Chapter Text
The ritual from the book was similar to the one the Avengers had originally witnessed and was in the same location.
Dean had gently touched the wooden cross while the others placed the devices Tony had mostly replicated (but had improved with some input from Dean and Bobby about supernatural resonances) around the cross itself. Each of them had to provide fresh blood as they stood in a circle, but Hydra had gone overboard with murdering five scientists, rather than just offering ‘blood’ for the sigil that Dean painted on his own face. It had been decided that Thor would be on the opposite side of the portal as Dean would most likely draw Lucifer’s attention easier.
The amulet was draped around Dean’s neck and the blade that had been used to draw all their blood was held in Dean’s hand. Bobby stood next to him, holding the Book with the translated ritual words up for Dean to read.
Dean was ready. He was scared of Lucifer and Michael and what could happen if they escaped, but he was more scared of what would happen to his brother if this attempt didn’t succeed. Would they double down on their torment? He didn’t want to think about any of that. His only thought was keeping to the plan, getting Sam out, and keeping the archangels inside the Cage.
They knew the Book couldn’t be destroyed, but Thor was prepared to grab it and shoot back to Asgard to seal it in his father’s vault to keep it away from anyone who would use it for further ill. Bobby and Bruce had discovered a way to make a curse box stronger than any Bobby had ever seen, that was also set with Runes to keep any but those with Thor’s bloodline (read as ‘not Loki’) from being able to even touch it.
Once everyone was in place, the ones nearest the devices flipped the switches and Dean read the Latin version of the spell. It was another precaution to keep anyone from overhearing it in English and immediately interrupting if they figured out what was going on. Of course, having the Avengers jet mostly hidden in the nearby field and Dean’s car parked just inside the cemetery gates, anyone nearby would think something was going down.
And it was.
As Dean read, the wind picked up, whipping tree limbs into creaking shudders. Lightning flashed, but Thor kept it concentrated on Mjolnir. With the cipher, the ritual was a bit different from what Hydra had used; more powerful. With the amulet and blade as well, they should have the power needed to pull the lone human, intact and with his soul, from the Cage, and bind the heavenly beings to the Cage itself, so that when they closed it, they would remain trapped within.
On the last word, the building chaos of nature around them whipped into a frenzy and the portal snapped into place, the void space barren of even the hint of movement.
Until a bubble humped up and popped, glistening a dark, burgundy red in the light that lit up the border of the portal. Another bubbled up and popped, then it began boiling, with white shapes within the bubbles bobbing around, sinking down again, then bubbling back up. When the largest of the white shapes they had seen so far breached the red and black surface, there were gasps as they recognized the shape of a human skull with some flesh still clinging to the eye sockets.
One bit of flesh split as the skull spun lazily in an invisible whirlpool and as it neared Dean, he realized it was an eye looking up at him from the skull. The same kaleidoscope hazel that he’d been looking into for most of his life. The other bit of flesh split and Sam’s eyes stared at Dean, no emotion able to be conveyed without muscles or skin to wrinkle in confusion or pull up in happiness.
The bubbles popped over the skull, boiling over it and around it, each bubble leaving behind a little more and little more, building up until there was nearly a face looking at Dean. They were all vibrating with tension and Tony had begun to erupt in small burps that in the back of his mind, Dean knew were the man holding back vomit at the sight as the other white shapes, Sam’s bones, eddied closer and closer to his skull, aligning seemingly at random, until the humanoid hands, covered sporadically in blood and muscles that appeared to knit themselves into place, reached out of the quagmire to pull himself higher.
“Sammy,” whooshed from Dean’s mouth, his stomach roiling right along with what he figured was Sam’s liquified remains trying to pull themselves together.
“Oh my god,” several voices whispered from the observers of Sam’s latest tribulation.
Once enough flesh had joined together for facial expressions, Dean nearly cried at the despair he saw in his brother’s eyes. Concern for Dean himself was what the older brother assumed. He knew from the video that Sam was resigned to eternity as the keeper of the Cage. And Dean wasn’t about to let that eternity happen.
“Sammmmmmy,” a familiar voice sing-songed, seemingly from all around them.
The Avengers girded themselves, faces hardened as they tore their attention away from the horror that was Sam Winchester putting himself back together atom by atom, to focus on the brown-covered head rising from the void in the center of the portal.
Dean saw his brother close his eyes as his still skinless body flinched. And he was done letting Lucifer do that to Sam.
“Hey, Sammy,” Lucifer said as he glided upwards from the void, now wearing Dean’s own visage. “Where you going? There’s so much left to try.”
Dean had warned them about the visage Lucifer had worn in the past. Nick hadn’t survived long after Lucifer dumped him for Sam, but Dean figured Lucifer would be able to take different faces and would use any he could conceive of to continue to torment Sam. He had not expected his own face to be what was scaring his brother, but one last glance at Sam before he took on Lucifer showed him that Sam knew it was Lucifer and not the real Dean.
“Well, well, well,” Lucifer chuckled darkly, and man, did that sound weird coming from Dean’s face. The Avengers were looking angry as it dawned on them as well what Lucifer was doing. “You think YOU are going to rescue Sammy here?” He gestured at the gore-covered man at his feet, then lifted one to press Sam’s back back down into the bubbling void.
“Not just me, asshat,” Dean growled, reaching into his shirt to grasp the amulet with his still bleeding hand.
Dean watched as the smile dropped from Lucifer’s face as he lit up from within. The archangel began to growl back as Dean’s features melted off, leaving a bright white light that was hard to look at directly, four glowing red eyes glaring out at him.
“I’ll never let you take my plaything,” Lucifer’s voice, now closer to Nick’s than Dean’s, said in all their heads.
“Brother!” A new voice rose up and Dean had to clench his hand tighter as he saw Adam’s body rise up slowly from the void as well. “What are you doing?”
The eyes shifted to glare at what had to be Michael, rising up behind him, but Adam’s body also began to melt away. Michael, unlike Lucifer, sighed as Adam’s flesh fell away. The bright white light, with six blue orbs that were his eyes, flexed as though finally free of being confined. There were shrieks as both lights slammed towards each other and then locked in a battle that none of them could really look at directly.
“Dean,” Sam gurgled from his shredded throat, almost fully coalesced, as he scrambled towards his brother on the edge of the portal. Dean chanted the words he’d memorized earlier and stabbed the blade down directly onto the border nearest him. With a slash, the border split, the black void beginning to spill out as it pulled wider.
“By Odin, the All-father!” Thor shouted, bringing his hammer down on the device nearest him.
Dean released the blade and reached in to grab Sam’s hand, now fully fleshed. Sam was almost complete, naked and covered in congealed blood and ichor, but it had to be enough as time was of the essence.
“By the power of Grayskull!” Bruce growled as he shifted into Hulk and smashed the device nearest himself.
“Cowabunga!” Clint shouted, slamming an explosive arrow into the device in front of himself and diving backwards as it created a smallish explosion.
“I am Iron Man!” Tony grunted, shooting a repulsor beam into the one just below where he hovered in his suit.
“Amen!” Steve said, slamming his shield into the final device.
Natasha was on the other side of Bobby, holding to modified curse box for Bobby to drop the book inside, not closing it just yet, as Bobby reached in to grab Sam’s other hand and together, Bobby and Dean yanked hard, pulling Sam through the gap. The border was flickering as both the archangels realized it had been breached, but as they turned to the opening, the border itself collapsed in on itself, wrapping around the bright light of the combined beings.
There was more of the high-pitched screeching like they’d heard when Cas had been fighting off Rafael merely 43 hours ago, but none of them dared let go of their weapons to cover their ears. None of them could hear Bobby and Dean cursing as they hauled Sam through the breach in the portal, nor could they hear Sam’s scream as the portal blinked closed one final time, sealing away the two archangels, and cutting Sam’s right leg off just below the knee.
The chaos snapped into silence only broken by heaving breath and a groan of pain.
“Sammy,” Dean sobbed, pulling his brother into his arms as he dropped to his knees next to him on the ground. Bobby was grabbing the blade to drop it in the curse box when he glanced over to notice the blood, much brighter than the gore that covered Sam.
“Medic!” Bobby shouted, tossing the blade towards Natasha. She snatched it out of the air, slammed the box closed and tossed it to Thor, who gripped it tight, nodded, and raising his hammer above his head, disappeared in his own beam of rainbow light in his rush to Asgard.
“Sam, Sammy?” Dean sniffled, ignoring how filthy he was getting.
He registered the woosh of Thor taking off, then the rest of them were moving in, Clint with a large first aid kit. Dean remembered they had talked about some of them possibly being injured, and distantly he wondered who it was. He’d heard Bobby shout for medical help, but he only had eyes for his brother.
Who hadn’t said a word since the portal closed. He pulled back just enough to look and saw Hulk shrinking down, Natasha at his elbow, Clint kneeling near Sam’s feet…foot, applying a tourniquet.
“Oh, Oh, Sammy,” Dean groaned as he realized Sam was staring up at him, but not really seeing him. He was basically catatonic.