What You Make Me Do, Chapter 1: Beast of Burden

Holy crap, a sequel!

So hi again everybody. I felt a sudden urge to get to work on a somewhat domestic sequel to Not Going Away, but I'm realizing that it's quite distant from the current SPN plotline. Like, all of season 8 contradicts not only what I wrote in the original fic, but also what will happen here. As a result, maybe re-read the last chapter to double-check that you have the correct headcanon installed?

Anyways, I think these chapters will be a little longer, and will be more focused on character development than plot or smut. I think I'll do maybe 5 chapters? We'll see how that goes...

And thank you, so much, to everyone for your support and overwhelmingly positive reviews on the last story. Hopefully I can live up to your standards for this.

Enjoy!

...

Dean would never forgive Lucifer.

He didn't think Sam would either—his little brother wasn't that dumb. But Lucifer was the bottom-line cause of all the suffering in their lives. He had tried to destroy the world, had found it fun. He'd torn both of Dean's brothers' souls to shreds in the pit. His demons had killed nearly everyone he'd ever cared about. So while Sam could believe in change and redemption and moving forward...Dean was only settling for distracting the devil. Settling and waiting, but not forgiving.

This waiting didn't mean he enjoyed having Satan around, either. The less he saw of the archangel, the better. It didn't help that Lucifer made a lot of their job moot, either. Heaven was in order, demons were no threat, and the leviathans were being chipped away at. He left them to work on ghosts and monsters and other things he thought of as dirty or beneath him, but for the most part, this outsourcing was endangering their jobs. Besides, everywhere they went was unseasonably cold when the angel was around. And Dean hated snow.

"All I'm saying, Sam, is that someone beat this whole damn situation with the ugly stick," Dean growled over a mouthful of take-out burrito.

"Yeah, I guess, but I'd rather be bored than have my life constantly threatened," Sam told his brother with a sigh. Part of Dean agreed with that. Less people were dying, and that was important. But relying on Lucifer wasn't a good thing on its own. Essentially, Satan was a bad thing all-around. That was what Dean had decided, and it seemed pretty self-evident to him that the world wold be better off without a devil.

The hunter licked some sour cream and beef juice off his thumb, crumpled up the empty tex-mex wrapper, and threw it in a perfect arc into the trash across the room. Normally he would have nodded with a bit of self-satisfaction, but he was irritated at the moment, so the shot went unnoticed.

"Better than putting Cas's life in danger, too," Sam added in a near whisper that told Dean that his brother expected him to snap at the remark. It took a bit of effort not to, honestly. The beating Satan had given his angel when they'd fought for heaven was very fresh in his mind. But that didn't mean he disagreed with Sam. As it stood right now, everything was relatively peaceful. Dean would be the last person to ruin that by ruffling the devil's feathers. He had family to protect, and he'd do what was necessary to keep them safe.

...

Lucifer watched.

He sat in the corner of the motel room the brothers had spent the night in, casually resting his chin on his hand. He had one foot resting on the edge of his wooden chair, which was tipped back to balance on its rear two legs, just shy of bumping into the light blue wallpaper behind him.

The devil ignored the eldest Winchester's periodic glares in his direction. He equally ignored the fretful frown on Castiel's face, which moved back and forth between archangel and hunter as if his vessel's head were the ball in a game of pong.

Lucifer's entirety was instead focused on Sam Winchester. His casual demeanour was calculated so as to not make the younger hunter worry and stop what he was doing—which was, at this point, packing his clothes so they could leave.

It was not as though the Lightbringer had never taken the time to observe his vessel—nothing could be farther from the truth. He had spent long hours observing Sam. He had watched his eyes dart across scenery as it whizzed by in the Impala. He had watched his chest rise and fall as he slept. He had watched the way his fingers moved when he cleaned his gun. He had watched his cells replicate.

But all of that had been before. All of that watching had been covetous, yes, and anticipatory. But it had all been with the same sort of analyzing precision as someone looking to purchase a car—you care about what the thing can do, and what you will be with it, but no matter how perfect the match it is merely a means to an end.

Lucifer now knew better. Sam's irrational, inconsistent actions and his ridiculous optimism were no longer deplorable side-effects of humanity. They were, in some strange way, the power behind the impossible feats accomplished by he and his brother.

But of course, he was merely watching a mortal folding shirts and tucking them neatly into a gym bag. The angel found himself growing irritable over the sentimentality that had been provoked by such a mundane chore, and so chose to stop observing for the moment.

Dean's gun hand twitched but did not move as the archangel let his chair drop onto all four legs. The action elicited a dull thud on the bread-mold green carpet that also caught Castiel's attention. Lucifer stood, stretching lazily and glancing through the part of the window that was visible between the thick curtains.

"Time has moved quicker than this while watching Dawson's Creek reruns," Lucifer declared impatiently.

"She'll come whenever she can," Sam told the angel apologetically, not looking up from his work. The hunters were waiting on a homeless woman they had run into the previous evening, when they'd freed a group of people who were apparently being prepared for dinner. The Winchesters had insisted that they look for the other groups of prisoners stashed all around the town, but the woman had insisted they wait—the baddie, whatever it was, worked on a schedule. The boys had reluctantly agreed to the plan, deciding that they could get everyone out safely while it was gone, then be ready to take it on once the area was clear.

The idea of the whole ordeal bored the archangel Lucifer immensely. He had distracted himself for an hour or so with a rousing game of Pokemon Pinball, but he suspected he was in for a boring night with this particular hunt.

A quiet knock sounded at the door, and Dean got up from mechanically cleaning his weapons to unlock the door and invite the woman in. "Hey Eva, thanks for coming," the hunter said with a decent amount of sincerity.

The woman was dressed in grey sweatpants and an olive green men's jacket that was absolutely covered in pockets and pouches. She was messy looking, but not dirty and was clearly sober. Lucifer wondered idly why she was homeless at all, but didn't give it much thought. Eva looked around the room, her posture careful and stiff. "Are they 'hunters' too?" She asked with a slight nod to Lucifer and Castiel.

Sam paused for a moment, and Lucifer felt him searching for the appropriate amount of truth to tell.

"In a way," he said with a sigh, deciding on some measure of trust. "They're actually, well, angels." Sam frowned a bit, looking to Eva with an expression that almost seemed to apologize for how ridiculous he sounded. He didn't expect the woman to believe him, despite what she'd already seen.

"Angels," she said with a doubtful once-over of the two scruffy men staring back at her. "Yeah, okay, why not. Are the angels going to be helping us?" The question was still directed at the boys, rather than the total strangers.

"Castiel will," Sam said with a nod to the younger angel. "The, uh, the other one won't be."

Lucifer nodded his head in greeting as if he'd just been introduced, a sarcastic smile on his vessel's face, but otherwise he left them to their work.

...

The prisoners were in abandoned warehouses and factories all over the town, and in some collapsing farms and stables in the county. It was a much larger-scale problem than they'd realized from the missing persons posters, and they realized that people had been rounded up from all over the state. It was Castiel who had managed to locate many of the other points as Eva and the brothers worked at freeing people in the town itself.

The sheer size of the problem, though, made it so that they were desperate for time. Eva became more and more panicked as the clock ticked, saying that whatever it was that had been collecting these people was bound to drop in and find them at any minute.

"That's why we need to focus and get everyone out of here safely," Dean encouraged her sternly. "Every minute counts, and we just keep working until we run out of time."

"You'll be fine, Eva," Sam added. "We've been doing this our whole lives. We know what to do." Sam's voice was as steady and calm as he could make it, but he was beginning seriously worry about the job. He had never seen this kind of scale before. Sure, there had been a handful of captives held by a djinn, and people were sometimes rounded up by demons, but nothing made sense for this kind of hoarding of humans. At least, not anything they were prepared to take out on their own.

A faint clicking sound approached then, as if in response to Sam's concerns. It repeated a few times, and suddenly the fluorescent lights of the appliance factory's warehouse spluttered on and the three were lit, in plain view.

A man stood on the stairwell that led down from the supervisor's office at the corner of the room. He was bearded, White, and dressed in a dark grey suit. The only interesting feature on the man, from what Sam could see, was that he wore a copper coil as a pendant around his neck.

Eva shrieked, and that was all the Winchesters needed to know. Dean whipped out his gun and Sam slid toward Eva, trying to usher her to cover.

"So you're the hoarder we're cleaning up after," Dean called out to the man, who hadn't moved since appearing.

"Dean Winchester, I presume," the man said, ignoring Dean's statement.

"Good guess. And what do we call you?" Dean asked impatiently.

"Taranis," he replied, the lights above flickering with his voice.

"Crap," Sam hissed. "Dean," he called more loudly. "Taranis is the name of the old Celtic god of thunder. He's a god who Julius Caesar said was given human sacrifices by the tribes that worshipped him."

"Of fucking course he is," Dean muttered just loud enough for Sam to hear. Then he opened fire.

Taranis barely flinched as rounds hit him or sprayed sparks at his feet. He slowly descended the stairs, and moved purposefully toward Dean.

"The bullets aren't doing anything!" Eva yelled at Sam over the sound of gunfire. Dean dropped his pistol, loaded with both silver and steel bullets, and grabbed his sawed-off. Rock salt had even less effect, if that was possible.

"I need you to geek out for me here, Sam," Dean shouted without taking his eyes of the advancing god.

"There's not much info on him, Dean. The Celts didn't write their myths down, and Caesar was mostly interested in how Taranis might be similar to Jupiter than on what the locals said about him." Sam replied, thinking frantically to try to remember something of value.

"Guys, he can't be an actual god, right? They're just myths," Eva said with a laugh so nervous it made her sound crazy. Or rather, a part of Sam's mind noted, it made her sound totally sane because that was exactly the right kind of reaction to the situation.

"You'll believe angels, but not gods?" Sam replied distractedly, still looking for a weapon they could use. Dean was retreating as he fired now, trying to buy time and maintain distance. Sam knew better than to count on Castiel appearing—if he remembered correctly, Taranis was a part of a triad of gods who took human sacrifices. It would explain the sheer number of people taken, and would also mean Cas would have his hands quite full. Lucifer, on the other hand, could not be bothered to help them with jobs not related to demons. The archangel insisted he was not humanity's pest control, and left it at that. And Sam himself, though a sort of on-again off-again psychic, was completely ineffective unless demons were concerned. So what now?

"Well, angels means God God, right?" Eva replied to Sam's question, though he hadn't really expected an answer. She sounded almost pleading, as if she could use logic to force the monster away. "So how do both angels and these old gods exist?"

"They just do, okay?" Dean yelled impatiently. It really wasn't the time for explanations.

"You would dare," Taranis said, his voice booming and the air in the room cracking. Sparks jumped across his skin and the fabric of his suit, making it hard to look directly at his figure. "The god you speak of forced himself upon our lands until there were none left alive who knew us. Yet you speak of him as if he is the original, as if he created us?"

Taranis suddenly leapt forward in a blur, knocking Dean nearly off his feet and landing with a spray of sparks in front of Sam and Eva. He raised a hand, lightning crackling down his arm and making Sam's hair stand on end. The hunter had the good sense to drop out of the way, grabbing the woman and moving her with him as he fell. The air buzzed and Sam's skin tensed violently as the blow swept mere edges above their heads. He couldn't be lucky enough to dodge a god a second time—they had to do something, immediately.

Sam grabbed a little iron farrier's knife from his bag and stabbed it into Taranis's knee, earning a heavy shock for his trouble. The god yelled and grabbed the little squared knife, pulling it from his skin and throwing it to the other side of the room. "Dean," Sam called, hoping his brother had their iron fire-poker in his own bag.

"Enough," Taranis shouted, the sound of his voice like a physical force that blew the boys to the ground. He whipped around to face Dean, who had been reaching for his bag. "You will be punished for your lack of reverence. The span of your torture will last lifetimes! You will learn your place and kneel before divinity, and you will thank me for putting an end to your insignificant struggles!" the god roared.

Sam felt anger, then, and realized that it wasn't his own. There was a sound of whipping wind, and Taranis stopped suddenly, turning to face the newcomer. "'Torture,' 'divinity'...do I laugh, or do I cry?" the devil asked from in front of Sam.

"Lucifer," Taranis growled.

Eva whimpered, causing Sam to turn. "Did he just say 'Lucifer'?" She asked, eyes large and rimmed and red from crying. "Oh my God," she said, forming the sign of the cross. Eva then grabbed a knife from Sam's bag and held it in front of herself defiantly.

"Hear me, archangel. You will pay for what you have done to my kin," the god said. As he spoke, the wind outside began to pound at the warehouse doors, causing a wailing through the cracks and rattling the corrugated tin roof. The lights flickered and went dim before surging down in a line of electricity that flared across Taranis and nearly obscured him from view.

The angel sighed, his expression perpetually calm and casual. "No, you see, you threatened Sam Winchester. Told him to kneel for you. And unfortunately for you, you arrogant shit, I've had a pretty boring day." Sam knew it was more than that. Below the calmly spoken threats, Lucifer was righteously angry. But even as that rage built, Lucifer looked over his should at Sam, his expression expectant and focused on nothing but the young hunter.

Sam couldn't find the words, so he simply nodded, expression grave. Lucifer's emotions still blurred into his own, and so his anger was such that he wanted this monster to be erased for what he had done.

The angel disappeared in a blink, and reappeared with his hand through the god's chest. Taranis sizzled, as if being cooked by his own electricity, and then fell to the ground as ash.

"Lucifer," Sam began, relief washing over him that no one had been hurt-beyond a few bruises, of course. He was happy to see the angel, and despite being sore all over, he managed a sincere smile.

The angel turned to him, expression uncharacteristically serious. "I don't enjoy doing that, so you're going to stop putting yourself in mortal danger every other day," he said tightly. "I didn't put my war on hold so I could clean up for you."

And without waiting for a reply, the devil disappeared.

...

Cas had had a rough time of it, but with an angel's constitution, he healed quickly. Eva had only been lightly bruised from having Sam fall on her, but she was the one who really needed time for recovery. Through their entire drive away from the factory, she had asked for clarification again and again. She was having real trouble not only with the idea of multiple very real gods, but also that her life had just been saved by the devil. In the end, as much as they hated to do it, they had Cas wipe her memory. Ana had been put in a mental institution for talking about the same sort of thing too forcefully—they had no doubt a homeless woman like Eva would be scooped off the streets and shut away.

Sam felt guilty about the entire scenario, though he wasn't sure what they could have done differently. They had needed Eva, needed Cas, and needed Lucifer to save those people. It had been almost a hundred people, in fact, and it could have gotten worse without them. He called for Lucifer while Cas and Dean were gone taking Eva to a shelter in town. Sam felt the need to apologize and try to explain himself, but his prayer received no answer.

Sam worried, not only because he was genuinely concerned for the angel, but for more selfish reasons. He wanted that security net the brothers had never had before; that guarantee that if things got way out of their league, his own guardian angel would swoop in and deal with it. And even more, he wanted to know exactly what Lucifer had meant about merely putting his war on hold. Because Sam Winchester did not want to be the man who started the apocalypse twice.

...

Hmm...I dunno how happy I am with that, but I know where I'd like us to go, so let's plow ahead, shall we?