks all the time. If it was bad, they'da taken us out at the head of the line." Dean eyes him. Right.

An elegant woman glides into view, patting the loops of jet black hair coiled on the back of her neck into place. She's wearing a long skirted version of the mook uniform; the overcoat is nearly as long as the skirt and her hand floats from the coils of her hair to the brass badge pinned under the collar. Serious almond eyes sweep them as she comes to a stop. Just the way she angles her head shouts "Big Boss In Charge." It's kind of hot, Dean thinks. Looks her over carefully—oh yeah, she's definitely hot. Angel digs a sharp elbow into his ribs and sets off an avalanche of jingling and clicking as the little bells and bracelets chime; Dean doesn't even have to see it to know that Angel's face is stuck in bitch-mode.

"You're a woman, remember?" There's a definite edge to his whispered remark.

"So?" Dean hisses, and gets a sandal ground into his toes. Bites down the curses that want to burst out.

"Well, well, today is a busy bride day. It's been a while since we've had so many, three separate groups today…the Market is going to be quite interesting this week." She looks Shem's papers over, hmming and tsking, before looking at the machine her subordinate had fluttered over. She takes a minute or two looking at something a faint frown on her face, lifts an eyebrow and purses her lips before smiling. "Ah," she says, as she spins dials and taps buttons. "I see now. There was an error in the machine. Seems my assistant here is not as skilled at calibrating it as he should be. You're fine," she says and Dean exhales a relieved breath. Their IDs are created, and their papers handed back, and the woman wishes Dean and Angel a happy, productive life with their 'spouses'. Dean glares until Angel jabs him in the ribs. Again.

~o0o~

They board one of the little transport cars, and it swings into action, clanking and moaning and spitting steam--it makes Dean long for the Impala like a lost lover. Once underway, the ride is actually pretty smooth and against his will, Dean ends up looking around wide-eyed. Feels a bit like a tourist, instead of an idiot on his way to almost certain Very Bad Times. The cars sway and hiss to a distant part of the station. There they step out, shuffling, heads down, taking annoyingly mincing steps like the shy country girls they're supposed to be. Shem stops them in front of a thin metal pylon that has a glass booth set at its base. "Get in," he says.

Dean looks up at the thread of metal spinning upwards, right out of the open part of the roof, where it takes a twist and soars onward. The glass booth shivers as further along the line, other glass booths take on people and rise straight up like a shot and then follow the twist of metal ribbon like a fucking amusement park ride. Dean plants his feet. God damn it, he's faced down werewolves and vamps and—and-- all manner of fucking supernatural freaks, he's no coward—but only an idiot would risk this glass death trap.

Angel loops his arm around Dean's waist like a school girl, and takes his hand. It appears to be a comforting gesture but it's only by sheer force of will the Dean doesn't yell—the fuckin' kid is grinding his hand bones to powder. "Don't be afraid, sister," Angel does a pretty good job of sounding like a girl. He leans closer, makes it look like he's kissing Dean's cheek and hisses, "Get the fuck in the car before I snap your stupid hand off."

Shem makes a show of patting Dean on the back. "Leave 'em be," he whispers, "Your boy's country bumpkin perfect. This here gawking and whatnot just what everyone expects."

And yeah, there were looks of impatience and sneers and outright laughter at his expense—what can he do? Dean stomps into the car, plasters himself against a wall and glares best he can through the stupid veils. Angel loops an arm through his but probably to stop Dean clocking any of the sneering passengers.

"Backwater savages…should keep that trash in the sticks where it belongs." A man glares at them, and waits for the other man he's with to agree. That one looks so fucking unimpressed with Douche Nozzle and it's easy to see why, he's weighted down with boxes and bags hung from his person like he's a fucking Christmas tree and the dull eyes he turns on Dean are so full of "I don't give a fuck' and 'I have nothing in me to give.' There are silvery pale stripes on most of the guy's visible skin but around his neck is a thick, raised red line.

Slave. Slavery. Real, ugly, slavery. Dean stares, as appalled with Douche Nozzle as the asshole was with him. The chill wave that swept him was suddenly a surge of hot, vibrating, rage—this whole fucked up thing finally spilling over and he takes a step towards Douche, opens his mouth and a sharp pain shocks up his arm—What the fuck—?

Angel lets go of the throbbing bit of Dean's skin and whispers, "Please, ManDei, please behave yourself. I can feel you swelling up like a pissed off cat."

"Yeah, whatever, shut up…" Once they settle for the night, Dean swears he's gonna cut the kid's fucking nails…or maybe just break his fingers. He manfully restrains himself from rubbing his tortured flesh. "Bitch. Stop abusing me."

They pull to a stop on a platform made of spun wrought-iron. "Get off, no fuckin' 'round," Shem says.

"Hu--nunh?"Dean stutters as Angel pushes him off the car—he'd been so pissed off and so busy glaring daggers at Douche Nozzle, he'd missed the whole ride. He counted that as a mother-fucking win and elbowed Angel—he didn't need to be coaxed off that flying glass coffin.






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