gavemea_45 | (no subject)

Sam gives him a sharp look, but subsides. It'll take longer to argue about it than it will just to eat the damn thing.

He takes a bite, grimly chewing and swallowing, then takes another.

His shoulders relax a little as he sees Sam starting to eat, and he moves to start on the setup.

The wire goes down first, forming the outermost ring. More than a ring, in fact; lines extend from its sides to the front of the mausoleum, incorporating it into the structure that's slowly taking shape. Shorter lengths of wire become internal nodes of the circle, or carefully formed replicas of the designs on the Colt.

Andrew only speaks briefly while he works, naming the things he needs: salt, chalk, candles, censer.

Knife.

At any other time, he'd be asking questions, maybe even taking notes for the hunter's journal he keeps faithfully the same way Dad had, fascinated by the spell itself and everything that's going into it.

Right now Sam couldn't care less, so long as it works.

He trails Andrew like a grim and silent ghost, handing over each item as requested, holding on to the rest.

"Okay," he says finally, low and a little hoarse. "Okay, if you can ... light the candles, and then step out."

He's got the last item hanging around his neck, for when it's needed: a length of white gauze, suitable for a blindfold.

Sam hesitates.

Are you sure?

The question trembles on his lips for an instant while he studies Andrew's face, and then he swallows it unsaid, and nods.

"Okay."

He pulls out his lighter and lights the candles, one after another, in careful sequence-- and then steps across the lines and stands back, watching.

He draws a deep breath.

Leans forward, touches a dried leaf to the flame of the central candle, and drops it onto the small pile of dried leaves in the censer.

Starts the incantation as the herbs catch fire, sending aromatic smoke up into the brightening sky.

Sam's own repeated litany echoes in haunting counterpoint in the silence of his mind.

Please.

Please let this work.

Please let us get Dean back.

Please.

"-- levate portae capita vestra," he's muttering as he turns from the center to face the mausoleum, "et erigite ianuae sempiternae --"

He crouches, makes a fist, holds his arm out over the foremost node -- the one with the shape of the entire schematic reworked in miniature. Braces himself.

Lifts the knife, and draws it carefully along the flesh of his forearm.

Sam hisses in a sharp breath between his teeth, but otherwise makes no sound.

His hands clench into fists at his sides.

Please let this work--

Andrew's breath catches, but only for a moment; he's chanting again even as he grips his cut arm and squeezes firmly, letting the blood drip down into the wire design, gleaming bright red against the brighter metal.

He doesn't move until the little space is filled, and then tugs the length of gauze off his shoulder and wraps it quickly two or three times around the wound. It'll stop the bleeding. Anything else can wait.

(Anything else like the memories pushing their way up into his consciousness: the pentacle, the earth, the blood against silver.)

Smoke continues to curl softly upward from the burning herbs. For a few moments, nothing else seems to happen.

Cold blue fire sparks upward with a hiss from the center of the pooled blood, drawing on it like fuel. It flares and races outward along lines of silver, setting the structured pattern ablaze with a wildly flickering flame.

The fire streaks along the carefully-laid wire lines to the tomb itself. There it flares again, and flows along the edges of the steel door, limning it in unearthly radiance.

A low thrumming begins to build, more felt than heard at first, rising upward from the ground through the soles of their feet.

Yes, he says silently, yes, go --

He'd know the spell was working even if he couldn't see the blue fire; he can feel it, pulling at him through his blood, drawing on his energy, transforming it into force.

The divided pentacle around the keyhole begins to turn, in slow grinding jerks.

Sam only realizes that he's holding his breath when his vision begins to blossom with large black spots. He rasps in a sudden, large gasp of air and keeps on watching as the brightness around the door continues to increase, flickering tendrils of blue light slowly edging their way down the steel bands that cross the door in the very center, beneath the twisting lock.

The light reaches the mirrored crescents on each crosspiece... and stops advancing.

Hot red sparks begin to spit from the tips of each crescent as blue flame is transmuted to burning gold, a gold that's echoed in the metal of the pentacle lock-- which itself has stopped turning and is beginning to glow.

Andrew's eyes are fixed on the pentacle lock. The look of determination is slowly draining away from his face, replaced by --

-- blankness, but not the blankness of shock; it's more as though there's nothing there to animate his face.

The gold light is spreading outward from the lock, pushing back the blue in a slow struggle. In response, the blue flares higher, harsher, growing bright enough to sting the eye.

The growing cold in the pit of his stomach warns him that his body knows the truth even while his mind is still trying to refuse it.

Something's wrong.

"Andrew?" Sam's tone is sharp, his words clipped. "Andrew, talk to me, what's going on here--"

Andrew doesn't respond. Doesn't react to Sam's voice at all. He's starting to shake; again, not as though from cold or fear, but as though gripping a live wire.

That's not too far from the truth.

White and purple sparks sizzle around the edges of the silver, and the little pool of blood is starting to char.

"Andrew--"

Sam strides forward, coming up beside the circle where he can see his face.

The pentacle flares bright, each golden thorn shining white-hot, and something begins to hiss.

His face is horribly blank, and twitching.

The stench of charring blood is rising, sharper and fouler than the burning leaves.

It's mixed with the sharp smell of heated metal. The steel door is beginning to glow a dull red, and lines of red-gold fire are beginning to appear at the seams between stone, all around the tomb.

Sam moves right up to the edge of the wire structure, looking back and forth from Andrew to the mauseoleum, his face twisted in agonized indecision.

The low thrumming underfoot is scaling upward in pitch and speed; the hiss abruptly grows louder as though joined by more sources, and the ground begins to shake. At the cardinal points of the circle, the candles flare up and melt into puddles of wax.

One arm of the thorned pentacle lock slowly sags, followed by another.

No, no, shit--

"Andrew, snap out of it!" Sam reaches out as though to grab his arm, but is stopped by an invisible wall of force. He whirls to stare in growing horror at the tomb, then back at Andrew, his fists clenched helplessly at his sides.

"Goddammit, Andrew, answer me!"

No response. The twitching and shaking is getting worse, as though jolts of electricity are running through him, speeding up --

The last of the blue fire struggles, gutters, and dies. In the space of a blink, the red and gold fire contracts back toward the half-melted pentacle lock, draws itself into a single blinding point, and goes dark.

A deep shivering boom sounds as the shockwave of a broken spell explodes outward, ripples toward the horizon.

Andrew's whole body jerks, convulses, and topples over sideways.

He's knocked sprawling by the explosion, fetching up hard against a gravestone.

Sam ignores the pain from his bruised ribs and pushes himself up, scrambling across the ground and the now-dark wire circle to reach Andrew's side.

"Andrew? Come on, man, say something--"

Andrew's lying on his side, legs still tangled together and drawn up in that frozen crouch, bandaged arm pinned under him. His eyes are open, glazed and staring.

He isn't breathing.

"No, no no no no no no oh god no--"

It's a nightmare, or at least it feels like one, and as Sam stares at the fallen body for an instant all he can see is the blood everywhere, and Dean's open, empty gaze.

Sam doesn't even realize that he's weeping as he reaches out to take him by the shoulders.

"-- please, please, no, wake up, please wake up--"