Chapter 4

[adrenalineshots]

TWO TEMPLES

When Emam-Ali had picked up the phone and Robert Singer’s voice had greeted him from the other end, he would have never guessed what the American man wanted with him.

It wasn’t so much what he asked that surprised Emam (although it wasn’t every day that one is asked to transport two coffins carrying the living from Luxor to his home in Daraw).
No. What had surprised him and what would steal his sleep from that point on, was the realization that the time had finally come.

The signs had been gathering, making themselves noticeable for everyone in every corner of the world, and they were so clear that only the most blind of all - those who did not wish to see - would not understand them for what they were: the heralds of the end of times.

Floods, earthquakes, fires, storms, tornadoes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, epidemics, pandemics, mass murderers, genocide, bombs and massacres, all at the throw of a hat... they were like small appetizers before the main course was served.

And now the time had arrived for Emam to finish playing his part in the events that were to come.

When Emam had met Robert at the airport, his first surprise was to see his old friend in a wheel chair. True to his nature ever since they’d first met, when asked, Robert had talked about everything but himself, sharing tidbits of information and vague tales of what he’d been up to. The fact that he was now paralyzed from the waist down was never mentioned.

Luxor and its international airport where both far enough from Emam’s home and relatives for him to have no qualms about passing himself as a funeral director, in charge of receiving and transporting to their final resting place, the two bodies that one Mr. Singer would be transporting from the USA.

Carefully loaded on the back of his rusty Ford Transit and then dumped in the middle of nowhere, after serving their purpose, the two cheap caskets never reached Daraw.

It wasn’t until he carefully transported the unconscious men from the van and into the abandoned mosque that stood right next to his home, that Emam finally had the chance to take a good look at the two of them.

Of anything that he might’ve been expecting, these two were far from it. Somehow, given what they were foretold to do, given what was expected of them, Emam had imagined that these would be larger than life men. Princely and terrifying.
The unconscious men had looked as young and innocent as his nephew, Benjhi, who had just entered Cairo’s University. Common men, with common fates. And yet, nothing could be further away from the truth.

Ebé would be asking questions later. His companion for close to two decades now, Ebé, a pediatrician nurse by vocation, was the sweetest of wives. But Emam knew that the sudden arrival of three Americans to their house, looking as grim and somber as those three looked, would pique her curiosity. He had told her that they were business associates, but he could see in her chocolate eyes that she did not believe him. Even without understanding a word of English, Ebé could tell that the giant man and the one in the wheel chair were concerned for the blind one and that, whatever business they had, it was not pleasant.

His wife had taken a special interest in the blind man, being extra careful in making sure that furniture was out of his way and that he was watched over at all times. Had Emam been a lesser man, he would have probably been jealous of all the attention being paid to a stranger. But Emam knew Ebé, knew of her sensitive ways and intuition, respected her knowledge of the things that couldn’t be seen but were, nevertheless, real.

She might not grasp the full meaning of the presence of these men in their home, or who the one they called Dean was, but she could certainly feel it.

She knew.



“What’s the earliest we can leave?” Bobby, holding a steaming cup, asks. The coffee smells different than the watery stuff he usually drinks, earthier, stronger. Over the rim of the transparent cup, he looks at Dean, the same way he’s been doing every two minutes since they traded the empty mosque for Emam’s house.

The IV bag is strapped to one of the kitchen’s dishcloths hangers and Dean sits, fidgeting underneath it. There’s a cup of coffee in his hands too, serving more as a finger-warmer than a drink. The dry cake that Emam’s wife offered is sitting on the table to his left, but Dean hasn’t touched it yet. At this point, Bobby is sure that the kid doesn’t even know where the cake is anymore.

Bobby keeps glancing and hoping that, one of the times, he’ll catch Dean looking back at him and seeing him. Keeps hoping that he hasn’t screwed up bad enough to permanently steal Dean’s sight from him.

“It is a four hour drive to Abu Simbel,” Emam answers. He’s drinking tea instead, a dark, reddish liquid that smells sweetly. “If we wish to arrive there not long after midnight, we should leave at sunset.”

“Where are we, anyway?” Sam is standing by the window, watching as a couple of kids play outside with a dog. One of the kids tosses what looks like an old tennis shoe and the dog takes off running like crazy to fetch it. It could be anywhere in the world, except for the fact that, over their jeans, most of the kids are dressed in the same kind of long tunic that Emam has on.
The street is busy, mostly with people coming and going, carrying baskets of food or clothes, handcarts filled with vegetables and other groceries. Most of the women that walk by are dressed in black or somber colors, their heads covered with simple shawls of various and bright shades. Two women pass by wearing burkas and quietly chatting with one another, each holding a child by the hand.

Emam’s wife, Ebé, also has her hair covered, even though her clothes are of a light green and seem more festive than somber.

“South of Egypt, in a small town called Daraw,” Emam supplies. “We are near Kom Ombo and Aswan, the bigger cities around here... Robert mentioned that you needed to get to Abu Simbel quickly, so we made a direct journey from the airport to my home, before waking you.”

“You said the place was heavily guarded,” Sam asks, his mind on the task ahead. “Something strange going on in there, something that justifies that?”

Emam smiles, his lips curling around the edge of his cup as he takes a sip.
“I heard on nothing strange going on in those parts, not the kind of strange you deal with, anyway. Abu Simbel is always heavily guarded... millions of foreigners visit there everyday. Our government is very careful with their security.”

Sam nods, looking less than pleased with the answer. Like any other hunter worth his salt, he had hoped that there had been some signs around the place that could clue them in on what they would be facing. Even in the middle of the desert, people would surely complain if animals started dropping dead or if weird storms were gathering around the place.

“So, the military aren’t there to guard the place? Just the people?”

“Once viewing hours are over, the temples will be mostly empty,” Emam says with a nod. “You are certain this is where they are keeping your friend?”

“Temples?” Dean, who has been mostly quiet so far, chimes in. “I though it was just the one.”

“It is a common mistake,” Emam agrees, before exchanging a couple of words with his wife. She gives him a long look, before nodding and turning her eyes to the two Winchesters. She takes her time staring at each of them from top to bottom, making short notes in a piece of paper as she goes.

Sam is about to ask what’s wrong when he realizes that she is literally measuring them up in terms of what clothe sizes they’ll fit in. He feels slightly uncomfortable under her judging gaze, shifting in his seat beside Dean.

“I’ll get you money for that, Emam,” Bobby says, wheeling out of the kitchen.

Dean, having missed both the woman’s gaze and the meaning of the foreign words, reaches out a hand to stop Bobby’s chair before he can drive away. “Money for what?”

“You will need clothes,” Emam offers, his hand pointing to the cheap suits’ pants and dress shirts that both brothers are still wearing. “Ebé’s cousin has shop... he will make you a very good price.”



Dean leans back on his chair, hand spread over the tabletop and tracing the floral pattern of the wood.
“How did you two meet anyway?” he asks. He wants to trust the man, mainly because Bobby seems to trust him enough to ask for his help. But it’s not easy to trust someone he can’t look in the eyes and get a sense of his true intentions.

“Me and Ebé?” Emam asks, sounding surprised.

“You and Bobby,” Sam clarifies, instinctively knowing what Dean means.

“I buy and sell ancient artifacts, antiques... some years ago, Robert was looking for an important book, a very rare book written by king Solomon himself. I was one of the suppliers he contacted. Since then, we kept in touch. Sometimes, he buys things when he comes here, other times, he sells them to me,” the Egyptian man explains, his eyes locking with Dean’s chest. “If memory does not fail me, I believe that is one of mine,” he adds with a smile, pointing towards the amulet hanging from Dean’s neck.

“Dean’s pendant?” Sam asks, curious. He had no idea that the cheap trinket that Bobby had once given him to offer to his father had come from so far. Nor that it would be as important as Castiel had told them.

God’s EMF meter. Sam wonders if Emam ever knew the importance of that amulet or if he was just in the dark about it as the rest of them.

Dean’s hand curls around the golden pendant, unconsciously hiding the horned head from view.
“You’re the one who found it? Where?” he asks.

Sam knows that ever since Castiel made his revelation about the amulet, Dean has been curious about the impossible odds of something like that ending up in the hands of Michael’s intended vessel. Neither of them really believes in coincidences.

Emam shrugs, scratches his short beard.
“Flea market, I think... it was a long time ago. I remember that Robert was very kind enough to take a cursed Anubis statue out of my hands and in return, I gave him that pendant and a couple others that I had collected over the years.”

“Emam likes to offer me junk,” Bobby cuts in, his chair sliding effortlessly across the stone floor of the kitchen. Stopping near Emam’s waiting wife, he hands her a wad of cash. “Shukran, madame Ebé.”

“Afwan, Roh’bert,” the woman offers with a smile that highlights her wrinkling eyes before leaving them alone.

“So, you were saying that there are two temples...” Bobby prods on, eyes focused as he searches his memory. “One for Ramses II and another for his favorite wife, right?”

“Yes. They are close enough that we can search both in the same night, but it would be better to know exactly which it is you need,” Emam explains. “You mentioned a call for help, yes? Did your friend give you any indication of where he was being held?”

Sam exchanges a look with Bobby. It is obvious that the older man has omitted important details of the reason why they are there and how they got that information. Friend or no friend, it would probably not go over well if they said that a rogue angel of the Lord has been dropping long distance calls in Dean’s dreams.

“He... he mentioned a tall room, with big statues, two columns of them, standing on each side of a corridor,” Dean supplies, easily catching on the ‘need to know’ basis that Bobby has kept his Egyptian buddy on.

“Standing statues inside-you are sure of this? Not columns with big figures of the goddess Hathor?”

Dean turns in the general direction of the Egyptian’s voice, head tilting slightly to the side from where the sound comes from. “Am I supposed to know what you’re talking about?”

“You are right,” Emam sighs, hands folding one over the other as he sets them on the tabletop. “I apologize. I am sure your friend was not at liberty to give you much detail-“

“Look, once we get there, I’ll know for sure when I se-“ Dean stops himself, realizing what he was about to say. For one moment there, he had been able to alienate his thoughts from the darkness around him and focus on the hunt instead. But unless he can see the place, he’ll never be able to tell for sure where Castiel is being kept.

The room has fallen silent around Dean, no one knowing exactly what the right words are to comfort the uneasiness that they can easily read in Dean’s face.

Emam nods, looking like he agrees with something that Dean doesn’t exactly say but he hears nevertheless. He gets up and opens one of the kitchen drawers, pulling out a yellowed road map.
“Since you mentioned inside statues, more than likely it is the temple of Ramses that your friend was referring to and not small Abu, Hathor’s temple, so we’ll start there...”

“I don’t get one thing,” Sam interrupts, standing up to look at the map over Emam’s shoulder. “You said the place is always crawling with tourists and army soldiers, so-“

“How come they don’t see Cas?” Dean finishes. “Yeah, I’ve been thinking the same.”

“Perhaps I can explain that,” Emam offers. “Both places have been under many restoration work since the last earthquake in the area. There are areas still completely sealed from public view.”

“What about the restoration people? Wouldn’t they report finding something strange?” Sam asks.

“Yesterday was Friday, our holy day. The men will not work in this day or the weekend... if your friend was taken there Thursday, after the men left, no one will take notice until Monday.”

“Almost four days of no interference,” Bobby digests.

“Okay, then,” Dean says. His hand carefully feels for the edge of the table before he sets his coffee cup down. “How do we do this?”
From the pregnant silence that follows, Dean knows that they are all staring at him. “What?”

“I think you should stay here,” Sam voices what is clearly on the others’ minds.

“Come again?” Dean asks, his words sharp and edgy like a blade.

“We have to be realistic here, Dean,” Sam goes on, his voice taking on a diplomatic tone that only serves to further aggravate the angry frown on Dean’s face. “You can’t see... you can’t fight. We don’t know who the hell has Cas or what their intentions are. For all we know, this could all be a trap to catch you-“

“Or you, you asshat,” Dean cuts in, wishing that he could pinpoint exactly where his brother is so that he can accompany the words with a proper cuff to the head. “I’m coming... and that’s final! I can still hear, still talk... and who the hell says I can’t fight?”



The words coming out of Dean’s mouth feel like a kick in the ‘nads, further deepening the pit of guilt that Bobby’s carrying inside his chest. In his mind, he keeps seeing Dean, trusting him with his life and obediently offering his neck for Bobby to inject him with the poison he’d created.

If Dean’s too stubborn to recognize his own limitations, Bobby’s more than willing to play the bad guy, if that at least keeps the boy from further harm.
“Who do you think you are, Dare Devil?” he asks, all piss and vinegar. It’s bad enough that his actions have left Dean like this. Bobby won’t be able to deal with it if that boy puts himself at risk under these circumstances. “Sam is right... it’s best if you stay here.”

Dean raises an eyebrow and even though he’s not looking directly at him, Bobby knows that one is for him.
“Is that so? What about you, Mr. Hot Wheels... you’ll be staying here too? ‘cause there’s an awful lot of sand out there and last time I checked your convertible over there doesn’t come with four-wheel traction...”

Bobby glares at the younger man before realizing that it’s a complete waste of perfectly good glare.
“Sam will need an extra pair of eyes to watch out for him,” he points out, the words burning like acid in his mouth. Sam will need Bobby’s of eyes, because the ones he’s used to relying on are out of commission for the time being.

“Thank you for agreeing with me,” Dean says with a practiced smirk.

Bobby opens his mouth to point out that he said no such thing, but Dean beats him to the mark.

“You said it yourself... this,” he says, hand pointing in the vague direction of his face. “This might be just temporary... how can you know that I won’t be perfectly able to see your ugly mugs by the time we get there?”

Neither Sam nor Bobby find the courage to point out that Dean might find himself getting to Abu Simbel just as blind as he is now. Besides, they know that Dean is perfectly aware of that argument. For all they know, the sly bastard is banking exactly on their inability to come out and just say that he might be staying like this forever. Dean’s dead right about that, and the smug smile on his lips says as much.

Sam sighs, sinking back on the chair that he’s vacated. Beside him, Dean is wearing an annoyingly victorious grin on his face.
“This is gonna be great. Two cripples, a hunter and a salesman,” Sam says.

“Sounds like the beginning of a very bad joke,” Bobby mumbles.

“I think it is,” the younger Winchester agrees.



Emam had been right about the security measures. Dean had counts at least three trucks loaded with armed guards, driving in the opposite direction as they make their way to Abu Simbel.

The noise of those trucks is specific enough that it makes it easy to pinpoint them, after Sam identifies the first one for him. Old Ford trucks, with squeaking suspensions from too many bumpy roads and not enough alignment checks and flapping tarps covering the rear compartment. By the time the last one drives by them, Dean could already pick out the faint, clogged noises that the trucks’ escape valves cough out.



He falls asleep after a while. Or at least, Dean is pretty sure he does. Because in his dream, he’s already there. And he can see.

He’s inside the temple, the one with the big standing statues. Up close, they don’t seem like stone at all, more like compact sand, so porous and fragile that he is afraid to touch it, worried that it might all crumbled apart like sand castles.
The walls beyond the columns are covered in faint drawings, like an old form of comic book, telling a story just the same. Dean doesn’t know the difference between hieroglyphs and pictograms, he’s even surprised that he remembers those names, but the story those drawings tell is easy enough to guess. It’s a tale about some dead guy being led by hand by a wolf-headed figure, straight in to the hands of a hawk-man figure. The scale, weighing a heart against a feather, is also fairly easy to understand. The man is being judged in his afterlife for his deeds while living. His sins measured against the weight of a feather, his worth valued in lightness.

It seems hardly fair to Dean, but then again, he figures his heart couldn’t stand to be weighed against even a block of cement. It would always weigh more; it would always weigh him down.

“Dean... you must hurry,” Castiel’s voice echoes in the otherwise silent temple.

Dean steps out of the shadows of the columns to see the angel, standing like before, in the middle of the circle of fire by the door.

“We’re coming, we’re almost there,” Dean assures him. “You have to tell me who is doing this... we need to know what to expect.”

The edge of Castiel’s trench coat touches the flame and the fire grabs on, hungrily licking its way up the angel’s clothes.

“Cas! Tell me who! Tell me why!”

“Asmodeus, one of Lucifer’s generals,” Castiel rasps out. Despite the flames that threaten to consume him, the angel seems to be shining, an intense glow that grows from within and contrasts with the thin fissures that start showing up on his face. “He lured me here under the false pretense that he had found it.”

The light is growing so bright that Dean feels the need to cover his eyes. He can see the cracks widening and opening on the surface of Castiel’s skin, all over him raw light peeking from the lean lines. “Found what?”

Castiel can do no more than point at something behind Dean before his skin breaks into a thousand pieces and the light, no longer contained inside, bursts out like an exploding star. Castiel opens his mouth to scream.

The pain filled shout Dean hears, however, doesn’t belong to the angel’s gravely tones. The voice is Sam’s.

Sam gasping for breath; Sam sobbing in pain.

Where Castiel was standing just seconds before, Sam has replaced him, face contorted in agony as the flames climb over his tall frame. Sam’s pleading eyes meet Dean’s for a fragment of a second before he too disappears, body consumed by the wall of fire.

Dean shields his eyes away from the vision of his brother burning; a silent scream trapped in his throat as the bright light hits him. The last thing that he sees as he turns his head back, to protect his burning eyes, is the same box as before, with the two winged figures on the lid.



There’s a hole on the asphalt and the jeep they’re traveling in bounces up and down as Emam hits it dead on.

Dean comes awake with a gasp; he’s confused for a few seconds, not understanding why everything’s so dark, even though he knows for sure that his eyes are already open. The confusion quickly vanishes, replaced by the image of Sam, burning to death.
“Sam?” he whispers, hoping that the brokenness blatantly clear in his voice gets blamed on the recent slumber rather than his racing heart.

A warm hand finds his wrist and Dean feels himself automatically relaxing. Sam didn’t burn. Sam is right next to him. It was all a dream. Dean remembers it now.

Sam sat in the back with Dean, both of them relegated to the ‘kids’ seats’ in deference to the two older men at the front. The back seat is large enough for at least four people but even so, somehow, Sam has kept his leg pressed against Dean’s the entire journey.

Dean will never admit it out loud, not even in a million years, but the contact actually helps with the feeling of isolation that his blindness is forcing on him, a feeling that grows more crushing and sharp the longer his sight refuses to come back.

“How much further?” Dean asks, trying to sound casual. The sense of being lost in a deep abyss just grows deeper and deeper the farther he gets from a common ground and familiar place. It sits heavily on his chest, like an anvil that refuses to budge.

“Nearly there,” Emam answers from the driver’s seat.

It is getting progressively colder and Dean pulls the hooded jacket he’d been provided with closer to his neck. For some reason, Dean had been expecting some sort of local clothing, maybe the same kind of long tunic that he can hear whenever Emam moves.

The jeans, tee-shirt and denim jacket had surprised him a bit. The fact that the jacket that Ebé had brought him was at least one size too big, was actually welcomed now.

“How’re you feeling?” Sam asks softly.

“Enjoying the view,” Dean replies acerbically, pulling the sleeves of his coat lower to cover his chilled fingers. It’s the fifth time Sam has asked the same question and since the very first one, Dean knows exactly what his brother is really asking. And the answer is still one that neither of them is happy with.



“Well, you’re not missing much,” Sam lies. The view, actually, is breath taking. The sun has long set over the western horizon and the rocky landscape has gradually given way to sand. Above them, without the competition of city lights, pollution or even clouds, the sky is like an immense veil of black that sparkles intensely with the light of countless stars.

It’s easy to imagine that this place hasn’t changed all that much in the past two thousand years or more.

The moon, that had started to climb up in the sky even before it was completely dark, is almost full tonight. It lightens the desert like a powerful flood lamp, transforming the desert into a giant stadium where only the four of them have showed up for the big game.

‘This’, Sam finds himself thinking, ‘If nothing else, this is worth fighting for.’

“Was it... you know... another one?” Sam asks, voice hitting new record levels of low. He knows the two men up front heard Dean’s gasps and barely contained moans when the dream had started, but now, at least, he can give Dean some illusion of privacy by keeping his voice down to a whisper.

Dean nods, wondering if Emam can see them in the rear-view mirror, whispering secrets like high school girls in the back seat. At least this dream brought with it a little bit more than just the usual foreboding and sense of impending death that usually leaves Dean itching to move. This time they have a name.
Asmodeus doesn’t ring a bell in his knowledge of demon lore, but its good to finally know which side of the field they’ll be butting heads with.

“It’s demons,” Dean simply says, because for now, their choice is between the Colt and the knife or blood sigils and oily circles. He’s not sure which is best. But while the Egyptian man is in the car, that’s the most that Dean can tell either Sam or Bobby.

Sam nods, not asking for details. The time for research and knowing every detail about their enemy has come and gone. Now, there is only haste and make sure that they don’t lose anyone else that week.

In the front seat, Bobby meets Sam’s eyes through the rear-view mirror and narrows his eyes. Neither of them likes the sound of that or the implications it brings.

If Castiel had been in the hands of his fellow angels, the whole thing might’ve been a trap to get Dean and force him to say yes to Michael or just as easily a private squabble between Cas and his winged former-buddies. Not an ideal situation, but one where Dean wouldn’t be at risk of anyone trying to harm him. Not permanently, anyway.

Demons were a whole different ball game. If they were the ones setting this, more likely than not, it will be a trap to get Sam, so he can be persuaded to say yes to Lucifer. And demons will have no quarrels about killing Dean. As they were told before, the idea is actually encouraged.

Kill the vessel, spare Lucifer from the added trouble of facing big brother Michael.

The idea that they’re going straight towards the ones who want to see Dean dead, delivering a blind hunter right to their laps, feels slightly deranged.

Right now, though, the alternative is to turn back and leave Castiel to his fate. Neither Bobby nor Sam is prepared to make that call and they both know Dean would stumble his way ahead alone if they tried to anyway.

When Emam announces that they have arrived, Sam still can’t see anything even closely resembling the fifty-foot tall statues that Dean described. Or a plan in the immediate horizon.

They park the car near the lake, beneath the palm trees, heavily laden with juicy dates. There is a heavily sweet smell in the air from the ripe fruits that have fallen to the ground and got squished under the feet of hundreds of tourists and sellers during the day.

The shops along the shoreline have long since closed, business done for the day. Their cover story, in case the remaining guards come asking, is to say that they are unloading merchandise for the next day. They have the empty boxes to prove it and Emam works at laying them on the ground strategically while Sam makes short work of picking the lock on one of the green booths.

“We all set then?” Bobby asks, parking his wheelchair inside the small shop.

The small structure is less than eight feet wide and ten feet long, both sides with top to bottom shelves stock filled with several sizes and forms of replicas of everything and anything that reminds tourists of Egypt. There are Sphinx in all colors and materials, Great Pyramids sets, gods, goddesses, pharaohs, palm trees saying ‘Welcome to Egypt’, camels saying ‘Enjoy your stay’, musical instruments and elaborate glass bottles of sweet perfumes, all in the same row. Slotted between the half-counter and the far wall are two racks with hanging clothes, anything ranging from cheesy tee shirts to extravagant and shiny tunics and gowns.

It all screams cheap, mass production and there isn’t a single replica in sight that can be accused of being accurate, but all of them no doubt sell like hot cakes.

Sam checks the disposable cell phones that they’ve picked up on their way there and grabs a couple of flash lights from the store shelf.

The demon-killing knife is tucked away in the waist of his jeans and he hands the Colt to Bobby. “You should keep this with you.”

Bobby gives him a look, not voicing the idjit that’s clearly on his mind. “And why the heck would I do that?”

Sam gives him a look of his own, one that usually works on Dean but is completely wasted on the older man.

“Because,” Dean interjects, even though he can't possibly guess the look Sam is giving Bobby, “you’ll be staying here with no backup and nothing guarantees that those demonic bastards won’t back track and attack you.”

“I could stay with Bobby,” Emam offers, even as Bobby accepts the gun reluctantly. “But I believe my presence is best served if I go with you to the temple.”

“I don’t need no goddamn babysitter,” Bobby hisses quietly, venomously. His eyes are focused on the two brothers, the direction of his discontent unmistakable. “Emam knows the place, knows the language... if any of the guards catch up to you two dimwits, what the hell are you gonna say? ‘Howdy!’?”

“Dean’s staying too,” Sam says, trying the sentence out as an affirmation, seeing how far that kite flies.

It crashes miserably.

“The hell I am!” Dean blares as he takes a step in his brother’s direction.

The edge of Dean’s jacket catches the beak of a black, overgrown, falcon-head figure on the edge of the third shelf. The soapstone statue crashes to the ground with a muffled sound of broken clay.

Dean curses and turns, his hand colliding painfully with a row of plastic pyramids and knocking the whole thing sideways like a string of dominos. It takes the constricting feeling of Sam’s hands on both sides of his shoulders, centering him, for Dean to stop his bull-in-a-china-shop impersonation and freeze.

“Yeah,” Sam breathes out after a heartbeat, “... I can see how insane it is to suggest that you stay here.” The words sting even as he says them, childish and uncalled for under the terrifying state Dean’s in. But they still taste a lot better than ‘Dean’s dead’ any day of the week. “What do you think you’ll be accomplishing by going with me?”



Dean, trapped in his brother’s hold, looks straight ahead, fixing his unseeing eyes on Sam’s face. He’s been doing that his whole life and even when Sam surpassed him in height, Dean could always find a way to look Sam straight in his eyes. Even in the dark. “I need to go, Sammy... I need to be there,” he simply says.

He knows that Sam will understand what he isn’t saying, what he can’t voice in the presence of others or even to himself, words about bad feelings and sense of protection and being with your family when everything else crumbles. He hopes Sam knows how hard it is for Dean to be asking to be a part of this at all, to admit that the decision is Sam’s to make and there is nothing Dean can do about it other than try to persuade him to see his point. He prays the Sam understands how unfamiliar this is for Dean and just meets him half way.

Sam is standing so close that Dean can feel the deep breath he takes, can hear Sam’s hair moving when his brother finally nods... or shakes his head. It’s hard to tell from sound alone and Dean resists the temptation to grab Sam’s head and figure out if it’s moving up and down or side to side.

“Okay... this is a terrible idea, but okay,” Sam says, making things easier for him.

Bobby clears his throat and for a second Dean thinks that he’ll have to fight the older man on this too.

“You sure you wanna do this, Emam?” Bobby asks instead.

From the stutter in the Egyptian man’s voice, Sam and Dean can tell that the question surprises him as much as it does them.

Hadn’t Bobby just argued that they were both screwed without someone who spoke the language?

“Ana mesh fahim...” Emam let out, shaking his head. “You said-“

“Yeah, I know what I said,” Bobby grumbles. “I also know that it ain’t easy going up against one of those sons of bitches again, specially after being possessed by one.”



It would be easy to assume that Bobby was talking about himself, but Sam realizes that he and Bobby are not the only ones in that small shop with a past that included being worn as a demon puppet.

Emam’s head is bent forward, like a penitent man, and his hands are worrying the sides of his tunic, the cotton fabric wrinkling under his fingers.

“It was many years ago, my friend,” the local man finally says, raising his eyes to met Bobby’s. “And you saved me then. It is a debt that I have taken too long to repay.”

Bobby huffs, in a way that speaks more of embarrassment than annoyance.
“You don’t owe me anything... certainly not for that.”

“Wait... I thought you two had met on business,” Sam voices as he realizes that the story he heard before doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface. But then again, as with most things relating to Bobby, he should’ve known that would be the case. The man was like the old cars in the his scrap metal yard: layers upon layers of paint coat, each a different color from the previous.

“We met on business, yes. We became friends when Robert saved my life,” Emam announces proudly.

“Sloppiest exorcism I ever did, if you ask me,” Bobby adds. “Emam’s was the first time I tried the ritual and to this day, in between the bastardized Latin and the awful long time I took, I still don’t get how it even worked.”

“Still, I got my life back.”

“Not before that bastard ruined any possibility of you ever returning to the States without being hunted down; not before he murdered that cop,” Bobby mumbles, obviously still beating himself up for something that, if any of them had to guess, was far from being his fault.

“So, you’re okay with facing a demon again?” It was Sam’s turn to ask. Odds were the older man wouldn’t even have to get involved, but Sam needed to be sure that, if push came to shove, he wouldn’t have to deal with a former possessed person freaking out on top of everything else. “Contrary to what Bobby believes, we can actually wipe our asses on our own... you don’t have to go.”

“I am going,” Emam repeats, resolute, his right hand reaching for the sky. “Insha’Allah.”



Master Post 

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