Chapter Text
“No Buffy,” Dean said, turning around. He had golden and red streaks of light running through his veins, turning his skin semi translucent. His once green eyes were rolled up in his head and there was this feeling emanating from the man. It was this feeling of utter power and complete and utter evil. This was the First Evil . The men and women surrounding him suddenly collapsed around him and Sam knew instinctively that they were dead. “I am definitely not okay.” The First said.
THREE MONTHS LATER
The Bunker, Lebanon, Kansas
Cas glanced up as Buffy and Spike walked in. They were followed by about five other girls, ones that Cas had never met before. At this rate, the girls would have to start sharing rooms. “New girls?” Someone called out, and Cas looked over to see Giles walking over, a coffee mug in one hand and a knife in another.
Buffy nodded tiredly, letting Spike usher the girls off. “We ran into a little trouble.” She replied, motioning towards one of the cuts on her cheek before throwing a newspaper down onto the table.
“Bringers?” Giles asked. “Or Dean?”
Buffy chuckled humorlessly. “If it were Dean we would be dead.”
Cas stood up, annoyed. “If it were Dean, we would all be celebrating, because that thing that looks like Dean is not Dean.”
Buffy and Giles exchanged a look before mumbling apologies. Cas nodded, and sat back down at the table. Giles and Buffy joined him, along with Charlie, Andrew and Faith, who must have heard the party arrive.
Andrew had been a surprising strength during these times. He and Dawn had worked tirelessly to provide food and clean clothes and sheets for all the ex-slayers, while the rest of them went out in groups to search for new slayers. Xander and Willow normally went out together, but only when there was the threat of the First, because Willow was the only one that seemed to frighten the creature in the slightest, but so far, they’d had no contact with the creature at all.
Faith and Cas tended to go together if there was a long trip, because Cas didn’t need to sleep and Faith was able to interact with people and slip through the world with ease. Spike and Buffy went together for the routine missions and the short trips, but normally they managed to find more of them. Word had gotten out that the slayers should go to Lebanon, Kansas if they wanted to survive the endless armies of Bringers hunting them down.
As for Sam, he normally went out alone when he did whatever he did, but sometimes he could be convinced to take Charlie with him.
“How’s Claire?” Buffy asked Cas. She had grown quite attached to the young blonde girl.
Cas shrugged. “She’s doing as well as can be expected. She and Dean grew surprisingly close in the time that we locked them in a room together and it’s been rough for her ever since he was possessed.” He told her and the others nodded, mumbling their assent.
“Speaking of taking it badly, how’s Sam?” Giles asked softly, lowering his voice.
Charlie chewed her lip, her eyes sad. “You know how it is, he blames himself for not being able to stop Dean and blames the world for doing this to them both. You saw how close the two of them were. I mean, Dean practically raised Sam. It’s not like he’s going to be okay .” She said hotly, as if she could feel someone judging him.
“Still doing it?” Faith asked tactfully.
Charlie glared at her. “Doing what? You mean not sleeping? Or constantly researching? Or refusing to sleep? Or Going out on solo missions in the hopes of finding Dean? Or do you mean drinking the demon blood?” She asked.
Faith refused to be cowed. “I meant drinking the demon blood. Is he still doing that?”
Charlie sighed sadly. “Yeah, of course he is. Last time, the demon blood inside him was the only thing that kicked out a much, much weaker version of the First, so he’s practicing until he is able to.” She told them all.
“How long until he’ll be able to? Because the First isn’t slowing down.” Buffy replied, pointing to the newspaper on the table.
They all looked at the headline. Mysterious Attack on Nashville, Tennessee . “Was that the First?”
“Over two thousand people were killed at the same time under mysterious circumstances. Who else would it be?” Giles took a sip of his coffee.
“What is It waiting for? It’s not like we can stop It? And what does It want?” Andrew asked, his eyes still flicking through the paper.
“Two thousand people.” Charlie whispered.
Faith sighed. “That’s the problem. We know It can’t be gathering an army, because It doesn’t need one. And It's only ever shown an interest in destroying the slayer line, but that’s clearly all It wants. So what is It doing? And why hasn’t It killed us already?”
Cas nodded to the paper. “This shows us something about the First. It can only kill in one place. We’ve seen that every time It attacks a town or a city, only the people in a small mile radius get killed.”
“Two thousand people were killed! That’s not a small town radius!” Buffy replied angrily, infuriated by the angel’s indifference.
Cas picked up the second copy. “And if you read it, you’ll see that they were at a football match. Which tells us that the First can only kill in a small radius. That tells us that the First is waiting; waiting until we’re all in one place. Attack us now, and some pesky slayers might still survive. As for what It wants besides that, I don’t know.” Cas explained and Buffy felt a chill go down her spine at the realization that he was right.
“How do we stop it?” Faith asked quietly.
“Me.” Sam said from the doorway. “Me and Willow. I get it out of Dean, then Willow destroys It.”
They all jerked around and Cas immediately felt guilty about having a sort-of meeting without him, but he barely seemed to notice. Sam looked terrible. He had bloodshot eyes and his pupils were almost fully dilated. He had stopped shaving and Cas knew that Dean would have made some stupid joke about his bad beard.
“How would Willow stop It? In case you hadn’t realized, this is the First Evil!” Buffy asked angrily.
“I don’t know!” Sam yelled suddenly. “I don’t fucking know! But that thing just killed two thousand people. Two thousand people? Do you know how many people that is? Because I cannot imagine something that can murder two thousand people in one second. And that thing is wearing my brother to the prom. So we need to get rid of It.”
No one said anything and no one dared to look Sam in the eye as blood slipped from one nostril and began to drip down his top lip. He was flushed and Cas wondered if he was imagining being able to hear his beating heart. It was pounding too quickly for it to be normal or healthy.
“We are all worried about Dean.” Charlie said softly. “We-”
“Clearly you aren’t, if you aren’t doing everything to save him.” Sam interrupted, his eyes flashing.
Cas stood up angrily. How dare he? How dare he? He walked around the table until he was facing Sam, barely a meter away from him. “Do you remember the first time Dean died? And he went to Hell? Who saved him, Sam? Was it you?” He asked and Sam flinched. Cas nodded, before softening his gaze. “I didn’t think so. I saved him, and remember how angry he was that you were on the demon blood? He wouldn't want this, Sam.”
Sam looked around the room and everyone that had been watching the conversation with bated breath looked away and pretended to be very interested in the carpet. “Last time I screwed up, I know I did. But this time, I can save him. I can. ”
“By turning yourself into a demon?” Faith cut in harshly. “That’s how we got into this mess.”
Sam didn’t flinch this time, perhaps because it wasn’t Cas saying it this time. Instead, he turned dark too dark eyes onto Faith. “I am trying to save my brother, because apparently, no one else can. The First is out there and It is killing people. We don’t know why and we don’t know what It wants. We haven’t got the faintest idea how to stop It. But I might have a way to save my brother, which might, in turn, weaken the First. Does anyone have any better ideas?”
No one said anything, everyone was too scared to meet his bright eyes. He nodded in satisfaction. “I didn’t think so. I’m not saying that the demon blood is a great idea, hey, it’s not even a good one. But we are out of options.” Sam said, before turning and walking out. Cas really didn’t want to know where he was going.
“He’s right.” Giles said softly and they all turned to him, opening their mouths to argue. “No, hear me out.”
Charlie scoffed. “Hear you out? Hear you tell us why letting my best friend slowly turn into a demon is a bad idea? This is how the apocalypse started in the first place!” She argued.
Something clicked in the back of Cas’ head and he let his thoughts drift away from the conversation as the people around him went in circles. Something about the apocalypse. Something about a way to stop the First. He couldn’t think of what it was, but he knew there was something important. Maybe, if he just thought hard enough, remembered enough, he would be able to figure out a way to save Dean.
The Bunker, Lebanon, Kansas
Spike motioned towards two of the last few empty rooms. It was getting crowded in here, slowly more and more people filling up the empty rooms that had lined the hallways. Soon, only one empty room wouldn’t be filled, but Spike knew that no one would ever be allowed to enter that one.
Sometimes, he saw Sam standing outside it, staring at the closed door longingly, like if he closed his eyes and drifted off for just a second, he could almost imagine that Dean was behind the door, asleep. The hunter never went in, but he would stand there, before eventually turning away, walking off to do whatever he did when he wasn’t sleeping.
The only person that ever went inside the crypt-like room was Castiel. He would open the door slowly, waving away the dust and he would slowly drift over to the bed. Spike could never figure out what was going on inside the angel’s head, mostly because he kept his emotions under lock and key these days, only ever looking sad or angry these days. But the look he had about him when he was in Dean’s room was never one of sorrow or fury, instead something far more powerful and far, far more complex.
“Hey, Spike.” A girl called out, effectively pulling the vampire out of his thoughts.
Spike turned around and grinned when he saw Dawn standing there. “Hey niblet.” He almost pulled her into a hug, before seeing that there was a girl standing behind Dawn. This girl was not someone Spike particularly got along with, mostly because she reminded him far too much of a female Dean and had threatened to castrate him with a blunt knife if he ever compared her to the man ever again. “Claire.” He nodded towards her.
Claire nodded back to him, her eyes distant. “Any news of Dean?” She asked, sounding strangely worried for a girl that insisted that she didn’t care for Dean in the slightest.
Spike shook his head. “Unless you count the fact that the First murdered two thousand people in a football match wearing Dean’s face, then no.” He told her and Dawn gasped, a hand fluttering up to cover her mouth.
“ Two thousand ?” She whispered.
“Why haven’t they figured out a way to stop him? I mean, he’s just one guy.” One of the girls listening in on their conversation chimed in.
Claire turned to the girl angrily. “Dean isn’t doing these things, the First is.” She told the girl.
A different girl rolled her eyes. “I heard that this Dean wasn’t a particularly great guy before becoming the First’s puppet.”
Claire looked ready to start a fight and Dawn looked half inclined to help her, so Spike swiftly cut in, stepping between the two groups. “I don’t know where you heard that, because clearly you’ve got your information wrong. Dean was a very good man who had saved the world many many times before some stupid bastard named Cain decided to come along and bugger everything up, giving Dean a mark that was slowly turning him into a demon. Besides, that has nothing to do with defeating the First,” he told them all.
“Apparently his psycho brother is trying to save him,” a third girl said and Spike almost wished that someone would be there to hold him back when the last of his self control finally disappeared.
Claire glared at all of them. She had a powerful glare that Spike didn’t find quite as scary as Buffy’s but it was scary nonetheless. “You guys should all be grateful. There are things out there that will kill you without a second's thought just because you were once slayers and you can’t defend yourselves, but Sam and Dean and Castiel have given you a place to hide. Just because Dean has been taken from us doesn’t mean that we won’t get him back.”
Spike could only pray that she was right, and that it would happen fast, before the First killed them all.