Chapter Text
"And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both body and soul in hell"
Matthew 10:28
They're holed up in an abandoned house somewhere in the middle of nowhere, with floors that let out eerie screeches after every step and boarded-up windows that only let in the slimmest amount of silver light. It's the quintessential hideout, with a special demon flair, judging by the browning splatters across the fire place. Still, in a sobering way, it makes him a little homesick.
Sam's knees are tucked up to his chest and his back is against the wooden bars of an old chair. He barely fits, with his heels just barely hanging on the edge of the chair, but he needs the comfort as his next words come out of his mouth. "What do I need to know about these princes of hell?"
"They're Lucifer's chosen. Lilith was first, but these.... they're the next in line."
"To what?"
Azazel's eyes glint. "The throne."
"So which one's in power now?"
"The eldest. The most loyal. He won't be our target, however."
Sam sucks in a breath through his teeth. "Then who?"
"Ramiel." Azazel drifts over to the side of the room, where a shelf of oddities sits. "The... youngest. And, of course, the weakest. He's lived among humans for years, and I believe that has... tainted him."
"Tainted him? Humans?" Sam laughs, sardonic and wheezing. "He's the demon prince."
"You're right, wrong choice of wording. Let's see..." Azazel taps his chin as if he were thinking. "Perhaps it's more like... reverting back to his original form."
Sam sits up straighter. "Original form?"
"All princes of hell were humans at one point. Lucifer picked them specially for his mission. Twisted them to his image. Which means..." Azazel tosses a glass jar in Sam's direction, and Sam, all reflexes and no thought, catches it. "You need a boost, big boy."
His breath catches in his throat as he stares down at the black liquid, and it back up at him. He remembers burning veins and burning hands and the cool, chilly, relieving feeling of touching Ruby's essence.... The jar thuds against the wooden table next to him. "No way."
"Second thoughts? You remember what's at stake here, don't you?"
"What the hell are you having me do here, exactly?"
Azazel leans forward. "You wanna keep the world safe? Fine. This right here is how you do it. You may think you're in the wrong here, but you gotta look at the bigger picture. With this... eventually, you'll call the shots. You know what you can do with this kinda power? Anything. But first, we gotta get you there, and to do that..."
Sam grimaces. "I have to... drink prince's blood."
"A little bit more complicated than that, but you got the idea." Azazel gestures towards the table. "And to do that, you gotta get stronger. So, what's it gonna be?"
The glass of the jar feels warm in his palm, even though he's fairly certain it's been sitting on the rickety old shelf for a while. He knows this is a test, one that ends with him dead or worse than dead. Still, hesitation creeps up his back and around his head. The part of his blood that's thrashing back and forth, trying to spit out the poison, it's the blood that ties him directly to Jess, to his mother. If he does this, it would be as if he were to take an axe and cut each of them off at the root, sever them completely from the head.
The lid pops off easy. He closes his eyes, nose, mind, and drinks.
The worst part is that it goes down easier, with a few quick gulps rather than the struggle it was before. He tries not to think about it. He tries not to think about his body getting used to the blood he's forcing into himself, letting it slither up his arms and into every part of him. It tastes sour, different than beforehand, and he can't tell if it's real or his mind trying to reject it. He lets go of the jar and it drops to the ground with a sickening 'crack'.
"Y'know, you gotta stop breaking those jars."
Sam wipes his arm across his face. "I don't give a shit."
"Alright, touchy, touchy." Azazel smirks. "Let's see what you can do."
He flexes his fingers out as they tingle, little sparks igniting what he knows is a monstrous weapon. He sucks in a breath, and then another, and then locks eyes with Azazel. The demon's eyes are normal, no gold or yellow in sight, but he can picture it, picture them peering over his mother's bed and down at Jake's body and up at-
Every piece of glass in the room shatters. The remaining windows crash forward, the bottles and liquids on the shelf splatter against the wall, and the vase of wilted flowers in the corner turns to shreds. It feels like a shockwave, all at once, and immediately there's a pounding in Sam's head that isn't distinguishable from the one in his fingers. He tastes blood and, lifting his fingers up to swipe under his nose, he realizes his nose is bleeding. The urge to lick is startling, and he quickly rubs his fingers against his jeans.
"Not bad! You sure this is only your second time?"
He can still feel the blood on his upper lip. He responds, through clenched teeth, "Yes."
"Well then." Azazel opens his arms up, like a father welcoming his child home. Sam feels nauseous. Sam feels powerful. "I think it's time."
The plan is deceptively simple: sneak into his weirdly human home, track him down, and kill him. Of course, as Sam is always aware, having a plan and actually enacting the plan are two entirely different things. Azazel is extremely vague on what exactly killing him entails, which means that there's a good chance Sam never walks out of this. But Azazel seems to insist that this Ramiel is out of practice, having spent so many years on Earth, but Sam knows best that there's plenty out there to keep you trained.
The house itself is ornate, a mansion clearly built on demon deals and murders. It's almost what he expects of a supposed prince of hell, except for the fact that it's in 'the middle of nowhere, Ohio'. For a brief moment, his mind reminds him that he's just repeating Dean's old jokes, but he shuts that part of him up pretty quickly. There's something in him that screams at him to keep this part of his life separate from dean, from hunting, as if he isn't doing this for that. He shouldn't feel guilty. And yet he does, the feeling hanging on his back and twisting around his skull and puncturing its way through his hands and feet. It consumes him. Just like the blood.
He's equipped with scarcely little as he ducks behind a bush, being sure to hide in the shadows that the night provides. He was given a knife, sure, but it was plain silver; no extra markings, no special grooves, no demon power. He's once again reminded that this, that all of his actions going forward, are a test to see if he's worthy of the power Azazel intends to give him, a test that he either passes or dies to. His teeth puncture his lip and he can feel the small trickle of iron dripping into his mouth. He keeps moving.
Strategically speaking, the best entrance would be a window; there are a few that are carelessly left open, curtains blowing in the night breeze, beckoning him towards their safe passage. However, Sam has long since been dealing with monsters of the night, and he knows that there's bound to be tricks hidden within their golden depths. So, he draws himself closer to the ground and sneaks towards the back door. He doesn't know why, but there's some intuition bubbling inside him that whispers that this door, this route, is the right answer.
His fingers find the cold metal of the handle, which he gently twists, only to find the door locked. The safety pin stuck in the corner of his jacket quickly comes loose, and he takes deep, calming breaths as he jams the lock just enough to pull the door open, wincing at the tiniest creeks. Suddenly, he's in, and he barely has time to marvel at the pristine hardwood flooring and elaborate arches before he's flat against a wall, eyes wide as he hears a noise creaking across the house. Out of reflex, his hand finds the handle of the knife tucked in his pocket. He peaks around the corner, and-
Nothing. Sam's cautious eyes dart across the layout of what appears to be an office space, but there doesn't seem to be a creature there. He takes a step forward, attempting to keep his feet light against the ground, and barely holds back a string of curses as a large, echo-y creak bounces around in the room. Giving up pretenses, he bolts into the room, knife out, waiting for an unknown figure to attack him at any moment. He takes a second to lament that Azazel didn't give him much information beyond 'use your power', because he has no idea what this demon-prince is meant to look like. Is he looking for a human, or is he looking for a weird amalgamation of human and monster, with horns and glowing eyes?
There's a sound from the corner of the room, and Sam turns just in time to get his answer; an older man, with whisky white hair and a long, elegant brown coat, stands across from him. His eyes glow a soft gold, which would seem harmless if not for the furrowed eyebrows and murderous expression. The man tilts his head, and bellows, "Who are you, and what are you doing here?"
Sam, in this moment, realizes his first mistake: the man doesn't seem prone to violence. Which, while ironic in many aspects that Sam is not willing to unpack at the moment, means that if he had come in here with full charm and puppy-dog eyes, claiming to be an interested historian or concerned neighbor from a few miles down, he likely would have had much easier access to the man before him.
Still, he holds his ground, and grits out, fingers clenched around the weapon before him. "Are you Ramiel?"
The man's eyebrow twitches, but otherwise he does not react. "How do you know that name?"
"You're a prince of hell, right?" Sam takes a step forward. "I came here to find you."
"For what purpose? To kill me?" Ramiel's laugh echoes out, cold and pointed, and he leans in towards Sam. "Young man, you don't know just how much trouble you've gotten yourself into."
Sam's cold glare does nothing against the man's golden eyes. "I know more than you think."
Ramiel grins. "With that knife? I'm sure you don't."
Sam tilts his head and, out of some bubbling sense of pride, he tosses the knife to the side. He stares back at Ramiel and then, lifting his hand, squeezes.
It's difficult to get a grasp on Ramiel, Sam finds. He grunts out in pain as his hand and arm scream against the force he puts behind them, but he can't grasp the slippery coldness that he now knows represents a demon's soul- or what is left of it. He can barely reach the tail end before it seems to dart away from him, like it knows what Sam is trying to do. His head pounds and he drops his hand, barely resisting the urge to clutch at his temples. He darts his eyes upwards just before he's thrown backwards, limbs askew. The wall hits him with a harsh force, and he collapses against the ground, sucking in breaths like it's the only thing he knows how to do. Shit.
"C'mon little boy, back out now and I won't rip your skin from your bones, hmm? I may be retired…. but that doesn't mean I've forgotten everything."
Sam grasps the corner of the table in front of him and hoists himself up, spitting blood out from the corner of his mouth. Something sizzles up inside him, angry and vicious, as he hears the word "boy" come out of the demon's mouth. He blinks away the light behind his eyes and tries to focus on the room. There's scarce little that he can use against Ramiel. Books are the main accessory of the room, stacked upon bookshelves, absent of dust. There's an axe up on the wall, old and ancient looking, and- there.
Grinning, Sam makes eye contact with Ramiel once again. "Giving up so soon?"
Something flashes in those golden eyes, and Ramiel lurches towards Sam, who ducks out of the way and swipes a hand in front of himself. Power rushes forward in his fingers and a bookshelf tips forward and collapses on top of Ramiel with a sickening crack. It takes him a moment to process that it was him that knocked down the shelf (him, without even touching it) before he remembers his plan. He turns and runs to the other side of the room where a glass case lays, embedded into the bookshelf. Gritting his teeth, he slams his fist into it, shattering the glass across the floor and sending blood splatters across his chest. He reaches inside, grabs the blade, and turns back to his opponent.
Sam has no real reason to believe this blade will work, sleek and gold with just a few words around the handle that are in a language he doesn't recognize; still, the metal feels hot in his hands as he lunges forward towards the figure who seems to have just climbed out, unscathed, from the bookshelf. Something screams in Sam's head, there's a bright white light, and then Ramiel's body lays on the floor, dead, covered in deep black blood.
His first instinct is to scan the blade, which seemed to take out the demon prince in a single hit, but instead he drops the blade, kneels down near Ramiel's body, and tries to catch his breath. He keeps his eyes off the blood pooling around his knees and instead focuses on the man's eyes, which have turned into a hazel-brown, unlike the gold they had been earlier. He's on the verge of thinking this is a trick, that he just killed an innocent man, when behind him he hears a voice he's come to dread, "Well done, Sam."
Turning, Sam makes eye contact with the other demon, who's grinning as if he just won the best prize at the arcade. "Azazel."
"Well, I must say, you didn't take him out exactly as expected, but you demonstrated quick thinking. Always knew you had it in you. Now, to move on with the process…"
"I just…. Drink this?"
"Little more complicated. You see, to get where we're going, you have to go through a special… process, shall we say. Each of them involves a different prince. With Ramiel, well…" Azazel procures a large glass from behind him. "You have to bathe in his blood."
Sam stares up at Azazel in disbelief. His skin crawls, and he can already feel the meager contents of his stomach reaching his throat. "Bathe?"
"Not entirely but…. A glass full, poured on you, should do."
"Did whoever design these trials make them so deliberately… humiliating and disgusting?"
Something flashes in Azazel's eyes. "Lucifer designed them."
Sam's eyes travel back down to the body next to him as he tries to process what he must do, which was somehow, in some crazy turn of events, created by Lucifer. He feels like he should laugh. He settles for scratching the back of his palm before grasping the cold glass in his warm hands. The body before him isn't cold yet, as he tries to maneuver it enough to get the blood that is dribbling out of it into the glass. He feels shame flushing down his back. And still, they sit there in silence, as the oversized glass fills slowly up with pitch-black blood.
Eventually, the body thuds back down on the ground, and Sam gulps as he stares down at the glass before him. He's hesitating, he knows, and Azazel is watching. For a brief moment, he wonders: what must Dean think of him, Bobby think of him? What would his Dad say?
His eyes squeeze shut as he tilts his head back, head towards the sky. It feels worthless now, hand grasped tight around the perfect example of his sins, but he prays. He doesn't know who or what is up there, but he hopes, God, that he's not gone down the wrong path.
The blood is still warm as it touches his face, trickling down his nose and across his cheek and through the curve of his lips. And suddenly it comes in waves, splashing harshly across his bones, down his chest and into his heart, and it burns. It goes on forever, black liquid leaving it's stain on his skin, before the glass finally empties out and Sam is covered in black. It's a baptism of the corrupted sort, and Sam can barely resist the urge to claw the sticky, already drying blood off his skin. Before he can stop himself, he licks it off his lips, and he feels the power shoot straight from his tongue to his brain. His body feels alight, as if he were a firework just about to go off. He feels disgusting, but he feels alive.
"Congratulations Sam, we're already one step closer to our goal. How you feeling?"
Sam peels his eyes open, squinting against the light. His head is still tipped towards the ceiling. He stretches his fingers out and, lifting his hand up, he urges energy through his palm. The ceiling cracks, a line stretching from the corner of the room to the middle. He grins. The iron hangs heavy in his mouth. "Good, actually."
“Blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity and cleanse me from my sin”
Psalms 51:1