King Takes Knight

The room was absent of all human life. Just a body on the bed, and the King of Hell.

"It's not easy," the king said gently, speaking the truth precisely as he had moments before. "It wasn't easy for me, and it won't be for you, Dean. I made my choice for entirely different—and entirely selfish—reasons. Your choice, made before Cain in service to me—though, admittedly, you had in mind it was about stopping Abaddon from killing humans—was based, as your choices always are, on this unflagging obsession with saving the world." He paused. "Or to save your brother. Yet you make no choices, ever, to save yourself."

The eyes, as expected, were black: sclera, iris, and pupil. Nothing of Dean Winchester lived in them. The newborn demon, still trapped in the transitional stasis between violent death and birth, lay upon the bed as his brother had placed him.

Except for the First Blade, cradled in the hand Crowley had closed around the hilt.

His, now, that blade. Crowley could not wield it. No one could, save the man, now a demon, that Cain, also a demon, had claimed worthy. He'd borne the Mark, that man, and now, killed by an angel's blade, was resurrected, but not redeemed.

There was no redemption for Cain, who had killed his brother and taken on the Mark of murderer from Lucifer himself. Now, no redemption for the human who had somehow always been more than a man, even when his wholly human heart beat, the blood ran in his veins, and his soul was intact.

Winchester males. Special, all of them. Hell knew it. Azazel had known it. Certainly Crowley did. It was why he had never killed the brothers. It was why he had returned Bobby Singer's soul. It was why he guided the eldest brother into Cain's orbit.

It was why, now that Dean Winchester was dead, Crowley waited at his bedside to guide him again. To welcome him to Hell. To his new life.

"It's confusing," Crowley said. "When we're born as human infants, we know nothing. When we're reborn as demons, we know what we knew, but it no longer matters. New things will come to matter. In different ways, perhaps, but they will matter. Because I'm the King of Hell, and now you're a Knight. My Knight." Crowley smiled, savoring it. "Abaddon, the last, is dead, thanks to you. Cain gave you his blessing, and his Mark. You're mine, Dean. Wholly mine. And you'll come to realize it. You'll come to serve." He made a conciliatory gesture. "Oh, not as you served Alastair. That was—inelegant butchery. Imaginative, in its own way—Alastair did have his uses—but not the best use for a Winchester." He smiled again, brows rising. "Then again, you're all very stubborn, Dean, you Winchester males: your grandfather, your father, your brother. And you?—you're the worst of them all. And that is why this is so . . ." He paused, finding the word, savoring it, " . . . delicious."

And it was. Purely delicious. So much better than to kill a Winchester. Killing was a simple matter. Admittedly the Winchester boys had managed to escape death more than once—and here was Dean yet again, dead but resurrected—but the concept of taking a Winchester, of turning him, of manipulating him throughout a very long process, and seeing now how that plan had come to fruition . . . well, it was a mix of emotions, an elation, Crowley hadn't felt since he was on the verge of being wholly human again.

And now? The end result lay upon the bed. Crowley felt like midwife, like father, like a scientist discovering success in the lab. A mathematician solving the unsolvable equation.

"Maybe it's a little like being God," Crowley mused. "He brought forth Adam from the dust of the earth. I've brought you forth from the fleshly wreckage created by a fallen angel." He smiled, feeling far more paternal than he ever had in regard to Gavin, his true human son. "Poetic, isn't it? And the stuff of legend: Dean Winchester, demon killer, made demon himself. Probably they'll sing songs of you in Hell."

The demon on the bed did not so much as twitch.

"But as for now? Time to go. This is no place for you any longer, Dean. Do you really think Sam could countenance a demon living under this roof? A demon who once was his human brother? All those years you guided Little Sammy, kept him safe, thwarted every attempt to kill him. No, Dean, Sam could never allow you to live here. Not as you are now. Especially not when the First Blade, and the Mark, drives you to kill innocents. Because they will. You will."

The eyes, in the pure architecture of Dean Winchester's face, remained wholly black, fixed upon the ceiling. He did not blink. To a human, looking at him, his eyes were unreadable, merely blank, black masks. But to Crowley, who knew how to read demons, they were full of many things, among them confusion and fear.

Dean was no longer Dean. No, the first hours of a newborn demon's life were given over to a nothingness, an absence of rational thought. And in Dean's case, bearing the Mark, the Blade held within his hand, he would be a network of needs, an assemblage of erratic and overpowering impulses he could not possibly understand.

"Time to go," Crowley said. "This is no place for you now. Rise, Dean. Rise from your deathbed and learn to live again."

The demon rose. Bruises faded from its face, cuts closed. He was reknit, healed, whole again. Far more powerful than the human had ever been; and that was powerful enough, in spirit and in body, to convince even Cain, the Father of Murder, that at last a man had come who could bear Mark and Blade, who could yoke them together and use them.

And so he had, in service to the King of Hell. And would again.

"We've always had a special relationship," Crowley told him, touching a shoulder briefly, turning the inert body, "and that's how I knew what to do. I cultivated you, Dean. I manipulated you. Just as Lilith, through Ruby, cultivated your brother. That plan was successful. As was this one."

A long, slow blink from the newmade demon. Its hand tightened upon the First Blade.

"I don't underestimate you, you know," Crowley said. "The very thing that made you so stubborn remains. And I value you for it, because it's what will make you a superb Knight of Hell. So I offer this as a suggestion, not an order."

The demon stared back at him.

"Do your brother a service," Crowley said, "for old time's sake. Leave him a note. A final farewell. And then we'll go."

And they needed to go soon. Sam's summoning had brought Crowley through the wards, and Dean's presence anchored him enough that he had avoided going directly to Sam, but the compulsion to answer, to appear within the devil's trap, was increasing. With Dean, he could leave the bunker. Could repudiate the ritual. But within a matter of moments, what little remained of Dean's humanity would pass. Both of them would end up in the devil's trap.

"Now," Crowley said; and that was an order.

Dean slid the Blade into a back pocket, turned, took up pencil and paper. He wrote something in clean, block print, then left behind pencil, and paper, and four simple words.

And he walked from the room.

Crowley, following, smiled.

Let's go howl at that moon.

~ end ~

A/N: I have always been fascinated by the whole concept of Dean Winchester, of all men, becoming a demon, and really looked forward to seeing the arc. I enjoyed what I saw, particularly in "Soul Survivor," but always felt the show short-changed the arc by ending it so quickly. I've explored a little of the Demon Dean arc in other stories, but always wondered what might have happened in the moments between Crowley's monologue just prior to Dean's resurrection, and the writing of the note Sam found later.

A/N2: Am now seriously considering writing a companion piece from Dean/DD's POV. Because what was *he* thinking, if he could think at all, during those first moments?