(Book 5 Arrow/Spn xover) Family Is Who You'll Kill For

Love to Hate

Dean toppled to the side. He swarmed over his brother, reversing their positions in mere seconds. "You just can't follow through can you?" He snarled, "Never could, that's why your life is like this Dean. You can never commit to doing anything but destroying yourself. You're such a coward, that's why you never left hunting. It wasn't my fault, it's because you're too damn scared to try to live your own life. Well, now you won't have to and I'll finally be rid of you!"

The candles glistened off of his blade as he stared down into Dean's feral eyes, what little rationality had been there was gone. The hate was pouring off both of them. Why am I hesitating? This is what I want! Free of his bullshit, of hunting, of all of it. This... A dull, pulsing orange light caught his eye, the Mark was starting to glow. His mind cleared for the briefest of moments and the passages of the ritual raced through it.

"And the Lost One must give himself over to the evil, and his kin must be willing to be sacrificed for the Lost One's choice to hold power over the Taint. For only when their bond is at it's strongest while being at it's weakest will the Taint show itself to them."

"The Lost One shall be stripped of his humanity, for only when he stares into the darkness of the Taint will he be able to extinguish it. The Sacrifice's blood must be mixed with the blood of the Lost One when the Taint is at it peak. They must succumb to the Taint together, for it feeds on the strength of their wills.

They must share the Taint to defeat it. The Taint cannot succeed by only breaking the bond in one brother, it must break it in both. For only then is the Giver's will truly able to flow through the Mark and triumph. As the bonds begin to shatter they must withstand the onslaught, their shared hate must be returned to love or they will be lost.

The taint is something specific, he realized, it's not just the Mark, it's whatever he felt when he stabbed Cain. Mixed blood, that spell that seemed out of place that Cas pointed out to me. It referred to some sort of alternate world and we discarded it because there was no other reference. Now it makes sense! Keeping the blade at Dean't throat, just in case, he used his other hand to smear some of his blood over Dean's stomach wound and recited the words he'd poured over for hours during the last few days.

He was no longer surrounded by candles, kneeling over his brother with a blade at his throat, he was in some endless space with hundreds of Dean's screaming:

"Kill him!"

"He's worthless!"

"You're just an attack dog, do your job! You don't need him!"

"This is what Dad really wanted, he was just too much of a coward to do it himself!"

"You were always the stronger son, now prove it!"

"Is he right? Are you a coward? Prove his weak ass wrong!"

It was deafening, he tried to cover his ears but it didn't make any difference. Doing his best to ignore the tumultuous cacophony of words and phrases spiraling around him he looked around. All the Deans were looking in the same direction, towards a house he recognized and a scene that he didn't remember but he'd been told about countless times. "Oh God, no, no..."

He started running, a blade manifested in his hand and without any hesitation he drove it through two of the nearest screaming Deans. Instead of them disappearing as he hoped they would they simply split into two, doubling their number and exponentially increasing the volume of hate that filled the air. "What the? I don't understand..." He slowed and starting walking through the first rank of Deans, none of them took note of him, just endlessly repeated why Dean should kill him. "Attacking them just makes it worse. That won't help, there's a different answer here. Are these just some sort of construct? Wait, Cas said the Mark was affecting him on the deepest levels, these are his, no wait, it's thoughts. Is this the Taint? No, that doesn't feel right. We're supposed to succumb to make the Taint show itself. It, not them. These are a symptom, the Taint's weapons, not it. Figure it out!