Title: The First Born
Author: JayneFaire
Notes: Hurt/Comfort/Angst
Warnings: Gore, Graphic Violence
Characters: Dean, Sam
Rating: R (Graphic Violence, Language)
Summary: Dean doesn’t fit the pattern.
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Supernatural, Warner Bros., or anyone associated with the "Supernatural" series. I am not endorsed by any of the aforementioned parties. Rights to the characters and their likenesses are neither claimed nor implied.

The First Born

Part One
the patterns in raindrops

He knew Sam was the one with the psychic ability. It was just there, a fact he didn’t challenge. It was something he trusted like the color of the sky and the taste of cold beer. Just things that were. So, when he had the inkling that something was going to change his life that night, he didn’t take it with the confidence he gave Sam’s visions. Besides, it was like every other feeling he’d gotten before the climax of a hunt: the jittery nerves, the rush of adrenaline, the stomach pain and the strange feeling of being half starved. The headaches and the shakiness he had successfully weaned off over the years, the rest was just as potent as they had been during his first hunt. Each time he knew there was a chance he wouldn’t survive; come home to see the new sun. Twice already in his life had his death been assured and twice had he cheated it. This feeling was present those times as well. This night, it was stronger than both.

He was a few paces behind tonight’s hunt. Running up the 26th flight of office building stairs, Dean tried to push his worry away as he took the steps three at a time. Glancing back to his brother as he rounded the turn to the next flight, their conversation in the Impala came back to him:

“Dean?” Sam had asked, the car speeding down rain-slicked highway 29 chasing a police cruiser. The driver was a possessed sheriff’s deputy; the passenger was his dead partner, a bullet hole making a third eye-socket in the back of his head. Sam saw the more-than-usual consternation and concentration in his brother’s face. It worried him. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothin’,” Dean said, grabbing his default response.

“It’s not ‘nothin’ man. You look freaked.”

He mumbled, “Feel like someone just walked over my grave.”

Sam was quiet a moment. Dean swerved through barely moving traffic, the Impala holding tight to the slippery road. “Need a grave first,” Sam said, almost positively and just as equally dismissive.

“Third time’s a charm,” he whispered.

“Third time to what?”

“Die.”

Now Sam was a few paces behind, his time spent reading and researching as Dean did a diligent daily exercise routine wasn’t paying off for him. Dean almost had to smirk at the purple of Sam’s face.

The demon burst through the roof access door and Dean flew out behind him. The rain poured down on them in traditional 33° winter night fashion. The bitingly ice-cold water just seconds from fluffy, gentle snow. The wind chill at 17° caused Dean’s mouth to tremble and chatter, his clothes and skin soaked. With forcibly steady arms, he raised his shotgun and peered to the red eyed Loki.

“Where the hell are you running to?!” Dean demanded, breathing heavily and feeling seriously pissed.

Sam jumped onto the final landing when the roof access door slammed in his face, millimeters from shattering his nose. “Dean!” He shouted, his balled up fists banging on the steel door.

Dean didn’t lose eye contact with the creature and kept his game-face on, but his stomach fell in fear all the same. Loki’s were generally mischief makers, the spiritual forms of Leprechauns. Not the ‘magically delicious’ kinds though. There wasn’t much power in them and the extent of their interest was living up a night of debauchery in their hosts before having them commit suicide in some gruesome or foolish way. In the case of the deputy’s partner, it was a game of true Russian roulette. They weren’t near what one would call intelligent and that had been the main reason why Dean’s gnawing, growing fear had confused him since this case began. There was no fight between him and a Loki. He’d exorcised his first at eleven.

It was the chuckle behind him, nearly lost in the sound of the falling rain that confirmed his fears and brought a bubbling turmoil to his gut. He swung around, stepping back a few quick paces to form a triangle with the Loki and Him.

“Night, Dean,” The Demon said with a casual smile. Capital “The”, capital “D”. He was standing by the retaining wall, his eyes a glowing amber, yellow lava. Jaundiced beyond repair. Those eyes bore into him with a smile, with infinite pleasure and with . . . question. Curiosity. No one but Sam had ever looked at him that way, like he needed to be ‘found out’. No one ever assumed there was more above the surface of what he allowed them to see.

“Dean!” Sam pounded on the door. Dean was brought back into the moment, recovered from his fear by the sound of his brother’s voice.

“I’m okay Sam! Stay there!” He commanded.

“Dean—”

“Just listen to me Sam! Stay there!” He had to get Sam away from here, away from this. “I need holy water!” Sam started kicking the door, not buying it, trying to break it in. Dean took a breath, knowing how his brother was and knowing what he’d do in the same exact situation. “You’re not going to open it like that! You’re not!” And it was his last words that told Sam his brother was in trouble and he was right. The door wasn’t going to open. Fuck.

The Demon smiled at him from under the 300lbs of a night watchman. “Aww, how sweet. Giving up on your backup just to keep him safe. Noble Dean, quite. But who will keep you safe from me? Though, I should be insulted if you think anything you do will keep Sam away from me. He’s already mine—”

“Blah blah, and all the kids like him. Why do you fucking bastards only talk in sound bites?”

The Loki backed away a few paces and came round farther outside of his peripheral. The Demon walked a few paces towards Dean. The triangle grew smaller.

“Sam isn’t why I’m here though. I mean, of course he plays a role in it all, doesn’t he?”

“I don’t speak ‘vague’ or ‘cryptic’ so I can’t help.”

“I mean only to say, Sam exists because of me. You can’t deny my role in his . . .” he grinned, “development? But you, you I’ve come to realize are an anomaly in my designs. You do not exist because of me. The day your mother was conceived, she was to have one child, special. Sam. Her first born, like all the others, be they only children or twins, they were first born. Imagine my surprise when I come for you six months after you were born to find a plain, regular, dreadfully ordinary child.” He took another step closer, “You stank of mediocrity Dean.”

“Gee, thanks,” he said, his teeth chattering on the ‘gee’. He was starting to loose feeling in his arms and the shotgun was getting too wet and too cold for his fingers.

“I left, completely disgusted. You were to be my first and . . .” he sighed heavily. “I didn’t even think of Mary again until Samuel was born. He, oh he was unique. Perhaps the strongest of them all. So, of course I figured your birth was a freak glitch.”

“Again, you flatter me.”

The Demon’s smile was erased, “But, I was wrong. Wasn’t I?” He moved closer to Dean, his ochre eyes blazing. “You disrupt the pattern Dean. You and you alone exist as an anomaly.” He glanced down to the shotgun and with a flick of his brow it was sent spinning from Dean’s hands and landed like a skipping stone against the wet rooftop. With a twist of his smile, Dean’s body was splayed wide and started rising off the ground inch by inch.

Dean felt as if the cords holding his body together were being stretched taut to the snapping point. The tendons in his arms were violin strings long out of tune, being pulled back to song and his legs felt like they were carrying the weight of the building below him. His ribs were separating and his intestines were pulling and uncoiling. He was being torn apart from the inside out. He screamed despite his promise to himself that he wouldn’t. His head fell back and his mouth breathed in ice water.

A shotgun blast with live rounds behind it, blew open the steel door and Sam Winchester leveled his gun evenly with The Demon’s head.

“I told you—to get out—of here,” Dean gasped.

“Don’t ever tell me that again,” Sam said, his eyes never leaving the hard yellow gaze. “Let him go!”

It shook its head, “I have something to do first. Test a theory. You do understand?” A squint later had Sam pinned against the wall.

“Nice—rescue,” Dean moaned against the pain.

“Shut up Dean.”

The Demon smiled. He looked to the Loki who was standing behind Dean. The creature nodded and from the deputy’s mouth spewed dark, oil-like smoke. It rose a few feet above Dean’s head before crashing back into every pore of his face.

“No!” Sam shouted. The deputy fell limply to the ground in a weary daze. “Get out of here!” Sam ordered. The man glanced up through the rain to see Dean floating feet off the ground and caught sight of those golden eyes. He ran, screaming.

Sam looked up to his brother, trying to get his mind together enough to formulate a plan, some sort of action when Dean, still bound so tightly by invisible strings, began to cough. Wheezing, powerful coughs that took his breath ravaged him until all he could do was breathe to cough again. From his mouth came the same black tar, no longer smoke, no longer holding any motion. Dead. The water washed it from his face and it evaporated into the night until all that was left was the color of crimson on his undershirt.

The Demon stood still, looking into Dean’s half open, normal hazel eyes. With a low voice he whispered, “Abomination . . .”

Dean heard his brother calling out to him but he couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore. Dizziness overtook him and he blacked out.

It was what he’d expected when he set up this little test tonight and now that his theory had proven true, he felt absolutely no satisfaction. Only fear. Only disgust. Resentment. It had to die. He was in a perfect position and ready to be torn into quarters and all it would take was a single, solitary thought . . .

“No,” he gasped, the killing blow stopped by his Word. “No, no, no!”

A promise made, a bargain dealt. Father’s life for the son. He was a creature bound, eternally to his Word. He walked up to Dean and grabbed his face in his hands, shaking the young man out of his daze. Dean looked into his eyes and felt his blood run as cold as the water covering him.

“This isn’t over,” he promised. He may not be able to kill Dean Winchester, but others could. He threw back his head and sped out of the night watchman’s mouth into the darkness.

Dean collapsed to the ground, searing pain burning every muscle in his body and the taste of blood and death filled his mouth. Sam was released from the wall and hit the ground running, dropping to his brother’s side in seconds.

“Dean? Dean, you okay?”

His brother didn’t answer; instead he just waved him off. Dean pushed up to stand and everything went black. Sam caught him before he fell. “I’ll be okay,” he mumbled, his vision tunneling. “Just, maybe not right now . . .” He passed out. Sam held him and looked around, trying to put together what had just happened.

The night watchman rubbed his head and squinted to them. “What you boys doin’ up here?” He took a breath, “What the hell I’m doin’ up here? It’s cold as fuck.”