The Final Solution

Disclaimer: I don't own "Supernatural" or profit from it in any way; I merely plunder its intellectual property for my own amusement. I also don't own Michael Chabon's titular novella.

Author's Note: This story is intended to feed my own desires, and it will lead the reader to an interestingly dark place. Read with caution, but relish with joy.

"Hell is empty, and all the devils are here," thought Sam Winchester with a touch of irony he hadn't felt since his last days at school, when the whole College Illusion had begun to lose its luster.

It wasn't his current battle against a particularly bloodthirsty fiend, or the back-to-back witch hunts – first in Wisconsin and now here in Massachusetts – he was just now finishing that left him to wax so philosophical. No, it was just a run-of-the-mill observation; the kind of thing an old professor of his had once told the class to "hunt for until your hands are raw and your eyes blister at the light of morning!" However, his current battle was a little desolate and the two-for-one witch battles had left him drained (as they always did: witches were a crafty and toughened bunch), both of which led Sam to realize the fittingly flippant manner of his scholarly findings (his area of expertise being Demon Hunting, his capstone written in werewolf blood). If he had bothered to give voice to his thought, Dean would have laughed out loud.

Unfortunately, Dean wasn't much into the "expelling oxygen" business right now, seeing as how he was wrangling hand-to-hand with the wiry old lady they were currently trying to kill.

"Some help, Sammy?" Dean managed to toss out between clenched teeth, his fist punctuating his remark by leaving an interesting bruise on the woman's left cheek.

"Give me one second…done." Sam responded as his hand plunged into the right pocket of his jeans to extract a handful of grey-blue dust, which he proceeded to toss around the spell caster.

"You brought grandma's ashes to fight one of the state's most powerful sorceresses? And here I thought you went to college for nothing."

"Hold on a minute, Dean. Now watch."

Sam finally opened the leather-bound book he was holding by his side, and began reading. As the Latin phrases darted from his mouth into the darkening night, the dust lifted from its messy line into a circle, then a cyclone. The magically created storm enshrouded the old woman, who had but a moment to utter a cry of retort before she was silenced by the whir of an ancient spell.

"I take back the cremation joke – that was some serious mojo." Dean said, a smile chasing his words.

"I didn't go to college for nothing: they did teach me Latin." Sam retorted, already moving into position to ease his older brother against the closest tree trunk. "Did you think all of those thirty-three rounds you went with the Wicked Witch were necessary?"

"I had to teach that bitch what it meant to be taken down by the Winchester brothers. We aren't some salt & pepper hunters: we're lean, mean, fighting machines. She never stood a chance." Dean said proudly.

"All grotesque chest bruising to the contrary?" Sam said skeptically.

"Bruises fade little brother; glory only gets brighter in hindsight." Dean threw back.

"Kind've like a massive house fire that kills dozens?"

"I really hope you aren't comparing my latest triumph to a horrible freak of nature."

"If the shoe fits…"

"Hit your irritating sibling with it."

Sam lips, chapped as they were and torn where the witch had thrown a small flurry of rocks at his, turned up at the edges. Banter with his brother: if he ever died, God help him, this was one of the few things he'd miss.

"Hello, Sammy? Let's not space out here, ok. You could use a healthy dose of first aid and I may just pass out right here if we don't start moving." Dean said lightly, shaking his brother's forearm.

"What? Oh, yeah. Let's go home." Sam's ruminations faded from his mind, giving him a pleasant background glow, as he helped his brother stand and they both started hobbling towards the Impala. At the moment before he slid into the passenger seat (even injured, Dean's "baby" was still off-limits, driving wise, to his baby brother), Sam looked back at his conjured cyclone.

"If that doesn't keep you tied up for a while, then we have a bigger problem on our hands than we thought."

"Talking to yourself again, Sam? Maybe you need a little more than physical treatment."

"Shut up, jerk."

"Bitch."

That smile from earlier returned, another continuing reminder of the amenities to be found in his new lifestyle of cruising-and-slaying. He slid in onto the leather, scrunching his legs into the almost-confining floor space.

"Off we go." Dean announced as he floored the gas into the soft and silent night.

For an evening so seemingly serene, the gnawing noises created by the brothers' spell made the night, for Naz, a disaster. Not only was she currently locked inside a spell intoned from a dusty language even she would have trouble tricking her way out of, but she was bleeding. Gushing even.

"I don't envision this ending well for me." She gritted out. She had minutes maybe, possibly even moments, before the darkness lurking in the far-off tree branches pounced on her consciousness, then swallowed her whole. She'd needed a contingency plan. How was she to know that challenging the latest freak-hating fanatics to cruise into her town would spell her doom? The last three times it'd happened everything had been effortless - the men's brains had been pulled from their skulls with an easy spell; they'd never felt a thing (well...perhaps they'd felt a little something). This though, she'd never expected to fight and lose to these babies. In her years at work as a conjurer of the quick and the dead and the satanic, all those who wished to do her harm had been older and burned inside with a passion always threatening to set them aflame (something Naz aided with much joy). To encounter a pair like this, calm and collected and put together, even before they crossed a measurable threshold into adulthood, was beyond her reckoning…and that had been her fatal mistake.

But it would not be her last move.

The question boiled down to this: in what uniquely exquisite way could she torture the brothers who had done this atrocity to her? There lay at her fingertips a dozen or more methods of eternal, barely-there misery; incantations to create a lifetime of slowly-building mania. No, she wanted a rapid retribution. To that effect she could just send their car flying from the road. Too quick: she needed something fast-acting but cruelly designed for a pain that would claw its way into both boys (Boys…who beat me! The thought still left her sick) and leave them forever deformed from her plans. Where would her inspiration come from?

Wait. Passing through her head, a remembrance from the battle: "…we're lean, mean, fighting machines." That was it; she would turn his declaration of youth into a haunting reminder of age and fragility for both of them. The swirls of darkness, potent in their nihilistic cravings, sprang easily to her mind and she spread her palms wide. A second before she mouthed the words that would seal the Winchester's fates, a realization: leaping across this void the younger one created around me will drain a portion of my energies. I fear I will not have enough to destroy them both.

Anger, resentment, and frustration. But wait: a smile.

"I cannot get them both – but just as killing a child will irrevocably damage its parents, so will I attack the amateur magician who has locked me into death, and in the process torment the pair as I torture the one." With this last pronouncement, Naz drew breath for the last time and muttered her spell. Then she died.

And as her eyes clouded over watching the night sky, her face drew tight in a caricature of joy: her magic this very moment glided across blades of grass and the wings of birds to the boy.

She would have her revenge.

Sam could count on one hand the number of times he'd been as happy as he was now to see the flashing neon lights of a roadside motel. Among these instances, the one he was currently involved in – injured driver, beleaguered mind – called out for rest and sleep as much as any. He would welcome his stale mattress with open arms tonight.

As the car roared (or rather, purred, as Dean was letting off the gas in preparation of exit even before they had turned into the lot) close to their room, Sam could hardly keep at least a small groan of content from passing through his lips.

"Eager for sleep, Sammy?" Dean joked, turning towards his brother as he opened the door and swung one foot out onto the pavement.

"I think I passed eager about ten miles ago. I'm hovering around 'desperate' right now."

"I hear you: I'm stripping down and sleeping in for the next twelve-to-twenty hours."

"I'm hoping closer to twenty."

"Crazy witch: kills more than five hunters and still has the nerve to take us on head-first. Good thing we took care of that; it'll leave more time for the important stuff."

"Like going into a coma?" Sam asked.

"You read my mind, little bro."

By this time the Winchesters had made their way into the room and deposited their weapons and supplies into a pile in the corner. Dean immediately slipped out of his shirt – a torn mess that, after being eyed-over for thirty seconds received the "You'll be safer in the incinerator," treatment – and jeans before pulling out the bandages and ointment from the side table.

"Interested in patching a guy up?" He said, turning to Sam.

"Patching you up is what I live for," Sam dryly returned.

"As long as it's done right, you can hate me for it all you like," Dean said, settling into his pillows, anticipating his coming sleep.

"Yeah, yeah – now pipe down or I might slip and do more harm than good."

"The day that happens, Sammy, is the day time starts flying backwards."

With this last witticism Dean set back into slumber, letting Sam finish his job – which he did roughly ten minutes later. Packing up the medical supplies, Sam decided to take a quick shower before joining his older brother in dream land. As he stepped into the bathroom and cranked the shower to full throttle (he'd been told by Dean that he'd inherited his like of hot showers from his dad, a fact he once thoroughly resented) an odd tingle touched his spine. Thinking it was just the change in the air temperature, he proceeded to shuck his pants, shirt, and a pair of white briefs before he stepped into the shower.

As his first foot hit the wet, hot tile the feeling expanded from his spine and moved to the base of his neck. This change gave the young hunter a moment's pause, and had the sensation then not ceased a second after it expanded fully to a warm glow in his head he almost surely would have said something to Dean the following day…or remembered the incident at all. As it was, Sam Winchester immersed himself fully in the cleaning fluid and let the day's activities melt away from him.

Little did he know that his stress wouldn't be the only thing to melt from him over the next few days.