Fic: I'll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife

I'll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife
Length: About 8600 words
Rating: Gen, R for language and maybe other things
Warnings: Author chooses not to warn because she considers them spoilery; read at your own risk
Characters: Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Castiel
Spoilers: Through The Executioner's Song
Synopsis: Dean deals with the implications of Cain's prophecy. Fills the non-linearity square on my Bingo card for spnspiration

A/N: I started writing this after Dean killed Cain, and there was a lot we didn't know about the Mark. I decided not to post it back then because, as the charming and astute frozen_delight pointed out, everything I thought I knew about the Mark was wrong. ;-) And after the season finale I thought about reworking it to make it canon-compliant and decided I liked it better the way it was. So, consider this an AU. And forget everything you know about the Mark of Cain except for these things: it turns you into a demon if you're killed, it eventually turns you into a demon even if you're not killed, and it makes it difficult or impossible to kill you.

Thanks to my lovely betas manzanita_crow and frozen_delight. I messed with it after they read it, so all errors are mine. The title is from "Take Me To Church" by Hozier.

before

The thing is, Dean's been on this side of a prophecy before. He is, after all, the Righteous Man. The Michael Sword. He knows how useless it is to fight it. Sure, he can spout a lot of brave talk about Team Free Will, but he knows the truth: you try to buck destiny, and you find that instead of killing your brother, you're setting up the dominos that eventually knock him into the Pit as Lucifer's eternal meat suit, and how is that a win? One way or another, destiny has its way with you and there's not a single fucking thing you can do about it, at least in Dean's experience. So he knows what to expect here. And it takes several months, but Cain's prediction eventually comes to fruition, and Crowley is the first domino to fall.

( ... )