log; dean winchester & magik WHO: Dean Winchester & Illyana Rasputina WHEN: Monday, May 18th, slightly later afternoon than Dean's last log WHERE: In the halls, then outside WHAT: Dean sneaks away from his friends to get stabbed. The Soulsword doesn't work, but there's some adorable bonding awwww.
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It wasn't that Dean didn't want to be cured, it was that...
...mm.
Either way, he said he'd try. He was on the hook for it now with everyone knowing about Illyana, but he didn't have to like it. Sam and Cas would be pissed he was going behind their backs, but he was pissed they kept hovering over his shoulder, so they'd live.
Some days were worse than others. Dean forced himself to think of it that way, because the bad days didn't feel all that bad until he caught himself in them. There wasn't much violence here to push the Mark, but the fight with the despair demon had woken the thing right up, and Dean had hesitated to immediately go after it. If he was asked, he'd say he was wary of irritating it some more, but the truth was that it felt great riding on that particular high. The demon had reached into him like it had reached into the others, looking for his misery to feed on, and its magic had come up against the magic of the Mark and only spurred it on. For a while, Dean hadn't cared about anything. He could feel the Mark burning in him and felt cleansed instead of damaged.
For some obvious reasons, he didn't go around telling his family that. Coming back to reality, where he was human and somewhat sane, was like a drug crash. He'd spent some time after the demon fight sulking in relative private, relying on the awkward silence between him and Cas and Sam's distraction with his new girlfriend to keep them from noticing.
Dean caught up to Illyana somewhere between the mess and the residences, gesturing for her to move out of the way of the general flow of traffic.
"This soulsword thing. If we're doing it, we should do it now, before I back out."
"Now? Where's Sam?" Illyana stood towards the wall as directed, staring up at Dean. When they had talked about trying her Soulsword before, Sam had been pretty insistent on being present. It wasn't that Illyana exactly agreed with that, but he'd made his wishes known to her. Surely he'd made them known to Dean, too, which probably meant... "You're trying to go around him, huh? Why now?"
They'd waited until Sam's birthday had passed to get some distance from that "special" day, and then things got distracting with the despair demon. She'd had mixed feelings about it herself. Her encounter with it as "hope" had been unpleasant for her thanks to its prying. Maybe unpleasant for it, too, since she'd reacted by trying to attack it. She'd been glad for the fight that came with its corrupted self, even though a whole lot more people had been part of that battle than she'd envisioned. Although… she had initially thought she was the one who had corrupted it. Wouldn't be the first time lately that something had twisted into demonic form after contact with her, but that was before the pods.
"Sam doesn't need to watch this kind of thing go down. If it doesn't work, he'll be more upset than I am, and I don't need him getting crabby while we're getting something done." Maybe it was a testament to how Dean handled his brother, but to his credit, he sounded more like a concerned-but-put-upon parent than someone petulantly avoiding his friends. Dean shoved his hands in his pockets.
"Unless you need some kind of prep or warm up first, but yeah. Today." Dean realized he had a vague idea what this soulsword was. It didn't sound like a spell or a ritual, but it could have needed one. He really should have asked before right this second.
"He's going to be pissed if it goes wrong and he isn't there to help," Illyana pointed out. It wasn't enough to stop her, though. She didn't want to break Sam's trust, but she knew very well about siblings keeping secrets from each other. She'd gone a long time without her big brother knowing what she'd become.
"No, we can get right to it. We're definitely not doing it here. Did you have somewhere in mind?"
"Outside. If shit goes sideways, it shouldn't happen indoors." Dean remembered seeing Illyana fight the demon. He knew she could at least get out of the way if she had to. If the soulsword made him worse (or, god forbid, actually killed him or turned him right there), it would be better if he didn't have an entire bunker of people to mow down on his way out to freedom.
That, and Sam and Cas were way less likely to accidentally find them if they were outdoors, but that was less important.
"Yeah, especially inside right here." Way too many prying eyes in the walk from the mess. Maybe they could get away with the tunnels, Illyana figured, but security was probably up after the whole demon thing. "Let's get going, then."
Illyana had been wearing a lot of long skirts over her other clothes and awkwardly tied rags around her legs. As soon as Dean and Illyana got outside, she pulled off the constricting fabric. There wasn't much she could do about her horns, but she could at least cover up her tail and lower legs. Down to her knees, her legs remained human; below that, they sprouted fur and cloven hooves. It made for a strange set of tracks as they walked away from the exit.
The goat legs were a first. Dean realized he'd never actually seen anyone with hooves before. He ended up staring for a couple of seconds, but he didn't look judgmental about it. If anything, he looked impressed. If you were going to be a demon, that was probably a good way to do it. The ones back home might be scarier if they did the horns and hooves thing.
To make up for the staring, Dean gestured toward her feet and said, "Bad ass. It's a good look on you." He wondered if it was easier having it all on the outside like that. Was it easier to feel honest when what made you inhuman was so visible?
"So... what do you want me to do? Should I sit or it is better to take a whack at me standing?"
Illyana didn't much like the stares, but all things considered, she preferred Sam's big brother's staring to her own. The way Piotr had looked at her like a monster… And that wasn't how Dean was looking at her. That was a change-- especially when he actually complimented her. "Um, thanks. Can't seem to get rid of it."
One of the good things about being on a mountain was having plenty of useful surfaces. She pointed towards a tall boulder. "I think put your arm across that. If it turns out there's nothing magickal about your Mark, the Soulsword will just pass through like you aren't even there. But if it's any kind of magic, or you're any kind of magic... you'll want to brace yourself, because it'll hurt like hell."
"Great. I love being in pain," Dean remarked, keeping it dry. Making his way over, he rolled up his right sleeve, exposing the Mark to air. Now it looked dull, like an old scar, not enough like a tattoo or an accidental injury to let people see it normally. They always asked questions that he didn't want to answer.
This boulder was not going to have a good day if something exploded.
Stretching his arm out, Dean took a breath and added, "If this goes sideways and the Mark acts up, don't worry about hurting me. If I try to take a swipe at you, you get to kill me first, no hard feelings."
"I'd say you'd had worse, but this will be pretty bad," Illyana said. She looked at the Mark curiously as Dean exposed it. It didn't look like anything special on the outside, more like a strange choice of scarification, but she knew how looks could deceive. "I really hope it doesn't come to that. Sam would be so pissed."
She drew a breath and held out one of her hands. With a thought, the Soulsword appeared in her grip, and white eldritch frames danced over the blade. "Are you ready?"
"Yeah, last thing we want is Sammy to get pissed." Dean shifted his weight, bracing himself. He had this nagging feeling that he was doing something incredibly stupid, but as per usual, he decided to ignore it.
"Hit me."
Illyana watched for Dean to brace himself as she took her Soulsword in a two-handed grip, tip pointed down. She didn't make Dean wait. As soon as he was ready, she brought her Soulsword over her head, then stabbed down into Dean's forearm.
Dean sometimes tried to clean up his language around teenagers.
Today, not so much.
It didn't just hurt, it burned. He'd been stabbed before, he'd been in literal hellfire before, and something about being stabbed in the soul really felt more like the latter than the former. The Mark of Cain was bright with magic, a sickly orange glow starting at the Mark itself and crawling through his veins, searing against his skin and rebelling against the Soulsword's powers, getting its grip on Dean's soul and digging in. He grabbed at nothing and tightened his fist until it was white, squeezing his eyes shut and grinding his teeth while the fire rushed through the rest of his body.
The taste of sulfur was on the back of his tongue, and there was a part of him just then that missed truly being a demon, when the fire under his skin was as familiar and largely unnoticed as any human felt their own soul. Turning last time hadn't burned so badly, but he'd been unconscious and had woken up with a body that could handle it. This felt more like demonic possession even if it was his own energy being twisted and blackened.
When he looked up, his jaw tight and his breath short with pain, his eyes were black. There were a few long, agonizing seconds (for him; surely she'd seen scarier) where it seemed as if he was lost and ready to strike out -- but eventually he blinked, his eyes back to normal, and he slumped down to lean hard on the boulder.
Glancing down at his arm, Dean unclenched his fist and flexed his fingers, watching the Mark slowly fade back down to normal.
"Well," he said bitterly. "That didn't work."
"Shards, what the hell was that??" Illyana hadn't been scared, but she was definitely alarmed by the sight of the Mark reacting. She could feel a magic she'd never felt before radiating out from it, and automatically had fallen back into a ready stance with her Soulsword. It was definitely demonic-- she could recognize demonic energies easily, even if she hadn't experienced the exact sort before-- but it was something ancient and powerful, and she'd underestimated it thinking her Soulsword would be enough.
"I thought it would exorcise you, but… I can't believe you stayed conscious." She could have been speaking too soon but he didn't seem like the type to faint after the fact. "It's like… It's part of you. I thought it would be more like an infection to purge, but it's so bound up in you."
She remembered the first time her darksoul had been dragged out of her for all to see. She had felt so far from human when that happened; she could well imagine how Dean must have felt then. Definitely something she could empathize with. She kept staring at the Mark and when she finally blinked, the white over her eyes had gone, revealing blue eyes.
"I've hurt worse," he said, like that explained it. It took more than a few moments of agony to take him out now, but the truth was that he didn't want to admit that as much as it had hurt, he'd also felt alive. Now that it had all subsided and he was himself again -- exhausted, but generally human, albeit it with an ache in his arm like a bad bruise -- Dean felt almost homesick for it. Life as a demon had been easier. Being one had been easier. It was all the invincible arrogance of being a teenager with none of the parental expectations or the awkward puberty crap, and he hadn't bothered staying out of trouble because, you know… demon.
He definitely wouldn't admit to being a little relieved it hadn't worked.
With a sigh, Dean shoved his hand back through his hair and scratched the back of his head. "The Mark's a curse, but it was made by Lucifer. Archangel magic doesn't like getting screwed with. You've got some serious mojo going on there, kid, usually this thing doesn't even react if someone tries to throw magic at it."
Illyana definitely had her moment of teenage invincible arrogance, but not so much at the moment after seeing how she'd failed. She wanted to reach out and touch the Mark, except Dean probably wouldn't have appreciated that.
"Lucifer? No wonder. I rule my own dimension, but that's a whole different level of power." Okay, she did secretly puff up at his compliment to her 'mojo'. "How are you feeling now?"
"Human. Friggin' exhausted, turns out getting stabbed in the soul takes it out of you." Dean ran his hand over the Mark, noticing that the skin was still warm. He probably hadn't pulled anything, but it would be sore for a while.
"Why do you need your own dimension? Most kids can't even take care of their room." It was clearly more affectionate than critical -- and yeah, all right, kind of impressed. At her age his dad wouldn't even let him drive the car.
"It's a hell dimension that I was kidnapped to by the demonic sorcerer who trained me. When I was thirteen I overthrew him and it's mine now." Maybe that was a little too frank, but considering she'd just stabbed him in the soul, he'd earned a little soul-baring. For all she knew, Sam might have told Dean about it (but probably not; he seemed like he'd keep people's secrets). Limbo was all hers even if it had gotten away from her for awhile there thanks to S'ym and the technovirus. "When you have absolute power over a realm, it's easy to hide your dirty socks."
"Shit. Should've put you in charge of Hell, the guy we've got now is just a douche. --Not Lucifer, he's ah… out of commission." Glancing back down at his arm, Dean ran his hand over the Mark one more time before tugging down his sleeve again. "I should get back and start making my excuses. Sam's yelling is less fun than getting stabbed."
Illyana shook her head. "I've got my hands full with my own demons being little douches. So who is it, then? Mephisto? Asmodeus? Sam was telling me something about Lucifer and a cage..." Her Soulsword had disappeared as if it was never there. She reached out to give his upper arm a little squeeze, well above the Mark. "I'm sorry I put you through that for nothing."
Dean shook his head. "A glorified salesman named Crowley. He's a Crossroads demon who weaseled in after Lucifer was bagged. He's harmless these days." He returned the touch by giving her shoulder a squeeze, almost apologetic himself. "Don't be sorry. You gave it a shot. I knew it might not work."
He wasn't unhappy that it hadn't, but she didn't need to know that. Nobody did.
She gave him a crooked smile and then impulsively hugged him. As tall as he was, her head didn't come near his chin, but her horns bumped him. "Sorry, forget about those sometimes. Guess I'll be seeing you around?"
Somehow, getting smacked in the face with her horns was endearing. He tipped his head to avoid them before hugging her back; Illyana was so much smaller that it was like a bear hug without even trying.