it started with a vision.

Sarie Venea

---

For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?

It started.

The Impala growled as it pulled up to a weathered farmhouse. Greyed and bowed wood fitted behind a porch. There was a swing, a bench seat that creaked back and forth in the dried wind. Creak and creak, and Dean’s boots scuffed along the slats. The screen door groaned and smacked the frame as they went through.

Minutes crawled slowly, dust swirling in lazy spirals across the yard before a sudden burst of motion disturbed its path. Sam tripped and fell down the steps, skidding his palms but he didn’t notice, up and running again, stumbling and falling, one hand flat on the hot black of the car as he retched next to her wheel.

Dean followed but did not kneel, his gun ready, the back of his leg pressed against Sam’s hip, his eyes searching, watching the dust spirals and the trees that rattled like bones against the hot washed sky.

Sam didn’t speak for 80 miles, but when Dean looked over, the tracks on his face glistened with fresh tears.

They had as king over them the angel of the Abyss, whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek, Apollyon. The first woe is past; two other woes are yet to come.

---

“Sam! Sam, wake up, damnit!” This was familiar, years and years familiar, nightmares screaming Sam not-quite-awake and his big brother grounding him back into reality.

But this was different. Sam’s eyes flew open on a cry and Dean’s nose came perilously close to breaking as Sam’s entire body stiffened and jerked upright. He sucked in air, his spine curling until he was pressed against his brother.

“Sam? What the hell was that?”

“Just…” Sam sucked in air on a shuddering half-sob and Dean let his arms settle around him.

“Okay, okay. Catch your breath.” They were rocking gently, Dean’s hand smoothing the rumpled t-shirt down over the scar he knew existed underneath. Silence grew with their hearts pounding next to each other’s and Dean finally leaned back, gripping Sam’s arms.

“Hey.” Sam’s head still hung and the word was nearly spoken into his knotted hair. “Hey, wanna tell me why you’re trying to share my skin?”

“Sor…ry.”

“You’re alright, it’s just…well, you’re not quite pretty enough for that, Sammy.”

A chuff of a laugh and he felt steady enough to pull back, letting go and watching as Sam straightened into himself again. But Sam was still pale, still shaking, and one hand still twisted into Dean’s shirt.

“You cold?”

That got a nod and Dean disentangled himself, crossing to the duffles and finding a thick black sweatshirt. It had memories wrapped up in it along with the threads, but since they ended in Dean being still alive, Sam had kept it. He helped Sam into it, flashes of a little boy being coaxed to raise his arms to slide into his clothing mixing with the shivering man in front of him. Sam’s face was shadowed within the hood.

“Alright. What the hell was that?”

Dean tried to find Sam’s eyes but they were hidden in pools of black. He shuddered and reached up, pushing the hood off his brother’s head. His heart stuttered when he realized the glistening track down Sam’s face.

“It’s starting.”

---

As I watched, I heard an eagle that was flying in midair call out in a loud voice: "Woe! Woe! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth, because of the trumpet blasts about to be sounded by the other three angels!”

“I don’t understand, Sam, I thought the fucking visions were done. No more, gone, poof, adios-”

“I thought so too.” But this was surely a vision: same blank stare as Dean tried to wake him up, same skull-crushing headache, same completely unknown people, places, and events that Sam still refused to entirely tell him.

“Okay, so, go to the house, stop the demon, save the people and still have time to hit the bar before happy hour.”

“No, Dean, this isn’t the same. This is…”

Dean glanced at his brother when he sentence paused. Sam was bent over, his hands resting on his knees and fingers digging into his scalp.

“Sam,” Dean began.

“No, I’m fine. Just, give me a minute.”

Dean nodded at the mumble. The back of Sam’s neck was cold under his palm.

“This was-Dean, it’s starting. The war, or, whatever. Demons battling it out with no regard for who gets in the way.”

Dean let his thumb press into the base of Sam’s skull.

---

Then another horse came out, a fiery red one. Its rider was given power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay each other. To him was given a large sword.

The next small town they drove through was a battlefield. Smoldering shells of buildings lined streets filled with charred cars and worse. Bodies. Bloated, burned beyond all resemblance of humanity. The smell filled the air and turned their stomachs.

“How much salt do we have?”

“We’ll make do.”

Four hours they spent dragging bodies to the crossroads in the middle of town.

Sam found a child, his skull battered and his eyes staring at the ceiling.

Dean found him cradling it, his eyes dry, a blanket tenderly wrapped around the tiny corpse in his arms.

They scattered every bit of salt they could find over the pile of bodies. One canister held back, but otherwise all from the trunk too. And then burned it. Lighter fluid and oil and the stink of burning flesh carried on with them, in the clothes they changed out of before burning two county lines over.

---

The rest of mankind that were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the work of their hands; they did not stop worshiping demons, and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood—idols that cannot see or hear or walk.

There were more children in the house. Little ones, three or four or five; a mop-headed boy curled around a small girl. Her legs ended in bloodied stumps, her face frozen in a rictus of agony. His small hand twisted in her hair, pressing her head into his chest.

A pool of blood surrounded them. Blood streaked up the walls, across the floor, bodies of others torn apart and scattered.

Dean carried the tiny entangled corpses, wrapped in a bloodied sheet, to a shallow grave dug hastily. They salted and burned them, separate from the bonfire of the house that trailed behind them in the rearview mirror. Together in death.

“What.” It wasn’t tilted, but it was a question. “What is this.”

Sam’s eyes followed the dark edge of the horizon as it streaked past the window.

He didn’t answer, but the trail of a tear that glinted on his cheek reflected another trail of smoke that poured into the sky ahead of them.

“Everything we’ve done, killed, Dean? Everything we’ve known? Only heaven can save us now.” Suddenly he turned to face his brother, his eyes wide and dark and his skin pale. His hair hung in his eyes like the little boy who’d played house with a blonde girl so many years ago.

“And only, only if it chooses to.”