stilljustandrew | [Detroit!AU: the first to come was a fair maid]

Andrew goes still, and very cold.

"Whose."

(He knows exactly who she means. It's all over his face.)

Meg's smile brightens. There's something almost worshipful in her eyes, but it's clear it's not for him.

"Don't be so modest," she murmurs. "You're being Called, Wells. Remember that."

Her expression hardens.

"Although you could have saved all this trouble if you'd just accepted His offer last time. Or even if you'd just come back to stand by Sam when it all started."

A beat.

"Oh, wait. I guess you didn't exactly have that option, now did you?"

Andrew's breath hisses in his teeth.

"I don't know what you think you know about that," he starts, "but --"

"You mean about how brave, noble, self-sacrificing Sammy Winchester came back to fight the good fight without you?"

Sarcasm drips from each word as she laughs in his face.

"Oh, sure, he was stubborn, I'll give him that; he held out for months, but once everything went down in Detroit ..."

Meg shrugs, and her smile is murderously delighted.

"Exactly as He planned, all along."

The building anger falls out of Andrew's face, along with most of the color.

"Came back to fight."

It's raw, and barely more than a breath.

"He fought?"

Meg stares at him.

"You didn't know?"

She shrieks with laughter, clapping her hands together as she spins around in a circle, unable to contain her rapture.

"Oh, this is just too much! Sweet little Sammy left his only sanctuary," she mocks, "trying to keep everyone safe from harm--"

She stops in place and darts a fierce grin at him.

"--and then his best friend didn't even realize what he'd done."

Andrew barely hears her. He looks more stunned than anything else.

You came back to fight. You came back to fight.

You didn't give up --

(Somewhere deep inside him, a constricted knot of grieving anger is slowly, painfully, starting to ease.)

He pulls in a ragged gulp of air, his head dropping forward as though it's suddenly too heavy to hold up, and mumbles something low and broken-sounding -- too low, in fact, to make out the words.

"What's that?"

She prances closer, bending forward a little and cupping one hand behind her ear as if to help herself hear, as she taunts,

"Come on, Andy, I know you can do better than that-- after all, I know just how loud you can scream--"

_{"...'ny hap,"} he repeats in a dragging mumble, his head still bowed.

She rolls her eyes for the benefit of the stoic two who are holding him tightly, and gives Andrew a light cuff upside his head before getting right in his face.

"When I tell you to speak up, Wells, you do it."

Andrew looks up, meeting her eyes from a distance of about two inches.

"I said," he enunciates carefully through an unpleasant smile.

"Knee. Cap."

And he lashes out with one foot, precisely aimed and with all the force he can muster.

This time her shriek is one of combined fury and pain, as her right leg crumples under her. Meg rolls away, out of reach.

Slowly, she gets back to her feet, then turns to glare at him.

Her eyes have gone entirely black.

The two holding him haven't moved; one's voiced a low snicker, and the other's tightened his grip on his arm, and that's all.

Andrew's eyes are locked on Meg, and he's still got that very fey smile.

"Made you look."

The hound stationed at the break in the wall turned at Meg's cry, and is now braced and growling at Andrew.

She silences it with a sharp gesture, and takes a deliberate step on what should be an injured leg. Then another.

One of the men shifts uncomfortably. "We can't-- he has to be--"

"I know that," Meg snaps. She's smiling again, a teeth-baring, feral smile. "He has to be intact. So that he can be used."

Two more quick steps, and she backhands Andrew across the face; not hard enough to break his neck or any other bones, but just barely.

"But I can give him something to remember me by."

The blow would knock him down if he weren't being held upright; as it is, his head rocks to one side, and he has to blink his vision clear of the burst of light that obscures it.

Blood fills his mouth from a gash on the inside of one cheek. Briefly he considers spitting it at her, but swallows instead.

"Oh, I 'member you all right," he manages.

"Good," Meg tells him. "That'll give you something to look forward to, once He's done with you."

"Kneel him," she snaps at the guards, and takes a few steps away. Meg bends to the ground, chalk in hand, and begins to trace the blackened line of the outermost circle.

He tries to brace his feet, but one of the guards expertly pops his knees from behind, and he goes down with a painful impact, biting his lip. He swallows the blood again, tries hard to swallow the rising fear.

(It's easier, in the absence of Lucifer himself.)

"So what's His Worshipfulness want me for?"

She ignores him at first; Meg's busy with her work. It's only when she brings the chalk line all the way around them, leaving a gap of only a few inches, that she straightens. At her quick word of command, both hounds bolt into the hallway, one going in each direction. Meg turns to face Andrew-- and the eager anticipation in the smile she turns on him lights her face with unholy joy.

"Your proven talents, of course." Still smiling, she gestures around them at the shattered room and the remnants of the rings he himself had drawn on the floor, some time ago. "Our Lord has a use for them, and thus for you."

The clatter of claws against the floor signals the return of the hounds, who evidently have found no witnesses, and Meg beckons them into the circle. As they take up guard positions on either side of the men holding Andrew, she closes the gap in the chalk line.

The chalk begins to glow with the same sort of light that he's seen before emanating from beneath Lucifer's feet, and Meg smiles in triumph as power begins to build within the ring.

"Witness how He calls us back through this very portal! And that's only the beginning, Wells. You'll see." She laughs again. "Oh yes, you'll see."

Proven talents. Summoning. A use --

No!

Andrew abruptly tries to bolt upright, shoving hard off the floor with one foot, heaving with his arms against the hard hands holding him down.

He doesn't get far.

The guards maintain their implacable grip and bear down with all their weight, pushing him back into his kneeling stance and pinning him there.

A low hum is rising around them now, as is a sense of growing pressure, and the air begins to shimmer and dance with motes of light. Meg's expression is even more joyous than before.

He keeps thrashing, trying to unfold one leg and kick sideways, trying to throw off their balance.

None of it's doing any good, and the pressure of their grip is building into pain even as the power builds around them.

Under his strangled cry of effort and pain, there's another cry -- this one silent, but not wordless.

Baby --

"Oh, stop squirming," Meg snaps at him. "It won't help you. You're being brought into His Presence -- try to show some dignity, if you can wrap your feeble little mind around the concept."

The pressure around them intensifies even as the hum suddenly rises in pitch, arcing toward some peak--

Andrew's eyes are shut, squeezed tight, his lips drawn back from clenched teeth in a grimace of struggle or pain or terror.

As the hum scales up, his eyes press tighter for a moment, and then open on a bleak stare into the rising light.

The light fluoresces into a sudden blinding radiance, the world going white--

--and when everything clears again, the small group is in the middle of a large hall with a wooden floor and many windows set high in the whitewashed walls around them, and a single figure standing in front of them a few feet away.

Lucifer lowers his hand, and smiles.

The hounds dash off to sit at heel behind him as both guards immediately go to their knees beside Andrew. Meg gives a deep curtsey, then approaches as he beckons her forward, her eyes shining as she looks up at him. He cups her face with his hand, stroking one thumb lightly over her cheek. "Well done," he murmurs.

Her answering smile is beatific. Meg remains where she is as he turns away and walks toward the guards and their prisoner.

He stops in front of them, and once again Lucifer smiles, this time at Andrew alone.

"Andrew Wells. Welcome home."

Home.

Andrew turns his face away from that smile, starting to shiver, feeling as though his guts have turned to water.

The grip on his arms has loosened. He could probably pull free of them.

If he could move.

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